Following last June's raids on the filesharing site Kino.to, the Society for Consumer Research carried out research on the users' entertainment consumption habits. The study concluded that Kino.to's users were among the entertainment industry's best customers, using filesharing as a sampling method to determine which media to purchase, spending premiums to attend weekend showings of new films, and generally outspending average consumers in their media consumption. The unnamed client who commissioned the research reportedly rejected the findings and refused to publish them.
The Kino.to raids were accompanied by inflammatory press releases that characterised Kino as "a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement" and threatened criminal prosecution for Kino's users.
Obviously it would be of great interest to see the report in full, but it appears that is not going to be possible. According to an anonymous GfK source quoted by Telepolis, the findings of the study proved so unpleasant to the company that commissioned the survey that it has now been locked away "in the poison cupboard."
GfK says it has a policy of not revealing who they conduct research for if their clients don't want to be exposed. However, they do carry out research for the movie industry. Telepolis go a stage further and call that work "lobbying".
The GfK source says that the study shows "If you download films, you have an increased interest in the cinema", which only highlights how stupid it would be for the authorities to carry out their implied threat of prosecuting Kino.to users.
Suppressed Report Found Busted Pirate Site Users Were Good Consumers
