8 ms·

Hollywood Wants To Kill Piracy? No Problem: Just Offer Something Better

35 points by ttt_ 15y ago

samstave 15y ago
Thats what is so confusing about hollywood - they want to kill piracy and at the same time kill/supress netflix. They are an outdated model.
- ttt_ 15y ago
  Perhaps this against the current behavior will lead them to exhaust their resources and make them naturally selectable for extinction as a business model. They had their chance to evolve.
  - greyfade 15y ago
    But they can't go bankrupt until the movie studios themselves go insolvent. The problem is these studios are rolling in cash. Even if they were to lose significant piles of it, they'd simply be bough tout by another large corporation that can afford to pump yet more money into it. They'll remain on life support so long as people go to theaters to watch blockbuster movies. Their business model won't change until people as a whole turn away form them.
- rmc 15y ago
  Thats what is so confusing about hollywood - they want to kill piracy and at the same time kill/supress netflix. It might sound like a confusing inconsistant approach, but it's entirely sensible when you realise that hollywood wants to go back to the 80s/90s. No mass piracy, and no online service.
  - bo1024 15y ago
    You mean 1940s? Only way you see the movie is if you come to the theater and pays your fee in person.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      No, they like video sales, because they make a huge amount of money on them. I'd say their ideal golden age occurred in the days after people had video playback equipment, but before the availability of home recording equipment, or at least before such equipment went digital. They'd like a widespread network of consumption devices, but no ability to create or copy content like theirs.
gxs 15y ago
The thing is I don't think you really can kill piracy and Hollywood should realize that it doesn't need to. For me personally, piracy is a crime of opportunity - I do it because it's easy and available. However, me downloading movie doesn't represent lost revenue for Hollywood - if I were forced to pay for a movie, I would simply do something else. This is what I think goes over the head of Hollywood execs. If a youtoube music video has 5M views, it doesn't mean it missed out on 5M customers, it just means 5M were willing to watch something for free. As a side note, the one movie service I have paid for in the past 5 years, Redbox, has strong opposition from Hollywood. I use it because as the OP mentions, it's better than pirating. Instant, convenient, and the cost is a non issue. Why doesn't Hollywood embrace this rather than oppose it? Who knows. All that said, it starting to feel like we're beating a dead horse here on HN.
CoughlinJ 15y ago
People WILL pay for convenience. It makes absolutely no sense for them to resist a move like this. Their misguided rationalizations are going to drag them down.
jmsduran 15y ago
I remember watching a documentary a while back on how Hollywood screened and rated TV/film productions. It angered me to see that focus groups consisting mostly of soccer moms controlled our movie rating system & what we see on TV. This is exactly what's wrong with Hollywood and the music industry in America. Seriously, it amazes me how an industrial complex like Hollywood can collectively make so many dumb mistakes, that would otherwise cripple/kill other industries, and still rake in billions.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  The documentary you're probably referring to is "This Film is Not Yet Rated" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/).
darxius 15y ago
I think Hollywood is way to resistant to change. People (consumers) are quick to pick up new technologies to fit their needs. Big corporations can either comply and cater to those needs or force their own model on their customers. The latter is NEVER the correct decision. Companies exist solely to please customers (which in turn amasses profit and satisfies investors). Hollywood, you work for us.
tlogan 15y ago
As a user here is what I want: * I search for movie/TV series title using Google what I want to watch, * I find it, * I type my credit card number and * I watch. But no - I cannot. I don't need special features or other things: I have money - you have the movie I want to watch.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  AppleTV. 'nuf said. OK, so it doesn't have everything yet, but between that & Netflix there's more than enough to keep most satisfied, and more content is always being added. And you don't have to enter your CC# more than once. Funny, Apple is making crazy money by offering customers the best implementation of what you want, rather than cutting them off...
  - chc 15y ago
    If by "AppleTV" you mean the iTunes Store (since AppleTV does not provide its own content), you have to be joking. No wonder the content companies are most friendly to that place — it makes their old distribution channels look downright cheap. Three episodes of "Whitney" costs as much as a month's subscription to Netflix.
    - tomkinstinch 15y ago
      Perhaps this is the problem. Does content have inherently lower value now that it is abundant, and distributed for (nearly) free? If content providers charged say, (cost of bandwidth)+10%, for each item rather than arbitrary whole-dollar prices, they would certainly see more takers--and perhaps higher profit.
      - chc 15y ago
