New Piracy Loss Estimate 480
An anonymous reader writes "WSJ reports on a new MPAA estimate losses due to piracy. "The study, by LEK Consulting LLC, was completed last year, and people familiar with it say it reached a startling conclusion: U.S. movie studios are losing about $6.1 billion annually in global wholesale revenue to piracy, about 75% more than previous estimated losses of $3.5 billion in hard goods. On top of that, losses are coming not only from lost ticket sales, but from DVD sales that have been Hollywood's cash cow in recent years."
Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't they show the RIAA and MPAA giving the Big Spin, themselves?
bzzzzzzzzz-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik
"Come on 6.1 billion! Come on 6.1 billion!"
tikka-tikka-tikka-tik-tok-tok "Come on 6.1 billion! YAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!! We lost 6.1 billion!!! Wheeee!!! Huzzah!!"
"Now we cut to live footage of those most responsible for the losses incurred by the RIAA and MPAA conducting a clandestine summit in a treehouse on the outskirts of Wooster, Massachusetts!"
It sure beats the boring truth, doesn't it?Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:5, Funny)
Donations through PayPal?
Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be the only way to pay them after they withdraw from the american market. After all, they're apparently losing 1.3 billion dollars a year by selling movies here.
Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but if they refuse to sell movies in the US, then any movies downloaded in that region can't possibly be considered a lost sale, thus they won't be losing a billion dollars are year to the pirates. It makes perfect sense if you think about it.
What about The Aliens? (Score:5, Funny)
I have a little more knowledge about what they might need to tap this huge market on planet Rofuble, but I need to do some further research on the technology. If they could just grant me $2 billion for research, I feel that we would be in a position to approach the King of Rofuble within the next few years. While that figure may startle you, rest assured it's a small price to pay for such a huge market!
Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:5, Informative)
With 1.3 billion dollars, the MPAA could afford...
Re:Gee, They put the lotto on TV... (Score:4, Funny)
This, from the organization (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This, from the organization (Score:5, Interesting)
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Conspiracy! (Score:4, Insightful)
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Do you think maybe the MPAA hired someone to go strangle women -- later known as the Boston Strangler -- just so they could have a scary phantom to use as a simile when battling the VCR in court?
Nah, they wouldn't stoop that low... would they?
How Piracy Hurts at the Box Office (Score:2)
Hollywood TV Studios hype hype hype said big movie on shows like ET, Access Hollywood, or Live with regis and kelly.
Someone pirates a screener of Gigli and posts a torrent.
Gigli opens in theatres.
A few people really into movies either download the torrent or see it opening day.
Those people who are really into movies are also the people that others go to to find out if new movies are any good.
Noone goes to the theatre by the second day.
Clearl
Re:This, from the organization (Score:2)
Re:This, from the organization (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless their motivations have changed... yes. The motivations of corporations rarely (if ever) change.
Re:This, from the organization (Score:2)
The MPAA has been wrong nearly continually on the topic of piracy. I merely highlighted one of the bigger errors they've made.
Re:This, from the organization (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This, from the organization (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This, from the organization (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't take it as a example of wrong, it was a example of exageration.
So ya, because they have always exagerated in the past, it is likely they are continuing along that theme today.
Clearly they are not "losing about $6.1 billion" they may be missing out a potential extra profit of $6.1 billion. Same as me saying I Lost $100,000 on the Palm IPO. Had I been a big enough trader, I could, and would (I did try) having shorted Palm during their IPO, covered by the 2000 shares I (eventully) recieved from my 3com stock distribution when it was selling over a $100 a share (was at ~$5 a share when I actually got the distribution). Then canceled out those shares when I recieved my distribution from 3com. I didn't do anything to deserve the $100,000. but had it not been for the exchange rules, I would have that money.
(ignoring that a million other people/variables would have likely ruined that possibilty first.)
Re:This, from the organization (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Informative)
If they come stapled to a $6.1 billion check made out to cash and slipped under the back door of the Captiol Building?
KFG
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
long answer: nope
Given from where they pull the numbers... (Score:4, Funny)
Of course not.
They pull these numbers from their a**holes.
So now they hired some bigger a**holes and were able to pull out bigger numbers.
Re:Stats from "person familiar with matter" (Score:3, Insightful)
Waitaminithere...
Every time someone downloads a movie, money gets siphoned out of the studio's bank accounts?!?!?!
How the hell can someone downloading something cost them actual cash?
Re:Stats from "person familiar with matter" (Score:5, Funny)
This is like that, but with less ducks.
Not buying a corporation's product is the same as stealing. If they're spending money to make it, you should be spending money to consume it. That's just common sense.
