How Piracy Created The Massive Movie Industry Success Of Nollywood
from the and-what's-happening-now dept
We've written in the past about how the three largest movie producing countries in the world are Nigeria, India and China -- despite the fact that all three have extremely high rates of infringement. It seemed to offer the perfect counterpoint to the insistence from the MPAA that high piracy rates automatically lead to the destruction of any form of movie industry. In fact, further research showed that the amount of piracy in Nigeria actually was a big part of the reason why Nollywood has been so successful. The ability to let "pirates" distribute their films in the most efficient way possible meant that the movies were distributed far and wide across Africa and established Nigeria as the place to go for movie making.Of course, as we've seen through the history of the development of various industries, it's always after those industries are created and growing rapidly that the existing players suddenly want to ramp up intellectual property laws to stomp out new competition. This is true throughout pretty much the entire history of intellectual property law, and it shows that such laws are not -- as we're told -- about creating incentives to invest in these industries, but rather about keeping out the competition and setting up gatekeepers to lock things down for established players. The same thing is happening in Nigeria as well, as there have been new efforts to crack down on infringement, despite it being so central to the importance of the rise of the industry.
While we've covered all this before, Eric Crampton points our attention to a new research paper that digs even deeper into this story: The Rise of Nollywood: Creators, Entrepreneurs, and Pirates by Olufunmilayo Arewa. It covers much of the same ground as our previous reports, first noting the usefulness of infringement in establishing the industry -- which appears to employ more people than Hollywood. In fact, what's amazing is that while many developing nations focus on government subsidies, insisting that that's the only way to build a local film industry, there's almost no government support in Nigeria, yet the industry is significantly bigger than comparable countries:
The rise of the film sector in Nigeria runs counter to existing trends in the film sector in which developing countries, which produce 1.2 films per million inhabitant annually, lag developed countries, which produce 6.3 films per million inhabitants annually. At current Nollywood production levels, Nigeria produces approximately 6.7 films per million inhabitants annually. Bridging the developing country film production gap remains challenging, particularly because the optimal ways to create domestic film industries remain elusive in many instances. Prior to the proliferation of Nollywood films, at least one commentator suggested that government takeover of the film industry would be the only means by which Nigeria could develop a film industry.In fact, part of that "market-driven" approach is to figure out ways to embrace and leverage widespread infringement. That helped set up rapid and inexpensive (to free) distribution and promotion of new films. It has also continued to drive interest in new films, as people want to keep seeing more, helping to keep the industry going.
Notably, although many countries have sought to incentivize particular types of film production through direct government funding, subsidies, or film protection schemas involving film quotas, many of these industries have not been commercially viable in the absence of subsidies or other support schemes. In contrast, Nollywood has created significant volume of local video film content with virtually no government involvement or subsidies. The success of Nollywood may in many respects be attributable to a lack of government involvement and its decentralized nature, which has permitted Nollywood participants to be highly entrepreneurial, adaptive and innovative. Nollywood now may employ as many as 200,000 people directly with estimates of indirect employment as high as 1 million. The market-driven Nollywood approach is less costly than existing models of film production and distribution and may offer a new model for developing countries that wish to develop domestic film industries.
That said, the report also talks about the new efforts to crack down on infringement, but notes that this might not make much sense. It notes, correctly, that "the battle to control piracy will not be an easy one," and that such an effort to ratchet up pricing may be futile. Instead, it suggests taking a more proactive approach to providing better services and to looking at better ways to monetize the movies -- including things like advertisements and product placement.
Discussions of the piracy problem in Nollywood are based upon goals for control of distribution that may simply not be viable for Nollywood given current institutional structures and manners of doing business. In addition to dealing with piracy and issues of control of distribution, Nollywood participants should undertake focused strategies to address varied business and legal impediments. The development course of Nollywood, which in fact increasingly moving to digital distribution outside of Africa, and events in other arenas, suggest that the battle to control piracy will not be an easy one. Further, to the extent that webs of unauthorized uses enmesh consumers and end users, seeking to impose desired pricing in the face of rampant unauthorized distribution, or even the possibility of such distribution, may be futile, particularly given broad nature of Nollywood distribution networks. This ultimately may mean that price reductions may be one way to deal with problems of piracy, particularly to the extent that Nollywood participants can effectively harness other sources of value. Nollywood participants thus far have focused to a significant extent on the value of Nollywood content, which may obscure other potential sources of value to Nollywood participants. For example, the network of viewers reached by Nollywood films may be valuable to advertisers and others who may be willing to pay to have access to such viewers. The value of these Nollywood networks may actually be far greater than the value of the content itself.The report also notes that "Discussions about the future of Nollywood should seek to move beyond discussions of copyright and piracy to fundamental reconsideration of a broader range of business and legal issues." I'd argue that applies to nearly all copyright discussions. Not just those in Nollywood.
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What wages?
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Re: What wages?
I mean, they're in a 3rd world country, they probably get paid like 3 snotrags a week.
If only they had oil, we'd help them get a decent wage; right after we helped with a 'regime change' and democracy.
/troll
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Re: Re: What wages?
Actually they have!
Sadly in that case the lack of regulation has not had good effects - largely because of the oil industry - Nigeria is the pollution capital of the world...
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Re: What wages?
