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Guardian editorial: ‘If you can’t buy it legally, of course you’ll download it’
May 5, 2009 | 10:15 am
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By Chris Meadows
In the Guardian, Naomi Alderman editorializes on the pointlessness of staggered film releases. As the headline says, “If you can’t buy it legally, of course you’ll download it.”
Alderman explains that, back in pre-Internet days, staggered releases happened because there were only so many prints to go around; the studios had to wait until they got the prints back from US theaters before they could ship them overseas. This didn’t matter so much given that the global public communication medium of the Internet did not exist.
But now it does exist, and suddenly web advertising for movies has become global—even when the movie itself is not. And people who can’t get the movies they want legally will turn to the Internet to download them. Alderman argues it’s time staggered film releases ended and movies hit theaters at the same time world-wide.
Alderman is talking about theatrical releases, but commenters bring up the anti-competitive DVD region-encoding system, and others mention downloading their favorite American programs so they can watch them before spoilers abound. This is true in reverse, too: every time a Doctor Who or Torchwood episode airs in the UK, it is seen a few hours later by American fans with BitTorrent and high-speed Internet.
This is, of course, just another facet of the same territorial problem facing e-book readers now: geographic restriction of e-book sales. These restrictions are also going to drive many e-book buyers to become illicit e-book downloaders. Many e-book readers already knowingly break the law in cracking DRM encryption on the books they purchase; it is doubtful that they would hesitate to download if they were not allowed to buy.
It would be nice if all this could be straightened out, but something tells me it may be a while before any medium gets around to acknowledging the global market.
Technorati Tags: piracy,download,staggered releases,movies,films,theaters,bittorrent,e-books,geographic restrictions
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Comments:
Of course I’ll download it. Because I’m so petty and selfish that I simply can’t accept anything short of Instant Gratification. Personally, I resent that suggestion (I’m a Dr. Who fan, too, but I can wait for shows to be shown locally in the U.S. without having a pathological need to download them the second they come out)… but I understand the point.
As long as there are people who don’t want to wait, maybe they can take advantage of services like Netflix to stream new and exclusive content to their homes on demand. It would seem like a logical extension of the Netflix model to offer brand new on-demand content on their new web-based streaming video service. And it may ably solve the issue of bootlegging, as so much of it is specifically to take advantage of those who simply won’t wait for new content. If I were the movie industry, I’d be giving serious thought to the idea of more limited theatrical releases, and simultaneous worldwide streaming opportunities through companies like Netflix. But that’s just me.
So maybe Alderman’s concern might not be an issue for very long…
How about a really radical idea: When the movie/book/play/song is done, put it out for legal sale through as many channels as possible as fast as possible. It has the virtue that it puts the pirates behind you rather than ahead of you. It’s also based on the observation that most people are tolerably honest. And it would make DRM irrelevant.
Of course, convoluted marketing strategists and clever executives would all be laid off. They’d have to get honest jobs trading troubled assets, since the marketing job would be to get the most people looking at your product as quickly as possible. Hard, but not rocket science. It would also make certain channels contract (or expand) as realistic competition and supply/demand curves exerted themselves. That would be bad if you were one of the contractees.
Nah, it wouldn’t work.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Had to hunt for the Guardian editorial link, I didn’t see it in this post: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/05/naomi-alderman-film-downloading
@C.A.: Whoops, pasted in the wrong link in the first paragraph of the article. Hate when that happens. Fixed now.
@Steve: Arguably, there’s not a whole lot of moral difference between a friend taping Doctor Who off for you and then passing you the tape (which was held to be a fair use in MPAA vs. Sony, IIRC) and snagging it by BitTorrent. The difference is largely a matter of scale.
(Also, sometimes the episodes shown over here get edited—particularly last season’s season finale, which had to be cut to the point that it made very little sense to fit in the one-hour timeslot allotted for it.)
Really, in this day and age, there’s no reason why on earth they shouldn’t release the Doctor Who episodes simultaneously in Britain and the USA. If they can release the Harry Potter books everywhere at once, and those are physical artifacts, why can’t they broadcast the signal at the same time to all?
Streaming services like Netstream may help, but only if they get more penetration and more rights to stream.
@Chris: Your last statement was exactly what I was thinking. I don’t see any reason a streaming service cannot be expanded to pretty much every market, and right into the home. In fact, the movie industry (or George Lucas, at any rate) was working on a system to send movies to theatres electronically, instead of sending them prints, making the wait for film copies to be circulated virtually zero.
No, this wouldn’t help the theatre industry… they would have to find other reasons to convince us to crowd into huge rooms to watch movies with hundreds of strangers. (Maybe lowering movie prices to below the cost of streaming…)
Steve Jordan said “In fact, the movie industry (or George Lucas, at any rate) was working on a system to send movies to theatres electronically, instead of sending them prints, …”
Theatre owners and movie studios are deploying these systems now as noted in the Wikipedia topic labeled Digital Cinema. “A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector.”
Wikipedia has an old statistic: “As of October 2007, there are over 5000 DLP-based Digital Cinema Systems installed.” DLP refers to projectors that use a Digital Light Processing chip from Texas Instruments. The resolution of cameras and projectors has improved over time. Many digital features were shot with 1920×1080 resolution. Now cameras and projectors can use 2K (2048×1080) or 4K (4096×2160) resolution. Scanning and processing 35 mm film is also done to create digital files.
Simultaneous release of a video or film project in multiple markets is bound to be easier when using a digital strategy. However, up-front costs would still be higher. Distributors would have to pay for advertising in all markets simultaneously and would have to use more guesswork when tailoring campaigns to different cultures. The language translation task would be multiplied and front-loaded. On the other hand they might convince more moviegoers to see a weak picture before word of mouth kills it.
I doubt simultaneously release is a panacea for studios. The guardian columnist is perhaps somewhat naïve. Piracy would still be massive. The main obstacle to piracy is the poor quality of Cams and Telesyncs for movies. TV shows on “premium” networks like HBO and Showtime are often pirated by non-subscribers and the release date is not the issue.