
Hollywood Wants To Kill Piracy? No Problem: Just Offer Something Better - ttt_
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120202/01473517632/hollywood-wants-to-kill-piracy-no-problem-just-offer-something-better.shtml
======
oflannabhra
I agree that convenience and ease of use are a compelling argument for piracy,
but really I think that most piracy occurs because it is free. It just so
happens that the technology that makes piracy possible also makes it
convenient and easy.

Really, what we are asking Hollywood to do is compete with free. This post is
saying "Tack on all these features to your movies, and I'll pay less than the
current price of your movie for those features." I get the feeling that
Hollywood hears that as "Your product has no value, so do all these things to
add value to it."

Hollywood is saying: "We shouldn't have to compete with free. Our product has
value (regardless of delivery or portability). Free is illegal." Now, this may
or may not be the case technologically, but I find it difficult to fault an
industry for failing to come to terms with those realities.

~~~
ctdonath
To continue the recurring argument...

No, it's not just because it's free. There's a cost to the "free" route:
technical adeptness & tools, time digging for what you want, dealing with
crappy rips, etc. Sure, it may be _cheap_ , but it's not free. Nothing is
free.

And that's the point of the OP: most customers _are_ willing to pay, so long
as the price is lower than the alternatives - and for most customers, that's
making selection & delivery drop-dead easy to the tune of pocket change.
[poster pauses, noting he hasn't had any change in his pocket for weeks due to
ubiquity of plastic]. Apple is doing very well distributing content for a
market it had nothing to do with a few years ago - why? because they made
distribution _easy_ to the point that those with limited time and a little
spare change will pay a few bucks to watch/hear something _right now_ , with
less effort & better quality than pirate channels. Oh, sure, a few people will
opt for "free" out of more time/resources than money, or out of sheer
tenacity, but they're of marginal impact so long as the price & ease balance.

Hollywood's problem, like that of Kodak, Smith Corona, and other big-money
megacorps of the past, is that technology changes the supply-and-demand
curves, reducing the value of their products. It still ain't free, but the
value per unit is dropping ... and the middlemen and stakeholders are going to
squeeze every penny they can out of their cash cow until the carcass stops
producing.

~~~
smoody
"There's a cost to the 'free' route" - your mistake here is thinking that
people actually compute those costs. "Free" is a word that lights-up
irrational neurons in our brains, like "all you can eat." It almost doesn't
matter the cost.

That said, I can prove to you right now that this scheme will not work: On the
music-side of the media world, I subscribe to Rdio. It's $10 per month for
all-I-can-eat music. I listen to it via my computer, via my home stereo using
Sonos (I can play up to three different songs simultaneously via Rdio using
Sonos -- more than I'll ever need). And, I can download the songs to my iPhone
and listen to them offline.

Yet, even with Rdio and the many compatible competitors (Rhapsody, Spotify,
etc.), people still download music illegally "for free." For $10 per month, I
can have millions of songs available on-demand for instant playback or I can
spend my time downloading songs, installing them in iTunes, syncing with my
mobile device, etc. Why would anyone choose the "free" option? Personally, I
don't know, but they do.

One difference... In the world of Rdio, songs are not free of DRM, but no one
should care -- I certainly don't even though I was one of the people
celebrating the move of music from DRMed to non-DRMed -- because six million
or more songs are instantly available anywhere I might want to listen to them
without any hassles. If I can get at the songs anywhere, at any time, from any
device, without hassle, why do I care about DRM?

~~~
kstenerud
The mere existence of piracy does not invalidate the convenience and ease-of-
use arguments.

For example, Valve seems to have found compelling evidence supporting the
"service" side of the argument: [http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/25/gabe-
newell-on-piracy-and-...](http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/25/gabe-newell-on-
piracy-and-steams-success-in-russia/)

They haven't stopped piracy (which can't be stopped completely), but they have
carved out a huge, lucrative market where others with the "free will always
trump non-free" mindset were too fearful to tread.

~~~
teamonkey
I'm always wary of what Valve have to say on the subject of piracy. They are a
gatekeeper, not a content creator[1], and everything that they say on the
subject suits _them_ in that position. Saying that they oppose DRM is
beneficial for Steam as a marketing move. In addition, being privately owned
they are under no shareholder obligation to maximise profit by conventional
means. I.e. their position is not typical of anyone else in the industry.

It's like when Netflix talks about Hollywood and the TV industry: sure, they
bring up some good points, but always something that would benefit the
gatekeeper first.

[1] My argument is that the games they create sell the Steam platform, not the
other way around.

------
res0nat0r
This is a nice, but typical Reddit solution which is a bit more complicated in
reality. There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for
many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this
service can just spring to life.

Also Steam works well because it really isn't easy for the common consumer to
copy a Steam game vs. as easy as it would be to copy a single unencrypted
movie file to share casually with their friends. It is much easier to buy a
movie on this Steam type clone and then put it online or give it to everyone
you know, which the industry won't want.

Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android,
iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not
fly.

~~~
randomdata
> There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many
> different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service
> can just spring to life.

Copyright is not a right, it s a privilege given to promote the creation of
new works in exchange for reasonable access to that work.

Hollywood could easily lobby the government about their contracts not being in
the spirit of copyright and that they need to be wiped clean in the interest
of the American people.

Instead, they lobby to reduce the reasonable access even further. Forcing
people into pirating even more.

I guess they know they have a better chance changing the law for 300 million
people than to change it for a couple of other corporations. Pretty sad,
really.

~~~
greyish_water
_Copyright is not a right_

I don't think you've thought that through.

