For all the work they're putting into creating a copyright regime, they could do build their own netflix and put everything on it, charge $10/month and fix their piracy problem like that.
Makes me wonder if they sort of enjoy being the evil villain in this whole thing.
Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries when the average blockbuster DVD/Blu-Ray release sells 1-2 million units a month from each individual movie?
Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries instead of getting a couple million from Starz, a couple million from HBO, a couple million from Showtime, etc just to license a couple movies at a time for their networks?
Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries when they get millions to sell a couple new releases at a time to cable operators for On Demand rentals?
Simply licensing everything for internet streaming for a couple bucks a month solves the piracy problem, but it also completely destroys their profits. They make far more money with the current system of physical discs, staggered format releases and exclusive licensing deals for different segments of their library with different distributors than they would make giving it all away for pennies per movie on a streaming service.
What did Netflix take in last quarter in revenues? $800 million or so? That's just 4 times the DVD revenue from Avatar. One movie.
why would they spend insane amounts of time and money on brokering horrible laws? Even if these laws did pass today, they would surely crumble in a few years?
Why would they work so hard, to gain the hatred and displeasure of the very public that pays money to watch their work, and makes them rich in the process?
As the parent says, may be they enjoy being the villain in this whole drama.
If they want, they can kill netflix overnight. heck, they can charge 50$ a month, and many people would gladly pay (I know I would) even if the movies come to streaming a full month later than their theater release date.
How long do you think they can keep playing this cat and mouse game? The only real winners in this entire shit, are the lawyers.
I think you, and others, underestimate the enormity of the revenues the movie studios are generating.
The MPAA represents 6 studios that produced about 15% of theatrical releases last year. They only released 12 of the top 25 movies in theaters too. The MPAA studios alone generate about $40 billion in revenue a year; I didn't try to add up all the other studios, but you can imagine the total revenue is enormous. What they spend lobbying for these laws is a pittance in comparison.
Total box office gross was $32 billion last year. Let's be generous and say the MPAA got 50% of the box office sales despite having less than 50% of the top movies. That leaves $24 billion in revenue from their films each year not including the theater releases. That's $24 billion from physical discs, licensing to cable providers, licensing to TV channels, licensing to premium cable channels, licensing to the existing streaming services, etc.
If the MPAA studios launched a streaming service at $50 per month, this would displace most of their revenue from other distribution models -- people would buy far fewer DVDs and they simply wouldn't get the agreements with cable networks, premium channels, etc. if customers can already get the movie from this website a month after theater.
To make up for that revenue they would have to find 480 million subscribers at $50. Do you think they can? I doubt it at that price point; that's more than most people spend on movie consumption across all channels now. Even if they could do it, those 480 million subscribers would only replace the revenue of the 6 MPAA studios, not the other 85% of the movie production market.
Whenever I see a "why don't they just give us what we want and stream everything like Netflix" suggestion, I see "why don't these companies just burn 85% of their profits", because that'd be about the same as far as their financials go.
okay, thanks for the numbers. they sure are enormous.
some points though:
people would buy far fewer DVDs
people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether the studios like it or not. the studios can't do anything about it. I can't remember the last time I bought either a movie DVD or a music DVD. I go to spotify or netflix, or a movie theater, so simply won't watch it, if DVD is my only option. Others might be different though.
I doubt it at that price point
If I go to the theater once, the absolute minimum I spend is 20$ (ticket + popcorn), and this is for a single guy. If I had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big cities. so 50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would go for it.
One thing is sure - the whole situation is fucked up. It has to change, it will change. It is just that the transition period is going to be awful. And we get to watch it, and be a part of it.
> people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether the studios like it or not
You're really out of touch with reality. In 2011, the top 100 movies sold 146,455,878 DVD copies (estimated, not all retailers disclose exact numbers).
Here's last week's North American DVD (non-Blu-Ray) sales:
> If I had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big cities. so 50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would go for it.
This is working against you... in arguing that people would spend $50/mo for this because it's an alternative to theaters, you're also arguing it would cannibalize the revenue from box office sales. Remember it was 480 million subscribers for just the MPAA's 6 studios to break even if the box office revenue was untouched.
