Hollywood record profits should impact piracy debate

Share This November 14th, 2009 Antowan

Where is the news of Hollywood coming close to breaking their 2008 record for the highest profit ever? I cannot find it for some reason, but it did hit television but for some reason the Internet is bereft of any information on the record earnings of Hollywood in 2008 that is set to be topped in 2009. Whatever the reason is for the shortage on information regarding this heavily important news for those who have been part of the piracy and anti-piracy lobby, it is an important reality that has to be considered. Is piracy honestly so bad for the media industry in light of this news as it is made out to be by anti-piracy groups?

MyBroadband recently carried a story on the success of the movie “Ink” and how its creators embraced the World Wide Web and piracy to make it an even bigger success. Perhaps the word “piracy” is the wrong word to generalise with. There is a major difference between those who download and consume and those who download and sell…

In short the movie became a huge success after it first was ripped and released as a torrent on the web. So much so that the movie is now amongst the 20 most popular films on the planet with current rankings on the Internet Movie Database. Well done! They set an example it seems. Seriously somebody needs to give the stuck up ignoramuses who run the Hollywood studios a crash course on the 21st Century and the technologies they should be using to distribute their content. Do the same for the entire creative side of the modern media. There are more and more examples of how the internet can facilitate awareness of content and the subsequent explosion of usage of that content, especially in traditional mediums later. Some folks don’t like to see it nor admit it, but it is true!

The piracy issue is not as clear cut as television productions like CNN’s “The Screening Room” recently made it out to be. Sure they showed the other side of the coin, but only for a split second. What we as educated citizens need to do is open our minds and think about these issues clearly. Is it wrong to download or copy something you would not honestly be able to afford? Do we want to live in a world where money is really that big a barrier to the consumption of knowledge and entertainment? Sure, the folks who copy to sell is doing something seriously wrong, but what about the folks who copy and consume? It is a philosophical question and I am on the side that says no, folks who consume informaton they cannot honestly afford is notin the wrong. Whatever your current thoughts, the issue is not cut and dry, nor easy to wrap your head around at first glance.

There is a more complex truth about residential copying and I believe it is one that actually end up lining the pockets of the creative’s in one way or another anyway! This can be through the expansion of their audience through accidental discovery. It happens very often that you will hear a band for the first time in a collection of pirated songs at a party or copy a bunch of movies because it is so easy to just copy a stack of them on a hard drive and then discovering something amazing that you did not know about at all and then via word of mouth expand the market for that movie even more.

Maybe the first step to coming to some sort of solution with regard to piracy, illegal, ill gotten, or whatever you want to label digital sharing as, is to admit, that we all do it, have done it or probably will do it… As one member of the European Parliament said, “we don’t really want to go the legal route because we will have to go after millions of people”. This might very well be a true democratic issue in which the majority is not necessarily on the side of the anti-pirates. Maybe it is time to look beyond the pure commercial interests of the creative’s and incorporate a sense of contribution to the greater good. Maybe Hollywood and company don’t have to fight this fight because maybe, just maybe there would not be a loser anyway. Not with record profits  in the middle of the worst recession in decades!

Entry Filed under: Broadband, General, General IT, World Wide Web