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New Piracy Loss Estimate
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."
Why don't they show the RIAA and MPAA giving the Big Spin, themselves?
bzzzzzzzzz-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik
"Come on 6.1 billion! Come on 6.1 billion!"
tikka-tikka-tikka-tik-tok-tok "Come on 6.1 billion! YAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!! We lost 6.1 billion!!! Wheeee!!! Huzzah!!"
"Now we cut to live footage of those most responsible for the losses incurred by the RIAA and MPAA conducting a clandestine summit in a treehouse on the outskirts of Wooster, Massachusetts!"
It sure beats the boring truth, doesn't it?A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
that said VCRs would kill the movie industry.
Seriously, this crap is getting ridiculous. I find myself cheering for bigger losses.
That's logical, right?
In other news I had a friend do a study for me (I paid him a pizza, a bag of dorritos and a case of coke) and he conculded, that I paid too much for Internet, my Internet was not fast enough, I was overcharged for movies and music, and I paid too much taxes.
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.
...if they were actually making movies worth watching!
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
...until I read this:
An additional $529 million in losses came from consumers making copies of legitimate films they bought on DVD or VHS.
Losses? You have to buy another one when you want to make a copy? Pay-per-disc?
They're counting every time any kind of copy is made as a loss of sale. They're not even trying to be realistic here.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This study can't be trusted any farther than it can be thrown, to mangle an age-old aphorism.
To put it simply, the MPAA sponsored this study, therefore it will be slanted as they desire. I'm sure there's some element of truth to these estimates, but the MPAA has as a goal the elimination of piracy, so the more inflated they can make the losses seem, the closer they get to their goal.
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
I don't even understand why they bother using real numbers in these studies. Why not just move ahead to the logical conclusion, and have the study say that the MPAA loses a zillion bajillion dollars per year to piracy? It would be about as meaningful.
Incidentally, do you ever notice how you never see any studies calculating the exact amount of money the MPAA loses each year from making crappy, unoriginal, cookie-cutter movies; showing the movies in a medium where you have to spend gas money to get to the theater and then more than half the cost of a DVD to get in the theater door; and then once they have your money putting more effort into showing you more ads than they do the movie? That's a study I'd be curious to read.
I'm sure it's quite obvious to most people that they're just inflating numbers. They can't really even begin to estimate how much revenue is lost to piracy on a yearly basis. I'll wager a substantial sum of money that in a few years this number will grow by another 2 or 3 billion dollars, not because people are pirating any more or any less music, movies, books, or other forms of media, but because the corporations want to make it seem as though they're in danger of falling apart. The truth of the matter is that they've been ripping consumers off for so many years that they have more than enough money to withstand the effects of piracy. Their hesitation to change and adapt by switching to new business models and solutions only reaffirms my belief that these corporate dinosaurs are actually in need of extinction.
If you can't be creative and adapt to the modern world market and find new methods of selling your product, please get the hell out of the way of the companies and people that are trying to make a difference. The stagnation and lack of creative thinking is inflicting more harm on the consumers and economy than any amount of piracy could ever do. Sink, swim, or get the hell out of the water.
I don't know why I bother:
This is funny, it almost sounds from the article that they changed their methodology to increase their claimed "losses", and had to rein them back in when they discovered their losses exceeded global Gross (International) Product.
I'm surprised to see such an MPAA friendly article from WSJ. Or maybe I'm not.
How about I get a bunch of people together and sue the **AA for all the "lost entertainment value" I have experienced from thier respective industries high priced albums and shitty movies.
How about this deal: You allow after-viewing refunds on tickets so I can get my money back after you waste my two hours in a theater, and I'll start letting you have my money when you make something decent.
I once had a meeting with the head of the MPAA and his head lawyer to discuss a technology my cousin and i had created. He full blank told us that the numbers they give are made up and that there is a chance they acutally make money from p2p (as the technology of choice was at the time). I was shocked by that statement. He said that they will probably just add another billion the next year.
Are they REALLY losing anything when people such as me download a movie or game that I never would have bought in the first place? I would easily not pirate the game and not pay $50 for it, or I could borrow it from a friend, or anything. I buy stuff worth buying, end of story.
the Political Inquirer
By toothpaste for dinner
They are guessing, and they are being overoptimistic about market prospects with no piracy.
