In the war against terror piracy, various film producing bodies have cited several reasons why people shouldn’t buy pirate movies and more recently, why they shouldn’t download them. But when you look at these reasons, they start to fall apart.
A common reason is quality. Apparently all pirate movies have people standing up in them, the sound track has people coughing over it and the camera (making the re-recording) is misaligned.
Whereas I can’t disagree that the sound quality is often worse, even if you went to the cinema, you could be one of those unlucky people that sit behind somebody with irritable bowel syndrome and you see more of their head than the film as they make quick escapes.
In the cinema you still have to listen to the hoard of teenagers tossing around and people trying to fit as much popcorn in their mouths as possible.
I’ve also been to film showings where the reel has been so worn that the picture quality is worse than a DVD rip you can find on the internet.
Some cinema’s even claim they have a better film watching environment! Than what? A jungle? I’ve a comfy sofa at home I can stretch out on and I know that nobody has been sick all over it somebody cleaned it properly when somebody else was sick all over it…
I also don’t have to get ridiculously overpriced public-transport or pay fuel and parking charges if I stay at home. The locations of some of the better cinemas are usually central to cities making them less accessible to anybody that lives just outside.
The actual ticket price is now approaching the price of the DVD! One viewing in a cinema is worth that much? Screw you. I’ll download it and watch it at home then buy the DVD if that’s the way I want to do things. What have you lost?
Being in England this also means that some things take months to travel over the pond and some things never make it at all! Why should I wait for you to bless our country when you feel like it?
These media companies need to get some perspective over what they offer. The internet is about getting what you want, when you want it. We don’t lie down and suck it up while people making millions off a film slowly make films internationally available in cinema or DVD format.
Forcing DRM on people is yet another reason people might download things. Why would I want to buy your boxed version that I can only play through a DVD player when I can freely download a copy of identical quality and do what I like with it?
I think, as home entertainment systems become more and more advanced, especially when the internet starts getting involved in mainstream media, that they’re going to find themselves short of quite a few pennies unless they wake up and get their act together in enabling everybody to do as they wish with their media, where they wish.
Until they do, piracy will continue to grow.