Torrents

[ussinners]

Us Sinners did not cost a lot to make. But, the little it did, I haven't gotten most of it back.

The first time I saw a torrent listing was when I first started sending out screeners and I got pissed. I was told by people "in the know" that it might be listed, but that doesn't mean it's actually there. It's just listed so you'll sign up and pay to join the site.

Now I see it on quite a few torrent sites and all have to get paid to download it.

Shouldn't these sites be held accountable for the movies they're giving away for free illegally? i know they don't actually house the files themselves, they're just the middle man. But, they're the middle man profiting from product they do not own.

I know it seems futile to even be bothered by something like this. But, damn it I can use some money and these people might be getting cash that could be going to me.

It seems if a group of film makers who weren't rich got together and brought suits against these sites, the courts and public opinion would be heavily on the side of the starving artists and not the thieves.

Just a thought.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Piracy is a scourge to anybody who want to make a living making indie movies. Back before the internet took off I shot a feature horror film and it was distributed around the world. The film made for $35,000 made around $150,000. (We did not see a lot of that because a thief of a distributor who we sued.) Today that movie wouldn't return $20,000. Not all of that decline is due to piracy, but I'd guess close to 50% is.

I'd guess far less than 50% of that decline is due to piracy.

First, there's simple supply and demand. 'Before the internet took off' is also before the rise of digital production took off, and that's had a huge impact on the market for independent films. The barrier to entry for independent filmmaking has dropped so severely that just about anyone can become a filmmaker with a little effort. I wouldn't be surprised if there's ten times as many feature length independent films being made as there were in the late 90's. Many of those are terrible, sure - but there's certainly a lot more films vying for investor, distributor and audience attention.

Second, there's simple supply and demand. Digital production tools didn't just make it easier to become a filmmaker - they made it harder to make a living in any aspect of traditional production. For instance, I'll bet there's a hundred times more professional editors than there were in the late 90's, and even more that aren't full time professionals but who may work on the occasional indie film for cheap or free. So again, many more people vying for a limited number of paid jobs.

Third, there's supply and demand. The most valuable thing to an independent filmmaker is an audience's attention. Unfortunately that's a finite resource - there's only ever 24 hours in a day, and worldwide population growth has been declining for nearly 50 years now so we just aren't making more audience members like we used to. Since the internet took off we have a lot more things vying for that limited attention than we did before. There's email, internet forums (reading indietalk instead of watching movies), facebook, blogs, news sites, youtube, twitter, farmville, phone apps, etc. Comscore estimates the average american online visitor spent over 30 hours a month online - that's 30 hours that would have been spent doing something else before, including possibly watching more films. And in 2008 the video game market began overtaking the home video market as well - what used to be primarily a market comprised of kids is increasingly occupying the time (and entertainment budget) of adults as well.

Fourth - there's supply and demand. Cable and satellite subscribers have 800+ channels to choose from, plus thousands of films and tv shows available via video on demand. Then there's netflix, and hulu, amazon, etc. The shelf space is essentially unlimited now - which means your film is easily lost in the crowd.

So we've got a situation in which many more films are being made, and many more people are doing that kind of work, for an audience who's spending more and more of their time doing things other than watching movies, and when they do watch movies their time is divided among the thousands of other choices available to them at any given moment.

Massive, massive supply with fixed or shrinking demand produces a commodity market in which it's extremely difficult to make a profit off of any individual item. The only way to make a significant profit is to make it up in volume - which is exactly what amazon, apple, etc are doing. They don't care if your film only sells three copies because they can make a profit by selling three copies of 10,000 other films just like yours. On the individual level though it was inevitable that the profit would drop out of it, and piracy has little to do with it.

 

[rayw]

Massive, massive supply with fixed or shrinking demand produces a commodity market in which it's extremely difficult to make a profit off of any individual item. The only way to make a significant profit is to make it up in volume - which is exactly what amazon, apple, etc are doing. They don't care if your film only sells three copies because they can make a profit by selling three copies of 10,000 other films just like yours. On the individual level though it was inevitable that the profit would drop out of it, and piracy has little to do with it.

