The Real Cost of Movie and Software Piracy

You see them everywhere. On your way to school at the sidewalks. At tiangge-kinds of malls. In Quiapo, Divisoria, Greenhills and everywhere else where people might pass by. They sell their pirated movies and software like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it is! Filipinos buy a lot of these pirated stuff! Well, they cost next to nothing. Who wouldn’t want that?!!

The Filipino movie industry, as well as International film distributors are losing millions of pesos yearly to the pirates. Last month, the Optical Media Board seized pirated DVDs in Quiapo worth P145 M pesos. Imagine that! Although the cost of movie and software piracy may be quantified in terms of millions of pesos lost. the real cost of movie and software piracy is in the taste of the Filipino people and their respect for the creativity of people who poured energy, resources and time just to produce such things.

1. Movie piracy provides cheap movie experience! Most pirated movie DVDs are taken fresh from movie theaters. You’d see shadows passing in front of the movie screen. The resolution is bad. Too grainy.  The noise of people inside the movie house is captured. The picture is too bright. Or too dark! The list of things that make pirated movies bad is endless. The result is that you wouldn’t appreciate a good movie for what it’s worth. If this love for piracy continues, you’d end up appreciating bad movies.

2. Piracy is killing the local movie industry. Although I argued that piracy helps the movie industry in terms of distribution of movies where such movies are not available, I can never deny that the Filipino movie industry is suffering because of pirates. The money and profits that movie studios should have received for their efforts and for future films are being turned over to the hands of movie piracy proponents. Millions of pesos!

Because of piracy, more and more movie studios are aiming for blockbusters and movies that could draw the crow. Forget about quality! Just churn out a movie with the hottest contemporary actors and actresses, splice over a thin love story, some dance number, and voila! You’ve got a movie. Too bad for the more critical moviegoers, we don’t get the movies we deserve!

3. Piracy diverts money to the people who didn’t use their brains to create the content. Instead of money paid to the studios, people are paying pirates who invested on nothing but the DVD copying machines for movie piracy purposes. Come on! Wake up people. If you invented something, you deserve to take credit. Not only credit! You also deserve to get rich because of what you created. Otherwise, why create in the first place?!

Yeah, money is a secondary consideration in art (oh really?! Hahah). But the ones who created content should be the ones to be rewarded and not some pirate who’s simply out to make money at the expense of media creators.

4. It follows then that piracy does not reward Filipino creativity. We rave at the government for not supporting Filipino inventions and creative endeavors. But do we berate ourselves for not rewarding the efforts of people who are promoting Filipino creativity?! Think again.

The real cost of piracy is our awareness of art and appreciation for good things. As a commenter said in one of my previous posts about movie piracy in the Philippines, we should take the example of the Thais. They won’t care about movie piracy in Hollywood movies as long as the Thai local film industry is left alone.

A crazy thought: What if the OMB would strike a deal with movie piracy people to leave the local movie industry alone. In turn, they will leave the pirates alone with pirated Hollywood movies?

Tags: counterfeit movies and film, film piracy, movie and software piracy, movie piracy, movie piracy in Southeast Asia, pirated CD, pirated DVD, software piracy