DVD Movies vs. Current State of Selling Music

[UMT]

I've been thinking the past few days about how the DVD/Movie industry doesn't seem to be having the same problems with people 'sharing' their copied DVD's with their friends. Oh, I do realize there is a certain amount of theft going on but it just doesn't seem to be as huge a problem as the music industry is going thru and I wonder why?

 

Seems to me that in the day of the 'internet download' that SOMEBODY ought to be able to make songs copy proof. Hey, at .99 a song, if you want one for your Ipod and another for your stereo setup, you should have to purchase another. Songs should be 'single use'...

 

I realize that there are hackers out there who could break the 'code' or whatever but at .99 a shot, I don't know if most people would go thru the hassle. Hell, if you could knock the whole theft thing down to 10%, it would be a hell of an improvement.

 

There has GOT to be a way and whoever comes up with it is going to be one wealthy individual.

 

But, back to the original thought: Why isn't DVD/Movie sales having as huge a problem as the music industry?

[Johnny-Boy]

There are plenty of websites selling pirated copies of DVD's. Some of these sites copy directly from TV and sell at a fraction of the retail price.

 

I'm sure the DVD/Movie industry is being clobbered as well.

 

John:cool:

[Anderton]

Also, remember that the US generally has pretty crappy broadband service. Downloading a movie will try most people's patience.

[eventArgs]

 

I've been thinking the past few days about how the DVD/Movie industry doesn't seem to be having the same problems with people 'sharing' their copied DVD's with their friends. Oh, I do realize there is a certain amount of theft going on but it just doesn't seem to be as huge a problem as the music industry is going thru and I wonder why? ... But, back to the original thought: Why isn't DVD/Movie sales having as huge a problem as the music industry?

 

The movie industry is struggling with it as well. movie piracy may not be quite as "mainstream" as music piracy but there's plenty of it going on. A couple of reasons it's more difficult with movies:

 

Problem is you punish the legitimate customers, whilst the pirates get a superior (ie: unrestricted use) version...

[daddymack]

Most DVDs are encoded to make illegal copying a very difficult process. What you get on these illegal copies is usually shot off an HDTV with an HD Camera, and then burned on a high speed stack burner.

Yes, at the time when I worked in that part of the biz, a decade ago, piracy was rampant and security encoding was in its infancy. Today, ripping is off the books, direct HD transfer as noted above is being done all over the world....for an investment of ~$5000 (or less) you too could be pirating DVDs...

[richardmac]

It's pretty trivial to make a digital copy of a DVD on a computer if you have the right software. I don't get into that but I know guys who do. But I agree that downloading huge files is not something that has caught on (yet.) Copy protection has been tried. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

 

Some folks believe that the all you can eat buffet approach is going to be the future - your cable bill goes up 5 bucks a month and you get access to every song ever made or something like that. I would do it in a heartbeat but there wouldn't be enough money in it to pay the kind of royalties artists would be due.

 

I think there are a quarter million songwriters sitting and home right now wondering if they should be giving away their music for free or trying unsuccessfully to sell it. Technology has made this era the best time to create and distribute music, and the worst time to sell it. We've debated that topic on here for years.

 

As long as pirating a movie is a pain in the ass for the average person it won't be a huge issue. But if we ever get extreme Internet speeds, Hollywood will be in trouble.