The Slipperiness of What Might Have Been

May 04, 2006 08:49


Hollywood is circulating a new study (which they sponsored, through LEK Consulting) indicating that the film industry is losing even more money to piracy by far than we understood before. It was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and although I don't see it online yet (except on the WSJ's subscription site) the story should appear in coming days. ( Read more... )

file sharing, publishing

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Comments 4

billroper May 4 2006, 14:56:40 UTC
I have been less than impressed with LEK Consulting since the time that they almost acquired our whole company and instead (fortunately!) ended up with just our consulting group. What a mess!

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drsulak May 4 2006, 15:06:11 UTC
File sharing has been around since we had cassette recorders. I suspect the amount of money "lost" in sales is not appreciably larger. What has changed is the size of the pirated library - it's easier to do digitally, so one can build a bigger one.

I remember some pretty massive cassette libraries in high school and in college, but by the same token, most folks I know bought the stuff they really liked when they finally had disposable income.

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Interesting flexible payment plan alicebentley May 4 2006, 17:34:58 UTC
Over on BoingBoing they linked (https://www.sheeba.ca/store/) to a musician who has set up her online store to accept variable payments, and to show overall statistics on what people are choosing to pay.

It's interesting that when given the choice, the majority of people choose to pay, and many choose to pay more than the standard rate.

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regek May 5 2006, 04:48:44 UTC
I find all of these studios' blatherings rather amusing, really. I, for one, have indeed given ripped (and compressed) copies of a few of my DVDs to some people I know. In fact, I've given one movie to roughly 16 people directly. Why do I admit this so openly?

Every one of them has gone on to buy his own copy.

Every.

Last.

One.

Not only that, but these same friends have gone on to share it with other people, who have also bought copies. And yet these movie studios would seem to want to charge me tremendous amounts of "damages" for what I've done. This sharing has directly led to the sale of at least 16 more copies of the movie than would have been sold otherwise. So yes, I also call shenanigans.

Of course, this was an indie movie produced for almost no money and didn't have a huge advertising budget, so they would say that it doesn't count or somesuch.

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