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Hadopi, the Paris-based agency in charge of policing illegal downloads, has cleared its final legal hurdle. The agency will begin sending 10,000 emails and 3,000 registered letters out daily to people suspected of illegal downloading from September onwards. US experiments show that 50% of miscreants cease illegal downloads once they’ve received a first, politely worded email. Individuals are monitored for six months before another email goes out, this time harshly worded. France is the most aggressive country in the world when it comes to pursuing internet piracy because of its strong cultural lobby.
As in the UK and elsewhere, telcos have insisted clamping down on internet use is an invasion of privacy. They say innocent families could have their vital internet connections cut off because of a few teenage miscreants. Finland has just made internet access a basic human right. It’s estimated that 1,000 computers a day could have their broadband connections cut off. Stars including Catherine Deneuve have campaigned against the Hadopi law. The argument runs these are entertainment dinosaurs defending an outdated business model; their time would be better spent coming up with new ways of making money.
Antoine Virenque, head of French distributors’ association FNDF, says he’s spoken to parents who would be appalled if children just went in and stole DVDs, yet turn a blind eye to them pirating music and films. Virenque says there needs to be an unspoken compact between the public that illegal downloading is immoral just as everybody has accepted the smoking ban in bars and restaurants.
Spain’s film industry has been ruined by piracy. One Spanish producer told me that he spotted his own film being sold as a DVD on the street when he was en route to its red carpet premiere.
International Chamber of Commerce has predicted that 1.2 million people could lose their jobs because of internet piracy by 2015. In 2008 film, TV and music lost combined revenue of €10 billion and job losses of more than 185,000 due to piracy, ICC said in March.
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Yes please
Classic Euros. This reminds me of the United Nations sending out ‘warning letters’ to countries like Iran and North Korea.
thanks for the generalizing. I could say to you: classic (aggressive) yank. but I wont.
If you could steal dvd’s from Best Buy, and not get in trouble, their shelves would be empty in a few hours. So informing people that there are consequences to stealing copyrighted material online is a GREAT way to let people know they are breaking the law. Because most people who download movies and music really don’t know, and if they do know, they don’t care because they can do it anonymously (unlike at Best Buy where you have to sneak by the security guard at the door).
Put a security guard online and it will stop. And these idiots who throw their hands up and say, well we couldn’t save music, so why try and save movies, are the same idiots who go home and download illegally and claim “well, everyone else is doing it.”
But then they complain that Hollywood isn’t willing to take chances and risks anymore with their films. Well how the HELL can they take risks if they have less than 48 hours after a movie is released before it is ripped and put online!!! It’s bad enough that bad word of mouth can kill a film with a few tweets after the matinee, but with the dvd market about to go under, along with Blockbuster etc. soon there won’t be any movies to pirate. And forget the indie producer who counts on dvd sales to make a living. Gee, I wonder why you don’t see too many indie films breaking out anymore…. And that’s why there’s no good music either, because all the talented musicians who have discovered there’s no money in it anymore, have gone into other professions, leaving us nothing but corporate sponsored pop. Soon movies will only be corporate sponsored BS too, and indies will be done, and everyone will complain and say “gee, how come there’s no good movies anymore?”
I think you have your facts wrong about indie films breaking out.
And are blowing the situation well out of proportion.
Piracy isn’t killing off entertainment, it isn’t causing musicians to run away and get jobs in Walmart or whatever.
What it is doing is taking revenue from big business. The poor indie producer you mention is either putting their own film online or working with Sony/WB/etc.
Torrenting is a great marketing tool for small films. Vodo is a website that offers torrents, but the thing is – all the films on there are presented free of charge by the creators for legal download and distribution.
It is highly unlikely piracy will stop. It’s not in most people’s nature to pay for something they could have for free.
Corporations should be looking for a way to make money from ‘piracy’ rather than ignoring its potential value and trying to stop it.
Ya know, like the music industry did with digital downloads… right before CDs all but vanished from the stores.
