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Hollywood hates pirates, but can it use them?
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New law cracks down on P2P pirates
April 27, 2005
Director Michael Moore's Sicko is coming off a glittering debut weekend at the box office. This despite the documentary's availability on the Web for the past two weeks--distributed widely over the Internet by file sharers who violate copyright law. Prager, a Washington, D.C.-based copyright attorney, was asked whether those who downloaded the movie could have helped ticket sales by spurring word-of-mouth sales.
"No, no, no, no," Prager seethed. "This is depressing. We're not seeing a rise in the peer-to-peer influence market. Anything positive they may bring is instantly canceled. These guys aren't just spreading their opinions. They're spreading the actual movies."
Ever since Sicko first appeared on the Web, CNET News.com has tracked the film's presence online and asked whether file sharing depresses ticket sales. Some in the file-sharing community hold that pirates often stir interest on the Web that migrates to the physical world in the form of ticket sales. The response from Hollywood studios is largely: we don't need thieves to help us market our films.
attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Online piracy is apparently becoming a priority to Hollywood, as the transferring of large digital files becomes less time-consuming and the quality of viewing improves. Already, billions of dollars are lost to illegal file sharing every year and the losses are certain to grow, according to the top U.S. movie studios.
So what can be learned from the Sicko controversy?
It is believed that tens of thousands of copies of Moore's documentary about the health care industry were downloaded without authorization during the past two weeks. The movie has also gone up on YouTube and Google Video, and was viewed by thousands before being removed. As the movie played on theater screens across the country this weekend, the film returned to Google Video and was watched more than 2,000 times.
Nonetheless, the movie opened in 441 theaters on Friday and earned an estimated $4.5 million for the weekend. That was good for ninth place at the box office. Pixar's Ratatouille was No. 1 with an estimated $47.2 million haul.
What is encouraging for Sicko's producers, the Weinstein Co., is that while the movie opened on relatively few screens, it averaged $10,204 per theater, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. The industry publication reported that only one other movie this weekend topped Sicko's per-theater average: Ratatouille, with $11,987.
If Moore's film has been harmed by file sharing, the damage is hard to find.
"File sharing has been going on for years now and yet the movie industry continues to see record profits and revenues," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users. "Clearly file sharing is not killing the movie industry, far from it."
File-sharing buzz or buzz kill
After a slump in 2005, Hollywood saw revenue grow 11 percent to $25.8 billion last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group that represents the top movie studios.
Could file sharing have played any kind of role in the growth?
File sharers often argue that they are among the first to tell friends about a good movie. They say that this stimulates interest in people who don't share files. On the surface at least, this is the kind of buzz building that movie marketers are trying to ignite.
In a May 2005 report on movie marketing by The London School of Economics and Political Science, researcher David Lane found that the secret to stimulating ticket sales "is less about the film itself than about the success of pre-publicity and word-of-mouth recommendations."
Lane found that marketing techniques had changed in Hollywood in the past two decades and that what mattered most was "to get people talking about the film, creating prerelease interest and then to sell tickets--fast."
When Moore's documentary surfaced on the Web, it generated a host of news stories that served as free advertising. But there's no way to determine how many people learned about the movie from someone who downloaded a pirated copy.
What doesn't help support the premise that file sharing helped give Sicko a shot in the arm was that the movie drew mostly older audiences, according to published reports. Most file sharers are thought to be of college age.
"A Michael Moore film is going to be in the headlines no matter what it's about," said Gary Stein, an executive at Ammo Marketing, an advertising firm. "The news hounds were ready for a Sicko story and this one happened to be among the first to come out...You have to remember these aren't people that wake up in the morning and say to themselves, 'How am I going to get people to see this movie.' They get off on watching a movie for free."
And any measure of the effects that piracy has on a film must look at an entire theatrical run, said Prager, who represents independent music labels and has also negotiated movie deals. She points out that the financial performance of a documentary like Sicko may be particularly vulnerable to Internet piracy.
"This is not a big special-effects action movie that depends on the big screen," Prager said. "This is a film that people may be satisfied watching on their computers. That could really hurt the movie's sales."
In the end, nobody really knows what effects copyright infringement has on a movie's earning potential, said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. Zittrain does, however, see one benefit from the controversy.
"The real benefit of this kind of leakage," Zittrain said, "is that it pressures Hollywood to think outside of the box instead of hoping the Internet will just go away."
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file-sharing, Hollywood, attorney, movie, Michael Moore
38 comments
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A bit of a double standard, no?
If you prefer, we can go back to the 3min song and note that there are 30 3min "segments" in a 90min movies, which, at 99cents/3min, for which you should be paying $29.70 in order to satisfy your own criterion. So, the next time someone wants to charge you $15.99 for a DVD, demand to pay $29.70 to demonstrate your own lack of greed.
surprised if he had the movie "leaked" just as those in
government "leak" stories for headlines. He drums up publicity
and does not have to pay for it.
The only "Sicko" in this movie are Moore and the idiots stupid
enough to pay the money to go see it. The undereducated too
dumb to understand his propaganda and the overeducated
without the common sense to know better.
Also see a post for Sicko done some days back:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.divinitymetrics.com/blog/?p=24" target="_newWindow">http://www.divinitymetrics.com/blog/?p=24</a>
Cheers..
Thomas.
The trade offs for universal care is vastly increased taxation, long waiting lines for absolutely necessary care, and fewer options to who, where, and what kind of care you get. Certainly people in Sweden, the UK, and Canada all agree that people in the U.S. can get needed care far faster than they can in their countries. Funny, how nobody holds up the massively disparate mortality rates for people waiting for care and procedures in those countries compared to the U.S.
Mr. Moore is really good at putting on a show tarring and feathering the objects of his ire. But as far as workable solutions to problems, he's a pathetic loser.
His movies are just junk PROPAGANDA and not worth the money spent on them.
Is this acceptable in the richest country in the world?
How is it OK to give out corporate welfare at taxpayer expense and use taxpayer money to wage BS wars, yet it is not okay to use it to help its own people?
Canadian and UK health care, but the FACT of the matter is they
are happy and do not envy the US. I should know. I lived in
Canada for almost five years. I'd take their system over ours in a
New York minute.
What about the recent study into private-managed Medicare in
the US? For those states that have it privately managed, the
patients pay way more out of pocket and it costs the states 12
percent more than if it had been government-managed.
As one doctor in California said in a piece yesterday, "I came
from Belgium. Here you have a provider for medical, another for
dental and another for your eye doctor. So there are three
different bureaucracies you have to deal with instead of one!"
Yeah, we have it great in the US. That's why so many people
aren't covered at all, and those covered by HMOs are routinely
denied coverage. Even if the long lines in Canada were true
(which they are most certainly not) that beats the tar out of not
being allowed to stand in line at all!
Drop the blinders and look at the facts. Singer payer is more
efficient any way you slice it. Health care needs to be:
1: Non profit
2: Single-payer
3: If privately managed, then there must be ceilings on profits
and limits on denial of coverage.
I am among the countless number of people in this great nation with absolutely no health insurance and whose wages are too high to qualify for government assistance of any sort.
Increased taxation? Yes, there would be. But then again, that would be offset by the lack of health insurance premiums (which can easily be several hundred dollars a month).
Long lines? I PRAY for long lines. As it is, I can't even GET in line.
Fewer options? Get real - how can you possibly have fewer than none?
One of the many reasons they have no credibility.
So lets do what we did with code, with music, and movies, and books. I'm contacting the participatory culture foundation now.
Movies and music are too generic and too manufactured, they are designed to make the most possible money by attracting the widest possible audience (for example, the big studios are making fewer R rated, and more PG-13, horror movies) and consumers feel cheated by these expensive shallow and samey productions so they have no qualms about ripping them off.
documentary" and Fahrenheit 911 was good production. I have
not seen Sicko, let my son handle that one.
The problem is that Moore is pushing a political viewpoint as a
documentary with many key points missing in the truth. If you
want to watch his stuff as entertainment fine but I hope you are
smarter than believing the content in his work is accurate.
Sorta like reading Ann Coulter and believing she is reporting
solid work. Both are sensationalists that laugh all the way to
the bank.
political viewpoint of Colombine? He did not advocate gun control,
just asked why this happens in the U.S. To compare Moore to
Coulter is so ludicrous you lose all credibility for all your remarks. I
doubt you have seen any of his movies and base all your views of
Moore on what you hear on faux news.
If the whole thing is going to be one huge computer-generated special effect, then I may as well take the time out to download it and watch it on a computer, if I could be bothered.
I went to "Spiderman 3" at the cinema, and it was nothing but a giant special effect. That's not going to open my wallet.
However, if your final product shows a profit, how do you calculate a non-existent "loss" from people who would never have paid to see the movie in the first place (people like me, who aren't going to open their wallets at the cinema or to an ISP)?
Start producing some quality again, and we may return to watching the big screen.
I think the movie theater chains are why there is piracy of films. the game is up, and people like my self will not goto a theatre anymkore. The studios have to get those movies on to video sooner then they do. other wise this game of downloading films will get easyer and easyer to do and thats that.
Chances are, if I'm gonna (hypothetically) download something, its because I have no intentions of buying anyhow. I'd be more likely to borrow it from a friend instead.
i never said that. we weren't here. 9/11 was a fake event cooked up my Michael Moore and George H.W Bush.
watch downloaded content if its good i make sure i go watch it at the movies and i usually buy it on dvd too
if its bad i save money and don't get pissed about the crap they release to the movies and stop going for 6 months
movies i will see transformers oceans 13 harry potter
movie i last saw The Queen see the time difference
can't list the stuff i bought after watching downloaded content too many also same for tv series and then i still watch them
Combine that with the fact that the theaters have become quite unpleasant, both physically and morally, and the exorbitant cost. To take a family of four at $8.50 a head, plus $5.00 sodas, $5.00 popcorns +tax, you're talking over $75.00! Our family (of 5) is over a hundred bucks a pop! I cannot recall any movie I've seen that was worth a hundred bucks to own, much less just to watch one time. So, $1500 bucks later (or 15 movies later) I have a 120" projection home theater w/all the bells and whistles, 200 watt 8.1 surround, HDTV etc.. No puny 60" plasma for $8000 or rear projection refrigerator crate taking up space. Electric screen drops from the ceiling and when you're done, it's up and out of the way and I get to reclaim all that living space.
With all the extra HDTV over-the-air channels and a basic $33/mo. satellite setup, you can totally immerse yourself in whatever you like, and if that isn't enough, there's always the thousands of DVD's at the rental store.
Fooey on the whole movie theater crap thing. I know for a fact that this scenario is playing out in more homes everyday. I live in a very modest neighborhood in a small town where the average income is under $30,000/year, and I personally know of at least 53 of these home theater systems, either projection or wide screen based, that have been installed. As soon as someone watches one of them, it isn't long before they are getting one of their own. The real price is less than the big electronic retailers want you to believe, since they make their biggest profit from overpriced, over-the-top, unrealistic systems . They've even had to close some of their outlets since Wal-Mart entered the big-screen market and cut their price gouging throats.
Piracy? Not in my opinion. It is, however, a great source for movie reviews. You don't have to download or watch a pirated move to quickly find out which ones are great and which are crap. Just look at the ones that are listed when you Google 'em. Any new release is all over the place, but within a few days, they're gone if they're crap, but the good ones are listed for months. Check back with Google in a month and see which one is still on top, Pirates of the Caribbean or Sicko. The "professional" reviewers place too much emphasis on "how" and "by whom" the movie was made, as opposed to how "good" it was. Let the pirates filter out the crap, and then you can discover what the general population REALLY thinks of a movie. Most of the time the great ones are not the reviewers choice.