A conversation that's old as home media itself. You often hear from the media industry that piracy is killing it, you know, like how Taylor Swift seems to believe it'll bankrupt her despite the fact she's worth fucking millions, seriously, if she stopped making music right now, she'd be financially secure the rest of her life as well as her great great grandkids. But really you can't blame them for being upset, they're a business, stealing is illegal and what they were originally supposed to make money off of, they now haven't. Now some people respond to this with "oh but it's an art form! They should just be glad people are talking about it!" well...yes and no. On one hand, it is good that people are viewing your work and very much like it. But on the other, it is completely up to the artists on whether or not they want to give the product away for free or make you pay for it. However the media does tend to over compensate for this and make a bigger deal out of it than it really is. Piracy isn't killing the industry, only a minority of people pirate, but honestly the more the industry punishes consumers as a whole makes more people pirate. Remember when Xbox One was going to have that stupid lock system to prevent a game from being played on two consoles, they said it was to fight piracy, but it would also kill the used game market as well as punish players who wanted to share games with their friends.
Then again, at the same time, consumers who do pirate often take advantage of it. I pirate all the time, i'm not gonna lie, but if i like a product then i want to support the artists. I pirated John Wick because the movie didn't come out in England until 6 months after America, I didn't want to wait that long so i pirated it, and i enjoyed it so much i went to go see it in theatres eventually and bought it on blu-ray. I also pirated Transformers: Age of Extinction because i knew it was going to be trash and i didn't want to support an awful movie, it sucked and i'm glad i didn't give it my money because i didn't have an enjoyable experience, some might say that's a poor excuse but it's how i feel, and besides, it didn't hurt the box office what with it making over a billion dollars. But then there are times were I have to pirate products. I was really looking forward to watching The Boondock Saints but to my surprise there is no England release, so i pirated the movie, loved it and bought the stupid German version because A: it's the only one that'll work on my dvd player and B: I wanted to support the movie. But even when i don't purchase a product, i do still want to support it. Bob's Burgers is a phenomenal show, but it has no dvd or blu-ray release here in England, hell i don't even know if it airs on a channel here. So i watch it online and tell as many people as i can to watch it, maybe then with a big enough audience to get a home media release.
Although you honestly know what the biggest deterrent to piracy is? Just make shit reasonably priced. I don't pirate games but with £40-50 per game is ridiculous and i honestly can't blame people if they don't want to buy that. And the same with television, charging up to £30 per season. I've only just watched all the Rocky movies this year and you know why? Because I found a new blu-ray for all 6 movies for only £20, there, i get some great movies (and some not great ones) and the studio gets my money. This is one of the reasons I pirate a lot of anime (or watch it on Netflix) £40 for the first season blu-ray of Attack on Titan? Go fuck yourself. £25 for two DVD's of Miyazaki movies? Go fuck yourself. And hell, some people in the industry love piracy. The Arctic Monkey's had their first album pirated a lot, but it didn't bother them because it lead to so many people finding out about them and made them massive, the same with the crew of How I Met Your Mother when they learnt their show was the most pirated comedy of all time, they were just glad people were still watching (Especially in those last few seasons).
The big reason why i've started talking about this is because of a recent video by KickThePJ (Or technically PJTheKick) a YouTuber who makes short films and sketches who has just made his first professional webseries Oscar's Hotel, with a proper cast, sets, make-up, even costumes developed by the Jim Henson company and is charging £6.99 or $9.99 for the whole series. Like I said, if he wants to charge for it, that's up to him, he's given plenty of free content in the past on YouTube and this is the biggest (and most expensive) project he's ever done, if he feels it's worth paying for then it's his right. Even then, you're basically paying just over £1 per episode so it's still a good deal if you think about it. Why I bring this up is because in his recent video he talked about how he disdains people pirating the show. Now this is a case where it's much more reasonable than Taylor Swift, like i said it's a great price but more than that it's because it's an independent project with a much smaller and niche audience. If 100 people pirate it then that (ratio wise) is a much more significant portion of the audience in that case. It's the same with Jon Schnepp's documentary "The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?" it's an independent documentary that he spent over a year of his life working on and if 100 people were to pirate his film then that would be a much larger audience than if people pirated an actual Superman film.
SIDE NOTE: I would recommend both Oscar's Hotel and The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened, both are very good.
So is piracy ever justifed? Well like most things in the world it's not as black & white as you might think. There are benefits from piracy, if people like your product they'll tell other people about it so you get word of mouth and for those who don't abuse their power of piracy will support the show in some way by buying home media or merchandise. But at the same time, if you pirate something and you don't like it that doesn't count as justification because they still gave you a product, you could argue it isn't worth the asking price but even then you should still have to give them something. But on the other hand there are plenty of people out there who pirate out of neccessity and can't afford all of these things and life without art or culture is no life at all. But it is the artists right to charge if they want and if you pirate then you're breaking the law, but most of the time they have an audience so big it won't affect them financially. But on the other other hand there are artists who are a lot smaller and for them piracy is a legitimate problem. God, it's so much easier to see the world in black & white. Grey...I don't know what to do with grey...
-Danny
No comments:
Post a Comment