6 ms·

Researchers find Megaupload shutdown hurt box office revenues

90 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

Empro 14y ago
The story's title is different, but I guess it doesn't fit on HN?
paulgb 14y ago
Direct link to paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2176246_code1545989.pdf?abstractid=2176246&mirid=1 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2176246_code... Someone more statistical than I can correct me on this, but by using on average 21 observations per movie (presumably for different weeks), aren't they creating dependence between observations which will artificially increase the p-values and r-squared?
- 1337biz 14y ago
  Am I understanding this right, that this papers hasn't even been peer-reviewed and are just 3 pages uploaded by the authors to ssrn?
iamben 14y ago
Haven't read the paper, but just based on the article I'd be curious to see the affect on blockbusters compared to say, their rotten tomatoes scores (or whatever). It'd be interesting to see whether the opposite of the reasoning applied for the smaller movies people may not have heard of ("I saw xxxxx, it was great you should see it") applies to the blockbusters with a lot of publicity and promotion behind them ("Yeah, I downloaded xxxxx, it was dreadful..").
darrencauthon 14y ago
If this was true (and I'm dubious of the "find"), it should be something for movie makers to consider when it comes to distributing their movies. What this shouldn't be used for, though, is the default excuse by pirates when stealing intellectual property. "My theft actually helps, see?!?!?" Even if there is some financial gain, more is lost when the fundamental IP rights are stolen.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  >Even if there is some financial gain, more is lost when the fundamental IP rights are stolen. // Apart from your failure to demonstrate an understanding of the difference between unlicensed duplication and denial through theft this bit still doesn't quite make sense to me. Are you saying that the IPR are worth more than their direct fiscal benefit and that this benefit is some how reduced even if more money is made by the rights holders? Could you expand on your reasoning? If the findings are correct then for some tortuous infringer's then yes it would seem the most likely causality is that their unlicensed use of the material is of benefit [in promulgating the cultural worth¹ and] in bringing more financial benefit to the industry. If. - - - ¹ but who cares about that!
  - darrencauthon 14y ago
    Sure, I'll expand on my reasoning, but only since you ask. :) I don't and won't debate IP here, but I'll try to give more details behind that short post. Intellectual property rights, themselves, are more important than the monetary gain. The right to own the product of your work is incredibly important to the creator's life. If you make something, whether it be a wood carving, a sandwich, or even a computer program or piece of music, that thing is yours. To take that something from someone without consent is theft. When it comes to intellectual property, the only way to control the thing is to control its distribution. If the creator has no ability to set the terms by which the book, song, software program, etc. can be used, then there's no such thing as ownership of the created work. I think that's a worse loss than any temporary financial gain that could be had by the loss of IP rights, as those IP rights are everything to the creator. If a creator doesn't own what he creates, and he can't trade his creation on his own terms, how can he succeed in life? Where's that pride of knowing that what you made is YOURS and you can control it? Imagine a situation where an accomplished, proud artist spends years painting what he considers his life's masterpiece. Then the next evening, a thief runs off with painting, but leaves a stack of $100 million in cash with a note that says "SOLD!". Was the artist justly compensated? Would there be articles written about how art theft could leave artists with more money than on the market?
    - 14y ago
runn1ng 14y ago
I am too lazy ... ummm busy to read the paper right now, but well, is it really causation, or some very, very weak correlation?
- jbri 14y ago
  For massive blockbusters they do find a negative effect, the positive impact is mainly for lesser-publicized movies without the massive advertising budget funneled into them. It's always hard to tell with statistics, but I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the extra publicity from file sharing outweighs the negative effects for those smaller movies.
  - aptwebapps 14y ago
    I imagine that most of the people who would want to see a blockbuster will know about it due to the overwhelming marketing. At the other end of the marketing budget spectrum the movies probably rely on word of mouth which would probably get a boost from file-sharing.
  - 1337biz 14y ago
    Even so I want to believe the story, it smells a lot like the typical correlation = causation story. These things are so easy to construct, i.e. the pirates & global warming correlation [1]. There could be a lot of other factors that were leading to this development, e.g. studios concentrating more on pushing blockbuster movies, generally a weak indie/strong blockbuster movie season, etc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirate...
brackin 14y ago
Why don't film makers put the first 10 minutes of a film on Bittorrent a week or month before release? This could offer many of the advantages and still allows them to earn direct revenue. I know some have tried similar models and other studies have shown leaks help the success of a film.
- runn1ng 14y ago
  Well, they already make trailers and put them to every videosharing site possible. If you add all footage from the trailers, it can be about 10 minutes, maybe more.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    Movie trailers are awful now. They generally show you all the important points of the movie and all the best SFX. Sometimes the movie is worse than the trailer. First 10 minutes sounds great - you'd know if you want to see more or not from that but it wouldn't [in most cases] give the whole plot away.
    - MojoJolo 14y ago
      Agree. I assume some of the trailers of the movies are automatically generated. There are these groups in my university conducting research of generating trailers / sound effects / background music. Choosing the best scenes in the movie automatically and combined them in a good way.
      - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
        What inputs are they using to chose the best scenes. Is it based only on the movie? Audience reactions at screenings? Sounds interesting. You could presumably then tailor trailers to particular groups to emphasise desired attributes. Downside to that is that if you sit through a few trailers you could literally have seen a-third of the movie before you go to watch it.
    - malloreon 14y ago
driverdan 14y ago
I really wish HN had a rule against blogspam like this. How about the original post: http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-hurt-box-office-revenues-121124/ http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-hurt-box-office-... Or maybe the paper itself? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246

90 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

Empro 14y ago

The story's title is different, but I guess it doesn't fit on HN?

