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
Re:Old News, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
The legislation enacted was almost EXACTLY what was requested by Gov. Schwarzenegger... and STILL they cry 'Blame Canada!'
It's the Canadians' fault, with their beady little eyes and flapping heads so full of lies.
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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.
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Maybe it's only incidental that these most recent, most egregious exa
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Since more than half of North-America consists of Canada( 3,854,085 sq mi, USA 3,794,066 sq mi ) , small wonder.
Only if the rest of the countries in North-America cover less than 60,019 sq mi in total.
summary wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the box office figures don't correlate directly to lost profits, because the DVD industry is so big now, and I think that's where they're losing most of their money. Getting a copy that was taken by a video camera sucks compared to a movie; however, once a DVD comes out, you can download the same quality for free.
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* Of course, I got that number from the same reports the MPAA used.
and what are the "good' movies? (Score:5, Informative)
How many "good" movies see a big theatrical box office?
No Country For Old Men [imdb.com] grossed $64 million in the U.S., Ratatouille [imdb.com] $206 million.
Both are fine films, but play to a very different audience.
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.
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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...
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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 audien
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.
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Optimists say there are about 30 original stories out there. Pessimists say less.
Well... there's a difference. No one begrudges when they reuse the typical boy meets girl story if there's interesting subplots along the way. But remaking old TV shows like The Honeymooners, Bewitched, and Mission Impossible isn't reusing an over all plot... it's just lazy and fear of making something original. There have been some weeks where over 80% of the movies in theaters are either sequels or (bad) remakes of books, comics, and TV shows.
Re:Stop giving me that crap about the "good movies (Score:3)
What if it's too crappy for me to pay for, but good enough to keep in the background while having dinner or something?
That's no problem, they don't have to pay a cent when I download their movies using bittorrent.
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Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Funny)
How DARE you imply that anything other than those Evil Content Pirates(tm) is responsible for any downturn (or not a big enough increase) in our profits!!!!
</MPAA>
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But I will admit that I only buy movies at my local grocery store when they hit about $20 (if not less.) Heck, I've got a bunch of movies that I've bought at that price point. But new movies for $40?
I can wait.
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.
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So you're the one who made me stop going to the movies.
Stop "socializing" during the fucking movie!
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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
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Since buying the movie on DVD gets me no additional rights, I see no point in buying. My movie collection can grow quicker by having new movies delivered to my house on a regular basis.
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Indeed. DVD sales in 2007 were down from 2006, and DVDs are where all the margin on motion pictures is. The theatrical distribution is really sortof a loss leader to promote the DVD and follow-on media, like DVD, television and video games (an industry which outstrips the film industry in revenues, I might add).
That depends on the film. Disney in particular seems to have very strong follow-on media sales. But I'd say that the characterization isn't true in general. There are films that do as you say, there are direct to video films that make no income at all from ticket sales, there are films that are make most of their income from ticket sales, and there are films that seem to be loss leaders in all of their markets and only generate bad publicity for the studio. :-S
But however you view it, there is big money
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Even really big, successful, good-press films lose money; remember that stars and directors and producers cut most of the gross box-office receipts up front, in such a way that films like Forrest Gump and Hook STILL haven't turned a profit, despite grossing several multiples of their budget on screens, because such
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2- ???
3- profits!
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If you don't pay them, they'll go somewhere else, and people go to movies based on who's in them. Jumper is atrocious, and the critics told everyone so, but put Hayden Christianson and Sam Jackson on the poster, and you'll still open at number 1; it may not turn much of a profit, but now the videogame has a good launch, and Jumper 2 is assured boffo pre-tracking.
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Yes, they can be shown to lose money, but this is because someone was dumb enough to sign a contract for a cut of the profits rather than the gross. Then the accountants divert some funds through some "production" companies (that are actually owned by the all the same people) to pretend that the movie was actually a big loss, and the people who signed those contracts get squat.
If Forest Gump was produced with the budget management skills of a yappy wiener dog, it made a profit.
Incidentally, the author f
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doesn't look like much of a loss to me.
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Now its 30cents of popcorn for $4.50 and 10cents of pop for $5.50, or you can get the pop+popcorn combo for $9.00, and for $11.50 it comes with a chocolate bar too...
