Support Showbiz Piracy – Reduce Studio Monies

Was bargaining for a water-melon today when a scrummy kid comes up and shows me a 3-in-1 DVD of “Fast and Furious 4”, “Pink Panther 2″ and “Get Smart“. The cost of the DVD was less than the water-melon and I was tempted to buy it. Oops… before you MPAA sons-of-guns ask the FBI to raid my humble abode and arrest me for writing about it and before you free-speech blogger activists go out for a march, let me tell you that I did not buy the pirated DVD. Several reasons –
1) The packaging was bad. The printouts were all fudged and shaky
2) I knew the films are bootlegged because they played in a theatre
3) Even otherwise, I did not have my laptop to check the quality
On the way back, I just could not help wonder about showbiz piracy morality.

Why does piracy of any form exist? It is for the simple reason that the originals are too costly. So, the sure way to beat piracy is to make the originals so cheap that there is no margin for pirates. If the powers that be really utilized their economies of scale and already established distribution, they can bring out DVDs that would cost less than a blank disk plus computing power plus human cost to burn a pirated DVD and sell it to the masses in the nooks and corners of the world.
But no. The studios do not want to, or in some cases, not afford to market piracy-discouraging cheap copies because they already spent several millions of dollars making the movies. The actors, directors, agents, managers, technicians, marketeers and the sundry crew associated with the movies are getting paid loads of money to do their lousy jobs. Honestly, can any person and any profession in the world justify upwards of several million dollars for maybe, 3 months of work? No matter who Kate Winslet is or Will Smith is, they just cannot be given the sort of money they demand. And what is the great thing that the showbiz people do anyway? Create an illusion by dressing up, read some lines and kiss each others asses of how wonderful and important they are. They’re not saving lives.

Simply put, the costs of making movies is too high. So, the prices of everything that follows such as tickets and DVDs are also high because the cost has to be recovered with profit by hook or crook. This obviously, has given rise to the markets of piracy, bootlegging cartels and P2P downloads etc. The free market has spoken, and I will even go so far as to say that some good is coming out of all this.
Everytime a pirated movie DVD is being bought, it re-directs the money that should have gone to the big studios to a complex network of tradespeople who make a buck or two in the process. Such entrepreneurship which is about seeing an opportunity and grabbing it should be rewarded. The poor people are empowering themselves by technological and logistical innovation. It warms my cockles. I support showbiz piracy. Who knows? Maybe, in the long run, stung studios will realize their folly and cut-back on the spending and salaries thereby bringing a modicum of sanity to showbiz with cool heads prevailing.

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