Damned Pirates: Hollywood Sets $10 Billion Box Office Record
Written by Ernesto on December 11, 2009Claims by the MPAA that illegal downloads are killing the industry and causing billions in losses are once again being shredded. In 2009, the leading Hollywood studios made more films and generated more revenue than ever before, and for the first time in history the domestic box office grosses will surpass $10 billion.
Nearly all the major BitTorrent sites have seen their visitor numbers go up throughout this year, and many of these new visitors are looking to download Hollywood’s latest releases. This development is a thorn in the side of the MPAA, movie bosses and some filmmakers, who repeatedly claim that pirated downloads are killing the movie industry.
Despite these worries, neither the ever-increasing piracy rates nor the global recession could prevent Hollywood having its best year ever in 2009. With an estimated $10.6 billion in consumer spending at the US and Canadian box office, the movie industry will break the 2008 record by nearly a billion dollars.
“The global economy is taking a major hit, and when these conglomerates that own movie studios are having a tough time, it’s at least one bright spot in the equation,” Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com Box Office said in a comment. “People are still, in 2009, going to the movies in big numbers.”
Hollywood is far from bankrupt and more alive than ever before. In the past decade box office earnings have increased significantly to reach this new record high. Of course this doesn’t mean that the lack of a negative correlation between piracy and box office ticket sales is proving that illegal downloads have no effect at all. It could be that the movie industry would make even more money if the plug was pulled on the Internet.
Then again, without any evidence the opposite could also be true. As many independent filmmakers have already experienced, BitTorrent and the Internet in general can be a boon to the film industry and a potential source of revenue.
Perhaps Hollywood should stop complaining and start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves. There’s a huge demand for online entertainment, so why not compete with piracy instead of spending millions of dollars fighting it?
Previously: Digital Economy Bill: Lords Want To Stamp Out Piracy Chasers
Next: New Moon Pirate Camming Farce Comes To An End
99 Responses
Box office gross is one thing, but consider the implications fo DVD/Bluray sales as well.
If both are rising, then piracy is not such a huge problem, but box office gross going up doesn’t mean anything if DVD sales are at record low levels, indicating that there are movie fans who want to see films as they “should” be (in the cinema) and then everyone else is pirating and watching it at home/etc.
“Perhaps Hollywood should stop complaining and start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves”
– need i even comment?
right on the money Ernesto!
As well as appealing to new comsumers through new tech, maybe they should also stop alienating the customers they already have? For every $ they make (piracy or not) im sure they are loosing some $’s though they’re bad rep as money grabbing gits ;)
Amazing results!
thats a lot of money
It’s not box office sales that will die, it’s physical / digital distribution sales.
Those Hollywood fat cats need to learn the lesson.
I hope people don’t go to watch movie in 2010 or at least go less often. Then they would be telling the truth when they say that they’re losing billions. Or would they lie then and say they’re making billions?
I dont think physical/dds sales are hit because of piracy either. cause No one will buy everything they download.If the plug is pulled people will buy only the selected movies not some crap they download 24 hour
The loss of DVD sales ought to amount to atleast 1 billion to make away the rise in ticket sales. Sure that this is the case? And sure that the low has nothing to do with the rise of Blu-Ray format after the HD disk format war which officially ended this year?
So yes, it’s exactly like said in the article: “It could be that the movie industry would make even more money if the plug was pulled on the Internet.” On the other hand – any hard evidence that DVD sales would rise then? We shouldn’t forget that it’s not only the latest Hollywood blockbusters that get pirated, but also a huge amount of lesser known/quality and/or STV stuff for which many wouldn’t really pay for.
HAHA joke of the day. The industri stop hunt pirates??
The movie industri will still produce crocodile tears in front of goverments to make laws that gives them more power, to hunt the custumers, why sell a dvd copy, when you can sue a person on fantasy income of $$$?
YOU shell buy a expensive bit of plastic, and not be able to pick your on movie when it’s fits you.
when the industri shout jump, you say how high :-D :-D
The day the hollywood execs start thinking proper and see the internet and torrents as a beneficial tool, is the day their profits will increase 1000 fold.
If they got off their high ‘piracy’ horses and released the movies to both the cinemas and designated LEGAL torrent sites (for very small fee), everyone would win big time.
Families that wish to go watch the new release in the cinema can get in the car and do that still and still enjoy the ‘theatre experience”.
If the weather is extremely bad, then they can login to their favorite LEGAL torrent site and pay a small reduced fee to watch the exact same movie that is simultaneously playing at cinema, in the comfort of their home.
Both sides win every time. There are always going to be those that prefer the real cinema experience over watching it at home. There will always be those that want to watch it at home and not the cinema. There are others that want the choice to pick either.
