Cheap DVDs - a different ethical question
Moser Baer has an interesting plan to make more money from its DVD business.
First, they got things in place to make DVDs super cheap. The problem with super-cheap DVDs, though is they sell at really low margins.
So, they bought a library of 10,000 movies and started printing movies on their really cheap DVDs. This created a whole new 'legal' market for cheap movies. And they've been quite successful at it. The movies earned Moser Baer about Rs 15 per DVD than they did before. However, considering the price for regular DVD movies is at least Rs100, MB still wasn't making the money that they could. But they don't want to lose their place as the cheapest movie retailer.
So they cook up this ingenious plan: They're going to retro-fit consumer products into old movie scenes and charge the companies for 'advertising'. They've even got the technology to do this - basically, a video version of photoshop.
As a business plan this rocks. You're making more money, keeping advertisers happy and giving consumers low-cost/ good-value entertainment.
However, there are two interesting problems about this. For one, it could lead to anachronisms - Imagine watching a movie from 1984 and suddenly you see a Tata Nano in the corner of the frame, 25 years before it was launched; indeed, two decades before it was even conceived!
Now, this isn't likely, but it is plausible. You've got a library of 10,000 movies that you'd like to monetize. Most of them are older movies. Most products being placed will be the latest ones. So the potential for gaffes exists.
The larger problem though, is a question of historical accuracy. As the new owner of this giant library of movies I feel Moser Baer now has a responsibility to treat them as historical documents.
Unfortunately, by 'retro-fitting' products into the frames, they may actually be breaking their responsibility for historical accuracy.
Think about it this way. Suppose one of the decorators of the Great Pyramid sculpted his own little string of heiroglyphs on the Pharoah's sarcophagus. Not only would this confuse archaeologists, but after studying the sarcophagus, historians might actually conclude something completely different than was originally intended.
Or imagine if some drunk librarian at the US' National Archives decided to write in some of his own words to the Declaration of Independence while no one was watching.... You're talking about 200+ years of legal, political and social history changed completely because of one single, unintended 're-interpretation'.
Perhaps movies do not hold the same importance as such documents and monuments, but they are a significant part of India's cultural history and identity. If Moser Baer was doing this to a small number of movies, I don't think my objection would be as strong. However, the company claims to upto a third of the number of commercial movies ever released in India. That, to me, is too large a historical archive to be willing to corrupt - for money. Perhaps they will reconsider.
First, they got things in place to make DVDs super cheap. The problem with super-cheap DVDs, though is they sell at really low margins.
So, they bought a library of 10,000 movies and started printing movies on their really cheap DVDs. This created a whole new 'legal' market for cheap movies. And they've been quite successful at it. The movies earned Moser Baer about Rs 15 per DVD than they did before. However, considering the price for regular DVD movies is at least Rs100, MB still wasn't making the money that they could. But they don't want to lose their place as the cheapest movie retailer.
So they cook up this ingenious plan: They're going to retro-fit consumer products into old movie scenes and charge the companies for 'advertising'. They've even got the technology to do this - basically, a video version of photoshop.
As a business plan this rocks. You're making more money, keeping advertisers happy and giving consumers low-cost/ good-value entertainment.
However, there are two interesting problems about this. For one, it could lead to anachronisms - Imagine watching a movie from 1984 and suddenly you see a Tata Nano in the corner of the frame, 25 years before it was launched; indeed, two decades before it was even conceived!
Now, this isn't likely, but it is plausible. You've got a library of 10,000 movies that you'd like to monetize. Most of them are older movies. Most products being placed will be the latest ones. So the potential for gaffes exists.
The larger problem though, is a question of historical accuracy. As the new owner of this giant library of movies I feel Moser Baer now has a responsibility to treat them as historical documents.
Unfortunately, by 'retro-fitting' products into the frames, they may actually be breaking their responsibility for historical accuracy.
Think about it this way. Suppose one of the decorators of the Great Pyramid sculpted his own little string of heiroglyphs on the Pharoah's sarcophagus. Not only would this confuse archaeologists, but after studying the sarcophagus, historians might actually conclude something completely different than was originally intended.
Or imagine if some drunk librarian at the US' National Archives decided to write in some of his own words to the Declaration of Independence while no one was watching.... You're talking about 200+ years of legal, political and social history changed completely because of one single, unintended 're-interpretation'.
Perhaps movies do not hold the same importance as such documents and monuments, but they are a significant part of India's cultural history and identity. If Moser Baer was doing this to a small number of movies, I don't think my objection would be as strong. However, the company claims to upto a third of the number of commercial movies ever released in India. That, to me, is too large a historical archive to be willing to corrupt - for money. Perhaps they will reconsider.
posted by Pierre at
10:39 PM
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