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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."
It's less a matter that piracy is Ok, and more a matter that stopping piracy will cost too much in terms of liberty in trying to block possible misuse of anything that could possibly be illegal
We could completely prevent speeding and stop just about all traffic accidents if we required that someone walk ahead of every vehicle carrying a red flag (a law that was actually on the books still in some places not that long ago), but the cost to society that such rules would impose would be FAR worse than the benefits.
In terms of Piracy, if all hardware was locked down and no general purpose computers were ever allowed to view video or play audio, that would eliminate piracy (except for books), but the cost to everyone, INCLUDING the industry would be many orders of magnatude higher than the cost of piracy.
They say that the Box office would be 1.5B more if there was no Piracy. How much would it drop if there was no digital version of the works available at all? I'll bet that home access to the works in question result in FAR more than 1.5B to the industry.
Never mind all the other things that they would accidentally prevent from existing in their efforts to block piracy.
Almost every single rationalization or justification that I've ever heard for why a person might pirate, other than supporting the abolition of copyright entirely, can be found on the list of ethical fallacies, and it gives a person some measure of pause to at least carefully consider the premise that just because one *can* do something, does not necessarily mean that they *should*.
I'm probably going to modded into slashdot hell for saying this, but that these alleged studies that somehow show that piracy doesn't harm the sales of works are entirely irrelevant.... if one believes that copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it, even if they do not agree with the means by which it is being implemented. If you pirate, you either advocate the complete abolition of copyright or are a hypocrite. Period.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But studios have always had a mix of huge successes, moderate successes, moderate failures and colossal flops. Is there any evidence that that trend is worse now than it was, say, in 1963, when Cleopatra became one of the biggest and most expensive flops in movie history?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I understand it takes a lot of money to make a movie, and yes they deserve fair compensation for that. A few years of exclusive rights, definitely but no creative endeavor is made in a vacuum, people copy and use other peoples ideas, to make new creations all the time (I can't think of one that isn't). Once are fair time has passed they should be returned to the public domain so other creations can be made from them. I believe that the laws as they stand are result of a corrupt political system that allows lobbing, not what is in the best interest of society.
I do however think a lot of the cost of making a movie feeds into itself, buying rights to stories, paying actors, directors, producers millions. These costs are because movies can make a lot of money, and everybody wants their cut, so if the story, actor, director, ... is famous enough it almost guarantees success.
I think these costs, are actually killing the movie industry, they not conducive to creating new and initiative stories but rather run by accountants, that produce the same stories over and over again because they know they will sell. If you are investing $100 million you do not want small chance of success. The only way to reduce the cost of movies is to force them to be competitive.
Apart from all that just because it is wrong doesn't make it stealing, just like it doesn't make it rape.
The crux of the issue is that while copyright absolutists claim the high moral ground, they have very little popular support short of those who make their living off copyright or have fantasies of becoming fabulously wealthy because of it. People choose the path of least resistance nearly every time and observing copyright generally is that path. When it is not, they have no qualms about ignoring it.
I knew this to be the case when I had a fairly computer illiterate 70 something explain to me how she had discovered how to pirate music and now had a large collection. She is an accountant with an accountant's typical mindset and otherwise follows the rules blindly. She explained to me with the zeal of a proselytiser. In a different case, I had to laugh my ass off when I found out that another man I know, who is a software development manager and makes crazy big money, pirates video games. He rails against pirating movies and music and has forbidden it at his house, but I guess software is okay.
Human nature does not see a moral equivalence between taking someone's property (theft) and copying their ideas without compensation. Copying does not "cost" the victim anything in real terms, in the same way that a lost sale does not actually "cost" the seller anything. It is the moral equivalent of duplicating a restaurant's recipes at home. However, restaurants cannot litigate since recipes have no copyright protection. Since no one expects copyright privilege in the restaurant industry, no one rises up in arms screaming about the "theft" of Red Lobster dishes.