Hollywood execs are just too stubborn and their refusal to jump on new technology will only cost them billions more in the long run.
Some young, envisioned exec will do this some day and will become richer than his wildest dreams :)
Curse those clever pirates!
@2: The movie can be the movie of 2009 that had the highest gross income, it can still bring very low dvd sales if you sell the DVD for 100$ for example. People just won’t buy it. They’ll wait a month and rent it.
oh they should also try banning renting DVD’s -____’
They should just give up they can’t stop evolution
I’m far from surprised by this.
Hmmm I think apologies for their cruel ways is in order.
Also @2 that’s not entirely true. Think about all the legit digital video distributors. That has some effect on DVD sales. I’m not saying some of it’s from piracy, but not all of it is.
and this year has been a crappy film year
crying hard times all the way to the bank :-D
The best thing about torrents for me is that where I live currently it is a 40+ minute drive to the cinema and even then they are only playing the movies that are the most mainstream and the biggest hits.
A lot of the movies I would want to see never make it to the cinema around here. Additionally, I find cool movies I have never even heard of before on torrent sites and Download them. If I think the movie is worth it, I go find the DVD and buy it even though I have a perfectly watchable copy already
If all the people that pirated movies, bought them, I can guarantee you that it would be considerably more than 10 billion. They deserve as much money as their movies are popular. Who are we to say how much money is “enough” for someone to earn? People call hollywood greedy for wanting payment for all of the copies of it’s movies distributed not just some. It’s as if someone’s employer told them “ok, you’ve earned enough, we’ll just stop paying you now.” And when the employee says that they want to be paid for all their work, not just some, the employer calls them greedy. How much sense does that make?
Hollywood has a natural tendancy to expand like any business..maybe this is why more movies are being made? The fact that they are expanding doesn’t necessarily point to rampant piracy being harmless. Movies are also taking much more money to make, so 10 billion may not quite be as much as it sounds to most people.
as i have to say once more: don’t buy from the corporations. no micro$oft, no google, no shell and whatever oilmonsters, no MGM, no GM, no MCstudpid etc.
support your small shops at home, buy local and second hand, do something good with ur money!!
Wow!!! The poor sods are practically destitute.
#22 i also buy stuff too but i find foreign indie films and documetaries.
i do not buy any hollywood films new nor do i go to any theaters.
i buy all mpaa films used as i do not want my money going to the greedbags.
Huh, That is really hard to believe as almost eight out of ten movies I have seen this year were so HORRIBLE I couldn’t watch more than 20 minutes. I
guess all these moviegoers really got suckered into watching these horrible movies or buying the dvd and then buy the end realized they were duped…
@23…
Well, neo.nazi, who are YOU to say how much is enough? When a movie covers its production costs, every additional dollar goes into the fatcats’ pockets, and not to the moviemakers themselves (so, in fact, it is the fatcats that go with the “you’ve earned enough” routine). Since the movies I like usualy do that less than a month after release, what incentive is there for me to pay up?
By the way, weren’t you convinced that piracy was KILLING the movie business? How come now its “naturally” expanding?
You’re slipping, troll boy. Go under a bridge and rest, before you make an even greater fool of yourself.
@\\.neo.styles|sSG: please kindly inform me where is the “hard work” in making endless copies.
Oh right there isn’t, cause people do it themselves.
That’s why Hollywood needs to be paid for that “hard work” that people do themselves. I mean, it’s obvious that it has nothing to do with the REAL hard work in a movie — a movie with huge effort can sell less than another one, so it’s not related.
The problem is Brandon, that when you go to the theater and the movie sucks ass, you can’t get your money back like you can at a restaurant or if you buy a defective product. This is the only industry that has this sort of BS rule. Many movies I have seen, and paid good money for, after 10 minutes in, I wanted to leave and get my money back. No suck luck! Once they have your hard earned pay you are just SOL!
10B? Their lawyers say it could have been 30B! Damn pirates!
If all the people that pirated movies, bought them, I can guarantee you that it would be considerably more than 10 billion. They deserve as much money as their movies are popular. Who are we to say how much money is “enough” for someone to earn? People call hollywood greedy for wanting payment for all of the copies of it’s movies distributed not just some. It’s as if someone’s employer told them “ok, you’ve earned enough, we’ll just stop paying you now.” And when the employee says that they want to be paid for all their work, not just some, the employer calls them greedy. How much sense does that make?
