You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You – Forbes

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.

via www.forbes.com

A must-read. One of the points brought up is that Hollywood's business model is simply not sustainable in its current form. Me, I agree: I'd rather see many smaller, better movies than have $200M blown on the likes of Battleship.

– Serdar Yegulalp

  • Scott D

    There’s a great point made on the third page – why spend $100-$200 million on a adaptation movie, particularly on actors and licensing, when a less expensive movie can be made from a script that’s been tossed sight unseen. I’ve been pondering this, and it’s the classic “built-in audience”. There are actors who draw an audience just by being in a film. There are franchises that are guarenteed people in seats. And with the instant hit mentality, unknowns are too risky, even if the amount risked is a quarter of the big-budget adaptations. Hollywood is working on an old model – people go out to movies. Well, the costs of admission, of popcorn, of drinks, of parking, of eating out are making the weekly movie trip a monthly or bi-monthly treat.
    On a tangent to the above, but still relevant, distribution is the biggest boost to piracy. Not just to the pirated goods, but poor distribution of a wanted product will get people to go through other channels, proper or not. There are singers I’d love to listen to, but their works just aren’t available. There were comics I wanted to collect, but just weren’t available. I don’t pirate because of costs; if I cannot honestly afford something, I don’t look for a way around. In general, I’d prefer not to, really, but if the only way I can get to see or hear something is through underchannels, well, poor distribution caused the loss of the sale.

  • http://www.stevensavage.com/ Steven Savage

    That’s a damn good article.
    What I take away from this is that the entire Hollywood system is essentially unstustainable and irrational, from the lack of embracing technology to a system that turns out horrible big-budget trash. They’re trying to make crap the only option while maintaining a system that can’t work. Then they want to use the heavy hand of the law to do it.
    Literally it just can’t hold, and it shouldn’t.
    At this rate the idea of Apple just buying a few studios and changing things is appealing as it might shake people up. Maybe those people half-joking about it should just go full serious.
    Finally let me add that Hollywood is also used to giving people limited options – and now the cat’s out of the bag. I have tons of options at my fingers at Netflix. It would take me ages to view everything I’d want there now.
    They’re competing with THAT. Remember all my speculation about backlog being competition? It’s there now.

  • Scott D

    And if Netflix doesn’t have what you want, there’s a World Wide Web with tastes for everyone. Sure, the viewer will have to do some searching, but with the 500-channel TV-verse, that’s a given anyway. Hollywood is no longer competing with itself, but with content creators from around the world that can keep up with the curve of special effects and storytelling. The professionals have to bring their A-game, or a talented amateur will usurp them.

  • http://www.stevensavage.com/ Steven Savage

    And you called it on the “A” game. They’re not.
    There’s no “A” game here. There’s rarely any great enduring works, or deep explorations, or truly classic comedy. No Marx Brothers, no Star Wars, no Carry Grant. It’s not “A” game, it’s an extraction system on “how do we get the money this time” that builds nothing.

  • Scott D

    It’s something I’m noticing – there aren’t as many cult classics being released now as there were in the past. There are no more B-movies. Everything is so tweaked by Marketing that the sleeper hit is rare to the point of near extinction. You need to be a George Lucas to get something released that should be successful anyway even if it bucks trends. (Literally. Red Tails would still be in pre-development slush without him.)

  • http://profile.typepad.com/genjipress Serdar (Genji Press)

    Scott: There are plenty of cult-classic-potential B movies being made right now. They’re just happening all outside the studio system and the conventional pipeline. Look at all of Yoshihiro Nishimura’s movies (“Tokyo Gore Police”, etc.), or “District 9″, “Monsters”, etc. These things do exist; it’s just that most people never hear about them because they’re in their own media echo chamber.