Film piracy is down to release delays

A new study in the US has found no evidence that BitTorrent has a negative effect on US box office returns but that international ticket sales were found to be "at least 7 per cent lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy".The researchers from the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College attribute this drop in returns to the long gap between international release windows, saying:"We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects."Over in the Hollywood hills they may be a dab hand at putting films together, but they don't quite seem to have the internet smarts to realise there's a simple solution to the issue of BitTorrent piracy: simultaneous international releases.If we had presses, we would stop them. It's almost as though Hollywood isn't aware that the internet is global, nor that to release something in one country won't stop people in other countries hearing about it and wanting to see it at the same time.The UK's film industry, at least, seems clued in to the thinking that legal accessibility will lessen the impact of piracy, but still faces major hurdles like getting films on to legal streaming services soon after release.