(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

Let's go on record here. I have no idea how much money piracy costs the entertainment industry (music, movies, television, et al) a year. I'll hazard a guess that it's in the low billions. That's a lot of money, no lie, but given that the industries themselves rake in fuckloads of money, I'm less inclined to listen to their cry-me-a-river nervous Nancy worrying routine.

Exhibit A: A Times Article about the Summer of Blah

You know when you have conversations where someone will go, "I'm not racist/sexist or anything, but..." then they go on to say something incredibly inflammatory because having made a disclaimer means that they're not really being racist/sexist? This article has all these far-too-wealthy people doing the same thing. "We're not complaining about not having made enough money this year, but [WHINE WHINE WHINE]."

Is it really the summer of blah? I've been bombarded with the idea that it should be, and so I am beginning to feel the same malaise. But from the start, I've found things to be excited about and had a good time going to see, so I can't see what the crap they're talking about. To the people in the article, something like the incredible amount of money that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest made isn't enough. It made REDONKULOUS amounts of money. Talledega Nights is making REDONKULOUS amounts of money a month and a half later. How is it that this isn't enough money? How is it that we have to then run crying about piracy when the truth is that marketing and advertising are so over-inflated, budget-wise, that they routinely eat up more than the opening weekend box office gross of most films (Snakes on a Plane made ~$15 million this weekend, but marketing costs were $20 million, and they don't connect the two at all?).

Nope, it's piracy. It's you people and your downloading. Your bootleg, Chinatown DVDs. Your mini camcorders and contentment with low-price for low quality rather than sacrificing for the good of the bloated studio heads and the over-paid actors by purchasing premium quality for a premium price. Damn you people!

Comments

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I did get a bit mad the other day when a group of my friends were all going to see a movie and we invited someone and he said "no, I've already downloaded it, I'll watch it later".

Usually, however, I don't care. Most of the other people I know actually skim their download to see if they think it's any good and then go see it in theaters anyway.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If I were to download movies, I'd only know to download ones I'd seen and liked. I'm not going to download something sight unseen that I wouldn't see in the theater--if it's not important enough to me to see in the theater, I'll add it to my netflix queue. That's legal, I don't lose it (because netflix saves my choice), and I don't worry about it. I certainly wouldn't chose it. The quality is about what you'd expect from a video of a video, i.e. craptacular, so even a good movie can get bogged down and made to seem less brilliant. I'd rather rent it on DVD and be pleasantly surprised (like I was with L4yer Cake--what little of it I understood--and Fantastic Four).

Plus, being a New Yorker, I don't support DVD peddlers because they take up space in already crowded areas--when they're not bothering me at fast food joints or on the subway, that is.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

They probably don't even lose billions annually. See, it depends on how you measure lost revenue. The MPAA and studios prefer the probable overestimate, of course: they count EVERY downloaded movie as a lost ticket/DVD sale. The RIAA does the same thing with music downloads: count every one as a lost CD sale.

Most analysts point out, however, that the majority of downloaders are teenagers who wouldn't have bought the DVD/CD even if they couldn't download it. Each case like that is not lost revenue. It doesn't make it okay, obviously, but it nonetheless is NOT the "lost revenue" that's being complained about as the primary reason piracy is SUCH a big problem.

I fall somewhere in between. I've only downloaded a handful of songs, no movies, and only TV series not yet out on DVD. On the other hand, at the same time as I'm not downloading music or movies, I'm leaving CDs and DVDs on my Amazon wishlist for YEARS, going "I should get around to buying that at some point." If purchasing for download weren't made such a massive hassle by the RIAA/MPAA insistence on obscene DRM, I might've bought them by now, they'd have my money.

If there are more people who feel the same, they really are shooting themselves in the foot, financially. They need to stop waging a war they believe is in their best interests but really ISN'T. Whether anything will ever get them to realize that is, of course, another story altogether.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

They probably don't even lose billions annually. See, it depends on how you measure lost revenue. The MPAA and studios prefer the probable overestimate, of course: they count EVERY downloaded movie as a lost ticket/DVD sale. The RIAA does the same thing with music downloads: count every one as a lost CD sale.

Ahhh, nothing like insane hyperbole to strengthen your position, hey what? Reason #1 people download is because they wouldn't/couldn't be bothered to buy. iTunes has proven that what they will buy, they will buy more of if they can be friggin' lazy about buying it (no more trips to Best Buy's awful selection racks! woo!). Plus, they overestimate people's greed. I will confess that there are plenty of downloaders of music really aren't going to buy if they can steal it, even for things they would buy, but that's not the majority. Most people are either aware that you shouldn't be able to get something for nothing or are afraid enough of being caught out at illegal downloading that they'd prefer not to worry and go for the legal copy.

Which leads into...

If purchasing for download weren't made such a massive hassle by the RIAA/MPAA insistence on obscene DRM, I might've bought them by now, they'd have my money.

...the biggest challenge to the next level of home entertainment delivery. I'm old-fashioned, I know, but if I pay for something, I kind of want a hard copy of it (my brother-in-law thought it was hilarious that I considered CDs 'hard copies' in this argument, but they are). I want to know that what I bought, this piece of intellectual property, is now mine to do with as I please. If I chose to delete it, so be it. If I chose to burn it to a CD to listen to it off my computer, so be it. If you try to tell me how to enjoy it, I will stop enjoying it. Remember, DRM fascists, people are going to pay for legal stuff, but they are overridingly lazy. If DRM complicates the way they want to enjoy something, they won't bother going the legal way.

They need to stop waging a war they believe is in their best interests but really ISN'T. Whether anything will ever get them to realize that is, of course, another story altogether.

Yes, but there's a problem, and they can't just do nothing! It's like what someone wrote a this forum I read talking about the new airport security measures:

A) See there is a problem.
B) Do something.
C) Problem solved because something was done (even when it isn't).

They're stuck on this "because you've whined, you should be able to get what you want" solution. Even though that solution works counterintuitively to the real solution which is finding a way they could actually work with consumers to make their product more appetizing and less appealing to steal. You can't get rid of piracy--for every security measure, there will be a hack and hacker who gets away with it. The best you can do is make piracy look like an unappealing alternative. They're doing exactly the wrong thing by making the legal option look unappealling. I can't figure out why they don't see that.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Well, as I said in your BD/HD-DVD post, if they have their way, the new disc formats will be as hard to do with as you please as downloads are now, so that isn't going to be any sort of "safe haven" for the consumer for long.

I've said before, I believe people will pay for downloads rather than stealing them so long as it's more convenient. (As you say, they're lazy.) If one can go on a site, pick a song, pay a buck, and have it in 30 seconds, they're more likely to do that than they are to scour the internet looking for a file of questionable quality that might not finish downloading, etc, etc. The PROBLEM is, in an effort to "protect themselves", they institute all this DRM that makes legal downloads more arduous to deal with than illegal ones. I'm convinced iTunes is only so successful because so many people just want to stick in on their iPod and go, and they can do that without a hassle.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's a big factor, too. Plus, there's the end run-around the DRM with iTunes that lets you burn a CD of your purchased music, which you could then burn over and over or something. I still don't trust it, and I don't like having to do that. I'll buy CDs of anything I really, really like or bands I want to support. I just buy them online where they're cheaper--I still want the produced disc.

DRM gets in the way of fair-use playing, which in turn makes all who stand for fair-use criminals with the way DRM has been implemented thus far. That's not a good way to keep consumers. And I was already wary of the BD/HD-DVD fiasco; what you had to say about DRM only made me more so.