The topic of movie piracy has been debated for decades. You’ve got people on one side saying it’s not doing any harm to the movie industry, while you’ve got folks IN the film industry saying that piracy is costing them money. To an extent, piracy does affect the film industry. Certain parts of the industry are getting hit harder than others. Big blockbuster movies like Star Wars and Jurassic World aren’t likely to be dramatically affected by people downloading a copy here and there, do to the films’ enormous budgets. I’m not necessarily worried about the big guys. It’s the smaller and more independent film-makers that I’m concerned about. Now, last night on Facebook, I was a part of a conversation with someone on the page of Scott Adkins. Scott Adkins, if you don’t know, is a British martial arts actor/stunt-man who is well-known in the independent film scene. He’s had some surprising success with films like Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, Undisputed III, and Close Range. Pretty down-to-earth guy, actually. Anyway, he posted an article about piracy and how detrimental it is to the film industry. There are a great number of people who have basically come out in support of piracy on HIS page. One of the arguments I read was trying to compare the theft of DVDs/Blu-Rays to multi-million dollar vehicles. That argument doesn’t hold water, because theft is theft, no matter how expensive the object is.
The people on that page have basically said, “if you stop making crappy movies, we’ll stop pirating them.” Here’s the problem with that whole deal: The reason the quality of movies is going down, is because the studios aren’t willing to make a significant investment in the event they won’t see a return. It’s simple economics. If you invest in something, you would expect to get something out of it, right? Piracy puts a rather massive dent in that investment. Again, for the movies that have 100+ million dollars in their budget, I’m not overly concerned with, because half the time they end up making that money back eventually with home video releases and through other means. It’s the independent film studios that get hit the hardest. The most money that these guys can put towards making a movie is usually less than 10 million. That’s a drop in the bucket when compared to the big guys, but it also means that the indie guys have to work harder in order to get their films done and out the door, which usually ends up going almost straight to video. Not many movie theaters are going to risk playing a small independent movie when more money could be made by featuring a bigger movie. Independent film-makers have to depend on audiences either renting or buying their films in order to make a living. The residuals from those sales go back to the studio so they can help pay for the film. I’ve talked about how complicated it is to make a movie, regardless of its size. It’s not a cheap endeavor. There’s a lot of overhead, and sometimes a lot of these film studios, even the big ones, don’t actually make a profit from their movies. Pirates don’t think about that, they only care about getting the film now and not having to pay for it.
Piracy, at least in the States, is about a 20 billion dollar industry. That’s not an insignificant chunk of change. Studios have gone after groups like The Pirate Bay and several torrent sites, and even gone after individuals for severe copyright violations. While the overall industry might not necessarily by overly negatively affected, the smaller studios and films are definitely going to feel the pinch. Piracy is theft in every sense of the word. It’s illegal and unethical. You’re taking a product that somebody has worked hard to produce and you’re not paying a single dime for it. People will argue that “oh, well, I was never going to pay to see that movie, anyway.” And that gives you the right to break the law….how? There’s also the excuse that pirating a movie gives it more exposure. Maybe, but how do the film-makers benefit from that? They don’t see the money from that particular copy, and when you pile on the amount of copies that are being uploaded to the Internet on a daily basis, that number adds up. It’s not an insignificant number and it really hurts the smaller guys. The big guys? Not nearly as much, but they will still feel it. Honestly, I don’t care what your “moral” justifications are for stealing somebody’s movie, it’s wrong. “Oh, it’s too expensive.” Save up your money and buy it later, or better yet, rent it. There’s nothing here that I’m going to say or do that’s going to stop people from pirating movies. That’s being unrealistic. But I really do hope that people realize that pirating movies can hurt people. It’s NOT a victimless crime as some people would have you believe.