Brett Danaher of Wellesley College and Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota and NBER conducted a study on the effect of online piracy on box office totals. It’s an extensive look at a really hot-button issue affecting the business. However, the results are somewhat surprising. The availability of pirated films online doesn’t cause a decrease in domestic box office numbers (hey, MPAA, how does it feel to breathe a wee-bit easier) but there is a decrease in international box office sales since the advent of BitTorrent technology, especially when there are longer lag times from the US release to the international release.
You can read the whole study in the embedded PDF below. It’s pretty short, and quite frankly, President’s Day sales are overrated.
