Movie Industry Cries All the Way to the Bank

shandrew writes: "Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, has reported that the year 2001 was the "greatest box office year in film history" with movie admissions reaching their highest level since 1959. Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?"

Comments

Same for the music industry..

[Chicane-UK]

It does seem pretty surprising. They stil try and push through these stupid laws & bills to prevent piracy, yet here is another example that the market is booming.

I can't exactly lay my hands on figures, but I know the same is true of the music industry - not necesessarily their best year or anything like that, but I know that they are definately not hurting from lack of revenue.

Now maybe they can cut some of the cinema prices? I couldnt help but notice that the prices keep ticking up, whilst the adverts get longer and longer..

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. Just because its a record profit year, it still doesn't make it legal to steal movies/music.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. Just because its a record profit year, it still doesn't make it legal to steal movies/music.

Nobody said it was.

If the content providers stuck to combatting piracy, I wouldn't have a problem with them. However, they insist on adding extra baggage that takes away my "fair use" rights, and whining about piracy putting them out of business whenever anyone tries to (legally) get around it.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Idolatre]

But people aren't stealing movies/music as much as the MPAA/RIAA claim to justify the SSSCA.

So they should stop bothering us honest customers who rip every CD they buy to their personal hard drive which is not shared in any way. I want to be able to use my personal MP3 CD player with copies of any album i BUY, and I want to have backups in case the original CD gets damaged (it's rare, but in my 250 cd collection, at least 5 of them are damaged)

The next they'll do is to say I'm denying them the right to profit by not buying a second copy of the same CD I already have, because I have a backup.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Dr. Evil]

Umm.. Just because its a record profit year, it still doesn't make it legal to steal movies/music.

Has anyone told the recording industry about this?

Re:Same for the music industry..

[jmb-d]

Now maybe they can cut some of the cinema prices? I couldnt help but notice that the prices keep ticking up

This is my major beef with box office statistics -- they're reported in $$ instead of the number of butts in seats. That metric would hold across time. Sure, Harry Potter (as an example) made lots of money, but did more people see it than Gone With the Wind?

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Ringlord]

The cinema market may be booming but what about the VHS/DVD market? This is where the piracy is the worst,

While I enjoy the free piracy of movies on the net, I don't pretend that I have a moral rigth to pirate it. I am just a greedy swine that like to get stuff for free.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[l810c]

http://movies.go.com/boxoffice/index.html
Click "all-time leader" tab, Then "inflation adjusted list" on right.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[smagruder]

That's funny. A big question that has been on my mind recently is "Why do the cinemas think they have the right to show *any* advertising before the movie, basically lying to me, the customer, about the movie's actual start time?" I paid a huge admission price, for 's sake! Not to mention the lofty prices for the refreshments! If that revenue can't keep them going, then maybe they shouldn't be in business to begin with.

Am I the only one who actually feels economically insulted/assaulted by having to sit through these ads?

Check out Commercial Alert for their ongoing campaign against commericials before and during movies and other rampant commercialism.

I'm still haunted by the rampant, conspicuous product placement in Mission to Mars, a crap film otherwise but even crappier with all the ads.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[vbrtrmn]

The movie industry is just mad, because Titanic is their best selling movie ever... at the box office anyway. I bet they were hoping something would top that US$600+ MILLION dollars (US alone) now, they're pissed, because nothing has yet. Titanic made US$1.2+ BILLION in foreign box office sales alone. Who knew nobody had any taste? Well, I haven't seen it yet .. i wonder how it ends. duh?

Re:Same for the music industry..

[AndyChrist]

Ads before movies might be tolerable if they weren't so FUCKING LONG. Good god, that "lying about start times" complaint is right.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

... assuming ticket prices follow inflation.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Cramer]

Ah, but it isn't legal anymore. I just love the way we're passing laws to make it illegal to break the law (even if we aren't).

"Who are you? Where are you taking me? And why am I in this hand basket?"

Re:Same for the music industry..

[lelitsch]

I am afraid you don't understand the MBA/lawyer mindset.

MBAs are hedging in case revenues go down or not up as fast as they expect. "Hey, Glitter wasn't my fault, it just got pirated so much that we simply couldn't sell tickets. And it only got pirated so much because Maria is such a popular artist."

For lawyers, this is a very nice way to get secure their continuing employment. Pick a topic you can't do anything about like piracy and start writing legal briefs and demand more money for lobbying.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Greedy Swine]

Actually, I am a Greedy Swine!

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Cramer]

• But people aren't stealing movies/music as much as the MPAA/RIAA claim to justify the SSSCA.

Indeed. They've never said it was putting them out of business. They claim repeatedly that piracy is costing them billions in lost revenue every year. To date, however, they have offered ZERO proof or statistics to back up their claims. They make sweeping generalizations based on anything from rumor to flawed market studies (polling 10 high school kids isn't very statistically valid) to extrapolations from what they think they should be making.

This kind of theft is very hard to quantify. People aren't breaking into a warehouse and taking thousands of CDs. The contents of one (paid for) CD is distributed to hundreds or thousands of people. How much revenue does that divert from sales? Likely far less than it generates. People are much more likely to purchase CDs of the music they have heard and liked. Case in point, I never would've known Gus Gus existed if WB hadn't placed one of their music videos on the jukebox -- Believe. I've bought every CD they've produced. I've bought numerous CDs from 800.com (recently defunct) beacuse they had samples of the songs.

Basically, the MPAA and RIAA are stupid and greedy. Organized piracy (factories producing bootleg CDs and DVDs) costs them a lot of money -- and that's very proven. However, they have taken no actions at all to thwart such piracy. Instead, they harass, berate, and criminalize their actual patrons who are the very foundation of their billion dollar a year industry. They draft one stupid (useless) law ontop of another. They throw one horrible, non-compliant, hack after another at us to "combat piracy" that just makes the disks useless almost everywhere.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[styxlord]

In my experience, it seems that if its technically feasable for content to be copied then there are individuals who will stop at nothing to do so. I don't think content providers care about these people directly since there is absolutely nothing they can do about it and it probably doesn't really effect the bottom line. But, as soon as there is massive distribution of the contraband then things get interesting. It seems to me that people just can't help themselves when breaking the law is easy to do and they beleive there's little to no chance of being caught.

If content providers don't make an effort to stop massive illegal distribution of their content and more and more people think, "hey its illegal but everybody does it so I may as well do it too", then content providers will have to substantially reduce the cost of producing that content (which will most likely lead to lower quality content) or increase the cost of the content passed on to consumers (which will probably lead to more people using the highly accesible illegal content). So as far as I can tell, unless content providers (or their representatives) try to prevent massive distribution of illegal content they will all go out of business, and that's what all want, isn't it?

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Chicane-UK]

Agreed. I dont see why you should have to sit through the adverts AND pay a fee to get into the cinema.

That'd be like charging a subscription rate AND showing adverts.. yet websites give you the option of paying to remove adverts.

Cinema should be the same.. :)

Blah blah, rant, whinge.. maybe its just that the office is too warm today ;)

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Steveftoth]

The problem with sharing mp3s is that the true effect of it is unknown on sales. Sure, some people buy more albums, some people just steal them outright, but the net effect on album sales is unknown by everyone. That truely scares companies in all markets when an unknown x factor starts to effect their revenue. Why? Because they don't know how to react. If a business knows that demand is high, then it will produce more and hence make more money, if demand is low, then the company will produce less, fire people, etc. to make more money. However, this whole sharing music thing really messes up the whole works for them. They cannot use the older methods of predicting album sales and that scares them. So they are trying to control the market with an iron fist ( the only thing they know how to do).

Re:Same for the music industry..

[BobGregg]

I attended Sen. Hollings' SSSCA hearing last week, and can tell you a few of the things that Valenti (and Hollings, who practically repeated everything Valenti said, so it was transparently obvious that the "hearing" was nothing more than a one-sided sham to drum up interest in the bill) said there. The comments were not the same as those I've seen posted in the "official" transcript of prepared texts.

Valenti said that, sure enough, piracy is costing them money. He said that only 2 out of 10 movies made actually make their money back at the box-office; the rest have to do it through video and overseas sales, merchandising, etc. Of course, he never said how many movies make their money back in toto - I suspect it's close to 10/10, or they wouldn't be making them, would they? Still, the 2/10 stat resonated with the Senators.

He said that the *average* cost of producing and releasing a movie today is $83 million. (Hint to the MPAA: if your product is so expensive it's reducing your profit... maybe you should cut expenses, instead of asking Congress to prop up your non-functional business model?) What the hell costs $83 million? Oh yeah - a few stars' mega-contracts. Boo-hoo. I wonder if you took the top 20 stars' contracts out of the financial picture (since those vastly skew the distribution of costs), what the "average" cost would be then. Probably much, *much* lower. So tell me again why I should care... And by the way, the linked article states that the average cost in 2001 was $43 million - about *half* what Valenti just testified to Congress. Talk about talking from both sides of your mouth!!

Valenti said the one "moat surrounding their castle" that prevented the movie industry from totally being taken down (!!) was that broadband wasn't widespread yet. He said it was critical to get all these new restrictions in place on the Internet and in home electronics before broadband bacame widespread. Of course, even if they did, the Internet is international, and as soon as a pirated movie makes it overseas, it will no longer be subject to our laws. It was obvious from comments during the hearing that they haven't figured this out yet.

At the same time he was decrying the impending rollout of broadband, he had the balls to claim that his industry was the very reason broadband hadn't gotten accepted yet! Valenti said that the reason people didn't want broadband was that "producers haven't made their highest quality content available" yet. He also turned around and said that the only reason why someone would want to have broadband today was if they were a pirate (!!). Quote: "You don't need broadband to do email; you can do that on a 56K modem." So to Jack Valenti, the two possible uses of a computer are email, and viewing video/audio content, which today must entail piracy since *his* content isn't legally available. The fact that *other* people might have legal content available - CNN, MSNBC, independent movie producers, amateur artists, countless Flash animations - or that there might be other bandwidth intensive applications besides wanting to watch a Disney flick pay-per-view, is something that apparently isn't even worth consideration. It's a totally Narcissistic mind-set - they're the only ones that exist in their minds.

As an extra-scary note, at the same moment Valenti was saying this, over in the House they were passing Tauzin-Dingell, which practically locked in the one thing that *is* preventing broadband rollout: the unacceptably high monthly cost, caused by monopolistic control over the network by the Baby Bells. Yet at least one of the Senators sat there and praised Valenti and the MPAA as being "critical" to the economic recovery, because they had to succeed to drive broadband rollout, to create the next round of economic growth. It all seemed utterly clueless to me.

Now for some scary "justifications". Valenti said that it was critical to the economic recovery in the US that his content be protected. He said that "intellectual property" production makes up 5% of GDP. He listed IP as including movies, music, books, and software. Right... which of those things is not like the others? :-) Guess which one also makes up more of that 5%? Last year's MPAA member revenues, according to Valenti, were $30 billion. Try adding up the US software industry's revenues from last year: start with Microsoft's ($27 billion), and work from there. Estimate an order of magnitude (MS is just one company, after all), so maybe $300 billion. One of the other speakers estimated it at $600 billion. Tell me: Which one of these is more relevant to the economic recovery? Which one needs more safeguards to make sure it succeeds? Right... so WHY ARE THEY KOWTOWING TO THE MOVIE INDUSTRY? Oh yeah - because they pay the Senators more than we do.

There's more - I could go on at length about what was said. Valenti proclaimed the movie industry "the crown jewel of American industry", because it's the only major industry that has a trade surplus with every nation. Well, that's true, technically. However: A) given that the MPAA's member companies have a virtual monopoly on distribution to the number-one revenue market (the US), that's not terribly surprising, is it? And B) since many of the distribution companies are majority foreign owned (!!!), claiming that giving them money consitutes a US foreign trade surplus is downright disingenuous.

Watching him talk, it was all so obvious. But hey, what's a little song-and-dance to misdirect attention? Look at the pretty lights, people; don't watch the man behind the curtain taking your rights away. And frankly, I'm still not sure that they "get it" at all. Valenti said (regarding the inability of Intel or Cisco to utterly prevent copying of copyrighted materials in their devices), "I can't believe there aren't two young geeks in San Diego in a garage somewhere who can't figure out how to make this work." As if some "geek" is going to figure out how to undo the mathematics that make "Turing completeness" a reality. But then, explaining a Turing machine to one of these guys and getting any reaction other than slack-jawed disbelief is a trick that nobody seems to have figured out yet. That, friends, would be an awesome hack indeed.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[FransUNC]

So as far as I can tell, unless content providers (or their representatives) try to prevent massive distribution of illegal content they will all go out of business, and that's what all want, isn't it?

The problem with the music industry at the moment is before the possibility of file sharing, artists and the labels were on the same page. The labels worked for the artists and made money. And while they were making money, they really talked it up as if they were doing it all for the artists. The fact is, the best interest of the label at the time was to support the artists rights. Now, times have changed, and because of that, the record label is changing to continue doing what is best for them...however, this happens NOT to be best for the artists anymore, AND it goes against what the labels have promised to the artists.

Check out the RAC for more. Don Henley and tons of other artists are doing some really good work for artists rights.

Now, this may appear off topic because the article is about the movie industry, but if you take away the artists as the variable and leave the same effect on the industry and the public, it's just the same as the movie industry. Record companies are doing everything they can to maximize profits in the short-run...movie companies are doing the same.

