So there are already pirated copies of the new Star Wars flick showing up on the Internet. Oh, my God, the evils of piracy …
Kutner [PR rep for the MPAA] could not estimate the financial losses of Internet piracy to the studios, but she said they are mounting.
“There is an incalculable financial loss to (the movie industry) right now and that will only grow as the ability to pirate movies on the Internet through broadband access is available to more people,” said Kutner.
Now, really … how many audience members do you think will be lost by folks downloading Attack of the Clones from the Net? These are exactly the folks who are running off to see the film eleventy-dozen times already.
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Piracy only really hurts if the product is poor. Otherwise it’s free word of mouth advertising. For every one person who downloads AOTC and likes it, they will tell countless other people to go see it.
Agreed. It’s only generating buzz, and stoking up the “gotta have every line memorized and every trivia fact figured out” crowd, at least in this case.
Of course, Lucas was one who dragged his feet for years against doing DVDs, for fear it would eat into his VHS sales due to Rampant Piracy. He was a big proponent of Div-X machines.