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Is Piracy Overrated?
Hi Folks,
Another in my series of articles which I expect some strong responses
against.
I hear all this hue and cry about piracy, but then I go to
Variety.com and under box office collections I see the following:
American Desi — $1.5 million
Monsoon Wedding — $23 million
Bend It —- $60 million
ABCD —– $120K (K= thousand)
Green Card ——- $181K
American Chai —-$135K
( Now you know why I say There is American Desi and then there are
all the others…MW & BILB are in a separate category, American Desi
is in the gnere of the Indian American Film Movement)
And these are just theatrical release collections, add to that the
dvd/cable and I am thinking , people are crying piracy as the root
cause for their film failing, then how come these films made
reasonable money (as in probably recovred their costs and then some).
So are the “piracy criers” really following the adage on ” a bad
workman or workwomen (being gender sensitive here) always blames
their tools. or is is a case of sour grapes, cause I see a lot of the
Indian American (not the above) lying in original, unpirated forms on
the shelves of grocery stores and not moving at all (plus they are
all originals and not pirated….so does this mean that even pirates
are not too concerned about them). BTW the only pirated copy of the
above mentioned films that I have seen , other than MW & BILB, is
American Desi. The others were all in their origianl format.
So are we crying “pirates” when we should be crying “quality or the
lack thereof.”
On an unrealted note some other interesting collection numbers from
Variety.com
Harold & Kumar - $ 15. 8 million and growing (way to go Karl & John)
Village - $100 million and growing (M. Night you are a stud, disney
from potential Chapter 11 to very much in the profits thanks to Manoj)
Lakshya - $1.3 mill and accumulating ( a certain Mr. Adarsh feels
those are “floppy” numbers for theatrical in the US, in that case my
answer …I love flops.)
Main Hoon Na - $2.6 million
Yuva -$600K, another one said to be a bad “flop” by you know who.
In anticipation of igniting a lot of fires here,
Sincerely,
Vivek “a good movie does well pirates nothwithstanding and a bad
movies does bad pirates not-with-it-standing” Kumar
13 Responses to “Is Piracy Overrated?”
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Piracy eats about 25% share of a B-grade film, 10% share of a C-grade film and close to 40% share of an A-grade one. (Source:Financial Express)
These figures are irrespective of a movie is flop or not.Now tell me,is privacy overrated?
I have stopped trusting the Indian critics or so called ‘trade analysts’. Reasons are aplenty. personal prejudices, playing favorites, celebration of mediocrity to prove ‘one’s point’, giving anothet of those ‘mass’ class’ discourse as to why a film did or didnt work etc etc.
I am not taking any names but I guess the usual suspects dont need an introduction. its time ‘they’ start seeing real cinema instead of leaving preview shows of films to write The First Ever Verdict on ABC film every friday.
there are countless examples of films which have suffered at the mercy of these monsters.
that reminds me of a line from Bluffmaster…
“NANA: trailer aksar achha hota hai, film nahi…
AB: to ticket mat khareed….”
in other words, never go by what they say, be your own judge.
as far as piracy is concerned, it is overrated.
its a very debatable issue as it takes the color of ethical preferences and one’s ‘usool’s’ but i would just like to say, come to Bangalore and visit National Market, and see all the rarest of classic world cinema DVDs and dont buy them if you can resist the temptation!
There is an easy way of combating privacy – studios/producers/distributors reduce the prices of the releases. When CDs came out in the music world, the goal was that they’d be much cheaper than tapes b/c they are cheaper to produce. The recording industry got greedy and kept prices the same. So, they are paying for it.
If the cost of a movie on DVD was $4, say, then they’d pretty much wipe out pirates since they’d dramatically reduce margins. Microsoft is trying this with reduced prices on software in China.
Piracy can be controlled through market mechanisms and not regulation. Market mechanisms always work better.
Piracy is here to live…Is piracy over rated?Hell no!A film releases on friday and you can easily access a camera print of the film on the sunday of the same week and the final cut within two weeks.Just today,I checked out the newly entered lot of golden dvds which push in around 8 to 9 films in one disc.I saw a chalie chaplin collection on the roads which had films like city lights,the great dictator,the kid,the life and arts of chaplin ,gold rush,all this and more for just 200 rupees!Really kills the value of movies,doesn’t it?This same stall had a stanley kubrick collection,a fellini collection and a scorsese collection.All their works for a price you pay for a single ticket….
