What is Digg?48 Comments
- Saintlink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+33Excellent article calling the WSJ and content industry on "fluff" numbers. Yes, the threat is real to their business, but bloating statistics won't garner any support from the tech savvy crowd. Dugg for exposing the truth.
- JasonPrini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31$6.1 billion must include the results of suing your customers and fans.
- TheTankengine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24btipling:"Agreed, the writer needs to employ a grammer checker however."
This comment practically writes itself! - joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12The biggest logic gap is that you can NOT LOOSE MONEY you didn't have.
Unless they can show that every single copy of a movie downloaded of the internet was viewed by a person that WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE spend $10 to see it in a theater or buy the DVD, their 'losses' are completely made up. - retral, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Something needs to be done about these pricks... We need to find some crazy person to go kamikaze their (RIAA/MPAA) HQs.
- TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10That is funny, I mean, these idiots think that they'll get people to buy records by randomly throwing law suits at them?
- justice7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I found it quite comical when they tried showing the "little guy" anti-piracy ads.. where the lights man gets less money because of piracy etc
Come on, what are they doing banking xxx million $ and paying actors some 10 mil just to do a 90 minute film? I think a .005% pay cut to one actor would cover the crew for the entire film.
The only ones stealing from the "little guy" is the MPAA themselves. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8They have a history of this, they've been making up losses to avoid paying writers a percentage for a long time.
- truspector, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I may just be that crazy person.
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"They have a history of this, they've been making up losses to avoid paying writers a percentage for a long time."
Ha! So true. The hollywood system is pretty much designed to make the most profit and paying the people that make the film the absolute minimum. As pointed out, this can often include convincing lackey's to skip a salary and instead take a percentage of profit...only to find out that they are able to bake the books to show that the movie didn't actually return a profit on paper.
Sounds a bit like another _ _ AA organization, eh? - Spaztic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I find it funny that the MPAA considers pirating lost revenue. Just because a pirate steals a movies off the internet does not mean that he or she would have purchased the movie if it was unavailable for download.
- TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5m00nmaster, we know some people aren't the best with grammer or spelling, how about we address the issue with the actual person instead of in the comment system. See, some people don't feel it's right for you to take up space by bashing someone over a typo or spelling issue.
- hotdrop, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Surprize surprize MPAA making up numbers to make pirace look worse then it is. Seriously is anyone surpized any more?
- dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's a lot easier to argue your point when you just make your facts up. It works for the RIAA, our administration, and a lot of coroporations. It doesn't make the argument valid, but by god, it sounds important.
My problem with these numbers is that they're viewing anything pirated as a "lost" sale. That follows the assumption that someone who stole it was going to buy it in the first place; from everything I've seen, that's not true. It also counts against sales to people who may have downloaded a movie, song, or tv show and then went to go buy it.
I downloaded a Pearl Jam CD last week to listen to it, and picked it up in the store today? So did the revenue from my purchase cancel out from my download? - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4He wants to get paid first. Just tell him we'll pay him double if he waits until after he finishes the job.
- Genma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3that "survey" is just a fake way to validate the only major claim to support their argument outside of the bootleggers. what we also know is that they refuse to publish their field of study for this ***** survey, which would of course be completely outlined in minute detail if the numbers had any real substance.
what they really want to protect is not revenue, because they have been and will always be able to profit. it's the one element that filesharing has eliminated, the ability to market their products regardless of price or quality, since people otherwise have no choice. if the price is right people will gladly buy a genuine copy, even if they haven't seen or heard of it. when they charge ridiculous prices in the theaters and shelves with more blatant false justification, people start to think about what they're spending their money on. and they don't like when people think, because then they might decide not to spend. - 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I assumed he spelt it like that on purpose, for effect. Made me laugh anyway :p
- vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Too bad this is published on an online tech blog and not in a periodical as widely read as the WSJ. I think a lot of people who aren't passionate about technology just don't understand or fail to realize how harmful the RIAA is to society. These issues affect everybody and it's time the major media outlets started presenting the other side of the issue.
- pgm_01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The MPAA should also shorten the lag time between the theater release and the DVD. There is a growing market for home viewing even as the market for theater viewing is decreasing. A competitive business would see this shift and shift its product to match the market, instead the MPAA wants to force market behavior that matches the way things have always been. When the there is a whole in the traditional market, a black market forms, and that is why "piracy" is increasing.
- astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2*sarcastic mode* Oh Oh..Mirah Carey's "Glitter" wasn't a block buster dis' year... must have been due to piracy, lets fluff the numbers to make up for the losses of da picture.
- syukton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is the thing I don't get: how do they know that the people who download movies would pay for them? Does it not occur to them that maybe the reason they aren't paying for the movie (and downloading it instead) is because they think it's too expensive to go out and see? (not to mention all the rude people, the cellphones, the crying kids in rated R movies, and all the other ***** you have to put up with when you decide to go interact with the general public) Given the choice of paying to see the movie and not seeing the movie at all, if the majority of pirates would just opt to not see the movie at all, then how much profit is really being lost?
- dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sadly, that's the biggest problem the "anti-" industry people face today: the difference between the technological industry and the traditional media outlets. We all know the RIAA is borderline evil and absolutely illegal, but there's little to know attention to this fact outside of technology circles. How many "breaking stories" pop up in the WSJ, NYT, CNN, etc. months after the story has come and gone from blogs, Wired, or Digg?
- MountainFlip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The tv program "BullS***" on showtime should make an episode based on this article.
- samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In general, people aren't going to download bittorrents of movies they actually care about. They may download movies that they "kind of" wanted to see, but if the movie is any good, chances are they'll get the DVD. Solution for the MPAA? MAKE BETTER MOVIES!!! I actually have a 42" monitor now that would serve as a great vehicle for watching movies on my PC (and I do via the DVD drive), but the quality of downloaded movies isn't worth the time it takes to download them. So I buy the DVDs and/or see stuff at the theatre. But most of what Hollywood is producing is shovelware. And it deserves just about the same amount of respect as its software counterpart.
- mousky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A good deal of questionable padding? Any figure the RIAA or the MPAA quote for losses due to piracy is 100 percent false. Last I looked, there was no line in their financial statements that listed losses due to piracy. At best, the figures 'cited' by the MPAA and RIAA are potential lost sales. At worst, they are lies.
- brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3English isn't a first language to many people, along with many other issues that make it hard for some people to always spell perfectly.
You still knew what he meant and understood, so I think that's good enough and you should just leave it alone.
Anyway...They never had the money to begin with so they should really just quit complaining. They've probably turned more people on to piracy than anyone else. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Just because you wouldn't otherwise buy it doesn't make it even REMOTELY right (or even less wrong) to take it without paying for it. Music and movies are not a right. If you don't feel they are worth paying for, then you simply don't get to watch it. Period.
Honestly..as bad as the RIAA/MPAA looks, people who use THAT excuse to excuse their criminal activity look 10 times worse. - atroxodisse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The main fallacy of their poll is that even if the consumer truly would have gone out and bought a DVD if they couldn't pirate it, if they have a collection of 50 pirated DVDs they most likely could not have been able to afford to go out and buy all of them. Maybe they would have bought 5 of them.
- zweben, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Well, what are you waiting for?
- FinishdLawSkool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does this research take into account the billions of people who do not waste time watching the crap films that are being produced? Or does it take into account the billions of people who do not want to waste money by going to a theater instead of waiting for a film to come out on DVD?
I think the billion dollars lost has more to do with people not being interested in the crap films that are being made as opposed to piracy. Using piracy as an excuse for low box office income is not going to solve the problems that the film industry is having... - Trjn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If they want any credibility on this issue, they are goign to have to make the survey public, then find a happy little scapegoat and say that they misrepresented the data and we took them at their word.
Still, the idea of people who pirating automatically counting as a lost sale seems ludicrus, apparently they asked the right question of "would you buy what you pirated?" But it begs the question of "have you bought what you pirated?"
I could think of a happy little example, FFVII: Advent Children, it got released in Australia only yesterday and EVERYONE who wanted to see it had already seen it long before release. Nobody waits around 7 months to pay for something widely available for free right?
It was sold out at all the stores I checked, well, aside from Kmart who only had one copy left when I entered the store, and then they were sold out as well.
The key to their losses is quality, people may pirate something they want to see, see it kicks ass and then get it, they might pirate something they really want to see but is too expensive and might get it down the road, they might pirate something that is not yet available (my main reason for pirating is that so many movie take donkey's years to get here) and might buy it when it is available.
