The Fight of Our Four Fathers
Back in the day, there was a string of commercials stating, "Piracy is a crime!" Featuring all of this mumbo jumbo about you wouldn't steal a movie, a purse, a car, a handbag, etc. Don't recall? Check it out to refresh your memory:
Now our four fathers of the Entertainment Industry were concerned piracy is stealing, which is a very logical statement. Back in the day, the thought was if an album, movie, or book was downloaded off our long lost friend Limewire, then the revenue from that media was long gone thus causing economic harm to the entertainment industry. Let's dive into it a little more though, shall we?
Piracy of 2014
2014 has brought a new light onto piracy. The same light shined upon me a few years back as I looked into piracy a little more. The Tribeca Film Festival programmer, Cara Cusumano is quoted in the article on ABC News that:
"Piracy is less about people not wanting to pay and more about just wanting the immediacy - people saying, 'I want to watch Spiderman right now' and downloading it," she said.
"I think that if companies were willing to put that material out there, moving forward, consumers will follow."
I agree - personally for myself, I HATE going to the movies. I HATE sitting in front of some kid kicking my chair, paying $10 for popcorn and a soda, and potentially seeing a terrible movie that IMDB has ramped up as the "Best film ever!" I would rather download the movie, sit on my nice comfortable couch with my beautiful wife, have a couple drinks, and be safe at home watching a movie that may or may not be terrible.
Piracy & Me
Now before the FBI kicks my door in, let's expand on my view on piracy. I am a musician, I have created content, and my content has been downloaded legally and illegally. Am I hurt? No. Was I financially hurt? Yes, but only in the short term.
The short term?
Yes the short term. Piracy is a wave. Someone downloads a movie, watches it. If it's good, they tell their friends to check it out. If it's not good, they tell their friends to stay away. So let's analyze this in a more elaborated fashion.
I download The Box Trolls today and LOVED IT. I tell a lot of people I know, some young some old, how awesome it was. The older folks, that don't know the first thing about piracy, go to the movies, purchase the ticket along with the $10 popcorn/soda combo and enjoy the film thus creating revenues for both local and industry businesses. The younger folks might download the movie, or they may take a night out with friends or family and check it out, thus creating more revenues. The ripple effect from their reviews can influence more people to do the same. Now, I know in a perfect world all of these people won't get up and go see the movie, but they may rent it on On Demand services from their local cable provider, or hey maybe they will download it illegally. The exposure of the film a pirated movie receives can in turn generate revenues for the industry.
The Long Term
Didn't we just discuss long term? A little, but let's take it from the music side. This info-graphic from 2012 shows how many music release downloads performed in just 6 months in 2012.
Pretty large numbers, right? They are, but let's take some alternative views on the chart. Back in 2006 I bought myself a nice Breaking Benjamin CD, I listened to it so much in my car and house that the CD became unreadable and scratched. Now, why would I go and buy the content again to pay for music I already 'own'? In this case, I remember downloading the album again, burning it to a CD, and probably scratching about four more copies before the CD was retired from my collection. Is this piracy? By an overall definition, yes, but is it piracy in my scenario? I believe a judge would have to rule on this one, but I would say a jury would say no.
Second Scenario: I pirate the new August Burns Red album (Rescue and Restore). I love the album, tell my friends, and jam to it for months. August Burns Red goes on tour with Vans Warped Tour, I buy a ticket, pick up some merchandise from the band, and go about my merry way. A few months later they release a vinyl version of their album, I buy it and all the variations of colors they offer which totaled to be about $100 to the band. During this time I am listening to the album, my friend hears the album, likes it, and then purchased the album via iTunes because he doesn't know how to pirate albums or simply doesn't like piracy in general. The cycle from that friend ripples towards new listeners and the revenues climb.
Fight It or Embrace It?
My views as you can see are simple. I feel that the entertainment industry should no longer look to spend millions fighting piracy, but spend money towards researching piracy trends. A simple search on Piratebay.org for the new movie If I Stay shows that there are ten torrents with 2659 seeds sharing the movie. Entertainment industry marketing professionals should take this data, process it into ads or promotions, and capitalize on potential revenue streams.
An article on Forbes.com analyzes if piracy is the new advertising. In this article, he states an experiment that occurred with a book called American Gods. For one full month, they put the book for free to download or read on the publisher's website. Now in the publishing company's mind this would cause a huge drop in sales, but in this case sales of the book increased 300% one month after the free experiment was done. The article also goes on to re-enforce my views on piracy stating, "if people are exposed to your work and enjoy it—even if they originally pirated it—they will eventually buy your work. Perhaps they won’t buy thework (book, music, etc) they pirated, but they’ll soon enough buy something else."
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, the views on piracy should be re-evaluated by media industries and embraced as a way to reach out to their customers. Maybe companies can capitalize by putting movies or music on piracy sites and adding watermarks or ads within them to advertise where and when to buy the works. Use the internet to distribute the works, but make them pay to get the watermarks removed. Another idea would be to offer discount codes to use for movies, music, or other media within the advertisements. Some revenue is better than no revenue!
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