The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent a Box Office Record

TheGift73 sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie's profits, it's really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage. ... Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the U.S. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher. Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these 'pirates' do not all count as a lost sale."

Comments

Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[M1FCJ]

Please do not try to confuse people with facts and logic. We all know MPIAA knows best. Right? Right?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use facts, the terrorists win!

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[rickb928]

You fed it, your problem now. I can send bill to you? Ja?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[dhavleak]

Same thing applies to Slashdot. Threads of this exact nature pop up every 2 months or so for the last 10 years -- and the point they're trying to make is still incorrect.

The media owners have every right to choose their business model.
The customer has every right to purchase, or not to purchase.
You don't want to spend 10 bucks on Avengers in a regular theater -- the MPAA cannot make you spend those 10 bucks. They can't make you spend 16 bucks to watch it in 3D either. They can't force you to buy the DVD or BluRay. They can't force you to rent it. You have every right to disagree with their terms, and not give them your business. But you don't have the right to obtain their media on terms they did not agree to.

You guys are simply discussing the wrong thing. The profitability of Avengers is 100% immaterial. The producer could choose to sell at 10x the price, or 1/100th (and take a loss). Their media, their choice. You choose to buy or not to buy (which is how you regulate their choice). Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[ctsupafly]

Your points are correct, but piracy of media is NOT theft. Theft implies something was taken, piracy (in this sense) is copyright infringement.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Yvan256]

They're not arguing that there's no loss associated with piracy.

They're showing real-world numbers that point out that the losses aren't the billions of dollars that the RIAA and MPAA keep associating with piracy.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're discussing the wrong thing. Every day we hear about how our basic freedoms are being taken away to stop the pirates from ruining the movie industry. We hear that we have to suffer through some awful DRM scheme because otherwise the media producer will go out of business under the staggering weight of piracy.

No matter how many votes we place to kick out SOPA supporters or what purchasing behavior we engage in, the informed and engaged don't number enough to make a difference unless we speak loud and often to convince the apathetic masses. The point we're making is not only correct, it is the only one worth mentioning.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright infringement is not theft no matter how you dress it up.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is an important matter you are failing to address:

It is arguable that the degree of harm presented by 'piracy' is immaterial in judging its illegality, or even its wrongness; but it is overwhelmingly harder to argue that it is immaterial to the question of what measures should be adopted to stop it...

When the media owners are(more or less continually in one guise or another) continually demanding greater legal protection and enforcement, which carries both direct monetary costs to the public, as well as potential damage to the interests of people and other industries, the amount of harm that they are suffering is very much an important detail.

Even if we are agreed that 'piracy' is theft, the question "Theft of how much?" matters. The law enforcement expenditures, and the curtailment of the interests of other parties, one could justify for the theft of $1 are totally different than the theft of $1,000,000.

If we do not so agree, the question acquires an even greater importance. If, for instance, we construct the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." to suggest that Congress should only extend copyright if, and where, doing so promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, this immediately raises the question of where, and where not, additional copyright protection leads to additional production.

At a bare minimum, even if copyrights are viewed as fully equivalent to real property, and infringement fully equivalent to theft, there is an important question of fact about how big the theft is. One simply must answer it in order to categorize, and respond to, the calls for detection and prosecution of such theft.

If one takes a less expansive view of the scope of copyright, it is entirely possible that the degree of economic harm to the owner of the work becomes directly relevant to the question of what protections you will give it. Protections are, after all, carved out of the scope of what others are allowed to do. They inevitably represent compromises. The gravity of each party's concession is important to deciding where the correct compromise lies.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. It's copyright infringement. For fuck's sake, as you said, we've had a thread of this exact nature pop up every 2 months for the last 10 years, so how the hell can you not know that. Stop injecting emotion into your arguments. This is not about piracy, anyway. It's about control of the distribution mechanism. Have you been sleeping under a rock? Everyone knows pirates do not affect profits one singular iota. Even the *AAs know that. But what they DON'T want is people turning to the internet for independent content that they don't have their greedy, propagandizing hands on. It's a thinly veiled excuse to make sure no one else can encroach on their territory.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[hoxford]

Same thing applies to Slashdot. Threads of this exact nature pop up every 2 months or so for the last 10 years -- and the point they're trying to make is still incorrect.

No, they aren't trying to make the point you think they're trying to make. The MPAA lies about piracy and its impact on their profits. They distort reality at every opportunity in order to get horrific legislation passed and create propaganda to twist the minds of people who haven't studied the facts. Combating that misinformation is the point of articles such as this. The copyright holders can attempt to choose their business model (though the market may reject it) but they should not be able to distort reality in pursuit of favorable legislation.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Wizzu]

Correct about downloading being theft (of sorts).

But how bad of an issue it is? I recently saw a comparison here from someone who said that as crimes go, downloading content could be considered about the same as jaywalking. Jaywalking is also wrong, but people don't get confined to their home or get huge fines for it. The reaction should be proportional to the severity of the issue. Because of that, the impact to the sales is a relevant point.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[kiwimate]

So you disagree with the parent's comment that "media owners have every right to choose their business model". That's perfectly fair, reasonable, and the basis of economic systems. Let them choose the business model and succeed, if they can convince people it is worthwhile, or fail and go bankrupt, if it is a poor model, or a changing world no longer sees value in the provided goods and services.

Why do you claim they don't have this right?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[jkflying]

Yeah, but the entry cost for pirating is a lot lower (ie, 0) than the cost for the actual product. So because costs went down, volume goes up, right? Basic economics? There are LOTS of people who would pirate something but wouldn't pay for it if piracy wasn't an option.

THAT is the effective (to the 'owner') difference between copyright and theft.

Oh, and watching a cam vid instead of the real movie theatre is crappy anyways, so unless the price for the theatre is super high, or the movie isn't good enough to warrant the cost of going to the theatre, piracy isn't really a big deal. Both of those problems are caused by inadequacies of the MAFIAA, not the pirates. That the pirates even exist is simply a symptom of overpriced, crappy movies.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[s.petry]

Partial correct, but why not paint the picture what it is? Hmmm?

MPAA/RIAA are suing artists not using their services and stopping their collection of rightful dues and propagation of media without their services under the DCMA. This is why many artists exploring the industry without them are so damn vocal about doing so. It's the only way they can protect themselves, not from the pirates mind you.. but the Industry that is supposed to be servicing them.

Legislation favoring their profits at the expense of our freedoms. Yes, an artist that does not sign with the MPAA... well, we know this from the Mafia right? It's called a protection racket. Because it's the movie monopolies we shake our heads yes? Really, that's not how it should work.

Lastly, there is the Robin Hood effect. When the economy is so F'd up, and the Have's keep getting more while the rest of us give up more.. the Robin Hood effect does kick in. This is true in pretty much any society in the economic state we are in.

Now, with that said. the majority of people still try to do the right thing. But when people do things that buck the elites..well I'm sure you know the stories as well as I do. Robin Hood will keep doing his thing to make it better for society as a whole.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Chris Burke]

Something was taken. The income that would have otherwise been realized from a legitimate purchase.

That income could be zero, if the pirate would not have made a legitimate purchase in the absence of piracy. This is the #1 mistake made when discussing this -- assuming that if someone pirates a copy, that they would have purchased that copy if they couldn't pirate.

That relation simply doesn't hold, though. This is most obvious if you consider the teenager with $50,000 worth of music and movies on their hard drive. If piracy was impossible, do you think they would have spent $50,000 on music and movies?

It's still stealing, and using a less stark name for it doesn't make it any less theft in absolute terms any more than the difference between lifting a pack of gum is less "theft" than boosting a Porsche.

In both those cases, there was a real, non-hypothetical loss. You don't have to guess whether a car thief would have bought a Porsche if car theft was impossible (probably not) -- the dealer is still out one Porsche. Whereas with piracy the loss is hypothetical and you do need to guess what the pirate would have done to even claim there was a loss.

That's why copyright infringement is not theft. It is not the legal definition of "that kind of theft". It's the legal definition of something which is illegal, but isn't theft.

Things that aren't theft can still be wrong. Maybe this is the third mistake that leads to the previous two mistakes -- If it's not theft it's not wrong, and copyright infringement is wrong therefore it must be theft!

No. Copyright infringement is wrong, but it is not theft.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[chipschap]

I'm just guessing but I suspect that piracy cost the theaters/industry close to zero on this one. The people downloading the movie likely either (1) wouldn't have gone to see it anyway or (2) went to see it and wanted a quick copy (this latter might cut into actual DVD sales at least some, but true fans would want a decent copy). How large can category (3) be --- the group that would have gone but will settle instead for a poor quality download? I'm not saying either that this kind of piracy is either legal or morally right. But the point made by the poster above, that the losses are nothing like 200% of the US GDP or whatever the MPAA claims (I exaggerate only a little). And I fail to see it "costing American jobs" as the politicians have been trained to say.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[gorzek]

That sort of logic is quite silly in light of the fact that copyright holders have enough to money to buy laws that favor longer copyright terms and stronger enforcement of copyright laws. Piracy is not theft; copyright infringement is not unequivocally wrong or immoral.

I'm sure there is a discussion to be had about how long copyright terms should be and whether the public good is served by having stiff penalties for infringement, but the notion that just because something is illegal it is therefore wrong doesn't hold much traction with me.

At the end of the day, copyright law proscribes artificial scarcity, and the purpose of that scarcity is to support certain kinds of business models. The purpose of that is to foster a prosperous creative sector that also expands the collective culture. But those interests are also supposed to be kept in balance; the profit motive should not override all else.

Saying "piracy is theft" is quite beside the point, and little more than a distraction in the overall debate over what form copyright laws should have.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Eivind Eklund]

Let me start with saying that I don't pirate - but I disagree with your conclusions anyway.

Same thing applies to Slashdot. Threads of this exact nature pop up every 2 months or so for the last 10 years -- and the point they're trying to make is still incorrect.

The media owners have every right to choose their business model.

As long as they don't have a monopoly and don't collude to restrict consumer choice or set prices, that is.

Oh, they *do* have monopolies, granted by the government, and *do* collude? Then they've violated their end of the bargain.

The customer has every right to purchase, or not to purchase.

You don't want to spend 10 bucks on Avengers in a regular theater -- the MPAA cannot make you spend those 10 bucks. They can't make you spend 16 bucks to watch it in 3D either. They can't force you to buy the DVD or BluRay. They can't force you to rent it. You have every right to disagree with their terms, and not give them your business. But you don't have the right to obtain their media on terms they did not agree to.

You guys are simply discussing the wrong thing. The profitability of Avengers is 100% immaterial. The producer could choose to sell at 10x the price, or 1/100th (and take a loss). Their media, their choice. You choose to buy or not to buy (which is how you regulate their choice).

Let me rephrase: "You choose to participate or not participate in culture (which is how you regulate their choice.)"

This is a cost that's not reasonable for most people to take; it cuts off their references and ability to communicate.

As part of culture, the media is partially owned collectively by the culture, and partially owned by the people that produced it. This was recognized in the original constitutional basis for US copyright:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

(Emphasis mine).

Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up.

DRM is theft no matter how you dress it up; theft from the commons.

Piracy is copyright infringement. It is a violation of rights granted by law, like battery is a violation of rights granted by law. But it isn't theft.

Also, I believe most piracy involve no loss to the original rightsholder - most piracy is performed by mass pirates, who would not have the financial capacity to buy more than a very small fraction of whatever they pirate in the first place, and most things they pirate they never get around to looking at, and would not have bought if it had any noticeable cost at all.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[serviscope_minor]

The media owners have every right to choose their business model.

Actually, no they don't. Copyright was invented as a mechanism to provide some incentive to the creators in order to get them to create. They in fact cannot do what they like because there is no innate ownership: they cannot for instance block fair use.

Also, they (in may countries) cannot sell DVDs that don't work as advertised, etc, etc.

Just because they made it doesn't give them any right to do what ever they want.

Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up.

No, piracy is not in general theft, however you choose to dress it up, since you are only depriving them of a potential sale. That doesn't justify piracy, but it is senseless to keep using the wrong word that doesn't apply. If you insist on doing that, why not call it murder, terrorism or peadophilia? That makes it sound EVEN WORSE!

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[lgw]

Agreed in principle, but in the case of crappy-quality screeners, I'm not sure any legitimate purchases are lost. Those are mostly of intrest to hardcore fans, who are still going to see or buy the movie anyhow (and of random collecters who neither buy anything or bother to watch what they collect, but again, no lost sale).

High-quality preview rips are a different story, and are a good reason that studios need to make DVDs available for those with some interest in paying far earlier than they do.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[poity]

While I'm not 100% certain of the last sentence, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the rest. There's another thing that irks me on the issue of piracy - the tendency for legit users to defend pirates. Pirates are the reason why we can't have nice things, yet we embrace them and provide them with dubious moral ammunition with which to perpetuate hostilities. Legit users should push back at restrictions from content providers, but we shouldn't defend pirates as if they're on our side.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[jellomizer]

Movies like the Avengers will tend to do well vs. Piracy, because these high effect movies, look really good with all the sound, and large screens... If you pirate it, you get a shaky little display with perhaps stereo sound. Now movies with a plot, may be more of a target to piracy. As we are more interested in the story and not the experience. But Hollywood doesn't put too many of those movies out any more, and will reserve these shows to DVD or TV production. Just because they can make money off of those that way. The big screen, is getting more limited to those High End Fancy Effect films. They often will take some medium effect films and play them for a week, just to give them official movie credits, but their goal is to make money off the DVD/BlueRays.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[n30na]

This. This is what so many people seem to miss when discussing piracy. Most people can agree that it's not the thing itself it's evil, it's the implementation and enforcement. And that's what's being abused. It's no about weather it's theft. It's not about how okay it is, it's about what's in the public's interest.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[argStyopa]

Kudos. Nicely put.

Continuing in your vein of copyright logic, I have a small question.

If copyright on films was limited to 1 year, would Hollywood stop making movies?
I suspect not. I don't even suspect much would change. Perhaps actors salaries would fall, but I'm not going to cry that someone's paycheck goes from $7 mill to $700k.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[metrix007]

This reasoning is specious, at best. It assumes that someone who pirates a copy would also have paid for a copy, which is generally not the case.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Darinbob]

We all know that when the figures are all totaled that the studio will claim this is a net loss so that they don't have to pay gross points.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I didn't see him/her making that point.

The copyright holders already have copyright. Regardless of the moral arguments, copying a piece of media that you don't have the copyright for is illegal. As you pointed out, that is well and good and we already have laws set up to punish those who break it for better or worse.

What I don't agree with however, is eroding our rights to give copyright holders a bigger stick to beat people with. Especially when there is such a long history of big business using various laws that were written for other purposes to reduce competition and other shenanigans.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[JMZero]

Well, it's not just how they sell their products, it's the laws and prosecution they want to support that model. I'd suggest that the severe enforcement actions they demand (and usually get), have a negative impact on society and are also unnecessary for them to exist and profit (even without changing their business model) - and I believe that last part is the main point of this Slashdot article.

I think eventually these businesses will shift to models that don't require this kind of enforcement, that provide a better product to more people, and with better margins - and that not much time will be spent worrying about piracy because it won't be a significant problem to people. In the meantime, I think laws should be much more in favor of consumers: penalties should be smaller and rights to privacy should be preserved. These companies do not need legal protection that is draconian, and that extends well beyond the protection others get for their physical property.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

The flaw in that argument is that it doesn't correctly map to the situation.

If you take my car while I'm eating dinner, you're still depriving me of its possession and use for a time; the fact that I don't need it during that time is irrelevant.

No such deprivation occurs with copyright infringement.

A better analogy would be if you used some kind of replicating machine to make an exact duplicate of my car while I'm in the restaurant, and drive off in the duplicate while my original remains untouched. Of course you'll have a much harder time making a case for that being wrong, which is why I suspect you chose the "borrowing" analogy instead.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[scsirob]

You are so right..

If shops would be as well presented with lobby groups as the entertainment industry by the **AA, then they would argue that shoplifting should be stopped by installing TSA scanners at each shop, and every potential customer sign a waiver that allows the shop owner full cavity search.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Requiem18th]

The media owners have every right to choose their business model.

Not quite, The copyrights owners have been given every right to choose their business model.

Been given, by Congress on behalf of the people under the pressumption that it would encourage the advancement of the arts and science. As such it is perfectly legitimarte for the people to redefine what their business models can be.

The only concession I'd grant you is that currently the people at large are acting independently of Congress, but of course the fact that the Government isn't listening to the people is the real crime here.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It doesn't matter what you call it. Copyright infringement is just the legalese. It's theft.

No, it isn't, which is why there is a distinction in terms.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Nidi62]

It doesn't matter what you call it. Copyright infringement is just the legalese. It's theft.

It's theft if you steal a DVD of a shelf in a movie store, as that copy cost money to make and that money cannot be recouped. Downloading something off the internet is not theft, as it does not prevent the producer of the item from selling that item.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[fast turtle]

another riaa shill trying to equate "Piracy" with Copyright Violation.

You sir are correct that piracy is theft as it usually involves the taking of physical goods by force yet RIAA/MPAA want to encourage everyone that a copyright violation is as bad if not worse then piracy, where people are injured/killed while the theft is taking place but No One gets killed during a copyright violation, otherwise the Chinese Population would be dropping faster then it's increasing and the government there would be dead and gone.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Nidi62]

Where's the flaw in that argument?

You still depreciated the value of that Porsche. It incurred mileage, wear on moving parts, and damage to the vehicle if you do get in a minor crash. All of these affect the value of the Porsche. Every mile you drive takes a little bit off the value of a car. If you download a copy of a movie, it doesn't suddenly make the movie have any less value. It still retains its original value. Downloading a movie off the internet does not remove a copy of the movie from anyone's stock or inventory. No one has lost any money already invested in an item. That is the flaw in your argument.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[mcgrew]

Your post was insightful until the last line, "Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up." Piracy is no more theft than theft is murder. Here's the difference between stealing a movie and pirating a movie.

If you walk into WalMart and steal the DVD, that's theft. WalMart no longer has their DVD, they took a loss, whether or not the thief ever intended to watch the movie. If he's caught, he'll pay a couple hundred bucks in fines.

If you pirate a movie, nobody has lost anything, and it may even prompt the pirate to see the director's or leading actor's next movie on the big screen. And if he's caught, he'll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Piracy is theft" is propaganda for the stupid. They share less in common than theft and rape.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

People who say that never go into why copyright infringement isn't theft. Understand, in the following, that IANAL, and it will show, but I think it's important anyway.

Copyright and sales licenses are agreements between people--none of them me, you'll note--that so-and-so gets to profit from sales of a particular work. So-and-so, being so caught up in the idea that this license is exclusive, creates artificial scarcity and does other kinds of social engineering to drive up prices. They use the legal system--which was created to stop or punish abuses of power--to make sure the license remains exclusive, even though what's happening isn't sales of the work; it's free distribution, in ways that violate the exclusivity clause of the license.

Basically, piracy is "But you said only WE can do that! Make them stop! Mom! He won't stop! Make him stop! I want to be a millionaire! Make him stooooooop!"

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Pieroxy]

That's why copyright infringement is not theft. It is not the legal definition of "that kind of theft". It's the legal definition of something which is illegal, but isn't theft.

It absolutely is theft. You're stealing access that you don't have. Doesn't matter how you dress it up, and what legalese you use -- it's theft.

Definition of theft: the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another.

The music I'm downloading illegally is the property of no one. Someone may have a copyright on it, but that doesn't make it their property. Therefore it cannot be theft.
Moreover, I'm not "carrying it away", I'm duplicating it. Therefore, for the second time, it is not theft.

Learn your word first, then look if it applies to the situation. Copyright infringement is not theft by any sense of the word theft. You might want to call it "theft" but that doesn't make it so. Not in English at least. in dhavleakish maybe?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Pieroxy]

No there yet are you?

Did any of the numerous replies made to you so far made a dent into your judgment yet? It really should.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

Stealing access that you don't have

You are misusing the word stealing.

Taking or forcing access to something without permission is trespassing, not theft. ( hence the computer trespass laws )

Stealing is the removal of property without permission.

Making a copy of something is not stealing it, as no property is removed.

Pirating may be wrong or illegal, but it's not stealing.

And no, pirates are not "stealing the profit from the lost sales".

Just because the pirate felt that a movie was worth clicking a mouse button, doesn't mean that it would have been worth $20 if the mouse clicking was not an option.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[PenquinCoder]

You don't want to spend 10 bucks on Avengers in a regular theater -- the MPAA cannot make you spend those 10 bucks. They can't make you spend 16 bucks to watch it in 3D either. They can't force you to buy the DVD or BluRay. They can't force you to rent it. You have every right to disagree with their terms, and not give them your business. But you don't have the right to obtain their media on terms they did not agree to.

Except, here's the thing. I LIKE to watch movies. I like to give my money(IE support) to local business (like a movie theater) to continue bringing some entertainment into this podunk little town. However, the theater does not have a choice in whether or not to give the money it gained to MPAA (and associates). The local theater (any theater) MUST give 100% of all ticket sales to the record/movie industry for the first two weeks to a month after a movie is released. 100% of the money given to the theater to WATCH the movie, for an entire MONTH is given to the fucking RECORD/MOVIE companies.

