$50 million for 'Star Wars' -- piracy aside

Associaed Press:

The last of the ''Star Wars'' movies has done what no movie in history has ever accomplished -- sold $50 million worth of tickets in a single day.

''Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith'' grossed $50,013,859 from showings at 3,661 theaters and more than 9,000 screens around the country Thursday.

NDTV.com:

Saturday, May 21, 2005: (Los Angeles):

The new Star Wars movie has just been released in theatres, but bootleg copies are already for sale around the world and on the Internet.

This is perhaps the most glaring example yet of a highly sophisticated global industry that costs Hollywood more than $4 billion an year. ...

What nonsense. The $4 billion figure refers to bootleg DVDs and VHS tapes sold by hard-goods pirates -- not Internet piracy, a fact that sloppy reporters often overlook. But there's little evidence that people would have spent anything close to $4 billion if they had to pay full price for movie tickets or DVDs. So that $4 billion figure is something of a phantom. Hollywood never would have made that $4 billion, so how does it claim to have lost $4 billion?

Bootlegging is wrong, of course. But let's not overstate its impact.

AfterDawn.com:

On Wednesday night, a copy of the new star wars movie appeared on the Internet and spread like wild fire (as one would expect). It is a full Workprint copy of the movie featuring two massive timers on the top of the video. The fact that this is a workprint means that this originally must have come from "inside". This was not made by someone with a concealed camcorder in a movie theatre. ...

To sum this all up, the media is paying too much attention to the star wars leak and the movie industry needs to start pointing the fingers at its own people instead of P2P users/developers.

Also see this discussion on Slashdot about piracy: MPAA Blames BitTorrent for Star Wars Distribution. Including this quote from the head of the MPAA:

MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman: 'There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith.

Again, what nonsense. The fact is that Star Wars Episode 3 broke all box office records despite that fact that people could have downloaded it for free from the Internet.