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DVD Release Delays Boost Piracy and Hurt Sales, Study Shows (torrentfreak.com)
One of the reasons that drive people to piracy is the delay in the release of a title's DVD or Blu-Ray in their local market. According to a new academic paper from Carnegie Mellon University, movie fans are finding it increasingly difficult to wait for the official DVD or Blu-Ray to come out. From a TorrentFreak report: Due to artificial delays which vary across different parts of the world, pirates can often get their hands on a high-quality rip of a movie before the DVD is officially released in their country. Researchers have looked into this piracy "window of opportunity," and found that release delays are actually hurting DVD and Blu-Ray sales. "Our results suggest that an additional 10-day delay between the availability of digital piracy and the legitimate DVD release date in a particular country is correlated with a 2-3% reduction in DVD sales in that country," the researchers write.
Despite the smugness, Europe is a garbage continent that has been committing atrocities and engaging in racism for millennia. We're talking about a continent responsible for the Crusades, nearly wiping out Native Americans, and rampant imperialism. Europe is the continent that started the two world wars and gave us leaders like Hitler and Stalin. Even after those brutal wars, Europe couldn't stop committing genocide, doing so in places like the former Yugoslavia. Syrian refugees are despised by many in Europe and subjected to rampant bigotry. Europe is far more racist than the United States, and that's despite strong prohibitions against hate speech. The EU is a political nightmare, which is likely to unravel because Europeans seem utterly incapable of working together to solve the grave problems facing their continent. Europe is a shithole. It always has been. It always will be. Europeans love to pretend they're better than the rest of the world and everyone should follow their lead. In reality, despite the smug facade, they're far worse than everyone else. Europe hasn't cleaned up their problems in thousands of years and they're not about to start now. Fuck Europe.
No shit, Sherlock.
Next, are they going to tell us water is wet?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Duh!
How about releasing legal copies for purchase and download worldwide simultaneously? Stop the price discrimination nonsense. Offer censored versions if you must for places like China and Europe that restrict some types of speech and geolocate IPs to enforce the restrictions.
It may seem common sense, but that's not a reason to not get empirical data illustrating the assumption.
It's sometimes bewildering to watch companies with a responsibility to shareholders behave in ways that appear counterproductive to their own bottom line. If the study from Carnegie Mellon passes peer review *and* the movie industry does not respond in a way that actually curbs piracy, then one has to wonder what exactly drives their behavior. This is not a rhetorical question. If anybody here on /. has insight into this, please share.
Listen, if they released movies digitally the day of with the option to stream / buy they'd make a shit ton of money immediately.
It may wipe out the theatre experience as we currently know it but, really, who cares? If you want I'll come over to your house, make you some soggy popcorn with "not-quite-butter" topping and kick the back of your seat after spilling 7-up on your floor
"But the pirates!" fucking... people already risk a lot to produce shitty CAM vids should say everything that needs to be said, where somebody like that takes the risk there's money to be made you dumb fucks.
Figure it out
This research shows that piracy negatively correlates with sales and pirates aren't buying legal copies. I've been told for so long on here that piracy helps sales. Can we finally stop repeating that nonsense, which has been disproved many times? Piracy is bad for sales because pirates aren't buying legal copies. Let's finally be intellectually honest in discussions about piracy and admit that it's harmful to sales.
The "artificial delays" are simply a specific form of artificial scarcity, and we humans always do our damnedest to route around them.
We also *really* don't want to be lectured to about piracy when we're watching a legally purchased DVD, nor do we want to watch ads, (except for movie trailers), in a DVD we've already fscking paid for. But media producers and distributors seem positively addicted to the practice of strapping on a pair of cleats and stepping on their own dicks.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
What the heck is a "DVD"? Is that Russian or something?
At $30 to $40 is anyone really going to make a habit of buying dvds for themselves?
N/T
Quit crying. Learn some self control and patience. It used to take years to get a VHS release after a movie had been pulled from the theatre.
Having staggered release dates is pretty much the dumbest idea ever now that anyone can get your movie the day it is released over the internet.
