It’s time to check back in with Crikey’s favourite cartel, Big Copyright. Long-time readers will recall the fun we use to have with reports by various consultants commissioned by the copyright lobby to explain how much money the movie industry was losing to file sharing, and how urgent it was that governments intervene to censor the internet.

It worked, at least in Australia — there’s now an internet censorship regime that prevents you from accessing sites like The Pirate Bay — although it primarily seems to work to remind file sharers to make sure they turn their VPNs on before they start torrenting, since they can’t access the site otherwise. That Copyright Cartel companies like Village Roadshow give massive donations to both sides of politics ensures a docile legislature for such censorship.

Of course, the threat isn’t over. Village Roadshow’s lobbyist-in-chief Graham Burke blamed the Ten Nework being placed into administration on file sharing, telling that unfortunate misplacer of zeroes, The Australian’s Derwood Davidson, that file sharing had cost the network “hundreds of millions of dollars”.

We’re used to wild claims about how file sharing would destroy industries. File sharing would destroy all cultural industries, we were warned in 2011, and again in 2014. In 2014, Australia’s greatest director George Miller warned file sharing would destroy cinema and put Australia movie industry workers out of a job. Cinema is under attack, shrieked The New York Times last year. Burke went further in 2016 and said file sharing would destroy the Australian way of life. “The potential for havoc to our way of life is frightening,” the veteran copyright lobbyist said. “As for Australian feature film production … simply stated, there will be none. Already a number of companies and individuals have been put out of business.”

So let’s run the ruler over these claims.

Has file sharing destroyed the movie industry? According to the Motion Picture Association of America — long one of the foremost campaigners against file sharing — “in 2016, the global box office for all films released in each country around the world reached $38.6 billion, up one percent from 2015”.  That was a record return for films. In North America, the box office grew 2% to reach a new all-time record. Similarly, 2015 had been a new record globally and in the US, too. And 2014 had been a new record globally, though not in the US. In fact, every year since at least 2006 (as far back as MPAA reports go), global box office has broken new records, and most years North American box office has broken new records. Revenue has grown significantly faster than inflation since 2006.

So cinema remains strangely undestroyed. 

But what about in Australia? After all, as Burke says, we’re the worst file sharers in the world. Surely the box office in Australia has underperformed because of file sharing? Well, Australian cinemas had a record year for revenue in 2015, and then another record year again in 2016. In fact revenue has hit new records most years since 2000.

No evidence of destruction there, either. But what about employment in Australia’s motion picture industry? Surely that’s been hammered by all that lost revenue due to downloading? According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data on employment in the industry sub-division Motion Picture and Video Activities, which involves production, distribution and exhibition, in 2016 the industry averaged employment of 31,270 — just down on the 2015 level of 32,400, but the second highest ever. Indeed, a decade ago, the Australian industry employed just over 25,000 on average. When George Lucas was making the Star Wars films in Sydney, the industry employed just under 27,000 people. It now employs significantly more than that.

But maybe production of Australian feature films has been destroyed and we only help make Hollywood extravaganzas? According to Screen Australia data, since 2010, the average number of Australian features produced annually has been 33 — which is above the level of any decade going back to 1970. And there are currently 35 major international and Australian features in production in Australia.

Turns out, all those predictions of the imminent destruction of the movies were about as accurate as those rubbish reports on piracy the Copyright Cartel used to churn out.