when you copy theatre screeners or cam the movie thats poking a stick right in a sleeping bears eye
What percent could, even if they wanted to pay, watch the movie legitimately in their country?
Does it matter if you watch a cam if you're not even able to pay for the movie?
The thing about movies is that they're also part of societal culture - in The West at least.
In my personal opinion copyright is all kinds of messed up, and limiting the length of copyright terms (to say 7 years from public release) first would somewhat legitimise such harsh actions.
This is an interesting point. Moral correctness aside...
The content industries try as hard as possible to make their stuff "socially mandatory" via marketing. If they could make it law to consume their product they would.
So, socially: For as long as there is such a social pressure, there will be people who try to fulfill that pressure at least expense.
And financially: In a world where you have increasing financial inequality, the balance of people for whom it is "worth their time" to find a cheaper way becomes greater.
So I don't think piracy is going anywhere, until the motivations are gone. For that, "all digital copies are free" is technically feasible.(Again, moral correctness aside.)
But I don't know what the commercial world would look like to allow that to happen.
Currently the long copyright terms are not encouraging innovation; the same works are being resold to the same people over and over.
Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek to name a few. These things haven't died out because they have people invested in their brand and storyline.
But they also haven't done anything super cool because they don't want to take the risk they might damage their brand. They try to make"reliable blockbusters".
when a movie is being sold on disk after theatre showings close out, there is already a return for investments and disk sales are just gravy.
disks are played many times lent out to family and friends watched in recap after the theatre and donated to thrift shops. a large group of people can "steal" by watching for free multiple times, but millions have been made in theatre wages paid and investors pacified.
when a movie is cammed this cuts into the revenue.
i believe in a co-existence being possible however thats short circuited by the one "free" view == one lost/stolen sale mentality.
They still got their share of the fixed pie. Theft isn't infringement.
Theaters probably "lose" orders of magnitude more revenue to teenagers watching 2-3 films after only paying for the first ticket.
Is there proof of this?
even teleciene versions are few in number [a way of camming in your pirate loPHt]. it seems cams were a counting coup for scene credit and its now just looked at as dangerous.
actual copying of prerelease screeners is in the mire as well. screeners basically were watermarked and sent out as promotionals so a theatre location could judge if they wanted to show them or not, and as promos in store to encourage rentals.
Some more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine_(copying).