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Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets Leaked
huh12312 writes "Illegal piraters have done it again. On Monday, the second movie in the acclaimed series of seven was leaked onto the internet to the horror of Warner Brothers. With so many blockbusters due out this holiday season this problem will only increase in the coming months." Also note that it will make millions and millions of dollars anyway. I'll probably be there opening night.
.. it will make millions, because nobody who really cares about seeing the movie will want to watch a grainy telesync with poor sound.
That movies are always going to be leaked and pirated should be no surprise to the studios. And it shouldn't worry them: even the pirates will pay to see the movies at the big screen - those who care about watching a flick will want to see it *properly*; those who would only pirate the film would doubtless have waited for the video release, at best, and the TV release at worst.
I know my kid wouldn't settle for seeing some grainy rip of a movie at 200 x 180 (or whatever crappy res it looks least bad at).
Hardly a comparison to the movie on a big screen.
It's also not like you can't read the book to find out the ending, sheesh.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The release of Harry Potter is a crappy cam, and won't affect Theatrical revenue. It's almost unwatchable.
The bigger question is, does film piracy affect revenue at all? A film is not like music: Nevermind and Sticky Fingers will be just as valuable to me in ten years, and I'll listen to them a lot as a soundtrack to whatever else I'm doing. A film takes 100% of my concentration, (well most of it anyway) and you can't watch a film while you do something else..so film and music piracy are vastly different things.
Let's look at a few examples: In the Theatrical Window, Spiderman both broke box office and piracy records, hitting tens of thousands of copies a day at its peak.
In the Home Video window, the Spiderman DVD was released on pirate channels more than a month early and yet it still is going to break all sales records. 28 MILLION in preorders, which blows away anything before it.
The exact same thing happened with Shrek last year..most pirated film - most pirated DVD - best selling DVD.
While it would be difficult to quantify, it's possible that piracy acts simply as promotion when it comes to film: it certainly didn't cause the films above to fail on any scale, and probably won't affect Harry Potter either.
The million dollar question: could the use of piracy channels as a promotional venue actually increase film revenue?
Everyone assumes Valenti and Rosen are right: that piracy is damaging the film and music businesses. But Valenti was dead wrong about VCRs in the 70's and I suggest he's wrong about digital delivery and piracy in the 21st Century.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
It is totally, entirely, and completely the fault of poor security at the film distributor.
So by your logic, in every case where an abused woman doesn't know enough karate to fend off an attacker and she is mugged, dateraped, or worse, you think that is her fault? Are stores that get robbed to blame for not having armed guards posted at the door?
Sorry, but theft is totally, entirely, and completely the fault of the THIEF, never the fault of the victim.
$8.95/mo web hosting
No, that's not the logic. The logic is more under the "self fulfilling prophecy" world.
...the movie leaked.
The MPAA claims that they need ultra-strong protection to avoid movie leaks.
They currently don't have these protections and look...
See? We need these protections.
Needless to say they could guarantee that the "crisis" occurred by leaking it themselves. (This is not saying that they did, but that's the logic of the original post, not leak == bad, mpaa == bad therefor leak == mpaa)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The fact is that the entertainment industry does not take 'value added' seriously enough. They put two good songs on an album (blues traveler 'four' comes to mind) and expect the populous to pay $20. Why should they, just download the two songs from the net(or, for those who can remember, record it from the radio, anyone got albums from the late night full play?). The same is true for movie theaters. They have 30 screens, 5 movies, only of which one are worth seeing at the theater, and the staff antagonizes you the whole time. How much money do they expect make. And yet I do not see the movie industry, those great champions of legislating profit from intellectual property, doing a thing to help the poor suffering movie theaters. Rather the studios leave movie theaters to fend for themselves and legislate for copy protection in hope of making money on the DVD release.
