Record Box Office Indicates MPAA 'Piracy Problem' Hot Air 244
Kinescope writes "The motion picture industry has said that its profits are at risk due to piracy, but a record-setting 2007 box office has some wondering if the industry is crying 'wolf.' Last year, the US box office totaled $9.63 billion, a 5.4% increase over 2006. 'Piracy is so bad, according to the MPAA, that we need special legislation to target the dastardly college pirates who are destroying the business. It's so bad that Weekly Reader subscribers will learn about the $7 billion a year "lost" to Internet piracy. It's so bad that the MPAA wants ISPs to ignore years of common carrier law and the promises of "safe harbor" and start filtering their traffic, looking for copyright violations. The real world isn't quite this simple, of course. It turns out that the MPAA's college numbers were off by a factor of three, a revelation that came after years of hiding the study's methodology but continuing to lobby Congress with its numbers.'"
Old News, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem with it all
As I have posted previously.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Our body of law gives rights to the creators and their protected ability of being the one to approve copies. Regardless of whether we agree or now with this, that is our situation.
Now, we take this to the "digital domain". Those older creators want, no.. need these protections as they see in the non-internet world. The only real way to "guarantee" this is by digital restrictions. The best way I think of this is that of a akin to a capability system and the copyright maintainer has an account on your machine.
However, our machines are ours. The geeks amongst us demand that we are able to control our software and hardware. What was unable to do in WinXP, Vista seems to offer the beginning of that capability system with the media companies at the kill switch. And to top it off, Vista has remotely disabling drivers for "holes" that might appear. For those that own a machine, this OS laughs in their face, as if saying "Bring It On!"
And there are many casualties. Those casualties are the Joe and Jane Publics that don't understand this issue close enough, or think that all needs to be done is burn to DVD... just like the iPod to music. When they find out that they are locked with binary garbage that cannot be used for any fair use purpose (backing up owned DVDs is fair usage).
And where are we now? When the users know they are eventually shafted, those that have the know-how will show others where to download the movies and the music they legitimately bought. Once they know they were taken advantage of, any feeling of "theft" (or whatever you call it) will be gone. The media companies had their chance to do their dealings with the public honestly, but have failed.
Just like língchí.. Death by a thousand cuts.
posted on kuro5hin.org
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Worthless article (Score:3, Insightful)
All the data in the article is proving is that a fairly consistent number of people enjoy going out to the movies. It doesn't have anything to do with piracy.
Why I stopped going to the theatres... (Score:-1, Insightful)
The movie studios and theatres are making money on top of what we pay to see these movies through advertisements before the film and in some cases advertisements in the movie itself. There is no reason people should have to pay to sit through advertisements.
There is no guarentee that I'm going to enjoy the movie as there are often idiots in the theatre talking the entire time and the last few movies I've seen in theatres were horrible.
I, like many others, will not go buy a bunch of random DVDs in hopes that I'm purchasing a decent movie. At $20-35 a pop, not many can afford to.
Instead, I will download a CAM or TS release when a movie comes out in theatres and buy it later on DVD or BluRay if it's worth watching again. If the studios wanted to offer an online streaming service for movies in theatres charging $4-5 per view, they would not be losing money and people would gladly pay instead of waiting on bittorrent downloads. Yet they have not tried. Instead of investing in a profitable legal alternative they spend millions on lawyers, campaigns, bribes, etc. and make NONE of that money back.
The monetary loss claimed by the MPAA (and RIAA) is based on their assumption that people would be buying these movies or going to the theatre if they weren't available for download. That assumption is false. I'll download and watch maybe 10 movies a month and actually purchase 2-4 DVD's per month. In my opinion this is a fair compromise for having sat through 6-8 shitty films that shouldn't have even made it to theatres.
I hope the studios realize the MPAA are costing them a lot of money and doing more harm than good by trying to persecute potential customers instead of thanking them.
Re:As I have posted previously.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What it really all boils down to is that people pay what they think the production is worth. If they want the experience of the theater they will pay for it at the theater. If they want to watch it at home the majority of them will pay to rent it. I think the logical fallacy taking place is that the studios are losing money because of piracy. I'd bet that over 80% of the people who pirate a movie would simply go without if they suddenly couldn't get a free copy of it. Most of my friends who are into movies and really like movies want to support the studios and they cringe at the thought of having a "movie collection" in a CD case with the names scrawled on them in Sharpie.
Despite the "losses to piracy", the studios continue to put out a good quality product and employ large numbers of people. They don't seem to be hurting that much. The large majority of Hollywood is unionized. Those people make relatively obscene amounts of money for what they do, and the perks are top notch.
