Movie Industry: Loss of Control Worse Than Piracy

tlhIngan writes "Miramax CEO Mike Lang has admitted to what we all suspected. The biggest worry is a distribution monopoly, not piracy. They saw what happened to the music industry with iTunes, and vowed to not lose control and be at the mercy of Apple or whoever becomes the dominant distributor. From the article: 'Lang, whose company today debuts the Blu-Ray version of the cult classic Pulp Fiction, emphasized that people don’t necessarily want to pirate, as long as they get what they want. “Innovate or die,” should be the motive of entertainment industry companies, where it’s key to listen to customers.'"

Comments

Customers don't know what they want.

[bronney]

To quote a certain friend...

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[blahplusplus]

Not only that most customers are clueless morons. In the game industry they support - MMO's, DRM, and DLC. I remember when everyone was pissed that game companies had the nerve to charge you full price for an MMO while it was an online game and they charge you monthly. The fact that most people are so clueless and take it up the arse has pushed the game industry in hugely negative direction with games being chained to online and DLC'd to death.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[tonywong]

The only reason they don't like iTunes is because it busted up their cartel. Period.

Given the choice between piracy (no income) and losing control (to Apple) they'd rather pick piracy. That is how bereft of thought these guys are, that there is no choice for them but to pick one or the other. No wonder Steve came in and took their lunch money.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[bronney]

Yup! I always thought Steam was a step in the right direction. If one day, indie developers can have their own store (like fraps), I would gladly buy direct. Steam however does a nice gamer hookup system like gamespy in the old days.

But you know, it isn't like there's anything the movie industry can do now. The decentralizing is just a matter of time.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[NoobixCube]

www.desura.com

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

iTunes didn't bust up their distribution model the internet did, Apple was just there to seize on the disruption and capitalize on it with iTunes. The movie companies have already lost control of distribution, their movies are out there for download before they're even officially released. That genie isn't going back into its bottle. Of course they could keep reaching for that holy grail and drag their whole industry down the ravine by doing so.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[MightyMartian]

Control of distribution is what has built these media empires. Essentially the studios as we have known them for eighty or ninety years will cease to exist.

I'm not sure why anyone should shed a tear. People will always want movies, what will they care if it's production companies backed by Sony or by Amazon and Apple making them? Besides, the movie industry has for so long been so filled with such colossal frauds and criminals, whose accounting practices should pretty much land every producer in the greater Los Angeles area in prison for everything from mail fraud to extortion, that I think it's high time some new blood was injected.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[MightyMartian]

Well, to be fair, it was Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and Bittorrent that scared the living crap out of the music industry and Apple was there at the gate to go "Now there there, Mr. Music Industry, yes you've been horribly ass-raped by the pirates. Just give us a big discount on your material, and we'll sell it legit."

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[blahplusplus]

Sorry sir, doing my best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymzh7YAlZng#t=0m42s

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

"Now there there, Mr. Music Industry, yes you've been horribly ass-raped by the pirates. Just give us a big discount on your material, and we'll sell it legit."

I think music (and movies) had already been devalued (by market saturation, cassette taping, CDR's and the internet successively) and Apple just came along with a pricing model that was based in reality instead of wishful thinking. You can't fight "supply and demand" and win.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[c0mpliant]

I completely agree with your observation about multiple nonsense programs. The reason I love steam is because it gives me flexibility with little problems. Its one application to install, for the most part its not very intrusive and is handy for communicating with my friends. My idea of a disaster is every game publisher and its cousin releasing their own download client. I was so annoyed by EA's decision to not release BF3 on steam. Their reasons to me seem petty. To force everyone to use their origin system frustrates many in the community. I don't want to have to install a piece of software to install for every publisher and I'm afraid its a case of you snooze you lose. Valve released a quality piece of software that was picked up by almost the entire community years ago, unless you are going to offer something different rather than just a re-hash of the same thing I'm afraid all I can say is jog on...

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I hate the freemium MMO model, it's the right model because otherwise the games would be overrun with cheats and bots, making the games unplayable.

As it is, many of these games (especially Japanese(FFXIV,Lucent Heart) Korean(Mabinogi,Vindictus,Aionm) and Chinese(Perfect World)) tend to be on the edge of unplayability due to the overrun of RMT chinese gold farming bots. Where as subscription models (WoW) have the very same problem, but solve it on the financial end.

