Not by me, of course.
I recently came across this very short statement about movie piracy among college students. It corrects some previous statistics the MPAA had released (they had significantly overstated the amount of piracy by students), but it also goes on to rant about the evils of downloading movies. I found this sentence particularly interesting:"American workers miss out on thousands of new jobs each year and billions of dollars in earnings, in addition to the cities and towns that lose millions of dollars in tax revenue – all due to piracy."
I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people believed this sentence. It's interesting not because the figures are exaggerated (they might be), but because the logic is wrong.
First off, there are some compelling reasons that college students might be the biggest movie pirates. They are often more interested in media, they have lower incomes, they are generally more technologically savvy and they are not as "set" in their beliefs of morality as older folks are.
When companies set their DVD prices, they are focused on their largest demographics; their biggest spenders, which most likely does not include poor college kids. In other words, college kids are "priced out" by all the higher income folks that are willing to spend $12-$20 on DVDs. The fact that college students will make the effort to illegally download/copy movies while the "recent graduates" (for example) demographic does not seems to prove the fact that the price is out of their affordable range. If piracy were suddenly impossible, these college kids would, in large part, still be priced out of the market.
This being the case, the relevant question is this: If it were suddenly impossible to pirate movies, would college kids suddenly start spending "billions of dollars" on movies? I think we've inferred already that this would not be the case, but let's just play along and assume the MPAA article is correct.
This means that there are "billions of dollars" worth of resources in one of two places. In the hypothetical world where piracy was impossible, the billions of dollars is in the hands of movie producers and sellers. In our world where piracy is possible, these billions of dollars lie in the hands of whoever sells stuff to college kids, since college kids get to retain the money that they'd otherwise spend on movies.
In short, either movie producers and DVD sellers get the money or clothing stores, the cafeteria at the student union, liquor stores and pornography site webmasters get the money.
That's what college kids spend their money on, right?
Anyway, the point is this: It doesn't matter who gets the money - the "thousands of new jobs each year and billions of dollars in earnings" will exist either way. Whether or not it's good for the economy is solely a matter of determining the incentives created by the money and how people ultimately use it.
My guess is that the MPAA article is just using a little fear mongering to draw attention away from the earlier mistake they made. They can bite me - I'm going to go download Deep Impact or Twister, or some other movie of that excellent, high-dollar blockbuster genre. God knows I'm not paying for that crap.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Pirate Bashing
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4 comments:
My question is, how do the towns and cities, or the movie staff (i.e. best boy, lighting, caterer), miss out on wages. The movie is made, they get paid. Do cities and caterers get residuals?
I am inclined to think the only people this is hurting is movie studios, producers, directors, actors and maybe theatres. Who ever is getting paid on the back end of a movie.
"Movie piracy" certainly hasn't slown down the production of movies. I would be inclined to think college students more than make up for it by purchasing lame posters and the other marketing ploys surrounding a movie. How many college freshmen and gangsta rappers have the same Scarface poster? How many Transformer toys did nerdy 20-somethings buy after the movie came out?
Their main assumption is that those who download or copy movies would have otherwise spent the money on movies. Less demand, less supply: Movie crews (lighting guys, caterers and what not) really do get less work, therefore, and the cities involved collect less in taxes.
IF this assumption were correct, they'd be right in thinking that movie industry folk are going to get less work. In fact, the more specialized someone is (like, "Horror Genre Makeup Artist," or something like that) the more they're going to get hurt if people stopped paying for movies.
Two problems for the MPAA's credibility, though:
1. The assumption is only partially correct, and
2. The money that is saved by piracy will be spent (and taxed!) elsewhere.
Long story short, if people are spending less money on movies, there really will be fewer movies made (and the movie staff will lose wages/jobs). The only questions are:
How significant is this? Should we care?
and
Shouldn't we instead concern ourselves with all the money redirected by college kids from booze into the DVD industry? Think about all the liquor industries jobs lost due to expensive DVDs!
I'd prefer a world where entertainment is cheap(er) and I have more money to spend on tangible items. Apparently college kids do, too, so they end up buying all those Transformer toys and other useless - but tangible - paraphernalia. (That's a good point, by the way, Zane.)
I thought the tax argument was a little hard to believe, especially with the reference to college students. My initial thought was regarding movie theaters. I know quite a lot of folks, most of whom are not college students, who have more or less stopped going to the movies because it's too damn expensive. If everyone thinks it's too expensive to go to the movies and therefore quits going, there will obviously be a hit to tax revenues. Theater prices were high before piracy was a big deal (at least in my opinion, especially considering the distance I had to drive to get to one in those days), which tells me that the the "theater experience" isn't worth the cost, especially if so many folks are willing to watch grainy, choppy versions of films on tiny screens for free rather than seeing them on the big screen for movie theater prices. Thus it seems the industry is behind on its business model, but everyone (else) already knows that.
You know, there's an interesting point - Maybe movie piracy is helping keep the price of theater tickets lower than it otherwise would be...
But then again, as you suggest, maybe they've just started to get to the upper bounds of acceptable prices (which would explain all the extra advertising theaters have been doing the last few years).
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