Idiotic decision by Warner affecting my country

It's last week's news, but I now got around making a thread about this...

Warner decided to push Hungarian movie premieres back a few days. The reason? Hear this out: they made the observation that most of the CAM versions (the picture part) is originated from Hungary, so if they push back the premieres a few days, they can delay the release of CAM versions and people who would watch the CAM versions will going to the movies instead.

(Beat.)

Let me count the ways how this decision is idiotic.

Movie theaters are losing the advantage over watching a movie at home. The most important edge they (still) have is that they release the movies in the best quality the fastest. (I feel uncomfortable even having to explain this...)

So... This act will create The. Opposite. Of. The. Effect. They. Intended. To.... Bitch.

If the premiere is later, the less the people would have to wait for the DVD Rip or R5 or whatever version which is better than the CAM one. Moreover, if the hungarian crew can't make the CAM version, someone else surely will - this is a battle that the studios cannot ever win. So the CAM version is out and the film is not out yet? Can I watch the film now for free? Yes. Can I watch the film now for money? No. Cue le Facepalm.

I think people who watch CAM versions are by definition a small group. A small and idiotic group, should I say. From this small group, an even smaller fraction is the people, who only go to the movies when the CAM version is not out yet. And by this, Warner will make their dream come true: the CAM version will be out way before the premiere in Hungary.

So this decision only affects a really small fraction of paying customers, and it has the opposite effect on them! Side effect: way to punish the regular moviegoers with the delayed premieres! Seriously just what the fuck???

Bonus round: when this piece of news saw the light of day on various Hungarian sites, in the comments there were a few users who all reported the same thing: 90% of the CAM releases they saw were from Russia or Ukraine. How could they tell? By the cyrillic captions. Do they write in cyrillic in Hungary? I think you know the answer.

Could Warner tell? Did Warner care? No, they didn't.

This is not idiotic. This is beyond idiotic. My brain almost shut down at the sight of the article when I first read it...

Well. How exactly does anyone conclude that punishing legitimate, ticket-buying customers will convince people to give up piracy, rather than the other way round? Make our customers unhappy = More people want to be our customers?!

Your reasoning forgot an important factor: Warner executives don't care about losing Hungarian audience: they care about Hungarian audience making them lose US audience.

Of course, missing the target completely is another issue.

edited 21st Jun '11 3:03:57 AM by Medinoc

I addressed that here:

Also, I read a Hungarian blog in which the blogger expressed his feeling of being robbed off of the midnight premiere of a number of movies. Since Warner pushed them back, there will be no midnight showing at all. For that blogger, that was a unique experience. Even though midnight showings are not available in my town, I feel sympathy. Another side effect of this idiocy...

That's not exactly true, Hollywood movies get even if not the majority, but a large amount of their incomes from international audiences. I don't know the exact details of how much cinema tickets are sold in Hungary, but even if it is not as much as in the US, in terms of population, it is still a potential consumer base of about the size of Michigan.

And the fact that it won't actually solve anything isn't "another issue", because this is what proves that they are losing a notable part of their audience for absolutely no reason. That's what makes a difference between the choice of making a costly but necessary sacrifice, and between arbitarily throwing away a part of their audience.

If you would hear that Warner sacrificed 3000 cows on an altar to Baal, praying for the end of piracy, you wouldn't say that it's an important factor to remember, that the cost of 3000 cows is less than the harms of piracy: If it completely and obviously fails to achieve that goal, it isn't even something that we need to consider, it is clear that they just made a loss that can't be justified.

edited 21st Jun '11 4:13:30 AM by EternalSeptember

Well put.

Corporate executives being retarded morons? News at eleven!

Films that are flops in America are successful elsewhere. The industry (according to the Economist, ergo, true) gains nearly 60% of its revenue from international audiences GOING TO THE CINEMAS. Not buying the DVD or the merch. Going to SEE the film at the CINEMA.

I see complaints.

But you're not offering them a better solution.

So they won't listen.

We don't need them to listen. They have lost the battle against piracy already.

If they start cracking down with full force, people will jump into encrypted networks and it'll be the end of Internet policing. They are at a dead end, and they know it. These are the death throes of the copyright mafia... Expect them to do random stupid shit for a little while longer before they give up.