If the industry would work with this, then eventually they would have the control they want over it. They would also have more profits. True, the industry would be more profitable if piracy didn't exist at all, but the industry (both movie and music) refuses to accept this. The example of artists just goes to prove my point...they're willing to damage the relationship with the very thing that makes them money to begin with just because they are too stubborn to accept the fact that times are changing.

Like I saw someone post on /. a few weeks ago, they need to stop crying to the courts everytime they lose a penny...the laws protect the rights of the industry, but it never had the right to protect profitability...it's a free market. However, with practices that the RIAA and others have been doing lately (there's some good articles in Rolling Stone that describe the RIAA paying congressmen to slip in laws with big bills that support the industry, but basically go unnoticed...things like preventing artists from buying back their own works) they may actually be able to buy that full protection. Congressmen need to get more educated on the matter...lawyers are winning cases (same with computer issues) because the courts don't understand it. That is ridiculous. Okay, enough rambling...

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are going to post a link - do it properly.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[juuri]

Any decent movie reporting list also has a "$$ per screen" average as well. You will find after observing those for a short time it becomes really easy to pick the potential sleepers and the art/foriegn films that are going to do really well.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[God! Awful]

The cinema market may be booming but what about the VHS/DVD market? This is where the piracy is the worst,

While I enjoy the free piracy of movies on the net, I don't pretend that I have a moral rigth to pirate it. I am just a greedy swine that like to get stuff for free.

This guy makes a good point. While the Slashdot community may treat copy protection and anti-piracy legislation with righteous indignation, I think people ignore the fact that the majority of the public are greedy swine.

Legislation and copy protection may not work in principle, but they work in practice because these greedy swine still have a limited sense of morality. Every act of piracy has a cost-benefit tradeoff, with factors such as "is it legal", "does everyone else do it", "is it over-priced", etc.

I know a few people who are anti-copyright advocates who do spend a fair amount of money on DVDs while pirating them at the same time (basically, this way they get to choose their own price). However, these people seem to believe that the whole world shares their perverted morality (or would do if they only had the chance).

I personally don't steal movies or music. But I would do so if it was easy and convenient and there was no chance of being caught. As it is, I make enough money that the risk outweighs the savings. But certainly I pirated stuff as a kid, and I'd do it again if I didn't have an overabundance of money. The self-serving attitude of some slashdotters towards copyright gets on my nerves after a while.

-a

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about talking from both sides of your mouth!!

Sounds like perjury to me...

Re:Same for the music industry..

[oldays]

I like 'em, they let me preview some movies on big screen. With action movies, seeing ads on TV is just not the same. OTOH I could see that if I were watching almost every movie that came out, I could find it vexing. I guess the system in place is tuned so that most people don't mind these ads. By the way, you could time how long they take and show up when they're over (if they take the same time every day).

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Amazing Quantum Man]

It's not the previews... that's OK. However, in L.A. the LA Times *ALWAYS* has a commercial, and there are other ones that I don't remember either.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[jedidiah]

What we are seeing here is nothing more than the fundemental unprofitability of megacorp movie making. Real films should not need home video, cable or merchandising as a crutch. The process of movie making is being polluted by orthogonal interests due to a fundementally flawed process.

Movies are meant to be viewed in a cinema. Any picture that can't live or die in that enviroment should never have been made in the first place.

No pirated video should ever pose a danger to the profitability of the cinematic release of a film. If it does, the studios are doing something fundementally wrong.

The fact that Valenti's corporate cronies can't make a profit in the cinema anymore is simply not our problem. We should not bear the burden of faulty managment in megacorp film studios.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[linzeal]

Near scottsdale in Az almost all the theaters have plastic surgery commercials for the vain rich perpetually ageing population.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[smagruder]

I have no issue whatsoever with the movie previews. I recognize that showing those is appropriate, as you sometimes cannot get a good feel for an upcoming movie without it. I hope it's obvious that I'm speaking of the kind of commercials that we're accustomed to seeing on TV now showing up at the movies. It's disgusting.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[linzeal]

Does anyone else not buy albums anymore because you just listen to techno, electronica, and the like and there are numerous well polished radio streams out there that satisfy your needs? I am sick of people requiring like one of life's sustanaces anything the mpaa and riaa has ever put out. Isn't there now many ways to actually support indie artists directly? Why not just turn our back and mosey on out to the much fairer future that this entails.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Fjord]

I, for one, like the ads. If it weren't for them, I would miss the beginning of every movie my wife and I go to see.

You've just gotta focus on the positive, 'cuz positive's the way you aughtta be.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Fjord]

Of course it doesn't even matter if only 2/10 make their money back in toto, as long as those 2 movies make enough money to offset the other failures. There no right to a sucessful project. I'd love the see the senator's reaction to me saying only 1/10 companies we wine and dine will pay for those expenses by giving us a project. The shock!

Re:Same for the music industry..

[blank_coil]

There are a lot of illegal things that really shouldn't be illegal. Our government has and is going to pass a lot of shitty laws. Just because they outlaw something doesn't mean that it's all of a sudden wrong. It just means that there are people in power who benefit from the law being passed. It's our job as citizens to keep this kind of crap in check, although I admit that's hard to do when the people in power make up the rules on how they're supposed to be kept in check.

Now I'm neither saying that swapping mp3s and warez is wrong or right, I'm just pointing something out, because I hear this argument a lot, and I think it's somewhat irrelevant. Whether copying mp3s is legal or not should not be a factor in deciding if it is right or wrong.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[AntiNorm]

While the Slashdot community may treat copy protection and anti-piracy legislation with righteous indignation, I think people ignore the fact that the majority of the public are greedy swine.

[Obvious] Including those in charge of the RIAA/MPAA.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Ringlord]

So then there is no reason to release on DVD/VHS. That would dramatically limit the availability of pirated movies to a few cam-in-cinema copies and stolen reels.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Fluid Truth]

Are you talking about actual ads or previews? Some of the replies to your message seem to indicate either. Personally, I like the previews. I don't like ads. But then, I don't remember the last time I saw a real ad before a movie, just previews (perhaps that's regional, though).

Now, product placement in the movie is a different story. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, anyone? ;-)

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Dirtside]

Actually, number of tickets sold (i.e. number of butts in seats) does not hold across time (although it does so better than $$), for the simple reason that there are more people than there used to be.

A better metric is the percentage of people who saw a particular movie in each period, out of all the people who saw any movies in that period. Basically, you take a particular movie's number of tickets sold, and divide it by all tickets sold for a given time period. This gives you a metric that holds across time, because if (for example) The Matrix has a 20% share, and Episode I has a 15% share, and Gone With the Wind has a 50% share (the numbers are made up), then it doesn't matter how many people saw the movie -- of the available movie audience, half of them saw GWTW, but only 1/5 and ~1/7 of the audience saw the other two movies (each of which have grossed more than GWTW in real dollars).

Of course, no matter how you cut it, it's an inexact science -- GWTW has had 63 years for people to view it, and The Matrix has had 3. Plus, there's no exact count kept of who saw the movie more than once, whether 1 person seeing it twice counts as much as 2 people seeing it once, etc.

Ultimately, I wish people would stop obsessing over the financial/numerical popularity of movies and instead focus on how good (or bad) the movies are -- the artistic, social, or political impact of a movie instead of its box office. Every week, hundreds of publications (newspapers, magazines) have stories about how much business each movie did, but you never see a discussion of the movie from an artistic standpoint except for the initial review -- too rarely do publications come back later and have any kind of in-depth discussion of any film.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[bughunter]

No, at least with respect to those genres, I buy more because of streaming MP3 sites. The recent royalties ruling is going to kill the last good thing left about distributed MP3s... And it will wind up costing the small labels more, because those are the ones that publish the good stuff that MP3 radio programmers select.

Techno and electronica recordings are especially difficult to buy because they get very little exposure thanks to the consolidation of radio station ownership, the monotonous format terrain, and payola. If it weren't for [LA deejay] Chris Doridas' programs on KROQ and KCRW, there would be ZERO airplay of techno artists other than those that cross over to alt rock, like Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method.

I used to be able to walk into Tower Records and pick out $100 worth of techno/electronica CDs, confident that Tower's return policy would allow me to exchange discs that I didn't like for new selections, eventually finding $100 worth of discs worth keeping. But since they no longer exchange opened CDs for anything but identical titles, they no longer see me in there spending $100 at a pop.

The problem is that the big labels aren't run by music professionals, they're run by bean counters. And they way they think, if you can't count it, it doesn't exist. But they fail to understand the inquantifiable factors that go a long way into creating a sale that otherwise wouldn't exist. Done right, these could easily outweigh any losses due to casual piracy.

It's frustrating and angering to a real music lover...

Re:Same for the music industry..

[smagruder]

Yes, I was referring to TV-style commercials now appearing at some cinemas. As I state in another reply above, the previews are OK by me.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Lectrik]

Hey I know a way they can reduce pirating and decrease cost for the record companies, fire all the artists. Then you don't have to pay them and since you aren't producing anything new (and we're all downloading 1300 songs a day on our shiney uber-band[tm] modems)we'll have all the songs in existance and we won't need to steal anymore.

now mod me as -1 troll or something

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Lectrik]

quoth the poster:
I, for one, like the ads. If it weren't for them, I would miss the beginning of every movie my wife and I go to see.

You've just gotta focus on the positive, 'cuz positive's the way you aughtta be.

I agree, if it weren't for the ads i would've missed the backstory at the start of LotR.
then again when i show up for a movie on time and have to sit thru that "Truth - the Musical" dran and a number of car comercials before i get to see the preveiw for Goldmember, it's annoying.

At least they put the comercials between the slideshow type local adverts and the preveiws so I won't mind missing them

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

More or less the bottom line is that modern industry considers growth to be the norm. If they make 60% profit one year, they consider it 0 effect if they make 60% the next. Consider the electrical concerns for an example. If they have a bad year, spend too much money or some such, they charge the customer more. By no means are these businesses running in the red, they are just not at their comfort level and gouging the consumer is the way to make up the difference. Most industries are coming around to this unfortunately short-sighted viewpoint. Worse yet, they are pushing legislation for "corporate welfare" in which their profitability is mandated by law. No more bad years or lost profits, the taxpayers and consumers will foot the bill.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[HKTiger]

Fascinating reading here, and I have to add my voice to the chorus of "why the hell spend that much money *making* the sodding things if they aren't paying off, then?!?" Given that a bunch of other industries are busily shedding much-needed staff ("downsizing") in order to scrape a few dollars off the expenditure to make the profit a tad bigger, whining that what you're doing *isn't* profitable because you're spending too much seems disingenuous at the least.

And apropos of nothing, am I the only one who keeps seeing "Jack Valenti, president of the Moron Picture Association of America"?

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Afrosheen]

Oh yeah - a few stars' mega-contracts. Boo-hoo. I wonder if you took the top 20 stars' contracts out of the financial picture (since those vastly skew the distribution of costs), what the "average" cost would be then
Amen to that brother. Anyone tired of seeing Helen Hunt's tired ass, Julia Robert's sucker-punched lips and drooping boobs, Richard Gere shagging-yet-another-very-young-woman, Billy Crystal trying in vain to get people to laugh, ad nauseum? I think it's about time for a whole new realm of discount stars in good films. Just take Jason Lee for example. If not for the steaming choad called "Almost Famous" I give him MAD props. We need more talented, interesting stars, not the same old faces in the same recycled plotlines.

Maybe what Hollywood and the studios need more than anything is an original script with a new cast. God forbid I go one month without seeing another rehashed war flick.

BTW anyone notice Hollywoods annoying tendency to spam the theatres with 4 versions of the same genre film at once? Slew of war flicks followed by slew of horror flicks followed by slew of love stories.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Neolithic]

Umm.. Just because its a record profit year, it still doesn't make it legal to steal movies/music.

Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.

Music/movies aren't stolen, they're pirated. The unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material. Again, I see no mention of this being inherently wrong.

I don't justify my breaking of current laws. I advocate a change from the current laws.

Re:Same for the music industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Around here, they charge $8+ to get into a movie.

Then they show slide-show type ads while you are waiting for the start time. (Back in the 1940s, I believe movie theaters showed NEW Looney Tunes cartoons in similar circumstances.) This may be accompanied by Muzak or by radio-type ads.

Then they show TV-style ads -- moving pictures, blaring sound. It used to be that these were only shown for a local charity, at the time of year when the ushers came around for donations. Then they added short clips for the concessions stand. Now it's long TV-style ads for anything.

Then they show previews (which are a form of ads, but a form that people generally LIKE and WANT to see, as opposed to all of the preceding nonsense).

Finally they show the film. Which is -- so far -- uninterrupted by TV-style ads, but may contain paid "product placements".

sick

[garvald]

yeah these people really make me sick. They are corporitists, living at the pinnicle of a corrupt plutocracy and doing very well for themselves. These scoundrels should be brought to justice - something which there seems to be a complete lack of, basically due to the fact that all these people think alike, the common man has little or no chance.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

If you work harder and earn more than the common man, you should be brought to justice.

The wealthiest people in the world are hardly the most hard-working. Look at the cast of the TV show Friends: They will be paid one million dollars per episode to film a 1/2 hour TV show. How does that compare to some guy that's doing construction work for 8 hours every day? Think of the pity that the average coal miner would feel for the hard-working cast of Friends.

People like Jack Valenti aren't hard-working. They're just greedy.

Re:sick

[JPriest]

actors and musicians are not the only wealthy people in the world, not everyone was born into money and some people DO/DID work to get where they are. I don't feel sorry for the person that is mining coal because they were too drunk to finish high school. If they can't make it drunk, stop drinking.