The problem is, there is no evidence that the drop in sales from their expectations was due to piracy.
Drop in sales can be due to the market; DVDs and ticket sales may no longer be attractive -- drop in sales figures may reflect people seeking alternative, cheaper entertainment options.
Yes, piracy exists, yes it has an impact, but no, that impact cannot be reliably measured with any precision -- there are too many factors influencing the sales numbers you get; primarily, the market - to presume sales always go up unless piracy drives them down is just plain arrogant and a head-up-in-the-clouds assumption.
The amount of piracy occuring is by its very nature a relatively unknown factor, especially when they refer to casual copying, or other things which DRM and other measures are purported to prevent ---- the best that can be made is an educated guess.
These from the people who consider lending an original copy of a CD to a friend to be piracy ---- they cannot reasonably measure the total of such things with anything close to an accurate reading, it's just not practical to get statistically relevant information from a population that is being told what many of them do is bad.
Of COURSE reporters and researchers paid by a company with a certain agenda are likely to drastically exagerate the extent and certainty about the loss being due to piracy or not due to piracy.
Is there *ever* going to be a point when the xxAA reports good news again? For instance, "Ticket sales are down, but we've increased profits by not releasing so many terrible movies this year." Or, "We increased sales of DVDs this year by reducing the price by $3 across the board."
Not likely.
As long as they keep complaining, they have a way to justify restricting access to digital (and analog) content.
Not that it really matters, because they have the money to pay lobbyists to influnece Congress anyway. But the public may be able to stomach some sort of compromise with regards to fair use restrictions if the xxAAs keep bitching and complaining.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
I heard that there are three types of reports from the MPAA: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
theatre in 2 years, haven't bought any recent films on DVD in at least as long and dropped my NetFlix rental plan to the "cheapo" plan as well. They aren't losing money due to piracy, they haven't released anything I would waste my bandwidth on. They are losing money because they release trash; bad "popcorn" flicks, weak remakes that bear little resemblance to their predecessors, bubble gum movies with pop stars who act worse than they lip synch,etc.. You can blame piracy for a while longer, but eventually the problem will become obvious to even the most oblivious film studio executive.
I don't like being forced to watch copyright warnings, stupid "don't steal" commercials and having trouble with archiving movies, so I prefer watching 'stolen' copies, which don't have any added crap.
"I don't even understand why they bother using real numbers in these studies."
I can see it now...
The MPAA reports on a startling new study indicating that over 63 trillion gigawatts of elephants are being harvested anually as a result of DVD piracy. The study corrected for factors such as yellow, and the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop, providing the first clear evidence of a connection between movie downlaods and the number 7.
Seems like the MPAA & the RIAA are having a competition..
they're standing on a rotating platform, trying to see who can spin the fastest.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
If the pirates keep this up, the MPAA will be losing so much potential sales that they'll end up in the potential red and be forced to shut down operations due to the massive potential loss!
Too bad the 'media' will rebroadcast this, and the average joe will believe it. Causing more legislature members to jump for joy, knowing they can pass more stupid restrictive legislation to restrict our rights some more.
If they hadnt all be bought, id say write your congressperson.. But they have, so why bother.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sure, another guestimate of what they think their losses are based on what they would like to think they're really making.
The real reason I don't belive a word of it is they think they're only losing 244mill in China.
And they claim $529mill in losses in the US because consumers are using their fair use rights to make a backup copy so they don't have to go out and rebuy movies every time a disk gets scratched because the MPAA is too cheap to use scratch resistant disks.
How long until they blame Netflix and Blockbuster because people are renting movies at a prepaid monthly rate instead of buying them.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
10 x 10,000,000,000 x US$20 = US$2,000,000,000,000 = 2 Trillion US Dollars
This clearly dwarfs the cost of invading Iraq and giving Baby Boomers their Social Security benefits put together, therefore it is much more important. It is in fact, as shown by the objective calculations above, by far the most important issue on earth today. More than global warming, AIDS, tuberculosis, environmental pollution, shortages of potable water, collapse of fisheries, ozone layer depletion, overpopulation, lack of medical care, famine, poverty, slavery, wars in the Third World, tyrannical dictatorships, nuclear weapons proliferation, exploitation of the many by the few, rampant governmental corruption, compromised information and news media, organized crime, in short more important than anything.