“The poor indie producer you mention is either putting their own film online or working with Sony/WB/etc…Torrenting is a great marketing tool for small films….What it is doing is taking revenue from big business. ”
You have no clue what you’re talking about. This is proven by your idiotic ‘big business’ comment. Clearly you know nothing about how films are sold and the problems independent producers have. You can put scare quotes around the word piracy, but theft is theft. You can’t spin that.
Every indie film is it’s own small business, like a mom-and-pop store. When you steal from these businesses, they no long have an incentive to create things, SINCE THEY LOSE MONEY. SO ALL YOU’RE LEFT WITH ARE MAINSTREAM CORPORATE MEDIA.
Understand? Didn’t think so. I don’t expect a thief to want to understand. My comment is for the others reading. If you think that you’re being rebellious and ‘taking from Corporations’ by piracy, don’t be surprised to wake up one day and find that ALL your media are in fact owned and created by corporations.
“Theft is theft”
No, in fact, it is not.
When someone steals a DVD from Best Buy, that store has lost the disc from their inventory from which they can sell to a customer.
The same is not true for digital downloads. If someone downloads something, it’s just 1′s and 0′s, and no store’s inventory has taken a loss.
You also cannot claim a 1:1 loss on even potential sales by downloads as many who are willing to click a button to download, are not willing to shell out their cash for the DVD. You can’t have a sale if someone isn’t willing to buy it in the first place. Therefore you did not incur a loss.
The GAO, your US government at work, recently released a report shedding light on the truth in numbers of these very facts, and confirmed the trade group’s loss estimates are wildly over inflated. That the real losses are a fraction of what are claimed, and the data source used by the industry has been discredited.
And yes, the answer here is to stop clinging to outdated business models. There is nothing stopping this industry from innovating and delivering their own content through new distribution models, rather than paying a share for Apple to do it for them.
Get with the times, or get left behind.
“The same is not true for digital downloads. If someone downloads something, it’s just 1’s and 0’s, and no store’s inventory has taken a loss.”
You’re clueless. Those “1′s and 0′s” are meant to be paid for, not stolen — I mean, ‘downloaded’. Either you believe in intellectual property rights or you don’t. Just because it isn’t on a physical disc doesn’t mean IP rights magically vanish.
“You also cannot claim a 1:1 loss on even potential sales by downloads as many who are willing to click a button to download, are not willing to shell out their cash for the DVD. You can’t have a sale if someone isn’t willing to buy it in the first place. Therefore you did not incur a loss.”
Nice circular logic there, but just one problem: downloading illegally is still taking something for free that was meant to be paid for. Care to spin that?
“The same is not true for digital downloads. If someone downloads something, it’s just 1’s and 0’s, and no store’s inventory has taken a loss.”
Totally clueless. As if intellectual property laws just vanish because IP isn’t on a physical disc and it’s ‘free one’s and zeros”. The law still applies, thief.
It’s one thing to act immorally, and not care. It’s another thing to attempt to arrogantly (and unconvincingly) rationalize the morality of the thing.
Firstly, one could easily make an argument for the immorality of purchasing or using goods you know to be stolen. At minimum, it’s illegal. So right now you’re hovering around the moral standing of a chop shop.
Second, even if there’s not a 1:1 ratio…. it’s sure as hell not 0. Think about what you would be doing right now if you weren’t able to download SATC2. Well, you say, you wouldn’t watch it. Therefore it’s not stealing. Bravo. (Understand that many would pay for it in the future, but maybe we agree that’s less than half). But here’s the thing – what WOULD you be doing instead? Probably watching The Notebook, illegally downloaded. What if you couldn’t watch anything illegally? Chances are, you’d be either out to the movies, or watching a DVD that you paid for, or watching TV that advertisers pay for. Downloading isn’t just the 0.x:1 cost of those who would watch the same thing if they couldn’t steal it. It’s also the opportunity cost to Jersey Shore when you don’t plop down in front of it with a strawberry daquiri from concentrate. Every studio and independent filmmaker takes a small loss when someone illegally downloads their material. But they also take a small loss every time someone illegally downloads ANY material. Just because it doesn’t show up on the income statement doesn’t mean you’re morally justified.
