Internet Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Study Concludes

I'm sure someone will look at the source of this link and discount it automatically, but I think that would be a mistake.

A prestigious economics think-tank of the Japanese Government has published a study which concludes that online piracy of anime shows actually increases sales of DVDs. The conclusion stands in sharp contrast with the entertainment industry’s claims that ‘illicit’ downloading is leading to billions of dollars in losses worldwide. It also puts the increased anti-piracy efforts of the anime industry in doubt.

One interesting point made:

One point of critique based on the main conclusions of the study, is that the observed relation only appears to be correlational. This may mean that the results could in part be influenced by significant third variables such as promotion and overall popularity. Since the report is only available in Japanese we were unable to confirm whether this was taken into account.

Obviously, any sort of study like this has to be taken with with a grain of salt. We don't know the hows and whys of the study, so there could be any number of factors that throw out the results. It is interesting that more and more place are coming out with data to suggest that the correlation between piracy and lost sales isn't as strong as anti-piracy advocates would like to present.