So according to Financial Times, the dip was 0.5%. Cry me a river.
Well, a lot of movies sucked this year (matrixes…) so no wonder it’s down.
And the set builder guy who is so concerned about internet piracy should be more concerned about increased use of blue screens as the entire set with the background digitally added later.
I fear, sir, that you are making an abstract argument that does not address the reality of the industry. In fact, nobody in the thread has yet brought this up, so it’s a general criticism, and I’m not singling you out; I’m merely quoting your post as it forms the articulate center of the assertion of one side.
On paper, and in principle, the anti-piracy position of the industry appears to have merit. Anything that negatively impacts profits will reduce the ability of the production companies to reinvest said profits into further product. Piracy is theft of intellectual property, and thus causes shrinkage of profit, and increases unemployment. This much is true, and I do not disagree with it.
However, what is truly galling about the anti-piracy campaign, focused as it is on the employment of the Little Guy on the lot, is its sheer hypocrisy. Why? Because there’s something that has been reducing said employment by an order of magnitude greater than any downstream shrinkage due to piracy:
Runaway production.
This sounds rather abstruse, and certainly isn’t on the radar of the average moviegoer, in contrast to the five-dollar popcorn. (And since that particular subject has taken a few shots in this thread, I will link yet again to my article on the subject.) However, runaway production is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, concerns in Hollywood right now. With the Matrix and Star Wars movies being shot in Australia, Cold Mountain in Romania, Catwoman in Vancouver, the TV series Monk set in San Francisco but filming in Toronto, and so on and so on, it’s rapidly getting out of control.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. NPR did a story on it this morning in which the number 50,000 was mentioned. As in that’s how many jobs in California have disappeared overseas in just the last two years. Here’s a story from Canada’s National Post in which that anti-American commie Robert Altman vows to buck the trend by keeping his film productions local whenever appropriate. Here’s an article by a Pittsburgh writer (published in the Miami Herald) about how the Pennsylvania legislature is considering tax breaks and other goodies that would offset the value of foreign subsidies and make homegrown filmmaking more attractive.
I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing. I’m not saying that the flight of film production wasn’t a predictable outcome of the very strong entertainment unions pricing themselves out of business. I’m not saying this is anything but the global free market at work. I am saying that runaway production is a huge priority for the industry. You don’t think Schwarzenegger got all those movie people’s votes because Hollywood is secretly Republican, do you? No, he got Hollywood’s support because, as a movie person, he is supposed to understand the runaway-production crisis and will submit and champion legislation to help California stay even with the foreign competition.
And further, I’m saying that the focus of the industry’s campaign is bald-faced hypocrisy. They themselves are behind the drive to shoot in other countries, and then they turn around and blame piracy for the loss of all these jobs, going so far as to recruit these underemployed union craftspeople in their deceptive campaign. It’s a shockingly callous example of moving the ball, of pointing at the closet door and blaming the boogeyman while hiding the bloody dagger behind their backs. They’re getting away with it, because Joe Average moviegoer doesn’t know anything about how the industry works. They see Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon on the cover of People and they figure Hollywood is all about money and glamour and all movie actors are rich and they bitch about the four-dollar soda and they make Scooby Doo a fifty-million-dollar-opening-weekend smash hit and they say it sucked but goddamn if they won’t see the sequel so they can say it sucked too. They don’t know anything about runaway production, and there’s no reason they should, except that it puts the high-profile screaming about piracy into its proper context.
If you really understood how the movie business works, you’d know that piracy, on the grand scale of things, is pretty far down the priority list. The only reasons it’s getting so much play in the media are (a) it’s easy to explain to the public (and by extension lawmakers in D.C., who are just as ignorant about the minutiae of the entertainment industry), and (b) it’s a means by which the Hollywood studios can consolidate their power. Look at the recent screener ban controversy, which was a pretty naked attempt to shut the independent houses out of a prime marketing opportunity operating in the guise of a blow against piracy.
