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Economist: File Sharing's Impact On Movies Is Modest At Most
First time accepted submitter SillyBoy123 writes What is the impact of file sharing releases on the movie industry? Ask the studios and they will say billions. An economist named Koleman Strumph is presenting a paper at the National Bureau of Economics this week that tries to estimate the crowd out from these releases. His conclusion: "I find that file sharing has only a modest impact on box office revenue." In fact, Strumph finds that file sharing before the official release of a movie can actually be beneficial to revenues: "One consistent result is that file sharing arrivals shortly before the theatrical opening have a modest positive effect on box office revenue. One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film. This is also the period of heaviest
advertising. In conjunction with the main estimates, this suggests that free and potentially degraded goods such as the lower quality movies available on file sharing networks can have some beneficial effects on intellectual property."
That all the work to prevent piracy of movies is paying off.
Good work Hollywood!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Pretty sure bluray and dvd rips have a significantly higher quality than what is commercially available, as they have all the unskippable bullshit stripped out.
The economist, spreading FUD.
Piracy has ruined the movie industry like it ruined the music industry. Counting all the billions in lost sales because of people distributing data by making it available mean that Hollywood and movie studios have run out of money.
Authors, musicians, actors, directors, agents and artists are all dying of starvation.
Why do you think there has been a rapid decline in content creation? less movies and music every single year, year on year. Piracy is killing the industry.
Look at the terrible fate of Microsoft, suffering the most pirated OS to date.
Poor bastards.
There are a lot of movie buffs in countries where good foreign and hollywood movies are not released. Video libraries are poorly equipped for the niche films and are usually expensive. P2P provides these people with movies they'd wanna watch . I dont think that'd hurt the industry much .. maybe they'll get a few foreign fans .
This study's findings simply say the same thing MANY of us have been repeating for decades now about such "intellectual property" as movies, music or computer games. If you're talking about content created for entertainment purposes, the fact that people have the ability to make duplicate copies of it and share it with others (bypassing your centralized, for-pay distribution system for it) doesn't mean you'll really lose much, if any, potential profit.
The #1 factor is convenience. When people want to be entertained, they typically have a limited time window they're able to use for it. (EG. You finally get a chance to get together with your friends on a weekend, when nobody has to go in to work, and your plan is to go watch a new movie that all of you want to see. If you aren't able to see it during THAT narrow time slot? Then chances are you're not going to see it at all.)
The theaters are ready to take your money and show you that movie, at one of a number of convenient, published time slots. All you have to do is show up.
That's always going to trump someone's plan to reproduce the same experience by downloading a pirated copy of the movie (probably having to screw around with it multiple times to find a copy encoded with the right language, no annoying subtitles, and in good enough quality), and THEN having to provide an enjoyable enough viewing experience for it. Even in the era of home theaters, how many of us really have such a setup at home where we'd be proud to show downloaded movies to our friends, knowing they'd enjoy it just as much as going out to the movie with us? I *used* to have a half way decent approximation at my old house, but since I moved, I don't anymore. I'd have to spend many thousands of dollars finishing part of our basement to even consider replicating it again.....
Every movie i've ever purchased from a hadj in afghanistan or some little old lady in the back of a restaurant in New York has done one of two things.
1)It's either completely turned me off of the movie because it was horrible. This doesn't cost a thing because now the money never changed hands; in the case of ultraviolet, i had to go get my money back for the movie being so terrible.
2)Has been awesome enough that i either simply want to see it on the theater screen with their lovely DTS surround or I want to watch it in 3D on a huge screen.
I'm a huge supporter of try before you buy. I had frozen MONTHS before it released on dvd and still ended up taking my daughters to the movies multiple times to see it.
There was a study a few years ago out of one of the Scandinavian countries - I think it was Sweden, but it might well have been Finland or Denmark - which stated that piracy had no impact on overall entertainment industry profits. What they found, as I recall, was that there was no impact because people spend roughly the same amount on entertainment regardless of how much they pirate, it was simply that they were spending it in different areas. Someone who was pirating films, for instance, would still spend their entertainment budget but might do so on books or music or video games instead of films.
I also agree with his second point about pre-releases being good for films. When Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out some years ago, there was a leak of a "beta" build that consisted of about 50-60% of the full game about a month before the game's street date. Up until that point, a lot of people believed that HR would be complete crap.. but then the leak happened and changed a lot of people's minds (myself included) about it. I don't think I would've bought it, even on deep discount, if I hadn't played that leak first.
That is not even comparable... Movies are not inventions, they are works of art. In fact every movie you watch now has already been created with some of the elements different, different actors, different scene and the like. Who here has not seen a crappy movie before but went to see the remake/reboot because they love that genre, or even character.
With a physical invention if you buy a cheap knock off and it does poorly then you assume that the actual product is bad, but with movies, say seeing Atlantic Rim, does not mean that Pacific Rim is just as bad
there is also an expectation that pirated movies will be of lower quality then the unpirated movie.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Who's reproducing things poorly? Pirated content these days is either ripped from Blu-Rays sent to critics (who can't make it to a theatre) or the actual theatre-quality data files used in digital projection. It's not only in equal fidelity to the original, it's often in a more convenient format.
