The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the main lobbying group for Hollywood’s studios has continued it’s effort on publicly displaying it’s stupidity for all the world to see and marvel at. CNN ran a good story on the new efforts by the Band of Morons (MPAA) who recently once again yelled from a podium that they are losing billions of dollars to movie piracy. Yes, a sad tale being told by a guy in a $6000 suit. However, their story just doesn’t jive with reality or common sense.
The MPAA seemed to glean it’s strategy from the Grand Moff Tarkin school of intimidation: “Fear. Fear will keep the local systems (internet users) in line. Fear of this battle station (lawsuits).
“We have taken action against over 100 servers in many countries on four continents,” said John Malcolm, the director of worldwide anti-piracy at the MPAA. He said steps were taken this week in the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Finland and the Netherlands.
What a joke. I work in a law firm. I know how much litigation can cost. It is a waste of time and energy, especially when you consider that it has little to no effect. Look at what happened with the music industry’s big crusade to sue little Sally Sweetcakes for having an NSync’ song on her computer in her bed room:
…peer-to-peer traffic dropped after the music industry first launched a series of lawsuits against individuals accused of illegal downloading, but that overall downloading has since rebounded.
But does the MPAA learn anything from this lesson? Apparently not. The only thing that results from these tyrannical lawsuits is individuals getting seriously hurt without any other world wide effect. So what’s the point? And while we’re talking about “The Point”, how much REAL money is the industry losing to movie piracy anyway?
The MPAA would have you and I believe that they’re going hungry… but they can afford to spend a record $270 million dollars on making and marketing The Polar Express. They claim it’s financially crippling them… but they can afford to pay Julia Roberts (just as an example) $20 million to appear in one of their films. They claim the industry is being destroyed… all while record box office records are set year after year. They cry poor while year after year making it more expensive for you and me to go to a movie… does anyone out there feel any sympathy at all? Not me. So how much are they really losing?
Keep these common sense thoughts in mind:
1) Each download does not represent lost box office money or DVD sale. The majority of people who download something are usually getting something they didn’t bother seeing when it was in theaters… and they certainly didn’t avoid seeing it in theaters so they could watch a crappy handycam version of it 5 months later. So while they are seeing it for free… the reality is that no industry money was lost.
2) For most people it’s a novelty. A friend of mine recently gave me a handycam copy of The Incredibles. Cool. But it’s crap (like all of them), and I still went to see it in the theaters 2 more times. It’s just novel to have it there, but it certainly didn’t stop me from giving more money to the MPAA.
3) It takes FOREVER to download a movie from the net. Even with High Speed Internet it’s quite a wait… and you’re waiting for a crap copy. This deters most people who otherwise would have downloaded a 4 meg mp3.
4) With DVD burners it’s possible to copy a DVD. Oh wait a minute… we’ve been able to do that easily for the last 20 years… it’s called a VCR! That didn’t seem to slow down the industry.
There are exceptions to all the things listed above, and I’m certainly not trying to claim that the industry is losing zero dollars on movie piracy. However, the problem is not as systemic as they would have us believe.
Here’s my bit of advice to the movie industry. It’s the same advice that I gave the music industry 5 years ago. “Quit stomping your feet and beating your chest you morons! Stop persecuting teenagers with internet connections when that isn’t going to solve your problem at all! YOU CAN NOT FIGHT THIS… SO FIND A WAY TO PROFIT FROM IT INSTEAD!”
Seriously, look at the music industry. They finally clued in that fighting the internet was a losing battle… so they found a way to profit from it instead… and man are services like iTunes making money! The movie industry needs to develop it’s own paradigm and economic model for taking advantage of these trends… but there are waysto be found if they’d stop using up their time, energy and money for hunting down little Billy in his bedroom as he downloads The Girl Nexdoor.
Honestly… how are people who were clearly smart enough to get outrageously rich be so damn stupid at the same time? Is it just me? Am I out to lunch on this? Your thoughts?
**UPDATE**
Richard added this good little paragraph in the comments:There’s no way I would consider that I’ve ever cheated the movie industry out of money, however they’ve more than cheated enough out of me with their false advertising for bad movies, poor quality of the film stock being shown, bad cinema setup causing poor quality, bad food that cost an arm and a leg (and probably is actually an arm or a leg since it’s always hotdogs for me!), creation of regionalised DVD system, etc.
