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.'"

Comments

summary wrong

[moderatorrater]

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.

Re:summary wrong

[iluvcapra]

Indeed. DVD sales in 2007 were down from 2006, and DVDs are where all the margin on motion pictures is. The theatrical distribution is really sortof a loss leader to promote the DVD and follow-on media, like DVD, television and video games (an industry which outstrips the film industry in revenues, I might add).