Let's say for example, that MMO's were completely free to play. The company would need to make up money somehow, so they could probably sell advertising (making the game a rather terrible experience) or write things into the game (KR/JP games tend to make some loose ties to tv shows and anime) that are optional. This only works as long as there is a market for it.

Now if a game operates on the Feemium model (where you pay for optional parts of the game, or to make the game easier), only 1-5% of the players will participate in this scheme, and then only if it's priced right. This is a good way to extort money out of players in exchange for not having to waste time doing something time-consuming-for-no-reason in the game, but ultimately it's ruined by instancing, since you can just retry the instance. So games have durability and other issues that make consuming time detrimental to the game play. See where I'm going at? If a game operates on the Feemium model, that means the game is no god damn fun to play and is just a fancy barbie-doll IRC chat if you don't play the actual instancing. Save yourself the money and just don't play. Meanwhile the RMT bots have full run of the game and will fish anything you want out of the instances so you don't have to play either. Hell every time I play one of these friggin games, even the players have their own "mule" accounts that they use as extra storage so they don't have to pay for the extra storage bolt-on.

On the other side of the coin we have the "subscriber" model where everything in the game has to be earned (in theory anyway,) So RMT becomes an expensive option, but because players want to make the most use of their subscription cost, they will bot the gameplay in any manner possible. This is generally done by the same means it's done in the Feemium model... create additional accounts and just use them as banks and/or party-filler. Of course there are things like "bind-on-equip" that makes doing this rather silly and expensive, but the games are more fun when you don't have to keep paying for do-overs.

My beef of course with either model is that the trade-offs are often very one-sided, and the DRM & DLC is a necessary evil to prevent the games from being hacked or all becoming console/ipad-only to avoid the swiss-cheese security model of the desktop computer.

So, the reason we are seeing a decline in the amount of single player games, all moving to feemium-MMO style games with DRM and DLC is because this is the only way to make money on a game in a land of piracy and cheating. It's more cost effective than simply charging 80$ for the game, when you can get potentially 1000$ out of a player in a 1 year time period by charging them 25 cents every hour to re-do missions that have been purposely setup to fail.

And that's why I quit playing. After a while you see that the games are not really fun and just frustrating. When you see cow-clicking games people play on facebook and they spend the same kind of money ... for wasting their own time.

It puzzles me how the feemium model has also become the norm for the social gaming model. Everyone wants a bigger e-penis and are willing to spend real money on it.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[icebraining]

This is the biggest lie of all, because in reality the MPAA affiliated studios have been having record profits year after year. The whole "piracy is killing us" is just simply false.

2010 was the fifth consecutive year of record profits, ffs!

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[bberens]

To be fair, it's a little more like a different cartel took over. There isn't much in the way of viable alternatives to iTunes. Amazon is okay and improving, but it still has a hard time competing with iTunes. Still a minor win for the consumer, but it's not as if freedom and ponies started raining down from the skies. Also.. movie/television industry? You're next.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[rwa2]

Yep, that's why the article says it's not about money, but about culture control.

The RIAA was in the same position. You like the music and movies not because they're incredibly good, but because you see and hear them everywhere, they become a "sign of the times", and part of the culture of a generation. All they have to do is decide what they want to expose you to, make sure it doesn't suck too much, and just use their exclusive channels to bombard you with it. Then later maybe they can charge you for the privilege of reliving those times through those Disney/Barbie/SpiceGirls/whatever franchise whenever you're feeling nostalgic.

But if people have too much choice and the market fractures into too many segments, they can no longer get the big bucks off of the same tired old top 40 hits; they'd actually have to diversify their holdings, and wouldn't be able to make manufactured Joe Rapper X "popular" just by playing him on the radio incessantly.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[SlippyToad]

I have to strongly disagree with you about cassette taping. There has never been anything but unfounded fear and hysteria that "home taping" or any other redistribution method ever actually impacted record sales -- except that I would say in many cases home taping helped spread the word about many an artist in the early days of their success.

I know of several very large sections of my music catalog that I would not have ever gotten into if someone hadn't given me a cassette recording or a ripped CD of their work. And yes I paid for those things. Some of them 2 and 3 times now as the formats have continued.

I just wanted to stop you right there, because this whole consumer copy thing is total, complete and utter steaming bullshit.

It is ONLY EVER about the loss of control, and not about "piracy" or lost sales.

Re:Customers don't know what they want.