The MPAA can't force YOU to give them that $10, but they CAN and DO force the theaters (which are independent companies mostly) to give THEM (MPAA) 100% of all sales. I do not want to give my money to MPAA, but in order to watch a movie anywhere in a theater, you have to. You cannot tell the theater to 'keep this for yourselves'. Welcome to capitalism.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Dr. Manhattan]

MPAA gets to choose their business model. They don't get to ban entire Internet protocols, arbitrarily shut down websites without due process, kick end-users off the Internet, or any other non-business-model-related "rights" they've been lobbying for.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[AvitarX]

I think you'd really need to go to 5 years to keep it at the status quo.

Though there would be a time period as people watched for free (or near free) every released movie they were interested in, leading to a temporary drop, and most likely at the expense of other entertainment additionally.

There's a good chance that actors would win if they were willing to endorse more products etc. Movies would likely be a larger part of culture, increasing the value of those that participated in them as cultural artifacts.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Mista2]

The unwelcome truth to the MPIAA, piracy isnt killing the movie industry. Crap movies are killing the movie industry.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Chris Burke]

Where's the flaw in that argument?

Um, every single part where you affect my material possession in any way? From wear-and-tear to outright damage (seriously?), to simply preventing me from having access to it if I decide to take my date home early or I forgot something in my car that's now not there.

The whole point is that if you pirate something the original copy is not affected in any way whatsoever. There isn't a single change, there isn't a single nanosecond where it's not still available to them.

If you could do something comparable to piracy to my car, like use a Star Trek replicator to instantly and harmlessly scan it, then reproduce a new one in the parking spot next it and then you drove off in that.. Then I wouldn't care.

Of course I also don't care if you did the same thing to my movies, but I'm not the copyright holder so my stake is only in my particular copy. Your argument doesn't even relate to the actual issue copyright holders have with piracy! What was even the point of this argument?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Mista2]

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.
Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.
With ebooks I have I look for legal sources first, 70% of the time I am still faced with "not available in your region"
I can buy the frikken paper book from Amazon and ship it around the world, but not a lousy 300Kb of data?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Mike Buddha]

The case against theft is that it denies the use of said item from the owner. Copying a movie does not prevent the owner from selling the movie; it doesn't prevent the use of the movie by others who paid their admission. The only thing it supposedly does is prevents the rights holders from selling a performance to those who choose to copy it, which this story is saying (and numerous other studies on the matter say) is plainly not evident. People who pirate will either still go to the movie in the theaters, or are so small compared with the total market as to be virtually insignificant.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[doesnothingwell]

Pirating is just the sheep fighting back, a certain amount is unavoidable. In an ideal supplier economy all consumers would be required to hand over their wallets and the producers would decide how much they could (not should) pay. Hollywood producers are just a bunch of greedy whiners that can't understand the world is not all theirs. I've bought enough product over the years sometimes they can just suck it up.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Chris Burke]

If you did that with the entire car without ever depriving me of it at all, then go fucking nuts I say (Porsche might feel differently about you copying their automotive design).

However there's no reason for you to want to duplicate my car key except to subsequently steal -- as in actually deprive me of -- my car, so no, that's not okay.

That isn't even remotely like copyright infringement. And on that note, "is it okay" is a separate question from "is it theft or copyright infringement".

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

some number of that is definitely lost sales

Do you really believe this?

I'm going to use the anime market in the US as an example here.
After the original japanese release, most anime franchises are not distributed in the US until there is already a large fan base.

How do you have fans for a show that isn't even available? Piracy.
How many of these pirates would have bought the dvd if there were no pirated copies being handed out? ZERO, because they would never have known the product exists.

How many millions of dollars do you think companies like adv, cartoon network, etc made because of the pirate anime market?


At the same time, around 100,000 people have watched a crappy download of the avengers instead of paying to see it in the theater.
Have you ever watched a theater rip? It's painful.

People don't watch camera rips because they would rather save the cost of admission. They watch them because
a) they CAN"T afford the cost of admission,
b) they want to see it before opening night,
c) they downloaded it because they were bored and wanted something to distract them for an hour.

Group A is not a lost sale.(they have no money)
Group B is not a lost sale. (they also saw the movie in the theater)
Group C is not a lost sale. (they would have just turned on the TV instead)

Now, dvd quality rips are another story. There are people who just download the movie instead of buying it.
However, there are also a lot of other groups of people who are labeled "pirates"..

a) People already own the movie but don't feel like ripping and transcoding it by hand ( like my blue ray collection )
b) People who have the dvd but just got a new 1080p mega-tv and think the higher quality is neat.
c) People who live in places where you can't buy the movie.
d) People who contribute screenshots to sites like imdb and tvtropes
e) People who don't have access to TV, but have family with internet and a cheap hard drive. (rural areas, mountain regions)
f) People who work odd hours and can't afford a dvr+digital cable for delayed viewing.

All of these groups are downloads that would not have equated to a sale.

a) already bought it
b) don't think the extra 300 pixels is worth an extra $20
c) don't have an option to buy
d) can't afford to spend $20 on every movie they edit
e) can't buy a show that isn't on disk. (samurai pizza cats)
f) Can't afford the hardware, can't afford to change schedule, can't buy the disks until it's out.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[sjames]

Or we the people could declare copyright to be null and void. It's not a natural right.

So tell me, what was stolen?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[hairyfeet]

Your points would be correct IF we had a free market, but we don't, we have government controlled monopolies. See copyrights being so long your great grandchildren will be dead before this movie leaves copyright (if it ever does) and the cartel pricing of movie theaters (ever wonder why nobody tries to undercut the ticket prices to draw more crowds? its because they CAN'T because they will be banned by the cartels from getting any prints) and your arguments simply don't hold water.

What we are talking about is frankly one of the most simple tenants of economics, if you price an item too high and use artificial scarcity to control those prices then a black market WILL arise to service those customers you ignore. Instead of following the Henry Ford model of classical capitalism, IE sell it cheap and crank them out, instead you have a bunch of MBAs (Masters of Being Assholes) that figure out what the absolute limit is and try to charge at that price or even above. You wanna know why piracy exists MAFIAA? Look in the mirror, you don't offer the customers what they want at a price they can afford.

If you were smart you'd do like Valve has with Steam, where they sell it cheap and crank it out but that wouldn't allow you to screw over the consumers like you screw the artists with Hollywood Accounting (which if EVER there existed a reason for an antitrust investigation that would be it) while making record profits. In the end the only ones you hurt are yourselves, no amount of propaganda is gonna make the public turn on piracy simply because your prices are too high. Many former game pirates that I know switched to Steam simply because it allows them to get games quickly at an easily affordable price point.

But as long as the means of distribution and copyrights are controlled by the cartels friend then your argument simply does not hold because there is no real chance for competition to spring up and lower the prices. This is the main point of a cartel after all, to control access so only those that are part of the cartels have any real chance of success.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[next_ghost]

Something was taken. The income that would have otherwise been realized from a legitimate purchase.

So if I bake my own bread using the same recipe as the bakery in my neighborhood, I'm stealing from the bakery? Sorry, no. Something can be stolen only if it's material and you had it in the first place. Things you might get in fantasy parallel universe don't count.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Mitsoid]

I just want to be able to burn a copy of my legally bought DVD, and pay my legally bought games, without dealing with DRM or other bull shit... I hate the fact I have to dig out my old CD's to play an older game and I *Hate* when my internet goes out and I can't play a steam game because it can't connect to their DRM servers...

That said... it's copyright infringement and it is illegal.. I think their numbers are bogus and 100% political/greed driven.. but the simple solution is to simply vote with your dollars... or minimize their benefit... Wait for 2 1/2 weeks after a movie comes out then go to the theater to watch your movie, more money goes to the theater (a good thing) and less to the Box officer/MPAA (also a good thing).. If someone else buys a dvd of a movie you wanted to watch, borrow the DVD (and not a copy, and don't make a copy)..

You can follow the law and still enjoy movies.. although you might need to delay your viewing by a bit.... Also find the times your theater offers movies for less -- Usually Wednesday's

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[next_ghost]

All of those questions only make sense when your goal is to preserve the entertainment industry in its current state. I don't see the point of preserving something that has outlived its usefulness. So the real question is this: Is it possible to make a decent living from creating music, movies, video game etc. without making non-profit copying illegal? The answer to that question is a deafening YES. So if the entertainment industry can't keep up with the times, here's the world's smallest violin playing just for them.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[scot4875]

Same thing applies to Slashdot. Threads of this exact nature pop up every 2 months or so for the last 10 years -- and the point they're trying to make is still incorrect.

But they do punch a hole in the big media's arguments that they need draconian IP laws passed to protect their business. I think that's the bigger point; I rarely see people argue that they are *entitled* to the products of the RIAA or MPAA, just that pirating them doesn't actually hurt the industry as much as they claim -- if it even hurts them at all.

--Jeremy

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Sique]

With your argumentation "lost sale" = "theft", you could also argue, that a negative critic in the newspaper is "theft", because it causes lost sales.

So for your information: Not every act that diminishes the perceived value of a good is theft.
Write that 100 times.
And then try to grasp the concept.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so wrong I'm going to make only my second post to /. in 10 years. Well done for that at least.

Repeat after me. Copyright infringement is not theft. Copyright infringement is not theft etc.

If what you're saying were even remotely true, why isn't there DRM on radio? There hasn't been DRM on radio *ever* and you can tune into any radio station whenever you like and record all the songs you like. You've been able to do this for the entire time theres been radio. History is littered with the industries attempts to limit open systems that allow users to control and copy. They've failed with stopping most of them and seemingly their failure has had very little effect on the ability of the industries to make money. Lots of money. HUGE amounts of money. They just want to make more of it (and still not give it to the artists) and they want to use DRM to do it. DRM benefits NO ONE but the company implementing the DRM.

They are not defending themselves from theft. They are using DRM to protect their outdated business models and practices which rely on the control of the entire distribution chain. The internet removes the barrier to entry (or reduces it low enough everyone can afford it) and as their entire business relies on stopping the content makers doing it themselves, when they can their business model falls apart. The industry is grossly distorted where the distribution is all that matters, not the product. Previously you could have been the best artist in the world but without a huge company to distribute and market, your local area was the best you could expect. Then the internet came along and EVERYTHING changed.

Basic economics revolves around making a product people want, then supplying it in acceptable way at the highest price they can manage. For so many years that equation has been grossly skewed in favour of the industry, not the consumer or content creator. They held all the cards at every single point in the process. Now, consumers have a viable, if illegal, choice to get things faster/easier/cheaper and the artists can go directly to them and sell. Consumers are not prepared to pay $15 for an album digitally when the costs of distribution are orders of magnitude less. They don't want to pay MORE for a digital version of a book than a paper version. They don't want to wait 6 months to watch a film in the comfort of their own home while the industry milks and extorts every last penny they can out of the chain. They KNOW they're being conned. They KNOW the media companies are taking them for a ride. They difference is now they have a means to give them the finger and ignore them, often going direct to the artist and paying MUCH less and giving the artist MUCH more. This is the future that has the industries scared, and they are scared for their lives.

Anon

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Artifakt]

If I don't have a right to obtain their media on any terms they don't agree to, then I can't by a used copy of the physical media after it comes out on DVD, or wait until it enters the public domain, because the producers of this product have claimed, through the MPAA, that those rights are not granted by their choice. Since when does copyright, even if it was totally legitimate law as it stands, extend beyond copying itself to mean my other rights are only whatever they choose? And isn't the unilateral extension of copyright term a theft of that right to the public domain? How about actually pulling once released material back out of the public domain and writing a retroactive law to place it back under copyright? Isn't that one huge theft? Isn't an ex-post-facto law something the constitution prohibits for damned good reason? Are you just another one of those people who love to call relatively powerless people thieves, but are too chicken to apply your own logic to the powerful and call them thieves as well?
        I don't pirate. I actually endorse the legitimate protection of content creators through resaonable copyright. But since the content creators have stopped endorsing my right to public domain access, my right of first sale, and other such rights they find possibly inconvenient, where's the people who write them letters calling them what they have become? Since they have subverted the laws of this once great nation in an arrogant abouse of monetary power, who's even ready to compare them to the old robber barons? Oh yeah, those people are like you, picking on just one side in what has become a struggle, the side that can't or won't give them any trouble back for taking their 'fine, upstanding moral position'. That gives them a cheap feeling of superiority.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[RichardJenkins]

Most people I see on Slashdot, whether they think piracy is great, terrible or anywhere in between don't think the damage it does warrants special laws or draconian civil penalties. Reading anecdotes like this makes economic arguments for additional copyright legislation harder to swallow.

Saying piracy is theft confuses it with a completely different thing. Only good to call it that if you are looking to confuse people.

You (I guess?) live in a country where your copyright on what you create outlasts anyone alive when you publish it. Madness to think this is a good thing.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up

Call it whatever you want. I'm going to bleed those motherfuckers any way I can. And that shit's on purpose.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[AngryDeuce]

They don't want people turning to the internet for THEIR content in violation of their chosen business model. As stated, that's their right. Don't like it? Don't buy their stuff.

Exactly! Torrent it instead, for free!

They need to get their thick, stupid heads around the fact that many, many people don't give a fuck about their profit margin or not. I read a study back during the SOPA debate that showed something like 70% of the population has no problem whatsoever with sharing media among family and friends. The general population is not behind them on this, which is why they're never, ever going to stop piracy.

If the majority of society thinks that we should be able to share media with our friends and family, where does that leave the MAFIAA? When a law makes the majority of the population criminals, is it really the population that's fucked up, or the law itself? Social mores change. 100 years ago someone trying to marry a partner of the same sex would have likely been locked in a mental asylum across most of the U.S. (if not ran out of town/beaten and left for dead). Today gay marriage is recognized in 6 states as well as D.C., and it will probably be recognized federally within a generation.

What will the MAFIAA do when they can't even bribe our government enough to keep the public at bay? What happens when the Pirate Party migrates to the U.S. and starts chipping away at IP and copyright laws? Are they going to stamp their feet, take their ball and go home? Or will we finally see the oft-promised "death of all media"? The only reason they have these rights is because they were granted to them by the people. We gave them those rights, and we can damned sure take them away. The government's been taking away the rights of the people in the name of security for the last 11 years, so you can damn sure bet your ass that the government can take some rights away from "people" that exist solely on paper in the form of articles of incorporation.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[selven]

They share less in common than theft and rape.

Are you sure you want to use that comparison? After all, rape does directly come from the Latin word meaning "steal"...

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Artifakt]

Remember, the damages the MPAA and RIAA claim in civil suits are statutory damages. That means congress gave them a special number to reflect how big the damages supposedly are, how hard it is to catch violators, and so on. If the real world numbers are a whole lot smaller than the hypothetical claims, those special numbers are based on a vast series of lies. It's easy to call the uploaders and torrenters thieves, but lieing to congress is a crime, and surely most of the people who think stealing is immoral also think lieing, particularly bearing false witness under oath, is immoral as well. So why are there people who want to come on Slashdot and say, in effect "Oooh, One side here is all made up of all bad people and the other side is all good people"?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[The1stImmortal]

If there was no piracy, there would be no need for DRM. Piracy will never go away, therefore DRM will never go away.

If there was no piracy, there would have to be a different excuse for DRM.
It's normal for businesses (and people for that matter) to try to leverage their existing position to expand their power/reach. Whilst DRM debatably has an anti-piracy effect, it's also a way for copyright holders/copyright managers to change the way users deal with their already legally licensed copies... for instance by preventing useful loaning/resale of media (game and ebook industries anyone?) or preventing backup copies or media changes. This forces people to purchase more licenses that would otherwise be purchased.
As for interoperability of DRM schemes - you either have a system where a limited group of organizations control the access to the DRM scheme (which leads to excessive control and lockout of competing businesses/business models/licensing models) or you have an open access DRM system, in which case there's not really much point to DRM at all.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Jaime2]

There was piracy without copy protection in the cassette tape days, and the recording business survived. They will survive just fine without DRM in the future. TiVo is a good example to learn from. Much money was made in the past on the assumption that people would watch commercials. TiVo and similar devices allowed a significant fraction of consumers to skip commercials. The ham-fisted approach would have been to make the fast-forward button illegal. The proper approach, that the market took, was to move many of the advertisements into the program.

DRM is a ham-fisted way to preserve a business model that is losing relevancy. The correct solution is to create new business models.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

De-facto; because the supreme court says so. I share your skepticism; but IANAL...

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[hoxford]

Yes yes... we *know* it's not stealing or theft already.

Then why do people continue to use that word to describe it?

Saying theft is not the same as piracy, is like saying

...like saying that piracy is not theft in response to people continuing to use the word theft to describe piracy over, and over, and over, and over... That's what it's like. And it's necessary because despite the repetition people still do not seem to get it.

Yes, copyright infringement technically isn't theft. But it might as well be, and it should carry the same penalty and weight because it's close enough to theft

No, it's not as people have clearly pointed out over and over again. Yet people like you still can't see the difference. Go educate yourself.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[EdIII]

Especially in this case. $10 is not a tremendous amount of money. I downloaded a cam a few months ago to see the quality and it was hysterical. Anybody that downloads a cam and watches it the whole way through is the same kind of person who would dumpster dive and consider it no different than gourmet food.

They would have never paid for it under any circumstances.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[user flynn]

And no, pirates are not "stealing the profit from the lost sales".

But they are stealing the power over others that copyright holders have.

    And we all know the slippery slope: one day a copyright holder will be treated the same as your average working Joe! They might actually have to live similar lifestyles and work as hard as someone who lives paycheck to paycheck.

    So we really need to prevent copyright holders from loosing their power over others, otherwise they might have to put as much into society as they take out....

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

Send me a message(check my profile), I know a Chinese distributor who took the US release audio and mixed it with the official japanese video. He won't sell it, but he will include it with orders for the official Japanese disks.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

OR THEY COULD OFFICIALLY RELEASE IT ON DVD!!

From the wikipedia page:
Discotek Media announced on March 12, 2012 that they had licensed the home video rights to the series and plans on releasing both the American series, as well as the Japanese series with English subtitles on separate releases

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[sixsixtysix]

No. Copyright infringement is wrong, but it is not theft.

copyright infringement is less wrong than life + 70 year copyrights. depriving the public domain (again & again) for generations is far more harmful to society as a whole. granted, i do buy quite a bit, but i still use my own discretion to choose when to futuractively borrow from my great-great-grandchildren's public domain. until copyright gains some sanity, it'll never be a black and white issue.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Joce640k]

Mod parent up.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[brit74]

> "With your argumentation "lost sale" = "theft", you could also argue, that a negative [critique] in the newspaper is "theft", because it causes lost sales."
People are allowed to exchange meta-information about products in order to help other people make an informed decision about buying it. Piracy is getting a free copy of a product and then deciding whether or not you want to pay for it (which, very often, people skip the paying part because it adds nothing to their already-appropriated copy). Don't try to equate piracy with negative critiques.

Piracy also has similarities to other bad actions which are outlawed:
* Sneaking into a concert or amusement park or theater - hey, you can't "prove" they were going to buy a ticket, and their ears aren't soaking up sound so that other people can't hear it (non-rivalry). As long as the concert isn't so full that you're actually blocking paying customers from coming in, then this is similar to piracy. You could even make the argument that by sneaking in you're doing the band/park/movie a favor because you might recommend it to your friends or buy merchandise - which is pretty similar to the argument pirates use to say that they should be allowed to pirate.
* Sneaking onto a Greyhound bus without paying - again, you can't prove they would've bought a ticket, and as long as the bus isn't 100% packed - why not let people get away with this? Afterall, their presence on the bus has a negligible effect on the cost of running the bus (which was already travelling to your destination).
* Living in a house or apartment without paying rent - as long as someone leaves the place in as good of condition as it started (or pays for cleaners to come in afterwards), then why shouldn't people be allowed to squat whereever they want as long as it wasn't going to have actual paying tenents in the place?

On the other hand, if people give a concert or amusement park or movie or Greyhound a bad review so that people don't pay for those things - that's perfectly okay. Piracy is not like a bad review; it fits in with the other examples. Personally, I think the owner/management of the concert, amusement park, theater, greyhound bus, or apartment should have the right to chose whether or not someone is allowed in without paying and have the right to kick people out if they try to get in without paying. Similarly, I think content creators should have the same right to deprive people of their own digital creations if those people aren't going to pay - and I say that because I don't believe amusement parks, concerts, theaters, buses, apartments, or digital-content creation are going to survive very well if everyone can unilaterally decide that they want the product but don't want to pay (and who would want to pay for something you can get for free?)

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

I considered that actually.

Thanks to the internet, most people usually decide right after opening night (or sooner, thanks to pre-showings) whether the movie is worth paying to go see.
I came to the rough conclusion that if the movie was that bad, a significant percentage of veiwers will probably just give it a pass or wait till it's available from netflix/$1 rental/borrowing from a friend.