Really this seems like an extension of the same logic they've been running on with DV Ds for ages:

• legit DVD: unskippable 5-minute lecture about how I'm a bad person, a criminal and apparently some kind of downloading-car-thief
• pirate DVD: film.

At least before it didn't actually hurt their own profits, but on the plus side now that they're actually shutting down whole markets out of paranoia, perhaps the shareholders will notice this idiocy affecting their profits and do something about it? Perhaps that was the goal all along? (nah.)

You want them to listen if you're being negatively impacted by their decisions and you want them to do something else.

Even a falling giant can still hit the ground pretty hard.

Indeed.

Hmm... only £5.10!

The principle seems reasonable to me - it makes sense to punish countries who are responsible for leaks, with the hope that it might encourage theaters in that country to put better security measures in place. They lose a bit of money in that country, but probably hope to make that back by the extra time it takes for a CAM version to be released.

It will work less well if they missdiagnose which countries cause leaks, 'cause it won't have as much effect.

Sounds like when Warner Bros. blamed Canada for piracy and put an embargo on press screenings there. And then it turned out that very little piracy happened in Canada.

The point where this falls flat on its face is the fact that the CAM version will be released by another team, just as quickly. There is no way for Warner to win this battle with a retarded move like this.

Plus, that only considers the CAM "market". Usually, by the day or worst case week after a CAM version of a movie is released, I see there already screener and even masters at the torrent sites anyway. And countries can't put better security at movie premieres if no one goes to the cinema to see the movie because its premiering is delayed one month and a high-quality rip is already out by the streetside.

A whole month? Are they insane?

You delay the Euro launch for a few days so that the guys in Eastern Europe don't get a shot to rip it before the movie's gone through its American premiere. A whole month is essentially kissing goodbye to the Hungarian market completely.

edited 24th Jun '11 1:15:08 PM by SavageHeathen

The OP said that the delay was a few days. I don't know where that month figure is coming from.

Still, the thought occurs that a person who's settling for a CAM version online is unlikely to see it in the theaters regardless.

You delay the Europe launch anywhere in Europe and there's gonna be kids torrenting it. To lose any nation in Europe is literally kicking yourself in the nuts. We watch as a whole market fuckloads of American shit. We would be American if we weren't so liberal and have free healthcare.

Yep, the delay is only a few days. This doesn't make the decision any less idiotic though.

To put it into perspective: A Hungarian university (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) conducted a study about pirating movies in 2008. The study was led by Balázs Bodó, who is a well-known figure in researching the impact of the internet and new technology to the market of intellectual property.

To quote the relevant part of the study: the results showed that in a particular 2 month time interval there were 3619 movie torrents on the major Hungarian torrent sites. Only 4 percent of these (152 movies) were shown in theaters at that time! If you project it to the theater, this means that we are talking about 1 in every 5 movies shown.

Further studying these figures, Bodó et al. compared the sold tickets VS downloaded torrents. The result: 1.650.000 (one million six hundred and fifty thousand) sold tickets VS 158.000 (one hundred fifty-eight thousand) downloads. It isn't even necessary to comment this any further.

The decision is ineffective, idiotic and illogical.

edited 27th Jun '11 6:12:16 AM by Sati1984

Anyone has any reaction to this? (a.k.a bump )

Anyone who's ever come within thirty feet of pirates (most people have; you don't need to steal the material yourself to know people who do) knows that damn near all of it is the screeners and masters; and not even shortly after cinematic release - often before.

My suspicion for a while has been that CAM stuff is a scapegoat for the producers to lash out at because dealing with the real problem would require publicly admitting that the industry is primarily under attack from unscrupulous individuals within the system, rather than a global conspiracy of CAM-version recorders funded by international drug and terrorist groups or whatever.

Film studios, I think, do not need to worry about pirating. People go to the cinema. LOTS of people go to the cinema. That will not change. The cinema is more of a social experience. DVD and merch sales are just bonuses, in effect. To do whatever the OP said they did would just be blind stupidity. Honestly, if we, people without a degree in economics, know how the hell you don't fuck over the consumer, what does that bode for the people at the top of these companies?