Recently, while promoting his latest film, The Visit, in an Australian radio interview, M. Night Shyamalan broached the topic of pre-release film leaks and how they affect films and the industry. Predictably, he prefaced his opinion by siding with the hackneyed "It's bad, mmm'aky" film industry line. But, he also made an interesting point relating to one of his films and how its particular leak was in fact beneficial for it.

Shyamalan said that his film Signs (2002) was forecasting a poor reception, from both critics and box office. However, after a "screener" leaked online, which was downloaded - according to the director - half a million times, it became an unexpected hit. That is, Shyamalan directly attributed the relative success of that genre piece to it leaking to the public before the critical reviews and broader public opinion came into full effect.

For sometime now, I've felt that not all "piracy" is bad for the industry. That some films, which would otherwise go unnoticed and end up in a bargain bin at Walmart or behind three other videos in the corner of one of the few video stores that still exist, get advertising and promotion that they could never garner for themselves. And if the films turn out to be something worth watching, they at least then have a fighting chance of being recognised. Conversely, if a film sucks, it won't [likely] make money anyway; so it being viewed for free is a much of a muchness. In this sense, "piracy" could almost be construed as a meritorious system!

In terms of blockbuster films being pirated: Such films make their money on repeated viewings by hardcore fans and will make money, irrespective of whether or not they're leaked prior to release. It's in fact why the ultra expensive blockbusters are all we see nowadays -- it's a far safer financial bet for investors than a moderately expensive, niche film that hasn't the advertising clout and might well fail. Low budget films, too, are still made. But they're essentially 'resumé padding' for those who make them and aren't really produced to generate a fortune at the box office; à la flashes in the pan, like The Blair Witch Project.

So, with all this mind, it's hard to see how so-called "piracy" damages the industry to the extent big corporations would have us believe. After all, most of those who pirate fall into two categories: A) those who do it habitually and will continue to, no matter what hurdles you put in front of them, and B) those who cannot afford to pay to see the films, so no potential revenue is lost anyway.

What say you, /prog/ -- side with Shamalamdingdong's allusions or the billion-dollar moguls'?

The big blockbusters aren't the ones in trouble. The people who go to see them at the theatre aren't usually the ones who pirate them. If they are, it's usually after they've seen them at the theatre.

Smaller films may lose revenue, but, then again, if they aren't carried on many screens, they aren't guaranteed to make much theatre revenue in the first place.

Predictably, he prefaced his opinion by siding with the hackneyed "It's bad, mmm'aky" film industry line.

Hackneyed? Theft is theft. And it's immoral.

Copyright infringement is not actually theft

>>4
But piracy is.

Yes, but piracy is basically a pejorative term used by the film industry to describe copyright infringement. Their argument has been cloaked in the rhetoric of 'theft' since forever, despite infringement being legally and factually distinct.

Besides all that legal mumbo jumbo:

Property is theft.

La propriété, c'est le vol!

The film industry is not pro-bono. Films are commercial products. A product seized without due payment is a product stolen.

Indeed, they are. If I were to walk into a store and take a DVD without paying, that would be theft. But downloading a film in a situation that breaches the owner's copyright isn't quite the same thing. In the first instance, there is one less DVD, hence I have 'permanently deprived', hence theft. In the latter, no permanent deprivation, I've just made a copy, hence copyright infringement, which is a statutory tort c.f. criminal law for theft. The copyright owner loses out in a similar way to the shopkeeper, and you could argue that morally, there isn't a whole lot of difference, but there is some difference, however small that might be.

I certainly won't dispute the indirect nature of it. In this instance, a good way to not lose sight of definition is to replace the word "product" with "service". One cannot deprive a commercial service as they would a physical-object-as-product, but they can nonetheless obtain or entertain as much via some manner of illicit access, thereby depriving the servicer whatever their due share of market return—theft of one's business.

Yes, I would agree with that. Moral wrong is similar; but the indirectness kinda complicates the economic effects of it all, which is where Shyamalan's argument comes in. With the stolen good it's pretty simple - you stole product x worth $20 and gained the benefit, $20 is the loss. With the infringement, there's $20 'lost' to the owner...but that's only potentially lost, since you may never have paid for the thing anyway - I believe some studies have shown that a fair proportion of downloaders download to some extent, because they can. Also, you can then get the offsetting effects whereby a film/show etc. is 'spread' initially through the infringements, and as such does better out of the legitimate sales than it ever would have done were infringement not an option (Shyamalan).