[KingMotley]

I was so annoyed by EA's decision to not release BF3 on steam.

Me too. So much so that I refuse to buy BF3, and I was really looking forward to it. I refuse to have a special EA downloader just because they are too pig headed and control freaks to release it on steam. Sorry EA, you have definitely lost one sale, and probably more than one, because there are other games you make that if you pull the same stuff I won't be buying those either (Need for Speed the run). I'll just play skyrim and borderlands 2 instead.

Too little too late

[cboslin]

Does anyone even care what the DRM loving Media moguls think anymore? Hardly. Son, that horse has done left the barn....you all blew it big time!

Re:Too little too late

[hairyfeet]

Wil Wheaton nailed it when he said "make it simple, make it cheap, and folks WILL buy it. Make it expensive and a pain to use? people will just BT". he gave a perfect example, he bought the Doctor Who episodes on iTunes and then when he crossed the Canadian border his videos wouldn't play so his first thought was 'If I would have just pirated it i'd be watching my shows now".

And THAT kind of bullshit is the problem. There are plenty of shows I'd buy online if they would give me them as .avi files to where i could just drop it on my thumbstick and play it on my netbook, or go to my dad's and stick it in his Nbox so we could watch together, but they won't so i just buy DVDs from the bargain bin and rip them to avi. This means there are plenty of shows I WOULD have bought but just decided it was too much of a PITA to deal.

The sooner they accept that piracy exists because they are offering an inferior product the better. That was something Jobs got when it came to media, make it simple, make it cheap, make it easy, and folks buy. Make it a stupid DRM infested royal PITA? Kiss those dollars goodbye.

Re:Too little too late

[sjames]

While they're at it, they need to drop the un-skipable commercials and the stupid FBI warnings (great, I buy it like I'm supposed to and they thank me with an up-front threat). Next up, they can stop screwing with the hardware. Their stupid (and broken) encryption demands is why you can't instantly switch video feeds. They add cost to every device and kill innovation.

Re:Too little too late

[hairyfeet]

Hell you want to talk about killing innovation look no further than the Nbox. if you haven't tried one they are great, a little box you plug a USB drive into and voila! your movies play. Great for someone like my dad. But the way the bullshit laws are there is no way to legally get content for it thanks to DMCA and DRM copyright bullshit.

There should be an .avi file on every DVD, in fact there should be two: One widescreen and the other 4x3 format, so folks like my dad could just pop in the disk and drag their new movie in .avi form straight to their Nbox. Real came up with a player that would have made things that simple, but even though it kept copyright protection (basically it just made a disk image) the courts shut them down, thanks to the lovely bribery result that is DMCA.

Just one more way they are holding everyone back and fucking themselves at the same time. my dad loves old war pictures and cop shows. if he could just pop onto Amazon and buy the movies and shows for an affordable price in .avi, so he could just click and drag onto his Nbox? He'd be buying movies and shows constantly. But because he has to call me, have me come pick up the disc, format shift it for him, and put it on his Nbox? he doesn't bother unless it is something he really really REALLY wants to watch. So there is another pile of sales just pissed away, all thanks to DRM horseshit.

Those who don't study history...

[mandelbr0t]

Hooray, there's a smart studio executive out there! Good luck with the innovation -- if it's any good, I'll probably buy it.

Re:Those who don't study history...

[ksd1337]

none of his peers will buy into it.

None of them will seed either! Selfish leeches!

The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[joaommp]

... is that the quantity of movies even worth watching is decreasing by the minute, let alone the quantity of movies that might be worth pirating.

Re:The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[Farmer Tim]

At least that has a bit more plot to it than Rock'em-Sock'em Robots, The Motion Picture. Still not necessary, though.

Re:The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[selex]

There has always been a over abundance of crappy movies (Alexis de Tocqueville said it was art in general when dealing with a democracy/republic). There were always crappy books, music, movies, etc. The distribution has changed and production has changed. There were probably crappy handwritten manuscripts before movable type was created, but afterwards the was an explosion of crappy manuscripts because it became easy to create. Its easier and faster to create a movie now then 20 years ago. So yes you will see an increase is crap.

There are some really good movies that have come out lately, you just need to sift through the crap to get there, and that is how its always been. If everything was awesome, then nothing would be awesome. You need crap to gauge greatness.

