No, Piracy Is Not the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Rob Atkinson and Alan McQuinn debunk claims that film piracy somehow helps, not hurts, Hollywood in the Huffington Post. First, films are pirated because they are popular, not the other way around. Second, academic evidence is abundantly clear that piracy causes filmmakers to lose money. Third, there are a bevy of legal alternatives that consumers have to easily find legal versions of just about any content they want. Finally, if allowing people to view movies without paying really maximizes sales, then surely the highly competitive movie industry would have figured this out and gone out of its way to enable unauthorized access to the content they own.