I’ve been a producer for 20 years. I know how films are sold thanks. I also know how helpful internet distribution is.
Also, you seem to assume I’m a pirate because I don’t jump on the moral bandwagon.
John-Paul, you are dead wrong. We can’t monetize stolen goods, you fool. The music industry lost value, which led to bands not getting signed, which led to strata and tiers in the music business where none previously existed.
Piracy is theft. Without revenue, productions cannot be produced. It’s simple.
Torrenting and piracy is not the same thing.
You can’t monetize piracy, but you can torrents.
Piracy is taking advantage of something that the studios aren’t. When studios figure out how to make money from torrents, which is completely possible, piracy will decrease.
What I’m trying to get at here, is that you can’t scare piracy away.
Finally, I really don’t see the point in calling people fools. It’s not constructive towards a civil debate.
Repo man is right! John Paul, You have no idea of how uniformed you are.
I’m French and I’ve followed the whole thing since the original idea.
The concept of HADOPI is actually a pet project of major record companies and studios. This is something imagined and implemented by the very same people who have never understood the Internet and seek scapegoats for their decline in revenues.
HADOPI will only monitor an handful of files on P2P networks, basically the French equivalent of the Billboard Hot 100 and the fifty best selling titles on DVD. It will be expensive, something like $500,000 a day, just to monitor these two hundreds of files and it will cost approximately the same thing as the governmental fund for French cinéma…
Besides, dedicated bootleggers have lots of other weapons and had ample time to adapt themselves to the new situation. You can still watch a stream or download the files from a site from Rapidshare. More obscure titles (including all TV shows unreleased in France) aren’t concerned, as the costs of surveillance would be exponential. Changing the file signature or zipping it might be enough to trick the system… So, they might get a few casual illegal downloaders but the ones who are skilled enough will just need to fine tune their habits.
The law itself drew heavy criticism. The initial plan was to cut the connection at the third warning with a simple administrative decision. It turned out that only French justice could take such a decision. Nay-sayers were silenced. One of the webmasters for the French TV channel TF1 (the leading one ratings-wise) sent an e-mail (using his personal Gmail account) to his representative to voice his disagreement with the bill, explaining why the law would lead to a schism between artists and web users. The mail was forwarded to the French ministry of culture, which forwarded it to TF1, which fired the webmaster.
The majors are keen to put all the blame on the Internet concerning their falling revenue and profits. But they’ve been unable to adapt themselves to the new opportunities alone. It took Apple to build a music store that wasn’t plagued by tons of terms and conditions or had a simple price grid. Actually, I’m convinced that the record companies just want the situation to return to the early ’90s when they could charge $20 for an album with two or three decent titles and one hour of filler material. Or sell the soundtrack for a movie for more than the DVD of the movie itself. Movie studios won’t take the blame for confusing their customers with charging a premium for a new release on DVD and selling the same product for the third of the price four months later in special operations.
French government could have focused on allowing the majors to make the transition to the future and new business models. Instead of that, they have let them yearn for their Golden Age with measures that will prove themselves expensive, useless and a waste of time.
Your rationalizations for theft are funny, but not surprising.
Could you show me where in my text I defend theft and piracy? I merely claim that the law is unefficient and short-sighted. It only targets a small part of the illegal files, it’s expensive and it just reflects the wishes of the majors.
It’s a fact that in the ’80s and ’90s the major record companies took as a given the album format after they had more or less contributed to the demise of the single. Their whole business model relied on selling albums, a collection of tracks featuring two or three songs that could go in heavy rotation on the radio coupled with subpar material. And it was nearly impossible to just get the tracks you were interested in. When people got the ability to just pick the song they wanted to hear, they didn’t see any reason to buy the full album. Some of them took the opportunity to steal, some of them are ready to legally download but when the physical form of selling isn’t relevant anymore, companies shouldn’t expect the business to stay the same. Actually, they didn’t accept the principle of selling individual tracks for a fixed price before Apple did it on the iTunes Music Store for Mac computers first, as they thought the experiment was a managed risk.