        I don't think cost-based pricing is the answer. Cost-based pricing is almost never the answer unless you're a charity, and it creates some really perverse incentives for the producer (for example, if I'm running my web service as cost-plus, it's in my interest to buy gold-plated servers cooled by ice hauled in from Antarctica — 10% of that is a lot more than 10% of $200). I do think the value of entertainment has dropped as the supply has ballooned. The problem is basically just that they're stubborn as a mule and refuse to seriously compete in the market that exists today. They want to keep things the way they were, and if you ask for something else, they'd rather just take their ball and go home than negotiate. And I mean, that's their right, but when they do that, they are really the ones who are undermining their business model.
res0nat0r 15y ago
This is a nice, but typical Reddit solution which is a bit more complicated in reality. There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life. Also Steam works well because it really isn't easy for the common consumer to copy a Steam game vs. as easy as it would be to copy a single unencrypted movie file to share casually with their friends. It is much easier to buy a movie on this Steam type clone and then put it online or give it to everyone you know, which the industry won't want. Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly.
- irishcoffee 15y ago
  "Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly." So... you're saying it should be web-based? I'd also argue the common steam user can torrent just as well as anyone else, they choose not to (at least 95% of the steam users I know) because they can get a legit copy at a fair price.
- randomdata 15y ago
  > There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life. Copyright is not a right, it s a privilege given to promote the creation of new works in exchange for reasonable access to that work. Hollywood could easily lobby the government about their contracts not being in the spirit of copyright and that they need to be wiped clean in the interest of the American people. Instead, they lobby to reduce the reasonable access even further. Forcing people into pirating even more. I guess they know they have a better chance changing the law for 300 million people than to change it for a couple of other corporations. Pretty sad, really.
  - greyish_water 15y ago
    Copyright is not a right I don't think you've thought that through. Forcing people into pirating Nobody is forced into pirating.
oflannabhra 15y ago
I agree that convenience and ease of use are a compelling argument for piracy, but really I think that most piracy occurs because it is free. It just so happens that the technology that makes piracy possible also makes it convenient and easy. Really, what we are asking Hollywood to do is compete with free. This post is saying "Tack on all these features to your movies, and I'll pay less than the current price of your movie for those features." I get the feeling that Hollywood hears that as "Your product has no value, so do all these things to add value to it." Hollywood is saying: "We shouldn't have to compete with free. Our product has value (regardless of delivery or portability). Free is illegal." Now, this may or may not be the case technologically, but I find it difficult to fault an industry for failing to come to terms with those realities.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  To continue the recurring argument... No, it's not just because it's free. There's a cost to the "free" route: technical adeptness & tools, time digging for what you want, dealing with crappy rips, etc. Sure, it may be cheap, but it's not free. Nothing is free. And that's the point of the OP: most customers are willing to pay, so long as the price is lower than the alternatives - and for most customers, that's making selection & delivery drop-dead easy to the tune of pocket change. [poster pauses, noting he hasn't had any change in his pocket for weeks due to ubiquity of plastic]. Apple is doing very well distributing content for a market it had nothing to do with a few years ago - why? because they made distribution easy to the point that those with limited time and a little spare change will pay a few bucks to watch/hear something right now, with less effort & better quality than pirate channels. Oh, sure, a few people will opt for "free" out of more time/resources than money, or out of sheer tenacity, but they're of marginal impact so long as the price & ease balance. Hollywood's problem, like that of Kodak, Smith Corona, and other big-money megacorps of the past, is that technology changes the supply-and-demand curves, reducing the value of their products. It still ain't free, but the value per unit is dropping ... and the middlemen and stakeholders are going to squeeze every penny they can out of their cash cow until the carcass stops producing.
  - oflannabhra 15y ago
fabiandesimone 15y ago
To me, the offer exists. Is called Cuevana.tv (http://www.cuevana.tv http://www.cuevana.tv) I would GLADLY pay Cuevana 35$ a month to watch the content in there. That's 35$ the industry is not getting from me when they could. Hollywood should embrace sites like Cuevana: they would have the distribution, the bandwidth, up-loaders, ratings, subtitles... all outsourced for FREE. Not to mention, these type of sites can work like marketing tools: you have ratings, user sentiment, geography... It pains me the amount of effort being placed to find a solution to stop this. It makes no sense.
janlukacs 15y ago
They will do that at some point, however at the moment it's probably cheaper to pay off politicians and keep the old model going for as long as they can. it's as simple as that.
arjunnarayan 15y ago
I have a dream. I want to pay the Government of the United Kingdom for a TV License, and the right to stream all their stuff using iPlayer. I would also like to stream BBC One through Four and BBC News conveniently. You can have GBP 144.50 per year from me. If only you will let me do this.

