The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record

http://torrentfreak.com/the-avengers-why-pirates-failed-to-prevent-a-box-office-record-120508/

by narad • 14 years ago

183 137 14 years ago

piquadrat2• 14 years ago

Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage

The direct impact of cam releases might very well be negligible. The bigger problem for the studios is that if word gets out that a blockbuster movie fails the expectations of its potential audience. That probability is much higher if there are CAMs available before the theatrical release.

So, to minimize losses caused by piracy, make your movie not suck.

ktizo• 14 years ago

The bigger problem for the studios is that if word gets out that a blockbuster movie fails the expectations of its potential audience.

Surely advance screenings and reviews have exactly the same effect in that case.

tonyrice2• 14 years ago

People usually trust word from family and friends for things like that

piquadrat2• 14 years ago

Word of mouth from your fellow franchise fans might have a bigger influence than Roger Ebert dissing the movie.

Also, there's such a thing as a review embargo. It would be interesting to see how review embargos correlate with box office success and after-the-fact ratings.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

Similar. Not having advance screenings is an even bigger red flag.

tonyrice2• 14 years ago

I agree. If the movie industry focused more on making great movies I would generally assume that CAMs wouldn't be an issue like they seem. In another sense I do believe bootlegs do give consumers a preview if the movie is worth seeing the theatrical release. I did watch The Avengers in the theaters and I can say I personally believe it was well worth my dollar.

walexander• 14 years ago

> So, to minimize losses caused by piracy, make your movie not suck.

Yes, but it doesn't work exactly like that. s/not suck/profitable.

This just means that instead of taking chances on a film which is a big risk (think Inception), we will simply see more and more super hero movies and more and more sequels. There is much less of a margin of error when people are downloading things.

I think there's little or no room for a "Requiem for a Dream" type of film in the coming years. Maybe kickstarter will have to be the avenue to make movies like that.

Retric• 14 years ago

Inception was hardly a 'risky' movie, plenty of explosions, cool visuals, and a simple but slightly ambiguous plot. Think of the way 'total recall' ends, is this just the vacation he had paid for? If you think about it they are fairly similar movies, and fairly well liked. If anything, I think suggests that a good movie can also have mass appeal.

WALL-E lacks dialog for 1/2 the movie, but because Pixar could test it out ahead of time they knew it was worth making vary early in the process. Pixar's string of hits has a lot to do with constant refinement and feedback. Saying Hollywood needs to put out more Toy Story 3's is not a terrible thing when their done well. There is something to be said for the old script + 6 weeks of frantic shooting + cutting room floor style of movies, but it's a style that showed up when film was expensive and budgets where tight.

ender7• 14 years ago

This was, sadly, a problem long before piracy came along. Hollywood is a famously conservative industry.

Tyrannosaurs5• 14 years ago

Inception wasn't that big a risk. Nolan had proved he could do ideas (Memento), he'd proved he could do big budget (two Batman films) and he was willing to stick major stars in it (including arguably the biggest star on the planet). They then backed that up with a $100m advertising budget.

In many ways it was an art house sci-fi film but in many others it did everything by the book for a big budget movie (proven track record, stars, special effects and action then hype it to the hilt).

You're right that the pattern is towards the more conservative but I'm not sure that Inception was a massively out there move.

Requiem for a Dream is a completely different beast and shows the other way you can do it even now. That was a cheap film - £5m or so. Adjust for inflation and you get maybe double that, which is still less than 5% of the budget of the Avengers.

That sort of film can be funded by smaller production companies, by larger studios (often as vanity / credibility projects - Schindler's List was seen that way when it was signed off though I doubt the studio will admit that now) and in a host of other ways. I can certainly see large studios funding things like that almost as part of an incubator model - giving new directors who seem promising a stage to show what they can do before they let them loose on something larger.

truxs• 14 years ago

Exactly, when you look at the list of biggest sales you realize that the list is pretty much the same for pirated movies.

rmc5• 14 years ago

Or alternativly, piracy will reduce spend on a crappy film, and people will spend the money elsewhere in the economy, and not waste it on something they won't like. Piracy of crappy films makes The Market better.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Indeed. If you make something excellent people will crawl over broken glass to give you money. Kickstarter is perhaps the best example of that principle.

tseabrooks2• 14 years ago

Torrentfreak's articles seem to get better and better. They note the ways in which piracy is hurting films (foreign sales) and show some numbers indicating that in the US it doesn't appear to be hurting sales much at all. While obviously torrentfreak can't ever be considered objective in regards to piracy, they seem to be getting closer each time.

