Is DVD Piracy Really a Problem?

(if this topic bores you, just skip to the bottom and watch the video)
Going off the coattails of this article from Yahoo: I wanted to give a slightly different opinion on the whole “DVD Piracy"
thing. First of all, US Movie and Software companies say they are losing $2.5 Billion annually due to Pirated DVD’s and software. Where on earth are they coming up with that number? I expect that they are taking all of the know “copies” that are distributed illegally and calculating those at full price, as lost revenue. Which I think is absurd. Look for instance at the DVD and Movie market here in China. The average salary is little less than $400 a month. Now, if you figure the cost of a DVD is about $20 that’s 5% of their pre-tax monthly income, just for a friggin DVD. To put that into perspective, if you think that average salary in America is around $36K then that would equate to a $150 DVD, and I’m not talking about Band of Brothers here. I’m talking about stopping by Blockbuster and paying $150 for Stealth (arguably the worst movie ever created and Ebert agrees). In today’s pirated prices, basing on that Average salary of $400, they are still paying what we would feel as $10 a DVD. Only that $10 is 10 rmb. There is no way that the average consumer here would even dream of paying full price for an un-pirated DVD. So it is ridiculous to assume that those pirated sales would have gone to un-pirated merchandise, had there been stricter regulations. The only thing that would have happened is less people would have seen that movie (which in Stealth’s case might not be that bad). To say that China’s DVD piracy is “costing” the US Movie companies $2.5 billion is completely absurd.

From China’s perspective, you have a booming economic communist nation. The people (for the most part) are happy. Anything you can do to sustain that happiness is important. At the first sign of bad times, they is a good chance they will revolt and demand a new government. If the government was to enforce these regulations, and shut down the DVD market, it would be disastrous to the “happiness” factor of this country (think Civ2 with no entertainers or food). This sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn’t. Let me put it into to terms you can feel. Let’s say that your cable didn’t cost $40 a month, but instead it cost $400 a month. I’m not talking Direct TV Season Ticket package here, just your standard cable with ESPN, one channel of HBO, Showtime and Cinemax along with H&G and Discovery Channel. You know…the standard cable package. Now, those of you who might not have known, but here there is no ESPN or Showtime here. No cable at all for that matter. They have the equivalent of channel 2,4,5,7,9,11 and that great channel 13 (I think Chris Ev and I during college once compare who got better reception on channel 2, mine at USC or his at LMU, because neither of us had cable). Can you believe that, no cable? Anyway, there is almost no way for a China resident to get access to “illegal” cable to get ESPN and Showtime. It would cost them $150 US ($1000 in our terms), so more than a quarter of their month’s salary, just for the Dish and installation. That would work for about a week, and then the card would get blocked. So instead, people buy DVDs in order to get some taste of American, Japanese or Korean (which are hilarious and the chicks are f-ing hot) film culture. That’s how they can see Spiderman, Harry Potter, Stealth and LOST. Taking away their ability to buy DVDs would be like if the U.S. government took away your ESPN. If no ESPN was bad enough, they would also take away all the movie channels, normal cable (and Direct TV) and then told you that movies watched on TV will $150 for each, and you can’t ever watch sports again…(here’s the kicker)They did this because France said so. That’s what shutting down the DVD market here would be like. Um, can you say “riot”? Compare the cost of taking it away, versus the “cost” of having it. It makes no sense to try and regulate this piracy. So tell Arnold and Jackie Chan to get off the bikes and do something productive. To borrow from Marie Antoinette, let them watch DVDs!


Edited later: Just read this from Kevin Smith, "Fuck the alleged rampant piracy that’s supposedly crippling the movie industry; this [the quick release from Theater to DVD] is what’s hurting the box office."

DVD China