 _Forcing people into pirating_

Nobody is forced into pirating.

~~~
randomdata
You are right that I did not choose my words very carefully. The underlying
point still stands.

------
tlogan
As a user here is what I want:

    
    
       * I search for movie/TV series title using Google what I want to watch, 
       * I find it, 
       * I type my credit card number and 
       * I watch. 
    

But no - I cannot.

I don't need special features or other things: I have money - you have the
movie I want to watch.

~~~
ctdonath
AppleTV.

'nuf said.

OK, so it doesn't have everything yet, but between that & Netflix there's more
than enough to keep most satisfied, and more content is always being added.
And you don't have to enter your CC# more than once. Funny, Apple is making
crazy money by offering customers the best implementation of what you want,
rather than cutting them off...

~~~
chc
If by "AppleTV" you mean the iTunes Store (since AppleTV does not provide its
own content), you have to be joking. No wonder the content companies are most
friendly to that place — it makes their old distribution channels look
downright cheap. Three episodes of "Whitney" costs as much as a month's
subscription to Netflix.

~~~
tomkinstinch
Perhaps this is the problem.

Does content have inherently lower value now that it is abundant, and
distributed for (nearly) free?

If content providers charged say, (cost of bandwidth)+10%, for each item
rather than arbitrary whole-dollar prices, they would certainly see more
takers--and perhaps higher profit.

~~~
chc
I don't think cost-based pricing is the answer. Cost-based pricing is almost
never the answer unless you're a charity, and it creates some really perverse
incentives for the producer (for example, if I'm running my web service as
cost-plus, it's in my interest to buy gold-plated servers cooled by ice hauled
in from Antarctica — 10% of that is a lot more than 10% of $200). I do think
the value of entertainment has dropped as the supply has ballooned. The
problem is basically just that they're stubborn as a mule and refuse to
seriously compete in the market that exists today. They want to keep things
the way they were, and if you ask for something else, they'd rather just take
their ball and go home than negotiate. And I mean, that's their right, but
when they do that, they are really the ones who are undermining their business
model.

~~~
tomkinstinch
Quite right about the perverse side of cost-plus pricing.

------
jmsduran
I remember watching a documentary a while back on how Hollywood screened and
rated TV/film productions. It angered me to see that focus groups consisting
mostly of soccer moms controlled our movie rating system & what we see on TV.
This is exactly what's wrong with Hollywood and the music industry in America.

Seriously, it amazes me how an industrial complex like Hollywood can
collectively make so many dumb mistakes, that would otherwise cripple/kill
other industries, and still rake in billions.

~~~
jonnathanson
The documentary you're probably referring to is "This Film is Not Yet Rated"
(<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/>).

------
gxs
The thing is I don't think you really can kill piracy and Hollywood should
realize that it doesn't need to.

For me personally, piracy is a crime of opportunity - I do it because it's
easy and available. However, me downloading movie doesn't represent lost
revenue for Hollywood - if I were forced to pay for a movie, I would simply do
something else.

This is what I think goes over the head of Hollywood execs. If a youtoube
music video has 5M views, it doesn't mean it missed out on 5M customers, it
just means 5M were willing to watch something for free.

As a side note, the one movie service I have paid for in the past 5 years,
Redbox, has strong opposition from Hollywood. I use it because as the OP
mentions, it's better than pirating. Instant, convenient, and the cost is a
non issue. Why doesn't Hollywood embrace this rather than oppose it? Who
knows.

All that said, it starting to feel like we're beating a dead horse here on HN.

------
fabiandesimone
To me, the offer exists. Is called Cuevana.tv (<http://www.cuevana.tv>)

I would GLADLY pay Cuevana 35$ a month to watch the content in there. That's
35$ the industry is not getting from me when they could.

Hollywood should embrace sites like Cuevana: they would have the distribution,
the bandwidth, up-loaders, ratings, subtitles... all outsourced for FREE.

Not to mention, these type of sites can work like marketing tools: you have
ratings, user sentiment, geography...

It pains me the amount of effort being placed to find a solution to stop this.
It makes no sense.

------
CoughlinJ
People WILL pay for convenience. It makes absolutely no sense for them to
resist a move like this. Their misguided rationalizations are going to drag
them down.

------
darxius
I think Hollywood is way to resistant to change. People (consumers) are quick
to pick up new technologies to fit their needs. Big corporations can either
comply and cater to those needs or force their own model on their customers.

The latter is NEVER the correct decision. Companies exist solely to please
customers (which in turn amasses profit and satisfies investors).

Hollywood, you work for us.

------
arjunnarayan
I have a dream. I want to pay the Government of the United Kingdom for a TV
License, and the right to stream all their stuff using iPlayer. I would also
like to stream BBC One through Four and BBC News conveniently. You can have
GBP 144.50 per year from me. If only you will let me do this.

------
janlukacs
They will do that at some point, however at the moment it's probably cheaper
to pay off politicians and keep the old model going for as long as they can.
it's as simple as that.

------
samstave
Thats what is so confusing about hollywood - they want to kill piracy and at
the same time kill/supress netflix.

They are an outdated model.

~~~
ttt_
Perhaps this against the current behavior will lead them to exhaust their
resources and make them naturally selectable for extinction as a business
model.

They had their chance to evolve.

~~~
greyfade
But they can't go bankrupt until the movie studios themselves go insolvent.

The problem is these studios are rolling in cash. Even if they were to lose
significant piles of it, they'd simply be bough tout by another large
corporation that can afford to pump yet more money into it.

They'll remain on life support so long as people go to theaters to watch
blockbuster movies. Their business model won't change until people as a whole
turn away form them.

