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New Piracy Loss Estimate

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the avast-ye-mateys dept.

An anonymous reader writes "WSJ reports on a new MPAA estimate losses due to piracy. "The study, by LEK Consulting LLC, was completed last year, and people familiar with it say it reached a startling conclusion: U.S. movie studios are losing about $6.1 billion annually in global wholesale revenue to piracy, about 75% more than previous estimated losses of $3.5 billion in hard goods. On top of that, losses are coming not only from lost ticket sales, but from DVD sales that have been Hollywood's cash cow in recent years."

4 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Brilliant assumptions by daknapp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, no it doesn't make the assumption that every pirated copy of a movie would be a sale. If you RTFA, you would see:

    Critics have faulted some piracy estimates for equating each pirated DVD with a lost sale, when many consumers would have skipped the movie altogether if they hadn't gotten a cheap or free unauthorized version. This time, the survey specifically asked consumers how many of their pirated movies they would have purchased in stores or seen in theaters if they didn't have an unauthorized copy, giving studios a different picture of their true losses.

    The results are likely still completely bogus, but at least they pretended to be correcting for that factor.

  2. Re:Duh *bangs head against wall* by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Informative
    Pay $20+ for an ad infused FBI warning with regioning, or virtually nothing for no ads or FBI warnings or regioning.

    Remove the warning, remove the ads, charge $10 max. I can live without movies if you force me to.

    Yeah, tell me about it. I popped in a DVD a couple months back and it was crammed with plugs for upcoming movies, which came out some time back when the DVD was issued, and I couldn't fast-forward, skip to menu or anything. What a bunch of low-life ****ers.

    I did eventually figure out I could hold down the menu button and start the DVD and it would actually skip to the menu, but some disks don't allow that.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  3. Re:Excellent! by kfg · · Score: 3, Informative

    is there any reason at all that anybody should be taking these numbers seriously?

    If they come stapled to a $6.1 billion check made out to cash and slipped under the back door of the Captiol Building?

    KFG

  4. Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... by Reverend528 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Good, maybe they'll spend 1.3 billion less on crappy movies using 'big name stars' to try and sell whatever script they had monkies write....

    With 1.3 billion dollars, the MPAA could afford...

    • 6.2 King Kongs!
    • 7.6 Waterworlds!
    • 14.9 Seabiscuits!
    • over 24 Giglis!
    --
    Badass Resumes