Major labels basically shouldn’t expect people paying the same now that nobody’s forced to get the whole album in a tie-in sale. They have to find additional sources of revenue. Live shows, for instance, have caught part of the money people were spending on records before. But it’s the companies job to find these new sources of income and they seem slow at finding ideas.
Nice comment. Thanks for the info!
Yeah for HADOPI!! I think it’s the best thing yet. Piracy is Piracy. I work for the big “evil” corporations and they are paying me far better than any of you illegal downloaders. To all you pirates: GET A LIFE. Do something useful for once already like get a job, move out of your parents basement and stop stealing other peoples work. You don’t need 30,000 mp3′s to make it through the day. It’s just a big $uck$ing pacifier. And you don’t really need sit there and suck on your ipod all day. It’s infantile. So move on already.
If you’re not a troll, your answer is a perfect reflection of why corporations don’t get it.
I’ve never implied that the majors were evil, apart from the fact that the Hadopi law had been voted after intensive lobbying or the mention of the Hadopi-doubter who had been sacked.
You claim to work for this kind of companies and to make much money, yet you’re not an artist. The share that’s actually paid to artists (if you except million sellers who got renegotiated contracts) has always been low, often close to zero, apart from the advance money. But the middleman makes money. Don’t you see any problem in that or any fuel for piracy?
Music is a great example because recording and producing a song or an album costs almost nothing compared to marketing, promotion and distribution. But the record companies are convinced they’re still relevant and that their current business model is fine.
I’m not endorsing piracy at all. I’m actually a big record collector. But the current strategy makes me think of an alternate early 20th century in which blacksmiths were trying to lobby for a legislation against cars because they didn’t make any more money with horseshoes.
When you’re stuck in the past, you tend not to see the present or the future.
Thank you for highlighting the need for innovation.
So support roman p and france does u a solid.
Samuel L. Chang “prove themselves expensive, useless and a waste of time.” lol. Seriously so i guess we should abandoned policing the streets as well then because it’s expensive and a waste of time… Don’t you get it? It’s all about creating a security presence, some sort of consequence for those who illegal download, it;s theft. Is there cops on every street corner? No. But the public is aware policing is happening within their cities which acts as a deterrent. If there was no policing going on, no deterrent, no consequence for theft then give me the address to your work im gonna come over and help myself to a free starbucks coffee and cookie cause im sure thats were you work with such a stupid comment.
“im sure thats were you work with such a stupid comment” says the guy who makes more spelling mistakes in his message than the guy he makes fun of and who doesn’t speak English as a first language…
I do not endorse piracy as a the new rule on the Internet. I just call the Hadopi system useless and narrowminded because it’s the ONLY answer found by the major companies in France to address the situation.
For instance, we don’t have any system similar to Hulu to watch old shows on the web. The iTunes TV shows section is also a joke because copyright holders have been pussyfooting on this. We often get seasons from a popular American TV show broadcast one or two years after the US. For instance, we’ll get “Mad Men”, season 3, this fall on a premium channel similar to your HBO. DVDs for season 1 and 2 were released only this spring. As a result, many fans get the new episodes illegally, with people even supplying translation of the subtitles. And, of course, “Mad Men” isn’t featured in the list of monitored files. I could tell the same story for “Dexter”, “Breaking Bad” and many others. The revenue of these shows may not be huge but the right owners in France could make more money if they had a more proactive approach.
