The abrupt closure of the popular file hosting site Megaupload in January this year, instead of helping the film industry, the hurt in general, but not in the case of the highest grossing films.
Although the difference is not significant in earnings, shows a negative trend, contrary to what they thought responsible for the film industry to pursue these types of file hosting services.
The study was conducted by Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School.
This counterintuitive result might suggest support for the theoretical perspective of network effects (social) file sharing where it acts as a mechanism to disseminate information on something good from consumers with little or no user willingness to pay high willingness to pay.
This study, called "Movie Piracy and Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload", included a weekly evaluation of data, with 1344 films in 49 countries. The data represents the last 5 years.
The negative effect is smaller, but is very consistent across different evaluations involving variables such as inflation, Megaupload popularity in other countries studied.
The study also found that the highest grossing films, shown in 500 rooms, if they had a positive change in these cases the closure of Megaupload shows a relatively positive change.