I realize I didn't really address the original question of "What alternatives do we have." I don't see many. Like I stated earlier, people pay what they are willing to pay. Hollywood could identify the conduits of piracy and increases the cost to compensate. For example, they could charge movie rental places more for the original copies. Those places would then charge their customers more to rent them. The people who make copies of the rentals would then in essence be "paying" for the movie. I think that would have the opposite effect though because suddenly a large number of people would decide that they didn't want to rent movies because they were too expensive, and so they'd pirate them or wait until their neighbor rents the movie and makes them an archival copy. The only other option is to lower the cost of the movies to the point where people who are pirating them decide to buy them instead. In theory they could then reap their benefits by sales volume instead of individual unit price. That won't happen though because I truly believe that the people who really want to buy a DVD movie are already paying the price that Hollywood asks. Everyone else just doesn't place a high premium on having a bookcase filled with plastic boxes with pretty pictures on them. They're happy with Sharpie labelled Memorex discs that play the movie as soon as you put it in the player and don't require skipping through warnings, previews and choosing menu options.
We have to get out of this argument of money (Score:3, Insightful)
1) It's not about how much money you made, but how much more money you could have made. Great I made $2000 last year on my stocks, but damn those pirates I could have made $3000!
2) Companies are all about shareholder equity. The more money you make, the more you increase your stock price and the more dividends you can pay out.
3) The average politician is sympathetic to this, both in terms of legally allowing business to flourish, and corruptly accepting money from donors involved with the MPAA/RIAA.
4) not enough average people make a stink about losing their rights thanks to copy protection, so politicians don't listen.
And #4 is what we need to continue to pound on and educate the masses over. Large companies want to slowly take away, nibble by nibble, your rights to copy things that you should be able to copy. You make the message simple enough, pound on it, and don't let up, and eventually rights will trump money. Consumers as a group are the most powerful group in the US, we are just completely disorganized and disinterested. Unless we get organized, the well organized MAFIAA will continue to dominate this discussion in the places where it counts.
Re:summary wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
2- ???
3- profits!
Box Office Revenue versus Tickets Sold (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be willing to bet Lucas made more $ from merchandise than from the actual Star Wars movies themselves.
One of the kids I knew growing up had at least $3000 of Star Wars action figures, models, posters, clothes. And that was in the 80's which translates to some ungodly amount now.
Again, this is a business model issue, not a Piracy issue. If studios are losing money, then they need to re-examine how much they pay executives and actors. I mean honestly, there is no actor alive that is worth millions of dollars a picture.
Yeah, I'm kindof a Troll about this. F'ing whiners, the lot of 'em.
Re:Old News, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, it just shows how big of a sellout Stephen Harper really is. As bizarre as it may sound, I'd rather have the old farts and their sponsorship scams than this Conservative pushover. I value freedom far far above tax cuts.
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
And once that's clarified, we'll talk about sports celebrities.
a. Standing around looking pretty, 10 million
b. Hitting a ball with a stick, 7 million
c. Designing the hardware, software and networks that bring it all to the consumers, 40k/yr
Shit's upside down!
record profits tell little (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As I have posted previously.... (Score:4, Insightful)
People are sick of crappy popular music and the only stuff that sells in huge quantities is kiddie stuff because they are easy audiences and don't realize that Hannah Montana can't hit a note without autotune. That is the main reason why the music industry is hurting - the talent is abandoning them and their old ways. Pretty soon though, you will find that as video equipment comes down in price and editing software is cheaply available, independent movies will come out and have global distribution the same way any musician can over the internet. The talent will slowly migrate to the new business model while the old studios will cry foul on their own customers. The best thing the movie studios can do to slow down the inevitable is to put out more good movies and stop trying to cheapen your brand by remaking everything just for a quick buck.
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so how can we actually tell if piracy is the problem?
An economist would have to take many things into consideration:And if all these factors are measured in dollars then you'd also have to adjust for inflation and other price changes. Only after you've factored all these variables can you determine if the difference is due to piracy.
Re:not quite so simple (Score:3, Insightful)
I could list reading, woodworking, gardening, playing a musical instrument, riding a bike, skiing, swimming, stargazing, painting, and billiards. Camping, fishing, hiking, metal detecting, maple syrup tapping, and chess in the park. Jogging, flying a kite, building a robot, volunteering for Big Brothers & Sisters, building a brick BBQ off of your porch, or training your dog to play dead. Skateboarding, sidewalk chalk art, building a bat house, sending away for Uncle Milton's Ant Farm [unclemilton.com], or taking up photography. The list is literally ENDLESS no matter what age you are.
That huge room with the bright blue ceiling has been around forever, you should check it out.
And in the late 70's/ early 80's when you were feeling lazy and the weather sucked there was always the Atari 2600 [wikipedia.org]!
So exactly what new entertainments are you inferring are available now?
Re:summary wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
tl;dr - Everything looks 'original' for the first few decades.
Re:summary wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
welcome to the reason that p2p is so popular
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, that's completely erroneous, because it's an extremely shallow and useless method of appreciating movies to judge them by originality alone.
