Why is it ok to pirate movies and games?
Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:39 am
In a nutshell, because most of them aren’t worth the money you spent to download them in the first place (free) much less the price you pay in the store. What’s interesting is how both industries are being treated legally and socially.
The first myth to dispel is that they (the industry in general) make too much money to begin with. While I would agree that there are certain individuals within these organizations that fit that description, there are far more people that do not. Did Harrison Ford really deserve $65 million last year for The Crystal Skull, http://bit.ly/xlVga? I think not.
But how many people were in the crew holding lights, getting food, driving people here and there? How much did those folks make? There is another issue that can best be described with a poker analogy. If you have $10,000 in chips and have to call a $100 bet to play your suited 9,10 that’s not such a big deal. But if you only have $500 in chips, taking a chance on a hand like that seems much riskier.
This issue was brought up in last Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes, http://bit.ly/1Scesa, when Steven Soderbergh, pointed out that Matrix would not have been made today. He says that no one understood the movie at the time and the people trying to make weren’t well known. The budget was only $75 million dollars so they got away with it.
If the movie industry in general doesn’t have plenty of cash on hand they find it much more difficult to make “risky” movies. I think it’s those risky movies that usually turn out to be better than another stupid reality show.
From that same 60 Minutes episode we hear about quality. Soderbergh points out that people that are buying pirated movies apparently aren’t concerned about the quality of the recording. Well, don’t even get me started on betamax vs. the VCR but he’s right just the same. Here’s a news flash for movie and game makers- we are not as interested in the quality of the media as we are in the quality of the product.
In the case of a game, it is much more important that it works correctly, isn’t over-run by cheats and hacks and, most importantly, is fun to play. If anyone doubts that just think of counter-strike or WoW. Neither of those games have set any kind of records when it comes to eye candy but they sure do get a lot of players.
The point here is that piracy cuts into the profits of the people that make our entertainment which in turn reduces their ability to produce it. While I have no doubt this is true, what no one seems to understand is how to get rid of it. Piracy is a symptom, not a disease and all anyone can think to do is take an aspirin. If the cause of your headache is being hit in the head with a hammer, it makes more sense to me to exchange the hammer for a pillow than to just keep swallowing aspirin. The problem is not piracy but the movie and gaming industries.
A few years back the American automobile industry started losing sales to foreign cars. Initially the foreign cars were being built overseas and floated here so the government imposed some new import taxes. These foreign companies then set up shop here in the US, hired US workers and STILL managed to make cars cheaper but this time there just wasn’t much the government could do about it. US auto makers started lowering their prices. That helped a little but they were still having trouble. You see, it cost extra to get A/C, extra for anti-lock brakes, extra for this and extra for that. It cost so much extra that by the time you got the car you wanted, you were right back where you started- buying a foreign branded car.
Do we pay the same price for a Cadillac as we do for a Taurus? Is steak the same price as hamburger?
Should we be paying the same amount of money to see Paranormal Activity that we would to see Law Abiding Citizen? Should we really be paying to see Paranormal Activity at all? In case you haven’t seen it yet, don’t. It’s the stupidest piece of crap I’ve seen in a LONG time and should have simply been uploaded to YouTube as a sequel to The Blair Witch Project.
There is no rhyme or reason to the way these products are priced. Games come out at $49.95 or $59.95 and then follow a very fixed downward spiral of pricing after the initial launch. Do those games get less fun to play in that time? Are movies less entertaining if they are 6 months old?
If you buy a car and you repeatedly get the same problem you are covered with under the lemon law, http://www.carlemon.com/. When you buy a game and it doesn’t work correctly there is no such law. In fact, if you read the EULA you will see that they don’t even guarantee the game will work at all. Are you entitled to a refund if you watch a crappy movie?
Yet, back we go to Wal-Mart or the movie theater time and time again only to be disappointed with the finished product we bought into based on trailers and reviews. I would be much more willing to pay more for a really good movie if I could at least get a partial refund if it sucked.
I would be willing to pay a monthly fee to play a game online if it meant that they actually fixed stuff Like they talk about in community forums and interviews rather than just slow play us until they can release a new version and we all buy in again. Insert your own offensive language directed toward CoD4/CoD5/BF2/BF2142 here.
It is my experience that people are willing to pay for decent stuff. I hate BT. It isn’t as fast as people make it out to be, too much stuff is infected and it’s a giant pain in the ass to get stuff. But it is affordable and I do want to see these movies and play these games. I can promise you that if I could pay $9.95 for the game or get the movie for $4.95 I wouldn’t waste my time with BT ever again.
The last reference to the 60 Minutes show is Soderbergh’s reference to Wolverine. The movie actually got pre’d in the scene a month before it came out in theaters. Amazingly enough it still made $160 million plus when it came out even though so many people had already seen it at home.
MPAA folks and game developers should take note of that. It sends a very clear message about quality. Enough people thought the movie was good enough that they wanted to experience it in a theater even though they had already seen it at home. That’s quality.
Enough people like CS that they still buy the game even though it’s free (technically they are buying Half-Life I suppose). That’s quality.
Why is it ok to pirate movies and games? Because in a capitalist society there is only one better way to send a clear message to companies that are screwing you over and that is to not buy their products at all.
