why would they spend insane amounts of time and money on brokering horrible laws? Even if these laws did pass today, they would surely crumble in a few years?
Why would they work so hard, to gain the hatred and displeasure of the very public that pays money to watch their work, and makes them rich in the process?
As the parent says, may be they enjoy being the villain in this whole drama.
If they want, they can kill netflix overnight. heck, they can charge 50$ a month, and many people would gladly pay (I know I would) even if the movies come to streaming a full month later than their theater release date.
How long do you think they can keep playing this cat and mouse game? The only real winners in this entire shit, are the lawyers.
I think you, and others, underestimate the enormity of the revenues the movie studios are generating.
The MPAA represents 6 studios that produced about 15% of theatrical releases last year. They only released 12 of the top 25 movies in theaters too. The MPAA studios alone generate about $40 billion in revenue a year; I didn't try to add up all the other studios, but you can imagine the total revenue is enormous. What they spend lobbying for these laws is a pittance in comparison.
Total box office gross was $32 billion last year. Let's be generous and say the MPAA got 50% of the box office sales despite having less than 50% of the top movies. That leaves $24 billion in revenue from their films each year not including the theater releases. That's $24 billion from physical discs, licensing to cable providers, licensing to TV channels, licensing to premium cable channels, licensing to the existing streaming services, etc.
If the MPAA studios launched a streaming service at $50 per month, this would displace most of their revenue from other distribution models -- people would buy far fewer DVDs and they simply wouldn't get the agreements with cable networks, premium channels, etc. if customers can already get the movie from this website a month after theater.
To make up for that revenue they would have to find 480 million subscribers at $50. Do you think they can? I doubt it at that price point; that's more than most people spend on movie consumption across all channels now. Even if they could do it, those 480 million subscribers would only replace the revenue of the 6 MPAA studios, not the other 85% of the movie production market.
Whenever I see a "why don't they just give us what we want and stream everything like Netflix" suggestion, I see "why don't these companies just burn 85% of their profits", because that'd be about the same as far as their financials go.
okay, thanks for the numbers. they sure are enormous.
some points though:
people would buy far fewer DVDs
people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether the studios like it or not. the studios can't do anything about it. I can't remember the last time I bought either a movie DVD or a music DVD. I go to spotify or netflix, or a movie theater, so simply won't watch it, if DVD is my only option. Others might be different though.
I doubt it at that price point
If I go to the theater once, the absolute minimum I spend is 20$ (ticket + popcorn), and this is for a single guy. If I had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big cities. so 50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would go for it.
One thing is sure - the whole situation is fucked up. It has to change, it will change. It is just that the transition period is going to be awful. And we get to watch it, and be a part of it.
> people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether the studios like it or not
You're really out of touch with reality. In 2011, the top 100 movies sold 146,455,878 DVD copies (estimated, not all retailers disclose exact numbers).
Here's last week's North American DVD (non-Blu-Ray) sales:
> If I had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big cities. so 50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would go for it.
This is working against you... in arguing that people would spend $50/mo for this because it's an alternative to theaters, you're also arguing it would cannibalize the revenue from box office sales. Remember it was 480 million subscribers for just the MPAA's 6 studios to break even if the box office revenue was untouched.
There's only around a billion computers in the world -- so here's a good recap of your plan: Get every single computer owner in the world to subscribe to a $50/month studio-backed streaming service. If they can't get every computer owner in the world to subscribe, then they will make less money than they do today not offering the service.
That's all it takes to see why the service doesn't exist.
Do you have numbers on year-over-year sales for DVDs?
While they're still big, I would assume that they're declining.I think what the parent commenter was trying to make as the streaming is how people are going to be consuming information. Not everyone's there yet, of course, but thats where things are shifting to.
It would make sense for MPAA to set itself up to succeed in the coming world where the majority of people want to stream their entertainment,rather than trying to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out.
What would make sense is to set itself up to succeed in the streaming world AND try to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out. Which, unsurprisingly, is exactly what they're doing. They ARE licensing movies to Netflix, Amazon VOD/Prime, iTunes, Hulu, etc. after all. They're just picking and choosing what parts of their catalog to stream and when to offer it such that it won't cannibalize the revenue from DVD sales and other sources they don't need to give up yet.
All they have to do to maximize revenue in the coming world is to shift timelines -- release more movies faster on the streaming services as the effect of doing so has less of an effect on other distribution channels.
I would agree with you, but they're trying to preserve the dying model's functions in the new model, which doesn't operate like that.
I completely agree with you, that doing something like you mentioned makes sense, but it doesn't excuse them from trying to censor the internet, buy congress and be an online bully that gets to take down entire sites for actions their users have done.
Why would they work so hard, to gain the hatred and displeasure of the very public that pays money to watch their work, and makes them rich in the process?
As the parent says, may be they enjoy being the villain in this whole drama.
If they want, they can kill netflix overnight. heck, they can charge 50$ a month, and many people would gladly pay (I know I would) even if the movies come to streaming a full month later than their theater release date.
How long do you think they can keep playing this cat and mouse game? The only real winners in this entire shit, are the lawyers.