Bingo.

Whenever I speak of the commoditization of film content this is exactly what I'm talking about.

When the current two thousand low budget horror films look like the last four thousand low budget horror films what you have is a commodity like coal, iron ore, lumber, or rice.
Sure, they all come in different grades, but as a whole... there's nothing particularly special about any one ton of coal or grain of rice vs any other ton of the same.
You REEEEEEEEALY gotta come up with something special to draw attention to your "film product".

The relative "value" of any one unit of commodity is nil.
The value is exclusively in the monetization of a bulk package.

WalMart doesn't make bank on selling one unit of X at $0.10 over cost.
WalMart makes bank on selling 100,000 units per month of X at $0.10 over cost.
Your one feature is one unit of X.
You gotta get a contract from WalMart to buy 100,000 units - or - sell 100,000 units yourself.

So, what's a sensible range of sales of a non-theatrically distributed indie film?
Probably depends upon the popularity of the genre.

http://www.the-numbers.com/market/Genres/
It's the "Average Gross" numbers we're interested in.
For simplicity's sake lettuce just think of those numbers as percentages.
If Comedies were 25% then Adventure would be 73%, almost three times as popular.
Remember, audiences DON'T PAY to see movies that are well liked; they DO PAY to go see films they WANT to like - and then b!tch about it later when they suck donkey balls.
"Too late then, suckah"!

So, the trick is to reign in production budget to below expected number of, thus $$ benefit, sales.

Now, from a producer POV, we know adventure films are expensive because they demand... well... adventure. And getting all our gear, cast, and crew to multiple locations generates expenses that aren't necessarily going to translate well onto screen - which is where the audience wants to see your/their money spent.

Action films = 56% (to keep going with the numbers as a percentage theme, unless one of you freaks wants to do a spreadsheet. I don't wanna. Sue me).
Drams films = 10%

Well that looks like... sh!t.

I (theoretically) could pretty much film an action film in the same locations and with the same actors with just a little larger expense for breaking sh!t as I could a drama film - and expect five times as much in interest/sales.

Cool.

So, back to our WalMart commoditization of our film product: How much of my indie film product should I reasonably expect to sell?
1,000 units at $10?
2,000 units at $8?
10,000 units at $8 or $7?
Should I expect 100,000 people to pay to watch my indie feature film?
200,000?

Now, I would love it if someone could please link to me/us a site that provides some believable numbers of units sold for even a handful of VOD films.

I want to be shocked.
I want to see the median number of paid VOD views somewhere well over what only $2 per view (in my pocket) would benefit me and the cast & crew.

With that I would start doing some reverse engineering math to figure out how much I would spend to produce and then advertise my own film product.

 

[IndieBudget]

The music industry in the 40's had an attitude of if they allowed the radio stations play their records, they will lose money because why buy the record if it plays for free on the radio.

Best way of fighting piracy, never release anything, 100% effective way to stop it dead. Our editing computers are the tools that make it easy for us to create and the computers and the internet allow for easy content sharing.

Give people a reason to buy and they will. Just look at the world's oldest profession. Sex is available for free, yet many pay. Rental vs purchase.

 

[Blade_Jones]

But what if you don't have a static IP or what if your IP changes on a regular basis?

Internet Service Providers keep a log of everyone's dynamic IP addresses for 6 months at least. That's why content owners will log not just the IP but the time and port number.

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

Internet Service Providers keep a log of everyone's dynamic IP addresses for 6 months at least. That's why content owners will log not just the IP but the time and port number.

Sure, but my point was an extremely simplified version of the issues of IP addresses.

If we get into the nitty gritty of it, we can bring up a nice meaty example.

Let's say you're a student at University.
This University offers a free wireless network for students.

Student X downloads ten of the latest Hollywood Blockbusters.

According to what the ISP/SOPA/MPAA would see, the University is solely responsible as they own the network (or in this case, the WAN IP).

Whilst I'm sure the student has left a record with his login and password, as far as the new laws are concerned, the University, and only the University, is liable for the use of their network.