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The unfortunate thing is this is just revenue reporting.. This doesn’t account for the amount of absolute crap hollywood has produced in 2009.. As always I already pay tariffs for my fair use of media.. I shouldn’t have to pay for multiple copies which means I pay the same tariff multiple times for no reason costing me more then the average consumer (with no tariffs to pay) If I am paying for this tariff I am going to do as I please with my media.. Lets not forget so called pirates purchase more media then the average consumer aswell.. This means the majority of the 10 billion in profit was from pirates theoretically..
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Hollywood has a natural tendancy to expand like any business..maybe this is why more movies are being made? The fact that they are expanding doesn’t necessarily point to rampant piracy being harmless. Movies are also taking much more money to make, so 10 billion may not quite be as much as it sounds to most people.
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Hollywood doesn’t have a tendancy to expand. As you already know since you don’t ever provide examples.. It’s been what 50+ years on the same business model.. NoYet they still claim they are losing money? The fact they are not expanding doesn’t mean rampant piracy is the cause or point to rampant piracy being harmless… Your points are pretty much M00T..
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i was still first you faggot bitch.
Pirating often leads to more sales.
But only if the product is quality!
I often downloaded a movie and bought it afterwards because it was worth it.
I also like the nice box which is too much a hassle to make myself.
I was wondering if neo-con could defend it but his post which makes him look more retarded than ever in defending the MAFIAA. Must get a lot of money just to type anything. Probably ran out of inspiration.
People do need a say in how much money is too much. One can see what happened with the bank crisis that those same type of people as the MAFIAA brought because there were no limits. And mostly those people dont like any cap on their income.
@neo-conservative
Dont worry. Soon you too might have to pay several times for things produced in the past. Other industries are learning fast. Saoudi Arabia wants compensation when their oil runs out, so we might get an oil tax when oil doesn’t exist anymore.
Ofcourse we would have to pay at least until 70 years after the death of the last Saoudi inhabitant or 95 years if a Saoudi business exists. May take a very very long time.
“Perhaps Hollywood should stop complaining and start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves.”
Exactly. If they came up with a decent way for me to purchase and download their movies etc, then I would happily pay for them. Well, if they had some sort of preview feature. The number of times I’ve paid for a cinema ticket/DVD and the film has turned out to be utter crap/generic shit for the sake of making money/a clone of an old film…
@Neostyles
“Who are we to say how much money is “enough” for someone to earn?”
But that’s exactly what you’re doing, dumbfuck. You’re saying 10 billion dollars isn’t enough.
How pathetic is it that you can’t even practice what you preach?
@35
“I often downloaded a movie and bought it afterwards because it was worth it.”
Exactly.
It’s about time dumbass TorrentFreak removed the stupid spam/”first” posts.
Anyhow, I will say I only can recall going to the theatre once this year for Law Abiding Citizen (good movie) and almost again for another movie but the girls I went with showed up late. Though, I did buy quite a few movies this year. I would purchase Dexter is if they wouldnt charge such outrages prices per season which is usually (only 10 or so episodes)
So the industry just needs to go ahead and learn that people want quality goods not garbage.
Down to their last 10 billion?
Oh noes!
@neo.styles
New Moon has grossed over $255 million in the US alone – seriously that piece of shit that I got dragged to has earnt too much and even YOU should agree with that.
So greedy, to be honest they make more than enough money to live a life of life’s.
Then still want more? I mean you have made almost by 1 billion more in profit this year. What more can you ask for?
If they didn’t spend so much money chasing after people who may be entirely innocent or are solely torrenting for private use to see if it’s worth spending the hard earned cash.
Their profits would have topped $10 billion years ago, as they would have adapted earlier and made even more money rather than spending it annoying the hell out of me or you.
Their money would be more if they would embrace pirates instead of trying to sue the whole world.
http://www.sharereactor.com
Now I pirate as much as anybody (more than most) but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the answer to this equation: ticket prices have been raised in response to lost revenues partly due to piracy. Its the same thing as a car insurance company raising your premiums because of uninsured motorists. Now I personally don’t give a shit about the movie or music industries, but lets be rational and admit that what we are doing is having a negative effect! This story proves nothing except the author’s bias.
Im not telling them how how much to earn. What I AM doing is saying that they have the right to earn all the money from EVERY one who watches their movies, whether it is in theater or at home.
Production costs? Fatcats? What is wrong with you? How much more selfish could you get? Has it ever occurred to you that they make a living off of this! This is their work. If their movies are very successful, what right do you have to tell them that they shouldn’t profit more? It sounds an awful lot like you are saying that everyone should profit equally, regardless of the quality of their work. That’s an awfully communist idea, comrade. I don’t know what country you are from, but here in America, people who work harder benefit more.
Now, this is hardly surprising considering you don’t know what hard work is and in your eyes, all efforts/talent are equal.
You are wrong too.. If a movie pulls in more money, everyone gets more money.
