"A new report on the effectiveness of the French three-strikes anti-piracy law claims that it managed to cut Internet piracy in half last year. While lobbyists are making preparations to show these great results to politicians worldwide, there is one thing the report fails to mention. Despite the claimed decrease in piracy, revenues through legal channels are down as well. This is strange, because in previous years these losses were solely attributed to piracy."
"The report goes on to cite a variety of statistics ranging from a 29 percent decrease in visits to “pirate” sites in 2011, to a 66 percent drop in illegal file-sharing traffic in France in the same period. Impressive figures indeed, and Hadopi is quick to point out that it’s directly related to their three-strikes law.
While we’re not going to dispute the validity of the provided statistics, it is worth pointing out that there’s something missing from the report. Something big.
For more than a decade the entertainment industry has claimed that digital piracy is the main cause for the gradual decline in revenues. So if piracy is down massively in France, one would expect that the revenues are soaring, right? But they’re not.
If we look at the French music industry we see that overall revenues were down by 3.9 percent in 2011.
Likewise, the French movie industry is still going through a rough period with revenues dropping 2.7 percent in 2011. Ironically, an industry insider even blamed online piracy for this drop."
http://torrentfreak.com/french-three...-sales-120330/
mods:this is the only link currently out there for this story. despite the name it isn't a file or torrent hosting site. however if it is a problem please remove the offending link.