That’s pretty much it, really, from a pragmatic standpoint. It’s about money, but it’s not about money the way you think it is.
OTOH, not everyone who downloads movies would pay to see them in a theater. And if watching a movie for free convinces them to buy a DVD, action figure, or T-shirt based on a movie that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen, or to pass around word of mouth that leads to more people buying tickets/merchandise, the studio doesn’t lose. I’m not saying piracy leads to increased profits, only that its effect is complex, and cannot be reduced to a slogan like “if you make copies, the studio doesn’t make money”.
OP here (gee, I wonder if anyone has taken over the handles OP, OPee , OPie or OPey just to create confusion)?
To the person who asked (seemingly in shock) about the price, that’s $13.50 Canadian… and we are still below 80 cents local to the greenback… but Hell is a good description for Calgary (-39C with windchill yesterday), so feel free to believe that’s where I am if you like.
A number of posters seemed upset about my not caring overmuch about theft from corporations… Consider it a philosophical difference… I think that copyright and patent rights are legal concepts that should apply to living, breathing, pissing etc. individuals… and that they should expire much like the entity they belong to… say within a few score years (the legal fiction that corporations are somehow individuals really bugs me). Being suspicious by nature, I think a large part of this broohaha over respecting copyright is the thin edge of the wedge regarding international agreements concerning intellectual property rights. There have to be limits on the span of copyright and patent protection, and allowing corporations (be they microsoft or disney) with an indeterminate lifespan to play on the same field and make the same claims to copyright or patent protection as people is insane. Hell, the whole idea of intellectual property becoming codified in international agreement is beginning to smell a lot like the Enclosures Acts out of the UK a century or two ago… great for the aristocrats, bad for us peasants…
… and until such time as studios are actually losing money, as opposed to experiencing a reduction in their profit margin, I am frankly not likely to give a damn about piracy…
P.S. and I would want an outside auditor to determine if they were losing anything… they have funny accounting practices themselves
Gasp! But if it can’t be blamed on the Internet and fought by shitty commercials, what hope is there?!
I’ve heard it blamed on not having a big My Big Fat Greek Wedding runaway indie hit.
IMO, another cheap rationalization, but if you want to convince yourself that piracy is somehow helping the studios (or to be more precise, that it’s “complex”, whatever that means), be my guest.
Uh, wasn’t talking to you. The “facts and figures” bit is from the OP. I’m with you; I just want to see the damn movie. Fuck all those trailers, too.
But why would they buy the DVD, action figure or T-Shirt from the person who made the movie? They’re bound to be more expensive to buy from the person who had to put the time and effort into design and promotion and cheaper to buy them from someone who just copied them.
After all, you don’t believe in copyright. So take it to its logical conclusion.
I just explained what it means: Sometimes downloading a movie (or song, etc.) results in less revenue, sometimes more, sometimes the same. Movies and music aren’t just products, they’re advertisements. You have to look beyond “Did this guy buy a ticket or didn’t he?” Only simple people need to reduce it to a simple black-and-white issue.
You tell me… why did I buy No Doubt’s new compilation CD instead of downloading the few tracks from it that I didn’t already have? Why did I buy Garbage’s first CD after downloading their second one? Why did I buy two Bloodhound Gang CDs after downloading three tracks? Why did record companies’ revenue per release increase while file sharing became more popular?
Maybe I’ll do that when you take copyright to its logical conclusion: Stop quoting posts when you reply to them, and never repeat anything that you hear or see.
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So you say. Shame you have no evidence.
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Because you live in the States and you couldn’t buy exact replica pirate copies, probably. But if you could, and they were cheaper, would you still have bought the studio version. Why?
Why do you only hear this from people who love stealing stuff and need desperately to believe that what they are doing is not immoral?
If you had even a basic understanding of copyright you would not make such a ludicrous statement.
Actually, I consider it naivety and failure of the imagination.
Presumably you’d think it immoral for a thief to steal a custom bicycle that a one man custom bicycle building shop had put a lot of time and effort into, right?