-----

Now what if, like any pirate worth their salt, you use a proxy to download your ill begotten goods?
Or what if you war drive the local neighbourhood for unsecured networks?
Perhaps you jump on down to the local net cafe and go nuts on their servers?

-----

The issue of IP addresses versus identity is, unfortunately, murky at best.

-----

An interesting point I would like to raise is that attacking Piracy in this way is the same tactic used by the US Government in its "War on Drugs".

It focuses on the key players - the distributors, dealers, etc.

At first this makes sense - take out the head and the body dies, right?
Well, as we have seen in Mexico (36k dead and rising) this isn't true..
Some other big player steps in to fill the void, bada bing, bada boom, millions of dollars spent for a disruption of a couple of days at best.

So what have some people suggested?
Doing the insane and legalizing the drugs.
WHAT? Well, if it's no longer illegal than any Joe Schmuck could pick it up from the chemist.
There goes the drug dealer's entire business model.

This is the same approach we must take with Piracy:
We need to offer a better option for the people who pirate.
We need added value which cuts out the distributor's advantage.

Unfortunately, the profits of the Big Studios are tied in directly with the distribution issues I outlined earlier and they will fight tooth and nail (as they have with PIPA/SOPA etc.) to protect their interests under the broad excuse of "piracy dun it!".

You want to destroy piracy in a week?
Release all of your products globally, at the same time, at the same price point (adjusted for exchange rate, of course) and at a reasonable price! Releasing in theaters? Release online at the same time!

Allow your users to use their products without DRM. (Useless - in fact, the pirates use this as an incentive to crack and then show off their 1337 skills)

Include a digital copy with your physical copy.

Sell a digital copy which is cheaper than the physical copy (big point, here - so many people charge the same price despite it being free to "print" a digital copy!)

I guarantee that when this industry stops treating their end user like criminals waiting for their next hit, piracy will drop. I mean, why bother wading through the crap releases online when I can throw $5 at a BluRay quality version of the latest movies from the comfort of my home?

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Let's say you're a student at University.
This University offers a free wireless network for students.

Student X downloads ten of the latest Hollywood Blockbusters.

Student X makes a shared folder on their computer available to anyone on the campus network and 100 other students in their dorm download a copy of the movies as well. Then a few of them do the same for their friends, and so on.

That's one of the kind of things I'm talking about when I say what's on the public torrent sites is only the thin visible top layer of illegal downloading, and any attempt to stop it by shutting down websites is essentially a waste of time and resources.

 

[TheArtist]

The most important point: a pirated download is NOT a lost sale!

Gee, thanks. I'm scared it took the second page of the post for someone to remind this.


If I ever make a feature, I'd be the first one to upload it on The Pirate Bay. Hell, I'd be honoured if reknown groups uploaded it. That's like free advertisement. And if my work is worth anything, that's also new fans and new potential buyers.

Although, I can understand how hard that can be to witness if your movies are your main source of income.

 

[rayw]

If I ever make a feature, I'd be the first one to upload it on The Pirate Bay. Hell, I'd be honoured if reknown groups uploaded it. That's like free advertisement. And if my work is worth anything, that's also new fans and new potential buyers.

I'll be kinda counting on it assuming I get that far.

Wish you the best then .

I appreciate that!
Thank you.

 

[TheArtist]

Wish you the best then .

 

[PaulGriffith]

While it's true that a pirated download doesn't always equate to a lost sale, it very likely could equate to a lost rental. The rental houses like Blockbuster and similar have also been hit hard by piracy, and people downloading a movie instead of renting it for $1 at RedBox means that redbox is also much less likely to buy that extra copy of a movie out there.

Granted, RedBox doesn't carry much indie stuff. Blockbuster however carries an impressive amount of stuff form indie distributors and straight to DVD stuff.

Piracy sucks. Pirates suck. You may not be able to defeat it 100% but you should still take action. When/if a less oppressive piracy act is presented it will have a LOT of support.

Putting your own film for free on pirate bay isn't the same as piracy. That's you giving your IP away. Though, unless you're the sole 100% owner of the product, I'd imagine you'd have a lot of complaining from people waiting for deferrals on your indie film, and very, very little chance of legit paid distribution.

