MPAA Revenue Drops 20% as Movie Studios Cut Back

[steven36]

The latest MPAA tax filing shows that the revenue generated by the anti-piracy group has fallen after a few years of modest growth. The decrease is the result of lower membership fees paid by the major Hollywood studios, which resulted in a significant loss. The filing further reveals that the MPAA's former CEO Chris Doss earned $3.4 million during his final year.

 

 

As a united front for Hollywood, the MPAA has booked many anti-piracy successes in recent years.

 

Through its involvement in the shutdowns of Popcorn Time, YIFY, isoHunt, Hotfile, Megaupload and several other platforms, the organization has worked hard to get results.

 

Less visibly but at least as important, the MPAA uses its influence to lobby lawmakers, while orchestrating and managing anti-piracy campaigns both in the United States and abroad.

 

All this work doesn’t come for free, obviously. To pay the bills the MPAA relies on six major movie studios for financial support. Over the past several years, these revenues had stabilized, but according to its latest tax filing, they are dropping now.

 

The IRS filing, covering the fiscal year 2016, puts total revenue at $57 million, down from $73 million. The Hollywood studios paid the bulk of this sum through membership fees which total $50 million. That’s a 22% reduction compared to a year earlier.

 

At the end of the year, this resulted in a significant loss of $8 million. While that’s a lot of money, the MPAA is not in imminent danger, as the organization still has over $10 million in net assets and funds.

 

We haven’t seen any explanation for the lower membership fees. It could be more permanent, but it may also be an agreed decision, as there’s enough money in the bank.

 

Going over the numbers, we see that salaries make up a large chunk of the expenses. Chris Dodd, the former MPAA Chairman and CEO, was the highest paid employee with a total income of more than $3.4 million, including a $275,000 bonus.

 

This compensation was for Dodd’s last full year as CEO. He was replaced by Charles Rivkin last year, another political heavyweight, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs in the Obama administration.

 

Dodd’s compensation took up nearly 10% of the entire salary budget. The rest is divided over the MPAA’s other 196 employees. This brings the total workforce to 197, which is down as well, from 224 employees a year earlier.

 

Moving on, it’s always interesting to see where the MPAA’s grants and other types of funding go to.

 

As reported previously, the group donates handsomely to various research initiatives. This includes a recurring million dollar grant for Carnegie Mellon’s ‘Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics’ (IDEA), which focuses on piracy related topics.

 

Another major beneficiary is the Copyright Alliance, a non-profit that represents copyright holders large and small on a variety of issues. The group was co-founded by the MPAA and received $750,000 in support according to the latest filing.

 

The total grants budget is $3.1 million and includes many smaller payments, which is not that different from previous years. Other large cost items are the lobbying budget, which totaled $3.6 million, and $5.3 million in legal fees.

 

Aside from the big dip in revenues, there are no real outliers in the filing.

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A copy of the MPAA’s latest form 990 is available here (pdf).

 

Source

[straycat19]

The movie industry has come up with all kinds of things to stop piracy over the last 40 years.  Even back in the days of the VHS tape they developed a case for the tape that had ridges in the plastic feed area that allowed the tape to be viewed fine on a TV but when someone tried to copy it the copy would be unwatchable.  The fix for that was to just pull the tape out far enough that the ridged plastic could be seen and a piece of Scotch tape place over the ridges.  The tape duplicated fine.  So some 36 years later the movie industry is still playing whack-a-mole.  How is that working out for them.

[steven36]

18 hours ago, straycat19 said:

So some 36 years later the movie industry is still playing whack-a-mole.  How is that working out for them.

The movie  studios  would like to see it go away because they all pay out millions a year to groups like the MPPA , lawyers , court cost and other anti piracy groups , Also the courts get tried of seeing these cases . Look how many years it's taking to even give Kim Dotcom a trial in the USA . But as far as the MPAA  and other anti piracy groups it work out just fine for them and they dont want to see piracy go away they just want make it  appear like they getting something  done, because if they was too really stop it they would not have no job and they would not be needed . Same as when I use to work construction we had a deadline to meet and the we were always working like fire and working ourself out of a job tell the company won a bid on the next jobs . But the company had us to build the stuff i did to only last 15 years tops . This was called job security . Someone would have to comeback in 15 years and repair it and this was if a storm didn't come along and destroy it in 15 years witch it most likely will . The company loved Hurricanes.     Same with the MPAA  piracy is job security to them and they don't want to stop it . It's all smoke and mirrors ..

 

How would you like to make 3.4 million dollars in one year  just to take out a few sites when theirs most likely 1000s and they close one and two more takes it place? Back in the early 2000s  everyone was using p2p like Kazza , Imesh and Limewire , BitTorrent was around then but was not very popular yet because you did not even need a browser to get you're fix and they never even really killed this tech off , they only killed the major players off but it's still around and used everyday .Then the warez boards and blogs came along and BitTorrent became a thing. Then people started making addons for Kodi that lets people get there fix without a browser again and now there is apps that can stream like Kodi as well . As long as technology exist they will always invent something to get around Hollywood .

 

Like we had 8 track Recorders , Cassette  recorders and VCR recorders back in the day then we got DVD Burners for Computers and software to remove the encryption , Today they have stuff to Burn Blu-ray and  remove the encryption from 1080p and 4k also the can rip anything from any encrypted stream  . So even if it was not on the internet easily downloaded,  it would still be on the street because the tech is there like it's always been.  Would they rather people download it from a  con artist for free off the internet , are would they rather see people  pay organized crime on the streets a few dollars for it?  Same as when they made Booze illegal organized crime got rich off it and the same as been happening with drugs since the 1960s .Organized crime  would love to see Hollywood ban it from the internet were they could make more money than they do already off of it, because now they can only sell it to people who don't have the internet. 

 

It's kind of funny when you look at it the MPAA and RIAA have all these other places block torrent sites but in the USA were most of the stuff is made it's illegal to block torrent sites because torrenting is legal as long as you use it to download non copyrighted works and there tons of software ,movies and music that's legal to download and BitTorrent software is legal it can be used for good or bad just like any other thing can be.  The government is the ones that allow it before when they try to pass laws they got shot down because of protest, if the USA start practicing what they preach then the warez scene will go underground again but it want stop it . It just want be seen in the open like it is now and of course there is some countries left that have sites were they cant be touched by DMCA and they dont work with Hollywood but Google could remove there search results if they wanted too but that dont help when we already have these sites bookmarked.

 

And i have software were you dont need a website to share . Two pirates in the name of the cause is all it takes to file-share  and have a party .