Back on topic then, Does anyone have the background necessary to know if someone (anyone) is working towards disrupting the complicated publishing mess that keeps films from being available overseas for so long.

yirt• 14 years ago

Well, the pirates are 'disrupting' it rather effectively.

But through more official channels, there's not much which can be done until rights-holders wise up. They have been and remain the core bottleneck.

jcampbell15• 14 years ago

I am perplexed by your comment about overseas release dates. There has been an absolutely massive compression in release dates in the past 5 years. Most obvious blockbusters are now globally released, and the spread for smaller films has also been contracting.

Avengers was released overseas prior to the US release. A film like The Descendants was released 4 weeks early in NY/LA, and then foreign releases were only 6 weeks after the US release. That is insanely fast for a movie that could potentially have never made it out of NY/LA.

tseabrooks2• 14 years ago

I'm taking that info from the article. It was proposed as one of the reasons that piracy over seas is so prolific.

rickmb• 14 years ago

This only involves the top blockbusters. For most other US produced movies the waiting time for releases can easily be well over 6 months.

Besides, 6 weeks is still a long time in the age of instant global communication. Basically, all the hype and buzz surrounding a film starts well before the release and dramatically drops a week after. After a month, people have pretty much forgotten about it.

This hurts sales even without piracy, because the artificially created urgency (why do you thing so many people go see a movie in the opening week?) has gone.

There is no alternative for simultaneous release that doesn't hurt sales, piracy or not.

jswanson• 14 years ago

Japan still lags behind the US for most big-ticket films. Avengers won't open here until 2012/08/17, more than three months after the US release date. [1] That's a month ahead of the projected blu-ray release of the film though.

It's really hit and miss, but most of the more major films lag by two to three months.

1 - http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%...

ekianjo5• 14 years ago

> Most obvious blockbusters are now globally released

Not true. Avengers is not even out in Japan yet. It wont be out until later summer (August). I can't believe they are delaying it for so long. And Japan is a BIG market for movies.

wyclif• 14 years ago

This is true. I was in the Philippines when Avatar was released, and it was the same day as the US release. It used to be that you could see a new movie in the US and travel to SE Asia the next day and by the time you got there nobody would have seen it for weeks or months after.

jcr• 14 years ago

I certainly do not qualify for "have the background" but I do have some information. One part is cost of reproduction; it's rumored to cost $1,500 for each reproduced film reel set. The current work (that I know about) is the move towards digital distribution.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/04/27/movie-theaters-ramp-up-...

Another part is translation. Though language barriers have been decreasing during the last two decades, they still exist, and most people prefer to watch movies in their native language, or at least have subtitles in a language they know well.

Various "fan groups" release subtitled versions of their favorite anime, and at least to some degree, this addresses the time delay of translation. More importantly, the entertainment industry has been slowly learning from the fan subbing groups. A good example would be the partnership between entertainment companies (read: investors) and groups like CrunchyRoll which does and distributes officially sanctioned, subtitled (re)releases a short time after the programs have originally aired.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/

Though the former could easily be considered just cost cutting, the latter is undoubtedly due to pressure from alternate distribution channels.

cdr• 14 years ago

My local indie theater recently ran a substantial (for them) fundraising campaign to upgrade to digital. They claimed that within a year or two, the major studios were going digital only and any theater without digital would be completely shut out. I didn't verify this, but I have no reason to doubt them.

nekojima• 14 years ago

The change will come through digital distribution of the movies to cinemas, instead of the physical reel method that has been used since movies were first shown in cinemas.

The main reasons these movies take so long to distribute outside of North America has been because of local content & distribution rules for movies, risk assessment for success from distributors and, importantly, studios not wanting to spend extra money on new or extra reels when they can just use those from North America after a few months in overseas markets.

teamonkey• 14 years ago

> Torrentfreak's articles seem to get better and better.

