Most profitable movie ever was also most pirated of 2010 | Hacker News Reader

Most profitable movie ever was also most pirated of 2010

torrentfreak.com

36 pointsBud49 comments

In other news, the most popular car is also the most stolen one.

I'm not trying to draw a comparison between piracy and theft, but is this article telling us anything other than popular things are, well, popular?

Except that the most popular car is the most stolen because it is the one physically most available to thieves. Digitally, almost all these movies have the same availability. The only thing the data shows are what movies are popular among people who download pirated films. It also might imply that there is a market between the $20 BluRay and the $0 download.

This is getting off topic, but cars frequently stolen are stolen because they are a) easy to steal, and b) are valued for parts (i.e. body shops are willing to pay for them). Mid-90s Accords, Civics, and Camrys have consistently been most stolen for years now.

A car is not the same thing as a movie, even though a car can BE in a movie. That does nothing to explain why both can be stolen, but its probably hard to clone and then post a car on a web site, and only one of them is an intangible item... Go figure!!!

Also the fact that Avatar can only truly be appreciated in 3D. I don't see a reason to pirate it, unless you have a 3D TV.

No...but piracy IS theft none the less.

> No...but piracy IS theft none the less.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it." (English Theft Act 1968 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft)

"Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, " http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html

"copyright infringement" != "theft"

Is it? Legally, that does not appear to be the case, at least not yet.

It's as much theft as recording something on a VCR and giving a tape to your friend.

I believe this tells us a lot. The torrent crowd does not represent exactly the moviegoers audience. Lots of downloaders would never go to the movies, even if they crave a movie, it represent different age groups, different behaviours

For instance, "Kick Ass" which is largely a film designed for geeks, is #2 even though it only did $98 million at the box office. You've got to wonder why it's ahead of Inception. In the same way, "Alice in Wonderland" did $1.02 billion in 2010 but it's not on the top 10. The torrent demographic is probably the same one that'd jailbreak the iPhone or use Android more than the rest of the society. A demographic immune to marketing, which can sort out good movies from bad perhaps better than the press, but also biased towards a certain type of movies (Kick Ass, action hero etc.)

Certainly not immune from marketing! They are immune from marketing that's not targeted towards them, and perhaps from movie studios, but everyone has their actions affected based on some form of mass persuasion.

An interesting note about Kick-Ass is that it's pretty widely known* that director Matthew Vaughn is planning to release an extended cut which has over 18 minutes of deleted material. I loved the movie and would definitely purchase an extended cut, but it doesn't make sense to purchase both. So until then, I don't feel too bad about renting it once and then watching a pirated copy.

It seems to me that the people who are likely to know about the upcoming extended cut are both (1) fans of the film and (2) likely to know how to get a movie via torrents. I'm betting that in the case of Kick-Ass, there is a large source of revenue that is currently untapped pending the release of the extended cut. This could certainly be a contributing factor in the abnormally ratio of downloaded copies vs. revenue.

* at least within a more technical demographic. See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kick-Ass_%28f...

In an interview Matthew Vaughn said, "There is about 18 minutes of [deleted] footage, which is really good stuff. If the film is a hit, I'll do an extended cut."

We can all agree that pretty much every movie is pirated to some degree, correct? So then it's just a discussion of how popular it was to pirate the content. Most popular for the year at the box office has a strong chance of being the most popular for the year on bittorrent. What made it the biggest earner? Popular + 3d novelty + increased 3d ticket prices.

It seems obvious that piracy must reduce income to at least some degree. If TF was trying to make any kind of serious argument they'd have to be able to point at a similarly popular movie that wasn't pirated at all and show it didn't do significantly better. Since everything gets (heavily) pirated, we have nothing to compare it to.

You might find it obvious that piracy must reduce income, but I don't think that's obvious at all. I don't pretend to know one way or the other. I think it's approximately just as likely that, at least in some cases, piracy can and has INCREASED income, by increasing hype and interest in a given movie or recording, which drives more awareness of it, which then eventually leads to some sales. Anecdotally, speaking only for myself, I'll admit to having pirated some media, gotten very interested, and then purchased that same media, either to reward the creators, or because I wanted a legit copy or a higher-quality copy, etc. I've also pirated some media, gotten interested, and then recommended it to many others, some of whom have then purchased it.

Why do you think it's obvious that piracy will always reduce income?

I expect the hype generated by a pirated movie is reverse correlation to the movie's budget -- a blockbuster is already marketed to the nth degree, so additional hype from a bittorrent release is probably not going to make much impact. On the other hand, bittorrent releases of small budget movies can make a film's popularity explode[1].

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/producer-thanks-pirates-for-stealing...

I can't say whether pirating media will lose or gain money for the studios/producers/etc. but I know one thing for sure. You are not entitled to that media and if you don't like the methods in which these studios provide it then your only legal option is to not consume it. I'm over peoples use of the same tired excuses to justify piracy.

You can say that about any law that people disagree with and/or break. But being tired of the argument is irrelevant to whether it has validity. If you don't want to participate in it, then perhaps you shouldn't participate in it.

I've edited my post to more clearly reflect my opinion on the matter. I agree that people have the rights to disagree with and attempt to change laws. Though I haven't seen any arguments that are more than people feeling entitled to things. If someone uses their time and effort to create something it is up to them to distribute it as they see fit. I see piracy as nothing more than denying the owner of content the distribution method of their choice. Of course they may pick a method that isn't the most profitable, but that is their choice to make.

> I haven't seen any arguments that are more than people feeling entitled to things.

* Economically: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...

* Morally: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip...

I'd draw a distinction between trying to "justify" piracy, which I am not trying to do, and pointing out that the MPAA's anti-piracy arguments are ludicrous and that their proposed penalties are massive overkill, which is closer to my actual point.