Well what if the shop was owned by two brothers, you’d think it wrong of someone to steal three of their bicycles, right?
So how about if they needed a bit more money so they invited in two other friends and together they rented a bigger shed to build bicycles, you’d think it was pretty wrong if someone stole 30 of their bikes, right?
So what if the rest of their town decided that it was a good business, put in five hundred dollars each so that they could build a factory and create some jobs and hire a professional manager (who got paid a reasonably salary). You wouldn’t think it was moral if someone broke into the factory and made off with 1000 bikes, destroying their profit and causing them to lay off all their employees and half the townsfolk to withdraw their $500, resulting in the closing of the business, would you?
Well what if the business survived but administration was becoming impossible because the business had 100 owners and every time a document had to be signed they had to get 100 signatures and so they decided to become a company (a single legal entity with numerous owners). Would it now become OK to steal from them? What if the business became very profitable? Would it now become OK to steal from them? What if 10,000 people invested in the business? Stealing OK now?
There is no qualitative difference between stealing from one person and stealing from vast numbers of people with an interest in a corporation.
It’s just that somewhere along the continuum, the abstraction gets too big for you to cope.
I have plenty of evidence that downloading music results in more revenue from the downloaders, namely myself. See my previous post for three examples. I don’t download movies, but I don’t see why the same wouldn’t be true there.
Sure, because I want to support the band. If I just wanted a CD with the songs in a plastic case, I could make one myself.
You don’t. I’ve never stolen anything, despite the efforts of certain copyright activists to rape the language and twist the meaning of that word. (Say, does that make you a rapist? :rolleyes: ) And I doubt the people who reported those figures have either.
Clearly you don’t care enough to understand my position, or you wouldn’t have made the ludicrous statements in your last post. I just thought I’d return the favor.
Now, let’s think about that for a minute. Why is it that stealing bikes from a factory destroys their profit? Could it be that… hmm… the factory workers can’t sell bikes they don’t have?
Come back when you understand the difference between physical and intellectual property.
Oh so an anecdote from an anti-copyright fanatic is evidence now?
And OK, so you would buy a studio made CD to support the band. How high minded.
It is interesting that you think that those who rely purely on selling intellectual property for a living should rely on the high mindedness of their customers while you yourself earn wages (if I recall correctly) by writing software your employers’ customers cannot avoid paying for because it is for embedded systems.
I frankly think you should give up your job and start working at something where you put your ideals to the test.
I understand that it is very very important to you to draw a sharp terminological distinction between what you believe in and the criminal behaviour referred to as stealing.
I don’t understand (and you are consistently unable to explain) what the practical difference is between the two things from the perspective of someone trying to earn a living out of making something and selling it, however.
One could (if one were cynical) form the view that the way you absolutely go apeshit when I refer to what you believe in as “stealing” is because you know how uncomfortably accurate that term is.
There’s no need to go over all this old ground, Mr2001, you know and have admitted that taking someone’s intellectual property without paying for it destroys its commercial value. You admitted as much in that other thread. You ultimately admitted that you just don’t care.
And besides which that whole post above about bicycles was not intended as a comment on copyright at all. It was intended as a comment on Bagkitty’s comment that she didn’t see anything wrong with theft from corporations as opposed to individuals.
Though it is interesting that at least she’s honest enough to admit that it’s theft. She’s one step more honest with herself than you, Mr2001.
While we’re on the subject, are there any studies at all about the relation between downloads and movie profits? The figures above seem to deny an inverse correlation (downloads increase as time does), and could be used to support a positive correlation.
None of that alters the correctness of my post. The fact that there are other factors which also hurt Bob the lighting technician and Barbara the costume designer and Mike the boom operator’s employment prospects (in this case, foreign competition) does not change the fact that piracy hurts their employment prospects as well. It isn’t a binary choice between causes.
Reduced profits = capital flight = fewer movies = fewer industry employment opportunities.