Group B more than most, as rabid fans who are willing to watch a low quality bootleg just to see the movie early are more likely to refuse to pay to see it on principle.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[SuricouRaven]

Piracy. They come for the free stuff, they stay for the ideology.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[SuricouRaven]

On the other hand, their main demographic is the male geek with a love of flashy technology. You'd think that would make such movies far more succeptable to piracy than, say, romantic comedy.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[OneMadMuppet]

I'm group d) : I download cam rips so I can put the audio track onto an MP3 player. In the country where I live there's a legal requirement to DUB foreign films, so I can't see it in English. I go to the cinema and stick the MP3 player in 1 ear. No lost sale. The audio quality's not great though :( I once suggested a system for cinemas where people could use headphones similar to a silent disco, where you could select a language on the side and listen to a different audio track. It never went anywhere though :(

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[blackest_k]

I've not seen the film and neither has most of the world (20 million out of 6 billion maybe). I probably will see it within the next couple of years for free on broadcast television, I might well enjoy it too.

I will also note that although I can record anything pretty much with the gear I have I tend to find the only use I have for PVR is to pause and fast forward the majority of stuff I've recorded intending to watch later doesn't get watched I really don't have the time for it.

Going to the movies is for dates, pretty much exclusively, or as a treat for the kids, often an option for divorced fathers. That pretty much covers it. Sometimes friends will go to see a movie together but thats mainly because they don't have dates or because their significant others are not into that kind of film.

For a successful date at the movies the film has to be at a minimum good and ideally excellent you take a woman to a lousy movie and you will both come out let down and disappointed and she is not going to have enjoyed herself and that disappointment will reflect on you.

I think we are all aware that often the trailer promises more than the film delivers, really the trailer is there to tempt you to pay to see the movie and once you have bought the ticket they have your money which is all that matters to them, enjoyment of the movie is irrelevant it is ticket sales that matters. They don't care about your date not in the slightest.

So the only way you can be sure of the movie is to preview it and that is what screeners are good for to inform you if the film is going to entertain your date. There is no doubt in my mind that Piracy can both hurt and boost movie ticket sales, because it cuts through the marketing bullshit in other words bad movies will not get the sales from informed consumers and good movies will. One copy of a screener may well effect 20 or more peoples choice to see a movie and most will not even see the screener they will just take their friends word for it if it is good or bad.

The movie industry as a whole commits fraud more often than not misrepresenting the product they want to sell you and they have gotten away with this for decades. The screeners just redress the balance. Your date may well become your wife, the mother to your children or maybe ditches you for someone with better taste in movies than you have. There is a lot more invested in this movie for you than just a few bucks and you really want to get it right.

I would lend a friend a DVD or a book or a cd no problem i'd like to get it back thou :) Oh and Kids DVD's it is practically insane not to copy it and keep the original safe, it is always going to get wrecked at some point, and besides who wants their kids sitting through loads of crap being marketed to them. Your the one going to be pestered to buy that crap.

       

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[tehcyder]

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.

No, you do not have a right to buy anything, if the owner does not want to sell it to you, so your point is absurd. If Ferrari don't want to sell cars in Albania, if you live in Albania you don't have the right to go out and steal one anyway.

And yes, we all know that copyright infringement is not theft, blah blah blah. As we are talking about someone who would have bought it, then this is certainly a lost sale if he pirates it. He could always have bought it legally if he tried hard enough, and if he couldn't, tough, he'll just have to do without it.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[tehcyder]

That relation simply doesn't hold, though. This is most obvious if you consider the teenager with $50,000 worth of music and movies on their hard drive. If piracy was impossible, do you think they would have spent $50,000 on music and movies?

And conversely, do you think they would have spent nothing at all on music and movies?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[tehcyder]

If you download a copy of a movie, it doesn't suddenly make the movie have any less value. It still retains its original value

You are ignoring the question of timing. A movie has greater value when it is just released. Over time, that value decreases. It is why TV companies pay to air films before they come out on DVD or whatever, and why movie companies stagger worldwide releases.

Personally, I think it's bollocks, as I don't watch films to be fashionable. A good film now will still be a good film in six months' time, and a crap film will most assuredly still be crap. But there seem to be an awful lot of people who rush to see movies the week they are released, so it is unrealistic to say there is no economic difference between a new and an old film.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[tehcyder]

And no, pirates are not "stealing the profit from the lost sales".

Just because the pirate felt that a movie was worth clicking a mouse button, doesn't mean that it would have been worth $20 if the mouse clicking was not an option.

Out of all the pro-piracy arguments, this always seems to me to be the weakest. Although it is self evident that not all pirated copies would have been purchased instead, it seems equally self evident that some of them would have been.

Someone obviously buys DVDy discs or pays for downloads from iTunes..

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[tehcyder]

I'm going to use the anime market in the US as an example here.

Why not just use the fucking movie market, which is what this is about?

The Hollywood film studios market big blockbustes by paying for ads, getting the stars on chat shows or whatever. They don't need some underground nerd railway to smuggle the product's awareness into people's consciousness.

If you want to watch their shiny crappy films, you need to pay them, so that they can make money to finance the next shiny crappy film.

If I can't be arsed to go to the cinema to watch some glorified kids' comic, I can wait til it comes on TV, or buy a cheap DVD in six months time at Asdas. But I don't have some god given right to watch it for free, immediately it comes out, because I want to.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[SteveTheNewbie]

Not only that, but if you borrowed his key and made a copy of it, that in itself is not actually illegal. What you do with the copy may or may not be illegal however.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[JosKarith]

It's relevant because the MAFIAA have been trotting out their junk statistics to prove why they should be allowed to destroy peoples' lives for downloading a song. They have made it relevant, you don't get to just dismiss it as soon as it's turned back on them.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Serpents]

I don't think they don't have the right to choose a wrong model and go broke. I think that piracy and how ubiquitous it has become proves that they've chosen a wrong model. However, instead of changing the way they operate they just buy laws to ensure that it's "their way or the highway". And we're paying them whether we go to their movies, buy their CDs or books or not. There's a fee for "potential copyright infringement" on every blank CD and every blank sheet of printer/photocopier paper you buy because it's assumed we're all thieves and use them to copy copyrighted music/video or books. So every time someone copies a flyer saying their dog is missing "the entertainment industry" gets paid, every time someone backs up the pictures of their granny on a CD - they get paid. With such ridiculous laws they won't go bankrupt even if they price Justin Bieber CDs at $100 a pop or just stop producing "content" at all.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Reziac]

'...you could also argue, that a negative critic in the newspaper is "theft", because it causes lost sales.'

Haven't there been some lawsuits which argued exactly that? (this is already 110% of what I remember about it. Maybe someone who does remember will chime in.)

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[CodeHxr]

So if the entertainment industry can't keep up with the times, here's the world's smallest violin playing just for them.

IMHO, this is exactly what's going on and exactly why the *AA agencies are fighting so hard and exaggerating data (if not outright lying). By the same token, however, several other industries (not companies, entire industries) have received government bailouts in recent years. Why have these industries (those bailed out and those receiving "special" legislation [i.e.: increasing length of copyright]) been yanked out of the fire and allowed to continue to exist in a supposed "free market"?

(This is a rhetorical question, btw...)

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That's the argument KeyGen software depends upon to stay legal. While it's illegal to steal a bunch of Microsoft License Certificates, it is perfectly legal to reverse engineer their algorithm and provide people with those keys.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Hmm, the genre *might* have something to do with all of this. I could barely stand to sit through You Got Mail with my wife ONCE- but I've seen Star Wars so many times I've lost count.

I could easily see a fan of THIS genre downloading the pirated copy *just* to make a costume of their favorite character so that they could stand in line for 12 hours in costume to get a ticket for the very first showing in their local theater.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[eldorel]

Now that you're done ranting about the first paragraph, go read the rest of my post.

The discussion is about whether or not 1 pirate == 1 lost sale.

The only connection piracy has to lost sales is that the media wants there to be.

You're a perfect example. You won't pay money to watch it, and will wait until it's available via free channels.
Either way the MPAA is losing profits.

They probably count you as a sale "lost to piracy" even if you never download anything.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[DerekLyons]

You sir are correct that piracy is theft as it usually involves the taking of physical goods by force yet RIAA/MPAA want to encourage everyone that a copyright violation is as bad if not worse then piracy, where people are injured/killed while the theft is taking place

Sorry, but no. Use of the term "piracy" for copyright violations and theft of intellectual property goes back for centuries.
 
It's not the RIAA/MPAA that's re-defining terms here, it's you.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[Chris Burke]

And conversely, do you think they would have spent nothing at all on music and movies?

Maybe. Depends on how much money they have, and whether they prefer to spend it on something else. Maybe in the absence of piracy, Pandora would be sufficient.

What's your point, anyway? In the course of pirating works supposedly worth 50-large, they may have hypothetically deprived an actual vendor of 15 bucks that they might have spent? That's great, I agree that the alleged costs of piracy are ridiculously over-inflated and based on faulty premises too.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[rohan972]

Out of all the pro-piracy arguments, this always seems to me to be the weakest.

That's because it isn't a pro-piracy argument. A pro-piracy argument would be saying that copyright infringement is good. This argument is against calling copyright infringement theft, which is an argument for correct use of language, a necessary thing when discussing ideas.

I have never argued that copyright infringement is good. I personally buy the stuff I want and my wife is a recording artist. However, copyright infringement is not theft and we can't have a reasonable discussion about this issue until people stop claiming that it is.

People who have decided to get their way by loading ignorant people up with propaganda are the enemy of all of us. I know society operates that way to a great extent but it harms us all, please don't buy into it.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[rohan972]

Similarly, I think content creators should have the same right to deprive people of their own digital creations if those people aren't going to pay

How do you plan to go about enforcing that right? Without locking every device with unbreakable DRM (which doesn't exist) it isn't possible to prevent people. Perhaps with harsher penalties and brutal enforcement we can frighten people into compliance?

Ever since the widespread adoption of the internet effective enforcement of copyright would require a dystopian state. Maybe effective enforcement would be a good thing of itself, but the price is too high.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[causality]

So you disagree with the parent's comment that "media owners have every right to choose their business model".

He didn't say that. My reading comprehension tells me so! Yours is faulty, and/or you're obsessed.

The point of the guy who started this thread was that the MAFIAA are a bunch of liars. They are liars whether or not they have the right to choose their business model. They have their "party line" and no amount of evidence is going to change what they say. It is their article of faith, their religion. That is who they are.

If you knew that, then you too are a liar, trying to sow confusion in order to divert the conversation into an argument you can win. Those are the actions of an insecure coward or a shill. If you didn't know that, you allowed emotion to cloud your reason and invented an excuse to rail against the guy where none existed, no doubt so you could climb up on your high horse and celebrate your "victory".

Either way, you're completely wrong.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[causality]

and create propaganda to twist the minds of people who haven't studied the facts

Just curious... for those people who choose not to study facts before coming to a conclusion about something ... what did they think would happen to their minds?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[kiwimate]

Look at the post this guy was replying to. dhavleak said:

You guys are simply discussing the wrong thing. The profitability of Avengers is 100% immaterial. The producer could choose to sell at 10x the price, or 1/100th (and take a loss). Their media, their choice. You choose to buy or not to buy (which is how you regulate their choice). Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up.

Not incidentally, when I posted, this was at +5 insightful. Several replies commented that dhavleak made some very salient points, although they took issue with equating piracy with theft. Today that comment is at +1.

AC responded to this on a rather raging tear saying no, you're wrong, you're discussing the wrong thing, and the public won't get this into their heads until we shout long enough and loud enough!!

I don't think my interpretation is faulty. How would you interpret this? I would suggest there are a few different themes you could read into this sequence; it is important, however, to keep things in context, hence my quoting dhavleak's comments.

And kindly refrain from more name calling. If you want to debate your case rationally, fine. If you are going to call me a liar and a coward and a shill, then I have better things to do with my time.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[phoomp]

Perhaps so, but the entertainment industry is trying to blame things like DVD ripping and distribution protocols such as Bittorrent for significan losses in revenue, which, for The Avengers, can be seen to not be the case. What other reasons could they possibly have for not liking the ability to backup a DVD and distribution models that will enable competition?

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.

Not sure where you have been looking but the first season has been out on DVD and BluRay for ages.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[ukemike]

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale. Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it. With ebooks I have I look for legal sources first, 70% of the time I am still faced with "not available in your region" I can buy the frikken paper book from Amazon and ship it around the world, but not a lousy 300Kb of data?

I hate to be nit-picky here but you are wrong about something. You state there there is "only one way to get it" and the implication is that one way is downloading a pirated copy, but then in the next sentence you state that you can buy the paper book and have it shipped to you. I'm no mathematician, I'm only an engineer, but by my count that is TWO ways. One of which doesn't break any laws.

Just sayin'.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[pthisis]

Movies like the Avengers will tend to do well vs. Piracy, because these high effect movies, look really good with all the sound, and large screens... If you pirate it, you get a shaky little display with perhaps stereo sound.

You're understating the state of piracy. For big releases like the Avengers, Telesync bootlegs come out essentially as soon as the first screenings; they're shot with high-def cameras on tripods mounted in the projection booth directly over/under the projector, with the complete Dolby Digital (5.1 or even 7.1) soundtrack ripped directly from a sound source (not recording it from playback).

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[pthisis]

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.
Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.

Game of Thrones is available on DVD in regions 1, 2, and 4 (Basically North & South America, Europe, Australia/Oceania, and much of Africa and Asia including Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, and South Africa). It's available on Blu-Ray in Regions A and B (North and South America, Western Europe, Africa, Australia/Oceania, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia).

And the US wasn't even the first DVD release; region 2 was released before region 1.

Re:Facts! Don't talk to me about facts!

[YodasEvilTwin]

How is a contract between the theatre and the MPAA "force"? The theatre doesn't have to agree, and the MPAA doesn't have to licence them the movie. I hate the MPAA, believe me, but that's nonsense.

How can you quantify the loss?

[noh8rz3]

The summary is asking the wrong question. It's not whether piracy prevents blockbusters. It's how much does piracy reduce the box office receipts of new releases. Maybe avengers would have made $5 million more without piracy, or $20 million more, or 25 cents more. I have no idea. But let's at least ask the right questions. I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts on how much the piracy cost.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[SJHillman]

Or how much piracy helped Hollywood gain? Of those 100,000 or so Americans that downloaded it, I'd be willing to bet a fair number of them did go see it in theaters simply because they liked the crappy version they downloaded and wanted the full cinematic experience.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[neokushan]

What makes you so sure that it actually causes a loss? You don't think that maybe some of the downloaders flicked through it, watched a bit of it or perhaps even the whole thing and thought to themselves "Hey that was pretty damn good, I want to go see it in the cinema and get the full experience!"?
Maybe if it wasn't for piracy, Avengers would have made $5million less.
Or maybe, just maybe, it would not have made a difference at all.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[kiwimate]

Well, according to the article, and the summary too, actually, about 0.5%, maximum. But the article goes on to say this is in the U.S.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in the case of The Avengers, people who pirated Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America, The Hulk, or Thor may have become invested in the Marvel series and decided they needed to see this one in Theaters. Then you can say the same about people who've pirated Joss Whedon's stuff in the past and have become fans of him.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[internerdj]

I'd suggest those who wonder why people aren't visiting the theaters have not yet had "the full cinematic experience."

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[g0bshiTe]

I have, it involved latex gloves, lube, and no post-coital cuddle.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[g0bshiTe]

Yeah, but Joss Whedon's fans have been stiffed!

Bring back FIREFLY!

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Altus]

Actually there is a halo effect with movies, a friend of mine did his PHD thesis in economics partially on this effect. When a big movie comes out the previous movies (if its a series) see a bump in DVD sales. Movies by the same director or with the same lead actors get a bump. In this case, certainly the previous "Avenger" movies in the "series" probably saw a bump in DVD sales and movies with Robert Downey Jr probably saw a bump.

The reason for this is likely pretty simple, people are talking about the Avengers and that stirs up interest in the previous movies, wanting to see them again or see them for the first time before the big movie or even a friend saying "Hey if you liked Robert Downey Jr in Iron man you should see Sherlock."

If there is a place where piracy is effecting the bottom line for studios it is probably seen in this effect where people might have been inspired to buy a copy of the Hulk to check it out but instead downloaded it to save a few bucks. It would be interesting to look at the spike in downloads for movies that your would expect to see a spike in DVD sales for.

Of course that doesn't mean every download of those movies is a lost sale, many of these movies are available for rental or VOD.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ranton]

I think he meant to say that the percentage is meaningless, it is the actual dollar amount that matters. 0.5% may sound small, but $1,000,000 is a lot of money. Not relatively large, but that is still $1,000,000 more that should go to those investing in the movie and movie theatres, not people trying to get something for nothing.

Then again, that 0.5% is completely made up. For all I know, the pirating could have helped them make more money from free advertising ("Hey, I saw this awesome movie on Bittorrent, you should go see it this weekend").

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Pewpdaddy]

^ This!! +1 if I had it!!

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't go to theaters often, but this is the first I've heard of TSA screening before the movie starts.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[dgatwood]

What that tells us is that, just as we saw in the music industry, the primary driving reason for piracy is not cost, but rather unavailability. Not everybody likes the "full cinematic experience"—sticky floors, overpriced food, little b**tards throwing popcorn at your head, etc. However, lots of folks still would like to see the movie at the same time as everyone else so that they can talk about it with their friends.

Thus, the very act of trying to prop up the theaters through protectionist tactics drives people to pirate, resulting not in not lost sales, but rather delayed sales caused by the inability to buy the DVD at the same time as the movie appears in the theaters; many of those same pirates probably rent or buy a legit copy of the movie when it finally does come out on DVD.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[aztracker1]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I go out to the movies several times a month... I'll often download a pirate copy if I have to go to the restroom during the middle of the film, so I can catch what I missed. I will also download copies of movies I have bought, as it's often easier and faster than transcoding them myself. I'm not always a lost sale, and a lot of times I am an added sale because of "piracy". I also tend to buy useful software, I may pirate 2-3 versions after my initial purchased version though, before purchasing again. In the end, I'm just a frugal bastard who wants a bit more convenience, and value for my money.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Archfeld]

That is exactly what I did...Watched a few brief minutes of a poorly pirated copy, got a good laugh and decided it was worth seeing. I dragged my retired parents along for a lark and we all 3 loved it. Without seeing that few minutes of the pirated copy I never would have convinced the parents to see it so actually the pirated version GENERATED 2 more paid theater views.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[aztracker1]

Maybe they should simply stop having release windows, and do international releases in under a week instead of months apart.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[cpu6502]

>>>I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts on how much the piracy cost.

I don't know why you say it asks the wrong questions? Assuming all 100000 downloaders bought tickets that would be just 0.6 million more on top of the 200 million actually earned. Not a big deal.

Cost? Very little because most of us either (a) don't want to actually PAY for the shit hollywood produces. I freely admit I've downloaded hundreds of movies this past year. If for some reason I was cutoff, I wouldn't run out and buy it. I'd just wait for a free version on TV. (b) Or they would like to pay but lack money to do so because they are kids, teens, college students.

ALSO: If the internet and downloading is so evil, why are RIAA and MPAA affiliated companies making money than ever before? They should be going broke but in reality they are getting rich. So rich, they are bribing politicians with election donations to pass CISPA and sign ACTA.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[na1led]

I can vouch for that, I downloaded Tron Legacy (cam video). The quality was terrible but it got me interested to go see the movie at cinema. Problem is that these Trailers always make these movies look good, but suck when you go watch them. If it's a good movie, I'll go watch it on the big screen, or buy the Blueray, but I'd like to see what I'm paying for first.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[BlackThorne_DK]

Well, according to the article, and the summary too, actually, about 0.5%, maximum. But the article goes on to say this is in the U.S.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

Then fix the release gaps, and stop whining. The rest of the world is tired of being reduced to second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth class US citizens...
If you want our money, start treating us like equals, and release the damn movies at the same time everywhere.
With digital releases, it shouldn't be that hard.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[noh8rz3]

Well, according to the article, and the summary too, actually, about 0.5%, maximum.

Are you accusing me of not RTFS? Do you know how hard it is, when you go to the slashdot page and see a new article with a red banner, to actually get fp? Especially when you want to say something insightful, not just FP MOFOS! In these cases, I RTFS for sure, however it's Read The First Sentence. :)

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ColdWetDog]

We ARE NOT talking about flying here.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Charliemopps]

Agree'd
Our local theater has started serving bagged popcorn that they heat up under a lamp. It's still $15 for a large popcorn and a flat soda. Instead of butter they now have a "butter flavoring" dispenser that shoots out some cold, yellow tinted oil substance all over your popcorn. Then they have about 5 different shakers filled with different flavors of salt. None of which really contain salt... I'm not sure what exactly it is... but it's definitely not salt. But hey, they have Imax!

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[cpu6502]

It also has an effect on TV, where either local stations or cable channels BUY the old Avenger/Hulk movies and air them for fun-and-profit. Most times I just watch the TV presentation rather than download.

I've seen IronMan & Captain America run about 5 times in the weeks leading to this Avengers premiere.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ColdWetDog]

Look, this is important to us.

We have to be first at something you know. Show a little love.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[noh8rz3]

Ok, let's crowd source this, if you're reading this, are in the US, and downloaded a pirated advance copy, please respond: did you also buy a ticket for opening weekend? Did you choose to buy a ticket BECAUSSE of the download? Wild you have been likely to buy a ticket, but did not due to the download? This would be a good slashdot poll.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[kiwimate]

Agreed. The argument is always "these rich studio producers have enough money already, they don't need any more". As you say, it's still deservedly owed to those who take the risk and make the investment.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[noh8rz3]

ALSO: If the internet and downloading is so evil, why are RIAA and MPAA affiliated companies making money than ever before? They should be going broke but in reality they are getting rich.