Morality is subjective. What's moral to a god-bothering, puritan, Bible Belt U.S. resident might not be "moral" to an ISIS member trapped for martyrdom. Morality is relative, subjective and mutable and cannot be used as a basis in any real world, factual argument.

First one must own to presence of willingness to pay for a particular product in the case it could not be acquired free of charge. If this motivation does not exists - e.g., one would not view a film if it cost money to do so - then no "theft" can exist; by very definition.

Intellectually property right or copyright infringement is another issue, but it's a wholly notional concept, and in the real world, amounts to little more that legal verbiage in place to facilitate litigation.

No. "Piracy" is a word which has acquired an additional definition in modern, intellectual property acknowledging times. A throw-away, dismissive buzz term which the dope masses have been ingrained with in order to facilitate the avarice of corporations through the sidling of more systems of control into the proletariat home.

"Piracy" is a grey area; nay black or white.

But, theft is not theft if no transaction would have taken place either way.

Your "theft" assumption is predicated wholly upon, A) baseless propositions indoctrinated by corporations, and B) that those who pirate would pay for what they're pirating -- a non argument I already addressed in my OP.

But, theft is not theft if no transaction would have taken place either way.

Exactly.

Yes. And this is the key point that corporations elide with religious constancy. For it renders all their arguments moot and exposes their true motivations -- greed and a desire to control.

If piracy is in fact so costly to the industry, why release films in Russia or China at all -- nations where so-called "piracy" is not a mere option, but a literal industry. Moreover, the revenue from one of these notorious piracy offenders - China - literally props up many Hollywood films which do no make their investments back in the West.

Hypocrisy is the the ultimate measure of one's convictions.

Pre-release piracy is not the real problem. It's piracy after a film has been released, with poor quality downloads flooding the internet, that people object to. It's not the big budget movies that really suffer, it is the smaller movies that are being watched for free which lose out in the end. I don't understand why people would want to watch a poor quality knock off, the only reason being that it's free. Piracy is theft pure and simple.

It's piracy after a film has been released, with poor quality downloads flooding the internet, that people object to.

What, so if the quality of the pirated media were better, the "problem" of piracy would no longer exist? I'm not sure I follow... Are you supporting piracy or opposing it?

Well, whatever M. Night Shyamalan thinks is good for films has got to be good for films, right? Don't argue with the master of cinema.

I think this is just another one of those discussions in which the participants get more entrenched in the views they already held.

Yup. Like gun control, abortion, and lots of other issues it seems that most people are strictly on one "side" or another, seeing little nuance or complexity to the problem.

Seeing little nuance or complexity to the problem? Kinda like this?

When your whole populace has been conditioned to believe that we are God's Chosen Kingdom on Earth, manifest destiny, defender of liberty, etc, etc, it's pretty hard for most to think that there's anything worthwhile about the rest of the world, except oil we can take, brown people we can bomb, and places to export our juvenile movies and fast food chains.

https://dis.4ct.org/newnew/read/1440596508/

Are you going to respond, you intellectually challenged coward?

Are you going to stop trolling with your hundreds of sockpuppets, spending hours every day just trying to fuck with people here and on /prog/ or /lounge/? Didn't think so.

And for the record, I don't claim for a second to be fair, nuanced, kind or anything else in regards to my views on any particular subject. I'm a failure and a hypocrite in many ways - just like every other human. But I don't spend my whole life just looking for random people to attack on message boards and kissing up to an occasional few dimwits so as to magnify my trolling efforts, and that alone makes me a slightly less reprehensible human being than you, I'd say.

Now goodbye, sock.

my views on any particular subject. I'm a failure and a hypocrite in many ways - just like every other human.

Ok, fine. At least you are man enough to admit it.

In this sense, there is no "least". There is only shame.

Yes.

The human being's inability to set aside inculcated bias and view a subject matter objectively is indeed a shortcoming of our species. TPTB understand this and utilise this weakness to abuse it to their advantage.

