Film Piracy and The 'Invisible' People It Actually Hurts

Photo Courtesy: Eelke via Flickr

It was 2011 when through the wonderful practice of eavesdropping on my older sister’s conversations with her friends (highly recommend), I first discovered Putlocker, a website which held the key to an untold number of films and TV shows at my fingertips, and with it I satisfied every little whim and fancy my five-year old mind could come up with. “Let’s watch Fantastic Mr Fox! And after that we can do WALL-E! And, oh, then let's do The Aristocats!” Those wonderful two weeks spending all my time on that website brought free and easy joy that I thought of as completely victimless, with the exception of my older sister whose laptop I turned into a brick after flooding it to the brim with pop-up ads in my quest to once again re-watch Barbie & The Diamond Castle.

But victimless is a go-to word we hear when we talk about film piracy, the go-to justification for streaming and downloading media on free (and often illegal) sites. After all, the film industry prides itself on its exceptionalism, an exceptionalism that is the only thing it offers to the public eye. Exceptional talent, exceptional attractiveness, exceptional wealth. So when it is published by studies such as Carnegie Mellon’s 2014 research that on average pre-release piracy causes a 19.1% decrease in box office revenue relative to piracy that occurs post-release, we don’t see victims genuinely hurt by our actions. We see exceptionally privileged people for whom this loss of revenue and royalties is but a drop of water in comparison to how deeply we feel that £8.99 - £13.99 movie ticket in the recess that is our bank accounts.

However, what we don’t see behind the veil of red-carpet celebrities and millionaire studio execs are the people behind the Hollywood throne. The makeup artists, the costume designers, the production assistants, and the many other people with parts to play and thousands of man hours to give in order to provide us with entertainment. Not to mention the crew also have recesses for bank accounts which require filling from the box office revenues that film piracy cannibalizes approximately $1.3 billion annually (Carnegie Mellon, 2016). And let us not forget the bright-eyed next generation of filmmakers whose break into the industry is reliant on Hollywood’s delicate ecosystem of blockbusters paying for other films’ rights to creative exploration. Once again, where we see a drop of water that spares us a potential cost, there is a Hollywood hopeful looking for the means to leave their mark. We here at UCL are full of them, people looking for ways to break into the ‘Christopher Nolan’ career track. And so, the victimless crime turns out to be victim-filled, and all we have to do is look behind the red carpet’s facade to see them.

So the next time you find yourself itching to find the latest hit on Fmovies and the like, ask yourself a simple question. Film piracy: blessing or curse? And knowing the millions of people that will be affected by your answer, you’ll find yourself picking curse every time.