This is most certainly not a biased funded study with links to the MPAA guys. Without-a-doubt it is definitely an independent study performed by real people with no links to the entertainment industry. Now if you'll excuse me guys I'm just going to go to the cinema to watch a $30 per ticket blockbuster movie because the entertainment industry needs our support. I'll be back later.
>I would assume they'd try to be fairly objective with this study, because they'd be very happy to discover that piracy is a good thing for them.
You assume their goal is to stop piracy rather than to promote "anti-piracy" legislation which just so happens to harm their competitors in markets related to content production (like content distribution and consumer devices) or otherwise attempts to make things more like the bad old days when reaching a large audience required the backing of a major studio.
I mean why do you think they keep defending the DMCA prohibition on circumventing DRM? It's obviously nothing to do with piracy because the pirates all just comprehensively ignore it. But what it does is give them a veto over consumer technology. If you have to interact with their DRM then they get to veto your device if they don't like it. Which they don't hesitate to do.[1]
Well the RIAA still firmly believes that litigation is what slowed down music piracy. However in reality it was probably the advent of easy to use and cheap (or even free) music streaming services that really hurt music piracy.
On favourite tactic of the movie houses is to report on decline in US domestic sales (and they are, or at least were last year), but report on piracy globally. They don't report on global sales, because they're raking it in.
Half-true. Foreign distributors get a large cut of that on a hit, but lots of films don't play to a foreign audience while still suffering from the decline in domestic sales. Said decline hits theaters and the people who work there, who are not subsidized by a film's overseas profits.
Definitely not suspicious!