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Is Piracy In the Consumers' Best Interests?
moviemodel writes "Warner Home Video in China are beginning trials of 'simple pack' DVD releases at $1.50. They state they are doing this as a test to see if they can recover a market lost to pirate DVD's at 75c each. They also sell higher priced and more complete DVD sets as 'silver' and 'gold' packs. Maybe this marks the beginning of movie industry realism and long hoped for shift in business models, forced by piracy. Perhaps they can take it on as a better model for movie downloads worldwide, facing the same problem of competition from pirated movies. Is such a model viable in the long term?"
Try reading the entire article summary next time. It mentions that they are trying to compete with $0.75 pirated copies.
s such a model viable in the long term?
Of course is viable. You just profit less. And even that perhaps is not true. I've been in China, where you can get absolutely anything in DVD for about 1 dollar each. In fact, it would be difficult for you to try and get a properly licensed film in China. I know I didn't found any. And there was another difference. I had friends there that had more that two thousand DVDs at home, many of which they hadn't had time to see. They simply bought on impulse, because spending 1 dollar is not something you think a lot about. Of course my friends had higher than average (for China) earnings, but in time more and more chinese families will approach that income level.
My bet is that if you had DVDs priced at 1.5$, film copyright infringement would end as we know it, and the amount of dollars spent in DVDs by the average family would grow. I cannot guess if that increase would be enough to compensate for the much-reduced margin on each DVD, but I would bet it would be better bussiness in the long term.
Add to that the release of DVDs on the same day of first screening (sell the things as people exits the cinema), and you have the film distribution model of the future. Big-screen film watching is a fundamentally different experience than DVD watching, and there is but little market cannibalising between the two of them. Film distributors should start to know that.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
If I BUY a DVD, I get warnings, ads and stupid menus that I can't bypass on my standard DVD player.
If I download a ripped movie, I get the movie I want without the crap. It starts the moment I put it in the player.
Right now, I prefer downloaded movies over pressed copies because I'm actually getting a superior product.
What's really going on is the effect of the public community.
OpenSource, GPL, Musicians and Bands offering their music for free MP3 download, Linux - free OS, Blender, Gimp, OpenOffice...all free software that are comparable to commercial versions are a part of a HUGE new revolution that have literally SNEAKED upon the commercial industry, and because of their own onslaught on people...threatening legal users with DRM, SpyWare and restrictions....haunting people down for just being "people" - have brought fire to this revolution.
Because of this revolution, more and more people will witch to free alternatives, and the "biggies" didnt even see it coming for all their own greed and hysteria.
The way we exchange services - will change forever.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I think video rental changed that by showing that alot of people would buy a video if it were sold at a lower price, and the studios would reap the profit instead of the people who rented the video. In many ways the video rentals places were stealing money from the studios in the same want online piracy is, and video became priced to compete with that grey area of acquisition.
Now, when we got DVDs the studios got greedy. They jacked the price, but that was somewhat defesible becuase of the added value. What they did do is put unskippable ads, warning, etc that made the DVD less valuable. In most cases, one cannot just put a DVD in and have it play. In addition, if one just wants a movie, it can't be had. The consumer is forced to pay for the extra content. And if the consumer wants to keep the original for backup and watch a compressed version in a more convinent format, for instant putting an entire series of one DVD, that cannot be easily done.
So the economics is this. People who want the DVD product tend to pay for it. People who merely want to watch the film once tend to rent it. People who do not want the DVD product, but want the film, are just out of luck. There is simply no legal way to aquire the film without the baggage.
And so we back to the dawn of video rental. There is no legal way to acquire the product, but there are many grey areas in which the product can be aquired. So the studios are either going to ignore this demand and perhpas not maximize profit, or find a way to tap at least some of the sales. There are limits. DVD DRM is not going away, so person who do not want to deal with 10 DVD for a season are still going to download, but a $1-5 basic edition goes a long way to satisifying the basic market.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Please note that I used the word "theft" somewhat sardonically, because that was the word used in the post to which I responded; however:
.what public good is enhanced by destroying private ownership?
. .
You do not understand the social contract of copyrights and patents. Like, at all.
The are not private property. A temporary right of monopoly is granted insofar as that grant benefits the public good by insuring they reach the public domain; and in a timely manner.
Free speach is the primal law which "Intellectual Property" laws are subserviant to (where such free speach laws exist, which they should in all jurisdictions that are signatory to the Berne Convention, since the assumption of free speach is part of the social contract of the Berne Convention).
While I'm sure the public good can be shown to be "served" by confiscating physical works of art, it still smells like theft to me.
Because that is theft. As is taking a DVD from the store without paying for it.
Copying the work of art is not theft.
Denying the right to copy the work of art is theft from the public domain. It denies the right to possess what is legitimately your property. Back in the day when the American copyright laws were being formulated the parties who were against it and the parties that were for it both understood this explicitly.
Get the hence and read the correspondence between Jefferson and Monroe on the matter (Jefferson was Ambassador to France at the time the Constitution was drafted, which fact leaves us with a fortuitous public record of the their arguments).
KFG
The point is, in my experience, pirates in Russia usually sell higher-quality mastered discs of the movies I want than licensed discs with the same movies. I don't know why it is so.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Man, you're making me feel old ... I've witnessed 40 of those 50 years. BTW, your description of the situaiton as Breach of Contract is very well worded.
... that's the piece I consider to be the material breach. More specifically, the original copyright terms formed a valid contract - the three requisite parts were satisfied (offer, acceptance, and consideration.) The "consideration" in this case is an exchange of a short-term monopoly for public-domain status at the end of that term. Disregarding the offer and acceptance aspects of the retroactive extension, there's only benefit for the copyright holders and none for the public. The copyright extension act therefore fails the consideration test, and is not a valid contract. The public already had the "revert to public-domain" element in the original contract. The extension offers benefit to the copyright holder in exchange for ... what? (hint: nothing.)
... are we up to number three already?
That said, I feel like I'm in the same exact situation. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with the Sonny Bono Indefinite Copyright Extension nastiness. The retro-active part makes me particularly furious
I've used the term "breach of contract" in many discussions. Is it possible to file a class-action lawsuit against Congress for Breach of Contract?
I'm quite certain that the lawyers would have a field day with that. The original contract was negotiated by representatives of the people, and I'm also quite certain that they'd argue that the terms of said contract were re-negotiated by representatives of the people. The whole "representation" thing creates a nasty grey area - we citizens aren't allowed to opt-out of laws we don't like.
In the words of Ed Howdershelt: "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order."
Looks like we're exhausted the first two