Well lets look at it this way, Apple computers CEO is the biggest stock holder in Disney. The US Copyright office just took the unusual step of actually making the statement that Apple computers is misusing Copyright Law to keep developers from making iPhone apps. So here we have evidence that Copyright Laws are being used illegally by the owner of the itunes store which works with Big media. And just happens to be a major owner in a movie studio. Copyrights go both ways. But Hollywood doesn’t believe real law. That is why so many movies and scripts are stolen every year.
samuel,
your argument is flawed. just because illegal downloading seems like an unstoppable flood, if you put a piece in it to stop it, and keep adding more, soon you have a dam. this is about theft pure and simple. you would not like it if i went into your house and took money out of your wallet, or went to your workplace and took your paycheck. that is whats happening to people who sometimes spend YEARS to make these films and with a cowardly click of a button, you rob them of this. now you’re saying to yourself, well the big bad companies are the ones who make the money anyway. consider this: dvd sales have plummeted and because of that, many movies can no longer get financing to be made. make the connection.
Sales have plummeted, but not all due to piracy.
If you took piracy out of the equation, there would still be an underlaying problem.
The business model is flawed.
I’m not making excuses for pirating but rather saying that it’s only one problem, not THE problem. But it’s being targeted like it is the only problem.
In fact, your previous comments DO make excuses for piracy (see my above response), so backtracking now isn’t convincing.
“The business model is flawed” you say. Really? And what would be better? Filmmakers giving everything away for free and hoping that advertisers and corporate sponsors (who would now have the leverage) don’t try to influence the content? Just admit to being a thief, stop trying to have it both ways.
What are you talking about?
Are you a filmmaker? Because I am. Clearly we have different views.
Also, you’ve incorrectly assumed I pirate films because I won’t be outraged by the process.
It exists. We can either rage against it, or calm the hell down and actually look at it objectively and do something about it.
Yes, the business model is absolutely flawed. No way can you set such a large price on content that is being given away elsewhere.
Things need to change on BOTH sides. I’ve said elsewhere, you can’t scare pirates away. They’ll just move to a different corner of the street. We need to remove the need for piracy.
I am an independent filmmaker, and your rationalizations will put me and those like me out of business. When you steal from the small business, that business goes under. Simple economics.
That is why the indie film world will eventually shrink into nothing, essentially becoming the publishing industry. Why? For one simple reason that you have yet to spin: YOU ARE TAKING FOR FREE SOMETHING THAT IS MEANT TO BE PAID FOR. Once that’s done, the incentive is gone. And once the incentive is gone, THAT’S IT.
Either you believe in IP law (and its accompanying rights) or you don’t. It is property meant to be paid for. The music industry capitulated: it no longer expects people to pay for music. They pay for shows and t-shirts. What film filmgoers pay for, if not the film? Do I have to stand on stage and do a dog-and-pony show?
Why do I have to be beholden to advertisers, just because people with an entitlement mentality want everything for free?
Repo man rocks. He’s totally right.
yes, the business model is flawed and studios need to get with the times BUT piracy is illegal and also needs to be stopped. your assertion above that it’s merely taking away from big business is bullshit– it’s the justification everyone uses for watching stuff online for free, but you are robbing the filmmakers, and no, they aren’t all set for life. Also, by robbing from big business, you are hurting profit margins that hurt future job creation for the thousands of others who make their living in and off of the entertainment industry.
Remember that a few years ago, the record companies had decided to fight piracy with high-profile trials in which illegal downloaders were fined thousands of dollars. Most of the decisions were broken in appeal but the main result was that the general audience started to despise the record companies… and were even happier to use P2P networks.
The HADOPI system is only a more refined take on the same problem. Smaller fines, many more targets and many people are supposed to receive a tap on the wrist. But the logic stays the same: record companies only see the customers as people who can pay them money as often as they can. There’s been little research about their needs or their changes in practices. The lowpoint is when you’re supposed to play $2 or $3 just to get the song you’ve already bought as a ringtone on your phone.
Artists are happy to make money. But their first source of pleasure is in getting the song heard by many people. If the song is any good, you’ll get interest then money, from albums, concerts and goodies. Actually there are more than a couple of bands or artists that make more money under the new business model than they would have under the old one, when the label had to pay to get the song on the radio (with the money putting the artist account even more in the red). Mick Jagger was quick to acknowledge that he doesn’t make much money with the records anymore but he’s also wise enough that the era he earned big, the 1970-2000 era, was a pleasant parenthesis not the norm for records in the whole history of recorded music.