Really, they should just jack the base ticket price by a dollar and include a small popcorn with every ticket. That will be more profitable than selling overp
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: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!
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.
Medical Profession (Score:3, Funny)
e. Fixing someone who got hit with a stick, 20k/yr
f. 3 year treatment for burnout, 120k/yr
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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
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No problem. Tomorrow we'll get the story about how DVD sales are down because of the MAFIAA's bullying of customers, terrible movies no one wants to see and rapidly growing demand for Creative Commons-licensed Ogg Theora videos.
Remarkably, the same conclusion is reached whenever sales go up or go down -- you don't think that when movie revenues were off in 2006 there was a story about how "Gee, maybe we'd
And what kind of loss is it, anyways? (Score:2)
In truth, I wonder just what percentage of people who buy bootlegs or download the movie would have been willing to pay instead of simply not watching it. I mean have you seen the tripe coming out of hollywood these days? Granted the whole point of those laws is that those people should not have seen the movie without paying, and so they have taken an undue 'benefit' or 'enr
Summary is off by 3 orders of magnitude (Score:4, Funny)
How about "billion" instead? (It'll probably get corrected.)
Well, either that, or piracy has indeed PWNED the movie industry. Bad. Hah.
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
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But the law never made, nor was it ever intended, to make such a guarantee. Nor does DRM guarantee it, and in any event they aren't entitled to it. They're only entitled to spend their own time and money defending their rights in court.
That's not enough for them, of course
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.
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.
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And this is with movies sucking... (Score:3, Interesting)
They make utter shit.. and people flock to pay for it! I can think of maybe one decent movie in the past few years.. Blood Diamond.
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Mind if I drink your milkshake then?
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I'd never expect to find such narcissism on Slashdot!!
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Juno was good, too. But if I ever consider seeing another Michael Bay movie in theaters, I want you to shoot me.
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Oh, wait,... sorry. I forgot that I was posting to slashdot,... ;-)
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Golden gems like the following are the epitome of Class and Creativity.
Larry the Cable Guy
Meet the Spartans
The accidental Husband
how to Rob a Bank
Alvin and the Chipmunks (That one is HIGHLY original)
Step up 2 the streets
and the best movie of 2007/2008....
Semi-Pro
Why cant you see the Creativity and quality in Movies???
"Profits?" (Score:3, Interesting)
Whew. (Score:2)
This may be news for some. (Score:2)
"Hollywood accounting" (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod Parent up (Score:2)
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.
Bad cams of films (Score:2)
Statistics (Score:2)
Theres incomplete statistical data, incomplete statistical data, and incomplete statistical data in this case.
How is any of this data valuable to anyone? no comparison between alternate goods out there, no verifying beyond the gross dollar value....
This entire article has the feel of "Pot To Kettle", which really sucks because I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA's numbers WERE entirely hot air (in fact i'm pretty sure they are). You cant fight bad methodology with bad methodology or you just end up with the
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You might want to do a little more reading on global warming. There's so many signs pointing in the same direction from so many branches of science that it's getting pretty hard to ignore all the evidence. Gore's movie barely scratches the surface, and oversimplifies to the point of inaccuracy in order to be accessible to a lay audience.
Bottom line: If the scientist isn't competent in a relevant field and doesn't have a good record of publication in refereed journals, he's full of crap.
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THAT is what i take exception to. By anyone. ever.
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After dinner mints.... (Score:3, Funny)
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You've been to that restaurant too?
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.
not quite so simple (Score:3, Interesting)
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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 d
Missing the point (Score:2)
How much real growth is that? (Score:2)
5.4% growth in gross receipts and "record sales" aren't terribly telling. They do suggest that the industry hasn't been totally gutted by piracy, but it's not inconceivable that you co
'07 was an unusually good year IMO (Score:2)
But 2007 had so many movies that were actually worth seeing. The Simpsons Movie, Transformers, The Order of the Phoenix, The Bourne Ultimatum etc. I am not surprised at all that ticket sales were up. It was a very unusual year in terms of quality of "blockbusters".
Of cours
Well what did you expect of those who... (Score:4, Funny)
This is capitalism (Score:2)
Well when records companies make money, that means piracy is destroying their revenues and they don't forget to reduce artists royalties by the way.