[ citation needed]. It is my understanding that the music industry has been gutted, with revenues down year over year.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ArhcAngel]

The summary is asking the wrong question. It's not whether piracy prevents blockbusters. It's how much does piracy reduce the box office receipts of new releases.

That's not even the right question because the answer is inconsequential. The real question is how do bootlegs affect BD/DVD/VOD sales/rentals. I go to the theater to get the full effect. I only go to the theater for movies I truly want to see. I knew 2 years ago I was going to go to the theater to see The Avengers. For all of the "I'd like to see it if..." titles I can wait and see them at home. That's where a bootleg would cut into sales and where I'd like to see the numbers. I'd say in the US it's still close to the 0.5% cited as even the cheapskates are still gonna go for the $1/$2 Red Box over a bootleg in most cases. In other countries I'm sure it is quite high but here again that is perpetuated by the fact that the movies generally aren't available in those countries at launch which frustrates consumers and drives them to a bootleg.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[cpu6502]

If they pulled their head out of their asset ledgers, the executives could solve this problem by releasing music & movies & TV shows the same week or month. Take Doctor Who for example: There's no reason it can't air on both Syfy and BBC the same week... then there'd be no desire to get DW through the net.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[sdguero]

The girl sitting next to me at Avengers last night was snoring the entire movie. Not sleeping mind you, just snoring.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Dunbal]

Yep, including cell phone ring tones, bright smart-phone screens, obscene smells, obnoxious children, dirty seats, dirty rest-rooms, overpriced food and drink and of course you get to enjoy all this at arctic temperatures.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[msobkow]

Absolutely true. I know a half dozen people who download cams to check out a movie before they're willing to spend $80+ taking the whole family to see it. While that means the parent who did the previewing has to sit through the movie a second time, everyone else in the family is enjoying a new flick. And the parents in question are willing to do that because they're not willing to gamble $80+ on the film of the week not being a stinker, given Hollywood's track record for producing drek.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[evilninjax]

The better question is going to be Does it affect DVD sales.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Isaac Remuant]

mmmm, this is interesting.

Imagine if someone implemented some sort of:

"Watch the first 10 minutes of this movie for free" and then you have the option to buy the ticket "for your nearest cinema" (or purchase the movie online if it has already been released in that medium).

Although it seems unlikely because it offers almost no incentives in the business side of things (unless it was a paid subscription system).

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[zlives]

while we are on it, can i get game demos back too :)

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[binarylarry]

Wow, my theater is nothing like that.

You might want to try another place.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jdgeorge]

No kidding! And it's even worse at the movie theaters!

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[kryliss]

Don't forget laser pointers...

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jdgeorge]

Seriously, my biggest gripe with "the full cinematic experience" is that it's loud enough for me to hear FROM my living room.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[GeckoAddict]

Let's be honest... the MPAA doesn't use lube, which is why it hurts so much to sit in a theater...

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

I see the overpriced food and drink.

The rest don't happen at our local theatre.

What it does have is mind piercing volume. We are talking 120db, nearly weaponized volume you can hear outside the building.

We asked that they turn it down last night and they did. We stopped doing business with the theatre which will not lower the volume.

And that was a for a light romantic comedy. Not even an action film. For some ungodly reason it was set to 7th row rock concert volume.

---

You can't duplicate the huge screen.

You can't duplicate the crowd effects of mass laughter, mass "ooing", mass "screaming"-- i.e. the crowd interacting with the film as a group.

I can see a comedy at home and its ... okay. I see the same thing with 20 other people (much less 300 other people) in a theatre and it's hysterical.

For action films, the huge screen has an impact that my 55" at home lacks.

If you put cam quality dark, with theatre noises and occasional random shakes up against a real DVD 3 months later and the theatre during 1st run, it's no contest.

Cam is a novelty and helpful to poor students.

My problem with DVD's (and entertainment in general) is that there is more than I can watch. I'm overwhelmed. So I usually go with the cheapest. But for Avengers, I did go see it in 3d. The 3d sucked and the glasses were uncomfortable after 2 hours.

I paid 7.25 which seems very reasonable.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ewibble]

I think you could implement, pay the ticket price watch the movie, didn't like the movie get a refund but you would have to fill in an application form.

You would get a couple of people scamming the system but I think most people wouldn't be bothered.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Talderas]

Is is sodium free salt?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[DerekLyons]

*Wow* Just when I think the pirates can't come up with an even more tortured and logic free "reason" justifying themselves - they manage to top themselves yet again.

"I can't be bothered to go to the theater and will feel left out if I can't talk about the movie - so it's ok to pirate it" Seriously? I mean, I can almost buy some of the arguments about regional codes, or not being released in new formats... but pirating because your self esteem will be damaged and you want to keep up with the crowd?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

Lol but not peter jackson or many other actual performers who invested a year of their lives in a multi billion dollar grossing but unprofitable film.

---

But seriousy... is it worth it to..

Surrender our privacy as a nation and go under constant surveillance, be forced to rebuy the same content multiple times because we have no way to legally buy the content and then watch it on our tv/computer/mobile device, suffer unjust penalties ($150k per movie vs a more reasonable fine of $500 or $1000), and have our devices crippled all so one group of people can make between 0% and .5% more profit?

Is the cost to society to protect the oligopoly worth it?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Minwee]

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

I'm shocked. How could anyone have guessed that if you _don't_ release something, nobody will be able to buy it from you? Curse those dirty pirates!

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[owlstead]

I'm not a fan of any copyright bureau, but I have to point out the obvious: how many people will download a *crappy* movie and still go to the theater? That's lost sales, even *if* it is for a crappy movie *1.

*1 crappy for the general public, there is lots of movies that I would think of as crappy that become a box office success

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[lenart]

While I am pretty sure that is the question the Hollywood people are asking themselves, I don't agree with the fact that it is the right question. In my opinion, the right question is: "How do we give our movie viewing audience what they want". And given that 80% of the people who downloaded it didn't come from the US, I think that that 80% was so excited about this movie that they didn't want to wait till it was in their local cinema.

In this world where more and more companies are using social media to get a better understanding of who their customers are, Hollywood still sees the world as regions. They try to withhold movies from people who are obviously eager to see them. It's obviously a financial issue, distribution of a movie costs money and world wide distribution through the current channels would probably be to expensive. But what if you'd change to a completely digital distribution system? And then provide all movies through this network so every theatre would have instant access to all movies? Maybe you could determine the selection of movies based on what people around that theatre would actually want to see...

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[na1led]

How about streaming low quality videos for free, and paying for SD or HD quality. I guess the only problem with this is, low budget crappy movies would never get revenue, which they probably don't deserve anyway.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ewibble]

I'm not sure but it might be that the networks get a discount on the old movies from the studios, after all it is advertising for the new movie.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[na1led]

They should refund you if you decide to leave before the movie finishes.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[SteveFoerster]

I guess. I liked it too. But when it comes to these things I have a fairly low entertainment threshold.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jmerlin]

To come up with a dollar amount, you must first assume that every person who watched an infringing copy of the movie would have purchased a ticket to see the movie AND THAT THEY DID NOT GO SEE IT ANYWAY. Both of these assumptions are completely incorrect. But together, they are uber-fucking-wrong. The movie made record breaking amounts. Yet people will complain that somebody watched it online at, heaven forbid, their convenience, even if the quality was sub 200p. There are so many problems with theaters and Hollywood's continual push to have movies first show up in theaters (the most inconvenient and terrible manner of distribution for viewers). I'd be willing to bet this model is so broken in this day and age that it's reducing their profits on new movies by 30-40%. So that 0.05% completely incorrect claim in losses due to piracy is absolutely dwarfed by very real losses in the draconian and ass-backwards distribution mechanism they still use. But we don't ever hear about analyses of losses like that, it's always the pirates. Always.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Crookdotter]

That is a hell of an idea. Where do you draw the line? 50% in? I think I'd set it at an hour, with 5 mins grace time. If you leave before an hours up, the refund is all yours. Amazing idea.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Splab]

Well there is some truth to it. I currently suffer from headaches and I get double vision if I sit too much in a high contrast environment, which means I can't go to the movies - if I want to keep up with what my friends are talking about, I actually *do* have to go and pirate, because there is no option for pausing a movie in the cinema (it takes me around 3 days to watch a full feature movie).

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jkflying]

What he's saying is that if the MAFIAA bothered to make a home-viewing version available, he'd be willing to PAY for it. Unfortunately the only people who offer that service is pirates, so... pirates it is.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jkflying]

Hah! Avengers released for me 8 days before the US (I'm in South Africa). Aus/NewZ got it even earlier...

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Ihmhi]

Watch the first 10 minutes of this movie for free"

The rule of thumb is if you walk out within the first 15 minutes of the actual film or so you've got a pretty good case. Check this out. You'd be surprised what you can get done if you just ask.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Ihmhi]

Derp, forgot some kinda important words. You've got a pretty good case for getting a refund from customer service or a manager if you leave within the first 15 minutes or so of the actual movie.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jo_ham]

Those in the UK wanting the "full cinematic experience" can get that by buying a DVD and then shopping for the popcorn and coke at Waitrose.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jo_ham]

That's "LoSalt" and is mainly potassium chloride (approx 60%), but it's not quite sodium free.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Eivind Eklund]

You're confusing a factual observation about the world (A leads to people doing B) with a moral argument (A makes doing B OK). Placing diamond rings on a publicly accessible tray outside your jewelry shop leads to people stealing them; this don't make stealing them them OK. It also indicates that placing diamond rings on a public accessible tray outside your jewelry shop is unwise if you're optimizing for low amounts of theft.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Pope]

Cam is a novelty and helpful to poor students.

LOL, the "poor student" excuse is such complete bullshit and reeks of the entitlement mentality. When I was a "poor student" we just either saw it at a second run theatre, or waited to rent it 6 months later.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[stephanruby]

Well may be, they should try forgetting about region-locking and staggered releases (unless they include new materials).

In my case for instance, I usually decide whether or not I'm going to get the DVD as I'm walking out of the movie theater after having just seen the movie. It's too bad they do not take advantage of my heightened emotional state at that point, because by the time the DVD is out -- it's really a gamble whether or not I'll buy that DVD then -- and by then, since I waited so long already and was able to survive without it, my rational brain (or my wife) has taken over and may delay the purchase even more, thinking that I should be able to get a better discount if I wait.

And it would be great if I could just pick up a copy of the DVD as I'm walking out, or in some cases where I absolutely know I will love the movie, it would be good also if they could just hand me the DVD as they're handing me the ticket (or just hand me the DVD without the ticket in case I didn't want to see the movie at the theater, because I was seeing another movie, or I arrived late for the last show time, or whatever...). And if the movie theater didn't have any DVDs left on hand, which I understand logistically can easily happen, it would be just as good to me if they could just ship the DVD to my home address in the next couple of days -- having made the purchase of the DVD already at the movie theater.

And regarding the issue of region-locking, or regional releases, they should just forget about that too, and release movies according to the language they're in. This way, all the people in the World who want to buy the English version of a particular DVD can do it at the same time (with the Internet, there is little reason not to allow that). If they still want to stagger something, stagger the Chinese subtitled version, or stagger the Mandarin/Cantonese dubbed version, since still most people are lazy and still prefer to wait until a movie is professionally dubbed into their own language before seeing it.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Imrik]

All I have to say about that is where are you getting in for 7.25? Around here it's 10-11 for a matinee in 2D, more if you want 3D (I don't) or a later show.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[dtmancom]

Downloaded a cam copy before opening weekend.

1. Bought 5 total tickets opening weekend, on Friday night for the wife and I, on Sunday afternoon for wife, son, and myself.

2. I partially bought because of the DL. It is hard to assess the quality, so the other reason was the hype that was building. I would say 70/30.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[roman_mir]

I can see a comedy at home and its ... okay. I see the same thing with 20 other people (much less 300 other people) in a theatre and it's hysterical.

- that is weird.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[zlives]

the whole idea was DRM free

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Jedi Alec]

Although actually posing the question instead of wildly speculating is a major improvement, I have my doubts as to just how representative the average Slashdot commenter is for the average pirate ;-)

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[eulernet]

It has been done for Serenity, 7 years ago.

The first 20 minutes were viewable.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[eulernet]

I forgot to mention that it was done by Joss Whedon !

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[zorax]

I had never seen Firefly. I heard about and watched the free preview of Serenity online. That was good enough to convince me to go watch the movie and support that marketing plan. I enjoyed the movie and even purchased the Firefly DVD boxed set later. Without that free preview online those sales would have been lost.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[internerdj]

We've tried everywhere in town, cheap to expensive. We even have one with an adult section (which apparently means that the annoying people get served alcohol too.) Every place is like that. So, now we go to the cheap places for anything we really want to see, because the service isn't that much worse. Anything else we wait for video.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[lister king of smeg]

my local theater is the only one near by that i don't have to drive 45 minutes to get to, and the charge $10 bucks for 2d and $15 for 3d and about 5 bucks for popcorn. i have gone to several movies where there are less than a dozen people in the theater. if the want people to go the should charge a more reasonable price.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[hairyfeet]

I would add that it also creates sales in other ways, take myself as an example. i heard this buzz on the net about this show that starred a soap actress and the guy from the Taster's Choice commercials. Now naturally that don't sound like my kind of show and wouldn't you know it no station in my area was carrying it anyway. But I downloaded the first 2 episodes and got hooked and now have the complete BTVS,Angel, and Firefly DVD collection (didn't care for Dollhouse) along with a couple of collectible figures given to me by my late sister to be bookends for them. That right there is over $600 in sales and I'll probably buy Avengers the second it comes out on DVD because its the same director. The only reason I won't go see it in theaters is because i can't deal with all the damned talking and cell phones going off which is bad in my area.

Would I have bought them without trying the show first? Not a chance in hell, like I said its description frankly didn't sound appealing, but because i could download a few episodes to preview I bought all those DVD box sets and will go see any movies he directs.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[chilvence]

This is why it is stupid to have an end of season cliffhanger. If your series is unlucky enough to be killed, then there can never, ever be any closure. It really is a terrible, terrible habit, worse than picking your nose while addressing a crowd.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[hairyfeet]

That depends...how crappy are we talking here? Are we talking "MST3K pile in with your buds and laugh at it" crappy, or just boring? Because i can tell you while not a big movie buff I DID buy Kane & Lynch II Dog Days simply because the reviews were so TERRIBLE I figured i'd get an MST3K laugh out of it and for $4 new I figured WTF.

While it IS pretty funny to laugh at, nekked fat characters and horrible targeting (don't bother with anything but the shotgun because even at long ranges it'll beat the rifles) for those that like to MST3K a game I'd recommend "You Are Empty" by this little Russian developer. The cut scenes make NO sense and look like an outtake reel from The Ring, you have crazy Russian coots running at you going "Wooga booga" I swear its true, oh and you get attacked by 20 foot tall MUTANT CHICKENS! That alone was worth the $6!

so the moral is if you have a stinker don't go half ass, go full crapfest because if its bad enough you can always grab some buds an MST3K the hell out of it. Hell hire the MST3K guys and have them do a rifftrax for the theater, I'd be happy to go see a film with Joel and the bots ragging the shit out of it.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[dgatwood]

*Wow* Just when I think the pirates can't come up with an even more tortured and logic free "reason" justifying themselves - they manage to top themselves yet again.

Wrong on both counts:

1. I do not pirate movies.
2. I was not attempting to justify anything.

It is a well understood fact that prohibition almost invariably leads to a black market. What we have here is a movie distributor prohibition on the sale of DVDs. Because there are no legal channels for watching the movie at home, an illegal channel for doing so naturally forms. I'm not saying that the black market is right or a good thing. I'm saying that the movie studios are morons for stubbornly refusing to provide a viable alternative, and are thus at least partially to blame for the situation. If you refuse to make your product available in a form that people want to consume, you can't really expect me to feel sorry for you when people find ways to convert it into that form using illegal means.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

Cinemark Theatres in Houston on Sunday afternoon. $8.50 for Friday nights.
It's much less for 2d. I think $7 (friday) and $6 (sunday) respectively.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

I can see the entitlement...

But if they have no money to pay for the movie anyway, then the studio loses nothing anyway.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Lagmo]

But for Avengers, I did go see it in 3d. The 3d sucked and the glasses were uncomfortable after 2 hours.

I paid 7.25 which seems very reasonable.

Indeed it does.. Almost unreasonably so, I just paid 110DKK(about $19.5USD incl. 25%VAT) + 5DKK reservation fee for the same privilege.

The audio was fine and so was the movie for that matter, but the Real3D setup gave me a splitting headache after just half an hour or so. I think I'll enjoy the 2D Bluray version considerably more, DAMN, there goes another $35..

How are these people NOT making money hand over fist already? And they want MORE protection for their racket?!

.
..
...

o--(=\=) ---THIS IS THE WORLDS SMALLEST VIOLIN AND IT'S PLAYING JUST FOR YOU MPAA.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[hkmwbz]

Not relatively large, but that is still $1,000,000 more that should go to those investing in the movie and movie theatres

Correction: That's $1,000,000 that wasn't fraudulently stolen by the movie industry using Hollywood Accounting.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[ElusiveJoe]

There really shoudn't be food & drinks in the cinema in the first place. Especially popcorn & soda which are awful for your health.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Artifakt]

The Avengers is technically a sequel to "Iron Man", "Iron Man 2", "The Hulk", "Captain America", and "Thor". Those movies are (critically and financially) a mixed bag. The Avengers is (at least critically and financially) better than several of these prequels. I'd figure just offhand that a higher percentage of potential customers than usual might want to sample The Avengers and see which of its predecessors it most resembles before going. In other words, there's a reason to think pirate copies of The Avengers had less loss effect than usual for blockbusters on sales or maybe even added to sales, but if the film had been full of the badder bits from all the prequels, the same piracy might have had more effect than normal.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[j-beda]

*Wow* Just when I think the pirates can't come up with an even more tortured and logic free "reason" justifying themselves - they manage to top themselves yet again.

"I can't be bothered to go to the theater and will feel left out if I can't talk about the movie - so it's ok to pirate it" Seriously? I mean, I can almost buy some of the arguments about regional codes, or not being released in new formats... but pirating because your self esteem will be damaged and you want to keep up with the crowd?

Your moral/ethical arguments do not invalidate the proposition that this type of thing is a driving force for piracy of this nature (which may or may not be significant). dgatwood didn't say he necessarily felt this way, but that "lots of folks" did.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Sabriel]

What I find ironic is how the industry spends a fortune on advertising to brainwash kids into "impulse" buying habits, spends a further fortune on bribing the government to extend their copyrights and cut their taxes (that go in part to the education system), and then complains when those same kids "impulse" download since they lack the education to understand why modern copyright originally existed in the first place.

"Just Do It", indeed.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

I used to buy a lot of DVD's.

Then I realized I was only watching them once.

So I rent or wait for it to come on TV.

Unless...

I know for sure i will watch the movie again within 5 years.

This is a very short list of movies/Shows for me and I own these on DVD.
Moulin Rouge (19), Silverado (15), Inception (3), Circle of Iron (15ish), Band of Brothers (3), Dead Like Me (2), and a dozen more.

Ironically--- Starwars did not make the cut.

Renting is cheap. Owning takes space. And is expensive.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[SuricouRaven]

Could backfire, though. In the case of movies which turn out to be really terrible, studios depend upon the power of advertising to get people into the cinema on the opening weekend. Cut together a good trailer to make the film look awesome, and by the time people realise it isn't they have already paid. This is a recognised practice - when The Hulk flopped dismally, one of the studio's explanations was the increasing use of texting allowed word of the movie's intense crappyness to spread faster than anticipated.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[neokushan]

So basically, what you're saying is that bad films get affected by piracy in a negative way while good films get affected in a positive way. Sound about right?
I've yet to see a single film do terrible at the box office yet be a critical success. All the films that caused the most uproar over piracy have been terrible.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[petman]

The Avengers is technically a sequel to "Iron Man", "Iron Man 2", "The Incredible Hulk", "Captain America", and "Thor".

FTFY.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[equex]

Worse than biting your toenails while addressing a crowd too ?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

I can see the entitlement...

But if they have no money to pay for the movie anyway, then the studio loses nothing anyway.

If they have no money to pay to rent a fucking DVD for two quid, how about they get off their arses and get a job, or else find a free hobby like reading library books?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

Why do people here go on as though it's compulsory to buy a bucket of popcorn and a gallon of coke to stop you from starving/dehydrating to death during a two hour film?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

I can vouch for that, I downloaded Tron Legacy (cam video). The quality was terrible but it got me interested to go see the movie at cinema. Problem is that these Trailers always make these movies look good, but suck when you go watch them. If it's a good movie, I'll go watch it on the big screen, or buy the Blueray, but I'd like to see what I'm paying for first.