Eventually, if left alone by the government, the free market will adapt and you'll find a way to give it away free and make money. Look at spotify from the music industry. Netflix does similar with older releases and does ok. The problem with those models so far is that because everyone is sharing a slice of combined total revenue (at least spotify, I know netflix negotiates up front) the little guy get's next to nothing while the big guys get a decent share.

Piracy indeed hurts the little guys the most. Sure, more copies of transformers will be downloaded than any indie release, but the fact the Hollywood looses money on big productions makes them less and less likely to ever risk funding the little guy as each year goes by.

Again, piracy sucks. As noble an idea as some people claimed bittorrent is supposed to be, the fact that 99.9999999% of it is used to steal intellectual property in the form of music, video, software, ebooks, etc makes it pretty sketchy all around.

 

[sonnyboo]

Whatever you DO go with, remember that a pirated copy is not lost revenue - chances are that person wouldn't have bought your DVD even if they couldn't find a pirated copy.

Yes, it absolutely IS lost revenue. Whether the user would have purchased it or not, they benefited from being able to see it without the copyright holder being compensated. Your don't get to eat a meal from a restaurant and decide after eating it if it was worth paying for or not.

Your assumption also alleviates the concept of TIME. 6 years ago if anyone told me I was going to buy a Peter Gabriel album, I would have told them they were insane. Never going to happen. Now I've spent over $200 on import CD's and all the remastered copies. Similarly, I never would have believed that I would buy Citizen Kane on DVD or Blu Ray, but now I own both - legitimate, not bootleg copies.

Piracy is not here to stay. A new form of the SOPA bill will get passed at some point and the wild wild west of the Internet will end. This may not be tomorrow, but within 10 years the law is coming to the torrent sites.

 

[NickSoares]

The most important point: a pirated download is NOT a lost sale! Thinking of them as lost sales is how the RIAA managed to come up with the ridiculous sum of 75 TRILLION DOLLARS (greater than the GDP of the entire world) when they sued Limewire.

Josh, I have had real world experience with this first hand. There was a specific day that our sales dropped, and after doing some research, we google searched "name of movie" and google's new algorithm had put a torrent site #1 for the search of "my movie- for sale" - Do you not think that people that were searching for my film didnt downloaded my movie for free? Guess what, the next week I got a call from a friend who said "Hey Nick, I was going to purchase your movie online, but I got it in a torrent file." (yes I got pissed) This was a FRIEND, can you imagine around the world?

So Josh, I just wanted to let you know that you can maybe take what I just said above, and add that to your mind the next time you think torrents dont prevent sales.

Nick

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

You can't lose something you never had. If you eat a meal from a restaurant and don't pay they can't sell the same food to someone else who is willing to pay - but you can always sell the same movie to someone who's wiling to pay.

And I'm not sure what your point is about time; to me it sounds like you're saying someone who may not be willing to pay for something now may be willing to pay in the future, which is absolutely true - and the same person who pirates your film now may be willing to buy the special edition DVD, or one of your other films, in the future. Six years ago had you heard of Peter Gabriel? Had you heard any of his music? That's because someone spent a lot of money to make sure you had heard of it, even if you weren't ready to buy it then. Was that marketing money lost revenue, or a legitimate business expense paid with the knowledge that it would bring in paying customers in the future?

Finally, I'll repeat myself once again - it doesn't matter if SOPA or another similar bill passes. It doesn't matter if these torrent sites are blocked. None of this will stop illegal downloading. What it will do is cost a lot of money for enforcement, money which you will pay through taxes. It will also likely hurt a lot of legitimate sites. What would you do if the site you use to sell VOD or DVD copies of your film is abruptly blocked because one of the big studios complained that there was content on the site that infringed their copyrights? Or if the site simply refused to accept content from independent producers for fear of accidentally getting blocked due to infringement?

 

[NickSoares]

You can't lose something you never had. If you eat a meal from a restaurant and don't pay they can't sell the same food to someone else who is willing to pay - but you can always sell the same movie to someone who's wiling to pay.

