October 21, 2008
(Illegal) Access Hollywood: Universities and the Movie Industry Debate Piracy
Universal City, Calif. — Cheering and applause overwhelmed speakers here at the 2008 Internet Entertainment Workshop, a “summit” convened today by the movie industry and large university systems to discuss the divisive issues of college students downloading music and video, possibly illegally and probably aided by university network services. There were full-throated shouts of joy, and the sounds of people jumping from their seats.
Well, that was actually from the boisterous motivational seminar going on next door at the hotel (“Are you ready to change your life?”). These hotel walls at the Universal City Hilton are thin.
In the Internet workshop, the mood was more somber, despite efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America, which convened the meeting, to find common ground between the two sides. “This workshop is designed to improve relationships,” said Stewart McLaurin, the MPAA’s executive vice-president for education. “The American system of higher education and the motion picture industry are perhaps our country’s greatest exports to the world. We are the faces of America.”
Bob Pisano, the MPAA’s chief operating officer, added: “You in the universities are on the leading edge. You have the high-speed bandwidth networks and the perfect demographic.” He meant students. “We have to figure out a way to marry the opportunities that technology gives us with the protection of intellectual property. We have to develop a digital conscience,” Mr. Pisano added.
Difficulties began to emerge as the workshop got under way, however. An official from the California State University system, one of the workshop’s sponsors, said during a coffee break that institutions do not want to get into policing and spying. “If we do it to students, what’s to stop us doing it to faculty?” he asked. “And won’t that have a chilling effect on academic freedom?”
And during a panel discussion, students from the University of Southern California pointed out that they often pay a lot of money to Disney, Universal, and other movie studios to see movies in the theater. Once they’ve done that, the students said, it seems OK to them to download a film if they want to see it again. —Josh Fischman
Posted on Tuesday October 21, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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The simple fact is that the movie (and music, for that matter) industry is not offering a product at a price that is acceptable to most consumers. Piracy is not new; most of the movies in my house as a child were taped from cable onto Memorex tapes. And this was normal amongst the houses I visited in the days before DVDs. Since then, I’ve seen binders full of DVDs and VCDs of movies people have never paid for.
People will pay for a brand when it indicates the quality and integrity of the product, but this does not make it immune from market pressures. People will always take the route that they perceive to have the least cost. When the risk of corrupted media, malicious software, lawsuits, and pangs of conscience are not enough to deter normal people from pirating, it should be clear that the costs for media are too high.
Perhaps it’s as low as they can make them, in which case their industries ought to be dying, rather than continuing to pay their stars exorbitant salaries. As it is, there is little indication that they are suffering, apart from the incessant whining.
Is any of this to say that piracy is right? No. It’s just that they’re offering their product at above market prices, which always leads to a black market. It’s not right, but it’s so, and they need to learn to deal with it, rather than try to guilt people into paying more money than their product is worth.
— Chris Oct 21, 09:15 PM #
Chris (#1), I completely agree. The only purchased VHS tapes in my home growing up were “Limited Edition” types – Disney movies, all of them – the classics that they had out for a short time, then took off the shelves. A few here and there we did have, mostly received as gifts. The rest of our movie shelf was blank-VHS with movies taped from TV movie channels such as HBO and Showtime.
And back then, going to see a movie was $4.50 for an adult in the evening – and that didn’t include popcorn.
Now, going to the movies in a theatre costs $10 just to get in, and then you will likely spend another $10-$15 on snacks/drinks. Most DVDs cost between $25-$35 unless you catch them at discounts, where they can be as low as $5 (particulaly for the movies that bombed, but only a few years later).
Most people rent a DVD, pop it into their computer, and copy it to a blank when they can – or they borrow from friends who either bought or rented or received as gifts to do the same. Just as people used to do all the time with VHS.
Why?
Blank discs cost far less than a DVD purchase, and the rental prices, depending on where you go, can be a little steep.
… I repeat again, blank discs are inexpensive – so why can we pick up a spindle of 100 blank DVDs for $40, yet pay $40 for a single movie, widescreen special edition that might have 2-3 discs?
Some media is worth paying for. If I like enough songs from an album (Pandora Radio has introduced me to many artists – and they don’t just play the same song over and over from an album like the traditional radio does), I’ll purchase the album – but what do I do with it? Rip it into my computer and put the disc in a box somewhere. I’ll buy it from iTunes if it’s available and save myself a step and sometimes, some money. It’s only going to be put on my mp3 Player anyway, or played from my computer.
Often movies are the same way – the computer has become the MultiMedia Entertainment Center that once used to take up half of our living rooms. Now we can hook up a computer to our 40” HD Widescreen and play our movies from there.
Technology is changing. The prices of the media, and the way its available should change with it.
— KM Oct 22, 09:48 AM #
A question for Chris: can’t it be said of a great many products that they are being sold at prices not acceptable to most consumers? Take, say, gas at the moment. Yet people don’t have much choice about buying gas, do they, or such staples as milk, which has seen steep price hikes in recent years. So why single out the movie and music industries here? Maybe it’s because people can’t steal gas and milk quite so readily as they can steal movies and music. If they could, would they be paying the prices they have to pay now? I doubt it. People always want to get something for nothing if they can, it seems, and technology currently affords that possibility for digital media. It is rash to make the assumption that a business is overcharging for its products unless you know a lot about the costs that go into producing that product. Do you, Chris? I am in the scholarly publishing business, and people complain about our prices, too—even when we are non-profits and don’t have to factor any margin of profit into our business equations. And still people think we charge too much and try to get our publications from pirated sources, too, if they can. A sad commentary on the morality of our population, I’d say. Oh, and by the way, archiving movies taped from TV is not a legal activity; the famous Sony decision covered only time-shifting for later viewing, not permanent archiving of copies.
— Sandy Thatcher Oct 22, 06:22 PM #