Re:sick

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you do know that filming half an hour of a mainstream TV show takes weeks of 10-12 hour days plus all kinds of publicity crap?

guy that's doing construction work for 8 hours every day?

So the more sweat and muscle the work requires the more you should be paid, right? Guess why the construction workers aren't paid as well as doctors? No, it's not simply because of education or skill. It's because that's the price the job markets have set! People estimate the value of the construction worker's input and pay accordingly. It's not the doctors

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

some people DO/DID work to get where they are

The vast majority of wealthy people either lucked into their money or were born into it. Some guy sitting in a leather chair in a spacious office pushing paper around is not working hard. The guy who built his office is the one who worked hard.

Everyone wants to believe that, with hard work, they, too, can be rich. Well grow up and stop listening to fairy tales. Most people, if they work really hard, will become middle to upper middle class. And that will be as far as they go.

I don't feel sorry for the person that is mining coal because they were too drunk to finish high school.

I would love to drop you off in a rural coal mining town with that little message tattooed on your forehead. It would bring me great pleasure to see you get the shit beaten out of you for your bigotry.

You are the most vile form of snob. There are many hard-working, sober coal miners, construction workers, assembly line workers, and and other tradesmen. You disgust me.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

So the more sweat and muscle the work requires the more you should be paid, right?

No, but if you're making millions of dollars a year, then you should not be crying to Congress because a few working people have copied your DVDs to share with friends.

Re:sick

[mlknowle]

They will be paid one million dollars per episode to film a 1/2 hour TV show. How does that compare to some guy that's doing construction work for 8 hours every day? Think of the pity that the average coal miner would feel for the hard-working cast of Friends.

In case you havn't figured it out yet, people arn't payed based on how hard they work - they are payed based on how much money they make for their employers! An executive who makes $190,000 a year might not work harder than a fast food worker, but he or she does create more buissness; he or she does more for the employer. That's how wages work in our world.

Re:sick

[hagardtroll]

Obviously this has more to do with Supply and Demand more than working hard.

There are many ditch diggers. There is only ONE David Schwimmer. If you want David Schwimmer you need to pay good money for him.

If you want to be wealthy own something that everyone wants. Like stock in a high value company an O/S that everyone uses or a sparkling personality and skill in acting that makes people laugh.

Re:sick

[tf23]

The vast majority of wealthy people either lucked into their money or were born into it.

That's a huge generalization. And what's wealthy? Someone who makes double the average US income? Most IT geeks passed that during the boom a few years ago. I know I wasn't born wealthy, and I make more then the average, as do most people I know :)

Some guy sitting in a leather chair in a spacious office pushing paper around is not working hard. The guy who built his office is the one who worked hard.

Oh that's a poor comparison. What if that guy behind the desk started the company 50 years ago - what if it's a construction company - that built that same building. This owner risked it all - his house, his financials, everything, back then, to start that business years ago. He busted his nuts.

Is there no time where someone who's paid their dues can sit back and reap the rewards?

Re:sick

[clickety6]

So how come executives of companies that are making losses still command huge salaries?

Or why do civil servants get paid so well when they don't make any profit for anybody?

Re:sick

[dgroskind]

if you're making millions of dollars a year, then you should not be crying to Congress...

You raise 2 interesting questions:

1. At what point do you make so much money that you cannot reasonably expect the law to protect your property?
2. At what point do you make so little money that the laws that protect property no longer apply to you?

It is people with the least amount of property that have the most the gain from the rigourous enforcement of laws protecting property. If those laws mean they can't pirate movies, that's the price they pay so that people can't steal stuff from them.

Re:sick

[psamuels]

The vast majority of wealthy people either lucked into their money or were born into it.

Source? Specifics? That may be true in some places, but they don't call the US the "Land of Opportunity" for nothing. Obviously there is such a thing as inherited wealth, and such a thing as good luck or bad luck, but honestly - if you have talent, ambition, imagination, and hard work - you really can do anything. If you're lazy, or you lack the imagination / ambition to do anything other than work in the same steel mill your father does - well, that will obviously limit your potential somewhat.

Maybe you want to define "luck" as "having parents who care enough to make sure you get a good education" (no I'm not talking about which school you attend! there is much more to education than schooling!), but that is really still self-determination, one generation removed. Then there are corner cases like "lucky enough not to have got the severe-learning-difficulties part of the gene pool" - but that is indeed a corner case.

Re:sick

[HCase]

How do any of the current string of property protection laws help the people with the least amount of property?

Re:sick

[JPriest]

I would love to drop you off in a rural coal mining town with that little message tattooed on your forehead. It would bring me great pleasure to see you get the shit beaten out of you for your bigotry.

I am sensing some aggression here, I'm sure there is a man in a leather chair somewhere that can help you with your feelings.

Re:sick

[PeelBoy]

You're an idiot. You think people get rich by sitting on their asses? You think actors did not have to work their asses off to get where they are at? And you think that creating a 1/2 hour TV show is as easy as it looks?

I fucking hate people like you. You need a serious reality check. Maybe you shouldn't talk about shit you don't know anything about. If it is so easy then why aren't you doing it? For that matter why isn't everybody doing it? Maybe because it isn't so easy? Hmmm well no shit.

Re:sick

[PeelBoy]

Who knows? Why don't you go figure it out on your own? They are out there but you aren't going to find them by sitting here doing nothing. The extent of your knowledge is based on what has been posted on Slashdot.

Re:sick

[dgroskind]

In case you havn't figured it out yet, people arn't payed based on how hard they work - they are payed based on how much money they make for their employers!

In case you haven't figured it out yet, employers pay people as little as they can get away with. What's more, they'll pay some classes of employees, women and blacks for example, less money than white males unless prevented by legislation.

Anyone who's ever worked in an IT department knows that productivity varies enormously between employees and salary only incidentally reflects productivity.

If you work in technology long enough, you'll figure it out eventually.

Re:sick

[PeelBoy]

A few?

Re:sick

[HCase]

Who knows? I obviously don't, and he apparently does. The obvious solution, ask. I haven't seen any cases where these new protection laws have helped "the little guy." Why you feel that everything I know I learned is is beyond me. Are there some really obvious cases that I'm missing? Or are you going to remain useless and instead of helping someone whose asking a question are you going to continue to prove your 1337 knowledge with flame and bitching? If there are good examples, please tell me instead of blaming me for failing to find them, I actually would like to know.

Re:sick

[PeelBoy]

Just because it doesn't get posted on the news or in slashdot doesn't mean they are not there. Most big companies start out as little guys. They found the laws and used them to their advantage. That's how the game works. Laws that protect a companies product don't only apply to big companies. There are a lot of laws out there that help small companies and I am sure that more get made every day.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

You raise 2 interesting questions:

1. At what point do you make so much money that you cannot reasonably expect the law to protect your property?
2. At what point do you make so little money that the laws that protect property no longer apply to you?

Then I will give you answers:

1. You can never expect the law to protect your property. It might help you protect your property, but you have to be a realist and expect that you will have some losses. Every retailer in the world knows that and accounts for it in their financial projections.
2. Never.

If Valenti was lobbying for tougher enforcement of copyright laws, I'd have little gripe with him. But what he's doing is analogous to the publishing industry lobbying Congress to outlaw photocopying machines. He wants to cripple everything from computers to HDTV, costing consumers millions of dollars and degrading their overall quality of life, because a tiny minority of people pirate movies. He's still mad about the Supreme Court betamax decision in the 1970s in which they upheld the "fair use" concept. He wants legislation to make fair use illegal (through the DMCA) and impossible (through the SSSCA). And he's already half way there.

If Valenti represented retailers, he'd be lobbying for laws that made pockets, large coats, and handbags illegal -- because a tiny percentage of people use them to shoplift.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

Yes, very few in the scheme of things.

Re:sick

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's more, they'll pay some classes of employees, women and blacks for example, less money than white males unless prevented by legislation."

This is false.

People earn what they ask for. Period.

I started working at a computer consulting company years ago (this is a long time ago, so don't laugh at the salaries), and I negotiatied for a week to bring my salary up to $29,000. They initially offered me $24,000.

After I started, we were young, so we had no problem sharing salaries, most of us were earning the same thing (within $1.5K or so). One woman took the first offer of $24,000.

And she was PISSED.

She said it was discriminiation based on gender.

And some idiot might agree with her.

I asked if she counter offered.

No, she hadn't. But why was it fair to pay me more than her?

It wasn't, I replied. But you won't get more unless you ask for more.

They would have paid her more, but she never asked for it, so her mind focused on the idea that it was a woman versus man thing, and she left shortly thereafter.

But it was her fault.

Re:sick

[HCase]

I'm not even to worried about little companies. I'm more worried about consumers who seems to be losing their rights. As of yet, I haven't found any recent laws that are truely designed to help small companies either though. The recent product protection laws have been along the lines of anti-copying laws. These are really to important for start-ups it seems. Theoretically they might be, but it seems the little guys are the ones who aren't screaming about the sky falling and industries disappearing. Where should I look if NONE of the news sites have them. That is generally the best place to go for news.

Re:sick

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, this little story clearly shows that there isn't salary gender bias in the workplace. Or not.

Re:sick

[dgroskind]

How do any of the current string of property protection laws help the people with the least amount of property?

The current string of laws seemed to be aimed protecting intellectual property in the new digital environment. New authors, composers or publishers have as much to gain, if not more, from these new protections as established companies.

As for consumers, they may find that new laws interfere with their long standing desire to get something for nothing but in practice, they can well afford to rent DVDs. If not, there's always network television.

Re:sick

[mrscorpio]

This post is not flamebait, the parent (modded at +5 insightful as of writing) is. To say that any one industry collectively works harder than another is beyond ignorant...I can't even come up with a word for that person.

Some "work" is physical, some "work" is mental, some is a little of both, some is repetitious, some isn't...there's no "work level scale" and physical laborers are not the only hard workers of the world!

Chris

Re:sick

[dgroskind]

People earn what they ask for. Period.

Trade unions would be surprised to hear this theory.

she left shortly thereafter

I presume they didn't offer her more money to stay.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

You're an idiot.

No, I'm a genius and have the test scores to prove it.

You think people get rich by sitting on their asses?

In some cases, yes. George W. Bush is a great example of that.

I fucking hate people like you.

Osama Bin Laden hates people like me, too. And your approval is equally important to me.

If it is so easy then why aren't you doing it?

Because I wasn't born with movie star looks, fantastic athletic skills, or rich parents. That's the point. It's not easy to get rich unless you were born lucky. Simply working hard won't make it happen for 99.999% of the people alive.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

Some "work" is physical, some "work" is mental, some is a little of both, some is repetitious, some isn't...there's no "work level scale" and physical laborers are not the only hard workers of the world!

And my point was that being wealthy was no indication of how hard you worked. I thought that the Harry Potter books got you children reading again...

Re:sick

[meehawl]

Source? Specifics? That may be true in some places, but they don't call the US the "Land of Opportunity" for nothing. Obviously there is such a thing as inherited wealth, and such a thing as good luck or bad luck, but honestly - if you have talent, ambition, imagination, and hard work - you really can do anything.

There are any number of sociology studies that demonstrate the social stratification of the US. The common-sense wisdom of a classless society and increased social mobility within the US (compared with European countries) is just pure ideology, useful to those with real power and inherited influence, essential for the preservation of hegemony. Remember Orwell -- if you remove words from the language and ways of talking about things, then it becomes almost impossible to easily think about these things. Or try Foucault, for an example of how people's ideas can be constrained by discursive regimes.

Or think about the Usual Suspects:
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Re:sick

[inkless1]

Chances are there is a guy above you that is working half as hard, with the half the talent and making three times more than you.

There are exceptions, but they are getting rarer and rarer...

Re:sick

[psamuels]

There are any number of sociology studies that demonstrate the social stratification of the US. The common-sense wisdom of a classless society and increased social mobility within the US (compared with European countries) is just pure ideology

Evidently you have studied more sociology than I have (or you're just a better karma whore :), but my own micro version of common-sense wisdom says that social mobility and stratification are not mutually exclusive. I believe it is possible, in this country [the US], to rely on your own wits, ambition and hard work and get basically anywhere you want to go, subject to your own God-given talents. It is also possible to piss away any advantages you may start with.

I know two guys, middle-age. Brothers, a few years apart. They grew up middle class, a little on the upper side. One went to a small unprestigious college, excelled, got a scholarship to that Ivy League medical school in Cambridge, Mass (no, the family couldn't have afforded it on their own), became a doctor. The other dropped out of a similar college, tried the army but couldn't hack it, drifted around for the next 25 years, never able to hold down a job for more than a year or two, is basically still minimum-wage, and evidently has kind of burned his bridges in quite a few towns.

Any theory of social stratification should take the above case (which seems almost too black-and-white, but trust me, it was not made up) into account. These guys have the same cultural background, the same social class - but the one had what it takes to make it in this world and come out higher up the economic food chain than he started, the other apparently didn't, and ended up on the bottom.

Yes I believe we have social classes in this country, but that doesn't mean you can't escape them if you try hard enough.

My other theory about escaping social class has to do with upbringing, i.e. the education you get a little of in school but mostly at home. As they say, I have come up with an elegant proof for the above, but...

Re:sick

[mrscorpio]

My reading skills are fine, your communications ones are off. This is what you said:

"The wealthiest people in the world are hardly the most hard-working."

To me, and many others that have replied, you were implying that those who are wealthy have not worked as hard as those who are not, using the examples of coal miners and construction workers (both of which are not really "low paying" because of the risk, they actually pay quite well) as "hard working non-rich" people.

