Movie piracy is strongly linked to box office revenue
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
But yeah, for the real interesting questions we would need to get the data for movies that are not available by piracy but are available in theaters.
> The data covers multiple methods of unlicensed content delivery including Streaming, P2P Torrents, Web Downloads and Stream-ripper sites
We're just assuming that the audience using these sites is the exact same audience as the comparison?
> cinema revenue at the individual premises and film-title level [in the North American market]
I think one audience learns about a new movie on a torrent site and then goes to see it in the theatre. (Another audience never uses torrent sites. Another uses them but rarely goes to the theatre, etc)
If there's statistically significant data about the first audience (as the article claims), that's interesting.
No, we are assuming they are highly correlated.
The argument that piracy drives box office sales would surprise me, except in a few cases (e.g. I would believe that some limited release movies might get exposure via piracy causing a wider release) that are more the exception than the rule.
> The argument that piracy drives box office sales would surprise me
Me too! It would be interesting if it did however; I can imagine a case where a user of an unlicensed site learned about a movie there and wanted to see it on the big screen.
If you read the study they don't argue that however.
Indeed, this is at the top of the article (emphasis mine):
> New research from piracy tracking firm MUSO shows that movie piracy is strongly linked to box office revenues. When pirated downloads peak or slow down, movie theater visits show a similar trend. While this may sound counterintuitive, the finding is actually quite obvious. Correlation is not causation and pirates are people too.
> Thus there is a very strong, statistically significant, positive correlation between Box Office revenue and unlicensed consumption
> That's a very generic conclusion, is it related to this article somehow?
And I intended to answer the question with how their statement is related to the article by pointing out that this statement is written at the start of the article:
> New research from piracy tracking firm MUSO shows that movie piracy is strongly linked to box office revenues. When pirated downloads peak or slow down, movie theater visits show a similar trend. While this may sound counterintuitive, the finding is actually quite obvious. Correlation is not causation and pirates are people too.
I didn't understand your point when you responded by saying:
> Thanks I read the article. From the study:
>> Thus there is a very strong, statistically significant, positive correlation between Box Office revenue and unlicensed consumption
What is the significance of the statement you quoted as a reply to mine? That's what I don't follow.
(Thanks for the time you've taken so far with your replies!)
I've brought it up a few times before, but you can read about another study here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 that assuming my previous comment on it was correct found for example that every pirated movie is 0.27 of a lost sale, whereas every pirated video game is actually 0.24 of an extra sale. If 0.27 was actually 1 or more, then a result like the linked study would have been more surprising for example.
> The combination of Box Office revenue data and unlicensed consumption data would provide a holistic view of film consumption
Piracy is theft, but it's pretty minor shouldn't be a felony and the harm is a dollar or two at most for movies and music per user and shouldn't be harshly penalized and thus probably isn't worth the studios or attorneys time to bother with.
Where for the audience, any amount of piracy which doesn’t visibly and reliably kill new movies they want to watch is perfectly fine. Even desirable.
Piracy is copyright infringement, which is a completely separate legal and moral concept.
My question to you is - if I could duplicate a physical object you own, with no harm or deprivation suffered by you, should that be a crime?
Assault isn't theft either but Piracy and Assault are still both crimes. Somebody who sells say photographs is _harmed_ by you just using your phone to take a picture print it out later without paying them anything. It's their livelihood.
However, whether is the crime of piracy worth the current penalties? No. They're excessive and that's what the parent was saying.
Reduced demand leads to reduced income/revenue. If someone did some action that directly definitively reduced your income, bringing you from say 130k to 110k, that would 100% qualify as "harm or deprivation".
Kidding aside, is it that surprising that the theatre viewing rate matches the home viewing rate? Both are just the same indicator of popularity.
- Pay to "rent" movie from service A, paying full price.
- Find out service A decides we are not allowed to have HD on our device even though it's 2023 and we have plenty of bandwidth and pixels
- Try renting on service B. Find out that our ISP is throttling service B to 2.5 mbps and we only can watch in stuttering potato quality.
