
BitTorrent Piracy Doesn’t Affect US Box Office Returns, Study Finds - dazbradbury
https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-doesnt-effect-us-box-office-returns-study-finds-120210/
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runn1ng
Whenever I hear statements like that (that the musical/movie industry is
growing _thanks to_ piracy, etc), the only logical question for me is - _why
are they fighting it so hard then_?

I mean, they are fighting the various P2P sites and users for _years_ ,
spending large amounts of money on various legal fights and lobbyists. The
wouldn't do this if it really didn't hurt their sales.

People can say "they are doing it because they are stupid". Well, maybe they
are, but they also have _far_ better statistics than we have. They know far
better what is hurting their sales.

I am not really arguing for copyright industry here, but I am just saying - if
it didn't hurt them, they wouldn't be fighting it _so hard_.

~~~
ahelwer
If they did nothing, their silence would be taken as assent. There would be a
critical point of social acceptance past which the number of people actually
paying for their product would rapidly drop to an unsustainable level. They
work to keep it from reaching that point.

------
pjdorrell
People talk about the "business model" of the film and music industries.

But they have a "moral model", which is to present copyright itself as a moral
proposition. Everything about why it is hard for us to stop the never-ending
creation of new laws and international treaties that attack freedoms of
computer use and internet use is due to this moral model.

It follows that empirical studies proving the "harmlessness" of piracy are
largely irrelevant.

~~~
csallen
It all depends on the purpose of copyright in the first place. In the US, at
least, copyright law stems from one section of the Constitution:

    
    
      The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and
      useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
      exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
    

The stated purpose is clear: to promote progress. It's not difficult to
evaluate the current environment in terms of this initial purpose, and I
imagine it would be tough to build a case that piracy is stunting artistic
progress. (And thus difficult to justify laws that inhibit file-sharing.)

Somewhere along the way, people began to confuse the concept of promoting-
artistic-progress with ensuring-people-can-make-millions-of-dollars. These are
two unrelated things. The success of some company's (or some artist's)
business model has nothing to do with the progress of the arts in general. So
I agree with you: the amount of monetary "damage" caused by piracy is entirely
irrelevant.

What really matters is the moral argument that piracy equates to theft, or
that piracy hinders artistic progress. I don't think it does. But if anyone
disagrees, I'd love to hear your argument here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577454>

~~~
pjdorrell
It doesn't really matter what the purpose of copyright was in the first place.
History is interesting, but it doesn't determine our understanding in the
present of what is moral and what is not moral.

Also, copyright is world-wide, so what it says in the US Constitution isn't
all that interesting to anyone not in the US.

And when I say "irrelevant", I mean it is irrelevant to public debate. The
copyright industry's side of the debate about copyright enforcement is mostly
the following, based on what I called the "moral model":

* We created something * We own what we created * Someone is stealing it

This message can just be repeated over and over and over again. Someone's
report that internet piracy might not reduce cinema takings completely fails
to address the above moral claim.

So the report can be ignored, and the moral claim can be repeated again. And
again.

~~~
csallen

      * We created something * We own what we created * Someone is stealing it
    

The content industry derives both the 2nd and 3rd part of that argument from
the law. They do not own something just because they say so. Nor is copying
the equivalent of stealing just because they say so. They are basing their
moral arguments purely on the law, which _defines_ ownership and theft.

So when they tell the public, "It's stealing!", that's nothing but marketing.
When the chips are down and they're standing in court, they argue based on
legal precedent. I don't think we can argue _against_ them on any other
grounds.

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mvip
...like rational, scientifically backed arguments, will burst MPAA/RIAA's
bubble. For anyone on the outside, the findings in this article are common
sense. So is the fact that MPAA/RIAA's business model is severely broken. Yet,
that doesn't matter when you have Washington on your payroll. Unfortunately.

~~~
Karunamon
Sad but true. If rational sense had any place in legislation, marijuana
wouldn't be illegal, the DMCA would never have been passed, and the __AA
groups would never have tried to serve a dead grandmother and a network
printer.

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yabai
What is the logic behind waiting to release Hollywood movies outside of the
US?

~~~
jcampbell1
Getting distribution is hard because screens for english titles are more
limited abroad. You need to prove out the title before foreign theaters will
pick it up. Obviously this doesn't apply to blockbusters which now often have
global release dates.

~~~
yabai
Interesting. Having lived overseas, that explains why it would take ages for a
film to arrive (sometimes 1 year). Many films would never arrive...

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illumen
US Movies are often released outside of the US to see how well they go, so
that an appropriate marketing spend can be done. Various small countries, and
small towns will go first. Like New Zealand.

If the movie does ok, then that is more evidence for the investors to ok the
massive marketing spends. But if their trial marketing fails (and their 10
different versions of it), then the movie will be released changed or released
in one of the spare slots; the slots that they need to fill in the movie
theatres to keep their quadmopoly(if they don't take up the screens with some
crappy movie then some independent might get a shot at a screening instead).

~~~
eslaught
I believe the term for a "quadmopoly" is an oligopoly:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly>

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rsheridan6
A more relevant question would be how piracy affects movie rentals and
DVD/Blu-Ray sales. You can't go out to see a pirated movie, so box offices
sales and pirated movies are apples and oranges.

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mikeryan
tl;dr

Study tries to find out if piracy has a larger effect in foreign box office
returns the longer the length of time between the domestic and foreign
release. Answer: Yes.

~~~
cynicalkane
Given the finding that piracy demonstrably affects foreign returns, and that
the researchers found no correlation to domestic returns, I think the article
headline and interpretation is inaccurate. Not finding evidence is not the
same as finding there's no effect, particularly when you've just found
evidence of a related effect.

~~~
mitchellhislop
I think part of the reason for the title is that the study suggests that
piracy is a symptom, not a cause. They are saying if the studios were
releasing worldwide at the same time, that piracy would be largely nullified
(at least my read of it)

