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Posted by Jyeshta on 12/06/07 17:08
On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 16:44:03 +0100 (CET), Gorf <pew@pew.pew>
wrote:
>actually, that's your bag - arguing that your subjective assessment of
>movie quality somehow suffices as an argument explaining lackluster dvd
>sales, in the face of the industry's hard data which clearly shows the
>effects of piracy.
Who has the money to buy DVDs regularly? How many times does
anyone watch any given movie? There are some movies I can watch
several times, but only with long intervals of time in between.
Then, when you get into the costs of DVD sets for TV shows, the
prices skyrocket.
So realistically, how much money does the average person have to
spend on disposable luxuries like DVDs and CDs? There's no way
on earth I could afford to buy all the DVDs and CDs I wanted,
even if I still had a good income. I also want/need to spend my
money on books, software, food, clothing, rent, bike repairs, the
occasional piece of jewelry...
About 60% of all the music I've ever downloaded I already owned
on vinyl, or cassette. The rest of it (experimentation looking
for new stuff I might like since I hate commercial radio
stations) is mostly stuff that did not impress me and I'd never
have bought anyway, or was of artists I already love so much that
I ended up buying as much of their stuff as I could, once I found
out via file sharing that it was 'out there' (I don't regularly
search the web for discographies but when I found out via file
sharing there were albums I didn't know about, I chased them down
and bought them, even if they were on RIAA labels).
My favorite living artists - I buy their CDs and DVDs. They
don't play RIAA pop music and I respect their right to earn a
living because they're mostly not on the RIAA labels. Since I'm
trying to boycott the RIAA (as well as many corporations I hate),
it's a real dilemma for me when I find a favorite band's material
is now owned by Sony, etc. If I want the CDs, I'll still buy
them, but it disgusts me to know how little of that money is
going to the artists!
And 99.9% of all the movies I've downloaded are ones I've seen
already on TV - mostly old films from the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s,
and some newer independent films that have been aired on cable
channels like Sundance and IFC. The only films I would buy if I
could afford to would be those newer independent films.
Hollywood has already made its millions from Bette Davis, Bogart,
Vincent Price, etc.
The only MPAA DVD I've been thinking of buying lately is the
spin-off movie of the too-short-lived TV series, Firefly.
The most recent VHS tape I bought was just a month ago (the movie
is apparently not on DVD and I don't even have a standalone DVD
player anyway because my TV is too darned old to hook one up
properly), and the film was originally made by a large studio.
The entertainment industry should be thanking people like me who
actually do buy CDs or DVDs or VHS tapes from time to time.
Nevermind how much I download; I'm still a customer when I can
be, and when the product warrants my expenditure. And maybe they
ought to remember the old adage: "The customer is always right."
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