- Give up and search for magnet link. Wait about 30 seconds and we can start watching the high bitrate blu ray rip that looks and runs better than anything we paid for.
My friend tells me that in a decade of seedbox usage, my friend has had maybe 3-5 lemons with data corruption.
Edit: Clarified that it’s my friend who has a seedbox.
Or alternatively pay, ideally in Bitcoin... after nearly 2 decades of watching Japanese Kickboxing/MMA etc... I found a spot that delivers most of those events (plus way more than I care to watch) and its everything I ever wanted out of a service and gladly renew every year--though I'm incentivized to seed as long as possible in order to decrease membership costs, but I'm usually the last to DL so my ratio suffers since it's pretty niche.
It's like these promotions don't want our money, and go out of their way to make it difficult for non-Japanese platforms tpo show them legally in other markets, so instead we pay a team to curate the recording in various formats (720/1080) and upload it next day or two.
When I was younger half the fun was staying up late, chatting with people from all corners of the World on forums PBP and reacting to a knockout or decision and seeing the sun come up with fights still on the card left and deciding if I can make it to school/work etc... but sadly those days are over and my version of convenience(s) comes from watching something at my leisure at sane hours days/weeks/months later in order to not mess up my sleep cycle these days (I pay a lot more for that by comparison).
To quote one of these die-hards on the forums:
> If I'm the only dude in the PBP on NYE I'm going to have a meltdown. Should be an interesting read when it happens, anyway.
The problems I see never show up if I play with VLC (“plays for sure”) but they did show up on debugging videos played on the XBOX ONE which has was been finicky no matter if I was using Plex, Jellyfin and various client software on the XBOX. A few out-of-spec frames din’t bother most players but the XBOX freezes up for two minutes for the slightest anomaly. With Jellyfin and the new Jellyfin client playback is fine unless there is something wrong with the file that I can detect with other tools.
Badly encoded videos are all over the pirate space, frequently they promise lossless audio but skimp on bits for video, for instance.
With that XBOX all the legit video apps (BluRay player, Peacock) have the problem of trying some handshake that cuts off video with my old Samsung TV and pandemic special Denon receiver (decontented POS compared to my old one which has the video output burn out). Power cycling the receiver brings back the picture but it is one more humiliation I face in front of my tech skeptical family.
Went into app settings and force closed the app, restarted app...black screen, no response.
Rebooted TV and opened Disney+ app. Black screen, no response.
Eventually just switched inputs to the laptop sitting under the TV stand. Clicked Popcorn Time icon (I leave VPN always on for this laptop). Clicked Loki. Clicked episode. Within 1 minute the show was playing.
This is one reason why I keep this as an option. Other times I admit I just can't be arsed to subscribe to yet another service to check out a show I heard about. Not claiming any moral high ground. I just don't want to pay for another streaming service when I already have paid access to 3 (at least until they offer something I know I want to watch for a month's subscription at minimum.)
Doesn't that sound like you're doing it very wrongly?
In order to combat piracy, you need to out innovate them in terms of convenience and features.
Music piracy is almost a non-issue because it is way more convenient to get music via Spotify and streaming.
Not saying your statement about Movie industry is inaccurate - yes, one (or few) super convenient platform(s) to contain all movies to rent/buy with high quality and reliable delivery would be amazing - but one flat price for streaming everything ala Spotify is not going to work for movies.
Piracy killed the profits in record sales and created a bimodal distribution for musicians wherein you're either Taylor Swift or the equivalent, or a struggling indie.
Let's not pretend that record labels weren't massively warping the playing field for decades before the internet took off; or that piracy hasn't helped indie artists get discovered / blow up. There are studies on this, and the ones that weren't sponsored by record labels are pretty consistent in showing your statement to be false.
Record labels bled musicians, sure. Piracy just all-out stole their music - I doubt you'll find any documented instance where a musician was actually paid for their music by a kind pirate.
