Piracy isn’t always the vile market bogeyman it’s portrayed to be by the entertainment industry, a new joint study by Indiana University has found.

But in a new study, Indiana University Researchers like Antino Kim say that online piracy can sometimes have a positive impact on markets, and being overly-aggressive in the policing and punishing of pirates may sometimes be counterproductive.

"When information goods are sold to consumers via a retailer, in certain situations, a moderate level of piracy seems to have a surprisingly positive impact on the profits of the manufacturer and the retailer while, at the same time, enhancing consumer welfare," Kim and his fellow researchers state. As an example, Kim’s study (“The "Invisible Hand" of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain”) points to the hit HBO show Game Of Thrones, which routinely breaks piracy records thanks to heavy file sharing on BitTorrent.

The researchers found that piracy often acts as a form of invisible competition, keeping both the manufacturer (HBO) and the cable operator (say, Comcast) from raising prices quite as high as they might otherwise (aka double marginalization). Raise prices too high, for example, and users will just flee to piracy, creating even higher losses. The idea that piracy acts as a competitive check on markets is certainly not a new argument. Countless companies (like Good Old Games) have found that the best solution to piracy is to offer a cheaper, better, DRM-free product that makes piracy less palatable. This is, however, a lesson many entertainment executives seem unwilling to learn. The researchers are clear to note their findings have their limits, and that they’re not openly advocating for companies to fully embrace piracy. They do, however, argue that if you understand the benefits of piracy as a form of invisible competition, you’ll find that overly-aggressive anti-piracy efforts can actually harm the market.

"Our results do not imply that the legal channel should, all of a sudden, start actively encouraging piracy," researchers said. "The implication is simply that, situated in a real-world context, our manufacturer and retailer should recognize that a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial and should, therefore, exercise some moderation in their anti-piracy efforts.”