There's only around a billion computers in the world -- so here's a good recap of your plan: Get every single computer owner in the world to subscribe to a $50/month studio-backed streaming service. If they can't get every computer owner in the world to subscribe, then they will make less money than they do today not offering the service.
That's all it takes to see why the service doesn't exist.
Do you have numbers on year-over-year sales for DVDs?
While they're still big, I would assume that they're declining.I think what the parent commenter was trying to make as the streaming is how people are going to be consuming information. Not everyone's there yet, of course, but thats where things are shifting to.
It would make sense for MPAA to set itself up to succeed in the coming world where the majority of people want to stream their entertainment,rather than trying to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out.
What would make sense is to set itself up to succeed in the streaming world AND try to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out. Which, unsurprisingly, is exactly what they're doing. They ARE licensing movies to Netflix, Amazon VOD/Prime, iTunes, Hulu, etc. after all. They're just picking and choosing what parts of their catalog to stream and when to offer it such that it won't cannibalize the revenue from DVD sales and other sources they don't need to give up yet.
All they have to do to maximize revenue in the coming world is to shift timelines -- release more movies faster on the streaming services as the effect of doing so has less of an effect on other distribution channels.
I would agree with you, but they're trying to preserve the dying model's functions in the new model, which doesn't operate like that.
I completely agree with you, that doing something like you mentioned makes sense, but it doesn't excuse them from trying to censor the internet, buy congress and be an online bully that gets to take down entire sites for actions their users have done.
Compulsory licensing. Shorter copyright terms. These are the reasonable responses.
In politics, you've got to define the playing field if you want to win. If you let the big copyright holders do all the defining, we get more of what we've gotten. We need a different viewpoint to balance things out.
The content cartels would be quite alright with these terms (they'd of course fight them in the short term, though). Their primary goal is to revert us to the days of receive-only information display terminals (TV). To actually push back:
* A right to Internet access (RAND terms, no 'identity'-based blacklisting by government or ISP)
* A right to personal computing devices (and require unlockable bootloaders)
* Decriminalization of anything copyright related, civil penalties only.
* A right for one's computing infrastructure to stay intact throughout court proceedings. (Seizing someone's servers gags them without due process).
I live in Japan and here I have seen some talk/debate of wether or not to join the TPP on TV and in the news. My first time hearing about it was on Japanese TV. Many Japanese are nervous about the effect of IP restrictions on the manga/self-publishing industry in Japan:
There is a desire not to be left out of an important partnership, but they are wary to end up on the exploitive end of a bad deal. I think everyone is still trying to figure out what is in this thing.
The Internet is disrupting old media, content industries, governments and democracy, being the ultimate platform for disruptive businesses, for freedom of speech, for the mass distribution of leaked secrets, for organizing revolutions.
After years of laughing about it and ignoring it, 2010 was the year that broke the camel's back, with the Wikileaks releases and the Tunisian revolution and the Egyptian revolutionand with iTunes and Amazon starting to influence people over what's cool or not.
It's freaking them out, as people are suddenly able to think for themselves.
This indeed is the year of the storm, the year in which they are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Just occurred to me: once it'll become too costly to consume, will people just start being creative and make things more? That's a benefit in the long run, I guess.
They've trained the public for generations to not use their imagination and creativity. The withdrawal is probably painful enough to keep them going for a while even past that point.
MPAA and RIAA are freaking out not because of lost revenue, but because consumers are getting more sophisticated. People creating content is the ultimate threat to their business model.
That's why these laws are targeting user-generated content websites.
The tech industry is operating within the limits imposed by the government and their shareholders. If the FBI were to shut Google down, even for a couple of days, that would be devastating to their bottom line.
That's why there isn't much they can do about it, other than to inform people of what's going on.
Ultimately the power lies with the people. It is the people that have to call their representative, or take it out on the streets if necessary, or to boycott the companies involved.
Also, we as developers, must fight back by promoting and working on alternative protocols for distributing content that bypasses firewalls and protects the privacy of users.
For all the work they're putting into creating a copyright regime, they could do build their own netflix and put everything on it, charge $10/month and fix their piracy problem like that.
Makes me wonder if they sort of enjoy being the evil villain in this whole thing.