Events, festivals, concerts should not be the only way a musician should hope to recoup some of the effort they put into creating music.
That happens literally all the time. That's why there are studies about it.
If you want to argue with the various study authors and find flaws in their methodology; go ahead. But the idea that no one who steals music would ever then pay for that music is absurd; on par with denying the moon landing, or that Azerbaijan exists.
> Events, festivals, concerts should not be the only way a musician should hope to recoup some of the effort they put into creating music.
I don't disagree in the slightest, but once again, the blame for that situation is squarely on the record labels. Bandcamp conclusively proved that independent musicians can make money from album sales, without the predatory industry machine, even as piracy continues unabated.
To be entirely fair, I think we ahvae reached a parody with Hollywood and Streaming services in terms of content: sure, some comic book movies requires 500 million to make and require studios to pump things up and a bloated marketing tour, but A26 is a perfect example of something being made for low budget, word to mouth and often quickly on streaming services that rivals most stuff in the theaters.
After this year, I've been to the movies more times since I was a teenager, I really don't feel like I missed much during that time: I'm still incredibly out of touch with what comes out and other than Oppenheimer I don't think I watched anything that had much of a budget.
As for piracy, it'll never go away, some of us just refuse to comply with these norms and find ways around geo-restrictions and IP bans half the fun, hence why these communities still thrive before Netflix started to self-canobolize itself.
PS: Last season of Black Mirror made me regret being in the loop, after COVID there was so much more to work with than it's entire existence, but this was perhaps the sign that Charlie Brooker needs to reach for fan-art scripts and should help get them green-lit.
Do you mean A24?
1. Look up which of the five streaming services have the film. 2. Give up as I'm not subscribing for one movie.
Take Cyberpunk 2077 for instance, it was leaked not long after it's launch; most people (even here) called it trash and gave up on it due to the bugs. Then after grinding away at it for 2+ years CDPR just sold more than 25 million copies after the last expansion. [0] That is ~25% of it its total sales.
While it's unlikely to determine exactly how much of an effect it had, it certainly wasn't zero. Consider also the massive community modders had greater access and CDPR garnered lots of new info (and code) from this source.
It maybe its a niche to the communities I've been around, be it in tech/games/music, but this a norm not an exception. Paywalled/DLC BS is a recent phenomon and its entirely off-putting, I didn't get PL this time around (I just don't have time to game) I did like how much of an impact it has made not just for the game, but the genre itself.
0: https://www.kitguru.net/tech-news/mustafa-mahmoud/cdprs-game...
All the crying about piracy is greed: nothing more, nothing less.
These media cartels are going the way of the dinosaur anyway, both with AI generation supplanting them in the next decade (Alexa, generate a crossover episode of SVU and the X-Files), and 'piracy' being normalized with each new generation.
I always assumed it was about control, given how media companies constantly attempt to provide alternative methods of distributing media, though only within their very narrow definitions, and how they fight so hard against anything that breaks their control. CSS, Sony's CD root kit, HDCP, etc etc etc
I disagree. Big movie studios can write off piracy, but independent movie studios, with much smaller budgets, can't. It's the same in the music industry.
I knew lots of independent artists in the early 2000s that basically had no career after Napster because nobody would buy their music anymore (but those same people continued to download/listen to it). They also couldn't tour to make a living, because large companies control all of the major venues.
Piracy has forced independent artists to go to large studios to make a living, contributing to the enshitification of the current state of music (and movies).
It's no different. If people pirate it, word of mouth spreads and people will go and see it.
No one really buys music anyway, artists make most of their money from shows.
Sharing is normal behavior, the whole concept of piracy as stealing is bananas. No one has a right to charge for every single copy of something in existence, not when it can be easily duplicated. It's entirely at odds with human nature.
In the 90s, artists COULD make money from music. Especially independent artists. Piracy changed all that and forced artists to only make money from shows, which are controlled by large companies.
Those artists are blaming piracy when really it's more likely to do with a shift to streaming and those artists not having the skills to have a strong online presence once physical media started dying out.
