Movie Piracy is a Killer

Piracy is very popular in the world culture today. People are fond of downloading software, films, magazines, books, and music among others without paying anything. After the free downloads, the individuals actively share the context through social media platforms and any other media platform as well as share physical copies of such downloads with others. Others reproduce the films for sale at low prices. Piracy, similar to other black-market activities, benefits the sellers and the consumers through low prices. Consumers are attracted to pirated products because of their low prices in comparison to the originals. Piracy is a killer disease in the film industry because it leads to revenue loss, incapacitates producers from further production, and strips playwrights’ authorship of their work and kills the playwrights morale to write more scripts. At the same time, piracy is not a killer disease since there are movies that are never pirated but they do not earn much, which discourages producers from producing and playwrights from further writing.

The first reason that piracy is a killer is that it leads to economic loss. The economy suffers unnecessarily, as it fails to raise the right revenue from the movies. In fact, piracy leads to high losses in revenue (The Instigator). It is approximated that the world economy loses more than half of the revenue it gets through piracy. Film pirating is a common base, yet there are many more piracy web sites, which leads to even greater losses. Piracy affects all nations and efforts to fight it do not bring significant positive results. The money that the governments use trying to eradicate piracy could have been invested in more productive ventures that could yield more revenues. In that case, the world economy does not only suffer loss through direct piracy it also suffers indirectly through piracy-related activities.

Secondly, movie piracy limits the producers from further production. People access films before their official release, and they hardly attend theaters for live performance since they have already had unofficial launches. Such practice kills the film industry. Producers and playwrights make huge sacrifices to produce good films (Outlaw). Films cost fortunes to be completed, but even before their creators can get the market cream, piracy takes control. The involvement of movie pirates in the movie selling process, which almost practically impairs it, leads to low sales and low incomes from movies. Producers always set target incomes for every film to be able to produce others. When this target is not met, it becomes difficult to invest funds into production. This slows down the film productions.

Lastly, movie pirating denies the owner of the creativity piece the right over his property. Playwrights strive to come up with interesting scripts and after that, they need the motivation to write more and they should have ultimate authorship rights over their products (Vittach). After getting nothing from the previous films because of piracy, playwrights with high skills and talent leave the industry to get jobs that will bring them profit (Outlaw). Playwrights do not enjoy the rights to their films, and they feel that their intellect is of no use to them since it will be stolen away.

However, counterarguments have it that piracy does not make any difference since even movies that do not do well in the box-office do not make much money. Neither do they encourage the owners to write or produce more. When a movie does not become a hit and it makes low sales, nobody says that the economy has made losses from low sales. It is difficult to say that low sales from a hit movie downloaded for free amount to losses. It is also irrational to argue that producers are discouraged from producing more movies because of low income (Outlaw). There are some movies that do not meet their projected incomes, yet producers reproduce them or make trilogies of them. Therefore, the issue of low morale to produce because of piracy imposed low sales is false. Moreover, playwrights give their works for the public viewing. In that case, they always lose the ownership rights of their property. For example, when the playwrights die, they leave their works behind for the public to view (The Instigator). More so, even when they are alive, once a movie is produced, they do not control sales or anything about them. Hence, it is pointless to say that piracy makes playwrights lose authorship rights of their works. Therefore, piracy is not a killer and it will never be.

In refutation, it can be argued that it is wrong to compare a successfully pirated movie to a movie that does not do well. Losses exist in business, and every industry suffers moments of low sales, and high sales. In the economic world, low tides are normal but they occur naturally. When the low tides are man-made, then they become harmful (Vittach). When economic situations lead to bad seasons in the film industry or a film does not please the audience for other reasons, it lasts for a short time. The low sales resulting because of piracy are everlasting. Furthermore, piracy affects all movies both hits and non-hits. Poorly performing movies are rare, but piracy affects all. Therefore, piracy leads to low sales of all movies, while natural occurrence does not pull all movies down.  

In conclusion, piracy is big problem for the whole world. It is explicitly important to step up strategies to mitigate and bring down piracy. Piracy causes economic harm to the country where a film is made. It causes industry stagnation and low morale as well as demoralizes the owners from creatively producing new works. There will always be arguments supporting piracy but stealing intellectual information is as bad as physical property stealing. There is no moral or legal ground for pirating another person’s movie. Piracy has crippled the film industry, the playwrights, and the economy of the whole world. It is important to come up with ways to reduce its effect.