Re:Stats from "person familiar with matter" (Score:3, Interesting)
More importantly, if somebody wasn't going to buy the item anyway and they download it, can that be counted as theft or a lost sale? The MPAA still has exactly as much money and stock as before and they have a means of getting a sale they wouldn't otherwise receive (
Brilliant assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
That's logical, right?
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no it doesn't make the assumption that every pirated copy of a movie would be a sale. If you RTFA, you would see:
The results are likely still completely bogus, but at least they pretended to be correcting for that factor.
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:2)
It sounds to me like they were actually trying to fudge the numbers DOWN rather than up, in this case. They are starting to get worried about their share prices.
Movies are one of the few good international businesses the US has left. I think it's important for us to preserve our dominance in this industry, and therefore to figure out ways to stop piracy.
Pirates are killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. If this continues, eventually they'll just be sharing stupid home movies of people swinging ligh
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:2)
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is not an indicator that suddenly 50% of the country is willing to break the law.
It's a very strong indicator that prices are WAY too high.
There is no other explanation for it. People simply aren't willing to pay what the industry is charging, and the representatives of the industry are trying to preserve what little bit of a monopoly they have left.
The ONLY WAY that these idiots can save their money and their shareholders' money is to drastically slash prices to the point where people stop downloading videos through torrents.
Remember that even the person doing the downloading has to make an opportunity cost comparison.
"is this video worth the Gigabyte of storage it'll take up?"
At some point, when the prices go down, sales will go up, and people will slow down and stop their piracy simply because it isn't convenient.
Any effort to preserve the high prices may result in recovering your losses in out-of-court settlements, if that, but even then, you're losing millions, if not billions, in the long term.
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:2)
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but also assumes that the sales coming as a direct result of the publicity gained by "piracy" would still be there, if there was no "piracy".
Yesterday I went to a concert of Arctic Monkeys in Paris, I paid 25 euros for the ticket. I also bought an Arctic Monkeys t-shirt for 20 euros. Their CD, which I downloaded from the net, costs 15 euros. I leave the conclusion to the RIAA.
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering they don't really get a cut of tickets or merch. I am pretty sure I know what their opinion is.
There IS no piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
The "brilliant assumption" is that people who pirate movies are going to tell the truth in a telephone survey. Did they also believe that everyone they offered a chocolate bar for their password gave a real answer?
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:3, Interesting)
"The "brilliant assumption" is that people who pirate movies are going to tell the truth in a telephone survey."
Slashdotters make this brilliant assumption all the time. How many times have you seen this:
"People who use P2P buy more music. The studies prove it!"
In this latest survey, if the respondents are acting as expected (saying what they think the survey taker wants to hear, or saying something which reflects better on them), then the loss to piracy is actually worse than the study states..
Re:Brilliant assumptions (Score:3, Interesting)
Lies, damn lies, and (corprate) statistics (Score:5, Funny)
Duh *bangs head against wall* (Score:5, Insightful)
Remove the warning, remove the ads, charge $10 max. I can live without movies if you force me to.
Re:Duh *bangs head against wall* (Score:5, Informative)
Remove the warning, remove the ads, charge $10 max. I can live without movies if you force me to.
Yeah, tell me about it. I popped in a DVD a couple months back and it was crammed with plugs for upcoming movies, which came out some time back when the DVD was issued, and I couldn't fast-forward, skip to menu or anything. What a bunch of low-life ****ers.
I did eventually figure out I could hold down the menu button and start the DVD and it would actually skip to the menu, but some disks don't allow that.
Re:Duh *bangs head against wall* (Score:4, Insightful)
Traveling between Europe and America, I was appalled my Mac notebook was only allowed to switch regions 5-6 times before being locked into 1. Whoever thought of the regioning scheme is a class 1 idiot (especially for seperating europe, USA, Japan, etc as if the price difference was major). And the companies that still keep implementing it on their DVDs instead of region 0 are even dumber.
What I never understood is anime dvds with regions. No one is going to buy anime from another country where it's cheaper just for the reduced price, since they don't understand language - if they're that desperate, they'll just download it anyway.
Re:Duh *bangs head against wall* (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine the losses... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they might be legitimate... (Score:5, Insightful)
An additional $529 million in losses came from consumers making copies of legitimate films they bought on DVD or VHS.
Losses? You have to buy another one when you want to make a copy? Pay-per-disc?
They're counting every time any kind of copy is made as a loss of sale. They're not even trying to be realistic here.