So, record companies should acknowledge that there won’t be albums like “Thriller” or Shania Twain’s “Come on Over” anymore. They won’t be able to sell the same product 20 million times. The industry and the tastes will stay fragmented for years and decades. By focusing only on the fight against piracy, they’re losing opportunities to adapt themselves to the new realities of the business by becoming more reactive and efficient. Touring is becoming a profitable business while it was often a loss leader to promote the album in many areas and countries. There are marketing strategies that could work with niche artists if you manage to target them instead of taking the whole nine yards and spending a lot on airplay or videoclips. So far, I don’t see any major company taking these opportunities. There’s too much bureaucracy and the executives prefer the old way: to put the blame on piracy, fire 25 percent of the staff and stay in charge. Then repeat.
What’s happened to the record companies should be viewed as a lesson by film studios.
it’s not that the business model is flawed, it’s that the business model is old and needs to be modernized. the film biz was able to reinvent itself after fighting VHS technology and then embracing it. so it can do it again.
fighting filesharing is like re-arranging chairs on the titanic. the music industry has been engaging in this fight since about 1999. it won a bunch of battles but has basically lost the war. we can follow those cats down that path or we can modernize.
“fighting filesharing is like re-arranging chairs on the titanic…we can follow those cats down that path or we can modernize.”
Spoken like a thief who doesn’t create anything, only steals. And please spare us the code words like ‘modernize’ which in your case really means “give away for free”
if only they did the same thing in the US! Time to stop the pirates. we can’t take risk financing films, producing films if piracy keeps growing. Torrenting doesn’t help for marketing, i have posters, trailers, facebook, advertising, festivals, word of mouth, etc… for that. Thousands of people watching my movie for free and sending it to their friends online are not helping the movie industry, they are not marketing my film, they’re just stealing it.
Some folks think torrents are bad because torrents aren’t fair and just.
Big companies don’t care about fair and just. They care about themselves.
Big businesses know that many people do care about fairness. They are trying to appeal to your sense of fairness to gain your support.
I think some of their representatives are posting on this thread.
People, do what’s in YOUR interest. That’s what businesses are doing; it’s what you should be doing.
If you think it’s in your best interest to speak on behalf of big businesses, businesses who are acting in their interests and NOT in yours, then do that.
But, I don’t think that’s in your interest unless these businesses employ you.
Let businesses worry about businesses. You can worry about you instead of worrying about them.
Whatever you choose to do, entertainment won’t go away. It won’t die. It will definitely evolve, though.
I wonder what this guy does for a living? He thinks that piracy is not hurting our industry??? Trust me when I say this, if you think the big studios are not trying to find a way to protect themselves and their industry you are dead wrong my friend. What I hear all the time is how the industry has to change and adapt and thats coming from within the industry. Trust me. Its happening. It may take some time but it will happen. We know what we have to do. And as a filmmaker who works both within the studio system and independently, we are all working on ways to adapt, but if you cant realize how piracy is hurting the industry you are just practicing willful ignorance. The movie business is and always has been a business. And all the great films you have grown up on and love came from those who created these movies in hopes of making something great and making money as well. If you kill the potential for profit, you kill the potential for all sorts of great movies both commercial and artistic. It’s that simple.
Ya thats right the business model is old, flawed. Ya I here the business model is old, flawed in the shipping business as well. Distribution, shipping oil on oil tankers is old and out of date, we should just cut a deal with the pirates, they are going to take the tanker anyhow but it’s our fault we’re out of date, were trying to sell a product. We’re the one’s who discovered it, took it from the ground but distribution.. lets just give it away, see if we can slap an advertisers name on the thing to make at least something cause our buisness model is flawed. Creating a product then selling that product oh ya thats way out of date the stoneage, thats flawed. Give me a break!
All the talk of new business models and pathetic explanations (seriously, a digital file is not a creative product and thus, cannot be stolen?!) are just lazy, faux philosophical attempts to justify stealing.