I disagree. They're intensely biased, they select only information that suits their agenda and they spin reports and statistics shamelessly.

That's not to say that they're entirely worthless as a news source but they do have to be treated as a mouthpiece.

dredmorbius• 14 years ago

Unlike, say, the MPAA and the mainstream entertainment-media industrial complex comprising it.

Sometimes triangulation between propaganda artists points you at the truth. Or at least illuminates what each side prefers you not see.

brackin• 14 years ago

The people that should be scared by piracy are those that aren't making really high quality, possible cult films. If you're making the next Jennifer Aniston movie, which replicates tens of others then people won't be motivated to go to the cinema, some may pirate it and others may buy it on DVD just for something to watch but you can't dedicate a huge following to go watch it in the cinema.

The Avengers got people to go in mass groups and those people told other friends to watch it.

excuse-me4• 14 years ago

That's the industry's real concern - that the majority of nice people will pirate movies.

As long as it's a few kids downloading copies of the latest blockbuster they aren't too worried - these people are guaranteed to go to see every blockbuster anyway - and will go with large numbers of their friends - and go multiple times. That's why the piracy of this kind of movie doesn't hurt US ticket sales.

But when nice respectable couples decide to download the movie rather than making the trip out, paying babysitters, etc then the industry has to worry. All it's nice middle of the road mid budget movies that it can't pay for with fast food tie-ins or theme park rides and had to rely on DVD sales for.

dacilselig• 14 years ago

If I may play Devil's Advocate. I can understand why Distributors, movie companies, etc go so far in pushing anti piracy. Not necessarily just because of the fact that it hurts profits (although by a minor fraction), but also because it's only logical to do so. If movie companies were to one day come out and say that they are ok with people pirating their movies, who's to say that it won't increase the number of people attempting to pirate the movies since you would not be punished. In this case the act of making pirating taboo and portraying it as anti social behavior helps in minimizing the acceptance that pirating is OK by mass advertising(Although this technique may not effective, but I haven't read enough to get a sense that it doesn't work). Although they take extreme measures, it's that fear of getting caught that helps in maintaining their profits which make their share holders happy.

iamben4• 14 years ago

For me it usually comes down to the 'is it worth it?' Avengers was worth it - you knew it was going to be great in 3D, explosions, cinema sound, Iron Man, etc. Whilst I begrudged paying £16 (~$26 US) for me and the girlfriend (before even thinking about drinks / popcorn) we were always going to see it in the cinema.

Compare that to a film that doesn't excite me (or most of the general population), and all of a sudden I'd rather wait for the movie on Netflix or whatever, because then £16 is better spent on a takeaway and watching from home.

I know films are different strokes for different folks, but the cinema is really overpriced if you're in the 'shall we / shan't we' category, so I can understand people just thinking - I'll pirate it and save the money (or spend it on dinner) and watch from the comfort of my home - the risk to reward is so much lower.

I'm not saying that's right - just with the cost as it is you need a great (or mass appeal) product to get bums on seats. Or you have lower the cost in cinemas and make going to the cinema the experience ("we can choose a film when we get there") rather than people just going to see something in particular.

EDIT: Regardless, great article on TF ;-)

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

> you knew it was going to be great in 3D

Quick off-topic question. Is the 3d version worth it here? Usually most 3d films is 3d just because, but make no real good use of it. But being 3d just adds an extra unnecessary eye strain.

This is why I watched the Avengers on 2d. But is this one of those rare movies (like avatar) where the 3d version is actually better? If so, I might go back and watch it again.

m0nastic2• 14 years ago

I saw it in 3D yesterday (begrudgingly, as I hate 3D, but the theater I went to only showed it in 3D). The 3D is used to pretty good effect for the most part (ie: it's not 20 minutes of normal footage and then a gratuitous 3D shot of something being waved at you), and I found that about an hour into the movie, I didn't notice it.

What I thought was odd was that there were things in 3D that were just part of the background (like there was literally a scene or two where the railing on a walkway was jutting out in 3D).

