takingchase

ya, because they don't have enough money already.

animalmystic

My thoughts exactly.

aynrandgirl

This MPAA study is about as believable as those "tax gap" studies the IRS puts out every time they ask for a big budget increase.

ScandalUMD

As a lost full-price ticket. The MPAA is still looking for somebody to blame their slump last year on. Downloading and bootlegging are how people see movies they are marginally interested in. Theaters and DVD are how they see the ones they want to see.

Argentoholic

Hollywood is paying too much. In Chinatown you can get 3 dvds for 10 dollars.

Neeb

Lobby Group (and the MPAA is a lobby group) releases scary sounding study to attempt to influence government law enforcement agencies to take action against downloaders as opposed to things like, you know, terrorists or online kiddie porn traders.

I am totally shocked. Totally.

hdtv00

Lol

toddly6666

And maybe if movies spend a little less on the total cost of the film, movies could get better, and more profit...If movies would cost less than 30 million dollars per film, films could get better. Sometimes when directors get 100 million dollars to work with, their films get worse. With a smaller budget, audiences may feel they aren't going to get what they want for their money like huge special effects or CGI, but it's not so...Furthermore, it's already a known trend that a movie is considered negative for its overuse of CGI. I don't remember anyone complaining about puppets, sets, old school Buster Keaton-type special effects... For example, there are many awesome action/sci-fi movies which cost less than 30 million (Equilibrium, Dark City, Night Watch, all Hong Kong action movies, etc.). There is no need for Hollywood's out-of-hand spending.

Hokeyboy

"Whoa Mary, this movie only cost $30 million? INSTEAD of over a hundred mill?!! TO THE MULTIPLEX!!!"

Giles

maybe Hollywood could pay the ushers a little more, give them night vision glasses, and catch the peeps who record the movies. they could catch alot of them at the Silver Spring's Majestic 20 theatres...

PixyJunket

I like the kids that argue that they wouldn't have paid for it anyways as if that justifies their theft.

covenant

What kids? In this thread?

Draven

I've never downloaded something I would have paid for

Joe Molotov

I like the people that argue that every download equals money lost, as if those people were actually going to pay for it otherwise.

paradicelost

Even with illegal downloading and bootleg dvds, doesn't dvd sales increase every year. Shouldn't that clue the MPAA in on something.

Jackskeleton

Well, it's like this. You assume that for every pair of eye that sees your film, someone is going to pay for it.

Just because you weren't going to use the money doesn't mean that robbing a bank isn't a crime. Though I'll debunk my own comment there by saying that you aren't really "stealing" anything from the film industry since money can be held but a film is more of the experience.

Either way, even if a person wasn't going to pay or watch the film doesn't mean they should get it for free. If they had any interest to download it that's atleast some potential interest that the person would have at some point and time attempted to go out and pay some sort of money (theatre, rent, ppv, ad space viewing on tv, etc) By getting it for free you are taking one of those aspects away.

I'm not one to say this study is correct because it is far from it and it's way to open ended in claiming cash lost. But the defense of "those who are downloading and watching it would have never paid for it to begin with" is just stupid.

Draven

I don't think anyone is saying that. What I see from the MPAA is an assertation that everyone who downloads would have paid (in some way) for a movie. That's just not true, and overly inflates their number to look like they are losing billions when I'm sure the actual amount of "lost" money is far lower.

tonyc3742

If that's what they're doing, I'd agree, that's vastly overestimating the 'lost' dollars. Plus I'd bet there are lots of people downloading/copying movies, who never even watch them. Hell, it's likely we have thousands of unwatched *legitimate* dvd's between us; if you get some kid who downloads and burns a movie a day, or someone who's renting and copying from Netflix, they've probably got a backlog as well.

I think both statements
"Everyone who downloads a movie would have bought it"
and
"Those who download movies would not have bought it anyway"
are wrong, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

And how many of those people who have pirated movies, watch them and say, "You know, I'm glad I didn't pay 9 bucks to see that in the theater" and toss the disk in the trash.

Oh, and one more annoyance: "Web downloading"? What websites exist where I can download full-length copies of movies? If there are any, they're probably full of spyware and viruses and 'Vote for This Site!' bullcrap. Now, if they mean "P2P" or "filesharing" or something, that's different, but last I heard, those weren't "the Web". "The Web" != "the 'net".

"It also showed that losses stemmed not only from fewer ticket sales but also from fewer DVD sales which has been one of the growing business arenas in recent years."

