Movie Piracy is Here to Stay – What to do About It?

posted by Jett Loe

In the NY Times today – interesting article for the layperson on movie piracy:

Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios

The gist of it is that right now movie studios are screwed.  Of course the film industry in Nigeria knows this, (I’d link here to an interesting and relevant article about this in the Economist – but it’s behind a pay wall – hmm).  In Nigeria piracy is so rampant that the production/distribution companies have to make back their money in a matter of days – after that it’s over – bootleg copies will have saturated the market, (at least that’s what I remember reading in the Economist – I could be wrong.  What’s with the pay wall?).

The article ends with a possible way forward:

“With so much pirated material online, Hollywood is turning to technological solutions. Perhaps most important, media companies are learning from the music industry’s mistakes and trying to avert broader adoption of piracy techniques. The No. 1 lesson: provide the video on the platform that users want it.

Mark Ishikawa, BayTSP’s founder and chief executive, sees a correlation between the availability of content through traditional legal channels and their popularity on pirate networks.

“When DVD releases are postponed, demand always goes up, because people don’t have an authorized channel to buy,” he said.

Partly in response to the piracy problem, a cornucopia of video Web sites now feature the latest episodes of virtually every broadcast TV show. Movie studios are experimenting with video-on-demand releases and other ways to offer films on demand. Legal alternatives, the companies hope, will stifle the stealing. The music industry, by comparison, waited years to provide legal options for online listeners.

“That’s how you start to marginalize piracy — not just by using the stick, but by using the carrot,” Mr. Garland said. “

I spoke via the Tubes to my associate ‘Jeff Love’, (if that is real name), who has been using the BitTorrent protocol to ‘pirate’, (not pay for), mainstream Hollywood fare for some time now.  Transcript follows:

Jett: So, Jeff, what do you make of the NY Times article?  Can the studios stop piracy by providing ‘video on demand’ services?

Jeff: Not stop it, Jett.  There will always be piracy of some sort if for no other reason that computers are ‘copying machines’ – it’s what they do.  Copying bits, whether they’re movies or music or whatever, is what they do best.

Jett:  OK, so piracy as a activity is here to stay.  But can it be constrained? You pirate a lof of movies Jeff.  Will the availability of services like Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Alec Baldwin’s Hulu put a crimp in the number of illegal downloads?

Jeff: Dude, I’m watching Rocky 4 on Hulu right now.

Jett: You’re kidding!  Rocky 4 is on Hulu right now?

Jeff: Yep.

Jett: OK, hold on.  I’ll get back to you

(80 minutes later)

Jett: Sorry about that.

Jeff: Rocky 4 rocks, doesn’t it?

Jett: It’s some kind of minimalist pop-art masterpiece!

Jeff: I always knew we had similar taste in movies.  Right, back to your questions.

Jett: So, are you’re saying that yes, services like Hulu are the way forward for the industry?

Jeff: Yep, as Mark Ishikawa says in the part of the New York times article you’ve extracted, traffic in pirated films increases if those films are not available by other means.  The important thing – the takeaway – is that people want to watch movies. Please emphasize that last bit in your post.

Jett: I will.

Jeff: Cheers.  As I was saying, people still want to see movies.  It’s not like they’ve stopped watching flicks and are spending their leisure time on some new sort of made-up sci-fi hobby like fleaming.  They want to see these things.  Studios should make new and old releases available instantly in a variety of formats – with a variety of ways to pay – ads on Hulu for instance – or subscription based as in Netflix.  And why you’re at in why not bundle it with some sort of discount at theatres to get people to go to the movies.

Jett: That sounds reasonable.

Jeff: It is.  Look, people will always pirate – if you like to read and don’t have any money, you can’t buy books, you go to the library instead.  If you don’t have any cash, paying 10 bucks to see a movie, plus more for parking and snacks, to see, say the new Clive Owen film The International, is nuts.

Jett: You couldn’t pay me to see that film.

Jeff: Really?  What if, instead of shelling out 20 bucks in total to see it – you could watch it the same day it was released in theatres – either with ads for free, or without ads for…let’s say 75 cents.

Jett:  Hmm…it looks pretty bad.  Maybe I’d just pirate it.

Jeff: What if the official copy was better resolution and included other features like discounts to other films online and in the theatre?

Jett: Huh, you might have something there Jett.

Jeff: I think I do.  And I think you meant Jeff.

Jett:  What?

Jeff: Nevermind.

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Other TFT posts on the same subject:

Ben Kingsley Doesn’t Do It For Me / Transsiberian

The 2009 Oscar Nominated Films: Pirated Copies Available Everywhere

jinni – New Movie Recommendation Service Any Good?

Netflix’s Watch Instantly is Getting Better and Better – Couple with a Service like jinni and Who Knows?

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(The International will be previewed on this week’s Show)

(Photo at top adapted from original by LeeLeFever / Photo above by Ross Angus)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 2:37 pm. It is filed under Blog, Jett Loe, Piracy, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.