If you've already seen it in 2D, I really don't think you missed out; but if you liked the movie (and I thought it was very very good) and were going to see it again anyway, the 3D doesn't ruin the experience.

juliano_q• 14 years ago

I also watched on 2D because 3D movies give me headaches, but several friends told me that the 3D stuff there is almost avatar-like good. I am tempted to watch it again.

iamben4• 14 years ago

Um, to be honest, if you saw it in 2D I wouldn't bother going again. FWIW, I enjoy a 3D movie but I don't think anything here was ground breaking or epic. There were a couple of good 'that piece of whatever is coming straight at me' moments, but nothing major.

That said, if you're a fan of 3D, haven't seen it and are deciding whether to see it in 3D or 2D, I'd still recommend it with the silly glasses.

waterlesscloud5• 14 years ago

I love 3D, but with Avengers the 3D actively hurts the experience in places, and adds little.

It's a post-conversion- it was shot 2D and 3D added in post. This almost always results in useless 3D at best.

2muchcoffeeman• 14 years ago

As far as I know, to date only 2 films have actually been filmed in 3D, Avatar and Sanctum. Which is probably why the 3D is done well.

frooxie2• 14 years ago

> Whilst I begrudged paying £16 (~$26 US) for me and the girlfriend

Does this mean that you only had to pay $13 per person? In Sweden, a single ticket sells for $20.

iamben4• 14 years ago

It does, yeah (although doesn't include the price of 3D glasses). This was at an out of London cinema, thankfully. In the center of town you can easily pay $20+ pp.

Are you paying that right across Sweden? If so, how awful :-(

mseebach• 14 years ago

Cost of living in the Nordic countries is very high.

Here are the prices for tonight in a large mall-cinema in West London:

2D: http://booking.myvue.com/Home/My-tickets/cinema/westfield/ui...

(£8.90/£7.50 adult/student)

3D: http://booking.myvue.com/Home/My-tickets/cinema/westfield/ui...

(£12.05/£9.80 adult/student)

bobsy• 14 years ago

A thing to note is that it was a CAM recording of the film that was leaked.

I have only ever watched one cam recording of a movie before. I think it was 'The Illusionist.' I was at a friends house, he slapped it on. The color saturation was wrong, the sound was like mono and the camera appeared slightly off so the very top or bottom of the screen was cut off. It wasn't completely unwatchable but it spoiled the movie. Its like watching a film through a neighbours window.. crap.

Piracy has far more effect on DVD sales. This is for 4 reasons. The price of DVD's, the inconvenience of going out and getting the DVD, the bullshit adverts and unskipable junk before the film and the menu which takes 20 seconds to display before you can press PLAY.

If there was a DVD quality recording of the avengers I think it would have easily had 5x more downloads, probably 10x. However, realistically the cinema is an experience. If you enjoy the cinema you are going to watch a film like this at the cinema - then maybe download it. I am firmly of the opinion that if you make a blockbuster film, whether it leaks or not it will do well.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Imagine how much money they could make if they released a 1080p HD version online, globally, 4 weeks at most after the launch in cinemas, and for a price of $5.

That may or may not kill the cinemas in the long term, depending on how hard they fight to become more competitive and unique compared to watching the movie at home, but it would definitely not hurt the studios and movie makers. If anything, they stand to make a lot more money on average for every released movie.

andrewljohnson• 14 years ago

When I imagine that much money, I imagine it is much less than what they make now. That's the nature of a disrupted industry.

jetti• 14 years ago

Then you would see complaints from retailers on DVD sales declining.

Tyrannosaurs5• 14 years ago

Why delay it at all? Frankly they shouldn't care how we want to watch a film, just that we want to and are willing to pay for it.

I like films but have small kids so I can't get to the cinema as often as I'd like. By not letting me give them money to watch their film (and I won't pirate it, I'll just do something else) they're throwing money away. Get me while the publicity and hype are out there, when I can discuss it with friends and colleagues. By the time it's out on DVD the moment could well have passed and my money has gone.

The cinema done right is a great experience and personally I don't think it's going anywhere. It doesn't matter how big my TV gets, I'll never have that social experience, the fact of getting out of the house where the phone won't ring and the door won't go, where I won't be tempted to pick up the iPad or whatever.

