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Record Box Office Indicates MPAA 'Piracy Problem' Hot Air
Kinescope writes "The motion picture industry has said that its profits are at risk due to piracy, but a record-setting 2007 box office has some wondering if the industry is crying 'wolf.' Last year, the US box office totaled $9.63 billion, a 5.4% increase over 2006. 'Piracy is so bad, according to the MPAA, that we need special legislation to target the dastardly college pirates who are destroying the business. It's so bad that Weekly Reader subscribers will learn about the $7 billion a year "lost" to Internet piracy. It's so bad that the MPAA wants ISPs to ignore years of common carrier law and the promises of "safe harbor" and start filtering their traffic, looking for copyright violations. The real world isn't quite this simple, of course. It turns out that the MPAA's college numbers were off by a factor of three, a revelation that came after years of hiding the study's methodology but continuing to lobby Congress with its numbers.'"
When the governator (Arnold!) made a visit to canada to discuss this 'problem', there was new legislation that was made law within two months. That shows you the power of the governator (or perhaps, the power of american influence). The problem was that 'Canada was responsible for over half the pirated movies in north america'. The legislation enacted was almost EXACTLY what was requested by Gov. Schwarzenegger... and STILL they cry 'Blame Canada!'
... is that it ISN'T actually a problem!
The only problem with it all
Just a nitpick, but the summary says $9.63 million, when it is in fact billion
Also, the box office figures don't correlate directly to lost profits, because the DVD industry is so big now, and I think that's where they're losing most of their money. Getting a copy that was taken by a video camera sucks compared to a movie; however, once a DVD comes out, you can download the same quality for free.
$9.63 million, a 5.4% increase over 2006
How about "billion" instead? (It'll probably get corrected.)
Well, either that, or piracy has indeed PWNED the movie industry. Bad. Hah.
I like basketball!!1!
Does this account for rising gas prices though? I'm sure the exec's Hummer H2s and H3s are sucking down a lot of that seeming extra profit.
What alternatives do we have?
Our body of law gives rights to the creators and their protected ability of being the one to approve copies. Regardless of whether we agree or now with this, that is our situation.
Now, we take this to the "digital domain". Those older creators want, no.. need these protections as they see in the non-internet world. The only real way to "guarantee" this is by digital restrictions. The best way I think of this is that of a akin to a capability system and the copyright maintainer has an account on your machine.
However, our machines are ours. The geeks amongst us demand that we are able to control our software and hardware. What was unable to do in WinXP, Vista seems to offer the beginning of that capability system with the media companies at the kill switch. And to top it off, Vista has remotely disabling drivers for "holes" that might appear. For those that own a machine, this OS laughs in their face, as if saying "Bring It On!"
And there are many casualties. Those casualties are the Joe and Jane Publics that don't understand this issue close enough, or think that all needs to be done is burn to DVD... just like the iPod to music. When they find out that they are locked with binary garbage that cannot be used for any fair use purpose (backing up owned DVDs is fair usage).
And where are we now? When the users know they are eventually shafted, those that have the know-how will show others where to download the movies and the music they legitimately bought. Once they know they were taken advantage of, any feeling of "theft" (or whatever you call it) will be gone. The media companies had their chance to do their dealings with the public honestly, but have failed.
Just like língchí.. Death by a thousand cuts.
posted on kuro5hin.org
Reminds me of the Bob and Doug McKenzie album where Bob is bragging that now that they are a band they have a roadie and 18 tractor trailer trucks carrying their stuff including 50 million pounds of back bacon. Bob: And 50 million pounds of back bacon. Doug: 50 million?!? Take off! Bob: OK, uh, 5 million.
Seriously.. record box office receipts with movies as bad as they are? What the fuck is the MPAA complaining about?
They make utter shit.. and people flock to pay for it! I can think of maybe one decent movie in the past few years.. Blood Diamond.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Jeeze, there were few movies that were even -watchable- much less -good- last year, and they still set records?
That's not so much 'hot air' as 'complete bullshit' then.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Using those "record setting numbers" is also a bit disingenuous. Inflated ticket prices (due to inflation) have more to do with it. Gross revenues almost always exceed last year, even in years when the actual number of ticket sales is down. They may have brought in more money, but that money was worth less.
Was this year different because there were movies worth watching? There were a few decent movies that got me into the theater this year but I have a pretty short memory and can't recall whether it has been different in any of the previous years.