Plus, if they earn more money, they can produce more ambitious movies…at which point people like you simply steal them off the internet without any regard for their creators naturally.
This is exactly the problem. What makes you think that this is “too much.” If it earned a lot of money, they deserved it since many people saw it. What don’t you get about that?
What were you expecting, that you be allowed to see the movie first and then if you are feeling generous, you would donate? Is this the cutting edge, up to date business model that freetards are trying to push?
No. Try again. What I WAS saying is that they should earn every penny from people who see their movies. Now, whether this is more than 10 billion or less depends on how many people actually saw their movie.
Plus, there is a HUGE difference. We live in an age were everything gets pirated, and I suspect that there were millions of people who should have payed for their copies. So, yes, it probabably should have been more than 10 billion. So, what?
Put yourself in their place (if you are even capable of that.) How would you feel if someone went “whoah, that looks like a big number, I think thats enough money for you to earn.” Movies are very popular, so of course they should earn a lot from them. If they are not profiting from ever copy of their movie that has been distributed, they are being ripped off and that is a problem.
How pathetic is it that you can’t even pay for what you own? How pathetic is it that while people go to jobs and earn money (this thing called “hard work”), you just sit their and lazilly download everything with zero effort? Hm?
Oh really? So who is going to go dictate how much money someone should make from their own work? You? This is exactly how it works in a communist system. When everyone profits equally, innovation is stifled and quality disappears. Then again, I guess that’s something people like you are fine with, since you think that the world only exists to cater to your every desire.
The reality of the matter is that what you are proposing is absurd and would never work in a world dominated by free market economy. What you are proposing goes against every one who ever tried to make a living off of their own hard work. It all boils down to this : people like you don’t don’t understand hard work. It’s like a foreign language to you. Thus, you have no regrets about stiffing the aspirations of people who try succeed through HARD WORK. You don’t understand why those who work harder should be rewarded more than those who don’t work very hard.
Oh yeah. And becoming a garbageman also helps you get a degree in physics!
The better something is, the more demand for it pirates have and thus the more it gets pirated.
hellll hyheah man that is the best i ever did heatr. rock on and i know the movie industy is totally doing so good and i love moveies and yeah! ALCOHOL!
@ our good friend neo
thanks for hangin out
your the greatest
my housemates think you suck
i dont
i get the same feeling about you as i did when i watched 2012
it was such a good film
damn those pirates for duplicating it and sharing such a good film around for free
rude buggers
anyway i know $10000000000 should have been more but really the only people that are really hurting are the mexican coke cartels……
and really neo its just a blip on there radar….
sorry slightly of topic
i do like neo though
and movies
and Ernsteo
they share the same last two letters in there names……hhhmmmmm
Sorry for spelling your name wrong Ernesto
got carried away
and this year has been a crappy film year…
Cater to us instead of attacking us.
Then you’ll start making money. :P
Wow 10 Billion dollars… that’s more than I’m going to earn in my lifetime… hell that’s more than I’d ear n 10 lifetimes.
The thing that the movie makers never seem to get is that a lot of piracy comes out of a lack of availability. Most of the movies I know people pirate are ones that they can’t get any other way, or it’s in cinemas and they download a copy to keep them going until the DVD is available. If it’s on DVD and i can actually get it then hell yeah I’ll buy it in a heartbeat, but if there’s no other option available in order to get a hold of a certain movie then piracy happens.
I’d be willing to bet that if the changed the system, released all movies and TV shows on DVD faster and in a way that everyone can easily get them and at a reasonable price then piracy would drop and maybe cease to exist, they can go on making billions and we get the entertainment that we want. Everybody wins.. it’s a pity that’ll never happen
Come on, OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE, TF is just telling you propaganda and one side of the story!
These poor poor execs probably haven’t been able to buy a new private jet for days now! It’s a disgrace and it’s all down to you filthy criminals! You’re forcing them to drive around in last month’s Bentleys and only wear 4 diamond studded Rolexes!!!! IT’S HORRIBLE!!! YOU BASTARDS!!!!
xD
10 your spot on, my son go’s to the cinema to watch movies that he get’s of his mate for nothing but he still pays to watch them on the big screen, the young generation want it every way just like they will watch music videos on utube but they still want the music on there mp3 things, the old farts in the movie industry just don’t get it the next generation want it every possible way in every format all at the same time, WAKE UP YOU STUPID OLD FU*KS.
PS i am an old fu*k to but i now understand.
its infuriating to see the MPAA/RIAA go after grandmas. whats worse is that they believe everyone owes a lot of money just because their projections guaranteed them to be multi-trillionaires just by manufacturing concocted, lab-perfected shitty music.
