Baffled Understanding

Friday May 20, 2005 - 12:22AM EDT

I read a headline that went something like, hollywood cringes as Revenge of the Sith hits the internet. Is it just me or are you baffled by the media's portrayal of the situation. I suppose I do understand not wanting your movie available for download illegalling. However with really large franchises like this, such illegal downloads have little if any affect on their ticket sales. I would argue that it might help them. Lets get something straight first. Going to the movies is an event, and outing. It is something to do. You are not going soley for the entertainment value of the actual content. If that were true Hollywood wouldn't make any money because most movies suck anyway. But you wade through the garbage and eventually you see something you like. Secondly the average person doesn't have 30 foot screen in their house and frankly no one ever will. Third, since going to the movies is an outing there are always going to be people who want to go to the movies instead of watching it in their homes. Besides it is a chance for funny interactions with other humans. I cannot stress enough the whole event value of movie watching. It is like going to a play. Ok maybe not exactly. Fourth, and this one may change in the future. The quality of illegal movie downloads can be freaking horrendous, unwatchable in some cases. Fifth since people are downloading them to their computers they are watching them on their computer screens which on an average are smaller than your average television. Who can enjoy a movie like that. One problem I can see that would be annoying would be illegal downloading that leads to illegal DVD distribution of the downloaded files. So when I hear that hollywood is supposed to be cringing I laugh. Especially with Star Wars. There is no way any amount of illegal downloads will prevent that movie from raking in record amounts of cash. These points can't be applied to music because music is different. But back to the movies.

So what to do about this downloading? I think I went over this is a previous post. I'll never fully subscribe myself to the arguement that pirating movies (or software) makes the companies lose a bunch of money. Mainly because such things as movies and software are not tangible objects but ideas. If someone stole a bunch of CDs or DVDs then then you would lose money because you put money into those physical objects. But someone downloading your idea is a gray area. On one hand I could be upset because they have something I want them to pay for but if I was a small time person maybe I would just be happy they were interested in my idea. So when I hear that whatever industry loses millions from piracy it is a perceived loss not concrete. How many of those which use pirated software or watch movies would have purchased them if there was a fullproof way to prevent such things? I would say that it wouldn't come close to the numbers quoted in piracy loss. For big companies piracy is mainly and annoyance and not a real problem. They still make substantial profits. It is a strange issue and it is not as cut and dry as the media and companies want to make it seem. It is as if the current system of commerce doesn't meld well with the concept of computer software or digital copies in general. Prior to digital copies much effort was require to make copies and often they were concrete tangible things. Now, a copy isn't concrete. It is like a thought, something without form, uncorporeal. I suppose the whole music download thing is kind of a compromise but not really. It is way to restrictive and really without the overhead of making CDs they could have much higher margins yet they are charging essentially the same price as CDs. Yes servers cost money, but not nearly as much as physical media production. I still don't know how they get away with that. It is a middle man thing probably. Since the music companies have to go through software companies to distribute their music. Still I can't believe that it cost more to serve up music on the internet than physical CDs. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah movie downloading. I don't even remeber why I starting writing about this. Ah well. I don't know what I would do. I'd like to think I'd do it differently if I made movies. But I'll just have to wait until I get there, if ever.