So before insulting my reading skills, you may want to reread your own posts before hitting that submit button, and thinking about how your ideas may be viewed by others.

Chris

Re:sick

[meehawl]

Any theory of social stratification should take the above case (which seems almost too black-and-white, but trust me, it was not made up) into account. These guys have the same cultural background, the same social class - but the one had what it takes to make it in this world and come out higher up the economic food chain than he started, the other apparently didn't, and ended up on the bottom.

That's the great thing about theories, there are so many to choose from. Bordieu's theory of habitus comes to mind. People are not born equal, but accrete a physical body, mental disciplines, and social connections based on their immediate neighbours. Basically, rich people are trained to be rich, poor to be poor, and so on. But these are not absolutes, they just tend to steer an individual along a certain lifepath and limit the trajectory of their ascent or descent within society. And so social stratification endures, reproduces, and resists change. Bound by culture, human society is an amazing, adaptive meta-organism that outlives the death of its individual cell bodies.

11. Is habitus totally atomistic? That is, does it reduce society to a = large collection of individuals, to be sorted or re-sorted at the whim = of the sociologist? According to Brubaker, Bordieu is not setting up a = theory to tackle a particular problem, but rather a heuristic to help = solve whatever problem concerns one at that particular moment. Further, how similar can two individual "habituses" (Habiti? Habitae? = Aardvarks?) be if they are dependent upon initial conditions - which = Bordieu states are objectively unknowable and only inferred from the = "symptoms" of lifestyle?

Sociologists even have their own versions of organizational emergence theories, or interactionism.

Bordieu came to mind because he died quite recently.

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

My reading skills are fine, your communications ones are off. This is what you said:

"The wealthiest people in the world are hardly the most hard-working."

And that is what I meant. I did not say that wealthy people were not hard-working. I said that, as a group, they "are hardly the most hard working." "Hardly the most hard working" is not synonymous with "lazy", "slovenly", or "shiftless."

Saying that "the Germans were hardly the best skaters in the Olympics" would not be the same as saying "the German skaters were amoung the worst in the Olympics."

My writing skills seem fine even when I review what I wrote. That you misinterpreted what I wrote is not a reflection on me.

using the examples of coal miners and construction workers (both of which are not really "low paying" because of the risk, they actually pay quite well)

If you think that they are paid well, read this from the United Mine Workers Journal:

The Journal recently conducted its own experiment, comparing the average coal miner's salary ($50,000) against American Electric Power CEO E. Linn Draper's year 2000 total earnings of $25,101,107--a figure that does not include the $7,612,500 Draper currently holds in unexercised stock options. After punching in all of our data, the reply came back that the average coal miner would "only" have to work 502 more years to equal Draper's one-year haul. It also noted that with Draper's salary alone, 21,941 workers could be enrolled in pension plans or health care coverage could be provided to 12,190 uninsured workers.

I hope that gives you a bit more perspective.

P.S. $50K/ year is not my idea of being paid "quite well" for hard work.

Re:sick

[mrscorpio]

"Saying that 'the Germans were hardly the best skaters in the Olympics' would not be the same as saying 'the German skaters were amoung the worst in the Olympics.'"

Bad example if you're trying to prove your point, because if the Germans are not among the best, then, based from that generalization (they're not the best, nor are they among the best), most of the non-Germans are better, right (the best is inherantly better than the non-best, by definition of the word)? Which means, used in comparison like you did, if rich people are hardly the most hard working, then most of the non-rich therefore are harder working than the rich :)

I'm nit-picking, but I know I'm right.

"My writing skills seem fine even when I review what I wrote. That you misinterpreted what I wrote is not a reflection on me."

If it was just me, I would agree. But looking at all the posts below your original and above this, indicate that it's not just me, and many reacted the same way as I did.

*snipped article showing that white collar makes more than blue collar*
"P.S. $50K/ year is not my idea of being paid "quite well" for hard work."

Are you socialist? Not that it matters, I'm just curious because socialists (in general, yes I'm generalizing) often try to further their agenda by pointing out how much more CEO's and such make than the blue collar workers and what an injustice that is. I have read much of the socialist propaganda spread around on large campuses and they always make that point. The point was made in previous posts about supply and demand. Good CEO's, especially ones with "name power" (like Jack Welch, for instance) are low in supply (1) and high in demand (just about any company would love to have him as an executive). This drives his price up. However, "coal mine worker" or "construction" is an entry-level job that anyone who is physically able can receive on-the-job training for and perform, therefore the supply (thousands) roughly equals the demand, creating a lower price. It's basic economics.

And $50k/year is over $24/hr for a 40 hour work week. I think that's pretty damn good pay for anything that doesn't require 4 years of school to be hired for. What do you think when put into perspective like that? I'll bet you never made anywhere close to 24/hr before you got your degree, if you even do now (don't know if you have a degree/don't know your line of work/don't know your pay/don't want to).

If you want to talk unfairness in wages, lets talk about racism/sexism, or how the people responsible for the future of our country (teachers) are paid next to nothing. I think we can both agree on those two issues.

But griping about white collar vs. blue collar is totally ignorant and irrelevant.

Chris

Re:sick

[fmaxwell]

I'm nit-picking, but I know I'm right.

I disagree (surprise!). "Among the best" does not include everything on the right half of the bell curve. In your world view, there is no one who is mediocre. Everyone is either "among the best" or "among the worst." I don't think that's how most people view it.

many reacted the same way as I did

And many pronounce nuclear as nuke-u-ler, but it doesn't make it right. ;-)

Are you socialist?

No, just a liberal.

However, "coal mine worker" or "construction" is an entry-level job that anyone who is physically able can receive on-the-job training for and perform, therefore the supply (thousands) roughly equals the demand, creating a lower price. It's basic economics.

And that's why I objected to the claim that personal wealth is strongly correlated with hard work. It's the luck of the draw. Being born pretty, intelligent, or to wealthy parents has more impact on your chances of being rich than how hard you work.

I'll bet you never made anywhere close to 24/hr before you got your degree

I don't want to appear a cad so I won't go into specifics, but you would have lost that bet on all counts -- and not barely.

But griping about white collar vs. blue collar is totally ignorant and irrelevant.

Ignorance would be talking without a grasp of the facts. I'm not doing that.

The gap between rich and poor has grown so wide that, in 1999, the richest 2.7 million Americans, the top 1 percent, had as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million. That ratio has more than doubled since 1977, when the top 1 percent had as much as the bottom 49 million, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office.

We need to have an economy where a person of average intelligence, ability, and drive can earn a living wage. And we are quickly going away from that. We are almost at the point where a person who lacks the intelligence or aptitude to make it in the tech sector or corporate management has to choose between working in retail or food services for starvation wages.

If we don't do something about that, we are going to end up with a caste system like India had.

Re:sick

[PeelBoy]

That's funny. One example. Is that the best you can do? I can think of a lot of other people who probably don't like you also. There's a reason you will probably never be rich and it is because you assume that the only way you will get rich is by getting lucky. People with your poor person attitude will never get rich for that exact reason. Most people DO NOT GET RICH BY GETTING LUCKY.. They work their fucking asses off for it. OF course there are people who get lucky and get rich but they are far out numbered by the people who actually worked for it.. BTW haven't you ever heard the saying work smarter not harder? Hmmmm...

Oh you're a genius? That's funny. Just by telling me that pretty much proves that you are not. A genius would never go around telling people he is a genius.

Get a life. God I hope you come back and read this.

Well they could have made more!

[phunhippy]

Don't forget if there wasn't 350,000 downloads(hehe yeah right) a day of pirated music online this banner year for the film industry would be even great which is of course more reason why we should support all of their digital copyright ideas right away and with out any debate!!

hehe i got a bridge in brookyln i can sell ya reall cheap to :) hehehe you could even charge people
$25 for a once a year fee
$ 2 per hour of use
$ 5 for 1000 views of the bridge from the road

ok that was cruel :)

They have a business to run.

[Anonymous Coward]

"complaining that piracy is putting them out of business"

Go to Hong Kong, Singapore, Cairo, and other cities. Estimate the number of legal DVD movies sold versus pirate copies. 2USD for a pirate copy of "Lord of the Rings", no problem? Don't you still understand their concern you have a problem.

Re:They have a business to run.

[ctrl]

How much does it cost them to produce the physical DVD? $0.5...
How much do they charge for a legal DVD in China,Cairo etc ? About the same as in the US and Europe (15-20$).
What's the average income of people in these developing countries ? (Hong Kong is not a good example) $100/month / $1200 / year.

People choose between nothing - not at all - and pirate. The "legal" choice, at 15$ apiece, is not a choice at all.

If they would sell the legals for $3, they would have the market.

Re:They have a business to run.

[TheConfusedOne]

Hmmm, let me see if I understand this now:

Rampant movie piracy in Asia means that we have to have region encoded DVD's and electronic devices that won't copy anything without going "mother may I" to the RIAA and MPAA?

Have you seen some of these pirated movies? Someone walks into a theater with a freakin' cam corder and films the film. Or, they borrow the actual film from a friend who works there and they do the transfer that way. How do ANY of the proposed DRM (Digital Rights Minimization) tools going to prevent that?

The single biggest complaint that most of us have is that there is no logic to support the laws that the industry is asking for. The last time the MPAA went this crazy against a technology it was the Video Recorder. Fortunatly, they picked on Sony and ran up against a company that was willing and able to fight. This lead to the fair-use laws and one of the largest ancillary markets for the movie industry ever. You think they'd learn from the past and look for the money making angle.

Re:They have a business to run.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's the average income of people in these developing countries ?"

Is that an argument? Should one sell Mercedes, Caterpillars, and Boeings there for lower prices too?

Re:They have a business to run.

[BattleCat]

Yes. It IS an argument. Some object's price is meaningful only within given geopolitical aspect. $1200 for the tulip flower is certainly too high even for USA, but it was pretty ok(converted to gold equivalent) in Holland during 1600..1700 timeframe. $15-$20 for the DVD is (mostly) ok in USA, but hardly acceptible here in Russia. Well, just an example - Jagged Alliance 2 (one of my favourite games) originally was priced at $49 or like. Localized Russian version (localisation done by Buka, under agreement with Sir-Tech), costed about $2.50 for two disk set and about $3.50 for shrinkwrapped version. And since Buka released their version (perfectly legal) with a price competing with pirated copies (they were priced for $2) - there were no pirated JA2 versions on the market anymore. Just an example.

Re:They have a business to run.

[letxa2000]

Is that an argument? Should one sell Mercedes, Caterpillars, and Boeings there for lower prices too?

If Mercedes, Caterpillar, and Boeing thought they would increase their profits by selling their products in those countries at a reduced price, they would. The fact that they don't indicates they believe they'll make more money by foregoing certain sales (at reduced prices) but preventing their products from becoming commodities--which would eventually lead to worldwide lower prices.

The poster is simply saying that, in the case of DVDs, the target market is "the masses" so you have to offer a fair and attractive price. The price you choose to sell your product has to be in line with what the market values your product at. Otherwise, people won't buy your product (but may look for alternatives). This is basic capitalism.

Piracy is truly a fact of life in any intellectual property business. I'm not saying piracy is RIGHT, but it's a fact of life and a cost of doing that kind of business.

Generally, a business should price their products to maximimze profits. That means that if they've decided to sell their DVDs at $20 each they've decided that, taking into account piracy, that is the highest price they can charge. Perhaps if they sold their DVDs for $3 there would be virtually no piracy, but their total profit would actually be less due to the reduced price. So despite piracy, they've maximized their profit and in all honesty have nothing to complain about unless someone is committing highway robbery and stealing their physical product.

What they are doing when they ask for all kinds of absurd copy protection, etc. is asking the government to legislate laws that reduce their costs of doing business. That's a luxury virtually no industry is going to receive, and is akin to government-endorsed protectionism.

It is NOT the government's job to protect companies--or entire industries--from becoming obsolete.

Re:They have a business to run.

[Weh]

Is that an argument? Should one sell Mercedes, Caterpillars, and Boeings there for lower prices too?


That's completely different, the difference with digital information is that is that digital information is expensive to produce but cheap to copy whereas with "material" products the cost of "copying" is much higher relatively. Therefore information providers gain more from selling someone something very cheap instead of selling him nothing at all, the cost of copying is neglible. With material products like cars the manufacturer can actually lose from selling at too low a price.

What's happening to the screens?

[mericet]

Frequent moviegoers and family-friendly films helped drive ticket sales even though the number of movie screens continued to decrease, Valenti said Tuesday during ShoWest, an annual convention for theater operators meeting in Las Vegas through Thursday.

If I understand economics at any level, this doesn't make sense, why would the number decrease when clearly the profits should rise (more audience per screen).

Ideas anyone?

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[larien]

1. larger screens = more people per screen = more money. The days of the smaller cinemas seems to be numbered, with larger cinemas taking over (certainly that seems to be the case here in the UK). If we see a move from many small screens to fewer large screens, there can still be more moviegoers.
2. If the fewer screens have a higher fill rate (i.e. less empty seats) revenue will rise with costs staying almost the same.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[jrs 1]

go and see a good film - support an independant cinema today! i'm so fed up with the shit i've seen at my local odeon, i'd rather it went under than the local picturehouse cinema. (less adverts too)

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Muad'Dave]

Gee, that's funny. I've noticed the opposite trend. Back in high school in the early 80's (cough!), the theatres here in Richmond, VA were huge. 'Ridge Cinema' had four or five enormous screens, with sense-surround or whatever it was called. (Remember Battlestar Galactica used it...).

