MPAA Touts Record Year For Hollywood

proudhawk writes "A blog posting in p2pnet today catches MPAA boss Dan Glickman at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas crowing about Hollywood's profitable year: 'Today, we stand on a new mountaintop, and I have to say: I like the view... We had about 5 percent growth in both the domestic and worldwide box office, all-time highs on both fronts reminding us once again that good stories well told always find a place in our hearts, our lives and our local theaters.' What ever happened to the ravages of online piracy?"

Comments

Re:Pointless argument

[invader_vim]

[piracy]'s had a dramatic affect on music sales.

Actually, a joint study by Harvard and University of North Carolina (CNET news story here, pdf link to original study available from the article) suggests that filesharing has almost zero effect on CD sales. Admittedly it is a few of years old now (March 2004) and is by no means exhaustive; however, the conclusions are still relevant and suggest that there are greater influences on music sales than piracy (despite what the RIAA would like us to believe).

Re:You're looking at it wrong.

[jcasper]

And to show that he wants to crack down harder, he "blasts Net neutrality" in the very next breath, saying that "it would impair the ability of broadband providers to address the serious and rampant piracy problems occurring over their networks today."

Re:It's the kiss of death

[absoluteflatness]

The thing is, in your two cases of VHS and 8-track manufacturers, they're tied to the format. The media companies, on the other hand, generally couldn't care less, except in the case of a market being fractured by many competing formats. The RIAA almost certainly made immediate gains from the switch from vinyl to CD, since CD's cost much less to produce. In the same vein, what does the MPAA care that Blu-ray will eventually (possibly) overtake DVD? They're not DVD manufacturers, they make money no matter what the format of the media. Now, there'll possibly be a depression in total video media sales as people are more reluctant to buy soon-to-be-obsolete discs, but also don't yet wish to upgrade to Blu-ray. Then again, Blu-ray players will play DVDs, so maybe that won't be the case. At any rate, the comments referenced in the article were about box office sales, not video.

Re:Pointless argument

[mlts]

The confusion between someone copying a movie from a P2P network for no profit and a criminal organization deliberately making unauthorized counterfeit copies of movies to sell in stores is a difference that a lot of groups want the line blurred.

Counterfeiting is truly theft, as each single counterfeit copy takes a sale away from a genuine firm. The other is not theft, but IP infringement, which is not considered a criminal offense in most countries (although there are a lot of deep pockets wanting to change that.)

Re:Are they really that evil?

[ScrewMaster]

I don't feel the outrage against them that I do the RIAA. They're more annoying than evil in their tactics.

Maybe ... but keep firmly in mind that it was the MPAA that authored the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. They're a dangerous outfit, in fact because they're more subtle than the RIAA they're even more dangerous. Don't let them off the hook.

Re:scapegoat

[schon]

I don't think that anyone ever claimed that movie piracy was set effect box office takings You think wrong.

They've been crying for years that camcorded copies are reducing box-office take.

Seriously, if you're gonna post complete and utter bullshit, you should make sure that it's not to an audience that knows it's complete and utter bullshit.

Re:scapegoat

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Piracy hurts Hollywood in the ongoing sales and royalties business. And it isn't the Hollywood execs that lose the most: it is the people like union workers, cameramen, grips, and even sysadmins that lose their jobs."

Funny. Those guys have already been paid by the time the movie is released. The execs, however, are the ones that stand to make money by the continual sales of completed works.

That is beside the point, however. The DVD industry has an 'open your mouth and close your eyes' business model. You cannot take a movie back if it sucks. So long as that is the case, there'll always be a 'market' for piracy. They're attempting to fight it by making that demand even stronger.

I work in Hollywood and frankly piracy isn't on my list of job-related fears at all. The execs pissing off audiences, however....