piracy discussion - new series

[Shalashaska]

There will be no guilt from me.

There will be no consequences to CBS either.

Either Star Trek is shit and it will die, or Star Trek will be fantastic and thrive.

Piracy will not change that.

If claiming that your movie or TV show only failed because the Pirates who have been pirating for years and not paying for anything for years, are still not paying for just your new product, even though you really thought that they would have a change of heart, and suddenly become good people and open their wallets, is the slimmest of margins why Star Trek was not renewed for a second season, then that producer/show runner is ignorant to expect the impossible from the intractable.

Everything is pirated.

Everything is free if you know where to look.

Most people chose to pay.

Blaming Piracy for a shitty TV show that no one is paying to watch is a crutch and denial about the inferior quality of your product.

It's like blaming vegetarians for the rise in price of hamburgers at McDonalds every year.

You're thick.

http://www.avclub.com/article/hannibal-producer-says-online-piracy-brutally-slau-233990

So one of the best TV shows of the last decade is obviously "shitty" because "online piracy brutally slaughtered her show"?

Alright then. Keep dreaming.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're thick.

http://www.avclub.com/article/hannibal-producer-says-online-piracy-brutally-slau-233990

So one of the best TV shows of the last decade is obviously "shitty" because "online piracy brutally slaughtered her show"?

Alright then. Keep dreaming.

Hannibal season one was sweet.

Season 3 was disjoint and conceited.

It deserved cancellation.

If the argument is that the season one audience left legal viewing options to pursue illegal viewing options, then maybe you're probably right.

What's more likely to have happened is that most of the season one audience just left. They saw the decline. Got bored and left.

Any illegal audience that joined with season three, if it was never a legal audience, was never going to suddenly later be a legal audience, because they don't pay. Either they are poor, foreign, assholes or all of the above, but downloading is shit. it's annoying and difficult. Legal is so much easier if you live in the right part of the world and have disposable income.

First half of season three we the audience couldn't even decide if it was a dream or not. Second half was verbatim of Manhunter, a fricking 30 year old movie who has spent it's load of plot twists already.

Martha is lashing out because her child is dim and unattractive.

I forgive her.

There’s a simple reason the series isn’t bringing in 5-8 million people: NBC gave it the death time slot for season 2. This isn’t a secret. Basically everyone has said this.

When Hannibal first premiered on NBC, it aired on Thursday nights at 10 with a lead in from now-cancelled Matthew Perry show “Go On.” The dark thriller was an outlier in NBC’s Thursday evening comedy block. When it returned the following year as a midseason show it’s ratings continued to stumble after it was placed after the network’s fantasy crime drama “Grimm.”

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-no-one-is-watching-hannibal-2014-7?r=US&IR=T

 

[Shalashaska]

Hannibal season one was sweet.

Season 3 was disjoint and conceited.

It deserved cancellation.

If the argument is that the season one audience left legal viewing options to pursue illegal viewing options, then maybe you're probably right.

What's more likely to have happened is that most of the season one audience just left. They saw the decline. Got bored and left.

Any illegal audience that joined with season three, if it was never a legal audience, was never going to suddenly later be a legal audience, because they don't pay. Either they are poor, foreign, assholes or all of the above, but downloading is shit. it's annoying and difficult. Legal is so much easier if you live in the right part of the world and have disposable income.

First half of season three we the audience couldn't even decide if it was a dream or not. Second half was verbatim of Manhunter, a fricking 30 year old movie who has spent it's load of plot twists already.

Martha is lashing out because her child is dim and unattractive.

I forgive her.



http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-no-one-is-watching-hannibal-2014-7?r=US&IR=T

If they lost viewership in season 1, it's probably because the casual network viewers lost interest as it began to fade away from the procedural aspect and went more towards a cable serialized format.

The show was already doomed before season 3, it's why Fuller felt he had the freedom to do those crazy dream-like episodes of Hannibal in the first half of season 3.

The second half of the season was an adaptation of Red Dragon, the first Hannibal Lecter novel, not an adaptation of Manhunter. Big difference

 

[AdmiralBruno]

By that logic fast forwarding commercials is stealing too by depriving them of more advertising revenue. A show should take me 42 - 44 minutes to watch, not 60.