Now, the Virginia Center Commons theatre is like a 20-plex, but with much smaller screens. Here's my theory: Say a real blockbuster comes out. You can show it on 5 of your 20 screens and still meet demand. You can even stagger the start times to limit the wait for the customer. As interest dwindles, you can reduce the number of screens in use (freeing them up for other flix), while still offering the movie in essentially full viewing rooms.

In the case of the old, large-screen model, as interest waned you'd be wasting all that space to continue to offer the movie, and would be unable to show anything else. I think it makes a heckuva lotta sense, actually.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[larien]

Interesting; certainly the move here has been for ever-larger cinemas, usually by Virgin (now UGC). Your idea is a sound one, except that the overheads for showing on one screen are probably less than for 5 smaller ones; e.g. you only need one projectionist, you can probably get by with fewer ticket collectors etc.

I don't have any more information to hand about screen sizes over time, so I can only say what I think is happening. Perhaps its a UK phenomenon *shrug*

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Atrahasis]

I don't think its a UK phenomenon either. UGC cinemas tend to have 12-20 medium sized screens, with maybe one large one (I'm talking in general here, not the London West End UGCs). Whereas UCI's, when they were in their hey-day in the 80's would have at most 10-12 screens the size of the large one in most UGCs. This follows exactly the trend described in the other post. Plus it makes for a better viewing experience. If you're near the edge of the cinema, you aren't deafened by the sound that is at a ludicrous volume so that thos at the middle can hear, and if you're near the front you can still see the whole of the screen, rather than the 1/3 - 1/2 you used to be able to see.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

The big movie theater chains are hurting financially because they over-expanded in the late '90s. AMC is probably the biggest example of this. These new theaters are usually the big "stadium" style that most people prefer now, which means that older theaters are closing shop.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remeber the exact details, but from an NPR report I remember hearing that over the last few years, the number of screens has decreased due to theater chains going broke.
Previous to that, the number of screens had doubled in less than 3 years eventually resulting in an oversupply of screens.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, your description of the Virginia Center Commons theatre is exactly what has changed in the theaters here in San Francisco Bay Area.

There is no such thing as a theater complex with just 5-6 large screens anymore for first-run showings; the prototype of the future of cinemas here is Syufy Enterprises' Century 25 Union Landing complex in Union City, CA, where you have 25 screens, with a number of screens of larger sizes for the blockbuster movies and smaller screens for movies intended for a niche audience or the tailing end of a first run. The important thing is that because the complex is built from the ground up, they can build every screen to sport full THX certification, which means above average picture quality and definitely top-notch sound quality. That means going to a movie is actually a good experience again. :-)

Syufy recently opened the Century 20 Great Mall complex (Milpitas, CA) based on this model; they plan several more complexes opening in the next three years built in the same manner. I remember the old days when people thought the Century Theaters were a joke; the new complexes with their THX-certified screens have ended that in short order.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[denzo]

except that the overheads for showing on one screen are probably less than for 5 smaller ones; e.g. you only need one projectionist, you can probably get by with fewer ticket collectors etc.

I doubt they have a projectionist for each of the screens in the multiplex theaters. From what it seems like to me, they just jump from screen to screen before the movie is supposed to start, start up the reel, and make any adjustments before moving on to the next screen. This means that if things go wrong during a showing, it won't be fixed until someone charges out of their seat to the customer service booth to let them know that the movie is fscked up. Sometimes they'll forget to do things like turn on the lights for the next group of people to be able to see where they're going to get to their seat. And I doubt they're paying the projectionist more for the multiple screens that they're in charge of (the typical trend of increasing "productivity" by adding more responsibilities to the same person without increasing their pay).

And ticket collectors are no biggie. If you have 10x the number of screens, theaters only need to hire up to 2x as many collectors. If there are going to be long lines, so be it. They're going to wait, they already paid for their tickets, so why bother adding more collectors? Same goes for the cashiers (even if they haven't already paid, they've already put the effort to try to find parking amongst the hundreds of parking spots).

The trend I've seen are exactly like the parent post describes: a multitude of screens, with only around two or three of them being big screens with the best surround sound systems for the top movies of the week, with the rest of the screens being smaller room with mediocre (or sometimes horrible) sound systems for the lesser grossing movies of the week. More screens, but not more service. Customers are just cattle. Charge exorbetant amounts of money at the consession stands. Also, don't bother opening up the theater until 5 minutes before the first showing, and don't bother getting the soda or slushie machines working until after the first 50 customers try to order their drinks.

The movie theaters are in a sad, sad state.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[bryan1945]

But they do have to pay for each physical copy of the movie they get. And theatres made a contract with the devil- they get no profit from sales the first week a movie is out, then 10% the 2nd week, etc. Basically, they really only make good money on concessions, which is why a $.25 soda costs $3. And everything else you said is true, though some theatres have wised up and are trying to make the movie going trip back into a true experience.

But yeah, theatres have drastically declined the last 20 some years.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they do have to pay for each physical copy of the movie they get. And theatres made a contract with the devil- they get no profit from sales the first week a movie is out, then 10% the 2nd week, etc.

Most modern theatres are able to show the same print on 2-3 screens at the same time using an interlock system.

Older theatres using reel-based projection systems can split the print in such a way that they can take a reel that's finished on one screen, rewind it, and get it ready to show on the next screen. I've even seen this done with the platter-based systems, although it's a lot trickier because on the platter systems you need to make and break splices while the film is running. For this reason, most platter-based theatres just get extra copies of the print if they want to have overlapping showings.

It's not really more expensive to have multiple copies of the same print for the theatres because they just pay a relatively small shipping fee for each print and then a percentage of the profits. So, the only difference between having one copy, or multiple copies is the shipping fee. The only reason why a theatre might opt to only get 1 print for a film they plan to show on multiple screens is if they think it won't have legs -- then they can free up a screen and get another film. Usually you have to agree to show each print for some minimum number of weeks no matter how little business it does.

Regarding the contract percentages, when I was in the business, I think the highest % I ever heard about was 80%. It was usually something like: 60% of the 2 highest grossing weeks, 50% of the next 2 highest, then 40% for all other weeks.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they have a projectionist for each of the screens in the multiplex theaters. From what it seems like to me, they just jump from screen to screen before the movie is supposed to start, start up the reel, and make any adjustments before moving on to the next screen. This means that if things go wrong during a showing, it won't be fixed until someone charges out of their seat to the customer service booth to let them know that the movie is fscked up. Sometimes they'll forget to do things like turn on the lights for the next group of people to be able to see where they're going to get to their seat. And I doubt they're paying the projectionist more for the multiple screens that they're in charge of (the typical trend of increasing "productivity" by adding more responsibilities to the same person without increasing their pay).

A lot of modern theatres don't even have a dedicated projectionist. The manager or an assistant manager, or sometimes even an usher, will get the films ready to show and start them as needed, and do something else while the films are running. Depending on how the theatre is designed, one person can easily handle 10 screens or more. I personally have run 9 screens (all platter) by myself without any problems, and also 8 screens (3 platter, 5 reel/changeover). The 8 screens with the mix of systems kept me pretty busy since I also had to worry about rewinding the reels.

A lot of projectors even have timers that can be set to start the film automatically, although I tried to never use them.

When I did prjection, I tried to check in on each film, at least: when staring it, when the actual film began, and every 20 mins thereafter.

And yes, the pay sucked, which is why I got out that business and into IT.

Re:What's happening to the screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened (at least in the US) is that in the past few years, theatre chains built a lot of new theaters with modern features like digital sound, stadium seating, etc., that audiences wanted. Now, they're closing their older theaters to try to stay afloat (or emerge from bankruptcy) after overspending on the new theatres.

Re:Slow news day?!

[Subscriber]

And some people are actually paying for these "news". You say this now, in the future you will ph34r my Gold Star!

75 a�os de Copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Lo curioso es que consiguen amortizar la película en menos de 1 año.
Así que a que viene que el derecho de Copyright dure 75 años?
Creo que con 5 años de Copyright tendrían tiempo de vender la película en los CINES e incluso vender unos cuantos DVDs a precio de "estreno".

Pero a más dinero ganan más dinero quieren, y más caso está dispuesto ha hacerles el gobierno.

Re:75 a�os de Copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Fish, the post reads:

The peculiar thing is that they are able to amortize the film in less than 1 year. So to that it comes that the right of Copyright lasts 75 years? I believe that with 5 years of Copyright they would have time to sell the film in the CINEMAS and to even sell a few DVDs to price of " opening ". But to more money they make more money want, and more case is arranged has to do the government to them.

This is actually a really good point - so I'm posting the translation as a public service.

Re:Slow news day?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please give us the option to add/detract score based on the writer's subscription status. -5 would be my choice.

Dumb-ass editors hard at work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie tickets sales != VHS/DVD sales.

Fucking Einsteins here...

Re:Dumb-ass editors hard at work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Einsteins? Why would anyone fuck a nerdy scientist, let alone one that has been dead for years?

Re:Dumb-ass editors hard at work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but high numbers at the box office isn't what makes studios their money. I was talking to a guy on the plane to Washington the other day who had worked as a broker booking movies at theaters for 20 years or so. He told me that "good" movies just break even at the box office - the studios make their real money from VHS and DVD sales, and only use the theaters as a form of advertising.

Of course, the lack of profits from large box office numbers is the result of the extremely high cost of reproducing/distributing 35mm films (among other things). There are people working on solutions to this - see http://www.cineq.com.

I used to think that a movie going "straight to video" (no theater run) meant it was a flop, but apparently the studios love that! I don't know if you've noticed that Disney often releases one feature-length cartoon to the theaters, then follows it with another "knockoff" sequel that is released only on video - the 2nd movie is getting sales based on the exposure (ie advertising) of the 1st. (BTW, he also said that the theaters don't make their money from ticket sales either, but from the concessions. They must truly hate me, as I never buy anything there! (I have an unexplainable aversion to $3 sodas and $5 popcorn ;-) )

Re:Dumb-ass editors hard at work...

[Anonymous Coward]

And bootleg copies of movies currently in theaters didn't get ripped from DVD, but that dosen't stop the MPAA from blaming DeCSS.

Re:NOW HEAR THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you don't execute prisoners if you have better use for them. Or maybe you have to stockpile them because the waiting line for the electric chairs is filled with crowded afroamericans?

Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

why we should support all of their digital copyright ideas right away and with out any debate!!

I don't see why you make a point of being sarcastic.

The loss of potential profits is a serious problem, especially if you can copy the stuff you sell infinitely. How would you like it if you ran a business and someone would steal your products and sell them off at a token price just outside your door? In addition to stealing your stuff the guy is depriving you of potential profit. So, it's a double loss for you. Every item sold on the street would be an item you didn't sell and thus also profit you lost.

I bet you would call the cops and the guy would get arrested right away for breaking the law.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in other words, you're not involved in any GPL projects ;)

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Ami Ganguli]

In addition to stealing your stuff the guy is depriving you of potential profit.

There's the fundamental weakness of the arguement. When dealing with intellectual property the stealing doesn't cost you (the owner) anything directly. You're only losing the potential profit.

Now the problem is figuring out what that potential profit might have been. Only a small fraction of the people who downloaded your CD for free would have otherwise purchased the music. Against that you have to (or should) weigh the benefit of additional exposure - more people will hear your music and will tend to make it more popular, thus selling more CDs.

I don't think anybody really knows what the impact of all these free downloads is. It is clear that the figures the RIAA throws around are nonsense, since they count each download as a lost sale.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because you'd have the right to call the cops and have him arrested. You can't blame the MPAA or RIAA for exercising their rights. However, it is questionable if it's a good idea to grant them the rights they enjoy. See the article about the incredible never ending copyright for details. I for one would love to see copyright shrink to about 3-5 years.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[phunhippy]

Because without open and honest debate oover laws crafted by users and producers of content we will eventually lose the ability to loan a DVD or a CD or whatever the nextgen of media will be(MPAADISC for example) to a friend to listen to and apreciate or even to make a back up copy... Potential profit is just that! POTENTIAL I'm not gonna go buy the britney spears CD but I have listened to an MP3 of it downloaded by a friend here at work and we laughed at how gay it was and converting it (in parts) to .wav and making it a start up sound on 10 people's computers here.. so the company loses potential profit.. but thats all it ever was since we would never be dumb enuff to ever buy it since we used it for less than 1 minute of amusement.

Also on the otherhand I have downloaded MP3's of an amazing artist Victor Wooden who plays BASS with bela fleck and i was so impressed with it that I went out and bought his whole collection of CD's. which would never have happened(from me) had i not heard a few of his songs first...

good enuff answer for ya?

Re:Potential profits are important!

[vukv]

its a movie industry not music... read damn article first


p.s. I am not saying movie industry is right or wrong, but there is enormusly huge difference between a movie and music cd

Re:Potential profits are important!

[ishark]

The loss of potential profits is a serious problem,


DAMMIT DAMMIT I have lost my lottery ticket, I have lost 1 MILLION EUROS!!!

..wait..

What do you mean with "you should check first if it was the winning one"?

(Potential is exactly that, potential. What next? Suing your employer because he didn't fire you, depriving you of the possibilility of getting a better job?)

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Potential profits are theoretical damages.
I don't think they'd have standing in court.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

1 MILLION euros == $2.50

Re:Potential profits are important!

[cmoss]

That gives me a great idea on how to put this in the proper perspective. How about we get together and offer to buy the studios tickets in every multimillion dollar lottery with the "potential" to win 100s of millions of dollars!

