| My 2 Cents quote:
They claim that the industry lost over $18 billion to piracy in 2005.
Where do they get these figures? If they "lost" revenue that implies that at one point in time they actually had that revenue. But it was never theirs to lose.
Are they assuming all these people that click a link and watch a movie online would have paid to see that movie in a theater if that link wasn't available to click? We all know that's not the case.
People are disgusted with not only the price of seeing a movie in a theater but the degrading quality of the movies they pay to see. Many movies are just not worth risking that much money just to find out they suck. For the price of a ticket, munchies and a drink you could have actually bought the DVD and viewed the movie as many times as you want in the privacy of your own home!
What they need to do is offer these movies, streaming, online with degraded quality so people can try-before-they-buy. This is essentially what people are doing now anyway and if the MPAA did it they could keep tabs on it. I know many people that download things because they refuse to pay full price until they have gotten to try it out. If it's worthy of its price and does all they need then they support the company by purchasing the product. If it's not then they simply delete it. This applies more for programs but in the ever increasing price of movies can be applied to those as well. If they can view it online and then find out it's worthy of support they will want to see it in full theater glory and then buy the DVD as well. If it's not worthy of support then they won't go see it or buy it and this will hopefully pressure the studios to stop releasing crap on the public and demand high prices to view said crap.
Unfortunately, right now, the studios have it backwards. Instead of upgrading the quality of their content and making people want to pay for their product, they continue to release crap and wonder why those movies don't do well, people look elsewhere for them, and they "lose" revenue. If they want to continue releasing crap movies then they need to lower ticket prices and DVD prices for those movies. Charging the same price for a blockbuster and a B-movie is not a competent business model. That is the precise type of business model that drives people to look elsewhere for their products, which is exactly what's happening now. People are tired of getting screwed over by big businesses. A more lucrative model would be to set the ticket and DVD price for a movie based on the cost of that movie to make. Unfortunately, this is not lucrative to the studios because they are leeches and demand high prices for everything. They would only raise the price of blockbusters to twice what they cost now and what we pay now would become the norm for everything else. Which leads us back to square one where the public looks elsewhere for their product, and will continue to do so until big business comes to its senses.
Of course there are people that download the worthy movies as well and never pay for them, there always will be. But most people will gladly pay for a worthy movie, to see it on the big screen and then to own their own copy, even after viewing a degraded copy online. |
