| most movie goers would just wait Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Moviegoers love to go to movies, and movie downloaders are the same guys that wait a week in line for the new Star Wars. Perfect customers, in other words. Did you know our town had a second-run movie theater until last year? One of the last towns to have one. They were packed all the time - but the new owners of all the theaters in town closed it because people could watch movies on the cheap instead of paying eight bucks at the plex. Now everything's only open for about five weeks and is then gone forever. I'm a busy man. My schedule often required going to the second-run because I literally cannot focus on chunks of time of five weeks to see a movie. Now, my only recourse is to wait a year or so for the studios to release a version of that movie I can buy, or pirate it. Sometimes I pirate it, even though I freaking loathe Bittorrent and the hassle involved in finding a good pirate copy. But I don't have a choice. And I love movies. I love Pirates of the Caribbean - my wife actually saw the first one in the cinema nearly thirty times. Once she showed up five minutes late for the evening showing and the attendant just laughed and waved her into the theater instead of opening up the cash register again, knowing she'd be back the following night. So after it closed in the movie theater, I downloaded it to continue watching it - then we bought it as soon as they decided to sell it to us, wore out one copy, and bought another. Do you think I'm atypical? Yet Hollywood thinks I cheated them by downloading Pirates of the Caribbean. If movie attendance is down, it's not because people are waiting to see a pirated videocam version they downloaded, it's because real prices have doubled or tripled and people simply no longer have the money to go to the movies as often. In a recession, no less. Next the MPAA is just going to garnish everybody's wages on suspicion of piracy. (If they actually do that, please don't blame me for thinking of it first...) |