Watching at home, if done right, is a complementary market as much as it is a competitive one. And if it is competitive one then hey, what do they care if they're charging for it?

It's not going to be $5, probably more like $20 (think a couple of people, a couple of tickets equivalent, perhaps figure in the fact they can't upsell you popcorn and subtract some lower costs), but so long as the price seems fair next to the multiplex cost I'm fine with it.

mikeryan• 14 years ago

Interesting hypothetical.

Lets take a recent blockbuster. The first Twilight movie made $392,616,625 in the box office, $194,881,773 in DVD sales for a total of $587,498,398 (almost 600M - pretty good rake)

In your $5 they'd have to sell 117,499,679 of those $5 streams in order to make that equivalent revenue (so roughly one in every 60 people in the world need to buy a stream).

For more fun take the last Twilight Movie (Eclipse) which was a bigger draw ($826,423,724 total revenue). Then you'd have to sell 165M streams to get to those numbers.

Considering the $5 stream scenario could be shared across a family - I honestly am not sure your assumption that a studio could make more money is correct. The real X-Factor here is the cut the various distribution chains take.

I'm not sure your price point is right, but would you perhaps pay $20 for the same stream?

EDIT: Also I don't think the 4-weeks after theatrical release is going to work I don't think theaters are going to show your movie if you're going to kneecap them 4 weeks out.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga_(film_series)...

xsmasher• 14 years ago

The theaters and PPV outlets would never agree to that. It eats into the post-opening-week time where the theater gets the bulk of the ticket price.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Sell it the same day as release, as well as DVD and Blu-Ray copies. The home and theater versions then become effective cross-promotions for the other, plus you hit the market at the peak of your advertising campaign. Nobody's had the guts to try this sort of thing though.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

720p or 480p would be more realistic; the bandwidth costs for serving 1080p would chew through that $5 pretty quickly. (Assuming reasonable video bitrates) Besides, a very large chunk of consumers own machines that cannot handle 1080p.

Before you scream bloody murder, remember DVDs are only 480p.

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

I wonder what would have happened if it had been a leaked screener instead of a CAM recording. I'd never choose a CAM over going to the cinema, but a screener might change my choice.

excuse-me4• 14 years ago

"If you enjoy the cinema you are going to watch a film like this at the cinema"

If you enjoy 'cinema' you would probably rather pluck your eyes out than watch a film like this anywhere in anyway

shawnc• 14 years ago

To each their own. I enjoy a large assortment of films. The Avengers and Batman Begins - or 12 Monkeys and The Usual Suspects - or The Triplettes of Bellville and The Lives of Others - or 12 Angry Men and The Seventh Seal. Hardly fair to say that someone who would 'enjoy' 'cinema' would 'rather pluck their eyes out' than 'watch' a 'film' like this 'anywhere'.

Interestingly, you used the term 'Film' to describe The Avengers, which some people would jump down YOUR throat for - since this was an almost All-Digital release.

its_so_on• 14 years ago

From your train of thought (starting with cam quality) I suspect you had it in mind, but you forgot the biggest reason in your list:

> Piracy has far more effect on DVD sales. This is for 4 reasons. The price of DVD's, the inconvenience of going out and getting the DVD, the bullshit adverts and unskipable junk before the film and the menu which takes 20 seconds to display before you can press PLAY.

You forgot to mention your main point about quality! The moment the DVD is released, the DVD is available to pirates for their dvdrips.

whereas you don't get a copy of the theater reel to play with just by buying a theater ticket, leading to the cam-rips you referred to. so, purely for that reason given that pirates distribute high-quality rips once they're available, you would expect this effect on DVD-sales to figure prominently in your list. (I'm sure you had it in mind but just forgot).

sushrutb• 14 years ago

Also for a movie like Avengers, which relies a lot on special visual and sound effects for its success, its easier to get such box office returns. But if same thing happens to a movie like Carnage[1], then it might be affect its returns drastically.