I can't believe anyone would sit through any version of Tron Legacy then voluntarily watch it again. A poster of one of the two hot babes on your wall if you're a seventeen year old student, maybe, but that's it.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[cpu6502]

Yeah THEY say they are losing money on CDs so they can convince politicians to pass ProtectIP and CISPA laws. Also the ACTA treaty. But in reality they are now making a ton of money off single sales, and that is more than offsetting any loss from CDs:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=music+industry+making+more+money+than+ever

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

That is a hell of an idea. Where do you draw the line? 50% in? I think I'd set it at an hour, with 5 mins grace time. If you leave before an hours up, the refund is all yours. Amazing idea.

You sound like you never heard of anyone getting a refund for walking out of a film early. Is this seriously news to you?

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

Those in the UK wanting the "full cinematic experience" can get that by buying a DVD and then shopping for the popcorn and coke at Waitrose.

I think you mean ASDA.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Maxo-Texas]

Clearly you feel much stronger on the issue that I do. Is it philisophical or are you an artist of some kind?

I want a reasonable relationship between copyright holders and the rest of society.

I currently think that anything past 28 years is unreasonable on the part of copyright holders. I think it stifles new derivative work. For example, if the descendents of the original creators of the Snow White story back in the middle ages still had copyright, it would have not been collected by Grimm. It would not have been as popular, and Disney (Julia Roberts, 20th century fox, ABC, Many independent comic book makers) would not have been able to tap in to the cultural Meme of Snow White and tell us an interesting new story about it. (Once upon a time, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Hunter, etc. etc.)

Yet here they are insisting on keeping the stories locked up for the next 100 years or more (life of author plus 70 years) or as Jack Valenti said "Forever less one day".

Copyright exists to encourage creation of works for the public. Those creations can then be used by other creators in a reasonable time period (28 years or even 14 years) to make new entertaining stories.

However, the problem is somewhat self correcting given the current incredible glut of entertainment, my main mitigation is to watch the least expensive entertainment first. By the time I get to the other entertainment, it's usually a dollar or less.

If there is no harm to the copyright holder, then I'm not bothered.
I get that you are. Your opinion is reasonably legitimate tho miserly and harsh to people too poor to afford the entertainment anyway.

I can't justify denying them happiness when it does no harm.
It's different if they have money and rip off the material anyway.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

You lived somewhere that never showed "Buffy The Vampire Slayer"?

Lucky bastard.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jo_ham]

I was talking about needing to take out a mortgage to afford the snacks. Asda would sell them to you cheaply because they were prepared by blind Chinese orphans.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[lister king of smeg]

i dont pay for theirs i just smuggle my own chips and soda in. but the point is that the prices are and indicator of how overpriced the whole thing is. and many do consider getting those things part of the cinema experience.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Jens Egon]

I don't think so, many of us outside the US are well aware that we are being asked to sit in the back of the bus - because of being you know ... ethnic.

Now, no-one was ever hurt by sitting in the back of the bus, but we're not going to fork over money to corporation that insist on treating us as second rate humans.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[jkflying]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

If Forrest Gump can make a loss, then Hollywood making a loss means ever increasing profits.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[CodeHxr]

And, please note, your IP addresses will *not* be monitored or collected by any government agency, spider bot, or anything else of that nature, so please feel comfortable admitting to breaking the law in a publicly accessible network location. :)

</sarcasm>

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Rakarra]

Are we talking "MST3K pile in with your buds and laugh at it" crappy, or just boring?

The former can provide a better movie-going experience, which may even arguably make it an a better movie.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Rakarra]

If you want our money, start treating us like equals, and release the damn movies at the same time everywhere.

The problem is that it's far MORE expensive to open super-wide in all territories at once. You have to make and ship far more film prints.

Also, the dirty not-so-secret fact about international movie releases -- the countries that have a higher likelihood that a high-quality pirated version of the film will be made and put on P2P on that country's release day -- those are the countries that get the film later.

We're just talking theatrical releases, not DVD/Blu-Ray/streaming releases.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[Macgrrl]

From memory it was around $17 to see it in 3D at our local Village Cinema in Melbourne. Sounds like the cinema in Townsville is gouging you.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[foksoft]

This is done to reduce revenue loss from piracy. Just imagine what sometimes happen. You go and see movie poster saying that it is premiere. You say to yourself, hey it might be good movie. But then you think. Wait a minute, what a premiere, it is the movie I have downloaded a couple months ago. OK, but it wasn't bad and I almost forget what it was about. I will go and see it again. And you go and it feels like watching those old movies with Charlie Chaplin. Studios make their profit and you feel good because you have seen that old forgotten movie again.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[tehcyder]

I'm not a fan of any copyright bureau, but I have to point out the obvious: how many people will download a *crappy* movie and still go to the theater? That's lost sales, even *if* it is for a crappy movie *1.

*1 crappy for the general public, there is lots of movies that I would think of as crappy that become a box office success

You didn't get the slashdot memo: Piracy does not result in lost sales.because no one who illegally downloads a copy would have bought it anyway.

In fact, piracy increases sales, because out of all the people who llegally download a copy, some at least will then pay for a copy/go to the cinema when they wouldn't have done otherwise.

I think that's right, anyway.

Oh yes, and it's traditional to put a "copyright infringement != theft" remark somewhere in your post, guaranteed a +5 insightful mod.

Re:How can you quantify the loss?

[martin-boundary]

You must not download enough movies. Whenever I see one that says SCREENER NOT FOR RESALE in half the scenes, I spare a kind thought for the poor pirate who voluntarily put his rectum in TSA's way just to bring one more movie into the Free World.

who cares about opening $ amounts?

[i.r.id10t]

With ticket prices way up (at least from the last time I paid to see a movie in a theater) of course even a bomb is going to have high $ sales.

What percentage of seats available were sold? I think that would be a better metric than gross dollars worth of tickets sold...

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[hbar squared]

In the town I saw it in this weekend, literally 100% of the Saturday seats were sold. Every. Single. Seat.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the nearest cineplex was sold out for the entire weekend.

All 60 showings, in the three biggest capacity theaters in the cineplex, with 2 3-D screens and 1 2-D screen.

Seriously, noon to midnight, every single showing completely filled.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Moheeheeko]

The midnight show here was sold out, and they had it running on EVERY screen in the place for the midnight show, and then went to sell out for the rest of the weekend.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[iateyourcookies]

It's not even a sensible argument... 0.5% of 200 million is still ONE MILLION DOLLARS. The Austin Powers reference wasn't even intentional!

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[T-Bone-T]

I heard on the radio of theaters not having enough seats. People with tickets were walking in to the theater but every single seat was occupied.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[gstrickler]

But according to MPAA math, 100,000 pirated copies @ 2250-150k per copy is billions in lost revenue.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[aztracker1]

I went to the opening midnight showing myself. I had bought tickets for an all-day event, but my GF banged up her foot badly on Weds, and wouldn't be able to be at the theater all day. :( We wound up watching it at a Drive-In (quality about on-par with a cam rip, though better sound, local FM transmitter). I had joked about maybe just downloading a CAM RIP, and decided a Drive-In would be better.. only slightly. It was a really slow-paced movie and was really expensive, if you count the $90 for the two all-day tickets (prequel films, and feature), then the two tickets at the Drive-In. Needless to say, won't feel bad if I download a BR-RIP on release.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I agree with the other respondents - all the seats were sold.

I went to the earliest showing of the day, got there within ten minutes of the theatre actually opening, picked the format I expected the fewest other people to want to watch, and still had a bitch of a time finding three seats together for myself, wife, and daughter.

And there were NO empty seats when the show actually started.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[geekoid]

average ticket price in 2012 — $7.83

You do the math.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Pope]

20 years ago, the Adult ticket price in Ontario was $8. Now it's $13. That's pretty much following inflation. 3D, IMAX, and other options will increase that of course, but they're entirely optional expenses.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Artifakt]

I took 'She who technically doesn't have to be obeyed but try telling her that' (Ms. ExArtifakt), to see it Monday night. 3D at $10.50 a ticket, maybe 25 people in the theatre, and canned sodas from a machine inside the place at $1 each. Clean floors, a ruly crowd, and not a single 'jerk with cell phone' issue.

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Neil Boekend]

Is that including 3d surcharges, IMAX surcharges and justbecausewecan surcharges?

Re:who cares about opening $ amounts?

[Rakarra]

With ticket prices way up (at least from the last time I paid to see a movie in a theater) of course even a bomb is going to have high $ sales.

I'm not so sure about that, John Carter had pretty low sales. Even paired as a double feature with Avengers it's barely eeking out $70m domestic, making it Disney's priciest bomb. They wrote off a $200m loss.

Pirated and still paid for tickets

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in US, downloaded a cam rip, and still bought three tickets to see it. Hell, I'll probably pay to see it again.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[SebaSOFT]

True, I really don't get the "Pirates failed...." argument of the OP. It sustains that the piracy scene is activelly trying to prevent people to go to the cinema.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[Marillion]

Dear Hollywood,
The reason The Avengers succeeded where other movies performed poorly is because it was a special and unique movie. Specifically, it was a good movie that lots of people wanted to see.
Sincerely,
Me.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[Altus]

I really don't understand downloading the cam rip, especially if you knew you were going to go see it. What is the appeal?

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[justinlindh]

That logic falls apart when you consider that the last Twilight movie made $300.5M at the box office.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[mordred99]

Simple. You see it first. Even if you knew you were going, and seeing it in the theater, the anticipation overwhelms you that you cannot wait. It is like opening your presents Christmas Eve because you cannot wait until Christmas Morning. You know you want it, and you don't have to wait, so why wait?

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[Bucky24]

Not if you consider that "good" is relative. As much as I disagree with them, a large number of people thought that Twilight was a good movie and wanted to see it.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[justinlindh]

But your argument is exactly what my comment about Twilight was meant to prove. Most of us, especially on Slashdot, probably consider the Twilight movies to be neither special or unique. It still made a (relative) killing at the box office.

You're absolutely right: There's a market for just about any kind of movie, even if most of us think it's shit. Which is exactly the point I was trying to get across by highlighting Twilight, and contradicts the GP's point about "Unique + Special = Profit". A movie doesn't need to be either to be considered a success. A success, as far as Hollywood is concerned, is a profitable movie.

It's no coincidence that all of those God awful parody movies made by Friedberg/Seltzer (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movies) kept being made. They were universally panned by critics, and were the exact opposite of unique and special. They only kept churning them out because there's an audience for them... at least a large enough one to make them profitable.

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

I really don't understand sex before marriage, especially if you're engaged and your honeymoon is six months away. What is the appeal?

Re:Pirated and still paid for tickets

[Rakarra]

But your argument is exactly what my comment about Twilight was meant to prove. Most of us, especially on Slashdot, probably consider the Twilight movies to be neither special or unique. It still made a (relative) killing at the box office.

That's because to teenage girls, Twilight is special and unique.

Hollywood Multiplier

[SJHillman]

You forgot to apply the Hollywood Multiplier. Each of those pirates would actually watch the movie at least 800 times apiece. In 3D. And buy tons of merchandise. If only the option to download it outside of the system wasn't available. So it's actually a 400% loss, not a *potential* 0.5% loss.

Re:Hollywood Multiplier

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, all you needed to do was include a large popcorn and soda. That'd more than made up the RIAA fudge factor.

And fudge, they should buy some of that too.

Re:Hollywood Multiplier

[Rude Turnip]

And all that lost revenue means there were fewer expenses for the studios to charge against the cost of the film to screw over the writers, director and actors. So, not only did they suffer from lost revenue, they suffered from lost losses!!! This is how movie studios (and record companies) actually think.

Re:Hollywood Multiplier

[srmalloy]

Perhaps, then, the way to get the MAFIAA [Music And Film Industry Association of America] off the backs of the file-sharers is to have them submit -- anonymously, of course -- bills for the advertising they're doing to increase the visibility of the movies or music being shared. That way, the production companies would be able to document the additional costs in their accounting to show that they're still in the red for the total production.

Yar

[Anonymous Coward]

Yar. Though we be pirates brave and true, our great guns and carronades only reach about 1 mile inland - and that be with good harborage. Thar be no way we can conduct the required cannonades to plundar all movie theatres for thar treasure chests of delicious popcorn with non-dairy liquid.

Re:Yar

[Trails]

Aye, the buttery topin' in Tortuga be runnin' low, argh. Soon I'll only have me grog to put on me popcorn while watching a cam of the back'o some landlubber's seat! A pirate's life for me!

they're not mutually exclsusive

[jaymz666]

How do we know those 100K downloads didn't ALSO buy a ticket?
Also, how many of those 100K downloads bought a ticket because of the download?

Re:they're not mutually exclsusive

[SJHillman]

And how many of the 300 million that didn't download it also didn't go to see it because they couldn't justify $15 for a movie that they only might like?

Re:they're not mutually exclsusive

[Cinder6]

Another important metric: How many of those 100k downloads were from people who wouldn't have bought a ticket even if they couldn't pirate it?

Re:they're not mutually exclsusive

[jaymz666]

And... how many of those 100K didn't watch it?

Re:they're not mutually exclsusive

[sandytaru]

I know of at least one that watched five minutes of it and then gave up and paid the money to see it in the theater in decent quality.

Re:they're not mutually exclsusive

[93,000]

I'm usually an Ed Norton fan, but nothing was lost IMHO.

Um

[Quiet_Desperation]

People actually watch those camcordered versions? Really? I torrented one once. I thought it was a joke. Is there a market for pirated ebooks with blurry fonts or MP3s reduced to monaural sound at 16 Kbps, too?

Re:Um

[SJHillman]

You have three alternatives for seeing the Avengers in the near future:
$15 - watch it in crowded theaters at high def, pay gobs more for concessions
$0 - watch it at home at low def in your underwear with your own snacks
$0 - don't watch it (or wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it as often as you want for the price of a single theater viewing)

The second and third option cost the same and there are a lot of people that still get as much or more enjoyment from the low def movie in their own home. I chose the third option, but if I really wanted to see the movie I'd sure as hell go with option 2. If it turned out to be too crappy quality, I'm only out a few minutes of my time and I can still go see it in the theater.

Re:Um

[NoSleepDemon]

Agreed, some people really are that desperate. The comments on them are also hilarious "brilliant camcorder rip! A9/V9" - brilliant with respect to what? Watching the moon landing?

Re:Um

[netsavior]

I take it you never pirated audiobooks or ebooks pre-kindle. The Audible mp3s are getting better, but for a long time even pay audiobooks were super low quality. Before there were large name ebook vendors (and I am talking amazon and barnes here not the smaller older ones) most of the eBooks out there in pirateland were from spine ripped, ocr'd scan stacks. They weren't blurry, but they were full of ocr errors and formatting problems.

Re:Um

[roc97007]

If those were the only things available, sure. It opened internationally before it opened in the US, so if you wanted to see it, it was the only way short of hopping on a plane.

...or waiting until it was released in the US. Unless you are in the last stages of terminal cancer and for some reason seeing The Avengers is on your bucket list, it's not a big deal to wait a few days.

Re:Um

[CrimsonAvenger]

You have three alternatives for seeing the Avengers in the near future:
$15 - watch it in crowded theaters at high def, pay gobs more for concessions
$0 - watch it at home at low def in your underwear with your own snacks
$0 - don't watch it (or wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it as often as you want for the price of a single theater viewing)

There is obvously a fourth option, since I bought three tickets for the show this past Saturday morning for $15 TOTAL, not apiece.

Re:Um

[na1led]

People do it because Trailers Suck! You can't tell a good movie by watch 1 minute of action. I don't like wasting my time to go watch a movie and have to leave half way through because it bored me to death!

Re:Um

[jeffasselin]

Every piece of literature, art, or human creative product is based on what came before. It's based on human nature, human history and human life; the species hasn't changed that much in the last 5000 years since the dawn of urban civilization.

So if you want really original stuff, read Gilgamesh and Homer, then you're done. Everything else is not original, not completely so; no artist operates in a vacuum.

Most of us choose instead to gain from retellings and new ways (or new mediums) of telling the archetypal stories of the human condition.

Is The Avengers a breakthrough? No, but it's a well-executed modern take on interesting and important stories that reveal somethings about ourselves, in a new medium that has its advantages and its failings. And it's FUN.

Re:Um

[SJHillman]

The time to find a torrent is, for many people, roughly the same or less as the trip to the theater and it can easily download in the background or overnight, so I thought of those but discounted them as barely relevant.

Re:Um

[Kjella]

I chose the third option, but if I really wanted to see the movie I'd sure as hell go with option 2. If it turned out to be too crappy quality, I'm only out a few minutes of my time and I can still go see it in the theater.

I wouldn't, if it turns out to be a good story I wouldn't want to put it down and once I've seen it to the end.... well, there's extremely few movies I could stomach to watch twice, knowing exactly what plot twists are going to come and exactly what they're going to say. Particularly if I went to the cinema shortly afterwards I'd be wanting a fast forward button for half the movie. Personally if I just want to see the movie, like there's not actually going to be a social event around it, then I'll wait for the BluRay release to watch on my own home cinema where I have a soft couch, pizza and beer. Hell, that kind of in-home cinema can get rather social too but then we pick the accepted noise level and if we need a bathroom break we can agree to pause it for a few minutes.

Oh, just so we're clear by BluRay I normally mean torrents. I generally buy it (unless the movie sucked ass) but that's entirely for the feelgood factor. The online offers don't come close to being the same level of quality as the pirate offerings, completely disregarding price. Just give me to me like DRM-free music and stop being such a pest, because the pirate offerings will be there anyway. You're just steering me towards using them instead of your crappy service.

Re:Um

[ewibble]

But if you look at the way people behave apparently it is important. People sleeping on the streets to get the latest iPhone (or other gadget) straight away. Queue for the latest harry potter book. Personally I can wait a couple of days just to avoid spending hours in the queue. Hell want to watch the Avengers movie, but I can wait the years until it comes out on TV. But I know I am a freak and the norm is to want something right now. If this wasn't the case why would people borrow to by things like TVs that they can't afford at the moment.

And the movie makers know people are like this, stagger the release to get maximum hype.

Re:Um

[geekoid]

You forget another option:
Waiting.

Re:Um

[roc97007]

It so happens I *do* take part in international discussions about things like movies, and I often need to avoid discussions for movies I haven't seen yet. I suspect that foreign participants often have to do this for American made movies, so we can hardly complain when we have to wait.

In any case, it's no reason to watch a crappy handheld camera version in mono sound. I'm not talking what's legal here, but what makes a reasonable viewing experience.

Re:Um

[bubkus_jones]

It's what's available. Sometimes the DVD screener makes rounds, but those are rare. Pirated E-Books and albums are generally copied from legitimate sources. The people responsible quite often buy the legitimate version and crack any copy protection, releasing a near perfect unhindered version. It's not like you've got a guy with a physical copy of the book scanning in each page, or someone holding a recorder up to their stereo speakers.

When a movie is still in the theatre, there's little one can do to get a high-quality copy, unless you have access to the source material (DVD screeners or the file they use for the digital projectors), and those are going to be protected pretty highly. Thus, the camera-in-the-audience version.

Re:Um

[roc97007]

I *hate* it when a new Apple gadget comes out. Any place I want to get to that happens to be next to an Apple store or an AT&T store (like, most of the Starbucks in this area) is just swarming with mindless fanbois blocking traffic.

But ok, you have a point, and it's behavior I could never understand. We saw The Avengers last sunday, but the way we work it is to go to the theater with the intention of seeing a film that's been out three or four weeks, but flexible enough to change our minds if it looks like the line isn't too long to get into the movie just released. As my wife will not go to 3d movies, and the 2d version tends to be less, this also works in our favor.

I could never understand queueing up with some gigantic crowd to sit in the far front in a hot stuffy theater just to say I had seen a film on opening night. I've done that exactly once, for the original release of Empire Strikes Back, and that was only because all my friends were going at that time. Haven't done it since.

Re:Um

[Quiet_Desperation]

Saw it for $10 on a gigantic screen, and anyone who buys concessions in a movie theater is an idiot or has no pockets.

Re:Um

[Quiet_Desperation]

A 9 relative to the Zapruder film of Kennedy being shot, perhaps.

Re:Um

[Quiet_Desperation]

Uh... I actually like the trailers. :-)

Re:Um

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'd call it a minor breakthrough in that it brought fun back to superhero films, especially after excruciating stuff like Superman Returns and, sorry, but the Nolan Batman films are taking themselves a tad too seriously. I *like* them, mind you, and will see the third one, but, geez, there is such a thing as brooding overload.

The animated Under The Red Hood was a great Batman flick.

Re:Um

[MtViewGuy]

Who wants to watch a blurry pirated version with questionable sound quality when by late this fall you can get it on 1080p high-defintion Blu-ray release with super high quality surround sound?

Re:Um

[qwak23]

I'd also like to add that the overall plot, characters, etc aren't the only value of a story, regardless of medium.

With books, the author's ability with the language may make a lame recycled plot and characters brilliant.

With movies/tv, the camera work, audio, pacing, etc are just as important as the story (and sometimes more so).

With video games, the level of immersion can have a drastic effect - compare (the original) doom with half-life: practically the same plot, yet one pulls you in and makes you part of the world.

You could sell me the same story every day in a new form as long as I thought your treatment of it was good.

Re:Um

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Why on earth would I be wearing underwear? I have blinds on my windows, nobody can see me.