I can't speak for movies but I used to download shows where I'd missed episodes, as an alternative to finding a VCR (who even has those?) or waiting six months for a DVD boxed set. It certainly helped me maintain my engagement in the series. I stopped because PVRs became affortable (I got one for free from my broadband provider) and VoD catch up services suddenly became ubiquitous.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I go to the movie theater to get an experience and that experience is tangential to the actual movie itself. I go to a movie theater because either A) they have a large screen and great sound and other features (sometimes food) that I cannot reasonably replicate at home or B) I'm on a date or other social outing or C) both of the above. If I wanted to just see the movie and don't care if it is on a shitty little screen at home TV or my computer then the theater going experience has nothing to offer me. I go to see Godzilla in the theater because big monsters should be seen on a big screen with awesome sound. I go to see a RomCom in theaters because I'm on a date. Theaters need to cater to these reasons or there is no reason to go there. Places like Alamo Drafthouse seem to comprehend this.
As for media purchases, I'm more than happy to buy a copy of a DVD (or similar media) IF and only if the price is not outrageous. The price to buy a DVD should be similar or less than the cost to see the movie in theaters. I'm giving up a large screen and awesome sound but I can watch the movie repeatedly. If the movie publisher insists that their movie costs $25 to view on my shitty little screen at home, then they should damn well expect me to look for a more economical way to view that movie - possibly including piracy if I'm sufficiently motivated. I'm simply not willing to pay that much for a mediocre experience even if I can play it as much as I want. Sell the DVDs for reasonable prices and with minimal restrictions (such as no mandatory ads EVER) and most people will be willing to fork over a few bucks without much fuss. People buy music from iTunes because for them it is a reasonable economic value (in spite of its flaws. If they charged say $3/song I doubt it would be nearly as popular.
Basically if they provide a good product for a reasonable price, I'm happy to pay them for their work. If they insist on gouging me and place too many obstacles in my way then they should expect me to go around them and pay them nothing. If the movie turns out to be shitty I expect the price to reflect that fact quickly. I think most people feel similarly.
I kind of skipped through mentioning it, but for some movies they actually make DVDs and Blu-Rays for critics to view before the film makes it into the theatre. (In case they can't make it to a press screening.) Those sometimes mysteriously wind up on file-sharing sites, so they started watermarking them so that individual copies could be identified later. Although for all I know the practice has stopped by now.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The paper goes into some detail regarding the latest X-Men movie, where there were 7million downloads of a pre-production work copy of the movie, and, with heavy news coverage, it could be assumed that everyone seeing the movie would know it could have been downloaded for free. Even there, the small, positive bump in revenue was found. That's the smoking gun, IMHO.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
No they don't. That was sort-of true 3 years ago. Pirated content of current releases is from camcorder recordings. For instance that's all that's available for Transformers. Picture quality is generally shit. This still from the top-rated download may look OK, but in reality as a movie I find them pretty much unwatchable. And that's better than most camcorder recordings -Transformers was very popular around the world, and has been out for a while already, so better camcorder recordings are available.
Yeah I'm able to believe bootlegs are a slight positive, because anybody who wants to see the actual thing enough to suffer through a low-quality bootleg is going to want to go and see the movie in a theater.
Of course where bootlegs hurt the studios is in Blu-Ray recordings, where easily-available, free, high quality versions of the movie compete with the same thing that is not free. There is no economic method for not-free to compete with free. Just legal threats and an appeal to morals.
One exception is after the Oscar nominations in February or so, where review screeners are bootlegged, and some art movies may still be playing in the theaters.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I wonder how much the illegality of it figures into the convenience.
A lot. iTunes is probably the best example of this. Prior to iTunes, people turned to services like Napster. Partly because of money of course but a lot of it was simply convenience. They could actually find what they were looking for and get it for a modest investment. Then iTunes came along and people could find much of what they wanted, quickly and legally, in exchange for an amount of money they could live with. They no longer had to buy an album with 12 tracks of crap for $10 to get the 1 or 2 songs they actually wanted. Now people buy literally billions of songs all on the up and up because it is convenient and the price isn't a slap in the face.
Would they continue to want to go to the theater, which has a much larger screen and great sound, but which also costs a fair bit (and even more for any snacks you want, which are actually the theater's primary profit center) and which isn't as convenient in either time or space as having it at home?
If they value the things the theater provides then yes they will go. If they don't then they won't. Right now I think the value for money you get from most theaters is pretty poor. I get to sit in an uncomfortable chair with a sticky floor, pay $8-15 for a ticket, the only food is outrageously priced food you normally only get at a high school concession stand served by poorly trained high school students in unsanitary conditions. Gee, wonder why people might not enjoy that.
There are some theaters like Alamo Drafthouse down in Austin Texas which seem to get it and are trying to offer a better experience. I really wouldn't mind going to a movie and dropping some bucks for some actually good food, comfortable seats, amazing sound, cool extras, maybe a dvd to take home, etc.
The world doesn't exist solely to accommodate your lifestyle.
If a business accommodates the customer's lifestyle, it will prosper. If it does not, it will go out of business.
Just be honest about your motivations and actions instead of rationalizing.
Nope. I am going to continue to rationalize. I have better things to do than sit around feeling guilty.