And I'm not sure what your point is about time; to me it sounds like you're saying someone who may not be willing to pay for something now may be willing to pay in the future, which is absolutely true - and the same person who pirates your film now may be willing to buy the special edition DVD, or one of your other films, in the future. Six years ago had you heard of Peter Gabriel? Had you heard any of his music? That's because someone spent a lot of money to make sure you had heard of it, even if you weren't ready to buy it then. Was that marketing money lost revenue, or a legitimate business expense paid with the knowledge that it would bring in paying customers in the future?

Finally, I'll repeat myself once again - it doesn't matter if SOPA or another similar bill passes. It doesn't matter if these torrent sites are blocked. None of this will stop illegal downloading. What it will do is cost a lot of money for enforcement, money which you will pay through taxes. It will also likely hurt a lot of legitimate sites. What would you do if the site you use to sell VOD or DVD copies of your film is abruptly blocked because one of the big studios complained that there was content on the site that infringed their copyrights? Or if the site simply refused to accept content from independent producers for fear of accidentally getting blocked due to infringement?

Is this comment directed towards me?

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

I think it's directed towards Sonny:

"Yes, it absolutely IS lost revenue. Whether the user would have purchased it or not, they benefited from being able to see it without the copyright holder being compensated. Your don't get to eat a meal from a restaurant and decide after eating it if it was worth paying for or not."

From me to you regarding what you said before:

As I said, I empathize with that. I really do.
When I said a pirated download is not a lost sale ; this is in reference to the ridiculous lawsuits brought up by the big studios where they've managed to calculate "losses" of TRILLIONS of dollars far greater than the gross domestic product of the world.

Whether or not your film makes a loss directly or indirectly due to piracy is something you will never know unless you have the stats in front of you. Until then, you have no idea how many people downloaded it, how many of those people even watched it, or even if those people ended up buying a copy because they liked it so much. There're just too many variables and, for lack of a better word, the statistics are just "projected guesses".

I mean, what if I release an absolute crap-shoot of a movie, but for some reason a million people download it for free. Apart from doing a bait and switch ("hey this looks like a great movie *ten minutes later* what the crap?!) how many of them were actually going to dish out money for it? How many of those downloads were people, like your friend, who were actually going to pay for it but then decided not to?

The bottom line is, like the War on Drugs, fighting piracy on the internet with rules and regulations is ridiculous. As I said, shut down the main sites and they will pop back up. Have you seen how many times the Pirate Bay has been brought down, only to be resurrected hours later?
Until you address the end user and the reasons for their actions, nothing will change.

Unfortunately, it seems to be common that asset creators bury their heads in the sand and blame it all on piracy (much like terrorism is blamed) rather than analyze the reasons and move on from there.

@Paul:
You bring up some excellent ideas. I can definitely see how revenues for rental places have been affected first hand by piracy. There are, as always, many factors at play, but I would say that it's likely to be a key point.

------

Whoops: Looks like it's already happened: http://www.dailytech.com/The+RIAAs+...he+Pirate+Bays+Torrent+Purge/article24005.htm
Guess they'll have to think of something different considering TBP can now be downloaded in a 90mb file...

 

[sonnyboo]

You can't lose something you never had. If you eat a meal from a restaurant and don't pay they can't sell the same food to someone else who is willing to pay - but you can always sell the same movie to someone who's wiling to pay.

Of course you can sell the same movie to someone who is willing to pay, but why would they be willing if they can get it for free? Especially in the illegal (in every definition) pirating of easy downloads?

Illegal downloads strip us of our rights to sell our work, at least the professionals who make a living at this. If you chose to give your movie away for free, there is no copyright infringement. For those of us who don't want to give away our work, and it is available for free - we have had our rights taken away without consent or permission.

Time will tell whose predictions will come true, and I agree that some sites will always be there for pirating, but the rampant high percentage of users will soon lose that ability to easily access them once the new laws are passed. Yes, we will pay for the enforcement with taxes and other ways.... so my point is proven - you will pay for the internet piracy one way or the other in the future. Everyone will, even those who did not participate.

