Hollywood Makes Record Profit in 2009

[admin]

2009 is set to be a record year for Hollywood, with US and Canadian box office numbers providing to be almost a billion dollars more than 2008, and over the magical $10 billion mark for the first time ever.

And yet, Hollywood has never screamed louder about the threat of online piracy, and have gone to extreme efforts to force governments and courts to take action.

The record profit comes in a year where all industries were hit by the global economic meltdown. Online piracy has increased, but it looks like it's not having a huge effect on box office receipts. If online piracy can be eradicated, and that's a big, if not impossible to achieve, "if", then profits will surely rise, but aren't these set of record profits enough?

More:

http://torrentfreak.com/damned-pirates-hollywood-sets-10-billion-box-office-record-091211/

[doctorhardware]

But they are loosing so much money to internet piracy!!!

[Alien Bay]

...
And yet, ...

http://torrentfreak.com/damned-pirat...record-091211/

I don't agree with the extraordinary, sometimes ridiculously cruel, punishment doesn't fit the crime, ways anti- piracy, or some pretention of that is enforced, but I'm not sure you can use the correlation that 'you're making money on your product and so you should let up on the other end' is a viable argument.

It's their product and the amount of money they make is a not a defensible point in making a case against whatever you percieve as their issues.

IMHO..

[admin]

I think it's just that their lobbying efforts have been based completely on scaring people into thinking how much money has been lost and how they're going to go out of business (they even said that they might be "forced" to make less movies because of the risk of piracy), that the situation is actually completely the opposite.

I don't mind them protecting their business, but they should not interfere with basic rights such as fair use and privacy and force ISPs to become copyright cops (with the associated costs, either absorbed or passed onto customers). And in the end, they'll only end up hurting their business, if they do not come out and embrace the new ways of watching and distributing movies online. Much like how the music industry missed their chance and allowed Apple to come in with iTunes.

[admin]

Another article about Hollywood's record profits this year, with graphs and analyses why Hollywood needs to "lie" about falling profits to convince those in power to take action to protect them:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/What-Is-Hollywood-Hiding-129976.shtml

The stat about fewer movies being made is less related to piracy and more related to the global financial crisis, making funding much harder to obtain.