“MPAA, movie bosses and some filmmakers, who repeatedly claim that pirated downloads are killing the movie industry.”
“$10 Billion Box Office Record”
lulwut?
DUde that is truly amazing. I like this idea.
Jess
WOW. This article sounds like something straight out of Fox News. Take the talking point that reinforces your views and completely ignore anything that disagrees with it.
Of course P2P isn’t going to have much of an effect on box office sales. When a film is in circulation at the box office, the only thing available on P2P (most of the time) is a crappy cam version. Unless of course a DVD quality leak becomes available, but DVD quality leaks are typically the exception not the rule.
P2P hurts DVD/Blu-Ray sales and will probably continue to do so as more and more people get on the Bit Torrent bandwagon.
With that said, do I care if Hollywood is losing money. Nope, I couldn’t care less. My point it that if you’re going to report a story, it should be reported from ALL angles.
This aricle is a prime example of Fox News style reporting. The only thing missing are a bunch of weasel words such as “some say”, “many believe”, and “some would argue that..”, etc.
Now if you’ll excuse me I think the Glenn Beck show is about to start….
@neo styles
No offense but for what actors and directors etc… do they make far to much money as it is.
Most movies that come out aren’t even worth buying just like music.
If they make a good product people will buy it that’s all there is to it. Bluray and DVD and CD’s cost to much as is.
Radiohead and NIN have already proven that releasing CD’s for free or extremely cheap can make them just as much if not more money then selling the cd.
Anyone who whines about making millions of dollars a year should be taken out on the street and beaten.
Down with state monopolies!
I LOVE movies. One of my greatest joys is spending a couple hours in a theater with a great movie. Watching movies at home is not the same but, I still have a large dvd collection and enjoy watching them. I’ve spent many 1000′s of dollars on movies. I always felt it was woth it. But, in the last year or two I have been disappointed over and over and felt totally ripped off more times than I can count, both by movies I’ve seen at the theater and dvds I’ve purchased.
In the past, if I downloaded an enjoyable movie or a friend gave me a copy of one, I always purchased my own copy and if it was still in theaters I’d see it there too. Lately, you couldn’t pay ME enough to want to watch most new movies and no way I’d ever watch them more than once even if I did get paid.
Yes I’m one of those ‘evil pirate’ people. But, until recently I was also one of the movie industry’s best customers. They are NOT mutually exclusive. It’s not pirating that hurts the movie industry it’s producing garbage and expecting people to pay a lot of money for it…
Here is our philosophy: If you make a semi-entertaining piece of shit action flick that has earned $10 mil for every weak ass actor involved, then why the hell would anyone pay to see it? I will watch your movie for free, tell people it sucked, and it will have no bearing on my life.
If you make a great, original film (or song or game) I will watch it for free. Then I will see it in a theater, buy a tee shirt, and tell all my friends to check it out. I won’t do this because I want to “support the starving artists”. Fuck that, there are people all around the world who are, literally, starving. If I am buying a t-shirt it is because your movie KICKS ASS and I want to rock that shit.
Downloading is only a problem for big studios that are used to getting rich by pumping garbage into the marketplace that they hold all the keys to. And as we can see, it isn’t even a problem for them.
http://www.selfhelplessmovie.com
Ban Hollywood’s trash from sale or public exhibition.
First of all, even though I disagree, thanks for providing a little balance on this site, otherwise we’d have no debate :) I don’t understand why these comments must resort to name-calling all the time, it’s not helping anyone.
Second, though, I think you misunderstand the free market. Doing work does not automatically make you “deserve” payment. Nothing does, unless you enter into some sort of binding contract. I could work my ass off day and night trying to design an awesome eco-car. Even if it’s indeed an awesome car, if nobody wants to buy it (for _any_ reason), too bad. I should have figured out a way to make people _want_ to pay for it. If people figure out a way to build my eco-car at home for close to free, well, that’s too bad for me but not morally wrong (even a company doing this for profit would only be illegal if I patented my design. There’s _no way_ of preventing private individuals from using my work!). Think how easy it is now to make a data CD versus 10 years ago. I don’t see the CD press companies suing software companies who distribute their product on CD-Rs. The idea that burning a CD yourself is somehow immoral, while paying the pressing company to do it is not, is preposterous. Likewise, it’s too bad that Hollywood’s current model is no longer working well, but TOO BAD. It’s not up to me to make their business model work, just like I’m not required to patronize a certain struggling restaurant with bad management. _That_ is communist thinking.
I await your reply :)
No money from me. I’ll download before I pay anything.
This article likes to ignore the following facts:
A) Costs to make these movies have steadily increased. $10 billion profit today is worth less than even 5 years ago.