Someone should tell the RIAA.
Everybody copies my program, nobody pays me!
I lost $2.7 billion last year. Oh on Thursday, I have a loss of $5.4 billion. On Saturdays and Sunday I have a discount.
I am the owner of 'Hello World'!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I'd like to see this study done in the real world by a movie studio: Take two similarly popular movies that are projected to perform similarly in revenues over the next few months. Then release both in DVD with all the appropriate promo deals and merchandising. Finally, offer one for free download from their official website via bittorrent or even an easier http download. After a few months they can measure the revenues of each movie. Now, do you think they'd actually do that study? What do you think would be the result?
From the article "An additional $529 million in losses came from consumers making copies of legitimate films they bought on DVD or VHS".
Isn't that fair use?
-ItsME
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Do you think maybe the MPAA hired someone to go strangle women -- later known as the Boston Strangler -- just so they could have a scary phantom to use as a simile when battling the VCR in court?
Nah, they wouldn't stoop that low... would they?
"Last year, according to a person familiar with the matter, copies of movies downloaded or received from people who had downloaded them cost the studios $447 million in the U.S., whereas copies stemming from professional bootleggers cost the studios $335 million."
We don't know his name. We don't know his position. But at least he's familiar with the matter!
damaged by dogma
Please don't fall into their game of using the word "piracy" for sharing data with other people in your society. We can debate all we like about whether that sharing is right, and we may even argue that it morally amounts to theft, but the *act* is sharing, and that's what it should be called. Regardless of the origins of the word piracy, it has a negative and unhelpful connotation.
I agree. No one wants to pay full price for they crap they come out with these days.
I was looking at the upcoming movies and they appear to be a fair mix between drivel and crap. I thought maybe X-Men would be decent but I read further and discovered they replaced the director and large parts of the staff so I lost much of my optimism (I guess I'll still see it though)
Coding Blog
I live in a world of people with fast internet connections and software skills, and where copying interesting data is in the blood, be it software, music, films. But just a week ago I realized how deep this P2P thing is getting into the "real world". I was doing some install in a manufacturing plant, in the production back office. It was a small office with about ten people working. Then the secretary raised the topic of a new CD of a popular band that was to be released that day. Se asked about how long she had to wait till the CD was shared. Somebody answers that he had downloaded already. The conversation involves more people. The talked about the band, asked if the new CD was any good. All was very natural, no hushing, no self-conciousness. NOBODY even thought about buying the CD. The one that had downloaded it offered for copy, the local net of the company was used to make copies of the thing, while mixing talk of music with production problems. It was all very natural, very cool, like sending copies of a joke e-mail or something like that.
Those where lower-income-bracket people, lower-computer-literacy people, that is, the backbone of the country. And they see nothing even remotely wrong in copying music. I fear the content producers are against too much of a slope now.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Have you ever seen anyone calculate the losses due to copy protection run amuck?
.NET 2005 due to sill copy protection issues, when I have the full, licensed copy.
I had to delay my graduation from UTA with a MS in CSE due to the copy protection in Wolfram Publishing's Mathematica not allowing me to run their software over the weekend, when my thesis was due Sunday at 6pm. I lost tens of thousands of dollars due to this.
I am currently unable to run MS' Visual Studio
I have suffered tremendous economic damage from people (e.g., IBM in 1998) saying that I was a pirate. You see, I was at a job interview, and was asked if I paid for my operating system. I said I did not; I ran Slackware Linux 3.4 I was physically thrown out; my $300 suit was ripped (it cost me $375 to repair) and the civil rights complaint went nowhere, due to a dept. of labor that screamed that I was a pirate and a felon.
I am currently unable to give out free Linux discs to high school students due to the BSA threatening the college that I teach at with lawsuits if I advertise that Linux is a free alternative to Windows on the college's web site. They call that advertisement an ad for pirated software.
I was unable to play "Test Drive 2: The Duel" from the time I purchased it a decade ago due to errant copy protection.