That has been one of my issues with the *AAs... they just look at profits and piracy and try to make sense of the trends. Why doesn't the quality of their product get factored in as well?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
They could still have a point about potentially losing a lot of money to piracy in the next several years though. I don't think the movie industry has been hit as hard as the RIAA simply because of bandwidth issues. Takes only a few minutes to download a full album, but a good high-def movie still takes all day.
Careful What You Wish For....
I was under the impression that movies haven't made a profit since shortly before the introduction of talkies. How can the movie industry "lose" that which their accountants deny existed in the first place?
Whew. For a moment there, I thought that watching movies without paying wasn't "okay", but it turns out they're still making money from other suckers, I mean, customers. So I'm glad we got that tricky dilemma sorted out.
But is it "News for Nerds"? Most Slashdot readers knew MPAA was full of it from the get go.
God spoke to me.
Gotta love those experts, I guess they didn't have to put themselves through college like a lot us did. PMSL
What do you expect from an industry that produces products that gross many times more than they cost to make, but still supposedly fail to turn a profit? "The Lord of the Rings" movies apparently grossed ~$6 billion, but didn't make a profit, all thanks to Hollywood accounting. Why should it be different for their other numbers, whether their "lost profits", stats on movie piracy, or any other number they decide to make up for the need at hand?
All the data in the article is proving is that a fairly consistent number of people enjoy going out to the movies. It doesn't have anything to do with piracy.
Could a factor be that bad copies of movies from camcorders are making the Movie theaters seem better? I know that I can download any movie I want, but often I insist on going to a theater to see a particular movie if I feel the extra quality is worth it. I know I didn't feel that way before P2P. To be frank I hated theaters before because the constant sound/video issues. But compared to a cam it is quite good. HD at home is better though.
My area finally has a second run theater, after not having one for a few years. The previous one was torn down for a mall anchor store that was never built. A movie is something like $3.50 a seat, and it's a lot of movies that were released 3-4 months ago. The film prints still look pretty good too.
Theres incomplete statistical data, incomplete statistical data, and incomplete statistical data in this case.
How is any of this data valuable to anyone? no comparison between alternate goods out there, no verifying beyond the gross dollar value....
This entire article has the feel of "Pot To Kettle", which really sucks because I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA's numbers WERE entirely hot air (in fact i'm pretty sure they are). You cant fight bad methodology with bad methodology or you just end up with the climate change debate or the war on drugs debate...
Ice Cream has no bones.
Property is theft.
If those dastardly pirates were stopped, according to the logic of the MPAA, there would be $16.63 billion at the box office! That's a tidy improvement over last year, don't you think?
Luckily for us, we have a theater with 2 dollar movies for second runs on tuesday, otherwise, yea $3.50. I don't understand how the movie industry thinks they are losing millions to students when a movie costs $8.5 to 9.75. I make a decent living but I still pay $2 whenever I can. And if the movie gets panned, I don't see it at all. Exceptions aside of course, lol.
Am I the only one who feels like the industry position is akin to a restaurant owner trying to figure out a way to charge some customers for using excess salt, and for grabbing two mints rather than just one?
I think arguments of how much money is made a honeypot for the MPAA/RIAA to suck us into an argument on their terms. The MPAA/RIAA are going to win if you make it about money for some very good reasons:
1) It's not about how much money you made, but how much more money you could have made. Great I made $2000 last year on my stocks, but damn those pirates I could have made $3000!
2) Companies are all about shareholder equity. The more money you make, the more you increase your stock price and the more dividends you can pay out.
3) The average politician is sympathetic to this, both in terms of legally allowing business to flourish, and corruptly accepting money from donors involved with the MPAA/RIAA.
4) not enough average people make a stink about losing their rights thanks to copy protection, so politicians don't listen.
And #4 is what we need to continue to pound on and educate the masses over. Large companies want to slowly take away, nibble by nibble, your rights to copy things that you should be able to copy. You make the message simple enough, pound on it, and don't let up, and eventually rights will trump money. Consumers as a group are the most powerful group in the US, we are just completely disorganized and disinterested. Unless we get organized, the well organized MAFIAA will continue to dominate this discussion in the places where it counts.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I like to buy DVDs but I have to tell you I'm doing it less and less now because we get shafted here in New Zealand. DVDs cost around $35(NZ) and are generally single disc editions. If I paid the same amount for a DVD in America I can get special editions. The movie industry only has itself to blame by incorporating pathetic Region encoding and not giving us the same value for money as the rest of the world. Once Apple finally brings video to the Australia and New Zealand iTS then it's all over for DVD purchases because I know I'm getting the right value for money from there.
