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At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies
ThinSkin writes "Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past, according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans. A typical movie downloader is 29 years of age, while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female. Kaan Yigit, director of the study, observes, 'There is a Robin Hood effect — most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie downloading as a big deal. The current crop of 'download to own' movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services — otherwise file-sharing will continue to thrive.'"
I suspect the number is higher. Free is very attractive. Doing something that is perceived as "criminal" and getting away with it is also very attractive.
Combine these two and you have a huge motivation for people to do this, regardless of their ever watching the movie.
It may be too late to stuff the genii back in the bottle. The result is that this becomes an "entitlement" that people expect. We are looking at a lot of people being out of work as a result. Not the "stars" but the studio grunts and the folks in the promotions and marketing departments.
and I've only seen one last year! Where can I find the others? :)
Are these folks just too lazy to go to the library and rip DVDs from there? Young people today!
One of the reasons I personally pirate movies is it's easier. I don't have to mess around with anything, I just find a torrent (easy as pie), click 2 buttons and I have it within a couple of hours (on a good torrent under 1 hour). Why ever would I goto the cinema or to a shop to buy something I can get for less effort and money?
I like muppets.
Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past
...and roughly 34 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded the first few minutes of a full-length movie, then cancelled that download to try to find a faster one.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
This is what the MPAA doesn't quite get. Most people I know over the age of 21 hate going to the theater. It's a fucking hassle.
So when a blockbuster is released like LOTR the options are:
a. suffer in the theater
b. wait half a year for the DVD
c. download the torrent
Just make the first runs available for download and guaranteed the piracy problem will be minimized.
Not at all. When you take something from Best Buy, you are removing a physical object that the store can no longer sell to someone. When you download a movie, no physical object is involved.
Agreed. Let's not forget that copyright is a recent notion, proposed by a few people in Western Europe only a few hundred years ago. It did not exist in antiquity--Roman poets such as Martial had no problem with their works being copied and sold as long as they were given credit on the title page--and even today most of the world finds it a nonsensical concept.
When I found out that Hollywood regularly adjusts their accounting practices to show their movies all lose money, I decided to adjust my own checkbook to show that I paid for all the movies on my computer.
{ - Generic Guy - }
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
That's right, I'm a movie pirate! And I like movies rated ARRRRRRR!!!
To tell you the truth, if I had to watch cartel product, I'd prefer "pirated" movies to store bought DVD's simply because I am not forced to watch or skip all of the damned advertisements. I have seen these movies on home made DVD's at other people's homes. I am amazed at their high quality. It should be high time that the movie and music industry stop suing and start listening to their customers. They can start doing this by removing Digital Restrictions Management from their products and stop overcharging. The only reason why these cartels have gotten away with their overcharging for so many years is because they have shut out any competition. Thankfully, those days are over.
With that said, I also want to state that I download video and music from the Internet all of the time. Just about everything that I download however, is not owned or copyrighted by the entertainment cartels. This is not because I have any moral qualms about doing so, rather, it is because most of the stuff produced by the entertainment cartels is pure unadultrated crap. It is a good thing that there are so many people "pirating." I hope that the piracy rate goes even higher until the entertainment cartels finally get the message. When the cartels finally accept the fact that they can no longer overcharge for their product and put unreasonable controls over how their product can be watched, they may regain some of the customers they have lost.
Much of what has been put out by the cartels these days has been little more than glorified reruns. If I want original entertainment, I go to the Internet and such sites as You Tube. The entertainment cartels will most likely never again make the kind of money that they once made now that they have competition, however people will be better off, and new producers will be able to enter the market. Yes, "piracy" is good, and no, it is NOT STEALING.