My idea for the movie industry's piracy "problem"

[Christmas themed thank]

Why don't they accept that they're never going to win against piracy and instead, offer:

• The ability to donate any amount of money to those who made the film, so you can get the movie from wherever you want and you can pay the film company if they deserve it
• Make purchases way cheaper - £4.49 for a 24 hour 720p rental is ridiculous

Thoughts?

 

[TheVoice]

Not exactly revolutionary ideas there. They want as many people paying full-price as possible, giving people the option to just pay a few quid to appease their conscience isn't going help. You'd alienate the people who do pay full retail price and you'd have a lot of retailers upset.

Cheaper rentals sure would be nice too, but it'd make purchasing them look even more expensive which again, they don't want.

 

[arknor]

I'm not convinced piracy is that big of an issue any more.

everyone I know that pirates usually buys the dvd/boxset if they enjoy it anyway

 

[Burnsy2023]

I'm not convinced piracy is that big of an issue any more.

It's still a significant issues for the movie/TV industry but music doesn't have the same level of piracy any more. Why?

1. Content is priced at reasonable price points
2. Content is quick and easy to obtain
3. The catalogues of content are comprehensive
4. Subscription plans are available at reasonable prices
5. It's really easy to be legal if you want to be (which most people do)

The business model of the film industries need to be updated to how consumers want to use their content. They are extremely slow and resistant to this change at their own peril.

 

[Caged]

A lot of people who pirate content wouldn't pay for it even if it were £1 a movie for a 1080p copy you keep forever. There are a large amount of people who build great big FreeNAS boxes or whatever just so they can max out their 150Mb/s connections for 12 hours a day to build up a collection of content they will never watch.

I don't really want to own movies on Blu-ray since it's not likely that I will watch them enough times to make it worth the shelf space. I do like Netflix / Prime as an idea, but the chance of a film just expiring on the service and not being renewed, plus the lack of decent content in the first place makes it a pretty poor option a lot of the time. And also to get the most customers possible, it has to work on crap Internet connections and so the quality suffers.

I don't think £4.49 for an iTunes rental is extortionate though, perhaps if you're used to everything being 'free' then it is, but I don't consider it a barrier to a purchase in the way that £18 CD albums containing mostly filler were. The videos are high quality and streaming to an Apple TV works very well.

I would happily pay £10-15 for a 24 hour rental of a film in a proper HD quality (1080p, 20Mbps+, decent sound) on the same day as the cinema release, but nobody can offer me that.

 

[Glaucus]

1. Content is priced at reasonable price points
2. Content is quick and easy to obtain
3. The catalogues of content are comprehensive
4. Subscription plans are available at reasonable prices
5. It's really easy to be legal if you want to be (which most people do)

l.

6. no stupid exclusivity deals, so regardless of service you can find it on the one you use, you don't need, sky, amazon, Netflix, blink box and then still have to buy DVDs for some.
Or if you buy same thimg. some are only on iTunes, some are only on Xbox movies. It's a complete mess.


7. High quality is available. Less so for movies.

 

[Voicon]

I would happily pay £10-15 for a 24 hour rental of a film in a proper HD quality (1080p, 20Mbps+, decent sound) on the same day as the cinema release, but nobody can offer me that.

Not going to happen, a lot of piracy these days is through i-tunes, if they gave 1080p streams on release day the piracy groups would just put out good copies sooner taking audience members from the cinemas.

 

[Caged]

Not going to happen, a lot of piracy these days is through i-tunes, if they gave 1080p streams on release day the piracy groups would just put out good copies sooner taking audience members from the cinemas.

Make me watch it on a proprietary box if you want, make me have to use two-factor auth to start the stream, embed something in the video so it can be traced back to me if I share it if you really want. This idea that you need to go into a room with a few hundred other people, sit in not the best position to enjoy the film and snack on crap food that stinks the place up to avoid waiting 6+ months for a Blu-ray release is archaic.

 

[Voicon]

Make me watch it on a proprietary box if you want, make me have to use two-factor auth to start the stream, embed something in the video so it can be traced back to me if I share it if you really want. This idea that you need to go into a room with a few hundred other people, sit in not the best position to enjoy the film and snack on crap food that stinks the place up to avoid waiting 6+ months for a Blu-ray release is archaic.

I agree with you, when I go to the cinema I always sit next to the ignorant idiot who wants to talk or eat noisy food throughout the film, either that or they have kids they wont control!

Just can't see what your asking will happen soon, the pirates will find a way to circumvent whatever security is put in place.

