According to this article in The Grauniad, the UK government is set on ignoring the recommendations of yet another report it commissioned (this time the Digital Britain Report, last time the Gowers Report) and are set to introduce proposals for a two strikes law on suspending/removing internet access from those accused by rights’ holders of illicitly sharing copyrighted material online (official government details).

The Guardian story quotes the ten “most shared” (which they call the “most pirated”) movies in the first half of 2009. Interestingly, at the same time this news is coming out, the movie industry is being rather coy about other news. That is, that while still in the grip of a recession when spending on entertainment tends to go down and tends to move to cheaper options as well, the-numbers.com is reporting US box office takings up 6% on last year (and last year was “much higher than expected” as well):
Nine Helps ’09 Strive to Become Number One

Now for the numbers for those movies the Guardian quoted as the “most pirated”:

(millions of downloads from BigChampagne and Box Office Mojo.com courtesy of the Guardian; US box office gross to date, courtesy of the-numbers.com)

  1. Watchmen 16.9m downloads; $107.5m
  2. Curious Case of Benjamin Button 13.1m downloads; $127.5m
  3. Yes Man 13.0m downloads; $97.6m
  4. Twilight 11.6m downloads; $191.4m
  5. Fast & Furious 10.6m downloads; $155.0m
  6. Gran Torino 9.9m downloads; $148.0m
  7. Marley & Me 9.1m downloads; $143.1m
  8. Slumdog Millionaire 8.8m downloads; $141.3m
  9. Bolt 8.7m downloads; $114.0m
  10. Australia 8.6m downloads; $49.5m

Note that this is simply the US box office gross, not the international box office gross. It also ignores other sales such as DVD/BluRay rental and sales.

While causality is just about impossible to prove in individual cases, which is why Hollywood and the RIAA have been pointing to overall aggregate numbers whenever they decline (but are utterly silent about them or massage the figures when they go up). However, there is one cast-iron conclusion that I can seefrom these numbers: assuming that the download numbers have some validity, then despite the downloads, these movies have taken a LOT of money at the US box office and stand in no danger of losing their makers money.

If you produce the movies people want to see, they will go to see them at the cinema.