Piracy Once Again Fails To Cripple Or Destroy Movie, Music, Television, or Software Industries
The New York Times reported today that box office receipts are up 6.5% from last year, and attendance is up nearly 5%.
Despite the MPAA's failed attempt to bring down one of the world's largest bittorrent trackers, The Pirate Bay, this year, the industry is experiencing growth.
The MPAA, meanwhile, attributes the lack of an additional $18.2 billion dollars in their pockets last year to piracy. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they came up with that figure, so I dug a little deeper. The MPAA's 2005 U.S. Piracy "Fact" (quotes mine) Sheet offers only this nugget in reference to the statistic: "Piracy loss calculations are based on the number of legitimate movies - movie tickets and legitimate DVDs - consumers would have purchased if pirated versions were not available."
So, okay, get this: to calculate their "losses" figure in anti-piracy press, the MPAA includes every illegal copy made, every bootleg sold, and every movie illegally downloaded as a lost sale. Not only that, but the MPAA couldn't possibly have reliable statistics for illegal copies, bootlegs, and illegal downloads. Why? Because such statistics don't exist and would be incredibly difficult to compile.
That's like estimating the number of blowjobs that happened in the United States last year by counting the married couples and multiplying by five.
To put the figure in perspective, Exhibitor Relations is projecting over $9 billion domestic box-office total. So, above and beyond the strange mathematics they used to calculate their "loss" figure, the MPAA estimates that the loss from piracy actually amounts to 200% of their annual domestic box-office gross *on a growth year*.
Oh, and MPAA, if you're listening, I borrowed my friend Eric's legitimate Old School DVD because I couldn't bring myself to see it in the theatre, buy the DVD, or rent the darn thing. It just looked too bad. But I watched it. And didn't pay for it. So add another $20 to that loss figure. Or $10, if you thought I'd see it at the theatre. Or $3.50 if you thought I would rent it.
In other news, Viacom's revenues up 7% in the third quarter, Microsoft's first quarter revenues up 11%, and Warner Music's revenue up 11% this past quarter.