So I find the "increase in crap" argument not getting to the problem. Copyrights allow the control of distribution. Computers copy information. The internet transmits information. So controlling the distribution is impossible. So the "industries" need to adjust the way they distribute their art. Long ago I used to pirate movies. I got Netflix (both DVD and streaming) and I no longer pirate movies. Why? Because for $17 a month I have unlimited movies to watch, I get to pick the schedule, the content, and the medium (PS3, desktop or phone). Its $17 a month were I was spending more then that buying movies. I haven't bought a movie in months because I can get it on Netflix. They changed the distribution to my liking, and I am okay with the way it works (I was upset when they doubled the price for Netflix, when then split the services so now I have to manage 2 seperate queues, but I will still use it because it still gives me a superior product to Google Movies, Blockbuster, Amazon, iTunes, etc). They need to fix the distribution.

Selex

Re:The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[jedidiah]

There is simply no point in remaking Footloose when I can probably buy the original in the $5 bargain bin at Walmart.

Piracy is not the biggest threat to Hollywood, their own back catalog is.

Re:The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[jedidiah]

...like I just said.

Hollywood has to compete with the last 100 years of it's own best material. Technology makes it easier and easier to access all of that material way in a convenient and legal manner. You can just watch stuff from your own media stockpile instead of buying something new.

Plus, Hollywood also has to compete with every new distraction that's been invented.

Re:The biggest problem with the movie industry...

[hjf]

Netflix recently started operating in Latin America, for about USD 10 a month, streaming only (no mail option, of course, since they don't have a physical presence). Guess what? No one is subscribing because it only has old movies. "Hunt for Red October" old.

I read that Telecom, my country's main internet provider, is starting a streaming service. http://www.infobae.com/notas/609633-Arnet-Play-el-nuevo-servicio-multimedia-de-Telecom.html

La oferta inicial de Arnet Play es de $20 durante los primeros seis meses (luego pasará a $40); a eso deben sumársele $10 por el set top box; y, en caso de alquilar los últimos estrenos y contenidos especiales, se abonarán entre $9 y $16 extras.

“Es un cargo que los estudios de Hollywood imponen. Aunque quisiéramos, no podríamos dejar de cobrarlo. Ni siquiera abonándolo nosotros para hacer más atractiva la oferta”, mencionaron en Telecom.

Translation: Arnet Play's initial offering is USD5 for the first 6 months (then it's USD 10); to that you need to add USD 2,50 for a set top box, and if you want the latest movies and special contents, between $2 and $4 extra. It's an extra that Hollywood imposes, even if we wanted to, we can't not charge for it. Not even paying for it ourselves to make the offer more attractive, Telecom mentioned."

What the hell, hollywood?

Step 1, no DRM

[exomondo]

You can't prevent me from giving away a copy of a movie i purchased without creating an inconvenience when i want to use it legally, so get rid of DRM.

Make it affordable, obviously.

Make it accessible, if it's harder than downloading a torrent then you'll fail, people will pay but you can't make it harder than getting it for free.

Make it global, nothing is more annoying (ok maybe not entirely true) than finding out you can't get particular content because your region isn't licensed for it.

Re:Step 1, no DRM

[AwesomeMcgee]

Thankyou. Free is easier and that's the simple truth right now. I really wish there was a legal way to get any movie in 15 minutes. I'll pay, really. If netflix streamed what they have on mail request i'd stop torrenting altogether.

Re:Step 1, no DRM

[EdIII]

'll pay, really. If netflix streamed what they have on mail request i'd stop torrenting altogether

I'll up you one.

I hate advertisements, water marks, and disruptive in-show advertisements SO MUCH, that I would pay Netflix $75-100 per month for full streaming access to everything they have, plus recent TV shows.

Does not have to be 1080p either. 720p is just fine.

Does not have to be all the TV shows either. Something like 20 shows for $14.99, 40 shows for 24.99$, etc. I get to pick them.

As long as you deliver me that content without advertisements, and in an easy consumable fashion, I will PAY MORE.

I am not interested in maintaining a huge inventory of DVDs any longer. I can rip them, but it costs me 5-7 gigs each to store them. Of course, I use RAID and NAS. My actual costs of maintaining DRM free access to my DVDs is ultimately more than $50 per month once I factor in hardware costs.

The only drawback, is that I cannot maintain perfect anonymity (cash purchases) about what I watch. However, I would give that up (which is huge to me) just to be able to access larger catalogues of movies on demand and not pay for the costs of personal storage.

