Movie downloads: cool, or stupid? Movies cannot be seen as a parallel to music, because although you can get some mighty fine sound off of cheap speaker sets, you'll be watching the movie on your tiny little 15" (or if you're lucky) 19" monitor. Televisions are substantially cheaper for much larger sizes, but for the most part you can't actually hook your computer output up to your tv (because in the past neither industry has wanted you to do this). However, if the service was cheap enough (like $3 or $4 for a movie) that could really be worth it.
Movie downloads may finally become mainstream though, as NBC Universal seems to be looking into to it. The main reason given though, is not that it benefits the user so much as that it's protection against piracy!
"The problems are spreading and no one is immune," Wright said. "In my business we're just looking over the shoulder of the music industry, which has gone through a very difficult time."
The global music industry has been decimated by physical piracy and online file-trading networks. It has stemmed some of the losses by aggressively targeting illicit file-sharers with lawsuits while also offering legal online alternatives like Apple's iTunes Music Store."
And once again, the journalist writing makes absolutely no mention of how there isn't actually any evidence that such "piracy" has contributed in any way to the music industry's problems, which may mean that online movie services may not do anything for the movie industry's problems either.
The only real reason I'm pointing this article out is as an example of how major companies are acting on what is no more than an assumption; namely, that there is widespread piracy of music and that such piracy actually contributes to flagging cd sales. It's an even greater assumption that the music industry is a parallel to the movie industry (although I'm inclined to agree that there is similarity) and that actions beneficial to one are necessarily beneficial to both, yet we multi-billion dollar companies and our government acting as if these assumptions are all true with no evidence to support them. Something needs to be done about this, but this is something that there is evidently very little public knowledge about.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
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2 comments:
Another load of crap. The movie industry, facing declining movie attendance due to the crap that they put out, have managed to convince themselves that people would rather watch a crappy version of a movie, filmed on someone's camcorder in a dark theater, on their laptop with it's tiny speakers, then sit in a real movie theater with surround sound and a giant screen. That is clearly absurd. So their natural reaction is to throw on copyright protection on top of movies downloaded from the internet, with all the resultant problems for users, likely among them being unable to burn it to multiple cds, watch it on another laptop, etc., etc. In all reality, if the real problem is crappy movies, then they won't even have to worry about protecting the downloaded movies from piracy, as hardly anyone will want to pirate them anyway.
You know, that's a very good point you make. Although some bootlegs can be in the range of $2-3, most are still $5-8, which makes it comparable to the price of an actual movie ticket, for a much better experience. At least here in America, the two aren't really in competition. I know one friend who bought a Star Wars Ep. 1 VCD which was one of those filmed in the theater. It was crappy. He hasn't bought any more VCDs of American movies.
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