At least communism had it right : everybody has the same as his neighboor : nothing, and elite drive in Lada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada/ [wikipedia.org])
They did not explain it... (Score:2)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
record profits tell little (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Year-End Loss: Poor artists/writers/engineers are to blame. It's not our fault.
Year-End Profit: We knew piracy wasn't that bad!
Not Enough Bandwidth: ISPs have to upgrade infrastructure. It's not our fault.
Excess Bandwidth: Whee! More music and music!
Low Box Office Turnout: The movies are crap. It's not our fault.
High Box Office Turnout: What the hell are the MAFIAA complaining about?
Low Record Sales: Wel
The problem with content and profit (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the content products like movies, music even books try to pretend they are normal products until it comes time to actually discuss profit margins and production costs.
You would say that if a movie cost X to produce then if it made a box office result of X+Y that Y would be profit? It don't work like that, extremely successfull movies that break box-office records can nonetheless show a LOSS. Hollywood style accounting would get you arrested in any other field, but somehow we tolerate it because... well you got to wonder why it is tolerated.
It seems rather convenient that the movie industry is allowed to just inflate its costs on all of its products until they rather handily do not show a profit. Say I create an item, a painting, I put itup for auction, then as the price goes higher and higher I keep increasing the costs of the paint I used so that even if my simple pencil drawing started out with a cost of a penny, if it sells for a million, it cost me a million and a penny to produce.
Idiotic? Well it happens all the time in movies, just look at the Spiderman movies and Lord of the Rings trilogy. Products that OBVIOUSLY had more revenue then cost but that is NOT what the final account says.
I know this will shock americans, but it is high time the state steps in and regulates the content industry. Offcourse that won't happen, any politician who dares regulate hollywood will be torn to shreds by the media.
And we swallow it, what is the favorite show of Slashdot? Futurama? How many eps show rampant anti-piracy propoganda? A show were turning humans into a softdrink is perfectly fine, but copyright infringement is an evil that deserves an entire episode.
We are controlled by the media, as long as the media can set public opinion they can abuse this by making sure politicians who do what they want them to do get noticed, and the ones who go against get buried.
Oh and don't think for a second that the content industry cares one shit about censorship. Ratings, a fine for a nipple? All part of charade. In exchange for allowing Hollywood to make its own economic rules, the politicians are allowed to introduce simplistic and ineffective self regulation.
And no, this is NOT a conspiracy theorie, there are no shadowy meetings in which this is arranged, it is just how things work. Conspiracy theorists are dreamers, idealists who hope that there is a clear enemy who no matter how powerfull can ultimately be overcome one day.
Real life don't work that way, there is just an understanding. Politicians leave the content producers alone, and the content producers won't tear them a new hole in the public eye.
Ever wonder why we think Kerry was a stiff, Al Gore to intellectual? Who do you think put that image in our minds? Watch the media very carefully and see how every person who is the smallest threath to the way things are done is assasinated.
Just imagine how you would react to a Jay Leno monologue about a senator who wishes to put the IRS in charge of examing hollywoods finanicials. How many seconds do you think he would need to tear this guy down and the audience swallowing it hook line and sinker?
The politicians KNOW this, the media controls the public so they can never control them.
Some people believe a free press is needed to keep goverment in check, but who keeps the media in check? Examine the politics in England and how newspaper support for one party or the other can swing the election. The media is the watchdog, but who watches the watcher? The public? Yeah right, they only know what the media tells them.
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Not to nitpick, but actual wealthy people don't drive those kinds of cars, the neuvo riche or yuppies or people pretending to be rich do. Execs drive high end mercedes and other subtle cars. An H2 yells "I WANT YOU TO THINK I HAVE MONEY" which is not what a real exec wants.
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I think, because they don't know how to make good products any longer. More correctly, I suppose, the people in charge have become so risk-averse that they don't dare take a chance on something that isn't sufficiently "mainstream". At least the junk they regularly churn out does, on average, turn a profit. Not as much as they would like, of course, and they want to eliminate copyright infringement to improve the bottom line without having t
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What are you watching on your home theater? The same old DVDs that you've had forever. Despite the poorly drawn conclusions of the article, ticket sales in the theaters don't really have anything to do with piracy. The piracy issue is on the DVD front... the movies that people like you watch on your home theater system. Now either you buy old "classics" o
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What has gone down, however, is the relative price of a video r