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Chinese movie piracy is overestimated
The three countries in which the [movie piracy] losses to U.S. studios were highest were not East Asian countries, and two of them were not developing countries: Mexico, the United Kingdom, and France accounted for over $1.2 billion in lost revenues, or 25% of the non-U.S. total – and slightly less than the U.S. total of $1.3 billion.
You will notice that China is not mentioned in that summary. Go to p.13 of the paper: Russia has a per capita piracy rate lower than that of Germany and about equal to that of Japan. And, out of the first eleven nations studied, China comes in sixth in absolute terms for movie piracy losses and eleventh in per capita terms. In per capita terms, nation #10, Russia, has almost ten times the piracy losses as does China. Per capita piracy losses are about twenty times higher in the United States than in China. If eleven more nations are added to the rankings (see p.15), only two (Korea and India) have lower per capita piracy losses than China. Overall that puts China at 20th out of 22 sampled countries when it comes to per capita piracy losses on movies.
Hungary, however, is a major, major offender. Chinese piracy is highly visible to those who visit major Chinese cities, because it takes the form of DVD sales in the streets. But the real grabbers are countries where everyone has a VCR or DVD player, and where the domestic film industry is relatively weak.
These numbers may not be highly accurate, but they do put things in perspective. Hat tip to China Law Blog.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 20, 2007 at 10:17 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
Since there are a billion poor farmers in the West that aren't involved at all in the Chinese economy, per capita numbers don't seem appropriate. China is really like two economies. A wealthy one and a very poor one.
Posted by: Mo at Nov 20, 2007 10:44:55 AM
Can someone explain to me how the record, movie and software industries calculate "lost" revenue?
Do they really assume that every pressed copy of pirate software translates into a lost sale? Do they really think the kind of people who buy pirated software and other goods would have legitimately purchased the product otherwise?
Photoshop is the classic example. The cost of a pirated copy is next to zero, but an official copy is several hundred dollars. For people with limited incomes but a desire to use the software (teenagers, college students) that makes pirating a very tempting choice.
Likewise pirating music and movies. Would these people have otherwise bought the CD or the DVD or gone to the cinema? Or do they just pirate, check it out, and then discard it? Or leave it sitting on a hard drive unwatched?
The RIAA in its lawsuits against random citizens seems to equate an "illegal download" with a "lost sale", which in my mind is a totally facetious argument.
I think the claims of $x billion in lost revenue are even more far fetched than we think.
Posted by: Luke Burton at Nov 20, 2007 11:42:12 AM
How could it amount to much when most people can't even afford to own a DVD player and buy $0.50 movies? I watch Chinese movies online for free through legal streaming video programs, which also carry live Chinese television.
Posted by: 8 at Nov 20, 2007 11:55:17 AM
Movie "piracy"? You mean free trade in movies?
Posted by: bob at Nov 20, 2007 12:37:48 PM
So thieves are free traders?
Posted by: juancarlos at Nov 20, 2007 2:16:24 PM
That's an interesting article, and it includes a number of very valid points about overblown claims about piracy. But ut the article ignores one of the main reasons that so much anti-piracy or IP-related rhetoric is aimed at China (as well as some other Far East countries, Russia, Ukraine, etc.) It's not merely that the consumers/listeners/viewers in those countries are buying and using pirated copies rather than authorized copies. That's certainly among the complaints of the big IP trade groups, but it's not the main one. Rather, the biggest complaints about China and Russia relate to the high levels of production of unauthorized copies in those countries, and their exports to other countries. I.e., the MPAA/RIAA are concerned that Chinese or Russian people may not be buying authorized copies of their movies and music, but these groups are more worried about pirated copies produced in factories in CHina, or hosted on Russian web servers (for example), and exported to other countries.
I don't mean to suggest that those concerns are not also overblown to some degree, but the paper unfortunately doesn't address this issue (at all, as far as I can tell), so it's hard to assess the premise of the paper -- that rhetoric about IP piracy and CHina is overblown.
Posted by: pilgrim at Nov 20, 2007 10:54:29 PM
@pilgrim,
You make a very good point.
Posted by: China Law Blog at Nov 21, 2007 3:26:22 PM
Not sure of the definition used in the research, but when I was there ten years ago for a summer study at Peking University in Beijing there were 100s of DVDs, CDs, etc that were sold non-stop on the street. I cannot imagine a China that has changed, instead I would assume it is worse than 10 years ago.
Re Luke & the comment that perhaps the consumer wasn't ever going to buy legitimately: true statement/concept, but that by definition is piracy. Perhaps the price is too high, which is causing people to search out and entertain piracy... perhaps the consumer doesn't feel connected to the work? Sorry for a confusing post...
- Cannon
http://www.soundgreen.com
Posted by: Cannon at Nov 22, 2007 12:53:06 PM
Posted by: 翻译公司 at Feb 25, 2008 8:40:22 AM
Posted by: Alii at Apr 3, 2008 9:03:28 PM
