MPAA Blames BitTorrent (Yeah, right)

mrG — Sat, 21 May 2005 23:51:27 -0400

There is no better example of how stupidity and ignorant rhetoric dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding MPAA Pres and CEO Dan Glickman's scapegoating BitTorrent for what was essentially an industry insider job:

"There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith. The unfortunate fact is this type of theft happens on a regular basis on peer to peer networks all over the world"
[ MPAA Blames BitTorrent ]

Let's look at the facts, shall we? Assuming such things still matter ...

That first file-share I commented on earlier was, apparently, bogus. It was a prank (or a troll?) -- It wasn't really Star Wars.
The real pre-print wasn't released on BitTorrent, it was released on Usenet, and only later appeared on the Trackers and various other networks. A leak is a leak, and once it's leaking, it's leaking.
That real print was not released until just three hours before the first midnight showings of the Real Thing; in my experience, it takes longer than 3 hours to actually locate and download a file that size, but I do understand that others are luckier. Nonetheless, the studios are crying over 180 minutes of lost revenue.
Even with this pre-release, to postulate lost profits, one must assume these eager downloaders do so in lieu of a theatre ticket, and not, as I suggested, as a means to pre-view and arm themselves with trivial observations to one-up their buddies when they do go to see it.
Here's the kicker:

After starting the day with $16,912,367 from midnight shows alone, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith closed Thursday with $50,013,859 from an estimated 9,400 screens at 3,661 theaters. That's the biggest day ever for a single movie in history.
BoxOfficeMojo.com

Let me restate that for clarity: Fifty million dollars, in one day -- that's some hooker. Brings a teary eye, it does. Show me that tv spot again about the poor distressed film-editor who's children will go hungry tonight because of fan(atic) file-trading.
And a postscript of common sense: If not Usenet, there'd be rogue FTP. If not FTP, there's email. If not email, there's couriers and VHS -- bootlegging did not start with BitTorrent, it didn't even start with VHS; pre-release leaks have been leaking for a long, long time.

When there's this much blatent disinformation in the mix, I don't know about you, but it makes me really wonder about the unsaid real story. Dan's hiding something, or the MPAA wouldn't need to speak through his teeth ...

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MPAA Blames BitTorrent (Yeah, right)