Jason Hortsch (The Beacon)
By Jason Hortsch, Staff Commentary
With the recent crackdown on file-sharing websites, the movie-making industry is opining louder than ever that piracy is hurting its business. While there is no question that piracy is costing the industry money, whining about the issue and shutting down websites one by one will do little to solve the issue.
The movie studios must take a more proactive approach. When facing any problem, you can face reality or instead approach it in only an idealistic manner. Unfortunately, the studios have opted for the latter. Instead of recognizing that piracy is not and will not go anywhere, they operate under the assumption that they can stop piracy. In a perfect world, that sounds great, but in actuality this is simply not the case. As long as the internet exists, so can piracy.
Instead, studios must change their mindset and understand that they are competing against piracy. Take a look at iTunes. It offered a convenient and easy to use alternative to pirating music, and experienced wild success in doing so. In fact, with the simplicity of iTunes and its integration with iPods, iTunes has become easier for most people to use than piracy to obtain music. It is only when legal alternatives offer something more (simplicity, organization and direct iPod integration in the case of iTunes) that these alternatives can compete with and even overtake piracy.
A look at what has been done on the movie front is not so encouraging. In fairness, studios have tried to make some progress in the right direction. Blu-Ray and DVD combo packs offer a great opportunity for customers to future-proof themselves. Digital copies included with physical copies are becoming increasingly common. A new service called Ultraviolet claims to allow customers to maintain an online library of films they have purchased a physical copy of, with the ability to stream or download the films to various devices.
While certainly an improvement, a closer examination of these services does not paint such a cheery picture. I purchased a Blu-Ray of "The Dark Knight" a few months ago and discovered, to my disappointment, the included voucher for the purported digital copy had long since expired. Similarly, a closer look at the Ultraviolet website's details reveals that after a year's period streaming may cost customers money (oddly tucked away in the fine print), that there may be "territorial restrictions" placed on the service (people outside of the U.S. want to watch movies also), and that a film can only be downloaded three times and played on 12 devices (more restrictions). An illegally downloaded copy of a movie has no such restrictions.
Studios are just not giving themselves a fair chance against piracy. While the price of free can never be beat, sheer convenience can and has to play a huge factor in swaying customers' preferences towards legitimate means (as in the case of iTunes). Restrictions of any kind, but particularly when excessive, are simply not convenient for consumers.
Speaking of convenience, what about a handy little service called Netflix? With approximately 24 million U.S. subscribers (nearly eight percent of the total U.S. population), it is readily apparent that the ease and convenience of their service has struck a chord with customers. For those technologically out of the loop, Netflix originally allowed customers to rent DVDs via mail, but has now turned much of its efforts toward becoming a service through which its customers can instantly stream movies online.
You would think that welcoming Netflix as the saving grace of their dying business would be a no-brainer for movie studios, but this is not the case. Inexplicably, studios are forcing Netflix to delay the date with which they can start renting out new releases, as well as making licenses needed to stream content instantly over the internet extremely expensive. Studios are obstinately refusing to adapt and become part of the solution and instead are choosing to propagate the problem.
As evidenced by the popularity of Netflix, customers want the ease and convenience of being able to instantly stream movies. It does not get much simpler than clicking on your xBox or iPad, firing up the Netflix app and starting a movie in seconds. Remember the convenience and simplicity issue from above? Netflix has it. Unfortunately, despite the company's efforts, its selection suffers greatly from the stubbornness of movie studios.
To illustrate just how shabby the current state of legal streaming options is, I compiled a list of the top 11 grossing movies of all time and the top 11 highest rated movies of all time (according to the Internet Movie Database), to more or less create a list representing the pinnacle of filmmaking. Two movies overlapped, for a total of 20. I looked at Netflix's selection, as well as the selection of CinemaNow, a movie-streaming service similar to Netflix, but which charges by the movie rather than a flat monthly rate like Netflix.
As of this writing, Netflix had two of the 20 films available for streaming, and CinemaNow had 10. Pathetic. Online streaming is the way of the future; maybe even the way of the present, yet the pinnacle of filmmaking has only a 30 percent appearance rate? That may cut it in baseball, but not here.
Should movie studios be more willing to work with Netflix? Certainly. At the same time, Netflix has to be more open to altering its business models, whether it is offering films (especially new releases) a lá carte, or starting to offer different pricing tiers for greater levels of content access. Their current fee for streaming access, a nominal eight dollars a month, will make it difficult for them to add quality content, and has also boxed the company in, since customers now expect the price to always be that low.
The demand for a simple streaming service is there. The technology is available. Customers are ready. All that remains now is for heads to be pulled out of the sand and egos swallowed.