What’s the take-away for the movie and gaming industries? Get on board with what your customers want. Less expensive movies and games they can actually afford to pay you for with a high enough quality to put pirates out of business.
The first myth to dispel is that they (the industry in general) make too much money to begin with. While I would agree that there are certain individuals within these organizations that fit that description, there are far more people that do not. Did Harrison Ford really deserve $65 million last year for The Crystal Skull, http://bit.ly/xlVga? I think not.
But how many people were in the crew holding lights, getting food, driving people here and there? How much did those folks make? There is another issue that can best be described with a poker analogy. If you have $10,000 in chips and have to call a $100 bet to play your suited 9,10 that’s not such a big deal. But if you only have $500 in chips, taking a chance on a hand like that seems much riskier.
This issue was brought up in last Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes, http://bit.ly/1Scesa, when Steven Soderbergh, pointed out that Matrix would not have been made today. He says that no one understood the movie at the time and the people trying to make weren’t well known. The budget was only $75 million dollars so they got away with it.
If the movie industry in general doesn’t have plenty of cash on hand they find it much more difficult to make “risky” movies. I think it’s those risky movies that usually turn out to be better than another stupid reality show.
From that same 60 Minutes episode we hear about quality. Soderbergh points out that people that are buying pirated movies apparently aren’t concerned about the quality of the recording. Well, don’t even get me started on betamax vs. the VCR but he’s right just the same. Here’s a news flash for movie and game makers- we are not as interested in the quality of the media as we are in the quality of the product.
In the case of a game, it is much more important that it works correctly, isn’t over-run by cheats and hacks and, most importantly, is fun to play. If anyone doubts that just think of counter-strike or WoW. Neither of those games have set any kind of records when it comes to eye candy but they sure do get a lot of players.
The point here is that piracy cuts into the profits of the people that make our entertainment which in turn reduces their ability to produce it. While I have no doubt this is true, what no one seems to understand is how to get rid of it. Piracy is a symptom, not a disease and all anyone can think to do is take an aspirin. If the cause of your headache is being hit in the head with a hammer, it makes more sense to me to exchange the hammer for a pillow than to just keep swallowing aspirin. The problem is not piracy but the movie and gaming industries.
A few years back the American automobile industry started losing sales to foreign cars. Initially the foreign cars were being built overseas and floated here so the government imposed some new import taxes. These foreign companies then set up shop here in the US, hired US workers and STILL managed to make cars cheaper but this time there just wasn’t much the government could do about it. US auto makers started lowering their prices. That helped a little but they were still having trouble. You see, it cost extra to get A/C, extra for anti-lock brakes, extra for this and extra for that. It cost so much extra that by the time you got the car you wanted, you were right back where you started- buying a foreign branded car.
Do we pay the same price for a Cadillac as we do for a Taurus? Is steak the same price as hamburger?
Should we be paying the same amount of money to see Paranormal Activity that we would to see Law Abiding Citizen? Should we really be paying to see Paranormal Activity at all? In case you haven’t seen it yet, don’t. It’s the stupidest piece of crap I’ve seen in a LONG time and should have simply been uploaded to YouTube as a sequel to The Blair Witch Project.
There is no rhyme or reason to the way these products are priced. Games come out at $49.95 or $59.95 and then follow a very fixed downward spiral of pricing after the initial launch. Do those games get less fun to play in that time? Are movies less entertaining if they are 6 months old?
If you buy a car and you repeatedly get the same problem you are covered with under the lemon law, http://www.carlemon.com/. When you buy a game and it doesn’t work correctly there is no such law. In fact, if you read the EULA you will see that they don’t even guarantee the game will work at all. Are you entitled to a refund if you watch a crappy movie?
Yet, back we go to Wal-Mart or the movie theater time and time again only to be disappointed with the finished product we bought into based on trailers and reviews. I would be much more willing to pay more for a really good movie if I could at least get a partial refund if it sucked.
I would be willing to pay a monthly fee to play a game online if it meant that they actually fixed stuff Like they talk about in community forums and interviews rather than just slow play us until they can release a new version and we all buy in again. Insert your own offensive language directed toward CoD4/CoD5/BF2/BF2142 here.
It is my experience that people are willing to pay for decent stuff. I hate BT. It isn’t as fast as people make it out to be, too much stuff is infected and it’s a giant pain in the ass to get stuff. But it is affordable and I do want to see these movies and play these games. I can promise you that if I could pay $9.95 for the game or get the movie for $4.95 I wouldn’t waste my time with BT ever again.
The last reference to the 60 Minutes show is Soderbergh’s reference to Wolverine. The movie actually got pre’d in the scene a month before it came out in theaters. Amazingly enough it still made $160 million plus when it came out even though so many people had already seen it at home.
MPAA folks and game developers should take note of that. It sends a very clear message about quality. Enough people thought the movie was good enough that they wanted to experience it in a theater even though they had already seen it at home. That’s quality.
Enough people like CS that they still buy the game even though it’s free (technically they are buying Half-Life I suppose). That’s quality.
Why is it ok to pirate movies and games? Because in a capitalist society there is only one better way to send a clear message to companies that are screwing you over and that is to not buy their products at all.
What’s the take-away for the movie and gaming industries? Get on board with what your customers want. Less expensive movies and games they can actually afford to pay you for with a high enough quality to put pirates out of business.