German Exaggeration!!

Germany Lost $660 Million in 2011 Due to Music Piracy

Another report on unauthorized downloading meant to victimize the entertainment industry and blame file-sharing claims that the German movie industry lost around $200 million in 2011, while the music industry received a real blow with almost $660 million in lost revenues.
The Berlin-Brandenburg Medienboard, known for endorsing media companies and the video game association G.A.M.E., supported the research, which was carried through by Berlin-based House of Research.

The research scrutinized different academic files with data on unauthorized download and streaming of copyrighted digital content and the impact it had on sales. The study mainly focused on the music and movie industry, while also taking a look on the games industry. However, the results were inconclusive because of the insufficient number of relevant surveys.

The results of the study say that German pirates have streamed and downloaded 185,000,000 movies illegally last year, which is 6% of the industry’s overall annual revenues. It turned out that ever since Kino.to was closed down and its operators and owners were imprisoned, film rentals increased by 29% the very next week, reaching 41% a year ago. However, in a few weeks things got back to what they used to be, because a copycat file-sharing service emerged.

Despite the fact that the House of Research does recognize the positive impact of piracy, it believes that it is too small to count. It admits that the industry now has to find reasonable solutions.

The discussions over Internet piracy and copyright legislation reached new levels in the country last year, particularly after the German Pirate Party had brought a new perspective in the political arena.