The Cost of Movie Piracy to the U.S
Written by Ernesto on October 09, 2006A recent study by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) reveals that Movie Piracy not only has a direct impact on the movie business, but that is also affect the US economy on a larger scale.
The research is based on the outcome of the MPAA funded LEK study that revealed that the movie industry lost $1.3 billion in the US, and $6.1 billion worlwide.
Based on these figures, the IPI concludes that Movies Pirates (online and offline) are responsible for:
However, the research does not report about the benefits of movie Piracy to the US economy. Especially online piracy is creating a lot of jobs and tax revenue. Pirates pay for broadband connections, buy harddisks and blank media etcetera. However, perhaps even more important, a recent study show that online piracy is a valuable source of innovation to the industries, as well as to entrepreneurs. Online pirates tend to be early adopters and they actually aid to the emergence of new and innovative business models.
Perhaps the MPAA should put more effort in developing new and innovative (p2p!) ways to distribute Motion Pictures over the web.
Previously: The Pirates Are Out To Get You
Next: EA Games: Challenge BitTorrent Users!
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How do they know that Movies Pirates are the cause of their lost? How on earth were they ablet to measure that? Maybe they just did bad business or maybe they produced many bad quality video’s. I mean: there’s a lot lame Hollywood stuff I don’t like watching.
And.
I am not buying DVD’s because I got sick of those Stichting BREIN warnings at the beginning of the DVD while my daughter is yelling ‘play track 13′ to me and I am waiting for the menu to appear. I rather DVD Shrink that thing on my harddrive and give away the DVD to someone else! DVD is just a very restricted format which I don’t like at all.
Those #s are just like all the MPAA reports lol… Scare your consumers into not filesharing I guess lol
For me piracy is free. Did someone pay for it? Costs?
;)
Well, measured in € (EUR):
€ 32.95 a month for my internet connection
about a € 20.00 a month on blank media
Many GBs a month
then my computer(s) and stuff …
Piracy is an expensive hobby!
£19.99 a month for unlimited bandwidth broardband
£0 for hard drive taken out of my uncles old computer along with my own one
Cheap enough to me :D
You forgot:
Screwing the MPAA nazis: Priceless.
complete bullshit….I use torrents to leech tv-series that are not showing in my country and the ones that will maybe never be showed here in Latvia….so the same goes for movies…and considering the load of crap hollywood is producing these days I belewe that watching a movie at home before spending my money on crap is a normal choice
“LEK study”
wasn’t that this GIGO piece that the british industy discredited as inaccurate and false?!
http://neuron2neuron.blogspot.com/2006/06/uk-copyright-lobby-discredits-mpaa.html
Apparently they are talking about profits not realized. Unfortunately, no metric or methodology can possibly attribute the cost of potential profits lost due to piracy. First of all, let’s realize what is being said by this. They are losing 5 billion dollars to piracy because someone downloaded a movie and watched it without paying. How about someone walking by the movie theatre and not going to see that movie. They still didn’t see the movie, and yet, they didn’t pay to see it either. Therefore, whether you see the movie or not without paying for it is irrelevant. It has to be assumed you never did see the movie, so therefore you cannot attribute a loss to something that was never realized to an intangible product which is what a movie is. It’s photons of light that are arranged in a particular way across a series of fast moving frames that you are paying to see.
If they want to use a metric to explain their loss, then assume that everyone in the world is a potential customer for their product and deduct you losses based on how many of those people never saw your movie. That would at least be more fair. If I stole a candy bar, then you can do a proper assessment about the lose of that piece of inventory that is stored somewhere that someone has made and already paid for and tried to sell to me and instead stole. You can measure that, but you can’t measure loss by who stole a movie as opposed to who never saw your movie and call that a loss. Just stupid.
I wonder how they could explain why the economy’s better now than it has been for 20 years…When Tom Cruise sells 17 of his private jets, I’ll agree that the entertainment industry is going south.
Whether you justify downloading movies to yourself or not - you are still a thief.
If it’s copyrighted and you have a copy that you didn’t pay for - you are a thief.
I may be a thief, but, I wouldn’t have gone to theater to see any of the movies I have DL’d anyways and odds of a rental are still pretty slim-to-none, however, I recommend movies to friends all the time who don’t want to wait for a copy from me or don’t have the know-how to get it themselves who then go to the theatre or rent a movie they otherwise wouldn’t have seen. I get one for free and they get a customer they wouldn’t have ordinarily had, fair trade in my opinion.