 

Re:Step 1, no DRM

[kangsterizer]

I'd pay $100 for 720p or above access to all movies, all shows, anytime i want, even the stuff that was on tv the same day, or a couple of days earlier, and movies as soon as they hit DVD/Bluray (ideally, just after cinema in fact). Heck, that'd be well worth it. I might even go higher.

I'd also pay $50 for dvd or above access to relatively recent movies and shows.

But i'm never going to pay $30 for old movies, old shows, various qualities, various availability, that's stupid. And it's hard to get better, specially when your country doesn't have netflix.

In fact, most of the tv shows can only be acquired if you pirate them. And for movies, you gotta wait almost a year to be able to buy them bluray (2 years for stream); who are they kidding?

Re:Step 1, no DRM

[smash]

This. My time is too short to go looking for dodgy rips or cinema cams of something on bit-torrent. A couple of bucks per movie to stream and i'll gladly pay for it.

I don't want to have to store hundreds of DVDs or spend terabytes of disk to maintain a media library.

Give customers a decent product

[NiceGeek]

I know an Canadian artist who is also signed to Warner/Sire in the US. Her latest album was a bit of a departure from her last one and Sire was too scared to support it in the US so she signed a distribution deal with a indie label for this album. Currently this album is #2 on the iTunes Pop chart and #18 overall.

tl;dr - Record labels are run by idiots who only want to release music for the lowest common denominator.

Re:Give customers a decent product

[Baloroth]

Yes. The lowest common denominator represents the largest amount of cash. For music this is hardly a problem, it is pretty cheap and easy to record your own album and get it out there.

For a movie, however, the budget required to satisfy consumers in the US is pretty high, which makes indie titles more or less a no go. Not to mention marketing or actually getting it into theaters. Unfortunately, the investment required also means studios don't want to innovate: they want to go with a tried and true formula that is guaranteed to make them lots of money. What we need is more good directors who are wealthy/ powerful enough to create whatever projects they want. In other words, more Christopher Nolan's or Joss Whedon's: people with resources and connections and the will to innovate. Even they often get shut down, but they can get pretty far.

Innovate or Die?

[Freaky Spook]

Why innovate when you can legislate?

That seems to be what is going on these days.

MPAA are morons

[mewsenews]

i honestly tried to grasp the logic set forth in the article but all i can see is "wahhhh we don't like the itunes model". if you don't want to get swallowed by itunes like the music industry did, create your own digital storefront. you never will because this implies actually building something rather than sitting back and letting the royalty checks flow in, you lazy, litigious, delusional assholes

Re:MPAA are morons

[Attila Dimedici]

This hits it on the head. The reason that e-books did not take off sooner was because each of the publishers wanted to make the money from selling the e0reader. The publishers recognized that e-books were likely the wave of the future and there were several e-readers developed, but they were each proprietary to one, or a small group of publishers. Anybody else had to pay a licensing fee to publish in that format. If the publishers had agreed to an open format that anybody could use to build a device and anybody could use to publish something, e-books wuld have taken off in the 1980s.

Well..

[Wovel]

Had the music industry not insisted on DRM, iTunes would have never had anything like the power it ended up with..

Re:Well..

[Trogre]

That is truly delicious iRony there...

Re:Well..

[TheRaven64]

iTunes was the only game in town because the iPod had something like 80% market share when the iTunes Music Store launched, and the iPod could play DRM-free MP3s, DRM-free AAC, and Fairplay DRM'd AAC. Apple owned Fairplay and refused to license it. A competing music store needed to offer DRM-free music for it to be playable on the iPod, but the labels would only allow their music to be sold with DRM. There were competing music stores, but they all used Microsoft's DRM, which didn't work with the dominant portable music player. It wasn't until they allowed Amazon to sell DRM-free music that there was a competitor that worked with the iPod.

No business model can compete with free

[blarkon]

In the past people might throw a buck at a creator if they pirated something because they felt a little bad about it. Today, with piracy normalized (hey everyone does it), most people don't feel any nagging sense that they might have done something "not right" when they consume a creator's output without providing any form of compensation.

This is because deep down most people believe that entertainment is an optional extra. People make the rational decision when given the option of paying for it or not paying for it. They save their resources and pay for the necessities.