A 5% increase (when inflation is 3+%) isn't much to write home about. Up front let me say I only go to at most 1 or 2 movies a year since, well, most of them suck and then there is netflix. That said, it would be a lot more helpful to have not only same screen data (ie, same store sales) but also to adjust it for inflation. That is the only way to have even a remote idea of where things stand. Significantly harder to quantify is the changing nature of what people do in their free time. Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s there wasn't much to do besides a) get drunk b) get high c) to to a movie.
I do agree that movie piracy is becoming a problem, but know where near as large a problem as it is hyped up to be in the media. Donate and I will love you.
Downloads were affecting DVD sales not box office. Ironically it was DVD sales that were hurting box office numbers because a lot of people wait for films to come out on DVD now. The reason they jumped on downloading before it became a major problem is they took a lesson from the record companies. The record companies only took action after it started to seriously affect sales. They were too late and lots of people got used to just downloading instead of buying so their numbers have dropped steadily ever since. Bandwidth is slowing movie downloads but that will change. Film revenues have been shaky so they are trying to keep from facing the same fate as the record companies. All entertainment companies are having to change how they market and sell products.
With ticket prices growing constantly (A million tickets sold in 1988 = ~$5 million, a million tickets sold today = ~$10 million), and inflation, even an industry seeing 0% actual growth should report "record" gross sales annually. And of course, the size of the movie viewing demographic is likely to shift over time as well.
5.4% growth in gross receipts and "record sales" aren't terribly telling. They do suggest that the industry hasn't been totally gutted by piracy, but it's not inconceivable that you could come back with some statistics showing that piracy does have some real impact. For example, what percentage of 18-25 year old demographic saw movies in the theater in 2007, relative to other years?
'07 was the first year in a very long time that I actually went to theater. I can't stand the theaters and usually I prefer to sit at home in my comfortable living room free of people talking and able to skip the previews if I want to etc.
/. about rehashing and sequels etc. It's admittedly much more difficult to capitalize on something entirely novel. But I am of the opinion that if you give your customers what you want you can't fail. Last year definitely managed to get me out to the theater and in '06 I would have laughed my ass off if you told me I'd not only go out to the theater but would do so several times in the upcoming year.
But 2007 had so many movies that were actually worth seeing. The Simpsons Movie, Transformers, The Order of the Phoenix, The Bourne Ultimatum etc. I am not surprised at all that ticket sales were up. It was a very unusual year in terms of quality of "blockbusters".
Of course every one of the movies that I listed come from a successful "franchise". And we often complain here on
Legally, every bootleg copy or download is made equivalent to that person actually going to pay full price to watch or buy the movie.
In truth, I wonder just what percentage of people who buy bootlegs or download the movie would have been willing to pay instead of simply not watching it. I mean have you seen the tripe coming out of hollywood these days? Granted the whole point of those laws is that those people should not have seen the movie without paying, and so they have taken an undue 'benefit' or 'enrichment' in having seen the movie that way.
I figure in real life, the studios can't really call it a loss when they were never going to get that money in the first place, and meanwhile, they are dropping the spanish inquisition on students, single mothers, etc.
The best solution for them is to make better movies that are actually worth paying to see! I mean it's gotten so bad over the last few years, that I can't even be bothered to download them and waste an or so watching. My wife and I have at least three pairs of free movie tickets 1 of which is over 6 months old, and haven't used them in yet because every time we think about going to catch a movie, there is nothing worth watching on!
More Caffeine. NOW
I am never surprised that Box Office revenue increases with the way they raise prices every six months. Nine bucks for a student "discount" (in Atlanta) is a slap in the face. There are several movies that I'd like to see right now, like the one with Jack Black AND Mos Def, but I'll wait until it's OnDemand. Five bucks for pay per view is way better than the eye gouge at the movie theaters. I never go to the movies anymore because it's ridiculously expensive. I'd be more interested in the year to year number of tickets sold.
When is Slashdot going to add a -1 moderation option for people who actually RTFA?
