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The Motion Picture Association of America recently released a statement claiming that complaining about availability with movies was ridiculous, as clearly there are many legal avenues to go down when it comes to buying and renting movies in your own home. However research suggests that most of the top-torrented films of the day aren't available anywhere online, so is it the case that availability is still an issue?
That's something that TorrentFreak wanted to investigate, which is why it dug up statistics on the top 10 most pirated movies at the moment. They included the likes of Interstellar, American Sniper, Taken 3, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and John Wick, none of which are available anywhere to buy or rent legally at home. In-fact, the only one in the top 10 of the most torrented films of last week that could be, was Gone Girl.
Mcconaughey seen here doing an impression of the MPAA's understanding of piracy.
This seems to counter the point that MPAA president Stan McCoy tried to make last week when he said:
“We need to bust the myth that legal content is unavailable. Creative industries are tirelessly experimenting with new business models that deliver films, books, music, TV programs, newspapers, games and other creative works to consumers.”
Indeed the digital landscape of movie availability is better than ever before, but as any UK Netflix viewer, or media-starved-native-Australian knows, getting access to it can be quite difficult. You need to use a VPN to get around region blocks for much of it, or at the very least pay for subscriptions to multiple different on-demand platforms in order to guarantee that some of the new movies and shows will be available.
The fact that The Interview made such a splash by releasing simultaneously digitally and in (select) cinemas is a great example of how rare such availability is. The fact that it managed to recover its costs without a big theatre chain backing it should show too that the market for digital releases is there. If it hadn't been limited to the US alone, it may have done far more than just recover its budget.
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KitGuru Says: As it stands, the moment a TV show is off the air or out of a cinema, often the only way to watch it is to pirate it. If that wasn't the case, if it was available to buy or rent immediately after a cinema run, or better yet, during it, you have to imagine piracy rates would be far lower than they are currently. Itunes and Spotify's impact on music piracy are testament to that.
Poor availability also includes over-priced, imho.
You need a cable subscription to get most TV shows, and numerous online streaming subscriptions. That could run into the cost of over £1000 per year if you went 100% legit.
Or, you can torrent in excellent quality for free (keyword: can. Not everyone strives for HD rips). The MPAA really think they have a point when they’re saying you should pay up to £1000 for a year of content? When the same content is had for free?
Most pirates will go legit for the right price. I’d argue Netflix took a good number of pirates into the paying fold. But the problem is price. They’re asking too much for things. When free is the viable alternative, £20 for a Blu-ray, or £20pm for various subscriptions (for content you cannot keep) is ludicrous. Only the wealthy will pay for that.
Availability is a big factor, look at Game of Thrones. It takes about 8 months for the BluRay, by that time everyone has spoiled the red wedding surprize… so now I want to watch it when everyone is talking about it.
Yes, I still buy the BluRay (Because I love the Behind the Scene goodness) but it still sucks to ‘miss out’ because I wanted to pay. Piracy lets people experience it while it’s hot, if the product is good enough people will buy it.
I’m itching to get hold of Interstellar! Hurry up March!
My favourite group is from Japan, and their products are incredibly difficult to get a hold of. They don’t sell their music via any other avenue than physical copies in-store, and they’re only available through Japanese iTunes, so I pirate a lot of their music while I slowly build up a collection through imports from amazon.jp and through sites like YesAsia (their shipping policy includes coverage of tariffs, which is great). It’s also true I wouldn’t even know about this group if it weren’t for people uploading their music to YouTube.
If they simply opened up other methods of payment, I wouldn’t hesitate in bulk-purchasing all of them as soon as possible. That option isn’t given to me, and thus my payments are incremental and slow, since I’m not willing to go through the hassle of ~hacking~ my iTunes and getting prepaid cards.
I assume that others are in a similar situation, and would be more than happy to shell out the money legitimately if there were only legitimate sources available to them. People want to pay for the same access to products that piracy gives, but they just aren’t allowed to.
YES THIS IS COMPLETELY TRUE.
X-men: Days of Future past was not released on DVD or Blu-ray until around 5 months after the cinema release and was available to torrent months before that. The same can be said for Interstellar and lot of other Films. It’s pathetic. RELEASE YOUR GOD DAMN MOVIES ON DVD AS SOON AS IT IS NO LONGER IN THE CINEMA AND WE WON’T PIRATE IT
The main issue these bigwigs are missing and it is a FACT for many a person that has pirated something is the simple fact that they can not afford to buy it, period and that is not just because it may or may not be too expensive.
Just how much money have these studios and record labels made off of reissuing the same content in a different format, funny how they never speak of this, its not like they say, hey many an individual has already bought this movie or album so lets find a way to give these folks a break because there is NO way that this reissue cost the same to put out as the original movie/record cost, yet it costs the same as if it was a new release.
I personally don’t believe that we can continue as a society paying the outrageous salaries that we do to entertainers, there once was a time when it was reasonable, now it is out of control.