Research into online piracy comes in all shapes and sizes, often with equally mixed results. Often the main question is whether piracy is hurting sales.

A new study conducted by economist Koleman Strumpf is one of the most comprehensive on the subject so far.

Drawing on data from a popular BitTorrent tracker and revenue projections from the Hollywood Stock Exchange he researches how the release of a pirated movie affects expected box office income.

The research covers 150 of the most popular films that were released over a period of seven years, and the findings reveal that the release of pirated films on file-sharing sites doesn’t directly hurt box office revenue.

“There is no evidence in my empirical results of file-sharing having a significant impact on theatrical revenue,” Strumpf tells TorrentFreak in a comment.

“My best guess estimate is that file sharing reduced the first month box office by $200 million over 2003-2009, which is only three tenths of a percent of what movies actually earned. I am unable to reject the hypothesis that there is no impact at all of file-sharing on revenues.”

So while there is a small negative effect, this is limited to three tenth of a percent and not statistically significant.

Interestingly, the data also reveals that movie leaks shortly before the premiere have a small positive impact on expected revenues. This suggests that file-sharing may serve as a form of promotion.

“One consistent result is that file-sharing arrivals shortly before the theatrical opening have a modest positive effect on box office revenue. One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film. This is also the period of heaviest advertising,” Strumpf notes.

One of the advantages of this study compared to previous research is that it measures the direct effect of a movie leak on projected box office revenues. Previous studies mostly compared early versus late leaks, which is less accurate and may be influenced by other factors.

“For example, suppose studios added extra security to big budget movies which then have a delayed arrival to file-sharing networks. Then even if file-sharing has no impact at all, one would find that delayed arrival on file-sharing leads to higher revenues,” Strumpf tells us.

Another upside of the research lies in the statistical precision. The data includes thousands of daily observations and relatively precise estimates, something lacking in most previous studies.

The downside, on the other hand, is that the expected box office impact is estimated from the Hollywood Stock Exchange. While this has shown to be a good predictor for actual revenues, it’s not a direct measurement.

In any case, the paper suggests that file-sharing might not be the biggest threat the movie industry is facing.

Even if the negative effects were twice as big as the data suggests, it would still be less than the $500 million Hollywood spent on the MPAA’s anti-piracy efforts during the same period.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It’s been under development for more than two years and in just a few months Kim Dotcom’s Baboom should be ready to launch. In the meantime the company has been outlining its vision for a listing on the Australian stock market.

Baboom’s 41-page prospectus invites investors to take a share in a company aiming to provide a special service to both artists and users. While allowing the former to pick up an industry-beating 90% of the spoils, the latter will have the opportunity to listen to music for free, a combination that Baboom hopes will prove a tempting mix to potential investors.

The company is issuing 11,250,000 shares at AUS $0.40 each, with the aim of securing “sophisticated or professional investors” able to pump in a minimum of $20,000 each.

The target is AUS $4.5 million and according to Ben Yeo, senior adviser at Melbourne-based Novus Capital, the company is well on the way. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Yeo says there has been a large amount of interest from not only within Australia and New Zealand, but also from Europe and Asia.

“While the offer has only been marketed to a select number of sophisticated investors, the offer is tracking incredibly well and we have extended the offering for an additional week so as [Baboom CEO] Grant Edmundson can present to a number of potential cornerstone investors in Australia who have requested an in-person meeting with the Baboom Ltd CEO,” Yeo explains.

The prospectus describes Baboom as a “cloud streaming and download service”, with users able to store their music library for retrieval anywhere in the world on both desktop and mobile devices. It’s estimated that users will get between 10 and 15 albums for free each year in the ad-supported model while their “locker” will max out at 50 gigabytes.

It’s probably no coincidence that this limit is the same as that offered by Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz, with the prospectus citing links between Baboom and Mega as a “competitive advantage”. Not everything will be centralized, however. Baboom says it will also offer “unique user ‘peer2peer’ content streaming” features, with a “jukebox” listed as an example use.

As previously reported, Baboom will also offer industry-leading audio quality via its FLAC streaming service and will integrate a worldwide ticketing and merchandising solution.

Also of interest to investors is Baboom’s target markets. The company says it will focus on under-serviced regions with high growth potential to include South East Asia, Australasia, Southern and East Africa and Europe.

Like Spotify before it, one of Baboom’s key aims is target markets with piracy problems. The company says it will deploy “robust marketing” in order to provide a legitimate music streaming and downloading platform in these regions.

But while Spotify has achieved its success with the full support of the major labels, it’s impossible to see a situation in which Warner, Universal and Sony warm to the idea of dealing with a company affiliated with Kim Dotcom. That reality is certainly not lost on the management of Baboom, who detail the company’s market strategy as focusing on “independent labels, producer archives and unpublished material.”