But let's focus on the pirates. Fewer ticket sales--as has been mentioned, give a product worth watching/paying for in a decent environment, it'll sell. DVD sales--some folks were waiting on HD/BR, some people get burned on double dips, and lots of people rent from BBO/NF/Green/etc. Do they count sales to rental companies in the stats? I know I have been buying fewer dvd's since joining Netflix/BBO, but I'm not pirating them.

Spanky BananaPants

In my case, that's certainly a big factor. My purchasing DVD's has slowed to a trickle since joining Netflix. Most of my DVD's were blind buys that might've looked good, but I didn't get around to watching it for a while. With Netflix, I'll watch a movie, and more often than not, forget about it. If it's worth watching again, I'll buy it.

Also, I rarely go to the theaters anyway. I'd rather just watch a movie at home without the distractions that a theater provides. There are a few movies that I'll make the trek to the theater for, but not many.

Really, the movie industry is just imploding on themselves, and they need to change their business model if they wish to stay viable. Piracy isn't the reason they're losing money.

redskull

Where is all this alleged bootlegging supposedly taking place? My friend and I have gone to see a movie in the theatre almost every weekend for the past 8 years. I'd say I've seen approximately 360 movies in 8 years. And how many of those 360 times did I see someone trying to videotape the movie? That would be none. None, because the vast majority of pirating is an inside job, done in a studio by the people who make the prints of the films. But Hollywood can't imagine one of their own is to blame, so they blame us.

I agree with everyone here, 6 billion sounds a bit high. Hell, 6 MILIION sounds a bit high. Is a $6 billion loss even possible? Wouldn't every man, woman & child in the country have to be bootlegging every minute of the day to even get close to that figure?

And I also call bullsh*t on Asia not being as big a problem as they thought. I visited China last year, and every street corner was selling movies that weren't even out on video here in the States yet. There was even a legitimate bookstore (the Chinese equivalent of a Borders or a Barnes & Noble) that stocked bootlegs on their shelves!

Jackskeleton

your answer: China. Also, very few films actually get bootlegged while there's much of an audience. It would be stupid to film your bootleg when there is a lot of folks that will potentially add noise to your film. Bootlegs are often filmed during closing hours by "inside sources" or during the slowest show times.

The inside the studio jobs are very few and far between because it's easier to trace it back to them. The few times that it has been inside men they are quickly taken care of. I had a friend who was fired because he took screen caps of his dvd screener copy of Harry Potter. Those images found their way through the grape vine to muggle net and a full on FBI investigation was placed down on him. They took his hard drive and took just about any material that could have been used to copy that and he was fired. They do a lot to make sure that it's not the employees. Hell, there was a film print missing a couple weeks back on the fox lot and every day as we left the parking structure we had to open our trunks for security to check out. Don't worry, they suspect "inside men" a whole lot but more than often it's not us who is the one releasing these or you'll see more and more better copies than you do telesyncs.

It's not a case of them blaming you just for the fuck of it. They have good reason to blame "you"

I agree with you that asia is a big problem. But once the market grows more folks will be more willing to purchase legit copies that are better in quality. Studies have shown that asian women are getting fatter because of better incomes and better eating patterns. So it's likely they will upgrade home systems down the line. But yes, Asia is a major issue for bootlegging. Most of all they do not even care about copyright laws.

kvrdave

Hmmm, I tend to agree that the study smells like a load of baby poo, but I also don't think much of the idea that people who download wouldn't pay for the movie anyway. I would bet that many of us have purchased movies that were blind buys.

But more than just that, when there is a movie that I think is marginal, so I don't want to buy it, I don't download it....if I have that little interest in it, I wait for it to hit HBO, etc. or even Netflix.

I tend to think one of the things really hurting the movie industry is a lot of home theaters are pretty dang nice. I don't go to movies anymore. I wait for them to come out on DVD. And now, 80% of the time, I get it on Netflix rather than buy it unless it is a movie that is a serious hit like Lord of the Rings, Sin City, etc.

The habits of people have changed and the movie industry hasn't caught up yet. I would bet Netflix costs the MPAA over a billion a year by their reasoning.

lamphorn

If it's not worth seeing, then why is it worth stealing?

cupon

MPAA.org should set up a PayPal donation link on their homepage.

Legolas

This reminds me of an article in, I think Entertainment Weekly, where one of their writers went off on a pro-movie piracy tirade. So in a later letter to the editor, one person said he agreed with the article and from then on would steal EW issues instead of buying them.

I wonder how many business owners think film piracy is a good thing.