Lost profits, ha.

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched a bit-torrent copy of Avengers, to see if it was appropriate for my child. It is, so we'll be buying TWO tickets.

Crappy camcorder copies work more like advertising than "crushing" box office sales. Assuming the movie is worth seeing, of course.

Pirates?

[Hatta]

I didn't even know there was a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie opening.

They still don't get it.

[metrix007]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

That's what they don't get. It's not stealing, because there are no lost sales.

People pirate because it is convenient, or because they want to see it and don't think it is worth paying for, or can't pay for it (students/unemployed as well as other regions). That is why Piracy makes no dent, because people are happy to pay for things worth paying for. All of the super hero movies. Good comedies. Shit like Contraband or MIB3 is simply going to do marginally well because it is tripe. Popcorn entertainment that is only worth paying for if there is nothing better to see and you still want to go to the movies.

I pirate a lot, because I can't afford to go to the theaters for most movies. Conversely most movies are not worth paying for and if I could not download them, I would be absolutely fine with that. The avengers is worth seeing in a cinema, which is why I will make sure I see it in one.

If studios, artists and programmers get rid of this idiotic concept that piracy is stealing and they are losing money, and just start making stuff worth paying for at a price people are willing to pay, then they will reap a profit. It's that simple, folks.

Re:They still don't get it.

[kiwimate]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place. ...
People pirate because it is convenient...

As you say - some people may not pay for something that they'd pirate (but that always strikes me as a disingenuous argument - if it's really not very good, why waste your time downloading it and then watching it?). But there are plenty of people who would have paid for it but will pirate it because it's convenient. There's low risk of getting caught, and they simply don't want to pay.

If you're downloading something, it has value. Maybe you don't ascribe as much value to it as the movie theater does, but the fact you are downloading it and taking up time (both to retrieve it and to watch it) and money (allocated space on your hard drive, bandwidth that you purchased from your ISP, electricity) means it has value to you. You can refuse to call it stealing because it's not "real" and you haven't deprived anyone of anything, but that is mere sophistry.

If it truly has little to no value - stop downloading it. For you, who cannot afford to go to the theaters, do what other people do and go without until you can afford it, or it becomes a higher priority of what to do with your disposable income. Sometimes, in the grown up world, people can't have everything they want; they have to make choices.

To finally wrench this rant back on topic, much of the figures being discussed in this article are the "leaders" - people who are willing to see a low fidelity copy or who will put up with the crush of the opening weekend crowd because they want to be first and that's their priority. It's not the shoddy webcam dreck that most worries studios; it's the pirated high quality rips once the DVD has been released.

Re:They still don't get it.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You must have needed a whole truckload of straw for that man you just built and then demolished. Good job! Let us know if you need any help cleaning up.

Re:They still don't get it.

[wisnoskij]

I agree the Entitlement of the studios.
I am ENTITLED to withhold this entertainment from people even if not doing so DOES NOT HURT ME in the least.
A pretty entitled, sadistic attitude to be sure.

Re:They still don't get it.

[Algae_94]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

I've already read 2 other posts of people that did pirate the cam version and then went to go see the movie. Piracy has a lot of use cases. The only one that costs the content producers money is when a person was going to pay for the content, but pirated instead and decides that is all they need. What % of pirated copies falls into this use case is a big unknown. I have a feeling it isn't very high and a lot of pirates wouldn't have been paying customers like you said, but I don't believe that 100% of pirates would have never paid.

Re:They still don't get it.

[BronsCon]

You missed the point. The point, of course, being that even if he couldn't pirate, he couldn't pay; no lost sale, no harm done.

If you can enrich your own life without hurting anyone else, why shouldn't you? Meanwhile, you're doing your damndest to try and bring someone else down for doing just that... without hurting anyone else, indeed. At least, that's how I try to live my life; have a positive impact, or none at all, on the people around me. And piracy does just that.

I'm either not going to buy or I am going to buy. Piracy has never prevented me from buying something I would have bought could I not have pirated it, but it has lead me to make purchases I would otherwise not have made. It's not a rationalization, it's a fact.

You're welcome to disagree, but then I would ask you to please explain to me how someone with no money can ever count as a lost sale. To illustrate what I'm looking for in an answer here, let's say I'm homeless, unemployed, have no cash, and my only posessions are my clothes and a digital camera; if I walk into an art gallery and snap photos of the works I like, rather than buying them, have I hurt anyone?

Re:They still don't get it.

[Fned]

Rationalization at it finest. Damn it I'm ENTITLED to see the movie EVEN IF I can't afford it.

If you CAN do something, and If it doesn't hurt anyone to do it, what difference does it make whether or not you're entitled to do it? Yours isn't an argument against entitlement; it's an argument in favor of rent-seeking behavior and memetic control by force. "They didn't pay me, so they shouldn't be allowed access to our culture."

You are not entitled to a job, a car, food on the table, or a movie in the DVD/Torrent player.

I take it they didn't have Sesame Street where you grew up, 'cause the rest of us can spot that One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others in less than a second.

Re:They still don't get it.

[na1led]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

That's not true. People who downloaded High Definition movies to watch on their big screen TV do it to save them the cost of buying it. Someone might see a BluRay movie they want, but don't want to spend the cash getting it, or rather try downloading it first. If a person can't get the movie for free, but really wants it, they'll pay for it. I bet some people who want to see this movie will wait till it's out on BluRay and download it, vs going to see at the cinema.

Re:They still don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have needed a whole truckload of straw for that man you just built and then demolished.

I love irony like yours. Most people won't pick up on the subtle joke, I'm afraid. The fact that he made a perfectly good point, and that you're making fun of the people who - lacking an argument based on substance and merit and intellectual integrity - trot out "straw man!" and "ad hominem" and "reducto ad absurdium" and "other debate-related terms that I really don't understand and by the way I also say 'begging the question' completely out of context and also say 'I could care less' when I mean exactly the opposite" ... they're hilarious. And I appreciate you lampooning them by using a straw man in a faux whine about someone else. Bravo!

Re:They still don't get it.

[hawkinspeter]

No - it's not stealing if you're not depriving the owner of their copy.

Re:They still don't get it.

[JohnG]

This argument becomes less convincing when you consider how many people pirate mobile apps. It's far more convenient to just pay your $0.99 and get the app from an official outlet than it is to pirate it. But there is still plenty of piracy. I don't think you can make the argument that people can't afford $0.99, or that (most) mobile software isn't worth less than the cost of a soda. I'm not saying that I've never pirated anything in my life. Most of the time it's because I can't afford it. Sometimes it's because I want to see a movie but don't have a car and can't get to theaters. But I do not represent everyone who does this sort of thing, and neither do you. Some people are just dirt cheap. And defending all of them based on your rationale for doing something isn't really helpful. Changes in the way companies think is going to come form open, HONEST, discussion. It seems that neither side is willing to do that, and both sides are simply pointing fingers at one another.

Re:They still don't get it.

[Bucky24]

I get the feeling that you're trolling here but just in case, let me try to explain to you again what OP is actually saying.

Imagine a world with no piracy. None. A movie comes out. 100 people buy tickets. 10 people either can't afford it or decide it's not worth it. The movie sells 100 tickets.

Imagine a world with piracy. A movie comes out and 100 people buy tickets. 10 people who can't afford it or decide it's not worth paying the ticket price torrent it. The movie sells 100 tickets.

Now, it's true that this is a very simplistic model. There are of course some people who will torrent rather then go to a movie just to stick it to the man, or because they feel like maybe they should save that $10 after all. But they are a minority. Most movie torrents, to be honest, are terrible (and cam rips are worse). I used to torrent, I won't lie, but that was before I got a job. Had I not been able to torrent, I wouldn't have gone to see the movie anyway. Now that I have money, I much prefer seeing the movie in the theater or buying the DVD. I suspect a vast number of pirates are the same (though I have no statistical data to back that up).

Bear in mind, I do agree with you that it's a bit of an "entitled" opinion to have (though a lot of that was given to us by society), but you've completely missed the point of OP's argument.

Re:They still don't get it.

[metrix007]

It has nothing to do with a sense of entitled. I don't imagine that I am entitled to anything that I didn't work or pay for generally, but when things are freely available, regardless of if they should be or not, a "sense of entitlement" does not really enter into the equation.

Less ""I'm entitled to it so I'm gonna take it try and stop me" and more "Huh, I can download this and have it without hurting anybody when I wouldn't otherwise be able to watch it, cool".

Re:They still don't get it.

[metrix007]

if it's really not very good, why waste your time downloading it and then watching it?

Quite simply because there is nothing better to do. The same way I might channel surf and settle on something I don't really care about, I might browse torrents and download and watch something I don't really care about.

But there are plenty of people who would have paid for it but will pirate it because it's convenient

These are by and far the minority. If it were the majority, movies would simply not do as well as they do, nor record sales. Itunes wouldn't even be able to make a profit.

but the fact you are downloading it and taking up time (both to retrieve it and to watch it) and money (allocated space on your hard drive, bandwidth that you purchased from your ISP, electricity) means it has value to you

Oh come on. Time is negligible. Hard drive space costs nothing, especially if you don't keep the file. Electricity would have to be paid for anyway. Bandwidth is not generally a finite resource in most peoples minds. Downloading something means....it was worth it for me to download. That's about it. For certain other stuff like say...rosetta stone or movies I actually really really want to see, I'll either pay for it at a point that coincides with how much I think it is worth, or if I can't do that...download it.

You can refuse to call it stealing because it's not "real" and you haven't deprived anyone of anything, but that is mere sophistry.

How is that sophistry? It is sophistry to try and say it is stealing. If no one is deprived of anything, then what theft has occurred?

If it truly has little to no value - stop downloading it.

Why? I mean, I'm not hurting anyone by doing so, and may be able to enrich my own life and contribute back to society in a positive way. Which is a net win for society.

 

For you, who cannot afford to go to the theaters, do what other people do and go without until you can afford it, or it becomes a higher priority of what to do with your disposable income.

Why? The only reason to do that is...out of some sense of morals based on the idea that if I download something I am stealing, which I don't accept and think needs to be redefined in the modern economy.

Re:They still don't get it.

[ewibble]

It's a mixture, but what percentage is hard to define because you can't measure what someone would have done.

Re:They still don't get it.

[jxander]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

Yes and no. I pirated a copy (*ahem*allegedly) because I couldn't be bothered to show up 3+ hours early to sit on a sticky floor in the theatre hallway. I love the comics, love the movie, love Joss Whedon's work ... but all of that couldn't compete with convenience of pirating, instead of marinating in the BO of whatever neckbeards WERE willing to sit on a sticky floor all afternoon. If pirating wasn't an option, well I probably would just gird my loins, and deal with the opening weekend BS. So pirating did (allegedly) lose them at least one sale on opening weekend: me.

However. I will still see the movie in theatres. Just not opening weekend. I have every intention of plopping down my $10-15 and getting my Avenger on. Hell, I'll probably see it 2 or 3 times.

Re:They still don't get it.

[ewibble]

The definition of stealing includes depriving the owner of something. If see your house colour, paint my house the same colour it I haven't stolen the paint from your house. Now you could say copying a movie deprives the owner the profit, however I don't think anyone has the right to profit, and if they where never actually going to profit from the copier then nothing was stolen. Copyright law may have be broken however.

Re:They still don't get it.

[R3d M3rcury]

You missed the point. The point, of course, being that even if he couldn't pirate, he couldn't pay; no lost sale, no harm done

Good point. I would never consider going to Disneyland. Therefore it's okay if I sneak in because, after all, I wouldn't have gone anyway. They didn't lose any money off of me sneaking in for free.

If you can enrich your own life without hurting anyone else, why shouldn't you?

Because you're getting for free what others are paying for. That is hurting others. Why should you get something for free when others have to pay?

Re:They still don't get it.

[R3d M3rcury]

I do agree with you that it's a bit of an "entitled" opinion to have (though a lot of that was given to us by society)

I put it to you, Bucky - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Well, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!

Re:They still don't get it.

[BronsCon]

You grab the last paragraph of my post, which poses a question, and fail to answer it while disregarding the rest of the post and declaring it to be built of straw. I'll provide a bit more courtesy to your post.

However most people who download movies do have some money - certainly compared with the $20 cost of the movies they want to watch - and they are potential economic participants in the market for entertainment products.

I addressed this in my post. I, indeed, do have money, yet I still download a shit-ton of content. 100% of my purchases over the last 12 years have been content that had previously pirated; most of those purchases were made within mere days of the initial download. I asked "If you can enrich your own life without hurting anyone else, why shouldn't you?" and nobody will ever answer that question in a straightforward, non-trolling manner, because such an answer doesn't exist. Would you like to try? And if you're going to explain that downloading a copy of something you have not paid for is hurting someone, please make sure to account for the purchases that would not have occurred without those same downloads; I, for example, am not going to plunk down $20 for a CD unless I've listened to the whole thing first, not just the 30 second samples provided by Amazon and one or two full songs that get radio play, especially when I can't return it if I don't like it. Please, tell me I'm wrong; then be prepared to back that up with logic.

If there is no moral or legal prejudice against downloading movies without authorisation then illegal downloads are just another 'supplier' to the market. The availability of a source of products for $0 has to affect the market for people trying to sell equivalent (at least in the case of DVD or Blu-rays, only semi-equivalent for movie theatres) products for >$0. To say otherwise is to assert that price has no impact at all on people's behaviour, which is even more ridiculous than the crap the MPIAA comes out with.

Well, then, it's a good thing I didn't say that, isn't it? For me, at least, it's less about the availability of a $0 source than it is about the availability of an unrestricted (use it how I want, not necessarily to share it with thousands of my closest friends), high quality source for media with zero risk of wasted purchases. That's right, let me return it if I don't like it. Too much to ask? Well, then I'll download it and either delete it because I didn't like it (I don't have it and I got to keep my money, just like if I had returned it, and there was no lost sale), or buy it (I have it, you have my money, and there was no lost sale). I can say with 100% certainty and honesty that there have been 0 lost sales as a result of my piracy and, in fact, there is a pending sale of a quite expensive piece of software now that they have released a version that runs stable on my system, to be completed as soon as I finish moving into my new apartment. These are sales gained by piracy, not sales lost, and they are sales that would have happened without piracy were there a way for me to return, for a full refund, media I did not like. That's why I pirate; not to get shit for free, but to ensure that I don't waste my hard earned money on shit i'm just going the throw away.

Piracy is an attempt to get all of the benefits out of that offer without suffering any of the costs.

Piracy has many motives. I've listed mine here, and in several other threads, and they are not in line with the single, limited-case, motive you state. Consider all of the driving forces behind the market and you'll see that the vast majority of the piracy problem is created by the industry itself; consider this fora moment longer and you'll see that the actualy piracy problem is minor compared to what the industry accountants want to claim.

Re:They still don't get it.

[BronsCon]

Good point. I would never consider going to Disneyland. Therefore it's okay if I sneak in because, after all, I wouldn't have gone anyway. They didn't lose any money off of me sneaking in for free.

You're taking up space in the park and using their resources. You're not just getting something for free, your actions are literally costing Disney money, so it's not a zero-sum game at that point.

Because you're getting for free what others are paying for. That is hurting others. Why should you get something for free when others have to pay?

How does me geting a free copy of a CD hurt you? Explain it, please, so I can figure out the best playlist to download to kill off people like you as quickly as possible.

Re:They still don't get it.

[GreatBunzinni]

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

That isn't totally correct.

I've spent about 5 years not listening to any music, but a while ago I decided to check out what the bands I knew and liked have been up to in all these years. Some ended, which made me die a bit inside, others kept going without releasing any new album but others actually put out a couple of them.

So, I've decided to check these new albums.

One of these bands was The Atomic Bitchwax. The band recorded a couple albums since I stopped listening to music, and so I set forth to download them. I did that, and on the .rar file which packed the latest album was a small text file which mentioned that the band's entire discography was being sold via download through the band's site. I've checked them out and lo and behold, they were selling a pack with their first 6 albums for 5 dollars. They were also selling the latest album for 5 dollars as well.

So, I've spent 10 dollars and purchased both of them. Quite nice.

At least in my case, I've only shelved 10 dollars on music, my only music purchase in the last 5 years, because I've downloaded some mp3 albums and stumbled on a good deal. I may not represent a lot of people, but as I happen to exist then it certainly must mean something. At least now, when I see someone claiming that people who download mp3 don't purchase music, or that music downloads hurt business, I know enough to call it like it is: a load of bullshit.

Re:They still don't get it.

[ElusiveJoe]

Piracy makes no dent, because people are happy to pay for things worth paying for.

However, I still can't convince myself to by a legal music CD. I don't even have a player for it, this thing is as useless as vinyl records. But if I pirate the album, I get a wide variety of formats and quality to choose from, not mentioning I get it inside my digital player instantly.

Re:They still don't get it.

[R3d M3rcury]

You're taking up space in the park and using their resources. You're not just getting something for free, your actions are literally costing Disney money

That's the best you've got--"you're taking up space." You're going to tell me about how I'm breathing oxygen, too, huh?

How am I costing Disney money? Disney is going to operate the park whether I'm there or not, so it's not like they're paying extra for electricity to haul my fat white ass up the side of Space Mountain.

How does me geting a free copy of a CD hurt you?

To drag your "using resources" argument back into the fray, resources were used to write and record that music. Resources were used to create that movie. My purchase of a movie ticket or CD or online download helped defray those costs. Your illegal downloading did not.

So, basically, I'm the one who's paying for the content that you're enjoying. That hurts me.

Or, to put it another way, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who enjoys the resources that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a guitar and write a song. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Sorry. Couldn't resist. :^D

Re:They still don't get it.

[BronsCon]

That's the best you've got--"you're taking up space." You're going to tell me about how I'm breathing oxygen, too, huh?

That's not the best I've got, but it's good enough to make my point. Regarding your breathing, you see, there's a process by which your body takes in oxygen and transfers it into your blood stream, exchanging it for carbon dioxide, which your body then expels. :) Yes, I'm pretty sure you're breathing oxygen, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this.

How am I costing Disney money? Disney is going to operate the park whether I'm there or not, so it's not like they're paying extra for electricity to haul my fat white ass up the side of Space Mountain.

In a crowded park, you're taking up space that someone else could be using. Plus, if you're not going to pay for anything, you're either just taking up space and probably not getting much enjoyment (e.g. not very relevant to this discussion) or you're sneaking onto rides, which is filling a seat that could have been filled by a paying customer. There are a finite number of seats, so by taking one for yourself without paying, you are denying Disney payment for a finite resource that costs them money to operate.

To drag your "using resources" argument back into the fray, resources were used to write and record that music. Resources were used to create that movie. My purchase of a movie ticket or CD or online download helped defray those costs. Your illegal downloading did not.

To drag your counter to my "using resources" argument back into the fray, those resources were used regardless of whether or not I pirated the media. The costs were set and the money already spent on those resources. Stealing a physical copy, of which there are a finite number which are created using resources which cost money, hurts somebody. I'd even go so far as to say that pirating a copy, when you have the means to purchase, and don't follow that up with either deletion or purchase, someone is seeing a loss (e.g. someone's getting hurt). If you don't have the means to purchase, it hurts nobody to make a copy, of which their is an infinite supply which can be made using only your own resources and those resources offered up by willing parties; I would also posit that, once one acquires the means to purchase, they are, then, creating a loss (e.g. hurting somebody) by not doing so.

No, the studios paid for it and set their price long before I pirated anything. Piracy doesn't affect you, as a consumer, in the slightest. Moreso, my piracy doesn't affect you, or the content creator, because I'm either deleting it immediately (and it's as though I bought it, didn't like it, returned it, and got a full refund; to wit, I wouldn't pirate if this were possible, because I wouldn't need to) or purchasing it (and it's as though I never pirated it to begin with).

Or, to put it another way, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who enjoys the resources that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a guitar and write a song. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Good to see that someone else on Slashdot can engage in a legitimate discussion and still keep a sens of humor without trolling. Great quote, by the way. I think I'll have to go download that movie and watch it tonight; only because I'm not sure which box my Blu-Ray copy is in.

Piracy is filling a market need, the ability to try a product in your own home, on your own equipment, the way you are actually going to be using it, and not be out any money if it doesn't pan out. It really became an epidemic around the time the compulsory "no returns if opened" policy was put into effect.

I'm not saying there's no other reason

Re:They still don't get it.

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Not quite. I'm ABLE to see the movie EVEN IF I can't afford it. The MPAA is ENTITLED to my money if I want to see the movie EVEN THOUGH they have no way of forcing me to pay them. So ... neener neener.

Re:They still don't get it.

[YodasEvilTwin]

Well said sir.

What if ...

[Cytlid]

... you stole the money from a pirate to see the movie? Who loses then?

Re:What if ...

[TheSpoom]

Ninjas.

Re:What if ...

[Fned]

... you stole the money from a pirate...

Stealing from pirates is copyright infringement.

Re:What if ...

[jkflying]

I don't see how that's relev... *facepalm*

I see what you did there.

Re:What if ...

[YodasEvilTwin]

Lol, mod parent funny, well played

Pirates increase sales!

[zethreal]

Huge numbers of people pirated the movie before it was released. The movie broke the record for opening weekend sales. Therefore, using the same figuring style that the MPAA uses ( only in reverse ), piracy actually made the movie industry millions!