I wonder how they get a rip before the DVD comes out? I'm going to guess that the theaters now get digital copies and those get rippped. I wonder why they can't control that effectively. E.g. watermark every theater's version differently.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm pretty sure the curve between maximizing movie-in-theatre revenue and then DVD-before-everyone-forgets-about-it revenue is already well-understood by the entertainment industry.
But, I still don't understand NEW MOVIE piracy in developed countries. Sure, I pirate every new GoT episode within hours of the official air date, but it's TV that I watch on a 23-inch monitor where quality doesn't really matter. Same thing with a 10+ year-old movie or cartoons that I watch with my kids. However, when I want to watch something with cutting-edge special effects and sound on my home theater (or any 32"+ TV with separate sound system), dropping the $3 to rent a high-quality edition that is guaranteed not to crap out halfway through (which tends to drive off my wife if she's watching) suddenly becomes worth it.
I don't understand the delays. Just sell it HIGH right out of the gate.
Make movies something crazy like $60-$80 on opening weekend. Grab all that extra profit while the hype is high and plenty of families with great home theater and 2.5 kids that they don't want to pay concessions for consider it a win-win.
Drop it by $10 or so every month or so, until they're $20 at the same time they're available now.
Why do they hate money so much?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I am not going to buy a disc that I have to transcode and upload to my NAS when I can download a DRM free copy of it in less than 10 minutes. My movie collection is massive and organized but physically less than 1 cubic foot. You can't have that with optical discs.
The Movie Industry biggest competition are pirates and if they want to beat their competition they will not do it on price, so they need to work on convenience. Adding DRM, Disabling Fast Forward/Next Chapter on previews are all things that are annoying paying customers
"release delays are actually hurting DVD and Blu-Ray sales."
No shit, Sherlock! Who couldn't have worked that out at the beginning of all this, when the idiots in charge decided to make DVDs have different regions?
You don't need a study to know this will happen.
Sell the DVD/blu-ray on cinema exit - Charge more for that special only cinema only special special version for the true collector.
Having to wait months for it, I've forgotten about it or just can't be bothered. Plus you can't get the cinema only version.
i can watch and re-watch Deadpool AND learn Korean from the subtitles... win/win
The vast majority of people feel entitled to something someone else produced. That is what it comes down to.
It doesn't matter that the person or company has taken the time and effort to produce something other people want, everyone else demands it as an inherent right to have it instantly completely ignoring the fact they haven't lifted a finger to produce the product.
Nope, it's all about them and what they want. The fact they're not even going to pay for the product doesn't matter. They'll keep stealing because it's their right to take what they want from someone else. No attribution, no thanks, no payment for the use and enjoyment of the product. Just steal it because it's all about them.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
And I will never go back. To lowly grainy DVD format. It has outlived its usefulness, since launched in 1995, and made for SD resolution of yesteryear's CTR tubes...
Release the Blu Ray and DVD, along with online distribution like netflix, at the same time, around the world, within 2 months of the theatrical release. Instead of the current 4 to 6 months for no reason.
Soderbergh/Cuban did it.
http://www.cnet.com/news/soder...
There's no word on what the outcome was.
I do agree that there are so many logistical difficulties to seeing movies in the theaters that a large swath of the potential market is excluded by the Hollywood practices.
For two adults you're basically talking about $70+ to see movie if they have to get a sitter for the kids.
On the other hand, family movies are cleaning up on this. Make a movie the adults can see with the kids and the family saves money by just sending 2 kids to the theater for $20 instead of getting a sitter. And it goes into the theater and studios' pockets.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Or why do they even sell DVDs at all? Why aren't these media companies providing timely streaming or download options?
They are. Availability for purchase on iTunes Store on the same day as DVD release has been around for years. See Apple's eight-year-old press release. DVDs are still made available in the first place because parts of the United States still have satellite or cellular at $5 to $10 per GB as the cheapest home Internet option.
why bother buying a movie where the plot matters (i.e. not directed by Michael Bay) when I know beforehand how it's going to end?
I thought spoilers increased enjoyment as well as aerodynamics.
