Keall Over : I want movies anytime. Stop treating us like kids

If you pirate movies on an industrial scale, then you've got to be prepared to get caught and banged up, like the gentleman operating out of a video store on Auckland's Dominion Road who was busted yesterday with 30,000 knock-off DVDs and 10,000 video tapes.

Apparently the guy's not-so-little back room project was revealed when a Sony Pictures-produced Bollywood movie, not due on NZ shelves for five months, became a wildfire hit for his bootleg operation.

My question is: if so many people in the local Indian community wanted to buy the movie on disc (or tape), why wasn't Sony Pictures selling it to them?

Movie studios have their reasons for staggering DVD releases (they want you to pay to see a flick on the big screen first), or not releasing a number of titles in NZ at all (our population's too small too be hassled with it).

But in the digital age, you can't be at war with your own customers. People have become attuned to getting what they want, when they want.

It's good that more and more big titles are getting simultaneous worldwide big-screen release, giving pirates outside the US no time to themselves before the movie hits the provinces.

Now studios should go the next step and abolish moronic DVD zoning system - which has been widely ignored by DVD hardware makers, but which is now returning in an "enhanced" form for regular discs, and reasserting itself with the new high def formats. Plus the associated practice of staggered releases around the world. It feels like we're being infantalised. It's just asking film fans around the world to hit the Torrents (or Dominion Rd, if you prefer hard copy).

It's good to see movie downloads picking up steam in the US, where at MacWorld yesterday Steve Jobs announced a new iTunes service that will let people "rent" movie downloads from Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount or Sony Pictures for $US2.99 or $3.99. You get 24 hours to watch the film.

There is still an element of compromise; movies will only be available on iTunes a month after their DVD release.

Still, hopefully it's a system that will migrate to iTunes services all around the globe, and other legit download sites. By the time National Treasure 5 comes out, maybe they'll be one (download) release date for the planet - and it won't be up to local distributors doing they're sums when or whether Kiwis get to see a movie. It'll be up to the customers. Imagine that.

Comments

According to this article from APC mag it is possible to buy iTunes gift ceritificates from ebay and use them to purchase movies from the iTunes Movie Store in the US from OZ or NZ

http://apcmag.com/8254/how_to_rent_movies_movies_in_australia_with_itunes

Posted by: Boris | February 26, 2008 6:28 PM

Chris...

You're forgetting one point in ths debate of making movies avaliable to the customer. They have to go through the ratings board first (which also takes a long time) - would it also be better if we had a cross-rating system with Australia (I think we do for G titles but nothing else)

[Good point. Though movie studios seem to have been able to get themselves organised enough for the simultaneous worldwide big-screen release of various movies, so I guess it's just a case of getting their stuff approved by each country's censor sooner rather than later. Would give local distributors a reason to keep existing. CK]

Posted by: David Hill | January 18, 2008 3:04 PM

Good article;
I used to have a page pinned up in my office until it was stolen; from memory some of the points were these:
The Customer.
The customer is the most important person to visit your office, in person, by letter or by phone.
The Customer isn’t the cause of your work, he is the reason for it.
The Customer is the person who is paying your salary.

There were quite a few more but the most important point, and one most businesses and banks should remember, was at the end.

No-one has ever won an argument with a Customer

Posted by: MikeP | January 17, 2008 1:16 PM