I have no disagreement with your point that nobody is "entitled" to pirate anything.

If you look at Kick-Ass, it was downloaded more than Inception but made about a tenth of Inception's worldwide gross. This suggests to me that because its cinematic 'wow factor' was less, pirates took the opportunity to forego the theatre experience and enjoy it for free. I can't see how piracy has helped it here - judging by its popularity it should have made an awful lot more money. If piracy drove ticket sales then why the stark contrast with Inception?

I am exactly the type of person Kick-Ass is targeted towards. If it was not available to me via torrent, I would not watch it at all. As it is, I have it downloaded, but not watched yet.

There is no possible universe where Kick-Ass has made money from me.

It is still theft no matter how many flowery words you try to use and how you try to justify it.

Your last three comments consist of you claiming that piracy is theft. Either you actually think that repeating a belief will make people agree with you, or you're trolling. Either way, please come up with a better argument (each of these three comments has at least one person debunking it, using the standard "theft deprives a person of an object, piracy does not" argument, which I have yet to see successfully disproved).

That's easy to disprove. Property is not an object but a right of disposal. If you steal someone's car, you have deprived them of their property because they can no longer dispose of their car how they wish. If you steal somebody's movie, you have deprived them of their property because they can no longer dispose of their movie how they wish (ie. control its distribution). They can still watch the movie, but their property has still been infringed.

You may say that's a semantic argument, but then frankly so is this whole 'piracy isn't theft' thing.

...and if the publisher decides to effect new control over the DVDs I've already purchased? Is it theft that I do not return them?

It is not theft or subtraction, it is piracy.

There was no loss when bits are copied, but because the downloader has no rights to the media, it is piracy.

There was no lost sales because the fact remains: the user wants a copy of the media or content without paying. To suggest that they would pay in some alternate universe is fantasy.

Interesting to look at the potential revenue lost through these downloads:

Kick Ass - Heavily pirated, not a huge commercial success If everyone who DLed it paid $8 it would have doubled its revenue (and pretty much all of this would have been profit). That's obv impossible to achieve but $2.99 a DL would make a big difference.

It is available as a $3.99 rental download from iTunes and Amazon VOD.

I'd be interested to see the gross effects on Media (DVD and Blu-ray) gross, in addition to the Box Office gross, in this comparison. Anyone know where one could find those numbers?

I would think that BitTorrent downloads would have more of an impact on Media purchases than Box Office purchases.

While the most profitable movie was the most pirated, if you'll notice, the second most pirated movie was far from the second most grossing movie. I would like to have seen a more consistent correlation for pirating vs grossing, but second place breaks the trend.

Exceptions don't break trends, they break rules. Claiming a trend is not the same as claiming a rule.

To me, this gives the lie to MPAA. I like things like that. ;)

they would just multiply the number of downloads by the average ticket price and ask for the compensation for the lost revenues caused by piracy.

What if those downloads were by people who already paid to see the movie in theaters and downloaded it later to watch it again?

If they waited for the DVD or Blueray to be released they could watch it an unlimited number of times after paying once. Should each time they watch it at home on a legally purchased DVD be considered a lost theater sale?

Well, actually, from what we've all seen, MPAA and RIAA like to ask for much larger penalties than that; sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, per violation.

No, that would be much closer to a reasonable penalty than they attempt to incur.

Except, it doesn't, really.

I imagine that if you surveyed bookstores, you'd find that there is a strong correlation between the best-selling books and the most-shoplifted books. Does this imply that shoplifting should be legal?

If you want to argue against the MPAA, you're going to have to find a better argument than this one.

Are you drawing a direct analogy between piracy (which does not involve stealing of a physical item that costs money to produce) and shoplifting (which does)?

Seems to me that that's a very shaky analogy. There's no way for the bookstore to end up ahead on that transaction. But there ARE multiple ways for a movie studio or recording studio to end up ahead on the transaction that I am highlighting here.

I think this is a very strong argument against the MPAA, despite what you say. The MPAA, as we know, likes to claim and pretend that all piracy is evil, that it costs them massive amounts of revenue in all cases, that they cannot possibly survive as an industry in a world where piracy exists. These claims are far from proven; some would say they are ludicrous.

Is it not possible that the shoplifter raves about the book to all their friends and they go buy copies from the store thus ending up ahead? That's the same reasoning I've seen FOR piracy of digital content. I know it's not a good analogy, but both situations are possible. Doesn't make shoplifting or piracy right.

> Seems to me that that's a very shaky analogy.

You let that straw man live for all of a millisecond before you struck him down, you cruel bastard.

> There's no way for the bookstore to end up ahead on that transaction.

Yes there is, following the same line of reasoning you've been using on this page. Someone shoplifts the book, reads it, likes it, and recommends it to multiple friends.

If that is such an advantage, then show me one bookstore owner who encourages theft for that purpose. And special give-aways don't count, since those are chosen by the business owner.

By that reasoning, piracy doesn't benefit movie studios, either--if it did, movie studios would encourage it. Which means the analogy still stands.

Exactly, piracy doesn't benefit movie studios.

All piracy is evil. That is why it is called "piracy". It is theft pure and simple.

Theft is the substraction of an object. Priacy may be wrong, it sure is illegal, but it is not theft. Saying piracy is theft is akin to saying braking and entering is murder.

Did torrent freak imply that sharing movies like this should be legal?

I'd say that no matter what the correlation, the penalty for shoplifting shouldn't be $25,000 per book.

How come people can pirate Chuck Norris movies, given what they say about him? It seems impossible.

Chuck Norris doesn't type, he thinks. And the internet comes together.

You know the stuxnet worm? That was chuck norris randomly mashing some keys.

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