Researchers: movie studios sold more after Megaupload was shut down

Study examines sales in 12 countries from two studios before and after closure.

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[Heapmalloc]

So they only looked at data from September to May and that's indicative of a trend? Wouldn't it make more sense to take a larger sample of before and after to see if this wasn't an anomaly? Why didn't they look at the sales data for a year before it was shut down and a year after? With such a small sample size I question the validity of their results. Heck it would have made more sense if they compared the same time period before and after...

 

[Heapmalloc]

So they only looked at data from September to May and that's indicative of a trend? Wouldn't it make more sense to take a larger sample of before and after to see if this wasn't an anomaly? Why didn't they look at the sales data for a year before it was shut down and a year after? With such a small sample size I question the validity of their results. Heck it would have made more sense if they compared the same time period before and after...

I'm going to take a stab at answering your question. It all has to do with what their initial question was. If the hypothesis was, "if you take away one of the most popular piracy avenues people will start paying for the content." The longer you go out the more confounding variables you start introducing. I.e. different sites become better known. The raid on dotcom has a lot of... complications... that may turn people against media companies etc. That's just my guess.

I can see that as a justification in that there would be more variables to account for it they looked at a larger dataset. But their contention is that shutting down MU caused a sizable sales increase. If they wanted to prove that, why didn't they compare the same time period? I wouldn't compare the number of tickets issued at the end of Feburaury versus the beginning of January and then state that the data shows a trend. That's like saying there are more people who register for license plates at the end of the month versus the beginning of the month.