Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Fifteen years before that, the RIAA leaders touted their "record year" for album sales, and CDs immediately supplanted records in 1988 and never looked back.
And thirty years ago in 1978 when Tomita released the final quad 8-track tape, the industry said it was "on track" for the best year ever as it instead saw the multi-track format slip into oblivion.
So when the MPAA touts a shiny year for DVDs, Blu-Ray is probably poised to make them eat their words.
That's partly true I think but the drive in Piracy would be more due to the way the studios try to fragment their markets in different regions, to maximise their own profits.
The internet has made the planet a truly global community and they have to relase globally, not try to stagger around the planet with Theatrical releases/DVD Releases and even different dates for TV premiere's.
In Australia we still cannot get video/TV on iTunes because of this or get access to other such online content because its all being restricted, so many people resort to pirace to see what they want and not wait 3-6 months(Up to a year some times) later.
Like the music industry the movie industry will only end up hurting itself by trying to contain online content rather then let it flourish in an open market, the more they put online for fair prices the more people will pay. Just take phone ring tones as an example of how people are willing to spend money on absolute crap. If more people could get movies at those prices they would be making huge sales.
Wait a second? Isn't this the same industry that cooks the books to never run a profit on movies so they don't have to pay their people? I assume these profits must be including all those "services" they charge themselves for. To me that seems a liability. It seems like they just gave the final data points necessary for all those people promised net points of nothing to do the math and find what their movies really made.
To which I would point out that The Pirate Bay is also setting records.
Which, you would think, would tend to show not only that the MPAA's anti-piracy tactics are working, but that there isn't really a correlation (positive or negative) between piracy and MPAA profits.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't have mod points. But absolutely. I don't think that anyone ever claimed that movie piracy was set effect box office takings. Still /. keeps rolling this sort of thing out as "proof".
To look at it another way, if takings were down because the content was rubbish, why is it that profits for the thing that can't be pirated have increased and the profits for the thing that can be pirated are down?
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.