There's a strong correlation between the death of record stores and these independent artists starting to lose money.
And besides, in modern day we have more independent artists than ever making money.
From a music perspective we have too much music; we have decades of history to stream, and each year more and more is released - ultimately only a few people will be able to sustain themselves with streaming revenue, and indipendent acts will need to survive with live acts and merch until they break through (or accept that they arne't going to become superstars).
Because the potential upside is so huge, many people are willing to gamble on that, much as people buy lottery tickets. Most people will be disapointed.
Piracy isn't theft. It's counterfeiting, which is much worse than theft. If we allowed everyone to counterfeit the dollar and use it, the value would head toward $0 over time. It's the same with all digital goods.
Where else should we apply this logic? If a large company uses GPL/Gnu software in their proprietary application, should we say that there was nothing lost because they wouldn't have shared the code anyway?
When AI gets good enough in the future, should companies be allowed to use the likeness of someone for free? After all, nothing of value was lost, right?
"From a music perspective we have too much music; we have decades of history to stream, and each year more and more is released - ultimately only a few people will be able to sustain themselves with streaming revenue, and independent acts will need to survive with live acts and merch until they break through (or accept that they aren't going to become superstars)."
Streaming is only the norm because of piracy. It's the same with software. Everyone is making software a service. Why? You can't pirate it. This was pretty easy to predict 10+ years ago.
I disagree. Dollars are only useful for their value. Movies, music, and games are enjoyable to "use".
You mean the crying and the greed of the people that don’t want to pay to see movies right
Surely you didn't really let those "you wouldn't steal a car" propaganda films get to you?
It's like the film industry has had its way for too long, and we need to change a few of the rules to make content consumption a little more consumer friendly.
Otherwise, consumers are going to keep pulling out their eye patches if we continue to let the content industry believe they are in 100% control of where, when, and how you consume their content.
I thought that say the Pixar movies he gave examples of would have done better than they did, but actually, No. He says that because they were placed alongside everything else... they didn't do as well because the marketing wasn't the same.
I know what to do! Put ads via stickers all over them right before we sell them! Surely this will decrease theft!
Movies like American History X, Fight Club, or What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
It seems these movies would no longer be "allowed" to be made, or perhaps the modern zeitgeist censors them away.
I just want to celebrate and encourage bona fide art and see more of it in the world.
And I would gladly pay for my family to access this higher quality art.
She couldn't get past the ugliness of the content to see that it was 'a good movie' about bad things / people / situations.
Alien 3 is also one of those, I think. I love it, but it's dark and dreary and hopeless - in fact, because of that.
I think when you are younger, there are movies that profoundly affect you. When you get older, and you have seen a lot of movies, its rarer to get the same kind of feelings. But that's just a part of growing up, it isn't a problem of censorship. I wonder even if, upon re-watching now, you'd think Fight Club is really the pinnacle of edginess and a profound art you attribute to it now, or if maybe you were just young when you watched it. And I also wonder if there are some great, profound works being made now that, for whatever reason, you have simply missed or felt the need not to see. Is "American History X" really leagues above "How To Blow up a Pipeline" in terms of "uncomfortable and ugly topics"? What about "Beau is Afraid"? Is that one censored by the modern zeitgeist? What about the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, Ruben Östlund, Harmony Korine, or Nicolas Winding Refn? Trying honestly, its hard for me to pinpoint what in particular you might think is censored these days. People are definitely still making good, uncomfortable movies.
Edit with a few more directors making really great, messed up things at the moment: Julia Ducournau, Gaspar Noé, Rick Alverson, Boots Riley. Have you watched any Cronenberg lately? Lars von Trier? Haneke? What about recent Verhoeven films?? What about Paul Schrader? Bong Joon-ho?
If these people are being censored, well, they are still definitely making some Art within those restrictions.
