An EU Commission report shows that there’s no link between sales and piracy, according to PC Gamer.

The report is quite dry to read, as it’s no less than 307 pages long. You can find it here. It talks about if there’s a significant connection between illegal downloading and purchasing, involving literature, music, games, and movies, taking data from 2014, including multiple countries.

In 2014, 51% of adults and 72% of minors have downloaded and/or streamed illegally in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Sweden. Out of the six, Poland and Spain are the „leaders” in piracy, and still, the report didn’t manage to find a „robust” connection between piracy and sales. „That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect,” the report says, although it did point out that „recent top movies” had a 40% displacement (in other words, piracy) rate.

The report also looked at the willingness to pay – the results show that for books, music, and games, a decrease in price would not affect piracy rates. The consumers either are willing to pay for the content or not.

What an interesting subject for Sunday…

Source: PC Gamer