Is this....mutiny, Mr Christian?

So, Tuesday was 'International talk like a Pirate day'*. In honour of this occasion, I have decided to write a short post on the 300-page study that the EU commissioned (at a cost of around €360,000), with the aim of finding out how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies.

The study apparently concluded that “In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.”

There is some suggestion that this study has been at least semi-intentionally suppressed (you might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment).

Anyway, there is a rather fuller discussion of the document and the history of how it came to light here, which I shall link to rather than...uh...pirating... it myself.

*releated informational nugget: what we think of today as the 'traditional' pirate accent - arr jim lad walk the plank pieces of eight rrration me rum, etc - comes from just one man: Robert Newton, who played the role of Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney version of 'Treasure Island', and the role of Edward Teach (Blackbeard) in the 1952 Disney film 'Blackbeard the Pirate'. He was born and raised in the West Country of England (the same area of the country which was the birthplace of many sailors and pirates during The Golden Age of Piracy in the 1800's), and based his accent on that regional dialect.