My question: How is the box office (ie, money brought in) showing improvement only slightly above the inflation level despite the fact that the cost to create a movie has skyrocketed a sign that piracy doesn't affect sales.
Hell, in my area, ticket sales went up 10% (from $9 to $10) so the fact that box office went up 5% while box office takings per ticket went up 10% indicates a loss. Granted, not every theater everywhere raised prices 10% last year, but still.
I think this dude explains it best.
MMOG companies are doing this too.
... make it a business to create fiction?
When companies make huge profits, they fire thousands because next years competition will be nastier (so they say).
Well when records companies make money, that means piracy is destroying their revenues and they don't forget to reduce artists royalties by the way.
At least communism had it right : everybody has the same as his neighboor : nothing, and elite drive in Lada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada/)
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
What they meant is that the number of people going to the movies is down! The receipts are up because they are now charging $10.00 a person to go to the movies. They have offset the decline in attendance by a huge increase in the price of the tickets. So those that do choose to go to the movies are paying much more that previously.
How many "good" movies see a big theatrical box office?
No Country For Old Men grossed $64 million in the U.S., Ratatouille $206 million.
Both are fine films, but play to a very different audience.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
when the dollar is falling almost daily. Wheat growers are having record profits, too (despite the famine). That's because the dollar has lost about 15% of its value in the past year. And now comes the torrent of accusations of conspiracy theories because I think the fed inflation figure is laughable. Not that I am saying that the right to charge for a freely(as in beer)-reproducible commodity should be equated with the right to sell a piece of property that can only be sold once without having to create it again (as in bread). Copyrights that last over 10 years is what causes piracy -- not consumers that want to treat movies the way they treat books. But the dollar buys much fewer things that anyone wants to have nowadays, so there are all the dollars people "earn" or have accumulated (when spend at the same rate) must be buying fewer things... but at higher prices.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Heh. Even a fool should notice that if this alleged piracy is so bad, then why in the world do their profits increase every year?! I think everyone would like to have a "loss" like that!
I'm sick of a bunch of fanboys living in their mom's basement trying to find excuses for stealing by taking shots at people who work for a living.
Your tears are like milk.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Look at all the published download numbers -- they aren't lead by art house flicks and niche bands, they're the same mass-market entertainment that the studios/labels spend millions marketing and that the *public wants to consume*. Its all Oops I Did It To Die Hard Again.*
If you want to watch it, pay for it. If it is too crappy for you to watch it, don't watch it. This is not a difficult concept. The studios don't owe you their crappy content for free when you, in actual fact, seek out the crappy content.
* OK, that was unfair. I liked Die Hard.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
What if it's too crappy for me to pay for, but good enough to keep in the background while having dinner or something?
The studios don't owe you their crappy contentThat's no problem, they don't have to pay a cent when I download their movies using bittorrent.
c++;
Point me to a listing of top downloaded songs, videos, or games which contains *one* work created prior to 1997. Go on, I'll wait.
The mass entertainment industry produces disposable culture and markets to create a perpetual demand for the new culture. That is what the pirates pirate, because that is what the pirates (and essentially everybody else) wants.
Let's look at the data:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2007/12/YE_best_of_p2p
Top Songs of 2007
1. Shop Boyz, "Party Like A Rock Star"
2. Akon, "I Wanna Luv U"
3. Sean Kingston, "Beautiful Girls"
4. Mims, "This Is Why I'm Hot"
5. Akon, "Don't Matter"
6. T-Pain, "Bartender"
7. Soulja Boy, "Crank Dat Soulja Boy"
8. Justin Timberlake, "My Love"
9. DJ Unk, "Walk It Out"
10. Jim Jones, "We Fly High"
A shocker! Long copyrights cause piracy of songs out less than one year! Clearly the public domain is being impoverished by being denied the heartrending artistic stylings of Justni Timberlake, forever locked up by the evil copyright lawyers!
If you look at movies, you'll find the same thing: piracy is very much a recent-blockbuster phenomenon.
Top Movies of 2007
1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
4. Ratatouille
5. Superbad
6. Beowulf
7. Transformers
8. American Gangster
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Stardust
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Good lord! Were there such things in 2007?
I am struggling to think of when I actually went to a cinema and saw a film and if so, what it was. I really cannot remember if I spent an inordinate amount of money getting in, then spent a small fortune getting a drink or sweets. Nope, still drawing a blank...