That should offset their current concerns of potential lost revenue.

Chuck

Re:Potential profits are important!

[GileadGreene]

There's the fundamental weakness of the arguement. When dealing with intellectual property the stealing doesn't cost you (the owner) anything directly. You're only losing the potential profit.

That really doesn't matter. This isn't about profit. It's about ethics. An artist or studio releases a work under certain conditions (e.g. don't copy and distribute the work, pay for each copy). The assumption is that there is a quid pro quo - in exchange for them actually releasing their work to the public (which they didn't have to do), the public agrees to abide by those conditions.

Now, it's entirely possible that some musician will release his/her music without requiring any fee (see mp3.com). That's their decision, and their right. But many artists don't do that. If you respect the artist enough to want to listen to their work, you should respect the artist enough to live with whatever conditions they impose on its distribution (which doesn't mean you shouldn't try to persuade them that there's a better way).

I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp around here. I mean, the entire community has a collective cow when someone violates the GPL. But no one seems to care when musicians have their release terms violated, or when movie studios have the same problem. It doesn't matter how much money they're making. The simple fact is that you wouldn't have the music or movie to rip off if it wasn't for the musician or studio or whatever. If you don't respect that fact they will eventually stop producing.

I'd love to see freely downloadable music. Or movies for that matter. But I'm not going to take the music or movies without permission. The same way I wouldn't use GPLed code without releasing my software under the GPL.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Ami Ganguli]

That really doesn't matter. This isn't about profit. It's about ethics.

The original point was about profits, and how the entertainment industry misrepresents their losses.

As for the ethics argument, you haven't proved your point. The whole basis for the monopoly granted to artists is that it benefits society. If you want to make an ethical argument, then you need to show that violating that monopoly hurts society. You've made that assertion, but you haven't provided any evidence.

As an individual, I can honestly say that I've never copied a CD that I would have otherwise purchased. The loss to society: zero. The gain to society: I got a few minutes of entertainment. Since there seems to have been a net benefit, my conscience is clear.

The same way I wouldn't use GPLed code without releasing my software under the GPL.

You're not required to release your software under GPL. You're prohibited from releasing your software without the GPL. In other words, you can't remove users' freedoms. That's not even vaguely similar to the situation with music and movies.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

If your sig is referring to New Jersey, I agree wholeheartedly. Yet I can't find a better job out of this f'n state. Yes it is a very good job, very interesting stuff with good pay, but it's in the middle of NJ right next to the coast.

Sigh.

And their damned roads!

Re:Potential profits are important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet.

Re:Potential profits are important!

[maxpublic]

Not each download. Each download *attempt*, based on some very unscientific sampling methods. In point of fact, as yet no empirical study has been done on the matter whatsoever.

Which means that nobody *really* knows.

Max

Re:Potential profits are important!

[maxpublic]

The cow I have is when some self-important asshole decides that he gets to modify *my* equipment, the equipment that *I* paid for, in order to protect against any possible future infringement of his copyright.

*That's* where the cow part comes in.

Max

Re:Potential profits are important!

[GileadGreene]

The whole basis for the monopoly granted to artists is that it benefits society. If you want to make an ethical argument, then you need to show that violating that monopoly hurts society. You've made that assertion, but you haven't provided any evidence.

I'm not really talking about some government mandated monopoly. I'm more interested in the fact that the artist offered up their work under certain conditions (government backed or otherwise). That was voluntary. Your accepting those conditions (be they restrictions on copying, mentary payment, or just a notice giving credit) is the "payment" the artist seeks for releasing their work. It's a voluntray, mutually beneficial transaction - the bedrock of the free market. By ignoring those conditions you make the transaction no longer voluntary - the artist is not receiving the benefit they sought. That is what makes it stealing.Just because something can be done (creating perfect digital copies) doesn't mean it should be done.

As an individual, I can honestly say that I've never copied a CD that I would have otherwise purchased. The loss to society: zero. The gain to society: I got a few minutes of entertainment. Since there seems to have been a net benefit, my conscience is clear.

I'm happy that your conscience is clear. But we're not talking about "society". We're talking about individuals. Benefit to you: you get music. Loss to you: zero. Benefit to artist: zero. Loss to artist: artist's work is taken without permission (i.e. stolen), rather than given voluntarily.

You're not required to release your software under GPL. You're prohibited from releasing your software without the GPL. In other words, you can't remove users' freedoms. That's not even vaguely similar to the situation with music and movies.

I'm sorry, perhaps I should have been clearer. What I meant was that I cannot (ethically) take GPLed code, incorporate it into my code, and then release the code under a proprietary license. By doing so I would be breaching the agreement that allowed me access to the code in the first place. The same situation does apply to music and movies, because both involve some kind of agreement, without which you would not have access to those things.

Sex, Lies and the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

It just goes to show that the movie industry wants to profit anyway they can.

Re:NOW HEAR THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

crowded

Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year ago

[autopr0n]

Hey, lets not forget that the RIAA was bitching the same bitch and making the same kind of profits a year ago, and now. Now things couldn't be bleaker, many people are predicting the demise of the recording industry entirely.

A year ago napster was in full swing.

Also, one thing you'll notice is that the MPAA isn't making exactly the same claims that the RIAA was. And honstly movie piracy isn't such a big deal. The quality isn't as good, and the download times are insaine. Back in the modem days it used to take me just about 20 minutes or so to d/l an mp3. But snagging a 1gig divx of a new feature film off the campus lan can take an hour, and it can take days to get off filesharing services like morphius.

Movie trading just hasn't caught on the way napster has.

What the MPAA is saying is that movie piracy is going to hurt them in the future and it's also keeping them from jumping on the digital TV, movie thing (thats why we need the SSSCA!).

You'll also note that these are box-office results, not home video rentals or DVD sales. Piracy wouldn't have any affect on that anymore then music piracy would affect concert sales.

Re:Slow news day?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You say this now, in the future you will ph34r my Gold Star!

Will your pretty little star look anything like the stars of this page?

75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[mirko]

though a little "trollish" because of the way it was written, AC above actually has a good point : (Babelfish was there)

The peculiar thing is that they are able to amortize the film in less than 1 year. So to that it comes that the right of Copyright lasts 75 years? I believe that with 5 years of Copyright they would have time to sell the film in the CINEMAS and to even sell a few DVDs to price of " opening ". But to more money they make more money want, and more case is arranged has to do the government to them.

I also consider that DVD-Region locking should *at least* be limited in time.
Listen to me: Valenti and his hord consider that DVD Region-ing is a way to prevent a film to be seen in a place in which it has not previously been played in theater.
they could schedule some 2-year period (hard-coded on the DVD, if they want) during which the DVD would only be playable in a given place, but after this period, it could be played worldwide with *no* limitations...

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[Anonymous Coward]

and the point of this would be?

2 years down the road when this protection runs out, you could more than likely buy the disk in that country anyway.

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[mirko]

The point is that if I want to collect some Indian movies (FYI, India is the biggest movie producer worlwide), I don't want to have to buy an India-encoded dvd player.
The same way, I don't understand why it took Tron more time (one year, maybe more) to be released in Region/2 (Europe) than it took for Region/1.
Europeans don't want to be milked anoymore by some american corporation.

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[dbateman]

they could schedule some 2-year period (hard-coded on the DVD, if they want) during which the DVD would only be playable in a given place, but after this period, it could be played worldwide with *no* limitations...

How would you enforce this. The work around could be as simple as changing the date on your computer?

D.

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[theridersofrohan]

I also consider that DVD-Region locking should *at least* be limited in time. Listen to me: Valenti and his hord consider that DVD Region-ing is a way to prevent a film to be seen in a place in which it has not previously been played in theater.

And thereby lies the problem. Why is a film not shown to all audiences at the same time? Why are some countries more priviledged than others? Why does a DVD come out in region 1 when the same movie hasn't been shown in a theatre in region 3?

And the answer is: Complete. Market. Domination. Have you considered that a DVD in the UK (region 2) costs about twice as much as a DVD in the US (region 1)?

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah sure, why not? Advantages - an overstock of a particular region's discs could be sold in another after two years has passed.

After two years (or whatever arbitrary number "they" come up with) the DVD could be rereleased as region 0 (no region) and sold around the globe. Easier to produce one disc for a world market than to have the stock run out in a particular region no?

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[mirko]

It is barely enforcable, of course, except if you add some encrypted ntp software in the player (we actually come to it...), but, on the other hand, if they do such a gesture toward us, won't you suddenly feel a little more reasonable and just either take your time to wait for it to be available in your country - or region-free ?

I actually think the only way to reduce piracy is to trust the consummer and also to offer him quality stuff.

BTW, end the star system, when Tom Cruise will make less millions for his stupid films, he will actually open the competition and dynamise the market.

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[mirko]

After two years (or whatever arbitrary number "they" come up with) the DVD could be rereleased as region 0 (no region) and sold around the globe. Easier to produce one disc for a world market than to have the stock run out in a particular region no?

Exactly, and if it was previously available, this could also help people who want specific versions of a film, ex, a professional translator (e.g. English/Japanese) would be happy to buy danish film with Japanese dialogs and subtitles in order to increase his language skills with new dialogs...

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[PantyChewer]

DVD region locking isn't really an issue. Its easy enough to buy a DVD player that is region free. They aren't illegal. Vote with your dollars and buy a factory region free DVD player and not a modded one. Anyone who is thinking about getting overseas DVDs probably know about the region settings and has a region free player anyways, so they aren't really stopping anything...

Re:75 years of copyright + Region-locking

[inkless1]

how many legal region free DVD players are readily available? And most RF Players suck, from I've read of reviews, because they are frequently lower-end models. While I believe in voting by dollars ... spending $300 on a second DVD player inferior to the one I've already got simply because the corporations decided to break up the markets through technology just doesnt seem sane.

inkly

Piracy hurting movies/CDs et

[fruey]

I still buy original CDs, as many as before.

I still buy original DVDs, as many as before.

I buy pirate music and DivX movies in the local market. But quality is not as good and I still yearn for DVD quality.

I just *consume* more music and movies than I did before, now I have high bandwidth. This is the point. Until everyone has a high speed pipe the dent in sales is limited. In any case, most people would rather have originals just like they still buy real Nike trainers and not fakes. A quality issue.

But this does not lead to less sales. It actually gives a big marketing push. In those areas where piracy is super prevalent, it's actually because good access to originals is hard. I just don't go for that "lost market" crap.

Goals and methods.

[Znork]

The goal of the media giants has nothing to do with piracy really. They want the infrastructure for pay-per-view/play, which will make their profits skyrocket beyond comprehension. Watch that movie again? Pay again. Play that song twice? Pay twice.

Piracy is a good excuse. If they can use the 'piracy threat' to force DRM technology to be adapted, it opens the way for a pay-per-view model.

Re:Goals and methods.

[kriegstanz]

Finally! someone's catching on! I don't believe any large entity (corporation or government) takes an action solely for the reason it states. We're being tricked here, people - or more importantly our representatives are (that or being bought off!). Once we give them the lock and the key, there's no going back.

Don't forget Amélie !

[cyrilc]

and in Europe, Amélie and others has been quite a major hit !!

Piracy is good

[bogado]

Piracy is the best free advertisement that any industry may have. People will always want to buy the original, and if they can afford it they will. they will sample the pirate and then buy the original.

there is a common belief that anything that is pirate is in fact of worst quality then the original one. This quality need not to be in the format (video quality, cristal sound and stuff like that), I believe that people will buy quality packing and quality extras. How many DVD rips you seen with tons of extra features, and how many came with say a poster of the movie?

even MS use piracy to enhance their monopoly, why do you think that every one is familiar with their enviroment?

Re:Piracy is good

[Beowulf_Boy]

I disagree with you sir,
I have many many Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy episodes ripped onto my computer that I've downloaded from Gnutella. I'm not going to buy them, and there is no way I can.
Same way with my music, I have over 1200 mp3's on my computer. I have never, ever, ever bought a CD in my life. I repeat, never have I bought a CD.
I used to hate music until I found MP3s. To get around the fact I'd have to make them into CDs for my car, I am putting an old Celeron in my car to play them on my stereo.
I also have about 10 movies on my computer in the divx format. Lets see...Ace Ventura, Remember the Titans, Office Space, Big Daddy, several of the Star Trek movies, and many more.
I haven't bought a DVD ever, in fact, the only DVD player in my house is in my moms computer, and its a 1st generation sucky one.

Re:Piracy is good

[RyMon]

The man has a point. 99% of my CDs I own because I downloaded a few MP3s and liked the band, and I imagine most people work this way.

As for DVDs, take this for example: I downloaded Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back when it was in theaters, but still went and bought it the day it came out. Why? Partially quality, partially for the director's commentary (Ever hear Kevin Smith's commentary tracks? Funnier than anything in the movies), and partially for the deleted scenes. I use downloaded movies to hold me over until they become available on DVD, because I'm sure as hell not paying $8.50 every time I feel like watching it.

Re:Piracy is good

[bogado]

But that's it you're just one person, sales are made in numbers. I am shure that like you exist many people that would not trade their pirate goods. But the majority will trade their "low quality" copy for a better official one.

Re:Piracy is good

[bogado]

I just thougth in something, have you watched those episodes on the TV before you downloaded them? If you had, hen you "bought" them, tv series are made to draw your atention to the TV and make the air price expensive to add. Even if you do not seens those episodes that you have, but you watch the series on TV this could be a success of the "piracy addvertisement".

