Hollywood thinks we're all rational consumers
Boing Boing linked a few days ago to a website showing screenshots from a terrible bootleg copy of Star Wars Episode III. There was a line of blur toward the top of the screen, extending all the way across the picture, which was a studio timecode that had been blurred out.
Here's a DVD case for a bootleg copy of the film, which includes the credits from the film Armageddon on the back, as well as some hijacked art from starwars.com (you can download the art on the back of the pirated DVD, "Rise Lord Vader," as a desktop wallpaper, although whoever made this DVD box had other intentions for it).
So why would anyone pay for this crap? MPAA operates under the assumption that we're all rational consumers. A "rational consumer" is a consumer who takes only price into account when making a decision about buying something. In a perfectly competitive market, this makes sense. The definition of a "perfectly competitive market" is one where there are thousands of sellers all selling exactly the same thing for, it turns out, exactly the same price (a single firm in a perfectly competitive market could lower its price, but it wouldn't be able to make enough money to have an economic profit, since there are literally thousands of other firms selling the same thing at a higher price and making more money off the deal. Like most things in economics, a "perfectly competitive market" is something invented by the folks at the College Board and the textbook companies. The graphs look nice, but they bear little resemblance to reality.
In reality, consumers do make distinctions based on factors besides price because items for sale do differ in quality. If I were a rational consumer, I would pay $5 for the bootleg DVD instead of $24.95 for the real DVD. But as a consumer concerned with quality, I want the assurance that I'm watching a real copy of the film, as well as a copy without quality problems (like a timecode in the middle of the screen). Why people would buy these pirated DVDs I'll never know, probably because they don't know that they're of terrible quality.
I'll download a 700 MB AVI of a movie I want to watch, but if I want to watch the movie again and again, I'll just buy it. The same goes for MP3s: if all I can find is low-quality versions of songs I want, I'll just buy the album (especially if I can't find the whole album. Do you know how hard it is to find all of the tracks for Music for a Darkened Theatre, Vol. 2 on the file-sharing networks? No one has it!).
We consumers make quality distinctions and we won't buy crap unless we're duped into thinking it's not crap. That's why people buy junky cars all the time: it's not because they want a junky car; it's because they've been led to believe it's not a junky car.
Comments
And the moral of the story, kids, is one the studios don't seem to have figured out: Offer non-crap, and people will pay for it. Offer crap, and they'll go elsewhere unless you lie to them.
Try offering non-crap instead of lying to them. It works out much better in the long run and makes you more money anyway.
Posted by: Larry Garfield | June 8, 2005 3:22 PM
And yet the existence of bootlegs in the first place proves that at least some of us are rational consumers; or, if you prefer, that there is something attractive about pirated films other than the price. Release dates, for instance.
Perhaps the MPAA (and let's add the music labels too) has gone too control-freaky on this whole issue, to the point of introducing draconian, Microsoft-esque security features on DVDs that in some ways cheapen the value of owning a digital copy versus owning an analogue copy (VHS, which can be duplicated within the comfort of your own home). That does not change the fact that no matter how overzealous, they are pursuing an understandable objective: protection of copyright.
The studios would not be pursuing anti-pirate measures if it were true that "offer crap, and they'll go elsewhere." In fact, it appears as though studios offering crap leads to people buying cut-rate, bootlegged, non-authorized versions of crap, making it more difficult for the crap producer to recover the phenomenally obscene cost of making crap these days.
And that, my friends, is a rational consumer ... ?
Posted by: MB | June 9, 2005 10:01 AM
The moral of the story is that STAR WARS is boring. Jeez louise people, if you want to see a good movie, go see Lords of Dogtown. Man I love skateboarding movies. Stop buying bootlegs of crappy movies I don't like. Sheesh losers. Sheesh.
Posted by: Bud-dy | June 9, 2005 10:29 PM
And what kind of a name is Ballway? Sounds like a joke waiting to happen. Change your last name to Trump.
Posted by: Bud-dy | June 9, 2005 10:34 PM
a) holy crap! you actually have real (not us) people reading your blog! how long until i have to refer to this site as "that ol' hotbed of intense debate?" i hope not long.
b) for the love of jesus christ and everything holy, and for the last time, would you change that green background? it's very hard to read your blog whilst vomiting all over myself and the screen, which is what happens every time i load up this abomination of color theory you call a website.
c) and just to clarify, the reason people will buy crappy bootlegs of the new star wars film is the same reason they stand outside the wrong theater two weeks in advance to see the damn movie. it's the same reason they are 38 years old, live at home and can't hold a real job, but could draw the circuitboards of an x-wing fighter from memory. it's the same reason they masturbate to pictures of darth vader, and then cry afterwards. it's because they are idiots with an obsession. and you, my friend, should not dissuade them, as it would likely interfere with my new business endeavor: selling bags of dog crap with star wars written on them for $1000 apiece. ching!
Posted by: Matt | June 10, 2005 6:29 PM