A Copyfighter’s Musings

Blockbuster is a new ally against region coding, sorta.  This article seems to say they have two beefs.  First, people are importing DVDs and using chipped players, so local Blockbuster’s are getting left out of the distribution loop.  Second, by the time we reach the international DVD release window, the piracy floodgates have already been wide-open from the domestic release window.  So, though not against region coding in principle, they’re against it in practice.

This reconsideration of the release windows is a broader trend in the movie industry.  Matrix Revolutions was released at the very same minute all over the world; X2 was released at the same time in different time zones.  As DVD sales grow and make up more of total revenue, the rental window shrinks.  Indeed, the entire cycle is becoming compressed.

(Cue thinking out loud:) There seem to be three factors at work here:

1.  Big budget, high marketing cost films create increasing incentives to release films broadly and recoup as much as the cost as quickly as possible.

2.  Going digital means going cheaper in manufacturing and cost to consumer.  Maybe we don’t need the jukebox in the sky – the jukebox is becoming priced to own for your home.  If tons of money can be made from those sales, why wait to price discriminate between people who would rent versus those who would get PPV versus those who would wait for cable TV?  As price goes down and convenience goes up, it might make less sense to have many windows spread out over time.  This should only continue as movies are sold online.

3.  Going digital, of course, means piracy.  That was the motivation behind the Matrix and X2 premieres.  It should have a similar impact along the whole timeline eventually.  Even if piracy doesn’t cut into theatre revenues, camcorder copies of theatre showings will cut into all subsequent revenue windows.  The more time between the camcorder copy hitting P2P and the DVD or digital download being released at a reasonable price, the more chance someone will choose to download.

Won’t all this compressed cycle cannibalize some of the revenue streams?   Maybe. But consider how precisely movie studios can track box office numbers. Add into that equation how precisely they could track online downloads and how easy it would be to create the files on a whim.  They could pin down when the box office is starting to cool off and immediately shift gears into the downloads market.

Right now, the movie industry seems to be adjusting relatively well to this – DVDs have been a huge boon.  I’d say we can expect similar compression in the music cycle – in fact, we are already seeing some shfits.  But will we see similar success?  To what extent will they too be able to sufficently recoup costs in a shorter timeframe?

Filed by Derek Slater at 11:36 pm under General news
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EFF reports “The Hon. Jeremy Fogel indicated he intends to issue a ruling within the next two months on whether Diebold will face the consequences of abusing copyright law.” Maybe it’s just wishful thinking that this could go in our favor.  But even getting this far feels like a win.  Here’s why:

“The plaintiffs liken themselves to modern Galileos persecuted by authorities. I fear that a more apt analogy would be to modern day Don Quixotes feeling threatened by windmills which they perceive as giants. There is no real controversy here.”

That’s from the judge at the final hearing for Felten v. SDMI.  He must have felt very clever. I doubt security researchers felt any safer.

Filed by Derek Slater at 12:05 am under General news
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