Carnage - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1692486/

rmc5• 14 years ago

that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps

Damn right. It makes sense that if you release a film in Europe 6 months after the USA that there will be more piracy in Europe. Why should we have to wait? There is a simple solution: Release films at the same time/day. This is an example of piracy making things better for the consumer, and this sort of market-correcting piracy should be encouraged.

m0nastic2• 14 years ago

There's actually logistical reasons why that's potentially difficult, (having actors show up at premiers for example).

I think considering that "overseas piracy" is the big stated concern for Hollywood (less people downloading cam-rips, more people selling DVD's on corners), their strategy of actually launching the movie outside the U.S. first made sense.

I suspect we'll see more of that for tent-pole type films.

EvilTerran2• 14 years ago

I doubt there's a single soul outside the film industry who gives the slightest damn about whether the actors are at the first showing of a film in their country/continent/whatever.

ljf• 14 years ago

It's a hangover from the 'old days' where those lower down the release date list got 'hand me down' film reels.

Reels are one of the last major costs for film distributors, and even in the face of piracy they would rather cut costs there, than put there risk onto their own shoulders and produce more reels. They are scared of being stuck with a flop movie, and many theatres in the UK and elsewhere outside of the USofA won't commit to buying reels without seeing USA box-office turnout first. The delay is here, and until we have digital projecting, I'm not sure how it will be solved

slavak• 14 years ago

What year is this? I was sure the world had long since moved on to entirely digital projection. I for one can't remember the last time I saw the "end-of-reel" spots on a movie in the cinema.

Are reel projectors actually widely used still?

rmc5• 14 years ago

until we have digital projecting, I'm not sure how it will be solved

Digital projectors exist. Physical reels are unnecessary. The general public does not care that it's expensive for you, we want to watch films now. Cinemas of the world: Adapt or die.

daimyoyo• 14 years ago

I watched the CAM recording over the weekend(before this I had no desire at all to see the Avengers) and decided it was worth actually seeing in a theater. I think that's what a lot of people use CAM recordings for. To sample a movie before spending the money to see it in theaters.

ilaksh• 14 years ago

I'll be honest, I downloaded the CAM version and it was crap to me, and someone had mentioned it was a great movie, so I went to the theater to see it because I didn't want to miss out.

I think the guy who released that CAM might have been doing the movie studio a favor because it might have made the next guy feel like he didn't need to do his own upload which might have been better.

If there was a good version available when I went to pirate it, I wouldn't have dragged myself to the theater.

I wanted to buy a large popcorn and soda with my cash when I got in there, but I only had $12 so I had to put it on the card.

I just wish they would release stuff on Amazon or iTunes (although I hate that program) the same day as it comes out.

Anyway, I spend way too much money on Amazon videos.

mayanksinghal2• 14 years ago

> anti-camcording technologies [http://torrentfreak.com/movie-spy-cameras-attack-the-dying-a...]

This is largely off-topic but I was wondering if there are any other popular anti-camcording technologies?

Also could a large IR lamp facing the viewers (or aimed at screen) be used to disrupt the usage of camcorders? This will be additionally beneficial as a large part of the world requires heating solutions during significant part of the year.

fryguy• 14 years ago

At the avengers screening I saw at midnight, it was like an oven in the theatre. That's not the best idea with a room full of comic book nerds. In theory, as long as the lamp is as bright as the movie it would make the movies really dim for anybody recording it.

mayanksinghal2• 14 years ago

Didn't know that idea is already used, I was just throwing a possibility!

delackner3• 14 years ago

This doesn't make any sense at all. You could easily defeat such a countermeasure by putting an IR filter over your lens. Dunno about camcorders, but usually DSLRs have such filters built-in to prevent IR from contaminating the sensor's input.

espadagroup• 14 years ago

I believe pirating does affect ticket sales but really only for the lower budget/less anticipated movies. I tend to bucket all the movies I want to watch into 3 categories: go the movies, dollar theater, and download. The less I truly want to see the movie the lower down the bucket list it goes.

So yeah a movie like the Avengers which for me and probably most others will definitely be in the top bucket won't be affected much by pirating. Can't say the same for say Madagascar 3.

stcredzero• 14 years ago

Because Aardman stop-motion animation has a niche fanbase? :)

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

The most mind boggling thing I've seen big studios do is block some trailers, promo videos or music videos in countries other than the US/UK/Canada or whatever their main market is. Why in the world would you ever do that?

