An EU study that found that online piracy doesn't harm music sales has come to light after a member of the European parliament (MEP) submitted a freedom of information request.
The EU Commission spent almost €370,000 (£325,000) on the 2014 study to establish whether illegally downloaded music, books, films and games have a negative effect on sales.
However, the 307-page findings were never released and have only just been made public following the continued efforts of MEP Julia Reda who submitted the freedom of information request.
The study found that in 2014, 51 percent of adults and 72 percent of minors in the EU illegally downloaded or streamed creative content including music.
However, it concluded that generally, 'the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements.'
The only exception was found with films, where for every ten recent films watched illegally, four less films were consumed illegally.
Digital rights group EDRi pointed out that this was the only part of the research to be released, finding its way into a 2016 academic paper by two EU commissioners.
It accused the EU commission of hiding the results to suit its agenda, arguing: 'The other unpublished results, showing no negative impact of piracy in the music, book and games industry, were not mentioned in the paper.
'This seems to substantiate suspicion that the European commission was hiding the study on purpose and cherry-picked the results they wanted to publish, by choosing only the results which supported their political agenda towards stricter copyright rules.'
The EU Commission spent almost €370,000 (£325,000) on the 2014 study to establish whether illegally downloaded music, books, films and games have a negative effect on sales.
However, the 307-page findings were never released and have only just been made public following the continued efforts of MEP Julia Reda who submitted the freedom of information request.
The study found that in 2014, 51 percent of adults and 72 percent of minors in the EU illegally downloaded or streamed creative content including music.
However, it concluded that generally, 'the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements.'
The only exception was found with films, where for every ten recent films watched illegally, four less films were consumed illegally.
Digital rights group EDRi pointed out that this was the only part of the research to be released, finding its way into a 2016 academic paper by two EU commissioners.
It accused the EU commission of hiding the results to suit its agenda, arguing: 'The other unpublished results, showing no negative impact of piracy in the music, book and games industry, were not mentioned in the paper.
'This seems to substantiate suspicion that the European commission was hiding the study on purpose and cherry-picked the results they wanted to publish, by choosing only the results which supported their political agenda towards stricter copyright rules.'