B) No matter how you slice it, every viewing of downloaded material is lost revenue
C) Despite the increase in revenue, there was a potential of bigger profit to be had that illegal downloading killed.
To “Dec 13, 2009 at 00:43 by @ neo.styles”
The name calling is a response to neo.na.zi and imprisoned mind calling us thieves and terrorists for sharing music and movies and such, while we do not profiting a cent form that act, the criminal cartels they represent blatantly steal from the artists they are supposed to protect!
They post asinine comments that no one here believes or find even remotely interesting! However, I do enjoy flinging their own arrogance back at them such as…
Record Labels Face $6 Billion Damages for Pirating Artists
You said it all with this…
I wouldn’t wait too long for a reply though, because neo.shill isn’t paid to comment on the weekend!
Should read…do not profit a cent from that act
Really need an edit feature!
Insane is all I can say. While everyone else suffers in these uncertain economic times Hollywood once again posts record profits despite claiming piracy is making them go broke. Why is that you ask? Most pirates wouldn’t have bought the movie in the first place so your not losing a dime.If the film was good enough pirates are still buying it to have in their collections. Bittorrent is giving you free advertising and word of mouth you never had before. You see a huge peerlist on a torrent, comments, IMDB ratings your more liable to grab it. For lesser know titles it is exposure they don’t otherwise get. Sure I might download it but ask yourself this if given the option to purchase everything I download would I? The answer is no. The quality of the entertainment has dropped to such a point that if it wasn’t free in most cases I wouldn’t bother. If it is good enough I go to the theatre and you get my hard earned dollars… Questionable movie, wait and rent the video. Rarely am I buying a DVD because quite frankly I feel you own me money for wasting my time watching you poor product in the first place. Everytime I read another one of these articles the story of the boy who cried wolf springs to mind.
@Dec 13, 2009 at 03:55 by Anon
“Honest” industries target making around 3% profit. Which means that for a total of $100 as income, they used $97 to make $3.
Now look at the movie industries and look at their profit margins. Compared to the production costs, most movies create two to three times more income.
Prove it! Show me the statistics backing up this false statement! Where are these provable facts?
So your crying about make believe money that you never had!
“But now we are faced with a new an very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder…”
—MPAA on the VCR (1982)
When Edison invented the phonographic record, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work, until a system was created for paying them royalties. Edison, in turn, went on to invent the movie projector and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This in turn caused a band of film making pirates, among them William Fox, to abandon New York for Hollywood. The reason was more hours of sunshine (most movies in those days was shot in out-door studios), cheap land, weaker unions, more liberal labor laws, and proximity to the Mexican border. When the police raided the pirates they could quickly flee over the border until the coast was clear.
They thrived unlicensed until Edison’s patent expired. These pirates continue to operate in Hollywood legally. William Fox’s startup has became one of the largest in media business: 20th Century Fox.
Bill Gates started his company by making a more or less copy of the operating system CPM (but not as good)and it worked out quite well for him, didn’t it?
Get your facts straight before posting your drivel on here, because we can and will prove you wrong!
????????????
C) Despite the increase in revenue, there was a potential of bigger profit to be had that illegal downloading killed.
–
There would be even less profit if the MPAA wasn’t allowed to release “art” of penises flopping around in front of a camera (Brüno) outside of porno theaters.
The MPAA needs to be criminally prosecuted for the public exhibition of sick porn to minors (who can get in to R rated films).
Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian said: “With numerous huge films still on the way, we are poised for the first $10 billion year at the box-office, a milestone that has never been reached in the history of the box-office.”
This was done during one of the worst recessions ever!
Poor, poor under paid movie industry, can’t make enough profit to support themselves and their quality of life! /sarcasm
The Band Journey made 35Million on Tour in 2008. I bet thats more money than they made in the 80s total. So theres a fact for you.
@neo True we cannot put a price on how much money is made on a movie. But, they put a price on how much it costs me to have internet access. And that price is unbelievable. So I try to get that back where i can. And film makers should seriously consider what they pay people to make the movies as well. Why not, every other industry besides oil tycoons have. Theres plenty of actors out there who wold like a shot at being a star. Just to make the money OUTSIDE of the movie. So it can be done. Now look at the gamble some new movie company is taking, a 400 million dollar movie being made as we speak.(Avatar) Yeah it will be flashy, but will the story live up to the budget? Probably not. But it will be their fault, not ours.Its just a sign of the time, more people are gaining than others are losing. We get a few movies, and the MPAA isnt losing really anything but on speculation.
Yahoo! Demonoid is back bitches!
@43 neo.nazi…
“You are wrong too.. If a movie pulls in more money, everyone gets more money.”