Re:Pirates increase sales!

[zentigger]

The sad fact is you are probably not far from the bullseye on that one.

How many of the people that downloaded a crappy cam rip and could bear to sit through it told a bunch of their friends what a great movie it was, and not only went out to see it on the big screen, but brought a bunch of friends with them?

What a great guerilla marketing campaign that would be for Hollywood to pre-release a "cam" version of the film on Pirate Bay--poor video quality, lousy sound, shakes and wobbles, popcorn rustling!

Re:Pirates increase sales!

[jxander]

... the secret is out!

Mr. Tigger, you may not want to answer that knock at your door. The men in white coats are NOT YOUR FRIENDS! THEY ARE FULL OF LIES AND...

ohhh, the meds are kicking in... yaaaaay

Why I go to the Cinema

[Dartz-IRL]

If I just want to see a movie, I'll watch it at home.

Piracy shouldn't affect new-releases at all. People go to the cinema for the whole experience which is really something that can't be pirated, can it? Unless you install full projection equipment and a three story screen in your own home.

The rude interruptions from phone callers will come regardless.

Re:Why I go to the Cinema

[roc97007]

If I just want to see a movie, I'll watch it at home.

Piracy shouldn't affect new-releases at all. People go to the cinema for the whole experience which is really something that can't be pirated, can it? Unless you install full projection equipment and a three story screen in your own home.

The rude interruptions from phone callers will come regardless.

And the sticky floors. And $5 for a small box of Whoppers. And asking for two tickets for the 8:30 showing and getting two tickets for the 7:30 showing (which was already in progress) and having to argue with the manager about it.

All that said, I broke a personal rule and saw The Avengers in theater rather than waiting for the video, and despite everything was glad I did.

BTW, have you ever *seen* a camcorder capture? I think the only reason anyone would waste their time watching that was out of the delight of doing something forbidden. It's a crappy experience, not worthwhile even for free.

Re:Why I go to the Cinema

[mjr167]

I have a a small child I would be willing to rent out. She would be quite happy to throw popcorn at you and ask silly questions randomly during key dialog.

Re:Why I go to the Cinema

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Age and hourly rate?

Not News

[mcmonkey]

We saw this 10 year ago with "The Eminem Show". That album was everywhere online before it went on sale. It was like a virus--it was hard to be online during the Spring of 2002 and NOT download a copy.

Then it was released, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, sold over 1 million copies the first week, and was the best selling album of 2002.

I guess a story like this is good as another example to drive the point home. But really, not news.

A friend unable to leave bed...

[Anonymous Coward]

..because of cancer was the reason we got the torrented copy. She was able to watch while we were at the theater, so it was almost like she went with us. She in NO way would count as a lost ticket sale, and I expect this wasn't a unique occurance.

But without pirate

[geekoid]

the movie would have made 14 bajillion dollars!!!

Annoying title

[roc97007]

Ok, I understand where the poster was coming from, and (s)he is right, but I have to vote "Why Pirates Failed To Prevent a Box Office Record" as the most annoying article title for 2012, so far.

IMAX

[Animats]

Disney/Marvel made a big effort to get "Avengers" on almost every available IMAX screen. In 3D, even. With five audio channels and subwoofers the size of a minivan. A camcorder version, overcompressed for BitTorrent, is no more than a thumbnail of that.

Concert to movie comparison kind of sketchy...

[synth7]

In my town of less that 100K people I can easily see any movie in glorious Doubly (it's in Doubly!) Digital THX brain-surround. No problem. However, most larger musicians don't play a date anywhere near me. So comparing lost movie revenue due to digital piracy to lost concert revenue due to pirated music is a specious argument. They really aren't parallel, except in the loosest thinking.

Look, it's a big screen movie. That's why

[gestalt_n_pepper]

It's not going to translate to my tablet particularly well. I want that big screen, big sound experience. A recorded pirate version, even plugged into my wall TV's HDMI isn't going to cut it.

Now, if it was one of those indie movies, top-heavy with facial expression reaction shots, written by an film major, about self-obsessed pseudo-intellectuals obsessing about how they feel about some petty personal circumstance so banal, trivial and uninteresting that they could bore a rhino to sleep at 10 paces, yeah, I'd probably torrent it, assuming my girlfriend nagged me enough.

Re:Look, it's a big screen movie. That's why

[RussellSHarris]

I want that big screen, big sound experience.

I don't, at least not enough to pay for it. I do occasionally enjoy going to a movie with my friends, but that's because I enjoy being with my friends enough to occasionally pay for a movie.

This is a false dichotomy

[nanotech]

I didn't bother to read the article obviously, but to compare opening weekend results directly with CAM downloads ignores many aspects. The most obvious to me is the people who did NOT go out to the theatre and who WILL NOT download the CAM, but who WILL wait two months for a high-quality free Blu-Ray rip to appear online. These are potentially lost sales for the theatres.

(Having said that, after going back to a theatre for the first time in a couple years specifically to see Avengers, I still believe the root of their problem does not lie with piracy, it lies with the appalling rudeness found in your average public gathering. For the same price, two months later, my living room is infinitely more comfortable and better equipped to show ME the movie in a manner I will enjoy and not be distracted by phones, screaming children, and poor sound).

the gun is good!

[Thud457]

You didn't feel abused by this?

I'd much rather watch Sean Connery in a red hooker outfit and slut boots than in a kilt any day!

If we're talking camcorder copies

[vawwyakr]

Then I doubt not only that it had an impact I doubt the 100k figure as well. I bet it was more like 10k people trying to download it 10 different times from different sources looking for something other than a crappy camcorder download.

Yo ho all together

[thomas797]

Hoist the colors high

Who thought this story about

[fermion]

The fact that Pirates: Band of Misfits isn't doing better than yet another unoriginal sequel pulled out someone's anus.

I mean, I am going to see Avengers, but in no way expect to be of the caliber of creativity and technical caliber of Pirates. Plus, it is very unlikely that Avengers is going to have a reference to Are you being served a certain pussy belonging to a certain randomly colored hair lady.

Everyone always complain about the long line of sequels and regurgitated ideas we must endure, but seriously, look at what brings in the money?

Re:Who thought this story about

[w_dragon]

I saw Pirates, and while I don't regret spending the money on it I wouldn't see it again, it just isn't a very good movie. It's different in style, yes, but at best it may become a cult-classic B-movie. The story is grossly lacking, the characters aren't interesting, and the jokes aren't good enough to make up for it.

Re:Who thought this story about

[tompaulco]

The fact that Pirates: Band of Misfits isn't doing better than yet another unoriginal sequel pulled out someone's anus.
At first reading, I also thought they were surprised that band of misfits didn't hold Avengers back. Now, I actually saw Pirates, and it was not bad for yet another Wallace and Grommet movie. I won't be seeing the Avengers. I haven't watched a comic book Movie since the Hulk, and I haven't enjoyed one since about Superman 3.

Pirating what you would pay for

[YodasEvilTwin]

IMHO, there are very few people who pirate things they would be willing to pay for if there was no pirated copy. Every movie I really want to see in a theater I go to see in a theater. There are plenty of movies I would never see in a theater but I have some mild interest in, and those I torrent. Some of those end up being great because my impression was wrong, and I occasionally end up going to see it a second time in a theater! In other words, my pirating never loses anyone money, and occasionally helps them gain money. I think that's the same for most people. (On a related topic, what kind of idiot pays $5 to rent a movie when you can get a vastly better experience for $8 at a theater? I can understand how torrenting DVD rips might hurt DVD sales and rentals, but personally I would never rent DVDs so I'm not causing them to lose money there either.)

Good movies, sure

[grasshoppa]

Piracy of movies impact the normal crap hollywood spits out, but has little impact on the good stuff. It's kind of like advance word of mouth.

To put it another way, it's advanced "word of mouth". Following this, I'm certain we would find that piracy will demolish first day sales, but subsequent days wouldn't be impacted.

Hollywood is just upset that they lose out on the first day sales on crap movies.

Re:Good movies, sure

[grasshoppa]

I like repeating myself, apparently. That's what I get for posting from work, I guess.

Better indicator

[Burning1]

A slightly better indicator is to compare opening weekends against the inflation of ticket prices.

http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm

By these measures. Titanic's inflation adjusted opening was only ~$50,000,000, inflation adjusted.

I also looked at Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Gone with the Wind. Adjusting for inflation, none of them even came close to the Avengers.

Re:Better indicator

[Dripdry]

Does it adjust for number of theaters as well? (total number of seats that can hold butts, basically)

if 100% of the theaters sold out, that's a saturated market and the best a movie can do at that time. As far as I can tell that's the only worthwhile indicator for movie popularity on opening night.

Re:Better indicator

[Burning1]

I'm not convinced that there are significantly more theaters now than there were 10 years ago. If anything, they seem to be closing.

As someone who has to wait for the DVD

[sandytaru]

due to the migraines I get from the overly loud sound in movie theaters, I am not surprised. Right now, it feels like everyone on the planet has seen in it theaters but me. Even my boss went! And a lot of my friends are going to see it a second time in theaters, because they wanted to see it in 3D or because other friends didn't get to go and they want to go with them.

See, Hollywood? When you don't make crap, people will happily pay you money for multiple viewings.

grrr

[Iniamyen]

Pirating make MPAA angry!! MPAA VERY angry!! MPAA SMASH!!!!!!

Re:grrr

[dkf]

Puny MPAA!

Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scarlett Johansson in her cat suit -full screen.

I rest my case.

Give'm a reason to go to the theater assholes! Then they won't pirate the movies - you fucking dicks!

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[niftymitch]

Scarlett Johansson in her cat suit -full screen.

I rest my case.

......

Yes sir. Needs a BIG screen.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[GameboyRMH]

The scene where she's tied up in a chair will be legendary to boob guys. It's like a 9.5 on the Hendricks scale.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[Gilmoure]

*golf clap*

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh.. Link please?

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[lucian1900]

Some of us simply don't like theaters and prefer to watch films at home. I pay for Netflix even though it has a tiny selection. The morons are figthing to keep more things out of netflix instead of putting everything there.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[GameboyRMH]

Image search "Christina Hendricks," should be self-explanatory from there ;-)

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

I did, and...? I'd give her a solid 5/10, maybe 6/10. Not the epitome of beauty in my opinion. Then again, thin models with a bust that's probably causing back problems aren't exactly my type. And her face doesn't help matters any. She looks like a cross-dresser with implants.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[GameboyRMH]

She's not super-hot overall, but her epic rack is world-famous.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Only because she's not a porn star. If she were it would be more or less average, and not my genre anyway.

Give me a slender chick with a good-looking face that's made up to look natural, not plastered with concealer and lipstick. And a C cup. Or a B cup. Even A, maybe. But B32 to C34... bingo.

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[GameboyRMH]

I agree but I can still appreciate the large boobies :D

Re:Here's why the priates din't hurt revenues.

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Actually, bra bingo... that would be pretty neat. See a picture - or live subject - guess the size. Get it right, and you can mark it on your card. First person to bingo wins.

Prize, and what the women wear, can be variable, subject to house rule...

Math...

[Bert64]

If all of those pirates paid to see the movie instead, that would increase sales by 0.5%... However:

Some pirates may have downloaded it for multiple people to watch.
Some may have downloaded it but also paid to see the movie, perhaps using the pirate copy to decide if the movie is worth watching or not, then going to see a full quality copy.
Some of those who downloaded it might never have watched it at all had a download not been available.
Some who watched the downloaded copy may have told others it was worth watching, who then went and paid to see it.

What the box office record does say however, is that piracy is not responsible for low sales... If a movie bombs, the poor sales are more likely to do with the movie being garbage (and there have been a LOT of crap movies released lately) than down to piracy.

Piracy is a scapegoat, used as an excuse for crap movies and as justification for implementing even more draconian restrictions on paying customers.

Ofcourse its a self fulfilling prophecy, if you release crap movies and enforce draconian restrictions on legitimate customers, then people will flock to the pirate copies which lack those restrictions (and a shit movie might be worth watching for free if your bored, while not being worth the time and expense to see it legitimately).

Two Words

[silas_moeckel]

Joss Whedon he generally does not make junk films. The movie did not suffer because it did not suck.

Sidestep the process!

[Jonah Hex]

Bullshit that the MPAA/RIAA spouts has forced me to go completely outside the Hollywood system, and I have never regretted it. The success of Kevin Smith, Louis CK, Khan Academy, and in depth looks like This Film Is Not Yet Rated have been my inspiration. Check us out, we do both online and in person collaboration. - HEX

Re:Sidestep the process!

[YodasEvilTwin]

Wow, excellent spam, the first portion of your comment actually had real substance. Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians and has certainly had great success with his own digital distribution. People love cheap, high quality, DRM-free media.

Come on now

[clevershark]

Surely you're lying and each one of the downloaders cost $100,000 to the movie industry! Stop confusing me with actual facts and figures!

Re:Harm is Harm, and Piracy is Wrong

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Finally, while not all pirated views represent a lost full-price admission ticket sale, they most certainly do represent a non-zero form of lost revenue.

Unless I see the cam on Wednesday before the Friday opening, tell all my friends how awesome it was and all five of us see it in the cinema on Friday at midnight. In that scenario the cam /made/ 5 sales. This is pretty much what happened with me and /Cabin in the Woods/. A friend saw it, told me it was good, so my girlfriend and I saw it then we told all our friends they should see it. Look at that, because one guy saw the film and told his friend about ten people have paid full-price admission for it now!

It's not even that good:

[RMingin]

If you want to further screw up the MPAA numbers, take into account all the folks who saw it in theaters AND downloaded it. I saw it opening midnight, and I'm on the hunt for a watchable copy. I'll probably see it again in theaters in the next week or two, and I'll want to watch a couple times in the comfort of my living room while I wait for the Bluray.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation either.

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[Algae_94]

What exactly does half-naked mean? I would assume either her top half or her bottom half had no clothes on, but it just seems to be her in a sheer outfit. I hope they got better pictures when they hacked her phone.

Same with me and The Matrix

[djacosta]

In 1999 when The Matrix came out a friend of got a bootleg copy and I watched it with him. After watching the bootleg copy I decided that I had to see that movie on the big screen. I watched the movie in theaters three times after that.

The whole piracy thing seems silly to me

[Digimed]

In this era of global data communications, it's beyond me why there isn't a global databank containing every piece of the cultural creations of mankind. A couple of levels of access, free for public domain content, a monthly fee for non public domain content added to your internet sub. Make the subscription a cheap all you can eat buffet and very few will bother with any other means of accessing content. Pay copyright holders and artists a fee based on how much an item is accessed. That's my dream anyway, I'm sure lots of holes can be shot into it. ;-)

Why Pirates Failed To Prevent a Box Office Record

[alexo]

Q: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent a Box Office Record?
A: Because They Never Intended To.

Re:Better indicator of $$$$$

[Lashat]

You are spot on here. Back in 1987, I worked at a movie theater and the ticket price was $5.50 We were the highest ticket price within 10 miles and 5 theaters.

Ticket price for Avengers on Saturday? = $15.50
No matinee discount, so "regular" ticket price, plus 3D surcharge, plus XD surcharge. AND.. the theater is brand spanking new. Very comfy seats, screen, projectors, and sound equipment all brand new and noticeable!

That said, the movie was great probably would have paid $20 (no theater owners read ./ right!)

Complete strawman

[AcidPenguin9873]

This is a complete strawman argument. A camcorder copy taken in a theater has much, much lower quality than the actual movie in a theater. The video quality is poor and the audio is terrible. I wouldn't want to watch a camcorder version of just about any film, ever. I saw one once, and it was garbage. You'd have to pay me to watch one, in fact, since it's a waste of my time otherwise.

Pirated copies can hurt sales when their quality is identical to the version for sale, yet their price is $0. For example: 1) pirated digital music file vs. the for-sale digital music file, or 2) a digital rip of a DVD vs. the for-sale DVD. The pirated quality of both of those items is identical to the for-sale items, yet they cost $0.

Re:Complete strawman

[JMZero]

Sorry, so sharing cam versions online doesn't hurt movie sales - and nobody said they did? That's a strawman?

That doesn't really go along with the facts: there's ridiculous measures to prevent cams at many theaters, new laws were put in place in many jurisdictions, and draconian enforcement has literally jailed people for things like "taking a picture of a friend, at a movie with the screen in the background".

You may have known this coming in, but it's certainly not just strawmen holding the position that online cam versions hurt sales.

Re:Complete strawman

[AcidPenguin9873]

The argument is "Piracy doesn't harm creators - take this example of the Avengers." I'm calling this Avengers example a strawman.

Perhaps my post should have been in response to the 20-30 posts above making that argument instead of a standalone reply.

I'll need to see citations for your claims of ridiculous measures at theaters, laws, draconian enforcement, etc. It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I think they are very, very rare since my anecdotal experience (myself going to movie theaters) has never encountered any of them.

Re:Complete strawman

[j-beda]

Pirated copies can hurt sales when their quality is identical to the version for sale, yet their price is $0. For example: 1) pirated digital music file vs. the for-sale digital music file, or 2) a digital rip of a DVD vs. the for-sale DVD. The pirated quality of both of those items is identical to the for-sale items, yet they cost $0.

One should also factor in the value of convenience. Finding and downloading a torrent in may instances can be easier or more convenient than paying for a ticket or finding a video store or vending machine to rent it from. If Redbox can make money paying for and handling physical DVDs with a rental price of $1 - it seems like some of those torrent down loaders could be turned into paying customers if the experience was simple enough and the price low enough.

It's the movie vs. the movie experience

[davidwr]

If I want to see a film, I don't need to be in a theater or with my friends.

If I want a "movie experience" then it's either watching with a group of friends on [insert favorite way of obtaining the movie to play in your home here] or going out to a theater or a similar mass-viewing venue.

Part of the reason to see a blockbuster in the first week is to experience the movie as part of a large group.

I didn't pirate, but I did go to the early show to save a few [insert legal-tender monetary unit here].

Spoiler alert: Most memorable two words quote of the movie: [spoiler-protected]

Well, you asked for my thoughts

[betterunixthanunix]

What is the cost of piracy? I suspect it is near zero.

Here is the typical choice you are faced with:

1. Pay $20 to see the movie in a theater. The floors will be sticky, the food will be terrible (and you will be forbidden to bring your own, better food), and you need to watch the movie on the theater's schedule. You might be subject to a security screening of sorts to check for cameras, but at least it is not (yet) as bad as the TSA. On the other hand, the screen is huge, the sound system is high quality and you can go with a big group of friends.
2. Pay some amount of money (the spread here is big) to watch the movie on a DVD. You will be forced to sit through ads that you cannot skip, but otherwise get to watch the movie on your terms. Unfortunately, unless you have a big house and a nice entertainment system, watching with friends will be difficult (but not impossible). For an extra fee, you can get an HD copy! This option will usually not be available until long after the movie plays in theaters.
3. Stream from Netflix or a similar legal service. You are forced to have the right version of every plugin, but other face an experience that is slightly better than Bluray. As with DVDs/Bluray, you will probably be forced to wait until after the movie has shown in theaters.
4. Download the movie illegally. You get maximum control over your entertainment here, assuming you did not download a trojan, you pay nothing for it, and you will not have to pay extra for HD. Quality, however, is not guaranteed; you may need to wait several months to get an HD copy.

Movie theaters are definitely going to have to compete with piracy, but the competition is not very difficult. It is rare that a decent quality download will be available before a movie comes out on DVD or Bluray, and most people have pretty terrible entertainment systems in their homes. This means that for people to pirate movies instead of going to the theaters, the movies must be so bad that they are not worth the price of a ticket and that the experience of going to a movie theater is not enough to justify the extra expense.

The solution is pretty clear: make better movies or make movie theaters a better experience (preferably both).

Re:Well, you asked for my thoughts

[Pope]

Movies aren't $20 a ticket here, and I don't eat theatre food. Maybe I'll grab a coffee (~$2 at the most) . Haven't had to deal with sticky floors at any of the big reputable chains or the smaller indies. Never go Friday or Saturday nights on the opening weekend. My movie going experience has been very good for the most part for a very long time. YMMV.

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not even that... it's a black cocktail dress. visible cleavage is not synonymous with topless...

No huge surprise

[Mister Whirly]

Giant blockbuster action movie on Imax 3D screen versus crappy jittery handheld cam version shot on an iPhone with people talking all around. Gee I can't imagine why people would want to go to a theater to pay for the quality version...

Full cinematic experience?

[Local ID10T]

I went twice.

The first "full cinematic experience" was Saturday afternoon, being crammed in next to a family with 4 children -3 early teens who were more or less interested, but kept getting up and going outside to check their phones (at least they took it outside, although ignoring it until after would have been more polite) and 1 crying infant who vomited repeatedly into a popcorn bucket throughout the film... Oh, and not to forget the couple behind me who kept sneezing down my neck. This reminded me why I have a projector at home.

The second time was Monday afternoon, with only about 20 other people in the imax dome. It was well worth the money.

Timing is everything.

Is it just me

[kawabago]

or does this result seem to say that widespread downloading of the movie drove increased numbers to the theater to see it on the big screen?

