The Downfall for The Fast and Furious 6 Earnings Due to Online Piracy

Photo Credit: Rollingout.com

You may ask yourself what’s the big deal if social media doesn’t have protection against movies such as The Fast and Furious to be pirated and shared online? The problem is that it affects the U.S. economy. Albershardt says, “The less profit that is made by a movie, the less money a producer has to make his or her next film.  This results in fewer films being made.  The fewer numbers of films that are made, the fewer jobs [are available]. The fewer tickets or DVDs that are bought, the less taxes are collected.” According to The Journal of World Intellectual Property states that, “the spread of piracy is also attributed to the rapid growth of technology.” The rapid advancement of technology has outpaced lawmakers to regulate piracy issues.

Online piracy of entertainment media has a drastic affect to the U.S. economy. For example, the Institute for Policy Information (IPI) published an AP article pertaining to sound recordings piracy to the U.S. economy and states that, “As a consequence of piracy, U.S. federal, state and local governments lose a minimum of $422 million in tax revenues annually. Of this amount, $291 million represents lost personal income taxes while $131 million is lost corporate income and production taxes.”

Piracy Causes Economy to Suffer | Create infographics

In January 2012, at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC, Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor states, “We do not need to reinvent international human rights law, or our enduring principles, to account for the Internet. No deed is more evil – or more noble – when it is committed online rather than offline.” If it is illegal offline then the laws are the same for conduct online. For example, it’s not permitted by law to steal the movie reels from the theater just the same as you cannot steal movies online.

The blog VoxIndie.org article states that the film The Fast and Furious had a pirated version that online less than 24 hours after the premier was released nationwide. To minimize piracy of the film, Universal decided to release the tent pole film globally at the same time versus releasing the premier in the U.S. first. In an interview with Susan Albershardt, a Course Director at Full Sail for Entertainment Media Distribution, states that “…studios release tent pole films internationally, at the same time they release them domestically, to keep people in international territories from pirating the movie when it is only released in the US first.”

According to the AP article from Deadline.com, The Fast and Furious 6 film was released on May 17^th in the UK and Ireland over a three-day period. In London, the film grossed $13.8M. The film was then release on May 24^th (Memorial Day weekend) in North America and 59 international markets simultaneously.  According to the data from The-Numbers.com, the movie earned $135M domestically, $208M internationally at the box office.

Many foreign countries do not have laws to protect against piracy but this is slowly changing. Albershardt assures that the laws are changing over in the past few years due to piracy in foreign countries to protect the entertainment industry financially.  “I know that France and the UK have implemented Three Strikes laws against pirates with the penalty getting much more harsh after each strike.”

An scholarly article from the World Intellectual Property Organization defines 'Digital Rights Management' (DRM) as “a tool to protect digital products such as films, music, books and software from piracy.” The purpose is to develop technology to access film downloads easier online to prevent piracy.   

According to The Journal of World Intellectual Property, further research could explore the framework of ways to stop piracy for the “…end-user piracy, network externalities or commercial piracy,” specifically in the areas of music, film and software piracy problems.