Anyway it's almost laughable people who get all worked up over digital "piracy"... At least the "victims" Are wealthy corporations and their overpaid employees. In Star Trek money has no value and everyone is equal. The show should live up to that. What Would Picard Do? WWPD

So unless you are a saint you have and probably still do cruel things to other people.Much worse than copying a video file

 

[Guy Gardener]

If they lost viewership in season 1, it's probably because the casual network viewers lost interest as it began to fade away from the procedural aspect and went more towards a cable serialized format.

The show was already doomed before season 3, it's why Fuller felt he had the freedom to do those crazy dream-like episodes of Hannibal in the first half of season 3.

The second half of the season was an adaptation of Red Dragon, the first Hannibal Lecter novel, not an adaptation of Manhunter. Big difference

Lit snob.

The ratings for season one and two where in the link to the alternative reason for the shows cancellation I supplied above.

Season one started at 4.5 million people, and finished 2.0 million viewers.

They lost 2.5 million viewers in year one. The first million fucked off between episode 2 & 3, and lost another million the next week because the network decided that the episode was "too" disturbing and would not air it.

The assessment I was reading said that to be truly safe, that Hannibal needed 7 or 8 million viewers every week.

The Most downloaded show in the world, Game of Thrones, only had 2 million downloaders downloading. So we think Hannibal's piracy approached that?

Hannibal needed 6 million additional people to start watching to avoid cancellation.

Piracy was not the largest part of the problem.

 

[fireproof78]

By that logic fast forwarding commercials is stealing too by depriving them of more advertising revenue. A show should take me 42 - 44 minutes to watch, not 60.

Anyway it's almost laughable people who get all worked up over digital "piracy"... At least the "victims" Are wealthy corporations and their overpaid employees. In Star Trek money has no value and everyone is equal. The show should live up to that. What Would Picard Do? WWPD

So unless you are a saint you have and probably still do cruel things to other people.Much worse than copying a video file

So, a crime is ok if the victim is wealthy? Fantastic.

Also, overpaid employees? I'll be happy to let my friends in the VFX industry trying to find work that they are overpaid. Also, Rythm and Hues would argue against being overpaid too.

It's not just the "wealthy" who suffer. Stealing a show, no matter how "inconsequential" to you, actually sends the message that the show is worthless.

Is it going to end anybody? Probably not right away. But the overall effect will be interesting to watch play out in the long run as the trickle down slowly drains value away from TV shows and films that people can get for "free."

You know, because movies are made for free.

 

[Guy Gardener]

TV is aware of Piracy.

They know what it is and where it is.

(Or they're idiots.)

They plan for it and plan around it.

Piracy is not a surprise.

A surprise would be "No piracy".



Hannibal season 3 ratings.

Less than a million for several weeks.

I believe the argument was that Hannibal would have great numbers if the pirates would just stop pirating.

Threshhold numbers were seven million.

Great numbers would probably be ten million.

9 million Americans were not illegally downloading Hannibal every week.

 

[Spider]

Oh for god's sake, piracy is not going to kill Star Trek or any other show. They'll make their money, otherwise they wouldn't take on the project. Piracy of tv shows and movies is a debate about morality , not an economic issue. I doubt the producers of the new Trek show will ever know you pirated anything.

 

[T'Arwen]

Oh for god's sake, piracy is not going to kill Star Trek or any other show. They'll make their money, otherwise they wouldn't take on the project. Piracy of tv shows and movies is a debate about morality , not an economic issue. I doubt the producers of the new Trek show will ever know you pirated anything.

That's oversimplifying but the basic idea is correct. Economists say the consequences of piracy are harder to quantify than the industry would like you to think, a point already made on the articles I posted on page 2. Take creative output for example. The author is not some populist but from the Cato Institute (founded by a Koch brother). http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/internet-regulation-and-the-economics-of-piracy/

If we look at movies, the numbers compiled by the industry statistics site Box Office Mojo show an average of 558 releases from American studios over the past decade, which rises to 578 if you focus on just the past five years. The average for the previous decade—before illicit movie downloads were even an option on most people's radar—is 472 releases per year. (As we learn from a recent Congressional Research Service report, it's weirdly hard to detect a strong overall correlation between output and employment in the motion picture industry, which actually fell slightly from 1998 to 2008, even as profits and CEO pay soared. One reason is the growing trend in recent decades for "Hollywood" features to actually be produced in Canada or Australia.)