Perhaps in the long run, people will be less likely to invest in creating expensive entertainment ( lets face it, the SyFy Channel has pretty much bailed on it already because their existing "make money on the DVD sales" model collapsed). Whether the lack of expensively produced entertainment is actually a bad thing is another discussion entirely.

Re:No business model can compete with free

[airfoobar]

If what you say were true the industries in question wouldn't be having record breaking profits every year for the past several years. Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and similar services would never have gotten off the ground. iTunes wouldn't be selling mp3s if people weren't willing to "throw a buck at the creator" -- where "creator" is used very loosely in this particular context -- and movie studio bosses wouldn't be complaining about how BIG iTunes has gotten if people didn't want to pay for its services. You wouldn't have studies showing that pirates spend more on entertainment than the average person (which makes sense, because they are the ones who actually spend more time on entertainment). The "piracy is killing X" line has been repeated enough times in the past century and every time it turned out to be a big lie, please stop repeating it already.

Nice quote...

[Junta]

people don’t necessarily want to pirate, as long as they get what they want.

If you admit that, why do you refuse to give people what they want?

I want to convert my media into various formats for playback on various devices without DRM fouling the process.

I want to import your media into my video library and never have to physically sort through media to watch what I want (though I do like having shelved copies of media to see, I don't actually want to have to deal with them day to day).

I want to play your content locally, rather than streaming it over my internet connection and incur the wrath of lower bitrates, slow seeking, and service outages right when I want to watch something.

I want to manage all my content in a single place and not have to open a different application or website depending on which publisher/distributer just happened to kind of/sort of give it to me.

Currently, I can have *all* of this, but only if I either go through the tedium of keeping up with how to remove DRM which frequently requires peculiar setups I may or may not have, or download it from someone who has too much time on their hands and breaks your DRM anyway. For me the problem is not that I don't want to pay for the content, it's that the quality of the illegal content is higher than the legal. I do actually refrain entirely because I just don't feel like going through the trouble legally or illegally, it's just not worth my time and energy. That could easily change if movies were as manageable as mp3s purchased through itunes or amazon.

Re:Nice quote...

[Trogre]

Unfortunately in many cases the only way to even get the content one wants is by piracy.

Consider the original Star Wars trilogy. The only way to see the theatrical versions in HD (or even anything more than LaserDisc quality) is to download or otherwise obtain fan-edited versions, which have been meticulously reconstructed from several different sources. Official versions just don't exist, except deep in Lucasfilm vaults and probably won't see the light of day again until they have degraded beyond a usable condition.

All those "make sure you're getting the genuine product" ads can bite me.

Adverts and lack of control (by the user)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hire/buy a DVD and place it in the disc drive, press play and try to go to the movie.

But no, some prick has decided that I WILL watch the advert for organisations that I have come to hate (movie companies, distribution companies, etc). Every time I see tht adverts I am reminded that they have an excessive level of control and I seek a means to take some control back myself. As I am forced to watch the adverts I think about the region codes on the DVD. And so the brand value of the advertisers goes even further down

I don't pirate to save money, I pirate so that I can choose what to watch. And I choose to watch the movie not that self serving adverts that make my blood boil.

Pirates do not sell me pirated movies; movie distributors sell me on pirated movies.

Re:Adverts and lack of control (by the user)

[omglolbah]

Hear Hear!

I already paid for the movie, stop nagging about stealing a car...!

Re:Adverts and lack of control (by the user)

[xenobyte]

I keep thinking about this graphic: http://xandermol.com/blog/media/1/20100724-GxzeV.jpg

I explains EXACTLY why some people actually prefer pirated versions. And while it is possible to skip most of the junk on DVDs, Blu-rays is significantly more locked in. I've seen blu-rays where you can't do anything at all when playback starts - you can't skip previews, you can't fast-forward, jump to the menu or anything. You just have to sit and watch 11 mins of previews, warnings and so on. I returned that blu-ray. Another release of the same title from another country in the same region had different extras so I checked that out. It had two previews, both were skippable and you could jump directly to the menu (to start watching the movie) anywhere. Much better.

But the core is value for money. Sure previews are nice, but a year later they're obsolete and a pain to watch. So simply do this: When the disc loads, go directly to the menu. Make the first choice to watch the movie with previews, the next to watch it directly, then setup, then extras. That way people that want a cinema-like experience they can have that, and people that just want to watch the movie can do that.

Dear MPAA,

[gman003]

Good luck with that.

Sincerely, the inevitable tide of change.

