Director Speaks of Piracy's Necessity

Lexi Alexander, a Hollywood director, spoke out against the anti-piracy piracy work. She specifically called out the MPAA and the arrest in Sweden of Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. While she never states that she condones piracy, she acknowledges that anti-piracy legislation and safeguards promote the act more than discourage it, explaining that even she has resorted to piracy. Alexander finds major issue with the money Hollywood is willing to spend fighting piracy ($19 million in one year alone to support SOPA), but condemns them for not making content available because "we still can't watch most programs from back home, even though we're willing to pay good money for it.”

“For every IP block, DRM and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes,” says Alexander on her blog.

Alexander said she thinks piracy is necessary because of country content restrictions, and that while the wealth piracy begets for the pirates isn’t right, the freedom of access to content is.

“Piracy has NOT been proven to hurt box-office numbers - on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line.”

Alexander is the first person I've come across to argue the side of the pirates while living the life of the content-makers. I found her points to be relevant and thought-out, particularly the idea that even if a person does pay for services, it can still be impossible to legally obtain some content. My family pays for Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, yet there are still countless shows and movies that we can't find and are therefore unable to watch. Not only is it frustrating for consumers but also it is harmful to the success of productions.

Source:

Gibbs, S. (2014, July 10). Hollywood director: piracy is necessary, and doesn't hurt revenues | Technology | The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/10/hollywood-director-piracy-is-necessary-and-doesnt-hurt-revenues

The Only Explanation for the Large Economic Effects of Piracy is Copyright Math (TM)

Rob Reid presents a TEDTalk on the concept of "copyright math;" that is, the math the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) use to determine how much money is lost because of pirating. With a comical twist, Reid explains that the MPAA estimates that over $58 billion are lost to the U.S. economy every year because of content theft.

A slide Reid used to convey the absurdity of the MPAA's claim.

Because this isn't just the hypothetical retail value of some pirated movies that we're talking about, but this is actual economic losses. This is the equivalent to the entire American corn crop failing along with all of our fruit crops, as well as wheat, tobacco, rice, sorghum -- whatever sorghum is -- losing sorghum.

The movie folks also tell us that our economy loses over 370,000 jobs to content theft, which is quite a lot when you consider that, back in '98, the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the motion picture and video industries were employing 270,000 people.

In a February New York Times piece, an MPAA spokesman did his best by attributing the eye-popping $58 billion sum to “piracy’s impact on a range of tangentially related industries — florists, restaurants, trucking companies, and so on.”

Reid does a great job of presenting this information in an understandable and often humorous manner. This is a difficult topic: maybe because it's genuinely hard to create these estimates or maybe because the MPAA makes it difficult, as Reid suggests. Either way, it's undisputed that it is not easy to pin down numbers for job loss in the industry or revenue loss; however, the suggestion that florists and restaurants should be included in these considerations is clearly the MPAA grasping at straws to prove their point.

Source:

Reid, R. (2012, March 20). The numbers behind the Copyright Math | TED Blog. Retrieved from http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/20/the-numbers-behind-the-copyright-math/

PIPCU Arrests Two Men Suspected of Stealing and Uploading The Expendables 3

A high-quality copy of The Expendables 3 became available online on July 25, despite the U.S. premiere set for August 15, according the BBC. The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), the U.K.'s anti-piracy police, have arrested two men, aged 36 and 33, for stealing the film from Lionsgate Films' cloud-based system and subsequently uploading it to the Internet. The company claimed spread of the copy cost them millions just in the U.K. This case is viewed as "a litmus test for measuring the impact of piracy," considering the film was short about $10 million, according to the projected earnings.

Head of Pipcu, Det Ch Insp Danny Medlycott said of the action: "Today's operation shows you the significant impact intellectual property crime has on our creative industries, with millions of pounds being lost as a result of criminal actions.

Research in 2011 from Carnegie Mellon University suggested that when a film is pirated prior to its release it loses up to 20% of its potential revenue. 

It is astounding how much revenue The Expendables 3 theoretically lost, especially when looking at X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which seemed to be unaffected by the release of its unfinished copy. The weird part about the situation is that these two men in their mid-30s who live in separate parts of the U.K. hacked into Lionsgate Films' cloud and stole the entire, completed film and then released it onto the Internet, free of charge. Despite the unusual circumstances of the arrested couple, PIPCU seems to be doing well since it received £3 million from the Intellectual Property Office to fund itself until 2017.

Source:

BBC News - Suspects behind Expendables 3 leak arrested in UK. (2014, November 25). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30192568

Piracy in the U.K.: Harming More Than Those on Top

The Guardian's article, "Movie piracy: threat to the future of films intensifies," discusses the ramifications of piracy in the film industry, particularly with independent films. When people pirate films (which 30 percent of the U.K. population does, according to Ipsos), they reduce the profits of the films; however, this does not harm the income of the big executives, as most people think. The minimal profits of indie films means buyers are less likely to take risks on such films. This not only means less support to independent film makers but also means production companies will put out more sequels and films that follow the same format, thus creating a more boring or repetitive film industry, and this also applies to television shows. The other large, negative effect of piracy is on the people in the credits at the end of a production, such as makeup artists and costume designers. Also, the websites people download/stream from as well as the producers of counterfeit DVDs are making profits, which can be traced to organized crime rings.

"Distributors are not able to take the risks they used to. What this means to the consumer is not that some producers don't get rich, it means the product doesn't get made," [head of the Independent Film and Television Alliance Jean Prewitt says.]

"One may think an individual act of piracy doesn't matter, but if that becomes a way of life then the value of intellectual property becomes eroded, shows like Downton Abbey won't get made," [executive producer of Downton Abbey Gareth Neame says.]

"The audiovisual industry supports hundreds of thousands of people's livelihoods and if the industry has trouble supporting itself, it's going to put people out of work," [managing director of eOne Films UK Alex Hamilton] says.

This article proposes ramifications of piracy that I had not considered previously, namely the ideas that independent films will go un-produced and the risks posed to more "bottom of the totem pole" positions. Considering how repetitive productions have been getting recently, we are in need of indies now more than ever; just look at how successful 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street were. Also, the film industry is enormous, so when it starts cutting jobs, that effect can be felt across the nation. However, the industry itself can take action against piracy, more than just sending out letters, as the article proposed. Downton Abbey, for example, premiered in the U.K. in September but doesn't premiere in the U.S. until January. American fans who don't care about pirating have been keeping up-to-date on the episodes and probably won't re-watch them in January. So not only is pirating of the show rampant in the U.S. but also the ratings will be lower when it is legally released because many watchers will have seen it already. And this phenomenon is not unique to this show; it occurs when any production (even in the music industry) is released at different times to different nations. This is not to excuse piracy, but it is a side of it the article neglected to discuss.

Source:
Lodderhose, D. (2014, July 17). Movie piracy: threat to the future of films intensifies | Film | The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/17/digital-piracy-film-online-counterfeit-dvds