Pros and cons of digital film piracy - Essay

What are the cons (for institutions) and the pros (for the audience) of digital film piracy?

There are many cons for institutions in digital film piracy. It can be a huge issue because of the fact that it can costs millions to create films and the aim of creating them, amongst other things, is to make a profit. If people are recording the films themselves in cinemas and distributing them online or otherwise, they are making no money for the institution that has made the film. If everyone committed piracy, the film would make no money for the film makers, and companies would, after a while, not be able to afford to make successful, high budget films anymore.

Secondly, if you do buy into the piracy market because you want a film earlier than the official DVD release date, or are not prepared to pay the full price, your money is usually given to criminal. It is probable that the criminal you are paying is part of a bigger web of criminals, and therefore your money is more likely to be spent on things you perhaps would not like the idea of.

The quality of films that are illegally filmed and obtained is also usually much worse than the film’s real quality. This can reflect badly on the film creators and also dissatisfies the viewer where ever they may be watching it.

Urmee Khan, Digital and Media Correspondent at the Daily Telegraph writes that ‘Tackling film piracy would generate £614m for UK economy’. This shows how much we could do with an end to film piracy. It would also provide some employment and tax revenue. With such technological advances in the past ten to twenty years, the problem of copyright theft is ever growing worse as it is becoming easier to translate a film somebody else has recorded in a cinema onto your own computer screen or television screen. There are not only pros of the internet!

However, there are also many pros for the audience of film piracy. The obvious advantage of watching a pirated film rather than an official bough copy of it is that you probably have to pay less. Also, often it is easy to get hold of early copies of movies that may not be out on DVD yet. These advantages often weigh out the disadvantage of the quality not being 100% for many people.

The ‘pirates’ also make money from selling their recorded copy of the film. However, if they are caught they could easily end up with a very high fine or even, in extreme cases, a sentence in prison.

Overall, it is clear that if everyone stopped piracy, the economy, and subsequently a large amount of people, would benefit a huge amount. However, it is going to take a lot more than the current effort made by ‘FACT’ and other organisations to stop movie piracy altogether. Over half a million people in the UK download films illegally every day, so there needs to be action taken and perhaps more individual smaller punishments for people sitting behind their computers downloading and never imagining they would be caught.