The study confirmed the positive impact of online piracy on anime sales.

An eminent commission of economic experts working for the Japanese government has published a study that claims that online piracy contributes to legal sales of DVDs. This conclusion is contrary to the beliefs of representatives of the entertainment industry, who in turn argue that illegal downloads lead to financial losses of billions of dollars worldwide. The expediency of increasing anti-piracy measures on the part of representatives of the anime industry also falls under doubt.


The Japanese Research Institute of Economics, Trade and Industry published a study that examined the effect of piracy on sales and rental of Japanese anime DVDs. The results deserve attention.

While the representative of the muses. and the film industry often makes questionable statements about the negative impact of piracy, researchers have not yet fully decided. Some researchers argue that the exchange really leads to financial losses. At the same time, others believe that in general, piracy is still useful.
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“The studies were conducted on 105 episodes of anime. Views on Youtube have a positive impact on rental and sales of discs. However, file sharing has a negative effect on rental discs, but does not affect sales. "- The researchers say.

They also argue that “YouTube allows a larger audience to learn about the program and this in turn affects the increase in sales of DVDs."

A study by Japanese researchers confirms that piracy is not always associated with a decrease in sales. It was also noted that the muses. and clerical possess similar properties.

Nevertheless, critics argue that third-party factors that were not taken into account could affect the degree of correlation. For example, an advertising campaign. Unfortunately, the study is presented in Japanese, and we could not clarify this.

For years, anime distributors were indifferent to piracy, but last week, the American anime distributor, Funimation, filed a lawsuit against 1337 BitTorrent users.

The likelihood that this research will change the attitude of aggressive rights holders is quite small. But it is hoped that content producers will come up with something that will benefit both them and consumers.