First the music industry, next cinemas?

[max_tranmere]

As people get 95% of music from illegal downloads now, and this has pushed the music industry to its worst financial crisis ever, I am wondering if cinemas will start closing at a rapid rate now because of online film piracy. Someone told me yesterday about three new blockbusters that have just been released in the cinema that he has seen. I asked him where he saw them, thinking he would have spent several evenings munching popcorn in a large movie house in the West End. The guy said that he had watched them all on his laptop, apparently there are many of these sites now and more are appearing by the week. You don't even have to join them, or pay any money, and you don't have to spend days downloading anything (like you used to have to do with Torrent sites). You can watch these things as easily and as instantly as a music video on YouTube. It got me thinking: the end of the CD, and more or less the end of the music industry as we knew it, has happened because of illegal downloads. Will there be any cinemas left within 10 years? It seems unlikely.

[jimslip]

I disagree with you, I go to the cinema alot and more often than not, for a blockbuster the cinema is packed. This is the same in Budapest, where the experience is really civilised, with huge screens, comfy seats and no antisocial yobs throwing popcorn.

I think the saddos who watch major pirated films on their laptops, wouldn't have gone to the cinema in the first place.

The music and film industry never stop whining and they still make shit loads of money. If things were that bad who would have invested $300,000,000 to make Avatar?

[max_tranmere]

What you are talking about is how things are right now, but the thin end of the wedge has already started being applied and as the years go on I would imagine cinema attendances will become less and online viewing will take over. You can still buy CD's now, and people do, but so many dont. It seems inevitable to me that online film piracy will do to cinemas and DVD sales what illegal music downloads have done to CD's. It will just take a few years but the change has begun.

[spider]

Will there be any cinemas left within 10 years?

Didn't people say that when TV started ? And again when Satellite TV, and again with VHS and Video Rental shops, and again with DVDs, Blue-Ray, etc, etc, etc ?

[jimslip]

Don't start me on satellite TV, Murdochs glorious dream. 400 stations OF SHITE!

I wonder how many millions tune in to Dave every night? My prediction is that in 10 years we will be back to the main half dozen stations, just like the old days.

[Dave Wells]

Include the porn biz as well !

[beutelwolf]

max_tranmere wrote:

> It seems inevitable to me
> that online film piracy will do to cinemas and DVD sales what
> illegal music downloads have done to CD's. It will just take a
> few years but the change has begun.

I think you are right considering DVDs. Cinemas are a different kettle of fish, as Cinema-going is also a social occasion, and can be combined with new technology which your PC cannot faithfully reproduce.

I have heard in my life many times the lament about the demise of cinemas, e.g. it took its first big hits when Colour TV became widespread. In the 1970s I saw reports in Film-Echo (the industry mag about German cinemas) about crisis meeting how the industry should respond to this seemingly inevitable decline. Then came video libraries (which in effect only killed sex cinemas), then videos and later dvds became cheaper and cheaper (which killed most video libraries)...

So DVDs will face a tricky future with much reduced sales. At the moment it's still way too inconvenient to get hold of the film you really want to download, free or not, at least if you have zilch interest in Hollywood blockbusters (like I do). But that'll probably change (the inconvenience, not my lack of interest in the Hollywood product)...

[beutelwolf]

jimslip wrote:

> Don't start me on satellite TV, Murdochs glorious dream. 400
> stations OF SHITE!
>
> I wonder how many millions tune in to Dave every night? My
> prediction is that in 10 years we will be back to the main half
> dozen stations, just like the old days.

I'm still on terrestrial TV, and I don't get 5ive either... So I'm limited to 4 stations.

Thing is I can't receive Freeview in my place, and I'm unprepared to hand over my money to that Australian I despise...

[Sam Slater]

Look at the highest grossing films of all time. Only two (Titanic and Jurassic Park) are what I'd call 'pre-internet'. Ok, we had the internet in 1997 but it wasn't practical to download movies over dialup!

Lots of young kids download this stuff to 'try out'. Many times I've heard someone say they downloaded an album/movie and exclaimed it was excellent and they were now going to buy it/watch it at the movies.

I watched Watchmen at the cinema and then bought the blu-ray directors cut to keep for myself. Could have downloaded it and excused the moral issue of piracy by saying I'd already paid to see it but I prefer the movies and music I class as 'keepers' to be hard copies. I can then rip it to a hard drive and have my own backup incase anything goes wrong (cds don't last forever!). I think a lot of people are like me in the modern digital age.

[Sam Slater]