Good movies only? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am struggling to think of when I actually went to a cinema and saw a film and if so, what it was. I really cannot remember if I spent an inordinate amount of money getting in, then spent a small fortune getting a drink or sweets. Nope, still drawing a blank...
DVDs however are another matter. Barely a week went by without some sort of hiring going on. It's far more comfortable and relaxing to curl up on the sofa with fiancee and a beer and relax.
One point I will say is that during the Great Depression, movie audiences were also at a very large high. It was felt that the general population needed to escape from the reality of their lives for a short period of time and that movies provided that relief. With the way that the world is heading (rising oil prices etc), what is to say that people will also choose to spend a few hours a week safe in the womb of feel-good movies.
Maybe Disney will see a new market here and make films with even more schmaltzy endings...
I Know This Music..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Year-End Loss: Piracy is to blame. It's not our fault.
Year-End Profit: We had great artists/writers/engineers that made some great products.
Not Enough Bandwidth: Piracy is taking up all the bandwidth. It's not our fault.
Excess Bandwidth: We have a better system than the 'other'guys. We're better ISP.
Low Box Office Turnout: People are pirating movies instead of going to the theater. It's not our fault.
High Box Office Turnout: We made really great movies.
Low Record Sales: People are pirating all their music instead of buying it. It's not our fault.
High Record Sales: We have great artists who produced great songs.
Anybody see a pattern here? Whenever the MPAA/RIAA or ISP's have problems, they blame pirates for "taking away" sales and clogging networks. The MPAA and RIAA don't realize that if they continue to pump out crappy content (films/music), then people are going to want to make sure thay what they are going to spend $25 on is worth it (would you buy a song or movie without listening or viewing it first? A 30 second preview isn't enough.). The MPAA/RIAA doesn't understand that people are pirating because the industries are prducing horrible music albums and over-hyped movies that nobody feels is worth their hard-earned money. Every film t hat comes out of Hollywood is over-hyped and inflated, so there is no way to tell a great film from a bad one. Record labels use the trick of putting 2 or 3 good songs out of 10-12 tracks on an album, and then charging $25 for the whole thing. If you produce crappy content, people are going to do what they can to make it better, or at least save themselves from being duped by record labels and film studios. ISP's have a similar reaction: Comcast blames p2p file sharing ("pirating" in Comcast's eyes) as the reason that it's service is horrible, rather than acknowledge that it spends way to much on advertising for customers that it already doen't have the bandwidth or infrastructure to support.
Whenever these guys have problems, they shift blame to other people, namely, "pirates". BUT, when they have a windfall, they are pretty damn quick to shift the attention towards themselves.
Basically:
Successes: We're just simply a company of experts who know what we're doing!
Problems: It's your fault, not ours.
The problem isn't only limited to these groups, but can be seen in other companies that don't understand how to run a business:
MAINTAIN your infrastructure. If you lose it, you have nothing.
INFRASTRUCTURE is everything. If it suffers, your customers suffer, and ultimately, you will suffer the most. (Just look at AOL.....)
DO remember that your customers chose you. You didn't choose them.
DO keep your customers happy.
DO provide good service.
DO give the customer what they want. If you do, they will give you money in return.
DO remember people want a product, not more advertisements. (AOL again.....)
DON'T spend more than you make.
DON'T advertise things you can't deliver.
DON'T try to pull a fast one by your customers. You will always lose.
DON'T overvalue your product. (AOL again.....)
DON'T treat the customer like an ATM. It pisses them off.
Word-Of-Mouth is the best and most effective way to get a new customer.
A happy customer is far more likely to convince a friend to buy from you than your commercial is.
Money from a customer is good, but get greedy and it will disappear.
And lastly:
DO remember that your competitors would be more than happy to buy your company from your creditors if you ever went belly-up.
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
People are paid based on the money they bring in, not the work they put out. If we were all paid based on the work we put out, then trash men would be gods and many of our congressmen would be paid like school teachers.
It's much simpler than that (Score:3, Insightful)
When you're watching DVDs at home it makes no difference if they're pirated or not, so piracy wins.
Re:summary wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
When computer synthesis gets good enough to slap any face and voice onto any actor (and we're ten years away from that now, at most - researchers already have crude working models of the technology, it just needs refining), there is going to be a lot of crying.
Re:Huggling over numbers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the true injustice is that companies with access to billions of dollars have tailored our laws to suit their own interests. These laws run counter to the original concepts of copyright that were developed outside of corporate interference.
The original purpose behind copyright was to allow these creations to fall into the public domain while providing incentives to the creator, not be used as some black-currency for corporations.
Re:Good movies only? (Score:3, Insightful)
This study doesn't take you into account; you're way out of the average.
For the record, yes, there were good films in 2007, and lots of people went to theaters, paying the ridiculous (in your opinion) prices. I would bet a large portion of the reading audience here, in fact, went to see Cloverfield alone, which means you might be out of the norm even for Slashdot.