My biggest pet peeve that comes attached to the movie industry is the madness that is called piracy. Piracy comes in many different forms leeching from the entertainment industry. Bootleg DVD’s, websites that offer “free” movies, streaming movies from illegal websites, I mean come on its crazy. What I mean by that is that the hard working people within the entertainment industry don’t get to see a dime when films are pirated. I know this has been ongoing for years, but it’s gotten pretty ridiculous in regards to it.
After going over the MPAA website (Smith, 2011), I caught a glimpse of an article regarding their efforts to curb piracy. There are many countries that are suspect, even here in the U.S. In my experience and travels, I’ve come across many of people trying to sell me bootlegged current films, mainly from the parking lot of a grocery store or gas station. It bothers me because, if that were my film (that I worked hard in writing and directing it) and someone were to come up to me saying “do you want to buy this new recent movie” and its mine…well let’s just say that I might be going to jail that day for bodily harm.
It disgusts me when I see things like that take place because I work in the entertainment industry and I’ve seen the hard work that people have put into a lot of films. Whether it would be mainstream or direct to video, it doesn’t matter. There are a lot of hard working people who work on these films who don’t command a million dollar paycheck, but they do make a decent living from making the films and for someone to come along and use a “camcorder” in a theater or pilfering streamed footage…it’s not right and it’s not fair. Also that would affect the marketing of a film, say if the film was put out "pirated style" before it was released, would take away from the box office. I would say a good example would be Ang Lee's 2003 film, HULK and the backlash that it received because it was unfinished, and then it affected it box office receipts. I mean just plain stupidity on the person who put it out there.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just ranting about this subject matter, but I know that the MPAA is stepping up its efforts to curb this disease that affects the entertainment industry and applaud them for it. For those out there who buy these pirated videos, don’t. You would be taking away from the people who make a living off from making films. I want to stress hard-working people who build the sets, work in the editing room, do the computer designs for a film, who do catering on the sets to feed the hard working people. I’m not taking away or even bad-mouthing the above the line talent, but my biggest issue is taking away from the below the line workers who don’t get the recognition but make major contributions to see that everyone is entertained on the big screen, TV screen, phone screen, I can go on and on. People please don’t patronize pirates. It’s not fair and it’s not right.
Link to post: http://www.mpaa.org/resources/53df70a5-8c97-44dc-baa7-211bd9b448c4.pdf
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