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Has Any Creative Work Failed Because of Piracy?
Andorin writes "Anyone familiar with the piracy debate knows about the claims from organizations like the RIAA that piracy causes billions of dollars in damages and costs thousands of jobs. Other studies have concluded differently, ranging from finding practically no damages to a newer study that cites 'up to 20%' as a more accurate number (PDF). I figure there's got to be an easier way to do this, so here's my question: Does anyone know of any creative works that were provably a financial failure due to piracy? The emphasis on 'provably' is important, as some form of evidence is necessary. Accurately and precisely quantifying damages from p2p is impossibly hard, of course, but answering questions like this may lead us to a clearer picture of just how harmful file sharing really is. I would think that if piracy does cause some amount of substantial harm, we would see that fact reflected in our creative works, but I've never heard of a work that tanked because people shared it online."
A film producer had his film stolen, and the thief got a lot of money for the screenings.
The producer that ended penniless: Georges Melies
The Thief: Thomas Edison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon
how long until
The short answer is also wrong and based strictly on your support of piracy and not the facts. I'm a writer/director and it's well known in the independent community that if you release a film you either have to sell distribution foreign and domestic at the same time or release it foreign first. Once it comes out in the US it will be pirated within days and no one will risk releasing it for sale in most territories. The Southeast Asian market is largely worthless due to rampant piracy. I was told by a distributor nearly ten years ago that my first film was selling side by side with 100 million dollar films in Malaysia for a $1 a copy. Foreign used to be a good market for independents but it has most dried up over the years due strictly to piracy. In the US it's gotten hard to even get a distributor because everyone is focusing on higher profit studio films. You can argue over the impact on big budget studio films but to say there's no impact is is denying what the ones on the ground are dealing with every day. I'm planning to be out of the film industry within two years because it's already nearly impossible to sell films as it is. What's happened is in order to hang onto their tightening profit margins the studios are squeezing out the independents. Anyone that thinks film profits are going up hasn't done their homework. Actual ticket sales have been falling for years. Increased ticket prices have somewhat offset the drop but they've maxed out what people will pay for tickets so over the next few years the box office take will start to drop. DVDs are faltering and over the next 18 months most of the brick and mortar stores will close up. There's less profit in the download rental services so that's more loss of revenue. Most of the films count on theater money to at least break even. The industry bet the farm on 3D out of desperation. It'll never last so one day those cash streams will dry up and films will become unprofitable. Already fewer films are made and released. It's not that people are watching fewer films they are simply starting to find ways around paying for watching films. The marginal films will die first but don't expect to see many blockbusters in ten years. George Lucas was dead on when he said by 2025 the average studio budget will drop back to 3 million dollars per film. That's more like what it was when he started out and that's without adjusting dollars. So what? How many 3 million dollar films have you watched in the last year? I'll bet they are mostly on the SciFi Channel. That's the future that is being created in large part due to piracy.