DVDs however are another matter. Barely a week went by without some sort of hiring going on. It's far more comfortable and relaxing to curl up on the sofa with fiancee and a beer and relax.
One point I will say is that during the Great Depression, movie audiences were also at a very large high. It was felt that the general population needed to escape from the reality of their lives for a short period of time and that movies provided that relief. With the way that the world is heading (rising oil prices etc), what is to say that people will also choose to spend a few hours a week safe in the womb of feel-good movies.
Maybe Disney will see a new market here and make films with even more schmaltzy endings...
Teamwork is essential. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
Movie stars generally didn't start the production company that made the films they're in.
Sure they may take more (passive) risks such as being hounded by the press, stalkers, etc., but I'm not sure it justifies earning several orders of magnitude more than the average white-collar worker. Remember, that there are also lots of advantages to being famous.
Here is how the MPAA / RIAA / ISP logic works:
Year-End Loss: Piracy is to blame. It's not our fault.
Year-End Profit: We had great artists/writers/engineers that made some great products.
Not Enough Bandwidth: Piracy is taking up all the bandwidth. It's not our fault.
Excess Bandwidth: We have a better system than the 'other'guys. We're better ISP.
Low Box Office Turnout: People are pirating movies instead of going to the theater. It's not our fault.
High Box Office Turnout: We made really great movies.
Low Record Sales: People are pirating all their music instead of buying it. It's not our fault.
High Record Sales: We have great artists who produced great songs.
Anybody see a pattern here? Whenever the MPAA/RIAA or ISP's have problems, they blame pirates for "taking away" sales and clogging networks. The MPAA and RIAA don't realize that if they continue to pump out crappy content (films/music), then people are going to want to make sure thay what they are going to spend $25 on is worth it (would you buy a song or movie without listening or viewing it first? A 30 second preview isn't enough.). The MPAA/RIAA doesn't understand that people are pirating because the industries are prducing horrible music albums and over-hyped movies that nobody feels is worth their hard-earned money. Every film t hat comes out of Hollywood is over-hyped and inflated, so there is no way to tell a great film from a bad one. Record labels use the trick of putting 2 or 3 good songs out of 10-12 tracks on an album, and then charging $25 for the whole thing. If you produce crappy content, people are going to do what they can to make it better, or at least save themselves from being duped by record labels and film studios. ISP's have a similar reaction: Comcast blames p2p file sharing ("pirating" in Comcast's eyes) as the reason that it's service is horrible, rather than acknowledge that it spends way to much on advertising for customers that it already doen't have the bandwidth or infrastructure to support.
Whenever these guys have problems, they shift blame to other people, namely, "pirates". BUT, when they have a windfall, they are pretty damn quick to shift the attention towards themselves.
Basically:
Successes: We're just simply a company of experts who know what we're doing!
Problems: It's your fault, not ours.
The problem isn't only limited to these groups, but can be seen in other companies that don't understand how to run a business:
MAINTAIN your infrastructure. If you lose it, you have nothing.
INFRASTRUCTURE is everything. If it suffers, your customers suffer, and ultimately, you will suffer the most. (Just look at AOL.....)
DO remember that your customers chose you. You didn't choose them.
DO keep your customers happy.
DO provide good service.
DO give the customer what they want. If you do, they will give you money in return.
DO remember people want a product, not more advertisements. (AOL again.....)
DON'T spend more than you make.
DON'T advertise things you can't deliver.
DON'T try to pull a fast one by your customers. You will always lose.
DON'T overvalue your product. (AOL again.....)
DON'T treat the customer like an ATM. It pisses them off.
Word-Of-Mouth is the best and most effective way to get a new customer.
A happy customer is far more likely to convince a friend to buy from you than your commercial is.
Money from a customer is good, but get greedy and it will disappear.
And lastly:
DO remember that your competitors would be more than happy to buy your company from your creditors if you ever went belly-up.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
d. Making someone pretty, 1 million
e. Fixing someone who got hit with a stick, 20k/yr
f. 3 year treatment for burnout, 120k/yr
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Cinema is a social event...not surprising it doesn't suffer from piracy.
When you're watching DVDs at home it makes no difference if they're pirated or not, so piracy wins.
No sig today...