Those are, to me, the three examples of piracy where there aren't lost profits because the people bought the item they pirated.
There are also the cases of the movie being pirated, found out to be crap and thus the person wouldn't have purchased it (possibly considered a lost profit because they didn't pay to find out the movie sucked). Actually, a lot of my arguments for cases where the profit isn't lost is basically, the movie/s sucked.
Long story short, how on earth can they possibly work out lost profits from these situations? At best they can make estimates, which can never be truly accurate, and in this case, seem completely fabricated. - schapman43, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3How many of the people who pirate the movie would actually go out and buy the movie if they couldnt download it? I think I own something like 10 DVD's. Most of them were gifts. I dont download movies because I dont want the man holding me down. I guess the point is that just because you stop a person from downloading your movie doesnt mean that you gained a customer. Maybe if they put something out that was worth the $15 Wal-Mart charges for it people would buy it. The MPAA gets a big 1 finger salute!
- BrainedChild, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"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," Did any of the questions involve asking how many of them had gone out and seen/bought movies even though they had a copy? Seems like bad polling methods to me. Nevermind they attribute losses to crappy movies in the theatre
- morsu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If everyone is doing it then its not illegal, it has become the way things are. You cannot battle the customer, we are always right.
- Niteryder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All these groups act like a government agency and get demographics (statistics) they couldn't verify if their lives depended on it. They pro port to have more network knowledge than the top network traffic engineers, who study and determine what networks do and how traffic flows. There are other groups also that make ludicrous claims.
It appears a fat paycheck to commit public fraud is more important than the real truth, not some hysterical cry, wolf when the wolves are at the table running their own business into the ground and lying to save their crumbling financial world. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0TheAttacks...what does Kelsey Grammer have to do with things?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0joejojo your'e wrong, the Internet is fighting against the MPAA and the RIAA (which have the same moron lawyers that don't know a ***** of technology) and Im sure you've heard of Kademlia, DirectConnect, those are protocols that enable a user to view a more wider network than torrents and Gnutella have. Everyday new subnetworks of Strong branches get more power and enable a movie to become avaliable for more than 3 months. So this guys really have to see other statistics than the torrents portals and such. My thought is that in 3 years people will stop using Limewire and just download complete collections of discographies and trilogy movies in a single user session, as Hard Disks get cheaper and have more space.
- mfratt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@digitalgopher
no, not really. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0btipling...well, now that Frasier is off hte air, KElsey may have time to check over internet articles.
- OropheR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2It seems to me that some sentences are not finished or there are "too many words"...
ie:
"One of this month's top intellectual property stories will surely be the MPAA's startling revelation that even it had underestimated the threat of piracy against the movie industry."
or
"What could be so bad that even the people behind Gigli and Aeon Flux and would want to see it lost at the bottom of a river?"
or
"I do want to hit some highlights, however, and note some of the massively problematic gaps in the story that should have been raised by "reporters" across the country, but weren't."
And so on... - digitalgopher, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3LOL! that was the funniest comment I've read today. :)
- duodave, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0They actually ASKED consumers if they pirated movies and would they had purchased them? OMG that is such a lame study! How many people wouldn't admit it? How many would buy duped dvds in hong kong? I don't know, if I was in Hong Kong and had the opprotunity to buy a fake DVD, I'd probably do it just to say I bought a fake DVD. It's like buying a fake rolex. Do you think the people who buy $10 rolexes would otherwise buy $1000 rolexes? I doubt it. If their numbers are correct, based on the number of people who admitted to piracy and said they would buy the item otherwise, in fact piracy is MUCH WORSE because it doesnt even begin to touch the piracy that is undocumented.
- Derrekito, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1im with you on that note!
- SuperGhost, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1You sir/ma'am, are most righteous!
- abenton, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4I just dugg it because im sick of the mpaa
- zip22, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1you obviously didn't read the article
""According to the Journal, this study "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," supposedly alleviating the methodological problem of relating downloads to lost revenues." - m00nmaster, on 10/12/2007, -17/+6I'm "surprized" you still can't spell.
- btipling, on 10/12/2007, -26/+6Agreed, the writer needs to employ a grammer checker however.
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