Just a thought. :-) I hope it dosen't ofend you, I can never say when one comment will make people mad, and that is never my intention.

Re:Piracy is good

[MartinG]

If you hadn't been able to download those episodes, would you have gone out and bought them?
In other words, was the only reason you got them because they were free of charge?
If so, then your "piracy" has done no harm because the copyright owners would not have got any money from you anyway.

Re:Piracy is good

[Fulcrum of Evil]

No. They're not offered for sale.

Copying is not stealing

[WowTIP]

These arguments are getting old, but here we go...

Copying, as bad as it might be, is *not* stealing, try to get that into your minds!

When you steal something from someone, they don't have the original object anymore, you do. The poor guy from who the thing was stolen is lacking his object.

When you copy something, the guy still has got his stuff left, but you also have a *copy* of the the object. You didn't steal anything from anyone.

Now some people will start yelling: "But you stole the Programmers/Moviemakers/Artists paycheck, they don't get the money they deserve...". True. But it isn't theft. Theft would be if you broke into that artists house and stole the money he has already made from previous artistic work. Now it's not theft, but copyright infringement. Theft sounds worse and is worse, imho. The people affected will very much notice when someone steals the stuff they already have, but not as much when someone copy one of their works.

Yeah, right...

[fmaxwell]

The loss of potential profits is a serious problem, especially if you can copy the stuff you sell infinitely.

So they propose legislation forcing each of us to pay more for our consumer electronics, and suffer with less capability, all so that they can protect against potential profit loss. It's not my job to protect their profits and neither is it the job of the government.

What the government should be doing is legislating fair use laws to keep consumers from finding themselves unable to copy music, record television programs, and fast-forward through commercials.

What next? Will we be required by law to pay a private security guard to stand over us and make sure we don't pirate software?

Re:Yeah, right...

[phunhippy]

What next? Will we be required by law to pay a private security guard to stand over us and make sure we don't pirate software?

Well I'm sure the US Government will allow us to come up with self-regulated rules on this issue before they require by making it a law.. we should start now.

I'll charge you $400 a week for myself to watchover you, and i'll do it virtually since i'm charging such a cheap price ;)

The internet can't hurt box-office numbers...

[NanoGator]

Well it can't. The internet cannot completely replace the movie going experience. Theaters are (usually) the best place to watch movies. You have an enourmous screen, awesome audio (theater dependent...), and I think most people prefer watching movies as a group.

For somebody to pirate just released movies today, that usually requires taking a video camera to the theater and capturing the footage from that. The quality of that capture process is horrid. The cool theater audio gets ruined. And getting a group of friends together to huddle around your screen is a 1-way ticket to the geek table. No matter how good the piracy of first run movies gets, it still doesn't hold a candle to going and watching the movie.

What can and will hurt the movie industry is inflexibility with pricing. There are a LOT of movies coming out lately, but my budget's having a hard time shelling out $7 for myself and $7 for my gf, only to have the movie totally suck ass. *Cough Rollerball Cough*. If theaters would lower their prices to say $4.50, then I'd likely see 2 movies per weekend, instead of like 2 movies a month. If Hollywood's producing more movies, they're going to find themselves a bit diluted. Suddenly downloading a video taped movie overnight doesn't sound so bad.

Re:The internet can't hurt box-office numbers...

[jaoswald]

Where the hell do you live?

Here, I pay $9.50 (ever rising) to watch a movie in a closet, projected on a screen the size of a bedsheet, where the soundtrack is overwhelmed by the latest Jerry Bruckheimer film in the closet next door. I have to fight over the armrest with my neighbor. And if I don't see a movie in the first three weeks, it gets replaced with some newer one-week wonder. God forbid I want something to eat or drink for less than $3, or want something other than sweet or greasy junk.

At home, I can rent a DVD for $5 or less, watch it in the peace of my living room on a comfortable couch with a number of invited friends, who know to shut up when the dialog is important. In the event anyone needs a break, or covered up the dialog with a laugh, or missed a plot point, we can pause or rewind. I can drink a glass of OJ or wine or beer, with unlimited refills. Popcorn without butter-flavored grease. If my girlfriend and I decide we'd rather make out, we can watch the movie later. If I reallly cared about the ear-shattering soundtracks, I could get a serious surround-sound system.

How can the theater compete?

Re:The internet can't hurt box-office numbers...

[jglow]

The quality of that capture process is horrid. The cool theater audio gets ruined. And getting a group of friends together to huddle around your screen is a 1-way ticket to the geek table.

Obviously you don't do much movie pirating. :) Most new releases can be found ripped from VHS or via a telicine machine, which ends up being at least VHS quality if not better. Once burned as VCD it can be played through most (new) standard DVD players. In return, you get a nice, VHS+ quality new release on your TV for all to see.

Re:The internet can't hurt box-office numbers...

[jaoswald]

Oh, yeah, one more thing---

The DVD reproduction is pretty good, and doesn't degrade. The local super mega-multi-plex hires minimum-wage slobs to run the projectors, and never bothers to teach them to properly clean the gate, so theater prints get seriously worn.

When digital theater projection starts being widespread, this won't be an issue anymore. The expense of delivering heavy prints will be reduced, and it changes the economics of keeping movies for extended runs.

Family Rated?

[epsalon]

it's very simple, R-rated pictures do not sell.

Wrong. The MPAA prevents R-rated movies from selling by rating them R! If there were no movie-rating bullshit then studios won't have to work so hard and remove quite innocent scenes to get a PG-13 rating. Get over it! Only parents should decide what their children see. Many parents are very liberal in this sense but the rating system limits the creativity of the movie producers to create.

Re:Family Rated?

[1D10T]

I don't see why it limits movie producers' creativity if they cannot make ever more violent films. And do you think parents do have control over what their children are watching. If your child is say 14 years old you will not always ask, what it is doing in the evening. As a matter of fact parents cannot control what their children are watching even if they wanted to. That is why there has to be a limit given by some other institution.

Re:Family Rated?

[epsalon]

The world is not a safe palce. period. It's you'r responsibility as a parent to ensure your child doesn't get into trouble.
So they censor movies. Does that prevent youth from seeing drugs on the street? However, if you let your children be exoposed to this material and educate them, then you might ensure they don't get into trouble.
What's so wrong with a child seeing sex, drugs and obscenity in movies? The fact these things are prohibited actually lures children to try these things, and not in movies but in real life.

Re:Family Rated?

[psxndc]

Well 1) I don't believe R movies don't sell. Half the flix at my local cineplex are rated R and 2) While I completely agree that parents should be making the decision about what their children can and cannot watch, I don't think a movie rating system in any way censors a movie. Only when you get into the R vs. NC-17 realm do I think driectors/studios/etc compromise content based on rating.

psxndc

Re:Family Rated?

[psamuels]

The MPAA prevents R-rated movies from selling by rating them R! If there were no movie-rating bullshit then studios won't have to work so hard and remove quite innocent scenes to get a PG-13 rating.

In my opinion it is the opposite. I can't back this up with any facts, but haven't you ever seen a movie with gratuitous nudity? I mean where it doesn't add anything to the plot, and would "lift off as easily as a scab" (Florence King, in the highly-recommended Florence King Reader, commenting on deleting a sex scene while editing her novel for republication).

I get the strong feeling the directors often include these scenes solely to bump the movie up to an R rating, and thus gain attention from audiences for whom lesser-rated movies fall under the radar. Why would audiences react to ratings that way? Ya got me.

Re:Family Rated?

[ethereal]

Um, I hate to tell you this, but your 14-year-old child is probably going to the movies with someone who is old enough to get into R-rated films. That's what we all did when I was a kid, anyway.

You pretty much have to understand that you can only protect them so far - once they're mobile, have friends, and are out with them for extended periods of time, the only guide that they'll have is any values that you gave them when they were younger. 14 is much too late to be inculcating your values about obscenity, violence, etc. into your children. At that age they'd already rather listen to their friends.

Re:Family Rated?

[Kamel Jockey]

In a way though, you could make the argument that ratings are good thing for movies. Because of the ratings system, the only thing preventing a director from sticking in too much violence or porn into a movie is strictly the marketplace. Prior to 1968 (when the ratings system was introduced in the USA), movies had to meet certain content requirements, there were things (such as anything even remotely sexual, compared to today's standards) or overly violent. Movies like Scream, Spaceballs, and The Matrix would probably never have been released if not for the ratings system were not in place.

Here is my reasoning. Basically, the rating is a warning that a movie has this kind of content. People cannot make the argument that a movie must be legally censored because the director can say "Look, this movie has an R rating, you know it has an R-rating, if you don't like it, you don't have to see it." Prior to the rating system, someone could go see a movie, deem it objectionable, and have it banned. Now the only thing preventing a director from putting too much sex or violence in a movie is the marketplace, if people don't see NC-17 movies because they are NC-17, then a director will try not to make the movie NC-17. However, if more people see PG or PG-13 movies instead of R movies, then the director will try to shoot for a PG or PG-13 movie. I have to disagree with your assertion that the MPAA tries to prevent R rated movies from selling because they rate them R. The MPAA cannot force people to go see an NC-17 rated movie (yet?), if people don't want to see such movies, and make their movie choices based on those ratings, then its up to the director or studio to correct the problem.

One could say the same thing happened to TV since they introduced the ratings system.

Re:Family Rated?

[NetGyver]

Here in Pennsylvania at least, you have to show a valid picture ID with your DOB on it for an R rated film. Everyone in your party has to, in order to see the movie.

As far as parients and kids, some of my best friends were brought up by very zealot-like parients who attempted to portect them from every little thing tht might be dangerous/offensive/questionable.

You are right in the fact that you can't protect your kids all the time. And you shouldn't, even if it was within your grasp to do so. Not allowing your children to make their own mistakes is like not sending them to school. They aren't educated first-hand by the mistakes they make themselves.

Some parients work so hard in sheltering their kids, that eventually the kids only see their parients as roadblock. Your values, pirnclples and reasons get ignored, and the kids find a way to do what they want anyway. This is not how it should be done. All the sheltering does does is make your children nieve and ignorent of the real world.

From the time their born to the time they hit 12 or so, (give or take a year or two) everything you tought your kids will be the deciding factor on their behavior.

They're like a lump of clay when their born,
they need you to shape them. The more you work and interact with them..(and i stress "with" greatly) the better they turn out in the long run.

whew, ok i'm off my soapbox now :)

Re:Family Rated?

[RatBastard]

You must be young. There was a time before the ratings system came out. All movies were made to the same basic standards then. No gratuitous violence, no nudity, the most cautiously hinted at sex, etc... It is the ratings system that allowed movie makers to create movies aimed at adults without having to water them down for children.

Go take a lok at movies made before the late 1960s. Look at how ALL of those movies were watered down and sanitized.

A little research is a good thing, sir.

Re:Family Rated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie ratings have nothing to do with content.

Say you make a movie and there's a dead body in it that's realistic/gruesome enough that the MPAA thinks your movie deserves an R rating. Do you need to cut the scene? No. Shorten the length of time that the camera pauses on the corpse from 2 seconds down to 1.8 seconds. Now your movie is magically appropriate for mass consumption.

The MPAA's guidlines (if they actually have any) are completely arbitrary. Many director's frustration with the ratings process that they can't get a straight answer from the MPAA, so the director goes back to the editing room and monkies with the film and resubmits it. Maybe it will get the desired rating, maybe not. Sometimes after going back and forth a few times, the director just puts the film back the way it originally was and it gets approved.

Jack and Co. are just a bunch of parasites trying to justify their expensive existance by pissing off as many people as possible. They annoy consumers with their anti-piracy efforts, supposedly on behalf of the content creators, then they turn around and screw with their precious content creators, forcing them to make unnecessary compromises with their already limited artistic creations.

Re:Family Rated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's not that people don't see NC-17 because the public dosen't want to see them, it's because no major chain of theaters will touch them.

Also, if your movie gets rated NC-17, you can bet your studio will spend $0 marketing it.

Corporate censorship at its finest.

And what, really is the purpose of the NC-17 rating anyway? You have to be 17 to see it, but you have to be 17 to see R movies. If you really don't want to see certain kinds of content, maybe you should scan a few reviews to see if the movie contains stuff you don't want to see. Or maybe the previews could include the tag line "This movie should Not be viewed by Christians."

OTOH, maybe that's what NC-17 stands for.

Re:Family Rated?

[Kamel Jockey]

Corporate censorship at its finest.

But keep in mind that corporate censorship does not come from any moral basis, its all about money. I guarantee you that if G-rated movies were not popular, no studio would touch them, nor would any theater. As people don't want to see NC-17 movies, theaters won't show them, and studios will tone down content in such movies to be R isntead.

Also, the difference between R and NC-17 is that people under 17 can go into an R movie with a parent, but with NC-17 no children are permitted at all.

Re:Family Rated?

[ethereal]

Here in Pennsylvania at least, you have to show a valid picture ID with your DOB on it for an R rated film. Everyone in your party has to, in order to see the movie.

I'm confused - "R" is "under 17 not permitted without a parent", right? So if I'm a parent, and I'm taking my kid who isn't under 17 and of course their ID shows it, how do they get in? It sounds like "R" has changed to "under 17 not permitted at all", which is what I thought NC-17 was.

You're exactly right about the children, IMHO (bearing in mind that of course I have none at the moment). You can only give them the guidelines and the framework for living their lives, hoping to set them on the right path. They walk down the path themselves, though.

Re:Family Rated?

[bryan1945]

It may have been a soapbox, but it was a damn fine soapbox, imo.