And according to Novus Capital’s Ben Yeo, things couldn’t be going any better on that front.

“What Grant and I have been overwhelmed with is the level of support we have been receiving from the global independent music industry who have thrown their support behind Baboom and are eager to show their support by uploading content onto the platform,” Yeo told TF.

On any platform of this type, content is definitely king, so potential investors will be encouraged that Baboom is receiving good support as it prepares for takeoff. The prospectus envisions a fourth quarter release for the service, but according to Yeo there is much work to be done.

“By the time the offer closes I envisage the company to be in a strong position to develop its backend systems, mobile platform and content acquisition prior to the platform’s hard launch either late December 2014 or January 2015,” Yeo concludes.

The early signs suggest that at least in its early days Baboom is unlikely to prompt a mass migration away from services such as Spotify. However, its unique way of remunerating artists could prove very tempting, particularly when played out against a backdrop of traditional middle-men struggling to remain both profitable and relevant in a changing market.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Leaks of material not yet available to the public are always a curiosity online. Anything pre-release can generate excitement, particularly so if the item offers a unique window into the usually hidden production process.

Back in 2009 the movie Wolverine appeared on the Internet in advance of its official release. The copy was unfinished and provided a version of the film to downloaders that would have otherwise remained hidden forever. Now that same dubious status has fallen to Doctor Who.

After appearing online over the weekend, what claims to be episode one of the new series of the hit show was uploaded to The Pirate Bay today. The 1.49Gb file is marked as a “pre air screeneer” with a claimed running time of one hour and 16 mins.

While leaks of TV shows are much more rare than movie leaks, this copy is particularly unusual. Clearly unfinished, the video is both heavily watermarked and monochrome.

As can be seen from the image above, the copy carries the text “Prepared for Marcelo Camargo at Drei Marc.”

Marcelo Camargo is the owner of Marc Drei Productions, a Brazil-based production company known for its subtitling work. There is no suggestion that Camargo or his company is responsible for the leak.

This is the second serious breach in a matter of days to hit Doctor Who and the BBC. Just last week scripts from the new series leaked online after inadvertently being made available to the public by a BBC Worldwide office in the U.S. It seems likely that this video comes from the same source.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Following in the footsteps of FrostWire and VODO, BitTorrent Inc. launched an artist promotion program a few years ago.

The idea was to let artists share their work for free, exposing it to millions of BitTorrent users all around the world.

Helped by a massive user base of more than 170 million the program has been very successful. But, aside from promotion some artists would also like to see some hard cash in return. This is now an option thanks to the “paygate” uTorrent’s parent company will launch this September.

The walled content can only be accessed and shared after a user pays a fixed fee to the creator. To prevent users from sharing it without permission there will be some restrictions in place.

The paywall idea was initially announced last year and film producer Marco Weber will be one of the first to try it in the wild. Through BitTorrent, Weber will release a pilot of the new TV-series “Children of the Machine” and those who like it can pay $9.95 to buy the entire series.

“If viewers fall in love with the show, they can purchase the entire series in advance via Bundle paygates. Once the funding threshold is reached — 250K subscribers — the first season will be produced, and delivered back to the fans who kicked in to support the project,” BitTorrent announces.

The filmmaker chose the crowdfunding format, which means that if the project is not funded the series will never see the light of day. This is a serious possibility as no artists have ever raised more than a few thousand dollars, even though many have tried.

The film producer is nevertheless confident that the the project will turn into a success.

“With over 170 million users, BitTorrent is a powerhouse. Add in paygates, and you have a fantastic tool to distribute content to a growing, influential youth audience,” Weber says.

The good news is that many of these millions of BitTorrent users are already familiar with downloading TV-shows, be it without permission. However, an often heard excuse for this deviant behavior is that it takes too long before an episode becomes available through legal channels, so whether these people will be patient enough to prepay a series months in advance will remain to be seen.

Both Weber and BitTorrent Inc. have to be applauded for giving it a try and it will be interesting to see the results.

BitTorrent isn’t the first to experiment with these new models though. The VODO platform has used a similar paywall system for quite some time, and together with The Pirate Bay and several other torrent sites they helped to crowdfund the TV-series Pioneer One.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Transcendence is the most downloaded movie this week.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(2)	Transcendence	6.4 / trailer
2	(1)	Noah	6.3 / trailer
3	(…)	Need For Speed	7.1 / trailer
4	(…)	Sabotage	6.0 / trailer
5	(5)	The Other Woman	6.5 / trailer
6	(…)	Muppets Most Wanted	6.8 / trailer
7	(3)	Rio 2	6.7 / trailer
8	(4)	A Million Ways to Die in the West (Webrip)	6.4 / trailer
9	(7)	Captain America: The Winter Soldier (HDTS)	8.2 / trailer
10	(6)	X-Men: Days of Future Past (HDCAM)	8.5 / trailer

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.