Recently, there was a major movie piracy crackdown at a mall near me. Police arrested 15 people, in 13 stores - seizing 150,000 DVDs.
That may seem like a lot of people, and a lot of DVDs, but I was at this mall today (less than 1 month after the arrests) and the movie stores are back in operation. The oddest thing to note is that the prices have risen - $8 for a pirated DVD disk, instead of the old price of $5. So obviously the risk has increased and so must the reward. (Also, a couple of stores have closed, so there is a bit less competition.)
But these stores have been selling these illegal DVDs for months (a year at least). And most of the stores are back in operation. If it takes another year to close them again, then essentially they will never be closed. If you take a year to remove a weed once it pops up, you will never be rid of weeds.
The movie (and music) industries have a major problem on their hands. To date, they have been hesistant to respond creatively to it. The problem is that the entertainment industry creates some highly desirable products that are expensive yet easily copied. Also, people would like to enjoy their entertainment in many different forms, some of which the industry does not allow.
When expressed like that, there are only four things that can be changed:
a) the desirability of the products
b) the expense of the products
c) the ease at which they can be copied
d) the entertainment media
To date, the entertainment industries have only been focusing on (c). They introduce new copy protection schemes, force hardware manufacturers to implement them, and try very hard to quash new advances in technology. They will sue TiVo if they make it easier to transfer recorded shows to your iPod. No peer-to-peer transfer service is acceptable, no matter what legitimate uses it might have. They've gone so far as to rewrite the core of the Windows OS using the same techniques as virus writers to make it harder to play music CDs on your computer.
Price is an important variable in the equation, to which the industry has not really addressed to date. As $5 (or $8) pirate DVDs are thriving in the shopping malls, people do not necessarily want to pay $30 for a DVD. $25 for a music CD is a bit much as well. So one way the industry can combat piracy is to significantly lower the cost of its products. What if a CD cost $8? Or a DVD cost $10? The media itself only costs pennies, so there is still plenty of profit for all parties involved at those prices. And people are far less likely to pay $8 for a crappy camcorder copy, instead of $10 for the real thing.
Now some may point to the advent of the 99 cent music download as a new breakthrough on price. I'm not fooled. A whole CD download still costs $14, and the cost of packaging and distribution is almost nothing. Downloads are still too expensive. Songs should cost 10 cents each.
Finally, we get to the issue of the entertainment industry not allowing consumers to enjoy their products as they wish. They set artificially low limits on the “number of burns”. So if I purchase a song through PureTracks, I can only make three copies. And if I want to enjoy that music on a non-WMA player like the iPod, I have to either break the law and turn the song into an MP3 or purchase it again in another format.
Another related issue to media is the way the movie industry controls the format. Movies must come out in theaters first. Six months later they come out on DVD. This idea has been expressed before: but what if I don't like going to the theater and I want to watch the latest Harry Potter movie at home. Why should I wait if I am willing to pay for the DVD? There is no reason to wait except that the industry wants your money twice (or more than twice if they can). So you pay to see it in the theater, and then buy the DVD.
The worst example of this was the Lord of the Rings movies. Each movie was released three times - once in the theater, once on DVD, and then once again a year later on “Extended Edition” DVD. How many LOTR fans saw the movie multiple times in the theater? How many bought the regular DVD and the special edition several months later? Is one movie worth paying $150 to see?
So here we are at the end. No further to the ultimate solution probably. But as the subject line says, Something's Got to Give. The movie industry will allow itself to be destroyed by piracy while they desperately hold on to the old model of overcharging consumers, and forcing movie releases to follow the traditional schedule. Thus regular, law-abiding people (of all ages) are forced to go and buy pirate DVDs by the armful. Why pay $150 to see a single movie when you can see 30 for that price?
The first step to defeating piracy has to be “stop ripping the consumer off”. And yes, maybe Jim Carrey won't be able to make $20 million per movie. Maybe this will force movie budgets back down from the $200 million per picture heights they are at. But these changes must happen. They simply must. Consumers are making it happen with or without the industry's approval.