Yeha, except… WRONG! Most of moviemaking is considered hired work with no additional benefit for the creators, regardless of its revenue. Salaries are fixed, and accounted for long BEFORE production even starts.
Mind you, this comes from a pro TV writer, so I know what I’m talking about. Unless you happen to BE the chief accountant of a movie studio (and not a common MAFIAA kissass, like we all suspect) , you’re WAY out of your league here.
i still have my old vhs movies that i legally bought years ago. now i cant watch them because the quality really sucks. is it because my term and licence of usage has expired or because they didnt care what would happen to the customer’s copy after a physical failure? shall i now have to buy the movie again, as a DVD or a blueray disc? why the fuck should i? i can still download them for free over the net and watch them, fo i have already paid my duee to them, years agogo!
Consider eCopy a kind of a film promotion. People don’t go to movies to just watch movies. It’s a kind of a socializing activity. I know there are lotta people who never buy legit DVDs BDs etc. but there are still many people who buy it. For themselves or as a gift. Buying a Pirated DVD BD could be serious piracy. Downloads for personal use should be forgiven. Proper pricing of DVDs BDs etc also could help to curb the piracy.
It is obvious since MAFIAA started claiming piracy is taking away their profits that the argument is flawed. And I’m not even considering the lack of proper studies in the equation.
Truth is physical media sales is bound to fall. People will only buy physical media for stuff they think it’s worth. Blu-ray discs, CDs and DVDs need space to be stored while you can easily store dozens of movies in big HDDs for much less space.
As said ad nauseam, all the industry needs is to evolve and offer different alternatives to the physical media for sane prices and they’ll surely increase their revenues a few billions per year. But of course they are not interested in that… So it seems from all the lawsuits against their customers.
i haven’t read anything written before, and if it’s been said, sorry.
But could the rising numbers just be a product of the rising costs of tickets?
Just sayin…
You are a fucking moron, Ernesto.
You start the article with “Claims by the MPAA that illegal downloads are killing the industry and causing billions in losses are once again being shredded.”
Then you end it with “Of course this doesn’t mean that the lack of a negative correlation between piracy and box office ticket sales is proving that illegal downloads have no effect at all. It could be that the movie industry would make even more money if the plug was pulled on the Internet.”
So, how *exactly* are the MPAA’s claims being “shredded?”
You’re lucky that most of the readers here are barely literate…they’ll put up with idiotic and non-logical propaganda like this as long as you keep bashing the MPAA/RIAA/etc. That way, they can keep grunting and pointing and adding to the chorus of “stealing is good…producers are evil.”
I think your name says it all Simple Sean!
I personally am appalled by this revelation. I am disappointed in the majority of movie going public. These people are so willing to waste their money on crappy entertainment churned by hollywood. They should be ashamed of themselves! I expected class and integrity, please refrain from wasting your hard earn dollars on hollywood rubbish.
We’ll kill’em next year!
dvd/blueray/cd
have any of you ever recycled your damaged scratched and useless old ones?
do anyone of you know how recyclable those materials are?
I understand they are pretty recycleable, but few of our little laser readable friends ever go that way.
is digital distribution better than plastic distribution?
plastic is a petrochemical product isn’t it?
Oh look, its ‘ha ha ha’ back again and spewing more butt putty out of his mouth! Thanks for adding nothing but filth to the commentary!
lulz, ha ha ha does not understand sarcasm! Epic fail!
dumbasses!
did you ever think that the 10 billion loss is from people like the ones on this site finding out about B/S you carry out and the people you sue over pathetic reasons, so we stop buying ur CRAP? = EG 10 BILLION LOSS? lol screw u guys -.- im not buying another CD until i see the laws change for the better
…the ppl saying that piracy hurts sales have seemingly forgotten one important thing.
would all the people downloading a specific Film really have bought it if torrents were unavailable?
I think not, many MANY of those would just have taken one glance at the box cover and thought “dude this film looks like pure s**t” and would then walk on with their lives never watching a film that could have become their all time favourite.
and there are others who (like me) have bought one too many expensive films that turn out to be utter cr*p.
and thus download just to find out if its worth buying.
so do not arrogantly assume that everyone who download would have bought it.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it possible these record breaking numbers are due to rising prices which in turn is due to inflation? It’s late and I don’t have time to research any of this, sorry if I’m misleading or blatantly wrong in any way. Just speculating.
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It’s the first I bother commenting here, but this just outraged me.
[i]neo.styles: “I don’t know what country you are from, but here in America, people who work harder benefit more.”[/i]
You’re wrong. Our society is far from perfect. There’s many people in the world who REALLY WORK HARD just to earn a decent living and they’ll never have the millions of dollars that you earn.