For fireproof's friends, piracy may not be a reason they can't find jobs. After all, the overall economy is trending towards higher productivity with less employees. Studios have their share of overpaid executives and underpaid peons just like most businesses.

Something else as food for thought.

In many industries, the relationship between consumer spending and job creation is relatively straightforward. If demand for widgets or restaurant meals rises, satisfying that demand requires a roughly linear increase in widget factories and restaurants, in hiring of widget-makers and cooks and waiters, and in purchases of the raw material inputs for those goods. Distribution of copyrighted content—and in particular digital distribution over the Internet—is a bit more complicated, for precisely the same reason piracy is an issue: once the first copy of a work has been created, an unlimited number of additional units (of the digital product) can be produced at effectively zero cost.

 

[Phoenix219]

My point is that if someone doesn't want to pay for CBSAA to watch the new Star Trek show, that's their right. But if they want to watch it by some other means (i.e. purchasing the download legally through iTunes or buying the DVDs/BRs) and instead resort to pirating it off the internet for free, that's still stealing.

I have no intention of getting CBSAA just to see Star Trek. I'm content to wait until the DVDs come out, because I'm a physical media dinosaur. But I'll happily pay the 20 bucks for a disk of 13 episodes.

It would be pure luck if it comes out for $20. New DVD sets of just finished seasons usually start at closer to $40-$50.

I have no remorse over the fact that I am archiving tv on a multitude of external hard drives.

Most of the content was paid for years ago, and I would have seen it for free on public airwaves.

The people that produced it have already been compensated.

My copy doesn't take away from the original or any of the people that want the original. There are still just as many physical copies for sale as there were before.

I have no disposable income, as I am paying bills on a small restaurant; there is no world where me not torrenting, would give the studios any extra money.

I could just ask friends to record stuff for me if it really came down to it.

I do not feel that I am stealing, hurting anyone, or committing a crime.

I sleep very well at night.

 

[fireproof78]

It's a complex argument. I understand your circumstances, but I also see the negative impact if the attitude becomes pervasive among consumers of mass media culture.

More to my point is the underlying attitude that is assented in some arguments that essentially says "This is not worth my money, but I'll watch it for free."

Is this attitude among everyone who torrents? No. Is it common enough to make me concerned? Yes.

 

[AdmiralBruno]

Good, original TV doesn't need piracy to hurt it. look how many stupid "reality" shows are out there because they are cheap to make, and people of very low intelligence watch them

 

[EnderAKH]

The people that produced it have already been compensated.

No, they haven't. Have you never heard of residuals? Every time an episode or movie plays when it is streamed or broadcast, or when a movie is purchased, the people involved get residual payments. For day players and staff writers, this is part of their income. That is how they continue to pay bills while waiting for another part or waiting to sell another screenplay. That is how they feed their families. So you are ABSOLUTELY taking money from people by pirating a copy of something versus renting it, streaming it, or purchasing it via an authorized source.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This is weird.

http://deadline.com/2014/02/lisa-kudrow-loses-lawsuit-manager-scott-cooper-689769/

Years ago Lisa Kudro accidentally gave away a chunk of her residuals on Friends when she unwittingly made an oral contract that she did not understand was binding at the time.

Oh and this is cool too.

Well, through the magic of syndication revenue, Friends pulls in a whopping $1 billion each year for Warner Bros. Here's the kicker though: That translates into about a $20 million annual paycheck each for Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, who each make 2% of that syndication income.

$20 million. Each year. For doing nothing.

Oh no. Poor law and order Cast!

