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Piracy Fails To Prevent Another Box Office Record (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The movie industry has reported global box office records reached $38.4 billion in 2015, up 5% on 2014's total, according to the MPAA's Theatrical Market Statistics report. The U.S. and Canada turned in $11.1 billion with international box office revenues hitting $27.2 billion. "I'm proud to say that the state of our industry has never been stronger," the former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is. According to Dodd, the box office would be more healthy to the tune of $1.5 billion if piracy could be brought under control. Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer. Napster co-found Sean Parker has a Screening Room project which hopes to bring first-run movies into the home via a set-top box. Though it has a trick up its sleeve: Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home would get two tickets to watch the movie in the cinema, which could either boost or at least maintain box office attendance. The Art House Convergence (AHC) said it "strongly opposes" the plan, warning it would only fuel torrent sites and piracy. National Assosciation of Theatre Owners chief John Fithian said, "More sophisticated window modeling may be needed for the growing success of a modern movie industry."
Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated. Hell, Deadpool and Star Wars are still playing on screens near where I live.
Yes, there have been flops, but I doubt anyone can link those flops to pirating.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The law says piracy is not theft. All logic and semantics be damned; the law is clear.
Copyright Infringement is illegal, but it is not theft. They are covered under different sections of law, have different enforcement regulations and different penalties.
Discussion over.
Here I have taken money that you can show what you would have gotten, if it was not for the lie.
If someone watches the concert through the window, you have lost money only if that person would have gone to the concert otherwise. They may have, they may not have, they may go to your next concert because they liked what they saw.
Just because someone pirates a movie, and if this is stealing, and the law as consistent, for a criminal case you should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they would have paid for it anyway. I don't think you could even prove it beyond balance of probabilities.
You have to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt, is "stealing" intellectual property so much worse that we have to lower the standard of proof.
The answer is you are not stealing but you are committing copyright infringement which is different.
I on the other hand balk at the fact that a 10 year old tv show is still $25/season (for SD).
In their defense, 10 years ago many shows were shot on video tape in SD (or maybe a little better) because it was going to air in SD and people would be watching it in SD and why spend the extra money to do film?
As an old example, the original Star Trek was shot on film. They did this originally because there wasn't an easy way to do special effects with video tape. But everything was optimized for an SD screen. 50 years later, they still had the high resolution film, so they could start with that and redo the special effects, fix some of the background issues (e.g. walls painted with chalk that is blatantly obvious in HD), and come up with something pretty good.
But, at least as I understand it, Star Trek: The Next Generation was shot on video tape because, by 1987, they could do visual effects on a computer. So there is no "high resolution master" for TNG episodes. I believe that's also true with Deep Space 9 and Voyager. I think the second season of Enterprise was the first to actually film with High-Def cameras.
Personally, I agree with you. I balk at paying $25 for an old TV Show--even a favorite. But in regards to SD/HD, they may not really have a choice...