I for one cannot wait until this comes to an end. Piracy is theft and we don't live in a socialist or communist state where everyone is "entitled" to movies, music, and TV shows for free. I've already gotten thousands of dollars from lawsuits against individual users who downloaded my feature film illegally. I do not feel any sympathy for them whatsoever. If it were possible to also press criminal charges, I would. A simple purchase or rental for $5-$10 would have avoided them paying out hundreds of dollars each in settlements.

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

You bring up something that has always irked me personally.

If I walked into a store and stole a copy of the same movie that you released (and settled with users) I would either get off with a slap on the wrist or a small fine.

Why is it appropriate to punish users with a charge several thousand times higher than that for "stealing" a digital copy?

I'm not saying that punishment is incorrect, but rather wondering why there is such a contrast between the two.
It obviously doesn't work as a deterrent.

Also, you might have missed the link I threw into my last post, but it would be a nice one to read to really highlight why any laws they introduce will only damage legitimate businesses as the pirates (and the ones doing the actual damage) will simply work around it.

 

[PaulGriffith]

I'm there with you sonnyboo. The few people I know personally that pirate stuff and have no qualms about it feel a sense of entitlement. It's either "the prices they charge for movies are ridiculous" or when it comes to software, "I just want to try it out first and make sure it fits my needs and the demos offered are never full featured enough to do it. If I like it, I'll buy it". Of course, I don't know if they've bought any piece after downloading it and they talk about movies like it's their birthright to watch stuff at a price (even $0) they deem appropriate.

Josh, the article talks about TPB using magnet links now to mange and host the bittorrent files. True, TPB itself have somewhat washed their hands of it, but now instead of filing suit against one entity, TPB itself, they'll be able to sue the pants off of any one of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of magnet hosts that will pop up. By hosting that content, it's placing you liable for distributing however many thousands of dollars worth of intellectual property that isn't yours to dole out.

The studio system has it's flaws, they are businesses out to make money any way they can, but in doing so they employ people in our field to do it. It's a little crazy to be pro-piracy and plan to make money in filmmaking.

Sonnyboo, out of curiosity and if you don't mind answering, did you hire a lawyer to file suit against individual pirates and settle out of court, or handle it all yourself? Out of state stuff or in your area? Again, out of curiosity. I have no features out there to be pirated, just want to know how it works haha.

In the mean time, if you know a fairly gullible pirate (with no heart issues) and want to give them a panic attack, send them this:
http://www.prankdial.com/pranks/digitalpiracy

 

[PaulGriffith]

You bring up something that has always irked me personally.

If I walked into a store and stole a copy of the same movie that you released (and settled with users) I would either get off with a slap on the wrist or a small fine.

Why is it appropriate to punish users with a charge several thousand times higher than that for "stealing" a digital copy?

I'm not saying that punishment is incorrect, but rather wondering why there is such a contrast between the two.
It obviously doesn't work as a deterrent.

Shoplifting isn't that light of a fine. Hundreds to thousands of dollars and possible jail time. A judge may let a teen off with a warning or community service or something depending on the situation, but that's not always the case.

Also, when you download a torrent file you are also uploading and hosting that file for others to download. It's akin to the difference of being a drug user and a drug dealer. Dealers are sentenced more harshly.

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

The studio system has it's flaws, they are businesses out to make money any way they can, but in doing so they employ people in our field to do it. It's a little crazy to be pro-piracy and plan to make money in filmmaking.
http://www.prankdial.com/pranks/digitalpiracy

You're absolutely right.

However, I think the current model of attacking the pirates instead of listening to their qualms and finding a way to meet that demand in a (probably) very creative way.

I mean, look at how iTunes completely changed the music business.
Look at how micro transactions in video games have become the new norm.

How many users hesitate to throw $.99, $1.99 or even $4.99 at an application, just because it's cheap, convenient and easily accessible?

Maybe I just have a different out-take on it because of my background in games, but I just don't understand why the big studios aren't scrambling to come up with the future of movie distribution.
Don't they want to be the next iTunes?