Proves that all its gloom and doom about the movie industry going bankrupt are really as far fetched as its opponents have claimed all along.
Every year the movie industry goes before Congress and anybody else who’ll listen and bemoans about how it’s constantly under assault by rampant piracy the world over. It claims it’s slowly being bled dry and that its future looks bleak unless lawmakers step in and remedy the situation.
Yet, every year we also hear of record box office receipts which the MPAA of course downplays as not being the full amount they could have otherwise gotten if not for piracy. Instead of the glass being half full, the glass is always half empty in their opinion.
In 2006 the US box office was up 5.5% with revenues of $9.49 billion USD vs. $8.99 billion in 2005.
In 2007 it was up 5.4% to achieve an all-time record high of $9.6 billion USD! The global box office grew 4.9% to some $26.7 billion.
So much for the starving studios rhetoric or fairy tales about out of work actors, stage hands, etc..
“From the threat and eventual reality of a writer’s strike to the global impact of film theft to concerns over the economy, the film industry faced significant challenges in 2007,”said MPAA head Dan Glickman. “But, ultimately, we got our Hollywood ending. Once again, diverse, quality films and the timeless allure of the movie house proved a winning combination with consumers around the world.”
You mean “quality films” had something to do with it? Go figure.
What’s sad is that despite the MPAA’s own admission that it’s doing “record business” it still refuses to ease up on college students or to back down from efforts to have ISPs filter copyrighted content.
It still continues to push for the the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 which ties university funding to the deployment of anti-piracy initiatives. The act requires the purchase of DRM-based, industry-sanctioned download services, and the deployment of network snoopware that spies on and disconnects students if found to be violating any copyright laws. This, despite the fact that a 2005 study that claimed 44% of domestic piracy losses were attributable to college students turned out out to false. It recently revised the estimate to 15%.
So even though college students aren’t as “problematic” as the MPAA claims and it’s having consecutive years of record profits it still insists that all isn’t well and that something must be done.
It seems to me that it’s suffering from the same dementia that the RIAA is in that assumes that an illegally downloaded piece of content translates into what otherwise what would have been a legally purchased item. This couldn’t be further from the truth!
How many of you have watched a movie that even for free seems like a rip off? How many of you don’t even have access to a theater that’s playing some of the movies produced each year? Exactly.
So once again we read about the MPAA’s pockets brimming with money. The question now is will lawmakers change their position on the college anti-piracy crackdown and see it for what it is – a corporate interest meddling in education?
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- MPAA Argues Fighting Piracy Saves US Jobs
- MPAAs third round of anti-piracy campaign begins
- What Piracy? MPAA Enjoying 17.5% Increase in Ticket Sales
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YEa it looks like the MPAA is makin’ the money dudes! Wooo! They’re rollin’ in it! You what I always heard? When a corporation achieves this much money they soon get bored. They crave POWER now as in political power. This is seen in it’s beginnings with endless washington lobbying of politicians to pass ridiculouly biased copyright laws infringing on our constitutional rights as citizens of the United states and even abroad. When the people of the United States look at some of the bills they try and pass off or hide in other bills it becomes clear that our politicians are hopelessly bought off long ago and corrupt. If the economy folds up in recession it will hopefully spur a revolution and clean up this bile.
i believe i said the same thing in the bush thread about power starwhite. so true.
You know after all this foreign policy on how out of whack other countries are on the copyright laws front and yet it’s foreign countries that have seen general growth overall. Meanwhile in the US you see all these copyright laws put in place heavy-handed enforcement on the US citizens etc. etc. The result? Foreign profits sky-rocket while domestically profits are locked at 9 billion. Yet further indication that restrictive copyright laws don’t equal so-called ’stronger market environments’ for the copyright industry? A picture says a thousand words indeed!
Another 900 mil and they’ll make double the income in other countries than on the home front. Judging by the overal growth rate it wouldn’t surprise me if foreign profits blast past 18 Billion in ‘08.