Indeed. Eisegesis is a common trait of most human beings -- re-enforcement of existing prejudices from whatever information is presented. It's in fact one of the key foibles which defines the also-rans of our species from the few, true worthy examples homo spaiens have to offer.

Who seriously wants to pay money to see The Happening?

Sarcasm aside, this is pertinent point: Should schlock purveyors be permitted to 'swindle' people?

Should not the film industry not offer full, no-questions-asked refunds for their products to unsatisfied customers? Video games do it -- why are films sacrosanct from accountability? Why is Hollywood permitted to effectively rip off its customers and then cry blue murder when some consumer take the power back and try before they buy?

Setting aside the ethical issue here, I doubt that Shyamalan is right about Signs. Back in 2002, I'd say approximately none of the people who illegally downloaded his movie subsequently paid to see it in cinemas.

He and other people made a pessimistic prediction about what would happen at the box office, and this prediction, like so many others (pessimistic and optimistic) proved wrong. Rather than simply say, "We got it wrong," he cast about for some post hoc rationalisation, and he found one.

>>32
Your video game comments shows you do not know what the hell you are talking about.
Steam and a few other of the big game services offer refunds if the game will not run on a computer system it should run on,,which occasionally happens.
You want the film industry to refund tickets when somebody does not like a movie.Huge difference.
One is a objective critea;The game does not run on a system where it meets all the requirements.
Whether a movie is good or not is an almost 100% subjective judgement.

Sounds to me like you are just another guy who wants all his entertainment for free,without paying, and comes up with some dumb butt excuses to try to make that into some noble cause.

It's a curiously revisionist statement for him to make too since before its release the film was tracking for a $40-45m opening (it opened higher at $60m but was never expected to tank), which was not only much higher than his previous film but it was also much better reviewed. But then many directors like to pretend that films that were successful right from the start of their run and were widely expected to be hits were somehow films that opened disastrously before word of mouth got out (David Lean and Francois Truffaut in particular were repeat offenders), so this kind of triumph snatched from the jaws of defeat fantasy is far from uncommon.

If memory serves (*I quite liked Signs and therefore do have some memory of it back in the day), the Shyamalan film in question wasn't particularly well received. IIRC, it was something to do with the religious connotations - i.e., its questioning of the relevance of non-interventionist gods in the face of the modern world realities - and its eschewing of the action-heavy, bombastic approach to the 'alien invasion' film genre.

In the context of mainstream U.S. audiences, this does in fact reconcile and points to the film garnering a lukewarm reception. Further, if the director himself says the film was tracking for a poor opening, methinks it likely was.

Someone should research the opening weekend/s takings for the film (in 2002) and what it was up against at the time; as this may buttress one or the other side of the argument... Moreover, given Shyamalan was riding the crest of the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable wave, Signs must have been throwing up some truly poor indicators for him to believe it wasn't tracking well.

With all the due respect deserving of a stranger on the Internet, a director will likely have a better understanding of his own films' box office performance than said Internet stranger. Also, we're working on the basis of information we have and not supposition that could derail the debate in any umber of unrelated directions.

That, and if the guy who's directly affected by the takings of a film and who is meant to be a veritable trumpet for the publishers and distributors of his films, says that a film's leakage resulted in more revenue, then I think it's a safe bet his assertions are rooted in at least some fact.

With all the due respect deserving of a stranger on the Internet, a director will likely have a better understanding of his own films' box office performance than said Internet stranger.

Two responses:

(1) Why? Any "internet stranger" can simply look up box office figures and have just as good an idea of what they were as anyone else. The director has no special insight here. And as TrevorAclea pointed out, directors' memories (or their stated recollections at any rate) are often known to be at fault.

[b](2)[/b] We're talking in any case not about the box office performance of Signs, but about what might have caused it. Shyamalan's proposing that what caused it was something entirely external to the movie itself - about which, therefore, there's no reason to suppose he has any particular expertise.

That, and if the guy who's directly affected by the takings of a film and who is meant to be a veritable trumpet for the publishers and distributors of his films, says that a film's leakage resulted in more revenue, then I think it's a safe bet his assertions are rooted in at least some fact.What kind of reasoning is that? Because Shyamalan is saying something unorthodox, he's probably right?