Direct link to paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2176246_code1545989.pdf?abstractid=2176246&mirid=1 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2176246_code... Someone more statistical than I can correct me on this, but by using on average 21 observations per movie (presumably for different weeks), aren't they creating dependence between observations which will artificially increase the p-values and r-squared?

1337biz 14y ago
Am I understanding this right, that this papers hasn't even been peer-reviewed and are just 3 pages uploaded by the authors to ssrn?

iamben 14y ago

Haven't read the paper, but just based on the article I'd be curious to see the affect on blockbusters compared to say, their rotten tomatoes scores (or whatever). It'd be interesting to see whether the opposite of the reasoning applied for the smaller movies people may not have heard of ("I saw xxxxx, it was great you should see it") applies to the blockbusters with a lot of publicity and promotion behind them ("Yeah, I downloaded xxxxx, it was dreadful..").

darrencauthon 14y ago

If this was true (and I'm dubious of the "find"), it should be something for movie makers to consider when it comes to distributing their movies. What this shouldn't be used for, though, is the default excuse by pirates when stealing intellectual property. "My theft actually helps, see?!?!?" Even if there is some financial gain, more is lost when the fundamental IP rights are stolen.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
>Even if there is some financial gain, more is lost when the fundamental IP rights are stolen. // Apart from your failure to demonstrate an understanding of the difference between unlicensed duplication and denial through theft this bit still doesn't quite make sense to me. Are you saying that the IPR are worth more than their direct fiscal benefit and that this benefit is some how reduced even if more money is made by the rights holders? Could you expand on your reasoning? If the findings are correct then for some tortuous infringer's then yes it would seem the most likely causality is that their unlicensed use of the material is of benefit [in promulgating the cultural worth¹ and] in bringing more financial benefit to the industry. If. - - - ¹ but who cares about that!
- darrencauthon 14y ago
  Sure, I'll expand on my reasoning, but only since you ask. :) I don't and won't debate IP here, but I'll try to give more details behind that short post. Intellectual property rights, themselves, are more important than the monetary gain. The right to own the product of your work is incredibly important to the creator's life. If you make something, whether it be a wood carving, a sandwich, or even a computer program or piece of music, that thing is yours. To take that something from someone without consent is theft. When it comes to intellectual property, the only way to control the thing is to control its distribution. If the creator has no ability to set the terms by which the book, song, software program, etc. can be used, then there's no such thing as ownership of the created work. I think that's a worse loss than any temporary financial gain that could be had by the loss of IP rights, as those IP rights are everything to the creator. If a creator doesn't own what he creates, and he can't trade his creation on his own terms, how can he succeed in life? Where's that pride of knowing that what you made is YOURS and you can control it? Imagine a situation where an accomplished, proud artist spends years painting what he considers his life's masterpiece. Then the next evening, a thief runs off with painting, but leaves a stack of $100 million in cash with a note that says "SOLD!". Was the artist justly compensated? Would there be articles written about how art theft could leave artists with more money than on the market?
  - 14y ago

runn1ng 14y ago

I am too lazy ... ummm busy to read the paper right now, but well, is it really causation, or some very, very weak correlation?

jbri 14y ago
For massive blockbusters they do find a negative effect, the positive impact is mainly for lesser-publicized movies without the massive advertising budget funneled into them. It's always hard to tell with statistics, but I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the extra publicity from file sharing outweighs the negative effects for those smaller movies.
- aptwebapps 14y ago
  I imagine that most of the people who would want to see a blockbuster will know about it due to the overwhelming marketing. At the other end of the marketing budget spectrum the movies probably rely on word of mouth which would probably get a boost from file-sharing.
- 1337biz 14y ago
  Even so I want to believe the story, it smells a lot like the typical correlation = causation story. These things are so easy to construct, i.e. the pirates & global warming correlation [1]. There could be a lot of other factors that were leading to this development, e.g. studios concentrating more on pushing blockbuster movies, generally a weak indie/strong blockbuster movie season, etc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirate...

brackin 14y ago

Why don't film makers put the first 10 minutes of a film on Bittorrent a week or month before release? This could offer many of the advantages and still allows them to earn direct revenue. I know some have tried similar models and other studies have shown leaks help the success of a film.

runn1ng 14y ago
Well, they already make trailers and put them to every videosharing site possible. If you add all footage from the trailers, it can be about 10 minutes, maybe more.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  Movie trailers are awful now. They generally show you all the important points of the movie and all the best SFX. Sometimes the movie is worse than the trailer. First 10 minutes sounds great - you'd know if you want to see more or not from that but it wouldn't [in most cases] give the whole plot away.
  - MojoJolo 14y ago
    Agree. I assume some of the trailers of the movies are automatically generated. There are these groups in my university conducting research of generating trailers / sound effects / background music. Choosing the best scenes in the movie automatically and combined them in a good way.
    - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
      What inputs are they using to chose the best scenes. Is it based only on the movie? Audience reactions at screenings? Sounds interesting. You could presumably then tailor trailers to particular groups to emphasise desired attributes. Downside to that is that if you sit through a few trailers you could literally have seen a-third of the movie before you go to watch it.
  - malloreon 14y ago

driverdan 14y ago

I really wish HN had a rule against blogspam like this. How about the original post: http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-hurt-box-office-revenues-121124/ http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-hurt-box-office-... Or maybe the paper itself? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246