AfterDawn: News

Warner Home Video to challenge Chinese Piracy

When most people are asked to name places in the world where piracy is known to be most rampant, most people would say China as one of their first guesses, and they wouldn't be wrong. For years, counterfeit music CD's, books, DVDs etc.. have been selling in huge numbers on China and now Warner Home Video has decided to take a different approach to challenging it. Instead of pushing the Chinese government's hand to start war on pirates, they will compete with the pirates with reasonably priced DVDs.

These DVDs will be available very soon after their theatrical releases but will contain no extras like audio commentary or features on the making of the movie. The will sell for about 22 Yuan (US$2.65) which is not much more than 8 Yuan (US$1.80) which is the price the pirates offer. The quality of the DVDs offered by the pirates that early is often quite low (see Asian Silvers), and Warner believes that improved quality that consumers can rely on will help it defeat the DVD pirates.



Despite massive crackdowns on piracy in China and throughout Asia, piracy still remains rampant. If the most copyrighted works sold in any country were pirated, it wouldn't be strange for the general public to get used to it and see nothing wrong with it, especially since the pirates can offer much lower prices than the entertainment industry would be willing to offer for legitimate products. It is estimated that piracy in China alone costs Western companies about $16 billion annually in lost sales.

Source:
Forbes

Written by: James Delahunty @ 25 Feb 2005 14:19

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• 7 comments

• deadcat

  So why doesnt WB sell these cheap movies everywhere?? not everone wants to pay $20-30 Australian for all the extras that your never going to watch. Sell the movie only for $5 and youd cut down on piracy everywhere

  25.2.2005 14:34 #1

• nanu-nanu

  hell yeah....I'd stop creating "backups" for Blockbuster if I could buy the movie without all the BS extras.....
  
  WARNER BROTHERS.....GET A F'n CLUE.

  25.2.2005 14:46 #2

• Dimi334

  Considering it costs less than $1 AUD for studios to create a DVD having a 3000% markup in Australia sends people scrambling to "backup" in great quantities here. If they were to flog the disks for less than $10 AUD then people might consider pirating pointless. Being ripped of as a consumer encourages people to find other ways when they are on a limited budget. How many times do people watch a DVD anyway? $30 ain't worth a couple of screenings.

  25.2.2005 16:00 #3

• domie

  hell, why would they lower prices in a full blown capitalist economy ? that would prevent them from ripping us off and thieving wouldn´t it ? It would also cut back on the number of files shared via p2p so then they couldn´t bitch and moan that their profits were being stolen and production was in danger of stopping.
  You have to laugh when you see them whinging about production being in danger when they spend over 100 million advertising the crap film, 150 million filling it with special effects and 40 million for hiring two main stars.

  25.2.2005 16:41 #4

• itshrunk

  The difference between China and full-blown capitalist economies is most Chinese won't pay (or simply can't afford) to see a movie. While, on the other hand, Americans, for example, are more than willing to pay upwards of 10 bucks to see the latest movies in theaters.
  
  So, as long as there are more people in America (or elsewhere)willing to pay than not, the movie industry will never consider selling DVDs that cheap.
  
  But I still think they're greedy bastards...and that's why I rarely pay to see a movie in theaters.

  28.2.2005 01:57 #5

• c4iscool

  they're greedy bastards...and that's why I rarely pay to see a movie in theaters. Damn right itshrunk!!!!!!! They need to bring that to the USA!

  28.2.2005 05:56 #6

• LordUthyr

  Let me understand this.
  They can sell a movie for $2.85 in China,but in
  their own back yard it's not even possible at $10
  The morale is copy more until they sell cheap.

  17.3.2005 18:25 #7