The problem is that the content products like movies, music even books try to pretend they are normal products until it comes time to actually discuss profit margins and production costs.
You would say that if a movie cost X to produce then if it made a box office result of X+Y that Y would be profit? It don't work like that, extremely successfull movies that break box-office records can nonetheless show a LOSS. Hollywood style accounting would get you arrested in any other field, but somehow we tolerate it because... well you got to wonder why it is tolerated.
It seems rather convenient that the movie industry is allowed to just inflate its costs on all of its products until they rather handily do not show a profit. Say I create an item, a painting, I put itup for auction, then as the price goes higher and higher I keep increasing the costs of the paint I used so that even if my simple pencil drawing started out with a cost of a penny, if it sells for a million, it cost me a million and a penny to produce.
Idiotic? Well it happens all the time in movies, just look at the Spiderman movies and Lord of the Rings trilogy. Products that OBVIOUSLY had more revenue then cost but that is NOT what the final account says.
I know this will shock americans, but it is high time the state steps in and regulates the content industry. Offcourse that won't happen, any politician who dares regulate hollywood will be torn to shreds by the media.
And we swallow it, what is the favorite show of Slashdot? Futurama? How many eps show rampant anti-piracy propoganda? A show were turning humans into a softdrink is perfectly fine, but copyright infringement is an evil that deserves an entire episode.
We are controlled by the media, as long as the media can set public opinion they can abuse this by making sure politicians who do what they want them to do get noticed, and the ones who go against get buried.
Oh and don't think for a second that the content industry cares one shit about censorship. Ratings, a fine for a nipple? All part of charade. In exchange for allowing Hollywood to make its own economic rules, the politicians are allowed to introduce simplistic and ineffective self regulation.
And no, this is NOT a conspiracy theorie, there are no shadowy meetings in which this is arranged, it is just how things work. Conspiracy theorists are dreamers, idealists who hope that there is a clear enemy who no matter how powerfull can ultimately be overcome one day.
Real life don't work that way, there is just an understanding. Politicians leave the content producers alone, and the content producers won't tear them a new hole in the public eye.
Ever wonder why we think Kerry was a stiff, Al Gore to intellectual? Who do you think put that image in our minds? Watch the media very carefully and see how every person who is the smallest threath to the way things are done is assasinated.
Just imagine how you would react to a Jay Leno monologue about a senator who wishes to put the IRS in charge of examing hollywoods finanicials. How many seconds do you think he would need to tear this guy down and the audience swallowing it hook line and sinker?
The politicians KNOW this, the media controls the public so they can never control them.
Some people believe a free press is needed to keep goverment in check, but who keeps the media in check? Examine the politics in England and how newspaper support for one party or the other can swing the election. The media is the watchdog, but who watches the watcher? The public? Yeah right, they only know what the media tells them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... and counting other people's money...
What happened to the famous Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere?
I mean, if it is wrong to watch a movie without paying its makers, does it really matter, whether 1% or 30% of the makers' money is lost to them?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just because box office totals hit a record doesn't mean that piracy isn't a problem. I'm not saying that piracy IS a problem (or at least one that justifies what's being proposed in an attempt to deal with it), but it's entirely possible for this to be a record year AND for pirates to be really eating into box office sales.
If your dry cleaner made $100k last year, and you made $130k this year but someone held you up at gunpoint and stole $20k, you'd still (after the theft) have record revenues.
Rental stores usually let the DVD copies out far earlier than the street date. They make a point in my area of trying to advertise that you can watch it from them earlier than you can own the DVD.
Plenty of video stores don't obey the street-date restrictions, either. Especially when a DVD hits areas like Hong Kong. National chain ones like Worst Buy and Wal(borg)mart, sure - but the little mom and pop shops don't care, if it's a chance to sell the merch or else lose your business, they'll sell the merch just to try to stay afloat. Every sale counts to them, especially when the only advantage they have over the Walmart (given that walmart's deliberately trying to run them out of business) is that they're still small enough to be under the radar; the MafiAA companies don't worry whether they broke the street date by a few days for like 5 people.
And I can guarantee you another way to get a movie early: order it with next-day delivery from Amazon (if you order a lot of stuff, get an Amazon Prime membership). I guarantee you, they will ship it out in the same batch as the stuff headed out "free ground delivery" speed and you'll have it at least a week before street date.
