I assume what they are going for is that if they were inversely correlated it would imply that movie piracy drives down box office revenue (since you could say

I assume what they are going for is that if they were inversely correlated it would imply that movie piracy drives down box office revenue (since you could say "the more pirated a movie is, the lower its box office revenue"). Since they aren't, it implies that piracy does not significantly cause reduced box office revenue. I've brought it up a few times before, but you can read about another study here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 that assuming my previous comment on it was correct found for example that every pirated movie is 0.27 of a lost sale, whereas every pirated video game is actually 0.24 of an extra sale. If 0.27 was actually 1 or more, then a result like the linked study would have been more surprising for example.