Billions lost in DVD piracy....how?

[Surf]

I read about this claim a few weeks ago. How in the world do they come up with the figure...?

The main losers I can see are the video rental shops and movie theaters.

I based the assumption on the notion that the pirated disk buyers are not the potential customers in the first place. Without piracy, bulk of the masses would just resort to renting.

No?

[Shinigami-Sama]

this is my theory
take a**
pull figure
whine about it hurting

but it looks like they pay off a bunch of 'thrid party' stats people to do it for them, still sounds fishy to me

[Doobie]

I based the assumption on the notion that the pirated disk buyers are not the potential customers in the first place. Without piracy, bulk of the masses would just resort to renting.

Even a loss of rentals translates into loss sales.

[striker9]

Even a loss of rentals translates into loss sales.

But if the people were never going to buy or rent in the first place it can't be considered a lost sale. To be a truly lost sale the people would have to have been a potential customer in the first place which in the case of the vast majority of pirates is not the case. This would be like a car dealer claiming that every person who drove by their place and not coming onto their lot to buy a car was a lost sale and then claiming they were losing millions of dollars. It's just plain ridiculous.

To answer the OP the figure is just bunk that the movie companies are pulling out of their asses.

[Mug Funky]

i think the main problem is how to quantify the "potential market" (ie the market we'd have if piracy didn't exist). i suspect it is in fact impossible to reliably predict how much people would be buying if there was no pirate option. i suspect it might actually be less than the current market, though it's difficult to prove.

perhaps it could be modelled based on the CD market 20 years ago? not being able to copy CDs certainly didn't hurt their popularity (though there were always tapes). DVD had a much faster uptake, but it seems to me it's a simple matter of mathematics to "fit" the DVD market growth to that of CDs, then look for marked differences around certain times (like when bitTorrent was introduced, when DVD burners became available, etc).

i really think there isn't much difference. i don't like the term "pirate" because there's worlds of difference between murder, kidnap, rape on the high seas and the copying of a few DVDs for no profit, but anyway, most of the "pirates" i know are just old guys who copy discs because they can and think it's clever. then there's some that copy stuff to their friends because it's hard to come by (like music DVDs released overseas but not here). i know of nobody who does it for profit.

but really, more DVDs are being sold now than ever before. if movie distributors are losing money, it's most likely from poor marketing, poor stock control (in the stores they're sold to), or poor titles.

there's no point people shuffling figures in such a way as to show they could be making much more money - you can't re-arrange the world to match your projections. rather the projections need to be realistic, because if they're not, a company will suffer due to bad decisions based on poor data.

it would certainly be stupid for a distributor to say "we project that without piracy we could make 100 million in a month", and then go and print 10 million DVDs where they would have printed 10 thousand. all that means it they'll cop millions of returns of unsold stock, they'll flood the market and have to drop their price, and they'll be unable to recoup the manufacturing cost.

[dani82]

i agree Mug Funky; dvd are being sold now more than ever

proof?

has anyone been to a Hollywood videos or Blockbusters lately, they only have about 100 copies of each major movie release

[Mug Funky]

has anyone been to a Hollywood videos or Blockbusters lately, they only have about 100 copies of each major movie release

that could also mean blockbuster simply bought too many and so they're all on the shelves rather than in people's homes... but your point certainly is valid :) blockbuster have been around long enough to be able to suss out how many copies of a movie they'll need.

[Surf]

Blockbusters << one of my main sources of previously viewed movies. Can't beat the prices between 7-12 bucks. :D :D Heck, I make much more than that in an hour...;)

I watched a few er pirated ones, never again!! Horrible quality!! No self respecting Doom9 member should ever waste money on such :D.

MugM's quite right as far as I'm concerned, I have been buying quite a few(hundred) titles in the past few years....nearly all at 10 bucks or less. Any higher, Hollywood won't get me money...