by Andrew Einspruch
Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.
It comes down to money.
Ultimately, money is the reason most people steal (or “pirate”, “borrow”, “find”, “preview” – call it what you will) digital content, although other factors can come into it, like not wanting to wait for something to become available legally.
And money is the reason there is a problem with those people who are doing it, since it represents potential lost revenue to the content creator. “Piracy takes distribution out of your hands,” said Lori Flekser, from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia. “You can’t control how you distribute it or how you monetise it. That is the worst thing about piracy to me.”
Flekser cited research from the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, who anonymously surveyed 16,000 people over 18, saying the the myth that “everybody does it” is just not true. While the survey missed the crucial under-18‘s demographic, it still showed that only 73% of those surveyed said they had pirated material. Of the 27% who do pirate, the vast majority (86%) said they do it because it is free. The bad news is that of those who regularly pirate, they would still do it even if a paid option were easily available.
There is a devaluation of the content inherent in that attitude, which is a clear problem for producers.
The numbers also showed that the number of people pirating is decreasing, but the amount pirated by those who do is going up.
Andy Green, COO of the online distribution company Distrify said he was surprised that the numbers were not higher. He also indicated that going after the consumer was not necessarily the best option. Green said that people have looked at the ads run on a particular torrent site in the UK, and found that the biggest ad buys came from a casino company, 888.com. This was owned by a Gibraltar company, which has half of its stock traded on the FTSE 250. “Numerous studio executives own shares in that company, and are earning revenue from the torrent site,” said Green. “When the studios took down the Pirate Bay, were they not just going to get their ad spend back? So we can attack the consumer, if you like, and say, ‘You are very bad.’ And you can have punitive fines. Somehow you might be able to come up with a legal model where the 340 million people who are currently downloading a film at this very moment in time can be taken to court, to stamp out piracy once and for all. Or we can say to the studio executives who own shares in the companies who place ads on that site, which run off that ad revenue, ‘Stop doing that.’”
As soon became clear from the panel, the discussion is more nuanced than “downloading = bad”. Nick Batzias from Madman Entertainment pointed to the fact that Australians downloaded Game of Thrones more than any other country, due to impatience that the show would not go to air in Australia until months later. He talked about how there are businesses that will give you data about who is downloading your content. And if you know that there are 12 million people who’ve downloaded your stuff, that becomes a data point to be taken to someone else, say a potential partner for a product placement deal, as evidence that there is interest in your work.
One problem with piracy is the perception that it is a victimless crime, that if anyone is hurt by it, it is a filthy rich corporation, or a star like Nicole Kidman who “can afford it”.
So one of the strategies for dealing with the problem is showing there is, indeed a victim, to personalise the effects. Green said that his company, which makes paid content available through a shareable, embeddable player, will put a pre-roll ad in front of a film. That ad will feature the director or an actor in the film saying, in effect, “I made this film. I hope you like it. Please pay for it.” That kind of direct appeal, which puts a face to the digital work, helps engender a human connection, and with any luck, a human response. “The question is not, ‘You wouldn’t steal, would you?’” said Green. “It’s, ‘You wouldn’t steal from a friend, would you?”
The other thing Distrify does is bring people into the system. They have an affiliate model that gives people a 10% clip of any sales generated. So if someone embeds the Distrify player on a web site instead of uploading a torrent, they end up becoming an ally instead of an enemy. Green said that often people don’t even realise there is a potential payment involved until Distrify contacts them and says there is $50 with their name on it. Apparently one girl in Tampa Bay got so enthusiastic, she started making enough money to pay her rent every month. This is a much more inclusive approach, and Green said Distrify has a low rate of piracy for its titles.
This same emotional buy-in is at work on the campaigns you find on crowdfunding sites. They become a way to connect with a community, and garner grass roots advocates for your film. This engaged community is more likely to buy your product when it is available. Green said that the average pledge for the documentary Girl Walk All Day was $140, well above the price of a ticket or DVD.
Batzias said that Madman’s experience with distributing anime is that people will usually have seen the material illegally, but because they are fans, the will then buy the cinema ticket and then the DVD. Fans are emotionally invested, and think of their downloads as “previewing”, because they have the intent to buy.
But when it was suggested that downloading helped create an audience of buyers, Flekser suggested the statistics don’t support that. For every Game of Thrones, where people become obsessive dollar-wielding fans, there are plenty of other shows that people won’t buy. The Game of Thrones is more an edge case than the norm. “There is someone making out of piracy,” said Flekser. “It’s just not you (the filmmakers). It is Kim Dotcom and people like that.”
Batzias said that, at one level, if you make a film that is pirated a lot, it means people like it. At some level, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It just isn’t making you money.
And maybe the person pirating it is under age, and does not have access to a credit card. Or maybe the person is one of the multitudes of unemployed people in Spain.
So there are lots of reasons (excuses, perhaps) that people have for downloading content. It might be to say “F— you” to a studio. Or they steal from a sense of entitlement. Or they are previewing. Or pirating because because that is the only way the content is available to them.
It seems like there is no single best approach to dealing with it. But some combination of making the content available easily and at a reasonable price, plus turning your audience into advocates, seems like a useful way to begin facing the problem.
Andrew Einspruch is a producer with Wild Pure Heart Productions . His current project is the low budget feature film The Farmer.
