According to a new report from the Informa Media Group titled ‘Film on the Internet’, peer-to-peer piracy and CD/DVD burning will result in relatively limited losses for the film industry - and in fact, Hollywood will thrive from the internet.

As global internet access spreads, the value of relatively underused ‘soft’ formats - such as downloading, streaming and online subscriptions - will increase substantially, with total revenues growing at least fourfold.

Informa estimates that the losses to the film industry will be $92m in 2003 - compared to estimated revenues from the legitimate direct digital sales of films of $1.1bn - 99.7% of which come from hard format sales via internet retailers.

Looking ahead to 2010, the report predicts that legitimate revenues from the digital sales of films (downloading, streaming etc) will have risen to $872.4m (compared to an estimated total of $2.8m for 2003).

In addition, the projected $2.6bn in revenues from hard copy sales via internet retailers will result in a global value of film sales via the internet of $3.49bn. At the same time, Informa estimates the losses to the film industry in 2010 will be approximately $460m.