What this is about is making the cinema releases worldwide for the same day
A lot of films lack budget to get cinema releases across one country for the same calendar year. Think of all the art films that play for a week in Los Angeles County, California, in December in order to qualify for that year's Academy Awards, with intent to open to a wide release the following January.
Why not release the damned DVD of a film immediately after it has stopped circulating in the theaters? I presume the people that make these decisions have their reasons, but to me, every moment of delay just means that it's fading from the public consciousness and any "buzz" it generated is going silent.
"Citizen Four" was released in Sept/Oct of 2014, but wasn't available on DVD until freakin' August 2015. I wanted to see it again as soon as I left the theater, but by August of the following year, I'd lost my initial excitement. Still haven't seen it for the second time.
My economics question is why back catalog movies which have been released on disc can't be purchased as downloads.
A lot of film producers' hands are tied by contracts with upstream licensors (such as the author and publisher of a novel adapted into a film or the performer, record label, songwriter, and music publisher of music used in the film) or with cast and crew unions whose members work on a residual basis rather than a "work made for hire" basis. Not all such contracts that provide for a home video release also provide for selling downloads. DVD early on had a similar problem with older films whose home video contracts were written for particular formats ("VHS and Beta" or "videotape") rather than generically enough to include DVD.
I'm guessing these titles aren't exactly burning up the sales charts and that a budget licensing deal for streaming on back catalog title to a streaming provider would be revenue they mostly wouldn't expect to get from a DVD.
For one thing, it can be expensive to gather all stakeholders (again, upstream licensors and any cast or crew promised residuals) for a contract negotiation. For another, old movies compete with the same studio's newer products.
The DVD-Video standard requires players to implement UOP, which allows discs to specify that a certain control shall cause the player to display the letter Ø in the corner of the screen for five seconds instead of performing the requested action. It was intended to make copyright notices unskippable, but distributors have abused it to make advertisements unskippable.
Press "Top Menu": Ø. Press "Title Menu": Ø. Press "next chapter": Ø (arrrgh). What's left?
Actually it was the Africans such as the Egyptians, with things like their wheeled chariots, irrigation and other things that came from civilization
Granted. But nowadays northern Africa is more closely associated with the "Middle East" brand than with the "Africa" brand. So that narrows the question going forward: What impressive tech or philosophy came out of sub-Saharan Africa before European contact?
are you suggesting that Europe is responsible for delayed DVD releases?
In some cases yes. Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea is the English dub of a French animated series. The original series has been released on French DVD around 2000, but the English dub has never been released on North American DVD.
most dvd sales now includes digital copy which adds a couple of dollars to the purchase. It is near impossible to find dvds without digital copies. This means the customers are giving them money for nothing since most do not get their digital download. Why is the movie industry griping since they are basically getting paid twice for every dvd sales whether the digital copy is downloaded or not???
Piracy involves hijacking, kidnapping, murder and other crimes on the seas.
Conflating Piracy with Copyright Infringement is akin to comparing Cancer to Constipation.
Anyone who frames Copyright Infringement as Piracy is a shill of the MPAA and RIAA.
play globally or gtfo. also, if you can use cheap labor to make the players, i shoul;d be able to use cheap imports to play in said player. anything else is anti-consumer.
Yeah. Sure. Art films are what are hit so incredibly severely by this.
Please.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Was not another study, but a fucking clue.
DVD delays aren't about increasing DVD sales, it's to increase theatrical profits. Studios have a stranglehold on theater negotiations, often taking 100% of admissions the first few weeks of popular releases. Also, box office numbers are used as proxy for a film's success. Doesn't matter if steroids have health risks...
And does anyone know of a leaked copy of The Force Awakens in 3d?
Deadpool - one of the most popular movies of the year - was released on DVD here last Wednesday, meaning it came out 3 weeks after the US DVD release. If I hadn't already seen it (twice) in the theatre, I can guarantee I would have pirated it. (I do buy movies I like on DVD, so I would have eventually bought it.) Waiting nearly a month after it becomes available elsewhere is just ridiculous.