A better way to fight illegal movie downloading
Boing Boing: Big theater chains refuse to show Soderbergh’s “Bubble”
Soderbergh is taking a novel approach to distributing this movie, one that I’ve thought of in the past: he’s releasing it in theatres, on pay-per-view television, and on DVD all on the same day. His rationale is that movies are already hitting the internet the same day they hit theatres, so why not give people other options than illegally downloading it?
The movie theatres, understandably, are upset. They say giving people these options will decrease their profits. This is potentially true, and I’m curious to see how it goes.
However, occasionally I’ll see a movie in a theatre, and love it so much that I’d be willing to buy the DVD immediately, if it were available. If the movie theatres simply set up a DVD stand in their lobby where you could purchase the DVD of a movie you just saw, at a lower price than in a DVD store, by presenting your ticket stub, I bet lots of moviegoers would take advantage of it.
In any case, bravo to Soderbergh for attempting to tackle the movie-downloading problem through unconventional means. Instead of engaging in pointless lawsuits that have been proven to discourage nobody, this approach is productive and thoughtful, and could help to update the film industry’s business model to compete in today’s high-bandwidth world.
Edit: Mark Cuban, who owns Landmark Theaters (which is the only chain actually showing “Bubble”), agrees with me, but is a much more eloquent guy, so go read his post.
January 19th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
I hadn’t considered the point about piracy. The article I read really only talked about reactions from the theater and movie industries, not the actual reasons Soderbergh is doing this.
Y’know, the DVD-in-theater idea is pretty good. Limited quantity, of course, because you don’t want to be stuck with a real loser. Maybe a special edition would add just enough value to punch the sales up to a profitable level.