Call it "first reel free"

[tepples]

I've even come up with a marketing name for posting the first ten minutes of a film on YouTube: "first reel free". (A reel is a unit of motion picture duration dating from the pre-digital days.)

You miss the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

The direct damage to ticket sales is NOT the reason the industry hates piracy. This is a very common misconception.

Piracy undermines the concept of ownership of data. If data cannot be owned, then it is not an asset.

One important key to being wealthy is asset diversification. It isn't just about having money, but also having gold bars, land, vehicles, businesses, and intellectual property. You own all of these things because their value can remain high even when the value of the dollar shrinks.

So, "owning" a movie is vastly more important than maximizing rent profits. Piracy tickles rent profits, but completely destroys the ability to own the asset, and hence reduces the wealth of everyone who has a large ownership stake in IP.

Of course....the fact that data cannot be owned because the laws of physics just don't support the concept is a non-issue. That is exactly what the force of law is for: to make poor people obediently buy in to the systems of ownership that keep them poor.

Re:You miss the point.

[AngryDeuce]

No, but the better question to ask is: When the majority of the population does not believe that there is anything morally wrong with openly sharing media among family and friends, how can it still be against the law? A study released during the SOPA debate (that I cannot find for the life of me, but was here on /.) showed that something like 70% of the population felt that there was nothing wrong with sharing music and movies. What the MAFIAA wants is irrelevant to them; and it shows in the fact that a similar sized portion of the population admitted to sharing media within the last 30 days.

The laws are supposed to reflect the will of the populace and the social mores of the people. When they stand at odds with the will of the majority of the people, how can it be the people that are wrong? Isn't it the law itself that is then wrong and should be abolished?

Re:You miss the point.

[Sabriel]

Did you miss the GP's mention of the laws of physics? When - not if - cars and gum can be downloaded, they certainly will be.

Re:You miss the point.

[foniksonik]

I'd be curious to know how much funding for movies is paid for with loans against future profits. Even broader, how much of anything in the movie industry (marketing, bonuses, benefits, salaries, etc) is paid for with paper backed by asset financing (future profits on the portfolio of movies).

Same for music, books, etc.

Re:You miss the point.

[tehcyder]

Of course....the fact that data cannot be owned because the laws of physics just don't support the concept is a non-issue.

The laws of physics say nothing about the morality of murder or fraud either, but so what?

The idea of property is entirely a legal invention, if you want to be accurate. How can I "own" a piece of land any more than I can "own" a piece of the sky?

All that happens is that I have swapped one thing (money) for the right to exclusively use that land. If there were no laws, anyone big and strong enough could come and chuck me off it, or set up camp on it.

The only property that really belongs to someone is their own body, and where there are laws that allow slavery or prevent abortion even this does not apply.

Re:You miss the point.

[sjames]

And so, after millennia of effort, we learn how to truly create universal abundance but instead we produce universal poverty so a very few can be wealthy beyond avarice.

Re:You miss the point.

[martin-boundary]

So, "owning" a movie is vastly more important than maximizing rent profits. Piracy tickles rent profits, but completely destroys the ability to own the asset, and hence reduces the wealth of everyone who has a large ownership stake in IP.

Suppose piracy destroys ownership. Then without ownership at all, the asset can't be sold or generate rent revenue for the "owner". So rent profits disappear. But wait, you've already asserted that piracy only tickles rent profits. So the chain of logic must break, ergo piracy *doesn't* completely destroy ownership.

I think it's better to view piracy as a normal risk of doing business. When you manufacture products, there are always a small number of defective units. When you sell products, there are always a small number of complaints. When you create "IP", there are always a small number of pirate copies. Sometimes, the number is larger than expected. It's no good blaming the machines that produce the units, or blaming the people who complain about your product, or the pirates who copy your movie. The solution is to improve your manufacturing process, to improve your customer service, and to improve your movie delivery experience. If a business can't invest in its own quality control process, it's time for it to get out, not blame everyone else in the world.

Re:Two More Words

[space_jake]

Alien Resurrection

give me convenience or give me death!

[retchdog]

yeah, i did the same thing. $6 each, even in nyc; matinees are great, the big screen experience really energizes the rest of my day.

and why do people find it mandatory to cram shitty food down their gullet while watching a movie? it's just two hours, surely you can manage! if you really have to, bring in a ~$1 candy bar.

Re:give me convenience or give me death!

[Quiet_Desperation]

There's a huge candy store right across the center from where I see movies. They do major business with people loading up for movies. Fancy schmancy candy shoppe, but still half what the theater charges. We try match the them of the candy to the film.

Re:give me convenience or give me death!

[qwak23]

Wishing I still had mod points for the first comment I've read that states you don't actually have to buy the shitty theatre food.

Mod parent up

[Dr. Manhattan]

It's a legit point. Claiming that "piracy isn't the problem the MPAA shrieks it is" is not the same thing as claiming that "piracy isn't theft".

You can't determine the appropriate response to a problem without correctly grasping how much of a problem it is. We as a country made a decision that the problem of highway accidents wasn't severe enough to justify a 55MPH speed limit, and raised it to 70MPH, for example. As a more appropriate example, we also decided that the threat of piracy by VCR was not severe enough to ban the production and sale of VCRs - as the MPAA tried to propose.

So, to reiterate: people can think piracy is theft while also thinking the MPAA is vastly exaggerating the severity of the problem.

Re:Mod parent up

[tehcyder]

So, to reiterate: people can think piracy is theft while also thinking the MPAA is vastly exaggerating the severity of the problem.

Yes, but most people who defend piracy (here on slashdot anyway) DO use the argument that it causes no monetary loss at all for the movie companies.

I think we all know the MPAA/RIAA exaggerate their damages absurdly, but because a free download doesn't cost them a thousand dollars doesn't mean it costs them nothing.

The "copyright!=theft" thing is just a red herring anyway.

Re:Mod parent up

[metaforest]

Interestingly once the MPAA lost the argument over VCR enabled piracy they discovered a new business model. Video sales and rentals.

Re:Mod parent up

[Dr. Manhattan]

True, but the main objections to raising the speed limits after the gas crunch eased were safety-based, and people still call for a return to 55MPH based on safety.

Can I steal your words?

[Jeng]

Can I steal the words you use and the order you use them in?

If I do, can you no longer use those words and the order you use them in?

If I take something, and you still have it even after I take it, is it theft or is it something else?

Nearly 100% insightful

[aepervius]

I was right with you until you said "piracy is theft". No it is not. Tehre is a good reason neitehr the public see s it as theft, nor the it is legally a theft, the correct term is copyright ifnrigement, like it or not.

That said I am 100% with you for the rest of your insightful post.

Actually, Ruffalo was awesome

[SteveFoerster]

I understand the sentiment because I love Ed Norton too. But see it anyway. Mark Ruffalo totally nailed the role. Better than Bana or Norton, and not just in my opinion.

Re:Actually, Ruffalo was awesome

[jxander]

Semi- offtopic, but I agree. Mark Ruffalo is perfect in the role. He and RDJ played the Banner/Stark dynamic perfectly (though I suspect Joss helped there)

Re:Actually, Ruffalo was awesome

[Rakarra]

+1 for Ruffalo! He was the big surprise of the movie for me.
Previous actors in the last decade had played Banner in a "I have to... keep a lid on my emotions. I'll act like I'm... emotionally dead!" Especially in the Ang Lee movie, which I sortof liked...

Give it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been ten years. Those actors are now older and some are unfortunately, erm, larger. It's too late for new Firefly. Joss has sworn off it anyway.

Let Firefly be your martyr and leave it at that.

Re:Give it up.

[foniksonik]

http://m.imdb.com/name/nm1132359/mediaindex?photoId=MV5BMTI5MTMzNzg3OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTU3MDUwMw

Summer is looking fine by my reckoning.

Re:Give it up.

[Rakarra]

Clearly what is called for is "Firefly: The Next Generation."

The many reasons to download

[Riddler Sensei]

The reasons for downloading can be greatly varied among people and, of course, some constitute a lost sale and some don't. My roommate actually ended up downloading a copy of the movie after we had seen it the day before. The reason being that there are some lines that we missed because the theater was too loud laughing (particularly after the Hulk scene with Loki) and he wanted to know what was said. He didn't just ask the internet because, well, everyone else seemed to have the same problem as well. So, no, he wasn't going to pay another $9.50 just to catch a couple lines he missed.

Just one more for the stats

[hyades1]

I know somebody who downloaded the camcorder copy (I would never do such a thing myself, of course). This person attended the 3D version with me, paying full price and enjoying the experience enormously.

The only people who would watch the camcorder version without going to see the real thing probably can't afford to go, and are no loss at the box office. Windfall profits from DVD and on-line viewing were never part of the movie business model, and I couldn't care less about them.

Speaking as more of a music than movie buff...

[JohnnyMindcrime]

...for me the concept is true.

Incidentally, please don't get me started on music downloads and the "Pick 'n' Mix" concept behind music distribution, I'm an album enthusiast, I like sleeve notes to read on the toilet and a nice shiny disc to file alphabetically and anally on shelves. I'm a music snob, proud of the fact and don't get me started on "... but there's only one or two good tracks on every album" because I'll just tell you to go buy music by real musicians as a response.

However, I do have a big music collection, I probably buy 10-12 CDs a month and I personally think £10 or so of local currency is a good price for a piece of music I'll hopefully be listening to over the next 30 years or so - all the better if it's a nicely remastered classic with a few interesting bonus tracks.

If I do see an album I like the look of, the first thing I do is go find a copy of it on Usenet or BitTorrent to listen to it first. If it's good, I can never be satisfied with someone else's sub-quality rip of it so I go buy it myself. If it's crap, I delete it because I can always use the hard disk space for the albums I do buy and rip myself to FLAC.

The result of this is that I never buy a crap album, music is therefore always a good value product to me and therefore I am happy enough to continue buying it. In other words, a bit of "temporary personal piracy" on my part benefits the music industry and artists in the longer term.

And I also go to many live concerts and spend money on tour shirts, overpriced gassy beer at concert halls and the odd meal before or after the gig - so everyone's happy.

World wide release, but not with Americans?

[antdude]

How come movies don't get released during the same week/day? I noticed The Avengers movie got released to USA a week later compared to other countries like Hong Kong. What's up with that? Why not release all at the same time/day/week?

Re:Besides the point

[scsirob]

The point is not that something was taken/stolen/pirated. There are laws for that and the owner can act on it.

The point of all this is that people's freedom and privacy is taken away with censorship, ever growing monitoring and threats to sue, because of 'commercial losses' that clearly do not exist. The **AA is allowed to shoot with cruise missiles to swat a couple of flies. The fact that millions of other people are impacted is taken for granted. And that is wrong. Very wrong.

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[serviscope_minor]

And obviously it's all-but-impossible to replicate the 3D experience

I should hope not! The trouble with 3D is that bgasically, the image is half the brightness, because of the polarising filters.

I went to see Thor in 3D, and in the Ice Giant realm, I couldn't see a thing because it was dark on dark in 3D with extra dark. So, I skipped that and went to see a 2D viewing and it was excellent.

So far, 3D seems to be best for very brightly colored films for me, which usually means animations of some sort.

Failed to prevent a record

[Cyko_01]

I was unaware that there was even an effort to do so. Pirates are not out to get anyone, they are just intolerant of the MAFIAA's antics and want things there way.

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[cheesybagel]

If its 3D i'm definitively not going to see it. I do not enjoy puking in a closed set.

hmmm I think I see now.

[blackicye]

The root of the problem seems to be that the **AAs just cannot conceive of a reality where a person who "pirates" an article of music or a movie would sooner not watch or listen to it than be compelled to pay money to consume it.

Many of these swashbucklers download and watch movies that they would never pay to watch.

The sheer volume of movies in recent years that most landlubbers wouldn't even watch for free is staggering.
I don't think I could even watch some of these motion pictures if they were offering anything less than a Spanish doubloon an hour.

The reality is many of these buccaneers would just cease to consume this (mostly crappy) content and marketing if they could not plunder it from other travelers out on the open ocean.

Some privateers I've spoken to also reckon that if they choked off and controlled every possible shipping lane and channel on the planet, people would just find other ways to transport their cargo, perhaps use submarines or darknets.

Re:No $ loss, just loss but not the same loss...

[Fned]

Truth is, the pirates would not go and see it. Therefore, it's not a loss in revenue but a loss in popularity and mass viewership.

More people seeing it is a loss in popularity and mass viewership...?

Re:Stupid argument

[ewibble]

Why? I see no reason why this should be the case. Unless more people are uncertain of its quality of the movie so less likely to spend there money (and pirate copies could then be considered advertising). But you could argue that a small movie would not be available as soon pirated, also people may not be as willing to pirate a small movie.

Apart from picking a random number out of the air how did you come up with that 25% number.

Funding the dub

[tepples]

Simultaneous international releases in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand I can understand. But for other countries, including a quarter of Canada, the film has to be translated into the native language. That takes time and costs money if you want decent voice acting in the dubs, and I was under the impression that the money for that came at least in part from domestic box office receipts.

Re:Funding the dub

[DrKnark]

Add all of Scandivia to the list of places that doesn't need, get or want dubs. I'm sure there are many more as well. The few dubs I have had the displeasure of watching have been of children's movies, and it cannot be expressed how horrible the dubbing was.

Besides, if the film has to be translated to the native language, why worry about piracy of a non-translated version?

Re:Funding the dub

[tepples]

Besides, if the film has to be translated to the native language, why worry about piracy of a non-translated version?

Fansubs unfairly compete with the forthcoming official sub.

i was one of the 20%

[musikit]

american but i live in Japan. I would have paid $50 for me and my wife (even though she hates "war" movies and doesnt speak english) to go see this movie in the theater but they didnt want a world wide release. did the same for sherlock holmes 2. so i pre-rented the movie. watched it now. when it comes out on DVD i'll rent it and just not watch it. rentals her cheap here too. approx $1.25 sometimes they have half price weekends too. now if i were a parent i'd be pissed if my kid lost $48.75.

Make something good

[Mantrid42]

My friend pirated a copy before The Avengers came out. He watched it, then he went and saw it in a theater. Twice. If you build it, they will come.

Torrent quality

[Jonboy X]

It might also have something to do with the fact that all the torrents that, umm, my friend could find when he looked were shitty camcorder recordings.

God this is stupid.

[Nyder]

First off, Piracy never hurts movie sales. Why? Because Cam copies suck dog shit. They are very fucking dark, and look like shit. You remember them VCR days? And you'd get a copy of a copy, which was a copy of the original? And it would look like shit? That looks better then most cams.

At worse, you get someone who downloads a cam and decides they will wait for a DVD/BR of it.

TS copies (Telesync) are just a tab better, but still look like shit.

DVD Screeners, VOD rips, usually look fine, and these might cut into sales of DVD/BR's, but probably not that much. Usually the people who download this stuff isn't buying DVD/BR's anyways.

I think the problem is Hollywood Accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Because I'm sure the Avengers isn't even going to break even in profits.

And that will be blamed on piracy.

Re:No shit!

[AngryDeuce]

You mock, but that is precisely what is happening, and there isn't a fucking thing that the MAFIAA can do about it...

This war on piracy is going to be the MAFIAA's Vietnam. Billions upon billions spent, and not a fucking thing to show for it but the majority of the people in the U.S. (and abroad) hating your fucking guts. What is it exactly they're trying to accomplish? The pirated copies are a superior product in almost every way. No bullshit previews, unskippable finger-wagging about piracy (on the legit copy, no less), DRM bullshit, whether in the form of encryption keys or locking it to online accounts such as iTunes or Amazon...

Ignorance to the alternatives kept the majority of the population from being dirty pirates for a long time (I myself made a fair amount selling mix discs back in the early days of Napster and cd burners due solely to this phenomenon, because nowhere could people legitimately buy a disc with the songs THEY fucking wanted on it nor did most have the high-speed internet connection that made it feasible to download themselves) but that's changing every day. I've taught people in their 60's how to torrent. The cat's long out of the bag...

Re:Reminds me of that Episode of the Critic.

[AngryDeuce]

I read somewhere that Uwe Bole is subsidized by Germany due to their laws in support of the arts. While I typically cheer this on, in Uwe Bole's case, they should make an exception and throw him in the fucking clink for crimes against humanity.

It "only" made $200 million

[Jason Levine]

Clearly, if there were no pirates, it would have made much more. Like about (checks MPAA script and puts pinky to lip) ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Those nasty pirates. Now the studio execs' money pile is just huge instead of obscenely huge. Won't someone think of the poor studio exec?

these 'pirates' do not all count as a lost sale.

[nurb432]

Some will even go that wouldn't have otherwise, now that they have seen and decided they liked the movie. Many people wont bother going unless they know its good.

Plagerism seriously impacts book sales.

[catmistake]

Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage

Hello. I'm claiming that you pirated that phrase from me and are claiming it as your own. You will be receiving a letter from the Slashdot Commenter's Association of America (SCAA).

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[ErikZ]

Ok, first picture her totally naked. Now, half that.

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[cyclomedia]

Yes, I haven't seen any of the previous movies in the run up to this, but went once I learned of the prospect of a 3D black-catsuit-clad Scarlett Johansson Bottom and was not disappointed. In the process though I fell in love with the ass-kicking driving-jeep-backwards-while-shooting-baddies Cobie Smulders.

What if 95% of your users were pirates?

[master_p]

Then piracy would be a problem, wouldn't it?

The number 95% is valid in software, of course, for some types of applications.

As an old Amiga user, I remember reports from companies that estimated that 95% of their games' users were pirates.

Theatrical windows of a year or more

[tepples]

It is rare that a decent quality download will be available before a movie comes out on DVD or Bluray

Unless it's a movie like Hop whose theatrical release window is a full 51 weeks long, and then Redbox and Netflix are four weeks later than even that. That amount of time is more than long enough to get a quality screener or telecine. Worse yet is an Academy Award-winning film that hasn't had an official release in any home video format in its country of first theatrical exhibition for over 3,400 weeks and counting.

It was tongue in cheek

[tepples]

It was tongue in cheek, as I understood it. One would get the impression from the MPAA's press releases, the "you wouldn't steal" ads, etc. that the studios think "the piracy scene is activelly trying to prevent people to go to the cinema."

Re:It was tongue in cheek

[SebaSOFT]

pun taken

Are you kidding???

[hesaigo999ca]

Make it sound like all the pirates out there band together to make the
movie crash at the box office on purpose by making it available through torrent.

That is the most ignorant thing I have heard!

The poster of this story should go into politics, he would fit right in!

To the poster of this story> Here is why the box office still made money....
it was a great once in a lifetime movie that SHOULD be enjoyed in the biggest screen possible .
Complete with popcorn and surround sound, this was the best hero movie I have ever seen....
and I knew it was going to be, with such a cast....this is when i don't mind paying 30$ to go see it.
The reason why other movies don't make it is because I would never spend 30$ to go see
Hes just not that into you, or ghosts of girlfriends passed, or even American pie #10....
but the star wars, hero, matrix movies yes....but they only come out 1 every year....
for all others, I wont spend any money at a box office....and not even in rental, if i can download it...
because the crap out there.....is soooooo crappy (mean girls, dude wheres my car, etc, etc)
you just have to really limit your spending to only the good stuff, no?

Robber Baron all the way down...

[DarthVain]

Agreed. Anime is the same thing. If it is not available at all in your region, I feel no qualms about pirating it. If they do not feel like distributing it to sell to me in my area, I will feel much less guilty finding a copy online. This is particularly true for Anime, where in many cases you have fan groups making subs for movies, to allow a wider audience to enjoy them. From the distributors it probably doesn't make sense, as there is not enough market anyway, however that won't stop them complaining like heck about it.

eBooks are a joke. Same with regional iTunes. Heck, I don't know why anyone in Canada would buy a Kindle Fire when all the features are disabled unless you live in the US. I also keep hearing about the US VS Canada versions of NetFlix... I have heard of people paying a online service simply so they can spoof their IP address to a US one, so they can get the US NetFlix, apparently it puts the Canadian one to shame insofar as selection goes...

Everyone wants to be a robber baron these days...

piracy prevents blockbusters

[DarthVain]

Clearly this is the case.... :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(company)#Bankruptcy

Hollywood Divider?

[DarthVain]

Talk about have your cake and eat it too!

As they will take that same movie you are talking about which made a Billion dollars at the box office, and took 100 Million to make, yet post a fiscal loss, ripping off all the actors, directors, etc...

Of course it is hard to have too much sympathy for someone crying into a platinum diamond encrusted cup on top of a pile of money...

On the contrary, she sounds like a great date

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

As long as the groping doesn't wake her up...

I thought...

[Meski]

Looking at this title that it was about a movie called "Pirates".

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[V. P. Winterbuttocks]

Which half?

Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[Rakarra]

I can replicate the 3D experience easily. I'll get the DVD when it comes out, then just cross my eyes really hard for a full hour before watching. Then too I can watch blurry video (unavoidable with fast motion and 3D at current frame rates) with sore eyes.

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Re:The Avengers is a bad movie to pirate

[SuricouRaven]

It'd be nice if the image could just be brightened, but the projectors already have to run at their limits. Ever seen the bulb for a modern movie projector? They need a water-cooling system to keep the electrodes from melting, and the envelope is made from quartz because glass would melt.