It makes absolutely no sense - they're blocking people in other countries from getting to know their new movie/single, which means those potential cinema goers and DVD/CD buyers either forget about it or go to torrent sites to get it, so when the movie/single is finally released, few people care about it.

One of the stupidest thing I've ever seen, for sure...

potatolicious• 14 years ago

> "Why in the world would you ever do that?"

Because the distribution rights probably belong to someone else in said countries. It's the same reason why some songs are available on iTunes in the US but curiously missing elsewhere.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

So why don't they push the distributors to release the stuff at the same time? It's their content, it's not the distributor who complains about piracy and lost sales, the studios can just kick them out if they're not making any sales... Besides, there are many countries where they have literally no presence whatsoever and it's like they're actively trying to prevent it from building up (unlike Microsoft, which just let people pirate their stuff, then came in and said "actually, you need to pay for that" - in reference to Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, where they successfully converted many companies and government agencies from pirates to paying customers)...

tptacek5• 14 years ago

Fatuous.

A cam'd version of The Avengers is not a market substitute for seeing the movie in a theater. Of the movies you could possibly consider this way, The Avengers is among the least amenable to substitution via cam'd copies.

All the widely-available torrents of The Avengers are cam'd or equivalent. There aren't screeners circulating.

A DVD rip is a near-perfect substitute for a DVD (or a streamed version of the movie, or whatever).

Nearly 50% of the revenue from motion pictures happens after the theater release, most of it DVDs.

Think what you want to think about torrenting movies, but it should bother you when sites like Torrentfreak insult your intelligence.

AndyKelley2• 14 years ago

I don't think you read the entire article, which explained everything you said here quite clearly.

lawnchair_larry4• 14 years ago

Entire article? He didn't even read the bold teaser, evidently. That was, indeed, the entire point of the article.

There are a few sites that tptacek will insta-contrarian on HN. Torrentfreak is one of them. You know the xkcd comic about someone is wrong on the internet? Substitute "being wrong" for "generating rageviews with libertarian nerds" and that is tptacek.

"Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie’s profits, it’s really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage."

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

I accidentally upvoted you, but the so-called "fatuous" claim you deride is the exact opposite of what the article is claiming. You would have known this had you clicked the link and read the third sentence.

tptacek5• 14 years ago

My point is that nobody seriously thinks camcorded movies are what's killing the movie industry.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Nice post, he fails to mention that the camcorder version may have increased ticket sales. I know people who have watched a torrent of a movie to see if it was worth the $10 - $20 it costs to see it in the theater.

So of the 100,000 people who downloaded it, it would be interesting to poll how many went to see it after seeing that it was a decent movie.

BerislavLopac• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure I know exactly when the film companies will abandon the current business model for movies (theatres plus DVDs) and switch primarily to online pay-per-view-like scheme, with DVDs going out pretty much immediately and theatres surviving, but slowly fading.

It will happen as soon as the first studio realizes and takes advantage of the fact that with such a scheme you a) can charge for the same movie over and over again, and b) you can greatly improve the feedback on how popular which movies are, which could use an update/sequel and which should be left to die. This is something we in the Web business take for granted, but in the movies they are still too ingrained in the old ways that they don't see the benefits and effects of online distribution. But they will, mind you; not all at once, but as soon as it proves itself they'll jump on the bandwagon.

dutchbrit• 14 years ago

"This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher."

Even though I agree with most points in this article, the 0.5% is a bit off. When a "pirate" (yarghh) decides to download a movie, they usually end up watching it with friends and/or family - not just by themselves..

Still, if you really care about a movie, you would watch it in a cinema instead of watching a bad "CAM" version.

psquid• 14 years ago

The point is that the stated 0.5% is an upper bound, so even if none of them also bought a ticket, as you speculated (and I find it very unlikely that this is the case), they would still only make up a 0.5% difference in the box office revenue.

gscott• 14 years ago

Even one lost customer to piracy justifies in the minds of RIAA/MPAA the spending millions on lobbying, creating draconian laws, and using the Government as their muscle.

The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record

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