The unionized workers aren't making all that much money and the independent actors are really hurt by the MPAA or RIAA respectively.
If there are benefits to SAG or any other major label you might want to enlighten everyone. There's too many stories about how they are antiquated in their dealings on the internet to truly believe they protect any one.
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Re: What wages?
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In Nigeria, more people spend their time worried about their next meal than they do about what theater to visit on Saturday. For them, pirated DVDs may be the only way they EVER see a movie. Not really a good indication.
China? Well, until recently there were few theaters, most of them showing internal products approved by the government censors. It's only in the last little while that the theater system has come into play. Remember Mike? You pointed out China as an indication that the movie business was thriving. Now you are saying it's not really movie business, but the piracy business? Pick one idea and work with it, okay?
India? Huge industry, huge money in a country where most people are worried about their next meal. Piracy there is only an indication of poverty, nothing else.
3 for 3 on the fail list today Mike. Care to try again?
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So BY YOUR OWN LOGIC the crusade to eliminate piracy should be replaced by a crusade to eliminate poverty!
We could start with all those wealthy film and record industry execs taking minimum wage and donating the rest to charity. Similarly the backhanders to politicians could be given to the poor ...
I'm not holding my breath!
(Last time I looked they were still trying to extract million dollar damages from poor people.)
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Re: Re:
No, that wouldn't be my logic at all. My logic is only that, in a part of the world where more people are worried about what they are going to eat (if anything), piracy is just one of those things. It's not a top priority item for anyone.
http://www.newswatchngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3692&It emid=1
The people have simpler issues to deal with. The burgeoning piracy film business isn't exactly a top priority for anyone except dweeb-ass commentators from California who would never set foot in the country.
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Except of course those who don't live there but still push for international treaties to crack down on piracy in those countries.
In general the people who would try to crack down on piracy are not the ones going hungry - I think the new version of your "logic" is less logical than the original one was!
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You do actually care about poor people, right? You're not just saying that piracy is okay there because they're too poor to pay and therefore aren't a viable market yet...? I know you're not saying that, because that would require you to accept that someone not being able to pay for something that can be copied infinitely without cost to the content creator is not a lost sale...
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That and Nollywood, as a new industry, is video based not celluloid which older film industries tend to be. As copyright enforcement is next to non existent in Nigeria Nollywood films have been spread around Africa, where they are extremely popular, and to the Nigerian diaspora in Europe and North America by "piracy" which, oddly, has made it very profitable.
Yes, hunger and poverty are issues in Nigeria as they are in most of South Saharan Africa but you're leaving aside the fact that during the Great Depression when many North Americans were hungry and poverty stricken movie attendance actually increased.
China, you're going to lose that one too. Long before Hong Kong was returned to China by the British it had a long record of film production ranging from the cheap martial arts stuff we're so familiar with to high end films. All that's really happened is that as China's big industrial cities have become wealthier is that production and the skill in producing movies has come from Hong Kong and migrated into other parts of China as the market developed. As for piracy China's record on the protection of copyright is, by North American and European "standards" next to non existent so as the movie biz has grown so has piracy. And, again, by means fair and foul this has serviced the huge Chinese diaspora around the world.
You really reach some for India. Hunger there, while still fairly widespread is not as chronic as it was in the 1950s and India's economy is rapidly expanding which, particularly in the large cities, is reducing poverty. In a country of nearly a billion people or more as the middle class grows so does the audience for Bollywood, not to mention that Bollywood also produces a great deal of Indian television programming. Once again, as the Great Depression illustrated, poor people often attend movies just to escape from the realities of day to day life. Bollywood is nothing if not largely escapist. Piracy there has also served the Indian diaspora well and theatres in North America, for example, who have chosen their films from the most pirated ones to show in theatres.
While you make some valid points for each country you ignore a lot of the realities of each which is simply that the entire population of these countries aren't the rural, hungry poor but that each has thriving, growing middle classes in their largest cities who are a large part of the market for movies though the poor often make up a good part of that market as well.
The only 3/3 fail here is yours.
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How can 3 countries with huge poor numbers create such an immense market and find money in that environment?
There are no laws there, for all intent and purposes and still they are creating wealth out of nothing and the pretty good thing is that they are not using monopoly laws to do it.
If nothing else it shows piracy is not a problem and never was a problem.
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Re: what wages?
The unionized workers aren't making all that much money and the independent actors are really hurt by the MPAA or RIAA respectively.
If there are benefits to SAG or any other major label you might want to enlighten everyone."
I make $22.00/hr with a good medical plan and retirement that's a joke, as a union grip. Rates vary, from $17.00 on tier 1 low budget to $32.00+ on big budget pictures shot in a big city. It's not fancy -I support my family but we by no means live in any kind of luxury. I think I am fairly typical in this regard. Almost none of us make money from residuals, other than a small amount that subsidizes the health plan (the exact dollar amounts I have yet to discover).
As for "benefits to SAG", I'm not sure exactly what you mean, also you seem to be referring to the actors guild as a "label", which is amusing.
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They may have next to nothing but they have opinions, they want to be entertained, they can be incredibly arrogant, and sometimes--complete assholes. In short, the are normal people. So let's leave such complex issues out of a discussion on moviemaking and piracy and how they two impact each other.
You want to know why piracy is so rampant in India and China? Cultural trait.
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