People who reject qualitative artistic appraisal of movies will reject that any such trend exists, and will say that everything is fine by the empirical metric of box office returns. They're missing the point; the reason movies are being made like this is because it's the least risky way to make a movie. Of course box office returns are going to look good, that's the point.
If the problem is simply, "I have to look too hard to find good things," or "ugh, they are making another Minions movie," then, congratulations, you are a hipster. But that's not really a problem, you just have good taste!
But there are great movies still being made. You just have to look fairly hard. The last few years have seen some brilliant films like:
* Everything, Everywhere All At Once
* Nobody Knows I'm Here
* Portrait Of A Woman On Fire
* Argentina, 1985
* The Banshees Of Inisherin
Later in life, it's far rarer to find a quote or concept that actually changes your life view at least a little bit.
I've got someone in my family that surfaces this stuff for me which is lucky. Since I don't go out of my way to dig it up.
Seems like most of the big blockbusters are extremely formulaic -- the studios take what made money before, and rehash it over and over again until it stops making money. A really good example of that was one of the silly superhero movies - the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Somehow, a fresh take on the tired genre made it to production, and audiences reacted enthusiastically, because it was somewhat new -- and what followed? Two carbon-copy sequels that didn't work nearly as well as the first one.
Of course that's within the constraints of big-budget studios that make movies as a high-return investment vehicles. Where else could you throw a hundred million dollars and get a 200% return?
I'm sure art films still exist, independent films still exist. People still make movies because they have something to say, and that's the medium they want to speak through. Maybe the way to encourage that is to fund more art schools and subsidize independent filmmakers.
On top of that were big name sequels Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Toy Story 2, the TV adaption South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and the well marketed low-budget horror The Blair Witch Project.
[edit]
Somehow didn't manage to fit Office Space in that list. It would probably be near to the top of many other years lists, but 1999 was just silly.
It may seem that way but I doubt it. I have faith in and trust artists, writers and film-makers to think outside the box. It's their job, and passion to do that. There will always be "safe", bland movies and TV among the good stuff.
I don’t know how I feel about it, but it always intrigued me.
If you wouldn't prohibit piracy, it would become normal and the people who could pay stop paying too.
As Gabe Newell said the best way to combat video game piracy is by offering consumers better service than what they might receive from pirates. Piracy is not a pricing issue, but rather a service problem.
Everyone I know who used to pirate music, now just subscribes to Spotify or whatever. So definitely not the case there.
On the other hand, not one person I know who used to pirate Photoshop, has ever then personally paid for it once they started making money. (Their employer often did, though.)
Movies/TV are somewhere in the middle. I think a lot of people pirate because the content they want to watch is spread out among so many services that need separate subscriptions. You can't pay for all of them all the time when you go for months without touching some of them, but constantly canceling and resubscribing is madness.
Also dealing with the nonsense that Netflix won't display high-quality resolution on all external displays, etc.
Hi! Nice to meet you. With the much derided (on HN) monthly plan, I have been paying for Photoshop (and its cohorts) for my own personal use without an employer paying for it. I even have a paid for version of Office. In fact, I no longer have any software illicitly obtained. It's either a fully paid version or something offered for free. Why? Because I can afford it in direct counter to your argument.
The only practical way for a high school student to get photoshop was to pirate it when I was a kid. My parents weren't going to shell out thousands of dollars for something like photoshop or autocad.
Sure, people can ascend through income classes, but there’s always a new cohort of broke young people. I imagine young adults today are pirating plenty as well.
They might save up to buy one $60 game. Or wait for it to go on sale and buy it for $30
On flip side, seeing some DRM-ridden game often just makes me throw it on wishlist and buy in a year or two when they remove it and game is now half the price.... not like I have time to play all the games I want anyway
There is also an interesting sidebar on the overhead of doing a transaction for any non-zero amount vs giving something away for free. The gist is that if you could do a (micro)transaction for $0.01 cheaply enough, you would be able to capture more of that market by lowering your overhead for offering the good.
This is also related to the idea that the optimal amount of fraud is not zero [1].