My uncle told me an article he read the other day (6/3 i think). Pretty sure it was in the Wall Street Journal, but i could be wrong. anyway, it said that the movie studios only make about 20% of their profit from a movie from the Box office sales. The other 80% comes from dvd/vhs sales (pretty sure these numbers didnt include revenue from marketing tie-ins and action figures and stuff like that). This is part (most) of the reason movies are comming out on dvd earlier than before. The longer the movie stays in the theater the more people see it and the less people buy(rent?) the dvd/vhs because theyve already seen it. Obviously big fans of the show/movie will buy the dvd even if they see it multiple times in the theater, but not everyone does. They dont know what the exact numbers/formula for how long to keep a movie in the theaters and how soon to release it to dvd is yet, but its being studied.

So my point is, that you may not think that bootlegging the dvd hurts that much, and it probably doesnt in the case where your downloading it before the official one is released, providing the people that download it buy the official one (as apposed to not buying it because they have a bootleg) But if people start bootlegging official dvds (which is done) then that is cutting into a bigger part of the studios profits. Not saying they need the money, but its still stealing and its still hurting revenue (which a lot of arguements say it doesnt)

before you say it doesnt, make sure you realize that i did mention the caveat of fans that will download the bootleg but also buy the official dvd when it comes out.

-Darth Simon