I am still unable to play "World War 2" "The Global Dillema: Guns or Butter" "Hero's Quest I" "Homeworld" and "Civilizations" due to copy protection BS. (These are about the only games I ever enjoyed, and I have lost the ability to play them due to absurd copyright stuff, like needing the original 360k disk in the drive plus the original manual for "Guns or Butter."
In my C#.NET class, I can not find a single student with a legitimate copy of VS.NET who can actually get the software to install.
Andy Out!
I like to consider myself a man of principle, and my heart tells me what they are doing is wrong so I refuse to be a part of it.
At first, it kinda hurt, I hated listening to the radio due to all the commercials, and there were movies that came out that I really wanted to see and did not want to wait to come out on DVD or the movie channels but after a while, you get used to it. Purchasing an XM Radio really helped alot, so now I dont miss the CD's and with a Tivo and a phat home theater setup, I allways have something to watch so I dont mind waiting for the movies to come out on cable.
I know that my silent little protest doesnt do shit to hurt their industry, and I am not niave enough to think that a mass boycott will ever work but screw em, I aint paying those jerks a dime if I can possibly avoid it :)
I wonder if the manufacturers of player piano music claimed that their losses were due to pirates when technology changed and made their buisness model obsolete?
I long for the death of the recording industry.......
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
Without an independent audit of their claims, is there any reason at all that anybody should be taking these numbers seriously?
Of course not.
They pull these numbers from their a**holes.
So now they hired some bigger a**holes and were able to pull out bigger numbers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok, here's how I look at it. The RIAA/MPAA (personally,they are both the same bunch of idiots) calculate that if they released X number of movies/CD's in a year and sold every one of them, they should have made X number of dollars. Now at the end of the year, they only sold Y amount, therefore, they "lost" 6.1 billion. Of course, they don't take in consideration that NO ONE IS BUYING THEIR CRAP because for the last few years, they haven't produced/released anything anyone wants to buy!
The first (at least) Harry Potter movie DVD was released with the Macrovision flag tuned off.
I didn't notice anything about the sales being poor.
(They did save a nickle a disk in Macrovision licensing, though.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
U.S. movie studios are losing about $6.1 billion annually in global wholesale revenue to piracy,
Or, put another way, US movie studios saved $2.5B annually in income taxes from the losses claimed due to the global wholesale revenue loss to piracy.
Little do they know, they are losing $588.34 trillion dollars a day by not selling to the Xiggawathians on planet Rofuble.
I have a little more knowledge about what they might need to tap this huge market on planet Rofuble, but I need to do some further research on the technology. If they could just grant me $2 billion for research, I feel that we would be in a position to approach the King of Rofuble within the next few years. While that figure may startle you, rest assured it's a small price to pay for such a huge market!
Just imagine how big the losses would be if they made movies that were actually worth watching!
No sig today...
2 Trillion US Dollars... [is] in short more important than anything.
Not quite, it's second to someone's phone bill.
Shit, i can't be arsed *copying* most of the crap out there, let along watching it or heaven forbid, having to pay for it.
I have no trouble paying for media, however when the average new release is about as enjoyable as prison rape, I doubt their financial problems are soley due to freely available copies...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Suppose each movie is sold for $10 per view, and only 1 out of 100 would pay for that. According to my memory of the economics lesson, if I sold it for $1 per view, there would possibly be 50 out of 100 would pay, depend on the content of the movie.
So can you say, because I sold it for $1 for an illegal copy and 50 bought it, you lost $10*50=$500? Or should it be $10*1=$10? There is a huge difference!
http://www.ieaa.org/~adrian/
Given ever increasing taxation and general cost of living, there's only so much money to go into the 'home entertainment' pot each month.
That pot is shared between DVDs, CDs, games and books.
There's only so much money, so I'll buy the best of each category and leave the 'good, but not great' until it is on sale, or just download it if I have the time to watch it.
So they wouldn't get any extra money in total if I didn't pirate it (how long until they count going around to a friend's house and watching a film with them as piracy?), and any loss isn't at full retail price, but at bargain sale price.
On the other hand I have bought CDs based upon downloading the music and liking the band. That music sale could have been a DVD sale, game sale or wine sale, the total money spent isn't increasing because I don't have that extra money to spend, but at least I could spend it better.