35 points by ttt_ 15y ago

Thats what is so confusing about hollywood - they want to kill piracy and at the same time kill/supress netflix. They are an outdated model.

ttt_ 15y ago
Perhaps this against the current behavior will lead them to exhaust their resources and make them naturally selectable for extinction as a business model. They had their chance to evolve.
- greyfade 15y ago
  But they can't go bankrupt until the movie studios themselves go insolvent. The problem is these studios are rolling in cash. Even if they were to lose significant piles of it, they'd simply be bough tout by another large corporation that can afford to pump yet more money into it. They'll remain on life support so long as people go to theaters to watch blockbuster movies. Their business model won't change until people as a whole turn away form them.
rmc 15y ago
Thats what is so confusing about hollywood - they want to kill piracy and at the same time kill/supress netflix. It might sound like a confusing inconsistant approach, but it's entirely sensible when you realise that hollywood wants to go back to the 80s/90s. No mass piracy, and no online service.
- bo1024 15y ago
  You mean 1940s? Only way you see the movie is if you come to the theater and pays your fee in person.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    No, they like video sales, because they make a huge amount of money on them. I'd say their ideal golden age occurred in the days after people had video playback equipment, but before the availability of home recording equipment, or at least before such equipment went digital. They'd like a widespread network of consumption devices, but no ability to create or copy content like theirs.

gxs 15y ago

The thing is I don't think you really can kill piracy and Hollywood should realize that it doesn't need to. For me personally, piracy is a crime of opportunity - I do it because it's easy and available. However, me downloading movie doesn't represent lost revenue for Hollywood - if I were forced to pay for a movie, I would simply do something else. This is what I think goes over the head of Hollywood execs. If a youtoube music video has 5M views, it doesn't mean it missed out on 5M customers, it just means 5M were willing to watch something for free. As a side note, the one movie service I have paid for in the past 5 years, Redbox, has strong opposition from Hollywood. I use it because as the OP mentions, it's better than pirating. Instant, convenient, and the cost is a non issue. Why doesn't Hollywood embrace this rather than oppose it? Who knows. All that said, it starting to feel like we're beating a dead horse here on HN.

CoughlinJ 15y ago

People WILL pay for convenience. It makes absolutely no sense for them to resist a move like this. Their misguided rationalizations are going to drag them down.

jmsduran 15y ago

I remember watching a documentary a while back on how Hollywood screened and rated TV/film productions. It angered me to see that focus groups consisting mostly of soccer moms controlled our movie rating system & what we see on TV. This is exactly what's wrong with Hollywood and the music industry in America. Seriously, it amazes me how an industrial complex like Hollywood can collectively make so many dumb mistakes, that would otherwise cripple/kill other industries, and still rake in billions.

jonnathanson 15y ago
The documentary you're probably referring to is "This Film is Not Yet Rated" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/).

darxius 15y ago

I think Hollywood is way to resistant to change. People (consumers) are quick to pick up new technologies to fit their needs. Big corporations can either comply and cater to those needs or force their own model on their customers. The latter is NEVER the correct decision. Companies exist solely to please customers (which in turn amasses profit and satisfies investors). Hollywood, you work for us.

tlogan 15y ago

As a user here is what I want: * I search for movie/TV series title using Google what I want to watch, * I find it, * I type my credit card number and * I watch. But no - I cannot. I don't need special features or other things: I have money - you have the movie I want to watch.

ctdonath 15y ago
AppleTV. 'nuf said. OK, so it doesn't have everything yet, but between that & Netflix there's more than enough to keep most satisfied, and more content is always being added. And you don't have to enter your CC# more than once. Funny, Apple is making crazy money by offering customers the best implementation of what you want, rather than cutting them off...
- chc 15y ago
  If by "AppleTV" you mean the iTunes Store (since AppleTV does not provide its own content), you have to be joking. No wonder the content companies are most friendly to that place — it makes their old distribution channels look downright cheap. Three episodes of "Whitney" costs as much as a month's subscription to Netflix.
  - tomkinstinch 15y ago
    Perhaps this is the problem. Does content have inherently lower value now that it is abundant, and distributed for (nearly) free? If content providers charged say, (cost of bandwidth)+10%, for each item rather than arbitrary whole-dollar prices, they would certainly see more takers--and perhaps higher profit.
    - chc 15y ago
      I don't think cost-based pricing is the answer. Cost-based pricing is almost never the answer unless you're a charity, and it creates some really perverse incentives for the producer (for example, if I'm running my web service as cost-plus, it's in my interest to buy gold-plated servers cooled by ice hauled in from Antarctica — 10% of that is a lot more than 10% of $200). I do think the value of entertainment has dropped as the supply has ballooned. The problem is basically just that they're stubborn as a mule and refuse to seriously compete in the market that exists today. They want to keep things the way they were, and if you ask for something else, they'd rather just take their ball and go home than negotiate. And I mean, that's their right, but when they do that, they are really the ones who are undermining their business model.

