Last week I got into a conversation with a studio exec, who conceded that video piracy was a permanent reality that companies like his would have to deal with. ...
Along those lines, Waxy dot com discusses how many nominees for The Little Golden Man get filched for on-line viewing, and when:
Every year, the MPAA tries desperately to stop Oscar screeners -- the review copies sent to Academy voters -- from leaking online. And every year, teenage boys battling for street cred always seem to defeat whatever obstacles Hollywood throws at them.
... A record 37 films were nominated this year, and the studios sent out screeners for all but four of them. But, so far, only eight of those 33 screeners have leaked online ...
Whatever the reason, online movie releasing groups are taking longer to pirate movies than ever. When I first started tracking releases in the early- to mid-2000s, the median time between theatrical release to its first leak online was 1 to 2 days. Now, that number's crept up to over three weeks. ...
Which isn't to say that piracy isn't a growing problem, it is. As anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the amounts of money flowing into coffers other than the content owners' can tell you.
At last Tuesday's membership, a representative for the MPAA and the major guilds and unions made a presentation about the billions that are lost to internet pirates. He began by conceding that the current raft of internet piracy legislation is dead. Some members voiced their opinions that it's a good thing that SOPA and PIPA went belly up, and some of the shortcomings of the congressional bills were acknowledged.
But piracy is still a major threat that gnaws into profit margins ... and by extension, into the cash flows that feed union health and pension plans.
No matter how you slice it, movie companies and attendant movie guilds are taking it in the shorts as delivery pipelines change and content value is siphoned off through illegal means. Corporations will need to adapt to changing realities by working with the new internet power players and reconfiguring business models. If they stand pat, they run the risk of ending up like the larger, more powerful record companies we once knew, bought vinyl and silver disks from, and loved:
In receivership.
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12 comments:
Has more to do with how bad the films are--especially this year. Hugo? crap. War Horse? REAL crap. Rango? Crap with corn in it.
Who'd want to pirate THOSE films?
that article goes on to say that 34 of the 37 nominated films have been leaked on line so it doesn't really matter that only 8 *screeners* have been leaked, the films still got leaked by other means.
Hugo is definitely a winner. No surprise it has so many noms.
Hugobwas terrible in so many ways. One of Scorsese's worst.
Piracy is only going to be resolved by passing serious laws that will put it to a complete stop. People use it because it's free. Even with Netflix for example, piracy will still be popular. It's a shame that with megavideo, people lost some service, but the pirating has cease from that site and let's face it, megavideo was for pirating. This isn't to say that Movie theatres couldn't lower the prices of tickets, discs etc... Piracy is still stealing no matter how bad the film might be.
The MPAA should stream these movies for their members online somewhere. Give the people their passwords, tell them to watch it and then vote online. Control who watches what. I hear the problem is members lend out their discs to other people..some of whom do the pirating.
With new movies coming out on bluray costing up to $40, no wonder some would rather get them for free.
It's wrong, but to a lot of people, it is a real option.
I thought the copies given to academy members (oscar screeners) had watermarks on them?!?
$40 for a blu-ray? Where are you shopping? Within release Amazon has them for $25 and wait a bit longer and you'll get the Amazon sales where they are $7 to $9.
The whole "It's too expensive" is a BS excuse. Nothing excuses piracy.
> Piracy is only going to be resolved by passing serious laws that will put it to a complete stop.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Look, sonny, the software industry was dealing with file sharing long before you bought a double-cassette boom box. YOU CANNOT PREVENT SHARING. You can't legislate it away, and there's no silver bullet to prevent it. All you can do is put out high quality product, in the format that people want to watch, for a decent price.
$40 for a blu-ray? Where are you shopping?
Best Buy. and thats the current price for "Planet of the Apes" Bluray. Do I need to take a freaking pic of it's price tag? There are other new bluray at that price a s well.
The whole "It's too expensive" is a BS excuse. Nothing excuses piracy.
You obviously did not read my comment fully. I said "It's wrong, but to a lot of people, it is a real option." Now, what part of "it's wrong" did you NOT understand?!?
e. d.
Passing laws does nothing, people who pirate movies obviously are not concerned that it is wrong and therefore are not concerned with the current law so any other law would do nothing. Kinda works like gun laws, only affects those who buy guns legally but that's a whole other subject.
We can probably make internet illegal, punishable by death.
It's possible to shut down internet, right? (Serious question)
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