Re:I thought they might be legitimate... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the pathetic thing about the MPAA (and RIAA as well). These guys represent some of the worst financial pirates out there. They rip off artists, investors and, most importantly, consumers, and then run around crying when some amoral sonofabitch does in miniature what they've been doing in large for decades.
Re:I thought they might be legitimate... (Score:5, Interesting)
They promised the writer, Winston Groom, a percentage of the profits, but a little cooking of the books and the top grossing film of that year becomes a commerical failure a la hollywood accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting [wikipedia.org]
Another example is eddie murphy's 'coming to america'. It grossed 350 mil worldwide but yet failed to produce a profit.
Art Buchwald received a settlement after his lawsuit Buchwald v. Paramount over Paramount's use of Hollywood accounting. The court found Paramount's actions "unconscionable," noting that it was impossible to believe that a movie (1988's Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America) which grossed US$350 million failed to make a profit, especially since the actual production costs were less than a tenth of that. Paramount settled for an undisclosed sum, rather than have its accounting methods closely scrutinized.
Even Stan Lee had to sue marvel over spiderman profits.
What I'm curious about is if Art Buchwald didn't settle with Paramount, and these practices were exposed in court, would the studio not be guilty of tax evasion if the movie made way more than reported?
Re:I thought they might be legitimate... (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed that, too. This "study" constitutes fraud on the part of the MPAA and the company they hired. Consumers making copies of legitimate films that they bought is legally protected fair use. To count one PENNY of that as so-called "piracy" is fraud of the highest order.
This time, the survey specifically asked consumers how many of their pirated movies they would have purchased in stores or seen in theaters if they didn't have an unauthorized copy, giving studios a different picture of their true losses.That's about the least useful thing they could have done. Why? Because:
The study also shows that home video, not theatrical distribution, is the market that piracy hits hardest, accounting for two-thirds of the studio's lost revenue.
Duh. Most movies aren't available in a pirated form until long after they have left the theater, low-quality camera versions notwithstanding. I would have thought that this conclusion would have been obvious. You mean the studios were surprised?
So let's see the whole paragraph you quoted part of....
Last year, according to a person familiar with the matter, copies of movies downloaded or received from people who had downloaded them cost the studios $447 million in the U.S., whereas copies stemming from professional bootleggers cost the studios $335 million. An additional $529 million in losses came from consumers making copies of legitimate films they bought on DVD or VHS.
So what they're saying is that their figures are inflated by $529 million, or almost 60%. More than 40% of their claimed losses due to "piracy" are actually due to legal copying. Okay. So even if we naively believe that this is the only flaw in their methodology and that their estimates of how many downloaders would have otherwise bought the movie are correct (big stretch), we're really only talking about the equivalent of one blockbuster's gross per year, at least in the U.S. Cry me a river....
Re:I thought they might be legitimate... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're reading too much into that. The article used "making copies" for brevity. You are assuming that this includes "backup copies," but I believe it was intended to be read as "making copies to give to friends, or making copies so that they can have a permanent copy for the price of a rental."
Saying things like (in effect), "ha ha, they are so stupid they think me making a backup copy of something I bought is a loss!" is funny and all, but it's not very intellectually honest. We're all pretty
Bullshit. (Score:2, Interesting)
To put it simply, the MPAA sponsored this study, therefore it will be slanted as they desire. I'm sure there's some element of truth to these estimates, but the MPAA has as a goal the elimination of piracy, so the more inflated they can make the losses seem, the closer they get to their goal.
I just don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Incidentally, do you ever notice how you never see any studies calculating the exact amount of money the MPAA loses each year from making crappy, unoriginal, cookie-cutter movies; showing the movies in a medium where you have to spend gas money to get to the theater and then more than half the cost of a DVD to get in the theater door; and then once they have your money putting more effort into showing you more ads than they do the movie? That's a study I'd be curious to read.
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it now...
The MPAA reports on a startling new study indicating that over 63 trillion gigawatts of elephants are being harvested anually as a result of DVD piracy. The study corrected for factors such as yellow, and the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop, providing the first clear evidence of a connection between movie downlaods and the number 7.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:4, Funny)
The actual report--The MPAA reports on a startling new study indicating that over 63e12 + 42j gigawatts of elephants are being harvested annually as a result of DVD piracy . . . providing the first clear evidence of a connection between movie downloads and the number -7 * exp(j*pi).
any Media Studies undergrads reading this? (Score:2)
Incidentally, do you ever notice how you never see any studies calculating the exact amount of money the MPAA loses each year from making crappy, unoriginal, cookie-cutter movies; showing the movies in a medium where you have to spend gas money to get to the theater and then more than half the cost of a DVD to get in the theater door; and then once they have your money putting more effort into showing you more ads than they do the movie? That's a study I'd be curious to read.