Sure, that seems impressive, but once Hollywood's accountants finish up, you'll see that last year they really *lost* $50 billion dollars. They just need a little more time to fudge... I mean, figure out the numbers.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
evil? Right. Clueless as to what the word "property" means is what I would say. "Evil" is probably the word best reserved for mass murderers and socialists. I would never resort to a vaguery when a precise description is available. And "evil" is as vague as it gets.
The mass entertainment industry produces disposable culture and markets to create a perpetual demand for the new culture. That is what the pirates pirate, because that is what the pirates (and essentially everybody else) wants. Everybody wants this? I haven't heard of a single song on that list, but Ok. Actually, I heard one person talking (once) about Soulja Boy. I might be out of touch. I am only on a college campus everyday -- not somewhere mainstream. I don't download songs, but here's the top 10 torrents that showed up when I clicked on top 100 on piratebay.org:- Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Btw, #13 on that list is "Pink Floyd - full discography". I am not sure where wired got their info. But I would bet they are part of the conglomerate that, as you put it, "produces disposable culture". So their information as to what happens to be popular might be, shall we say, "biased". Their parent company, Condé Nast, also owns Vogue, GQ, Mademoiselle, Vanity Fair, Gormet, American Golfer, etc. 'Enough said.Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
While you are correct with 'Theft is theft' the true theme here is that the numbers the MPAA is stating is to be called in question.
They claim that falling profits is directly related to piracy. Here is where I have a problem with what/how they do what they do.
Sales declining in the last few years, do they take into account:
- Higher ticket prices
- online rentals like NetFlix
- On demand / Pay Per View
- The Blu ray / HD DVD 'war' being fought waiting to see what to buy next
- Getting burnt by crap at the theater
- Cell phones, having to deal with more and more annoying people
I would like to see more numbers crunched before people are sued for piracy. Yes theft sucks for anyone including the artist, But theft from the artist starts before the movie is released.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
I don't expect to win any points, but I "trade" movies with a couple of friends of mine, on a private FTP server. Nothing new, no DVD pre-released screeners, and I'm pretty positive I'm not impacting the bottom line of the MPAA.
Its odd though, my gf would rather go to the blockbuster and rent an old movie, instead of me downloading and burning it, even though its exactly the same quality. hmm, social aspect?
Thought I'd share
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
All I needed was to realize they weren't claiming the losses to "piracy" as financial losses for insurance claims or on tax returns.
Until they do one or both of those things, which basically puts the board under oath on the matter, I do not believe them.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If they actually lost money when I downloaded a movie, I can honestly say that I would keep azureus going all day, every day, downloading every movie I could get my hands on. Twice. I hate those money grubbing, lying, cheating scumbags so much.
Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.
Comment of the year
How can this year have record box office draws, what movie was worth seeing? I didn't see a single movie in the theatre last year, and honestly, I don't know why anyone would go to the theatre anymore. What is a ticket now? $10? $15? Then you gotta deal with the mouth-breathers who think that the actors can hear them, the fucktard who leaves his cellphone on (or, worse yet, TALKS on it during the movie), plus the crap that gets put out on film.
There was no Lord of the Rings, no Harry Potter (I don't think), no Narnia, and even the kids movies looked pretty crappy. Look at the Oscars this year: lowest rated Oscars since they started rating (or near to if not exactly lowest).
Something about this post smells fishy to me.
>They claim that falling profits is directly related to piracy.
It doesn't really matter if MPAA profits are going up or down. The point is that theft is occurring. It is probably worse to steal from the poor than the rich, but it is still wrong and illegal to steal from the rich.
Politically speaking, the MPAA has to claim profit losses due to piracy to get traction in their fight against it. Everyone going to congress exaggerates their claims, that's the name of the game. That doesn't undermine that fundamentally the movie studios have had their legally established property rights violated and deserve the protection of the law.
>But theft from the artist starts before the movie is released.
And that is an excuse for pirating movies how?
Also, that's a bullshit argument. The artist enters into a legally binding contract, that some may say is not as favorable as possible. However, this is not theft. Theft is when you take someone else's possession without their consent.
Finally, I think you are confusing the MPAA with the RIAA in terms of "theft from content makers." The directors, actors, and writers for large movies all tend to get a pretty fare shake. The MPAA is more just an alliance of major studios to appeal to the legal interests of those studios.