Harry potter has buzz, is probably a good movie, and is squarely directed at the annoying child demographic. The leak will certainly affect ticket sales in some minuscule manner, but isn't going to make anyone homeless. It is too effective of a method to keep generally undisciplined children quite for an hour or so.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
.. but it flies in the face of so many other cases of observed human behaviour. There are plenty of things that are easy to steal, and people don't do it nearly to the degree that people copy movies and music. This is the key point that folks postulating your line of reasoning seem unable to explain.
Siphoning gas from your neighbours tank is dead simple. But people don't do it. Why? It's stealing.
But explain to me why people don't mind steal^H^Hcopying movies/music/etc when clearly there are so many other things that can be easily stolen in life? Gee, maybe because its not stealing. Its copying. And yes, it can be terribly immoral (ie, selling bootlegs for profit, or downloading movies to circumvent renting or theatre going altogether.)
Also note that copyright holders' rights have never been 100% protected. If you listen to a CD at a friends house, I could easily make the case that you're stealing the music because _you_ didn't buy the CD.
If you wanna build a case for the immorality of copying content without paying for it, at least respect that a majority of peoples' behaviours dictate the morality. Morality isn't simply somebody or some group passing a law; that doesn't make breaking that law intrinsically immoral. I'm tired of folks using whats set in law as the yard stick of morality. There are plenty of legal things I can do to you that is immoral, and there are plenty of illegal things I can do that are moral.
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
That might be a valid point if you had any real (not annecdotal) evidence backing it up. I can understand your reasoning (if you can have it for free, why would anybody rent the DVD)
If you want to convince anybody that copying movies and music is bad, you might start with explaining why the amount of people stealing music and movies is so much higher than people who steal ungaurded physical objects. You'd probably also want to make sure that you viewed the rampant cassette copying of the 80s as highly immoral as well for consistancy (in addition to recording TV, recording the radio, etc).
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Look, someone's leaked the new Harry Potter movie onto the Internet! Geeze, being as how I'm such a tremendous fan, I think I'll download it."
(days pass, as the movie is slowly and painfully downloaded, in pieces, from any number of p2p networks)
"Boy, the movie was awesome, but the pirated copy sucked ass! The picture was lopped off at the edges, someone didn't adjust the camcorder and the colors were washed out, the dialog was basically incomprehensible, and people kept standing up and blocking the screen."
"I'm SUCH a huge Harry Potter fan, but since I've already seen the crappy camcorder rip, I guess I don't need to spend $8 to go see the movie anymore. And I certainly don't need to drop $30 on the DVD, nosir. 'Cause the noisy, incomplete DivX-encoded version was enough for me. Come to think of it, perhaps I'll stop buying Harry Potter merchandise as well."
I'm not going to argue that it's *right* to distribute copyrighted works over the Internet. But you cannot by any means claim that Chamber of Secrets being leaked is somehow going to cut into the movie's box office gross. At best, the camcorder rip or the telesync (which is what they call it when they pipe the sound in from a theater-supplied hearing aid) is a pale imitation of the real cinema experience. People who were going to see the movie in the first place, won't be satisfied.
I'm not sure about that... If it wasn't distributed by P2P it would be distributed by something else...
I don't think P2P is any more to blame then anything else, it's just faster.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Film piracy is never going to cut into box office dollars, period. No computer setup -- not even one with a projector screen and 5.1 surround sound -- will ever duplicate the theater experience, especially with a grainy telesync. The big screen and crowded theater hold too much fascination for us as human beings, and it won't go away any time soon.
The place where film piracy will hurt the most is in the home video market, because DivX rips of DVD films are at least VHS quality, usually better in some cases. Still, the movie industry has an advantage over the music industry here, because DivX rips are hard to download and DVDs are cheap. Hell, it's easier to rent a DVD and rip it yourself then to hunt down a film on Gnutella, and even then, you're still supporting the filmmakers in some small way, because you're paying the rental fee.
If the movie industry can improve the video quality and service quality of sites like MovieLink and CinemaNow, they'll have the one thing the music industry never really created -- a convenient, inexpensive alternative to piracy in the marketplace. Gee, is that all it takes? Who knews?
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Because I, in reality, heard someone say, and it seemed quite sincere to me:
"Jeez, they left that one wide open for a sequel."