That is a fuggin' great idea
Re:any Media Studies undergrads reading this? (Score:2)
Increasing Numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't be creative and adapt to the modern world market and find new methods of selling your product, please get the hell out of the way of the companies and people that are trying to make a difference. The stagnation and lack of creative thinking is inflicting more harm on the consumers and economy than any amount of piracy could ever do. Sink, swim, or get the hell out of the water.
it's... fuzzy math. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why I bother:
This is funny, it almost sounds from the article that they changed their methodology to increase their claimed "losses", and had to rein them back in when they discovered their losses exceeded global Gross (International) Product.
I'm surprised to see such an MPAA friendly article from WSJ. Or maybe I'm not.
Re:it's... fuzzy math. (Score:2)
It's not a non-sequitur at all, if they only raided 1/7 of the establishments they were targeting. They are making estimates based on a limited sample size.
Re:it's... fuzzy math. (Score:3, Insightful)
Put the shoe on the other foot. (Score:2, Interesting)
How about this deal: You allow after-viewing refunds on tickets so I can get my money back after you waste my two hours in a theater, and I'll start letting you have my money when you make something decent.
No surprise but the MPAA is lying (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No surprise but the MPAA is lying (Score:5, Funny)
Are they REALLY LOSING? (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth about the RIAA revealed (Score:3, Funny)
Fact is, they don't know. (Score:4, Insightful)
They are guessing, and they are being overoptimistic about market prospects with no piracy.
The problem is, there is no evidence that the drop in sales from their expectations was due to piracy.
Drop in sales can be due to the market; DVDs and ticket sales may no longer be attractive -- drop in sales figures may reflect people seeking alternative, cheaper entertainment options.
Yes, piracy exists, yes it has an impact, but no, that impact cannot be reliably measured with any precision -- there are too many factors influencing the sales numbers you get; primarily, the market - to presume sales always go up unless piracy drives them down is just plain arrogant and a head-up-in-the-clouds assumption.
The amount of piracy occuring is by its very nature a relatively unknown factor, especially when they refer to casual copying, or other things which DRM and other measures are purported to prevent ---- the best that can be made is an educated guess.
These from the people who consider lending an original copy of a CD to a friend to be piracy ---- they cannot reasonably measure the total of such things with anything close to an accurate reading, it's just not practical to get statistically relevant information from a population that is being told what many of them do is bad.
Of COURSE reporters and researchers paid by a company with a certain agenda are likely to drastically exagerate the extent and certainty about the loss being due to piracy or not due to piracy.
This is news because!? (Score:2)
Yeah, I know this. (Score:2)
It's so tremendously hypocritical talking all that bullshit about globalization, a free market and how everyone's gonna save oh-so-much by having goods produced in low-wage-countries of the third world and eastern europe, and at the very same time not wanting to adjust to the demands the consumer - which is not the most unimportant in that market-thing in the end, you know, c
Good news? Ever? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not likely.
As long as they keep complaining, they have a way to justify restricting access to digital (and analog) content.
Not that it really matters, because they have the money to pay lobbyists to influnece Congress anyway. But the public may be able to stomach some sort of compromise with regards to fair use restrictions if the xxAAs keep bitching and complaining.
Article categorization. (Score:2, Funny)
I haven't been to a movie... (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, irony! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like being forced to watch copyright warnings, stupid "don't steal" commercials and having trouble with archiving movies, so I prefer watching 'stolen' copies, which don't have any added crap.
Playground games. (Score:3, Funny)
they're standing on a rotating platform, trying to see who can spin the fastest.
Awesome! (Score:2)
*yawn* (Score:3, Interesting)
If they hadnt all be bought, id say write your congressperson.. But they have, so why bother.
so incorrect... (Score:2)
+5,Bull$hit
Only 6 billion? (Score:2)
$529 due to fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
The real reason I don't belive a word of it is they think they're only losing 244mill in China.
And they claim $529mill in losses in the US because consumers are using their fair use rights to make a backup copy so they don't have to go out and rebuy movies every time a disk gets scratched because the MPAA is too cheap to use scratch resistant disks.
How long until they blame Netflix and Blockbuster because people are renting movies at a prepaid monthly rate instead of buying them.
Re:$529 due to fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
They always blaim someone when they're trying to weasel more control over the market.