And for anyone posting who doesn’t work in a creative industry who thinks piracy is not stealing, are you that morally bankrupt or are you just envious, consuming pigs? I hope you’re not in school going into debt with the idea that you’re going to have a rewarding career in filmmaking, TV, video production, gaming, commercial production, art design, graphic design, publishing, writing, music… because unless you’re already in the business, there is almost ZERO chance for you to break in. Talented or not. Thank your torrent-loving friends for your dreams going up in smoke before you can even pursue them.
“Piracy Kills Dreams”, I guess that we’ll never see the day in which an unknown but talented artist uploads a few videos on YouTube, turns it into a viral sensation, gets attention on himself or herself then makes a lucrative deal with a studio. Especially not the guys from The Lonely Island, The Human Giant or Derrick Comedy.
We’ll also never learn of this “irony” thing.
By using a FREE service like Youtube as a ‘modern’ business model to emulate (and how many people earn a living off of it again?), you have rendered your other arguments meaningless. Or perhaps you were just being ‘ironic’?
Where do I write that YouTube should be the new business model? I was replying to a guy who painted a one-sided grim picture of the situation, claiming that Internet piracy was preventing unknown talented people to break in the entertainment industry because there wasn’t any money left to be made (as if it was the only reason in Hollywood to dismiss talent…).
So, why unknown people are still breaking in in spite of piracy and, worse, thanks to the Internet?
Piracy costs money to the entertainment industry but why do we never get a true assessment of the money it truly costs? The estimations almost always use the traditional point of view of the companies: if somebody has this song or this movie on this hard disk, it costs them the value of the record or the DVD the guy would have necessarily bought, had he not downloaded the file. The problem is that the guy might have not tried to watch some TV show, if he hadn’t got the curiosity to download the file, and it might have led him to enjoy it and to get the DVD for the entire season. LOST was a huge hit on P2P networks and the seasons boxes still sell quite well. If you treat your customers as people who would steal anything if they had the opportunity (for instance by displaying three minutes legal warnings when you play your legitimate DVD), you can even lose them.
@Mr. Mandingo
So your entire argument against piracy is that it’s wrong because the corporation you work for is paying better than an illegal downloader who isn’t getting paid at all for something that would go against the sane corporation. Sir, you are an idiot. If your argument isn’t sound then it just seems like you’re trolling. So, sincerely, stop.
After reading some of the reactions I got, I can’t help thinking of the whole “war against terror” thing from a few years ago: if you don’t support our policies, you’re supporting the terrorists.
My point was against the strategy put together by the majors against piracy, not to promote piracy. Majors are using piracy as a target to fight with an heavy (and inefficient) fist while it’s also a scapegoat that prevents them to see real structural problems in the way they work. Warner didn’t flop with “Cats and Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore” because of piracy. They just assumed that any crap converted in 3D would be a sure hit.
I find it all the more ironic that we’re discussing this on Nikki’s blog, which has contributed to the current demise of Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. I guess that Deadline makes money because there’s quality content, many readers and some advertisers, while the old papers (that don’t fortunately focus on an anti-xeroxing campaign) have simply found difficult to adjust to the new stakes brought by Internet. The same thing is happening to the record companies and may happen in a few years to studios.
Point taken concerning some of the comments against you. Consider me convinced that you aren’t trying to rationalize piracy.
But some of your logic doesn’t hold up, methinks. First off, your blacksmith analogy is too misleading to use. This isn’t self-interested, society-harming lobbying. This is self-interested, rights-protected, society-helping lobbying.
Also, you seem to have a problem with the distribution of money: more for middlemen, less for artists. But this is just economics: artists are willing to give up a lot of money now for the chance to make it big, which pays off for them in more ways than just a paycheck. Either they’re voluntarily entering a losing tournament scheme, or they’re starry-eyed and irrational. Either way, I’m ok with it. So… with that said, where should I be seeing “fuel for piracy”? Are you saying that pirates are attempting to be Robin Hoods? A very popular thing to say, surely, but quite untrue. Or perhaps I misunderstand you…