In the video above, host Cailtyn Becker chats with Jill Hennessy (Assistant DA Claire Kincaid), S. Epatha Merkerson (Lt. Anita Van Vuren), Carolyn McCormick (Dr. Elizabeth Olivet) and Dann Florek (Capt. Donald Cragen) about their expectations for the series at its beginning and how things have changed now that the show is syndicated everywhere. With all those ubiquitous reruns, you might assume the actors are getting a stack of healthy residual checks each month, but you’d be wrong. In fact, according to Merkerson, sometimes the price of the postage to send the check is more than what’s actually inside the envelope.

Residuals are not enough to live on, unless you were big.

(Not talking about piracy. Just residuals. Google is being difficult. i want to know how much one random celebrity gets for one well known show, but my google fu is shite.)


Hmmm. This is from 2005.

ote: Under the Screen Actors Guild collective bargaining agreement, each performer is entitled to a percentage of their initial pay for each rerun. The amount starts at 100 percent for network reruns and about half that amount for non-prime-time syndication reruns.

These rerun payments are subject to a ceiling of less than $3,000 for a half-hour show and less than $4,000 for a one-hour show. (So, if you're Matt LeBlanc making some $1 million nonsense per episode, you'll get max $3,000 on a rerun, says Bernstein.) In reality, however, most of your scrub actors get residual payments in the hundreds, not the thousands. Some actors have even reported getting residual checks for just a few pennies.

Oh this!

I've heard Vicky Lawrence say that her residuals for Mama's Family were something like $100 per month- not much at all. In a recent interview with the very bitter actor Kevin Hagen (best known as Doc Baker on Little House on the Prairie) he said he receives about $8 per week (but then he never had a contract- he said that if he'd had a contract instead of being pay for play he'd have earned well over $1 million since the show's demise [which was the point of the article, a 'Michael Landon was a greedy scumbucket' rant]).

Michael Landon is a greedy scumbucket!!!

Bitterness can be hilarious sometimes.

 

[EnderAKH]

That's largely what the writer's strike of 2007 was about, renegotiating residual payments, especially for new media.

 

[Phoenix219]

No, they haven't. Have you never heard of residuals? Every time an episode or movie plays when it is streamed or broadcast, or when a movie is purchased, the people involved get residual payments. For day players and staff writers, this is part of their income. That is how they continue to pay bills while waiting for another part or waiting to sell another screenplay. That is how they feed their families. So you are ABSOLUTELY taking money from people by pirating a copy of something versus renting it, streaming it, or purchasing it via an authorized source.

No, I'm not. I wouldn't be renting/streaming/purchasing it anyways. The penny that would get back to them from my rental fee is not hurting them, either.... Doesn't change the fact that they were still paid for what they did already. I'm supposed to feel bad that they don't get paid twice? HAH. The bulk of whatever I spend would absolutely not get back to them, and would get wasted on the way anyways.

Like I said, I sleep very well at night. Shrug.

 

[LtChange]

Remember one thing guys. If the new series does not have enough success we will loose it and than we will have to wait 20 more years to get a new series if ever ... I think that is a pretty strong reason not to pirate this ... It's Star Trek.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm not planning on still being alive in 20 years!

That's actually an argument I had for my girlfriends mother who sits down and watches Murder She Wrote every day like it's a religion. She is not exactly old, but at one episode per weekday till they get to the end of season 10, it's likely that she many not be able to last that long, another 3 or 4 years.

You can Stream it, it's all online, you can watch 10 episodes a day, I said, you can get to the end before someone buries you, and not miss out because god and worms have other plans for you.

 

[rahullak]

Just enough people need to pay for it so that the show turns a handsome profit and the showrunners are given another chance. And then another chance, and another and so on...

There's another argument which is similar to the ones posted above: If my friend bought a show and i watch it with her every day, does that make me a pirate because I'm not buying one myself? How many people does it take to be in the room for it to become illegal? Suppose my friend shared her screen with me over a chat/video application? Suppose she shared it with a lot of people (ala justin.tv)?

Piracy and copying is illegal, but can't be stopped of course.

 

[fireproof78]

No one is saying it can't be stopped. For me it's the principle that seems to be growing that media is not worthwhile to pay for. That's the more dangerous attitude and it crops up more and more.