Okay so I went to see the new Disney/Pixar film Up yesterday. It was an excellent film and I highly recommend it to everyone, but this isn’t what this post is about. Up was officially released in the UK on 9th October, but its US release date was way back on the 29th May! Further research would show that its being released on DVD to our friends over the pond in a mere few weeks, on November the 10th! It’ll still be in the cinema here at that time! So the question I’m going to pose is this, if production companies are choosing to have such long periods of time between US and UK/European cinematic release dates, is it any suprise that more and more people are turning to illegal downloading to watch these films and do the companies realise this when they’re off complaining about how they’re losing money from filesharing.
Before I carry on, I’ll admit fully that I have downloaded something “illegally” before, I imagine most people reading this are lying to themselves if they haven’t. Whether it be that one song you heard on the radio or that film that you just happened to miss in the cinema, most people have done it. Personally I’m beginning to think things are probably beginning to improve – spotify has quenched most peoples music needs, offering almost all the music you could think of for free if you don’t mind listen to a few silly advertisements every so often (although you can’t download from spotify, so people looking for tracks for their mp3 players are still a problem), and there is a far smaller gap between film release dates in the UK and US now, with them either coming out at the same time or within one or two weeks of each other. We even sometimes get things first! Going onto an American Transformers board having seen Revenge of the Fallen before them? Now that was a good day.
But with Up, I do feel (and please excuse the terrible pun) that Disney/Pixar are taking the mickey. Here we have one of if not the biggest children’s (and adults, since we all love Disney) entertainment company allied with the leading team in CGI filmaking who can seemingly do no wrong in most people’s eyes leaving a whopping 5 months between release in two of the biggest markets. Personally I could wait, since I don’t think a dodgy camcorder copy is a substitute for the cinema experience (especially now in glorious 3D) but it would be interesting just to see how many people DID download Up because they felt they couldn’t wait that long.
Internet providers have recently been debating methods to deter the amount of file sharers on the internet, given how they can’t just simply shut down bittorrent or other torrent programs as file sharing itself isn’t illegal (only the file sharing of licensed material), some even suggesting banning people from the internet itself (for more info see here). But here’s me offering a different method, one that I’m directing at the companies making the things they don’t like us illegally downloading – give us LESS reason to illegally download, and maybe, just maybe you’ll end up making a difference.
This is unacceptable Disney, I don’t expect to have to wait this long for Toy Story 3.
(but thanks for all the wonderful films, especially the Lion King)
Alex's corner 