Films do recover their costs and earn profits..But boss,40% is too high a share to be stolen away by piracy.On one hand we blame the media generated hype ,undue publicity and marketing gimmicks employed to pull us to the theatres and on the other hand we say piracy is over rated.It’s piracy which is forcing producers to misguide us and marketing each new film as a masterpiece.I am not defending them but thats what they do to get us in the theatres.Piracy is flourishing more than ever now and if it isn’t stopped,be prepared for 10 more Dons and krrshs.Also be prpepared oliver stone collections and Anurag kashyap collections.
P.S.;The only good thing piracy did is made black friday available to the general public!
If there was no piracy, I would never see get to see Water too!
this anti-piracy campaign is so shameless, seriously.
these big stars come on the screen and beg us to fight piracy. how much more money do they want?
in hyderabad, its damn hard to get tickets for a big star’s movie in the first week. cos half or more than half of the tickets are sold in black by the theater management itself. is any movie star trying to stop this? and they ask people to go to the theater and watch the movie instead of watching it on a pirated cd.
anyways heres something interesting happening in sweden.
there is a young political party called ‘the pirate party’.
it is against hardcore copyright laws, it is FOR sharing.
well to know more about it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
and do read this speech made by the party leader. its translated to english from swedish.
http://tpbeng.blogspot.com/2006/06/demonstration-speech-pics.html
very interesting.
good links, Kalki. I have a simple policy for piracy, noone might agree with it. Only buy a pirated copy when you CANT procure the original, which is mostly european cinema in my case. as for the Hindi film scene, things are looking good now. the market is more conditioned towards revenue from the video and satellite rights.
moving further, i strongly feel there has been a gradual but a positive move towards developing an indian DVD industry, which we can see is flourishing now, thanks to the early DVD releases, the ‘parallel-crossover’ movement,a pro-buying and consumerist shopping-mall culture,house full weekend shows(generally costing higher than the price of a DVD), and the over all feel-good indian cosmo guy who would not mind buying a hazaaron khwahishen aisi if he has heard a lot about it. Now,it might be a personal opinion but i am generally more inclined towards paying the indian movie makers than their western counterparts. i might cite many a reasons for it, i would be more than willing to buy a Yahaan or a Maqbool, or a 1947 Earth, swades, even a yuva, which come at a way more affordable price slab than say a fight club , which wud cost me 600 bucks to procure an ‘original’ dvd(why the hell should i pay the currency differential! i am not bothered about your stupid third world economics, i am a film watcher, not the one to wallow in the misery of dollar convertibility). moreover, i feel the makers of a fight club or a godfather would have earned enough dough to feed their future 10 generations….again, no offences, its a IMHO thought.
stupid logic, right? i thought so too.
btw, has anyone heard about PIRATE, Priyadarsan’s ambitious project based on the piracy theme. he wanted rahman to do the music for the film, but ironically PREETAM, the new offspring of the pirates’ legacy of bappi lahiri n anu malik, is doing the music for it!
@Tushar
Hey,I kind of like your policy..Its funny and somewhat logical at the same time…
yaaa!! i ll call my mom right away and tell her that ONE person thinks i am logical! :-)
:) ok heres another policy.
after one(or two? or three) year of a movie’s release, rip all its copyrights and ownership. and put it in the public domain. anybody should be able to download, share, broadcast it without legal restrictions.
I am all for piracy, especially after the multi-plex boom. There are hardly any single hall cinemas in the vicinity in the capital and seeing a movie with family mean a BIG HOLE in one’s pocket….No copyright for entertainmet!
LONg Live Piracy!!!!
It has to do with economics, a parallel economy(piracy) exists only to counter the oppressive structure of free market economy, audio/visual media lies in the realm of the intangible, it’s impossible to create, own and distribute media without infringement, unless it’s truly democratic and only the end user decides how much he should pay for it, the internet and youtube are showing us the way. piracy, like corruption, is what keeps your children warm and cozy at night.
Piracy also helps accessibility to media, to international cinema for example, if not for piracy, i’d probably be hailing spielberg as the greatest filmmaker in the world, i remember anurag (kashyap) writing an incredible article on this issue in tehelka, almost a year back, its a must read.
interesting angle madhur. deep.
true.