I put a cinema system in my house and now I just wait for the bluray.

 

[Burnsy2023]

A lot of people who pirate content wouldn't pay for it even if it were £1 a movie for a 1080p copy you keep forever. There are a large amount of people who build great big FreeNAS boxes or whatever just so they can max out their 150Mb/s connections for 12 hours a day to build up a collection of content they will never watch.

I don't think there's that many people who do that though. It's not common for people to do that with music when decent subscription services exist.

6. no stupid exclusivity deals, so regardless of service you can find it on the one you use, you don't need, sky, amazon, Netflix, blink box and then still have to buy DVDs for some.
Or if you buy same thimg. some are only on iTunes, some are only on Xbox movies. It's a complete mess.


7. High quality is available. Less so for movies.

8. Region locking or releasing of content in staggered areas is stupid.

 

[Tefal]

A lot of people who pirate content wouldn't pay for it even if it were £1 a movie for a 1080p copy you keep forever. There are a large amount of people who build great big FreeNAS boxes or whatever just so they can max out their 150Mb/s connections for 12 hours a day to build up a collection of content they will never watch.

So no loss at all to the movie companies as their content isn't even watched?

 

[Caged]

I don't think there's that many people who do that though. It's not common for people to do that with music when decent subscription services exist.

No but my point was more that I don't think price is a massive barrier, at least not as great a barrier as availability of content is. There are people who just will not pay for films, TV shows, music etc. regardless of what you do with the price.

 

[Burnsy2023]

No but my point was more that I don't think price is a massive barrier, at least not as great a barrier as availability of content is. There are people who just will not pay for content, regardless of what you do with the price.

Indeed, and there are people who do pirate content who would pay for it if it were available legally.

 

[Caged]

At which point I think the problem that needs resolving is availability, exclusive deals with certain providers etc. - the studios needs to accept that the same thing that happened to music is going to happen to films. Once that's been worked out then we can let competition/market forces sort the pricing out. Making iTunes rentals £3 each won't change the reason that a lot of people have for resorting to piracy.

 

[Burnsy2023]

At which point I think the problem that needs resolving is availability, exclusive deals with certain providers etc. - the studios needs to accept that the same thing that happened to music is going to happen to films. Once that's been worked out then we can let competition/market forces sort the pricing out. Making iTunes rentals £3 each won't change the reason that a lot of people have for resorting to piracy.

Agreed, I think that is a large part of the problem.

 

[Redwarrior5544]

Offer content cheaper and the need to pirate will be gone. The price for HD rental is high, and quality sub par.

 

[spoffle]

There isn't even an actual problem with "piracy", the movies industry are constantly making record earnings whilst moaning that they're making nothing.

 

[FoxEye]

Perhaps there are people who would always pirate, no matter the price.

But I am one of the people who would rent a lot more if they were better priced. I really don't care to own most films.

£3.49 for low-def and £4.49 for something approaching HD is overpriced. As such, I don't watch any films until they come on TV for free.

Also the rental availability window is comical. I still haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy. I can no longer rent this movie digitally, it seems. I can only buy it on DVD or Blu Ray. Neither of which I will do, as it's even more expensive, and I really don't care to watch films more than once.

I am someone who likes watching movies, but I'm perfectly happy not to watch anything that isn't on TV. I don't download/pirate, but I'm not buying *anything* from any provider, due to the silly money they want.

So...

1. Let me rent what I want when I want it. There is no reason to have limited rental windows.

2. Reduce prices. Low-def should be no more than £2. Hi def for no more than £3. Otherwise I'm just not buying anything. Your loss, not mine, to be frank. You need the money, I don't *need* to watch anything.

But the movie industry is still living in the 80s/90s when people rented movies at Blockbuster.

 

[Redwarrior5544]

Perhaps there are people who would always pirate, no matter the price.

Well, duhh.
Everyone has a limit, for the minority their limit is expecting everything for nothing. You leave that as an acceptable losses and move on, not by raising the price hoping the ones who do pay will pay more. That's how you increase piracy and that fits into the narrative they want

 

[FoxEye]

Well, duhh.
Everyone has a limit, for the minority their limit is expecting everything for nothing. You leave that as an acceptable losses and move on, not by raising the price hoping the ones who do pay will pay more. That's how you increase piracy and that fits into the narrative they want

I don't know. I try never to underestimate the arrogance and stupidity of well entrenched corporations

I'm not sure if they actively want piracy and are doing their best to encourage it, or if they're just completely blind to the obvious ways of decreasing it?