If people were to be paid in terms of who works harder, moviemakers sure as hell wouldn’t be the ones earning the millions.
Instead of being thankful for thankful for what you DO earn, you demand more and more money from the common people that work harder than you in an attempt to be even richer.
—–
On a side note, I study Business and I’m really amazed at the f’ed up business model of the entertainment industry.
Any company that wants to be in business has to adapt to the changing marketplace and consumer needs, in an attempt to satisfy their customers and provide them with what they want at prices they can afford.
Instead, the entertainment industry vehemently refuses to adapt to technological change, criminalizes and alienates the costumers, ignores their needs and charges more than many can afford to pay for their products. Way to go!
@ all the people claiming torrents hurts bluray and dvd sales.
If I couldn’t torrent, I still wouldn’t buy shitty insanely overpriced $60 crapfests that hollywood tries to pass off as movies. That said, if I download something I like, I buy it. Oddly enough, the stuff that doesnt suck is usually reasonably priced too. For example, I have all 10 seasons of SG1 on dvd, which wouldnt have happened if I hadn’t torrented it first.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have enough disposable income to risk spending a fuckton of money on something I might not even like.
Myself and several people I know are refusing to buy physical media simply because of how quickly it can become obsolete. It may take somebody years to legally purchase a large DVD collection–only for it to become obsolete because some BS company like Sony decides to come out with some proprietary garbage like blue ray (I refuse to misspell the word ‘blue’ as Fony would have us do)…and of course as soon as we as a society toss all of our DVD’s and buy this new blue ray crap, along with replacing the movies we ALREADY bought in a different format (VHS, LD, DVD, HDDVD) those will be obsolete too.
Screw you Sony and screw blue ray.
Of course it affects the movie business when most are downloading, instaead of 10 billion they would have made 11 billion this year…
@Neo
You know it’s not so much on how much money they make on a movie but how they do it that concerns so many people. Their conduct is so bad. They lie in the media about their losses when it has been proven that they are not losing money at all. They have PR people, like yourself, to troll sites like this to pass on their propaganda. Big Business with their high powered lawyers and corporate lobbyist with their deep pockets have corrupted governments around the world to do their bidding. And the list goes on.
The sad thing is that they are missing an opportunity to create a business model based on the popularity of P2P. Unfortunately their greed of money and power has probably blinded them to this fact.
I have worked in the movie industry and I can tell you first hand that if a movie makes a profit, it’s not the creators that benefit from it but the upper echelon: CEOs, executive staff & management, and occasionally the star(s) of the movie. Everyone else, the production crew, writers, supporting actors, do not make any money if the movie makes a profit. Most of them are underpaid or are on what is called lo/no, which means they’ll be lucky if they see any money at all from their hard work. Nevermind the amount of money that is wasted on spending that is not related to the movie and then hidden in the budget.
Also you are working from the assumption that internet file sharers are stealing never buying what they have downloaded. There have been studies that shown that most who download are from the “try before you buy” group. And the figures in this article, and others, proves that the entertainment industry is anything but suffering from downloading.
All this Big Business crying foul is nothing but BS, and a means to control the internet for their own greed.
I work in retail. In my job I know what goes in and obviously out of the store. Mainly because I UNLOAD the trucks in receiving. It’s nothing to unload 2 cases of a new street dated movie, and on Wednesday after the release another 3 cases are on the truck. Movie sales aren’t slumping.. We can’t hardly keep movies on the shelves. Old and new alike.
The MPAA can piss and moan all they like. What it all really is?
It’s blowing smoke up people’s asses.
Movies are mindcontrol.
Paying to be turned into a slave through witchcraft programming is ironical and hysterically funny, isnt it?
I’m sure they appreciate the humour while casting their spells on us.
Someone should make a movie showing the point of view of one of the kings of the world, looking at normal people like at so many ants.
Standing at a busy street intersection and looking at the human cattle, obeying conditionning and orders right down to the slaughterhouse.
About obsolescence of DVDs and CDs… (in response to comment #93), a friend of my ex told me that audio CDs have an engraved limit to the number of times they can be played. As a dance teacher she knows that because she had to come back to audio tapes in order not to have her showtrack CDs fail during live performances.
I havent checked that theory on the web, but it stands to reason that very few customers play a CD hundreds of times and if the hardwired limit is above a hundred, it might remain quite little known.
that’s great strategy
Yeah sure Hollywood thinks piracy is a threat, but not to their basic income which is movie receipts which makes way way way more than their DVD blueray sales. So let the pirates have what’s rightfully theirs, FREEDOM OF INFORMATION and that includes your movies you filthy rich Hollywoodmongers
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