I do, but I left out the numbers for foreign-language versions and other data, because I don't want to load the question down with too many caveats. We all know that some people torrent by preference than because they lack any other means to view the film. I'm just trying to figure out how the MPAA is supposed to turn those people into paying customers.
I used to pay for netflix in the US and access it with a VPN when I was living in China (a country where most content is only available through pirating). I did this both for convenience and because I wanted to pay for the content I was consuming.
But eventually I got tired of having to jump through hoops because of region locking and other inane rules decided by the MPAA and equivalent. I'm now in France, Netflix has a rather poor catalogue (I joined this month to check it out), The Master for example is not available (and I don't know any easy way to stream it).
So, instead of bothering to jump through hoops, I just download it on Bittorrent. It's quick, it's easy and it saves me time. It's also more confortable using Mplayer or Plex to play a video than any of the streaming website players.
When you say that 25-30k people torrent the movie, I'm sure there's a lot of people in my case. And excluding the foreign language versions won't help because a lot of people in Europe download the original version.
Steam has the answer. Make paying for content easier and more enjoyable than copyright violation.
Easier: see netflix, amazon video, et al. Contradictions include region lock-in, unavailability of streaming version (physical media only).
More enjoyable: un-skippable advertising is a big one that drives people to torrented content that's an overall better experience. Charging Hulu so much they still have to play ads. Not allowing people to share content.
Oh yeah, and fair pricing. Steam has a huge amount of revenue in older content that's had significant price drops. MPAA should look into that.
OK, but I'm talking about a film that is available on streaming media (Netflix and Amazon, within the US at least). And there are no ads or anything if you watch it that way. There's a reason I picked a single example to study closely, it already addresses several of the things you mention.
Oh yeah, and fair pricing. Steam has a huge amount of revenue in older content that's had significant price drops. MPAA should look into that.
??? Old films are already cheap, on the whole. Do you want the MPAA to set price controls across the industry? Because that would be illegal in the US, surely you've noticed several high-profile cases about price-fixing by Apple etc.
I think that people who are happy to watch only the content available on Amazon/Netflix, are not the people whose behavior you want to change. So your case study is IMO starting with flawed assumptions (that people who are content with existing streaming services still pirate content).
I'm not assuming that. I'm asking why people who have access to extremely affordable streaming services but who choose to torrent anyway do so. Why should the creators of film X be penalized for the unavailability of film Y on a streaming service by people who are downloading film X?
I mean, I get that people would like a streaming service that had every film that ever existed available instantly, but there isn't any way to force such a thing to come into existence without essentially forcing everyone to license their work to it, and while it doesn't exist some people are always going to cite it as an excuse not to pay for anything that is easily available. And again, my original question was what you would expect someone in the MPAA to do on behalf of users.
> why people who have access to extremely affordable streaming services but who choose to torrent anyway do so.
I think the only real answer here is unavailability of content in a sufficiently convenient/appealing form. But you've already written off unavailability of content as a reason you want to deal with, so I don't think there are any remaining answers for you.
Regarding pricing, Disney is a good example of a company who are highly restrictive of when and for how much their content is available. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this translates to higher piracy rates.
Ah, I see. Well, you're quite right about Disney, but they're actually rather exceptional. Most films that go out of print or become hard to find do so because they're just not very popular, and the apparently-tiny audience isn't enough to offset the costs of bringing it onto a new platform (which can run into tens of thousands - QA requirements are very specific and if you don't meet them exactly it costs the streaming operator nothing to refuse it).
I left out the numbers for foreign-language versions
You know Netflix isn't available with the same content in English language speaking countries?. Or that there are English language native speakers in places where Netflix isn't available?
