>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]
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]
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/judge-rules-against-re...