“If it’s copyrighted and you have a copy that you didn’t pay for - you are a thief”
OMG then for example millions of linux users are thiefs…. and “Steve” is either a mouthpiece for the MAFIAA or just a brainwashed moron!
“Steve”, If you really believe what you are telling us then you are incompetent. If on the other hand you are just pretending to believe it, then we must regard you as a liar.
Have a nice day and remember:
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* COPYRIGHTINFRINGEMENT IS STEALING
I’m a thief? I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to see a movie in the theatre only to realize half way through it that I’m the one being RIPPED OFF!
I’d be willing the bet the estimated money lost from piracy doesn’t eclipse the money made from people who don’t think they got thier money worth. When the movie industry offers a money back guarantee, I’ll go see more movies.
For instance, over the past 2 years, I’ve probably seen 10 movies in the theatre - and of those 10, at least 8 were not even worth my TIME, and certainly not the money. That’s a 20% (at best!) customer satisfaction. No other industry can even survive with that kind of record.
A study I did found that the RIAA and MPAA cost me a combined $99999999999999999999999999999999999 last year, that I *would* have made if I hadn’t spent my time using their products.
Where can I send them the bill?
How can I get the government to collect the money they obviously owe me?
Brad Said: I’d be willing the bet the estimated money lost from piracy doesn’t eclipse the money made from people who don’t think they got thier money worth. When the movie industry offers a money back guarantee, I’ll go see more movies.
EXACTLY. Half the movies I download suck and I dont even watch the first half. Or I find some movies I enjoy and either go see it again in the theater, recommend it to friends, or get the DVD when it comes out. Either way I end up supporting the movies that dont suck. Not my fault half the stuff coming out these days is garbage.
Quote:
Blert Wheedown on Oct 9th, 2006 said: |Quote|
You forgot:
Screwing the MPAA nazis: Priceless.
The methodology of this piracy-related study sounds a bit like a similar one conducted by Microsoft. Microsoft simply estimated the number of new PC’s sold over a period of time worldwide, subtracted the number of Windows licences sold over the same period of time and reported the difference as piracy which generated an astronomical amount for piracy. The problem with this calculation is that there are lots of legitimate non-Windows computers including those running Linux that are counted as being pirates.
These figures look as though it is calculated based on the number of videos and DVD’s potentially played per month based on the amount of devices sold and subracting the amount of sales / rentals for DVD’s and videos. What they probably ignore is the amount of homve videos, instructional videos, taped TV-shows etc that are being viewed.
If someone buys illegal copies of 20 DVD’s in the far east, can you really make the assumption that the same person would have purchased movie tickets for the same 20 titles were the pirated copies not available? Can you assume that the same person would have rented the same 20 titles? Ditto for online downloads - how many people really sit in front of a computer and watch a movie? How many people successfully manage to download a 1.5Gb Hollywood release as a torrent?
These stats are flawed, but they do produce the telepone numbers necessary to spark a vision of gloom with the lawmakers that will spur a new generation of copyright and anti-piracy legislation.
I’ve seen figures like this before… and they all make the same invalid assumptions.
1) Every download = one lost sale.
2) Every share = X lost sales.
3) Every lost sale = full MSRP.
None of these are even close to being true.
Here are my assumptions:
1) 78% of statistics are made up on the spot.
2) 65% of everything is crap.
Have a nice day.
The fact that their losing so much money should be a pretty clear indicator that their business model is freakin’ BROKEN.
what people pay for movies? lol paying is to simple fro teh 1337s
Those figures are a bunch of crap. I like many of you download shows that I couldn’t watch otherwise, and the movies I download is because I’m most definitly not going to browse around and rent or buy something before I know what I want. I also recommend to tons of friends, and relatives the best movies out. Plus I still go to the cinema just as much as I did before I could download movies, which is on dates or with friends. I for one believe the loses they are experiencing have more to do with quality rather then people downloading movies.
Don’t forget about all the backups I have to do incase my pirated movie drive crashes - I dont want to have to re-download everything i’ve been downloading for the last 10 years!
The reason the hollywood movie industry is in crisis is that the vast majority of movies it produces are unimaginative, derivative, formulaic, poorly executed SHIT!!
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