Slashdot Mirror
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."
"Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer."
Great idea!
"Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home....."
uh oh, I see more black sails on the horizon...
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.
Copyright should be a good thing. It's called copy right, as in "the right to make a copy". But in a few decades, Hollywood, the MPPA, the RIAA and Disney butchered copyright laws to a point where the spirit of it isn't even there anymore. They've twisted it into "it's only to protect us, screw everyone else and screw the public domain".
The argument here seems to be that piracy is okay because the movie studios are making plenty of money anyway. It's like saying that if I steal a couple million dollars from a billionaire, they're making plenty of money anyway so it's not really theft. Theft is theft is theft. And it's wrong.
Agreed. Here are the bigger questions involved with the current setup:
1.) Copyright infringement is wrong, and should be punished. However, the present system is such that a conviction of copyright infringement can be a life-ruining event. As TFA shows, the MPAA is not making a compelling case that ruining the life of an infringer is reasonable. If the MPAA wants to make the case that downloading a movie from The Pirate Bay is akin to stealing the Blu-Ray from Best Buy, then make the punishment for downloading the same as stealing the Blu-Ray. Instead, the fines and criminal charges are seen as akin the professional counterfeiting and piracy rings in court.
2.) There has always been the concept of the public domain - where art goes after a certain amount of time, and can be used by anyone. Copyright first started with a reasonable length of time for authors to make money off their work as an incentive to continue creating. However, it's been extended to the point of absurdity - no video game released, or pop song I grew up with, will enter the public domain until my grandchildren are dead. Now, there are different ideas as to how long copyright *should* last (my personal belief is ten years, with the option to renew at the cost of 10% of the owner's gross income annually), but "two lifetimes" is generally agreed upon to be patently unreasonable.
3.) There's very little 'reasonable ground' to be had. Stealing $100 from a billionaire is wrong, but 'finding a $100 bill on the ground that is later determined to have belonged to a billionaire' is a different matter entirely. In the US, making backup copies of one's own DVDs and Blu-Rays for noncommercial use that are never otherwise shared is, legally speaking, subject to the same penalties as operating a for-profit piracy ring. The whole "digital copy" situation with movies is such that whether the digital copy applies to the customer or not is dependent upon which services are being used. It's impossible to legally view a movie on an Android device if it comes in a DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes combo pack, and nobody wants to standardize.
The MPAA's issue here is how royally fixed the game is in their favor, and a seeming unwillingness to come up with reasonable terms for things.
Your arguments are complete BS. The film industry has always had films that lose money; long before the age of piracy. This is nothing new. What is new is that they can no longer produce a bad film and make their money back before the public gets wise to the fact that it is a bad film (the Ewe Boll business model). If your film is garbage, you're going to lose money on it, period. And your DVD argument is complete apples and oranges. Your example is theft, removing property from someone's possession without compensation. Copyright infringement is not theft by any legal system in the world because the original is still in the original owner's possession, no matter what the media industry tries to tell us. Even with that in mind, your DVD argument is still bogus because that is what every retailer who sells DVDs does. As long as they make money overall, they continue to sell DVDs and call it a success. Do they try to minimize the theft? Sure. But, they don't say DVDs sales are a bust because they had a small percentage of their copies stolen.
What the media industry is doing is looking at all the piracy numbers and saying to themselves "if we can turn all these numbers into sales, look at all the money we can make!" This is complete fallacy and their own internal studies have proved it. The most prolific pirates are also their highest-paying customers. What does this mean? That means they purchase a legitimate copy as well and they use piracy either as previews or for convenience. What they industry wants is for everyone to purchase multiple copies of the same content. No one in the world is going to go for this, regardless of what laws or actions taken by the industry or the governments that support them. Do all pirates own legitimate copies as well? No. But, the ones that don't are almost impossible to turn into legitimate sales, again, according to the industry's own studies. They either don't have the money or have some ideological issue with paying (even if it's selfish miserliness).
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
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
Absolutely not.
Nobody has an ethical obligation to support every aspect of a law just because they support one part of it. The fact that the constitution included a process for adding amendments should make it clear that unquestioning obedience to the law was never the intent of our legal system.
We're quite capable of acknowledging that copyright has benefited society while still recognizing that parts of copyright law have been expanded far beyond the original intent in ways that now cause harm.
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.
Oh please. False Dichotomy much?
. /Oblg. DVD vs Piracy
People pirate for a variety of reasons. Such as:
1. One can't legally buy a copy. Piracy is the *only* option to watch it. /sarcasm Those pesky Mathematicians! They are the cause of the downfall of society!
2. Artificial Scarcity. If a DVD/BluRay is not available in my region, piracy is simply more convenient
3. They can't afford it.
4. If a borrow a movie from a library, watch it, and then return it this has the exact same effect as if I had borrowed a movie from the library, made a copy, returned the original, and watch my copy later, except the former is legal, yet the latter is "magically" illegal
5. Piracy is the delusion that "copying numbers is illegal". How stupid is Civilization when it has declared Illegal Numbers !?!?
To everyone who plays the bullshit piracy-is-illegal card here are some questions for you:
Q. If your friend buys a DVD and loans it to you, is it piracy if you watch it? You never paid for the content.
Q. How many friends can I loan my DVD / BluRay to before it becomes piracy?
Q. Why is it OK if I personally loan it to friends, but I can't share my copy with strangers?
Q. How "long" do I have to know a person before I can legally share my copy?
Q. Are libraries engaging in piracy?
Do I personally pirate? No, as I like having my own personal library so I don't mind buying BluRays / DVDs. If I can't buy it, I'll just wait until it is available. But my reasons for why I _don't_ pirate may not work for someone who _does_.
> copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it,
1. When Copyright was only ~20 years, sure, I have no problem following that but when the law has become corrupt that something that _would_ become "public domain" will NEVER reach that status, then there is higher obligation:
Civil Disobedience is the only way to change to corrupt laws.
2. Rosa Parks would like to have some of what you are smoking. Laws are NOT absolutes. That is why they _change over time_.
Personally, abolish copyright, because it is no longer server its original purpose:
So no, we're not ethically bound to follow bullshit artificial laws.
If you screw my wife then you've attempted rape.
LOL - nope! It's only rape if she wasn't consenting...
Given that you appear to think of your wife as property, I would not at all be surprised if she consents... often and frequently.
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.
Except for the bit where the people who pirate are mostly movie lovers and very often go to see it in the cinema as well, hell sometimes before pirating. Watch it on the big screen once with friends/a date - and download a copy to rewatch multiple times.
That is something they never factor in - the reality is that piracy has, if anything, most likely INCREASED movie profits.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *