The problem is a simple one to define. Billions of $$ in revenue are lost due to
piracy of the entertainment industry. The solution, however, is elusive at best.
Consider the statement. "Billions of $$ in revenue are lost due to piracy of the entertainment industry."
If this is true, then you have to wonder. How much profit is the entertainment
industry making, and further, where are these profits coming from?
For the past 15 or so years, I've noticed a couple of very disturbing trends in the media.
On the one hand, you have the litigators going on about how the music industry is being
bankrupt by P2P networks. How the movie industry can't afford to pay for a Grip's eye glasses
because of piracy. They've even made a TV commercial about it.(Hope somebody else out there
has seen it, and, can back me up on this..!!)
Yet..!! In the past decade or so, I've seen the the budget for even the lowest of low budget
movies balloon into what, (to me anyway) seems incomprehensible amounts of cash.
The average budget for a film. $170 to $200 million, for just one film..!!
The average return. $1.2 to $2.4 billion, for the most popular ones..!!
Doesn't seem to me that the TV industry is hurting too much when
they can afford to pay Jerry Seinfeld $267 million for the 1998 season.
Hollywood can't be missing many meals when they can dish out $25 million
plus points per movie to the likes of Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carey,
Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Smith, Julia Roberts... Etc.
Let's look at the music industry. In some very rare cases we've had actual "artists" speak
out against, in particular, file sharing. Of course, the most infamous and the one that
sticks in my mind the most. "Metallica Vs Napster".
Metallica's estimated yearly salary at the time... $128 million (I followed that case very closely).
Believe it or not, fundamentally I was on Metallica's side.
But, for the most part, what we have are the industry's litigators (lawyers/media reps.), going to
Washington's courts in an attempt to "protect their clients copyrighted material".
This is like shoveling sand into the ocean... And they know it..!!
But, guess what?.. There is a lot of money to be made in the process. The irony in of all this is
that the lawyer's fees are subtracted from the artists generated income.
So, let's see..The chances that the lawyers are going to create a positive impact for the artist?
Slim to none. Look at Metallica.. They won, destroyed Napster as we knew it...!!! So.. We must
assume that you can no longer download a Metallica song illegally.. Right..? Yea right..!!
The real outcome was that nothing much changed. Hundreds of other P2P's came in to take up the
slack left by Napster, and the sad fact is that Metallica lost a substantial portion of their
fan base. Their current estimated yearly income (according to some web sites) $28 million.
The entertainment industry will not fold. Popular artists will not starve, or be forced to alter
their lavish lifestyles. The perception that piracy is having a huge impact on their profits is
largely generated by greedy litigators looking for a piece of the pie. And
we, as consumers, hopelessly buy into it. Rationalizing the whole time, that
the reason it costs so much to go and see Star Wars is that someone leaked
the pre prod. Is this also why I have to pay $3.00 for a 16 oz cup of soda?
In the sale of an item such as a CD, no one knows exactly how many units will be sold. You can
only speculate, (another word for guess) or rely on statistics.
Loss is calculated by projected revenue based on statistical, and highly speculative data.
For example:
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Nocat wrote and recorded 12 songs. Cost $100.00
Sale price per CD. $10.00
Number of friends and family members who will definitely purchase Nocat's CD. (10)
number of people who feel sorry for Nocat and buy the CD out of pity. (2)
Number of people who think Nocat is someone else and buy the CD by mistake. (30)
Number of people who will buy Nocat's CD as a gift for someone they really, really hate. (20)
Projected sales. (62)
Projected revenue based on above data: $620.00
Minus cost...........................: $100.00
Projected profit.....................: $520.00
Actual sales. (57) (Apparently, some of Nocat's family members downloaded the CD from Emule)
Actual profit.... $470.00
loss............. $50.00
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If you add a few zeros to those figures, you can see how, as a lawyer, you could scare the
crap out of an artist. Or make an indignant speech on one of the talk shows or a newspaper article.
Or go to court claiming that Nocat is being robbed of 5% of his income. When in fact, all
the numbers you see are pretty much made up or speculated. Except for, of course, cost and
actual sales. In my mind I made out like a bandit...! $470.00 return on a
$100.00 investment. Not bad for a sad sack..!! (Of course I'll have to have
a talk with some of my family members)
What I'm trying to get across here is that you can't take every thing you hear or read at
face value. It seems to me that, for an industry bloated with cash, they sure make a lot of
noise when they feel like they should have made more.
Greed, is that evil that whispers into your ear saying, "I know you have more than you could ever
need, but you could have even more, you'll never be happy 'till you have more."
Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way condoning or excusing the people who are making a profit from
something they didn't create or pay for, on the contrary, I am very strongly opposed to it.
But in the end you have to be guided by your conscience and your ethics, if they tell you it's
wrong, then don't do it.
Sorry for the rambling...
