Our new writer, Patrick, is here to comment on the Expendables 3 pirated copy situation.
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| "I am SO disappointed with your hair." |
So The Expendables 3 leaks
three weeks early and is downloaded a few million times. Lionsgate gets a temporary restraining order
issued to try and stop the hemorrhaging.
The cat, of course, is already out of the proverbial bag, and no amount
of court-mandated injunctive relief is going to change that. Bad news for Lionsgate, but for those of us
that take an interest in these sorts of things, this situation presents a
unique opportunity to study the effects of widespread online film piracy on
ticket sales and the overall cinematic reception of a potential summer
blockbuster.
Ask any film industry attorney about the effects of online
piracy and you are nearly certain to receive at least one consistent answer –
online piracy negatively impacts the sales of movies at every level – theater
tickets, DVDs and other physical media, and even legitimate online sources,
like Netflix. You’d probably discover
similar sentiments from more “neutral” parties, such as judges – the existence
of damages in a copyright infringement lawsuit are usually a bygone conclusion,
and with good reason too, applying good old-fashioned logic would tend to
agree. If these “pirates” are downloading the movie,
they obviously aren’t buying it like the rest of us law-abiding folks. There is certainly an argument to be made,
though, that this conclusion is far from bygone, and that online piracy isn’t
nearly the harbinger of Hollywood doom that it’s made out to be.
The film industry’s argument goes something like this – “A
would-be consumer downloads our movie, watches it in their home and therefore
will not purchase a movie ticket, or DVD, or legitimate digital copy of our
movie, and we lose sales, causing us irreparable harm!” We can all admit that this presents a likely
scenario, but is it the only
scenario? Obviously not – this situation
assumes that this would-be consumer would otherwise have purchased the film (in
some medium or another) had he not already viewed the pirated copy. Here we have several more likely scenarios –
first, the consumer may have never even considered purchasing the movie unless
the price of the movie was, well, free.
That’s Economics 101, folks, there are some people who will not purchase
a product no matter how low the price, unless
it’s free. Second, viewing the film
from an infringing digital copy does not preclude that viewer from paying to see the damn movie anyways! If viewing a crappy, digital copy of a
movie on my 21” computer monitor is equivalent to viewing it in the theater,
why the heck are we spending $15 a ticket to see a movie on the big screen?!
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| "Well, I figured it couldn't get much worse than the Crystal Skull." |
Further differentiating the “pirated” experience from a
theatrical (or even DVD or digital) one, is that most pirated films, at least
those still in theater, suffer from exceedingly low quality. Most are listed as “CAM,” which is exactly as
it sounds – the almost humorously cliché pirated movie – the one recorded by
some guy with a camcorder under his trench coat. Perhaps that has something to do with why Guardians of the Galaxy is smashing
August box office records despite the fact that there are over a dozen pirated
versions of the film circulating on the internet.
-Patrick McDonald