Or is it more that you're saying: Holy cow, I've finally found a film director who says something that sort of supports my own pet theory. He must be right!

Any "internet stranger" can simply look up box office figures and have just as good an idea of what they were as anyone else

Indeed. Or that the film's competition was the second weekend of Goldmember and the first weekend of The Master of Disguise and a Martin Lawrence live comedy film (something it takes barely a minute to look up). This information is hardly secret, and nor are the trade papers' estimates of what it was expected to do. Just as the films better reviews than Unbreakable are not.

As for directors' memories, David Lean loved to tell anyone who would listen that Doctor Zhivago had a disastrous start at the box-office before slowly becoming a word-of-mouth hit, when the reality is that the film had the biggest advance ticket sales of any MGM picture up to that time and set first and second week records at every theatre it opened at. If you look at one of the interviews Truffaut gave in 1981 that's included on the Criterion DVD of Love on the Run, Francois Truffaut says that his then-current film, The Last Metro, was a critical and box-office flop - in reality it was one of his very biggest hits in France with 3,393,694 admissions (French films traditionally gave admission figures rather than grosses), won 10 Cesar awards and was nominated for an Oscar. Both directors repeatedly made such claims about some of their most successful films, just as other directors claim that notorious failures were actually profitable.

Directors love to create romanticised offscreen narratives where no-one believed in their films, but it isn't always true. And it certainly isn't in the case of Signs.

This thread just convinces me the more that the anti copyright people are just freeloaders who want all their entertainment for free,and try to create scenarios which make them some kind of moral crusaders.

As for anon quoting the "Property is Theft" B.S., I wonder if he would feel the same if somebody broke into this apartment and stole his all his stuff.

Piracy is great for films, especially for Shyamalan's works.

I would kill myself if I spend my money on Signs or The Village. I saw The Happening in cinema and felt like a complete retard for buying tickets. This movie sucked a lot of my brain cells.

David Lean's story has even been reported as fact without attribution to him - and I'll admit I used to believe it for that reason.

Shyamalan is speaking 13 years after the release of Signs, more than enough time for any memory to become radically corrupted. I'm a little more surprised with Truffaut, who would have been speaking only a year after the release of The Last Metro - but I wouldn't want to say that even he was actually lying rather than falsely remembering a more exciting story.

>>42
I'm beginning to think that from the late 70s at least Truffaut was a glass half empty kind of guy: almost all of his interviews between then and his death seem to be him describing his films not just as failures with the critics but also at the box-office. Maybe he didn't make as much from them as he hoped, maybe he was always owed money, maybe he only remembered the bad reviews, maybe his health problems were just depressing him.

It's surprising how many directors find themselves with recollections of their biggest successes that are at odds with the facts. Sometimes it's just seeing what they want to: The Exorcist was not well received by the critics for the most part in 1973 but William Peter Blatty remembers it as a critical triumph because some of the local newspapers and obscure Catholic journals he subscribed to gave it rave reviews, for example, but it's more common for filmmakers to claim the world was against them even when they were on a roll. I just think there's a romantic and self-aggrandizing triumphalist appeal to the notion that the studio and critics didn't believe in a film but the audience discovered it anyway, as if to say they succeeded in spite of everyone and everything else. Which sometimes is the case, but not as often as some directors claim. And Shyamalan, who has gone to sometimes bizarre lengths to create a mythos and mystique around himself in the past, is certainly one of the less reliable ones.

The answer to the question is in the results - no, piracy has not had any negative effect on the movie industry. From a general perspective, the industry is as rich as ever before. From a quality perspective, you sometimes have good movies getting ignored, and bad movies succeeding - but that has always been the case, way before piracy as well. There is just as much diversity in the industry today as ever before, and smaller budget films face similar struggles as in the past.

There is no proof whatsoever that piracy has been harmful to the movie industry.

I have a serious question for anyone willing to answer.

If someone watches a movie online without paying but would simply order it on Netflix when it was released or watch it streaming how is that losing money to the studio?

Hell, what if that person wrote down every movie they watched online and then ordered all of them again on Netflix when they were released? There is no way that anyone would be losing money there.