For the record, I think the MPAA has a lot less to worry about from internet leaks than the RIAA. The theatre is a good place to watch a movie, most of the time (if you wait a week or two or even three for the big releases, or your movie is a little more undeground, you have less people even.) Don't underestimate the environment. I listen to music in my car, mostly.
The avg. movie still is around 700 megs big and often has bad compression artifacts. An album is of course, smaller.
Unless, of course, it's a really bad movie, one of those that they don't show to reviewers first, and they download a copy and tell everyone it's shitty.
Of course, occasionally the power of people to detect crap is amazing. Only occasionally. The Cast Away movie with Madonna only grossed a couple hundred grand the first week. More money than I will ever make, but maybe it'll be a lesson to the studios.
Dan
The number of people that are able to download movies P2P *
is probably going to cost them about $200 bucks.
Then factor in how much they'd lose in DVD sales eventually to the hard-core fans that aren't morally shy about downloading a DivX rip off Kazaa. If that would be substantial, they can release their own crappy-quality leak that will be instantly proliferated throughout the community, since it's the only one there at first. This will make finding the high-quality rip that will eventually be made from a DVD that much harder. It's much more insidious a way to spoof than just having void files that are the same size, ala the RIAA, because plenty of people will download and share it, thinking they've got the "real" version and not knowing there's a much better one out there.
Add to that the publicity value in the war against terrori^H^H^H^H err pirates to "Congresscritters" and the public. "Hollywood bribes Democrats, Republicans" doesn't capture the public headlines as well as "Hollywood campaigns to combat pirates" - "Avast, ye scurvy dogs" says Jack Valenti.
I'm not saying the MPAA is behind this leak, I'm just saying that, if they weren't, the might want to think about it...
However, there's one facet you overlooked - and that's the movie theater OWNER, who for some reason enjoys allowing copies to be made.
I have heard it told - not witnessed myself, mind you - that some of the "theater tapings" have been made in completely empty theaters, with only the camera running, and often before the official release date.
The theaters HAVE to get the film before opening day, after all... well before it in most cases, because you do NOT want to have half a premiere because of some fedex delay.
Couple that advance availability with just one owner who feel philanthropic, and you have a very high quality theater recording hitting the streets in advance of the release.
Yep, nothing like
Yep, I'm sure there aren't any good reasons to sitting at home in front of a good home cinema.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There's a big Bond movie opening in a week, and so the marketeers for HP have to get attention on their product before they get run over. So anything that gets people talking about the movie...
Killing someone is murder.
Oh, wait, except when the fetus isn't born yet, then it's abortion. Legal in some places.
Oh, wait, except when the guy is a murderer being executed by the State. Legal in some places.
Oh, wait, except when he's trying to kill you and you shoot him first, then it's self defense, and legal probably everywhere.
Oh, wait, except when the guy is really old and sick and would rather die. I don't know if euthanasia is legal anywhere yet, but it's at least being argued.
Oh, wait, except when you kill yourself, then it's not a crime nearly everywhere.
So no, it's not theft the same way shoplifting is. The damage (lost potential sale) done to the victim is simply not the same as if the CD was shoplifted. In fact, the damage you make may be less than setting up a website to say how much the album sucks. Think about that, because it's protected free speech.
Note that I'm not saying it's right, just that it's not black and white like physical theft. Specifically, there should be a difference (in law) between someone who "pirates" for personal use, and someone who distributes, because they cause different damages.
Think of a paper book. You can buy it, read it, and give it to your friend to read. In fact, two people read the book, and only paid once. Now, how is that substantially different from beaming an ebook to your friend before you're finished reading? What about after you're finished reading?
It is different, by the way, because your friend could potentially want to read it so badly he buys his own copy - potential lost sale. However, the act of beaming the ebook is not the same as shoplifting, because its impact on the copyright owner is not the same. Think of the difference between murder and suicide, and while some people consider both immoral (perhaps even equally immoral), only murder is generally an actual crime.