res0nat0r 15y ago

This is a nice, but typical Reddit solution which is a bit more complicated in reality. There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life. Also Steam works well because it really isn't easy for the common consumer to copy a Steam game vs. as easy as it would be to copy a single unencrypted movie file to share casually with their friends. It is much easier to buy a movie on this Steam type clone and then put it online or give it to everyone you know, which the industry won't want. Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly.

irishcoffee 15y ago
"Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly." So... you're saying it should be web-based? I'd also argue the common steam user can torrent just as well as anyone else, they choose not to (at least 95% of the steam users I know) because they can get a legit copy at a fair price.
randomdata 15y ago
> There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life. Copyright is not a right, it s a privilege given to promote the creation of new works in exchange for reasonable access to that work. Hollywood could easily lobby the government about their contracts not being in the spirit of copyright and that they need to be wiped clean in the interest of the American people. Instead, they lobby to reduce the reasonable access even further. Forcing people into pirating even more. I guess they know they have a better chance changing the law for 300 million people than to change it for a couple of other corporations. Pretty sad, really.
- greyish_water 15y ago
  Copyright is not a right I don't think you've thought that through. Forcing people into pirating Nobody is forced into pirating.

oflannabhra 15y ago

I agree that convenience and ease of use are a compelling argument for piracy, but really I think that most piracy occurs because it is free. It just so happens that the technology that makes piracy possible also makes it convenient and easy. Really, what we are asking Hollywood to do is compete with free. This post is saying "Tack on all these features to your movies, and I'll pay less than the current price of your movie for those features." I get the feeling that Hollywood hears that as "Your product has no value, so do all these things to add value to it." Hollywood is saying: "We shouldn't have to compete with free. Our product has value (regardless of delivery or portability). Free is illegal." Now, this may or may not be the case technologically, but I find it difficult to fault an industry for failing to come to terms with those realities.

ctdonath 15y ago
To continue the recurring argument... No, it's not just because it's free. There's a cost to the "free" route: technical adeptness & tools, time digging for what you want, dealing with crappy rips, etc. Sure, it may be cheap, but it's not free. Nothing is free. And that's the point of the OP: most customers are willing to pay, so long as the price is lower than the alternatives - and for most customers, that's making selection & delivery drop-dead easy to the tune of pocket change. [poster pauses, noting he hasn't had any change in his pocket for weeks due to ubiquity of plastic]. Apple is doing very well distributing content for a market it had nothing to do with a few years ago - why? because they made distribution easy to the point that those with limited time and a little spare change will pay a few bucks to watch/hear something right now, with less effort & better quality than pirate channels. Oh, sure, a few people will opt for "free" out of more time/resources than money, or out of sheer tenacity, but they're of marginal impact so long as the price & ease balance. Hollywood's problem, like that of Kodak, Smith Corona, and other big-money megacorps of the past, is that technology changes the supply-and-demand curves, reducing the value of their products. It still ain't free, but the value per unit is dropping ... and the middlemen and stakeholders are going to squeeze every penny they can out of their cash cow until the carcass stops producing.
- oflannabhra 15y ago

fabiandesimone 15y ago

To me, the offer exists. Is called Cuevana.tv (http://www.cuevana.tv http://www.cuevana.tv) I would GLADLY pay Cuevana 35$ a month to watch the content in there. That's 35$ the industry is not getting from me when they could. Hollywood should embrace sites like Cuevana: they would have the distribution, the bandwidth, up-loaders, ratings, subtitles... all outsourced for FREE. Not to mention, these type of sites can work like marketing tools: you have ratings, user sentiment, geography... It pains me the amount of effort being placed to find a solution to stop this. It makes no sense.

janlukacs 15y ago

They will do that at some point, however at the moment it's probably cheaper to pay off politicians and keep the old model going for as long as they can. it's as simple as that.

arjunnarayan 15y ago

I have a dream. I want to pay the Government of the United Kingdom for a TV License, and the right to stream all their stuff using iPlayer. I would also like to stream BBC One through Four and BBC News conveniently. You can have GBP 144.50 per year from me. If only you will let me do this.