Perrin, Stephen R (2017) A critical analysis of the effect of copyright infringement on the UK film and cinema industries. LLM thesis, University of Sheffield.
Abstract
Film studios and major cinema operators strongly contend that copyright infringement, commonly known as piracy, is costing the worldwide industry many billions of dollars in lost revenue. A number of senior industry figures, as well as other commentators, foresee the industry’s slow death due to illegal consumption. Consequently, for the past two decades the industry has lobbied governments and legislators to provide legislation that restricts illegal online access to their product. During this period, however, the industry has witnessed significant growth in worldwide box office returns, admissions, film production investment and in the number and quality of cinema available for the exhibition of films. These two observations appear to be at odds. Arguing that film, and especially cinemas, provide socio-cultural as well as economic benefits, this thesis critically examines the industry and academic evidence pointing to the quantum of revenue loss, as well as academic evidence examining the effectiveness of the legal measures that the industry has been successful in establishing. The thesis reaches two conclusions. First, the equivocal nature of research findings regarding revenue losses suggests that estimates of infringement revenue effects appear to have been overstated. Second, the effectiveness of legal measures appears to be in doubt, with any positive effects being short-lived. However, it is argued that the equivocality of the evidence does not permit the counterfactual conclusion that the industry is totally unaffected by copyright infringement, or that legal measures are totally ineffective. Alternative perspectives and their implications are discussed.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Burrell, Robert and Brown, Mark |
---|---|
Awarding institution: | University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Law (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Dr Stephen R Perrin |
Date Deposited: | 26 Mar 2018 15:29 |
Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2018 15:29 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:19709 |
Download
Filename: Thesis final S R Perrin pdf version 1.pdf
Description: pdf
Licence:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License
Export
Statistics
You do not need to contact us to get a copy of this thesis. Please use the 'Download' link(s) above to get a copy.
You can contact us about this thesis. If you need to make a general enquiry, please see the Contact us page.