Theatre Attendence (Score:2)
In return for my money, I get to watch commercials before the movies and public service announcements about piracy (by the way, assholes, it's not "stealing", it's copyright infringement). Then, I get to watch trailers, which a really commercials too. Finally, the movies starts, which I might enjoy if I can hear it over the sounds of people's babies crying in an R rated mov
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They are way off! (Score:5, Insightful)
10 x 10,000,000,000 x US$20 = US$2,000,000,000,000 = 2 Trillion US Dollars
This clearly dwarfs the cost of invading Iraq and giving Baby Boomers their Social Security benefits put together, therefore it is much more important. It is in fact, as shown by the objective calculations above, by far the most important issue on earth today. More than global warming, AIDS, tuberculosis, environmental pollution, shortages of potable water, collapse of fisheries, ozone layer depletion, overpopulation, lack of medical care, famine, poverty, slavery, wars in the Third World, tyrannical dictatorships, nuclear weapons proliferation, exploitation of the many by the few, rampant governmental corruption, compromised information and news media, organized crime, in short more important than anything.
Someone should tell the RIAA.
Overestimated costs (Score:3, Funny)
2 Trillion US Dollars... [is] in short more important than anything.
Not quite, it's second to someone's phone bill [google.com].
Re:They are way off! (Score:3, Funny)
Dont forget to HDTV cable. (Score:2)
Sounds like the MPAA is out of touch with consumers. Pay for crap quality? I wont even steal that crap quality.
I lost $2.7 billion last year (Score:4, Funny)
I lost $2.7 billion last year. Oh on Thursday, I have a loss of $5.4 billion. On Saturdays and Sunday I have a discount.
I am the owner of 'Hello World'!
A real study (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A real study (Score:3, Insightful)
Its almost impossible to set up two movies that would give identical results and know it ahead of time. Its going to depend on the type of movie, the actors involved, etc.
Almost ANYTHING could taint this study, a stiff wind could make it null and void. Not to mention the one they didn't set up for download, would be set up for download like it always is anyway, regular pirates would get ahold of it anyway. The only difference would be the average joes who
Harry Potter (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't notice anything about the sales being poor.
(They did save a nickle a disk in Macrovision licensing, though.)
This is scary people (Score:2)
Shit, those numbers really made me think people. I really feel bad about MPAA and it's about time we start to take this seriously, and no more inane jokes.
I suggest we organize some kind of charity or something where we can donate and help MPAA recover at least a small part of the losses they endure due to the plague that piracy is. It's
No sympathy here (Score:2)
I don't pirate movies or music, but I lost any sympathy for the RIAA or the MPAA when they decided to buy laws forcing me to buy hardware with pointless DRM to prevent the piracy I'm not doing.
I'm not pirating, but I have to bear the cost of the MPAA's unworkable "solution", a so-called solution that puts industry spyware in my computers and TVs, and that makes my current hardware obsolete?
Fuck those fat cats.
too lazy to do inverse marketing (Score:2)
would it be too much effort to break into categories this piracy market instead of just lumping it all together as "bad"?
i'm not very good at marketing, but even I can see that pirates fall into some categories...
* the duplicator factories that get the artwork and labelling to match exactly so they can inject it into the distribution cha
How the F*** is this supposed to be piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't that fair use?
economics 101 (Score:2)
This P2P thing is starting to surprise me (Score:5, Interesting)
Those where lower-income-bracket people, lower-computer-literacy people, that is, the backbone of the country. And they see nothing even remotely wrong in copying music. I fear the content producers are against too much of a slope now.
Piracy saves movie industry money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, put another way, US movie studios saved $2.5B annually in income taxes from the losses claimed due to the global wholesale revenue loss to piracy.
bah (Score:3, Funny)
Shit, i can't be arsed *copying* most of the crap out there, let along watching it or heaven forbid, having to pay for it.
I have no trouble paying for media, however when the average new release is about as enjoyable as prison rape, I doubt their financial problems are soley due to freely available copies...
smash.
Only so much money ... (Score:3, Informative)
That pot is shared between DVDs, CDs, games and books.
There's only so much money, so I'll buy the best of each category and leave the 'good, but not great' until it is on sale, or just download it if I have the time to watch it.
So they wouldn't get any extra money in total if I didn't pirate it (how long until they count going around to a friend's house and watching a film with them as piracy?), and any loss isn't at full retail price, but at bargain sale price.
On the other hand I have bought CDs based upon downloading the music and liking the band. That music sale could have been a DVD sale, game sale or wine sale, the total money spent isn't increasing because I don't have that extra money to spend, but at least I could spend it better.
Re:new movies = teh suck (Score:2)
Including Silent Hill.
Someone put Roger Avary to walk the bloody plank! (arr)
Well, at least I give it a 7. Cool graphics and sounds
Re:Pile of shit (Score:2)