I'm glad to read that many of you who read this blog agree with my stand that pirating movies is wrong. Trying to do some more research on this, I found this article on how the MPAA is ruining the movie experience. Long story short, the couple in the article felt they were subject to unfair treatment while attending the screening. (Cell phones being checked, guards maintaining surveillance throughout the movie) I've worked my fair share of screenings, and this is pretty standard procedure at all of them. It's reasonable for the production companies to try their best to protect their multi-million dollar investment! If you paid a few million dollars for something you were going to allow people to see for free, wouldn't you want there to be some security there so that no one could make a quick buck off of what you worked so hard/invested so much money in? I think most people would say yes to this. However, it also needs to be considered that this security issue would be no big deal if there weren't people out there who make a living by pirating movies. If there were no pirates, then security would not be as tight, and the experience more enjoyable.To save yourself some trouble and enhance the experience of everyone in the theatre, just leave your phone in your car if you're going to a screening (or any movie in general). If you must bring it with you, expect it to be checked or not be allowed into the theatre. It's just people trying to protect their investment. What I'm basically saying is, I don't agree with the article I've linked above. There are always a few people out there who make it harder on everyone else. In this case, its the pirates. As for the experience itself, people need to realize that going out to a movie doesn't mean you can act like you do at home. Maybe its the fact that so many people are seeing movies at home where they can act however they want that brings about this attitude. Long-time moviegoers often know common courtesy when it comes to watching a movie in theatres!
This article provides a pretty good explanation on some of what I'm writing about here. I kinda like the idea of a plant in a theatre to make an impression on guests about not using their phones in theatres. It also provides a review of some of the larger chains (old, but still not bad). The gripes that some people have with pricing in theatres I can understand also. I know that its hard to believe, but the only reason why theatres can stay open is because of ads and high concessions prices. Ticket sales make up so little of a theatre's profit. Yes, prices are VERY high, and I'll admit that, and ads can be annoying, but they're necessary at this point. If these are that annoying to you, there quite a few ways on this blog that I've mentioned will save you money and time! A lot of people are relocating to their homes for movies, but think about it, if theatres didn't exist, the experience would be gone.
I guarantee that if theatres vanished, in 50 years, there would be people saying "I remember back in the day when I could pay $10 and watch a movie on huge screen with 500 other people" Do you want to be part of that generation? I don't. You can't tell me King Kong doesn't look good on a 60 foot screen!
3 Comments Posted!:
It would be an unimaginable cultural loss if movie theaters ever went out of business! I don't even want to think about it.
(Side note: My job requires me to be familiar with foreign economies. Did you know that China is one of the world's worst offenders when it comes to bootleg movies? Newly released Hollywood blockbusters can be found on shelves of DVD shops in Beijing within days of their premieres in Los Angeles. According to the Wall Street Journal, the American movie industry lost 90% of the Chinese market to piracy in 2005. In April, the U.S. government filed a case against China with the World Trade Organization because of all the copyright violations happening there.)
Pirating and cinema closing - inadmissible!
You, my friend, do the good job of informing us here. Many things I didn't know.
Be well!
hey joen05. thanks for visiting my blog (exhibitionresearch.blogspot.com) I haven't been paying too much attention to it recently, but hopefully I'll get back to it someday and make it rich with updates and blog value like yours :)
Here's my thing about pirating. I think everyone who thinks they stand to lose something from piracy is very easily swayed by the MPAA's campaign against piracy. The simple comparison to stealing just doesn't work. If you walked by a barbeque and you smelled the ribs on the grill, would you say you stole that smell? You didn't pay for it. Somebody else worked hard to make it. But in a lot of ways, it's just impossible to avoid.
The transmission of digital media brings up a lot of complications in things that can be copied. Originally, copies had limits and that simplified how deep our understanding of the issue needed to be (a film print was expensive to reproduce and show, a video tape was crappy quality... so standard copyright law worked). But now, copying files is like breathing. It's easy and the technology makes it so. The technology isn't the villain, it's the environment.
Which isn't to say that environments can be left unmanaged. The atomic bomb is part of our environment too, and if there weren't limits on how that was used, then we'd all have serious problems with our health.
But to a large extent, the reason that the atomic bomb isn't used more is because the alternatives are so much more attractive. We could all live instead of dying. That's what is missing in the world of internet piracy. The business and cost associated with digital copies, just isn't right. The MPAA is wasting a lot of everyone's time and money trying to convince the world that piracy is the great satan of our time, when their time would be better spent developing a palatable alternative.
Good luck stamping out the pirates, MPAA. Taking a moral crusade when the motivation is clearly financial is a shaky endeavor, in my opinion.
By the way, I stand something to lose from piracy as well. I want to have my own movie theater some day which can't happen if they all shut down. I just don't think "pirates" (and by "pirates" I mean everyone and their mother) will be the cause, if they do.
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