Copyright means right to copy

[dutchwhizzman]

In the past, when printed books were invented, it was deemed fair to give the original artist some money for each copy sold. That is, the original artist, not his agent, the publishing company or someone he sold his "rights" to. I don't object to that. I do object to the movie and music companies getting 90% of the money made from the work of art. Evidently, artists should be happy to get about 10% of the price consumers pay for something. The other 90% is purely for distribution, and as we all know, since we have broadband Internet and writable optical media, there should be an insignificant charge for that, not nine times the money the artists get. If this invalidates the business case for the majority of publishing companies, tough luck.

The industry was thriving on a single market anomaly. The anomaly is being corrected and the industry will cease to have a right to exist. You can't keep coaches the only form of transport and keep automobiles, subways, taxis, trains and all that out, just because the coach drivers have friends they bought a seat in congress for.

Re:DRM wasn't the right answer then and it's not n

[jbn-o]

Not entirely, and now that their catalog includes more than music the same old issues have continued. In early 2009 Apple said that they had removed DRM from 80% of their music catalog. Today, as I understand it, audio books still have DRM, earlier-purchased audio tracks still have DRM, and of course (as should be apparent given Wheaton's story you quoted) videos have DRM.

Re:How does your model deal with piracy?

[TheRaven64]

So? Newsflash: DVDs and BluRays end up on torrent servers as soon as they're released too. Some people pirate because they have an entitlement mentality. You can probably stop them pirating if you make every copy you sell locked down with invasive DRM, but getting them to pay is a lot harder and you'll probably piss off a lot of paying customers in the process. Some people pirate because you are not selling them what they want. Sell them DRM-free downloads at a reasonable price and they'll become paying customers.

But then, we're talking about the movie industry. Their entire business model is 'don't give the customer what they want'. They delay DVD releases because 'it would cannibalise cinema revenue'. This, translated, means 'a lot of people would rather buy the DVD than go to the cinema'. Not really surprising given how small the quality difference between a half decent (but still cheap) home cinema setup and a real cinema is these days. So, having identified a market, they intentionally don't fill it. The result? People who want to see the film during the time when the studio is hyping the crap out of it with millions of dollars of advertising but don't want to go to the cinema pirate it.

American TV shows are even worse. The region 1 DVD release is usually 6 months after the end and the region 2 release comes even later. That means that there's a year-long window between the show becoming available to pirate and it becoming available to watch (rent or buy) legally. Dollhouse Season 2, from 2010, is still not available to rent on DVD in the UK. I can only assume that this means that Fox really wants to see it pirated. I rented season 1, but they apparently don't want my money for season 2.

Re:name names?

[Leebert]

It's easy enough to look up, check: http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/top10popsongs.html

(Assuming it's not the US top 10 (which would be "LMFAO - Sexy and I Know " *shudder*), it would be "Adele - Someone Like You". I'm listening to it on YouTube right now, and it's definitely a departure from normal "pop", and not really my cup of tea.) A little bit more googling tells me that XL Recordings is a British independent label.

Of course, this says nothing of the veracity of "I know a Canadian artist", but I see no reason to doubt that.

Re:How does your model deal with piracy?

[Kjella]

Not really surprising given how small the quality difference between a half decent (but still cheap) home cinema setup and a real cinema is these days.

To be fair you'd still get a quite a few cinema tickets for a good projector, sound system and in small apartments many don't have the real estate to give you a good cinema feeling. If a cinema ticket got me an instant teleport to and from my seat, I'd be there a lot. But your home cinema is extremely convenient, that's what.

As TV shows, they still live in the pre-globalization world. I'm wondering what cave they live in and wonder if they'll ever come out. I pirate them when they come out and usually buy the season on BluRay when it becomes available. If it hadn't been for the existance of AnyDVD HD and the assurance that if I want I can just rip and use those however I want, I probably wouldn't have bought those either. If I can't get them without DRM, broken DRM is the second best.

Re:You're only right for some classes

[Hatta]

People for whom time is worth nothing find piracy valuable.

Because of the extreme income disparity, that describes most of the people in this country. If you want to stop piracy, we need to fix our economic system so people have more money than time.

You remind me of this graphic

[Quila]

http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/tech-fun/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pirateddvd1.png

If that's not incentive to pirate, I don't know what is.

Aside from format shifting, it's the main reason I never watch a DVD I buy. Instead I rip it and watch the rip.