One more person who will raise their children right, maybe the world does have a future afterall....

Re:Family Rated?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the MPAA didn't rate movies, the government would. The MPAA rating system was set up to prevent that.

The MPAA rating system was originally meant to be a guide for parents -- there was no legal requirement for theatres, or anyone, to enforce ratings. It was called "voluntary compliance". As far as I know, there is still no federal requirement to enforce ratings although some states/communities may have passed some laws in the past few years.

It all worked fairly well until Oprah got her panties in a (huge) wad 10-15 years ago and did a big expose on how underage kids could easily get into Rated-R movies. Then theatres had to start strictly enforcing the ratings because of a big backlash from Oprah followers.

And this is somehow surprising?

[rmckeethen]

Oh course Valenti, et al are bitching and moaning about 'potential' piracy when box office receipts are at record highs: in their minds they now have more to lose. And think about it, do you really expect them to change their tune in any case, up or down? Don't be silly! Imagine you going to your boss and saying, "Gee, no, I don't need that raise right now sir." That's about the position the the entertainment industry is in. Doesn't make me feel any better about DMCA, SSSCA, etc. but I can at least see where they are comming from. Can you ever really have enough money? For me, yes, for Hollywood execs? Maybe not...

Hell, I'd be willing to give 3 to 1 odds that Jack trots these figures out during the next congressional inquiry as proof of the movie industries' unquestionable value in recessionary times and why they should get special legal protection from all those Internet pirates.

Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[NanoGator]

Can DVD sales suffer from internet piracy? Possibly. Can box-office sales? Nope. Pirating a movie in the theaters cannot hold a candle to going and seeing the movie. Frankly, if somebody is going to download the pirated movie, then the chances are they aren't going to pay to see it. It is too big of a hassle.

DVD sales can be seriously hurt by P2P sharing. The MPAA has a few things they can do to prevent that, though. Loading DVD's up with features is one idea. The DVD still has value if the movie's getting downloaded, but the extras aren't. (Or am I in the minority of DVD purchasers because I care more about the bonus footage and making of scenes...?)

Another good approach would be to get a handle on why people download the movies. Are they just curious if the movie is any good? Well here's an idea, the MPAA should release an edited version of the movie, free to watch on the net. Maybe insert some ads into it or something to get some money per view. Edit out the language, and maybe cut out a few scenes. This way, somebody can watch the movie to see if it's interesting to them. Then they can go buy the DVD if it's interesting to them, or move on if it's not. If they can get ad revenue that way, then it's not wasted time for the MPAA.

Hopefully the MPAA will look at why people download movies and try to provide a profitable alternative to them, instead of trying to sue them out of existence. It works better for both sides if they take a more mature attitude about it.

2600

[Nero216]

I bet the boys and girls at 2600 must of either A) died laughing when they read that or B) became immensly infuriated.

insert variables for the results on movie industry

[fruey]

docalc() {
p = profit
v = people at movies
y = dl pirates
}
get input v()
get input y()

p = v - y

ERROR! cannot quantify y!

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[epsalon]

Better - maybe put online only the first half of the move (+ADs). Many people will watch it to see what's it all about and then will be in great suspense and urgency to actually see the whole movie. It's much better than trailers.

They Don't Claim to be Hurting Right Now

[Schlemphfer]

The summary reads:

Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?

I don't think so. I don't think the movie industry is claiming that piracy is putting them out of business, or even causing great harm at the moment. I think that their argument is that emerging broadband and internet technologies could soon put them out of business, if effective legislation and anti-piracy measures are not enacted.

The primary difference between the recording industry and the movie industry is that the recording people are complaining about what's happening right now, whereas the movie people are acting to prevent a "Napster for Movies" from being possible three years from now.

A pox on both their houses, of course. But I think it's wrong to suggest the movie industry is complaining about piracy ruining their profits today. It's all about what they fear will happen in the near future.

Re:They Don't Claim to be Hurting Right Now

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say this, but eDonkey2k et al are already good places to go for DivX films. I know people who have ~700 DivX, and we're talking fullscreen, ~TV quality, 128kbps sound. Enough to put a dampener on VHS, if not DVD sales. The newer codecs are that good, and enough people have DSL, and the hz to display full-screen mpeg... mpaa's figures of downloaded movies per "x" may not be more than an order of magnitude out...

Re:They Don't Claim to be Hurting Right Now

[MasonMcD]

What happens when massive OLED 16:9 screens are cheapcheapcheap? And 64 oz cokes with a tub of popcorn are 15c to enjoy in the pleasure of your own theater room? Will the MPAA legislate against home theaters?

Re:They Don't Claim to be Hurting Right Now

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Will the MPAA legislate against home theaters?
Of course they will, because you're obviously an evil hacker who is pirating all their precious content. There's no way anyone would have all that equipment unless they were a child molesting, copyright-stealing, terrorist supporting, drug-dealing, evildoer pirate!

Re:They Don't Claim to be Hurting Right Now

[bughunter]

Will the MPAA legislate against home theaters?

No, but Congress might... the MPAA is just the big studios, no longer afraid of being prosecuted for anticompetitive practices, openly colluding to fix prices, manipulate markets, and buy legislation that favors them and hurts their competitors. They can't legislate themselves... thank God.

I predict that what the MPAA will try to do is buy a law that requires us to pay for every viewing of a movie in a home equipped with high-end equipment.

Another idea....

[NanoGator]

What made me go watch both Galaxy Quest and Blair Witch was that scifi-channel ran a cleverly written 'documentary' on them. In the case of Blair Witch, the documentary explained how some kids disappeared but their film was found... but in an Unsolved Mysteries kind of way which was meant to sound real. Galaxy Quest had a 'behind the scenes' documentary, pretending that Galaxy Quest was a real TV show. These documentaries were fake, but they were fun to watch. I actually liked the BW one better than the movie. It stood on it's own as a neat show.

It'd be cool if Hollywood would start releasing clever marketing 'shows' like this on the web. Give me some downloadable content to watch on my laptop while i'm flying! They could use the Internet as a powerful marketing tool, but they have to do more than use fancy Flash banner ads.

Re:Another idea....

[HKTiger]

Publishers of old-fashioned paper-type books do this (or used to: I don't seem to have left my crypt for several years now, so I don't know what the world outside is like): they'll give away thin tomes comprising a few pages or a chapter of several new (or soon to be released) books when you buy something from a bookshop, to tempt you into buying something else. And hey, it works, readers being the same sort of junkies as movie-goers.

This is the same principle as trailers, but I think the trailers have been hijacked, in the sense that folk are now far too savvy. That is, we've seen too many examples where the producers have taken a scrofulous film, selected the 15 seconds of decent footage, and fast-cut it over a pumping soundtrack: we poor innocents get lured (by some sort of primal monkey-brain response) into thinking it must be exciting, and go and see what will probably scar us for years.

Whereas if they would make available (not show in cinemas to waste 20 minutes that we thought we'd spend watching the movie, dammit!) a carefully selected scene or two, something actually representative of the film as a whole, this would tempt many people into seeing it. Of course, this might also have the result that crap films don't make as much as they might otherwise make, but hey, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make...

Re:Another idea....

[NanoGator]

Interesting, I remember coming across a 'novel sample' with a 12 pack of Diet Coke once heh. It'd be neat if you could download a 10 minute teaser for a movie where the Director explains what it is about the movie that makes it interesting. I think some movies would have a higher satisfaction rate if people were guided in the direction of what makes it interesting.

When I first saw Austin Powers, I hated it. I guess I was expecting a Hotshots type of slapstick movie from the trailers, but the movie was very different from that. Since it was different, I dind't really give it much of a chance. It wasn't until I watched it again with my cousin that I understood what made it funny. He was able to show me the satirical nature of the movie that I missed the first time, as I'm not that familiar with James Bond and Flint.

Maybe if a trailer highlighted the interesting part of the movie, I'd not only be more likely to see it, but it may even improve my chances of enjoying it.

Anybody ever run across the theatrical trailer of Empire Strikes Back? That trailer was seriously cool. I've seen that movie to death, but that trailer made me want to dig it back out heh.

That was an interesting post, HKTiger, you helped me clarify what I was thinking in my original post. :)

The MPAA is evil too?

[TrollBridge]

"Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?"

I thought it was the RIAA that was always bitching about this.

Anyway, I can't see how piracy is putting so much as a scratch in the profits of the MPAA since only those with alot of bandwidth (and patience) are actually pirating movies.

And you're proud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone think beowulf boy is 13? Sounds like a spoiled brat to me. Once he gets his butt kicked a few times and learns about respect, he'll change his tune.

Re:And you're proud?

[DohDamit]

He's not thirteen. More likely, he's thirty and living in his mom's basement, applying for telemarketing jobs and what-not while posting hundreds of comments on Slashdot, most of which are (shudder) lacking even more content than this post.

Re:And you're proud?

[bryan1945]

Who cares how old he is? He/she's a pathetic little bitch who will be the first one to start screaming the second someone steals something of his. Yes, he is spoiled and thank God that most people are not like him. Really, putting a computer in your car just so you don't have to buy CDs?! That is almost pathalogical(sp?).

it's a little thing called evolution...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

if you are unwilling, or cannot change... you will be phased out of existence. or something like that...

the mpaa (and riaa for that matter) are operating on such old business models. granted, those models have been very successful. however, they're starting to break down.

the mpaa, riaa, etc. aren't willing to evolve. piracy is the only reason they're moving towards online content. they're waving their hands in the air, frantically crying out, "look! over here!" in an effort to distract people from piracy. if it weren't for piracy on the internet, these companies probably wouldn't have even thought twice about offering their "products" online...

must be..

[monkey_jam]

..all the people with camcorders. see? piracy does help the industry

maybe for music

[__aawsxp7741]

I wouldn't really go so far as claiming that in this case, illegal copying is helping the industry. With music, this might be a little different. Not that the music industry necessarily profits from mp3 sharing, but here, the downloads constitute a real advertisement for the band, potentially making people go to see their concerts. And as far as I know (I don't have the numbers), a band generally gets hardly anything out of record sales.

BTW, the word "piracy" seems to me to be highly inappropriate if one thinks of what pirates usually do. We could just as well call it "terrorism".

Fight terrorism, save the MPAA!

Re:maybe for music

[bogado]

BTW, the word "piracy" seems to me to be highly inappropriate if one thinks of what pirates usually do. We could just as well call it "terrorism".

Shure and the next thing you will see is the MPAA bombing some housing with the backup of president Bush himself.

Seriuosly you are advice is to change one word (piracy) because of what 16th century (17th or even 18th century, I'm realy not that good with history) people did, for one that is used now and is on all the media? I realy don't think it is a good idea.

Re:maybe for music

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen a Gas Station blow 100 m. from you? Have you seen poeple bleeding to death and willing from help? anyone one of you had to study English using the light of candles to read cause there wasnt electric energy on your house?

Well... I DID!

So... shut the fuck up! Terrorism KILLS INNOCENT PEOPLE!!!! I havent heard in my life of someone dying because his music was pirated.

In my country earning 600 US$ a month is a HIGH SALARY, and a DVD is worth 30 US$ and a music cd US$ 22. If you pirate and sell it, you are making people happy cause the can listen music for a littel price, end they got money left to eat.

Re:maybe for music

[__aawsxp7741]

Well, tell that to the people whose family have been killed in one of the frequent pirate attacks in south-east Asia or off the African coast.

I am not saying that "pirating" music is terrorism, I'm saying that calling it pirating is inappropriate in a similar way in which calling it terrorism is.

Both piracy and terrorism are horrible things, and in no way comparable to copying music.

Re:maybe for music

[__aawsxp7741]

Piracy is still very much active, though. If it were indeed a thing of the past, I'd agree with you. Check for instance the weekly piracy report (first non-software hit on google).

Big pictures vs Small

[CptLogic]

from the article:

>>Of the record 20 films that reached the $100 million mark, five went soared past $200 million,

Now they reckon production costs have been slashed to an average 47Million USD.

How much money did the 20 big ones cost to make?
How much profit did they make? Lots?

Now how about the other films, that cost 47Million to make and weren't one of the lucky 20?
If they didn't make a ton of dosh at the box office they're relying on DVD/VHS sales to make thier money. It's *there* that the pirating can hit them. Even with the best home cinema system there's nothing like going to the flicks to see a movie, but when it's on the small screen it's not so important that you get a legal copy. That's where the studio's can lose out.

Chris.

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[Shadow99_1]

You are forgetting foreign markets... Valenti (unless I completely missed it in the article) is only talking about US revenue... lots of non-top 20 films get carried overseas. Even if a film "only" makes 30M of it's 47M cost in the US how hard would it be to make another 17M world-wide? Not very hard really...

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[CptLogic]

Yes but Piracy doesn't just happen in the US.

It effects (especially pacific asia) foreign exports too.

Chris.

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[Artik Vodka]

The problem is that those movies reach others countries late. Before they hit the cinema, they hit the CD Recorder of your local friend who has a shitload of movies and sells them for 2.5 a piece after downloading from the Internet or ordering from the states.
Sometimes DVDs from States get here (Portugal) before the movie does (theater).
Lot's of people see it and lose interest.
Others like it, but ain't going to the cinema in two weeks to see it again.

So, they can get hit pretty bad.

They should release movies worldwide at the same time.

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[Shadow99_1]

I agree with releasing at the same time everywhere, but their are several places I cna think of (like England) where they get the movie within weeks of the US release... DVD releases still take 3 months (or at least they do here in the US).

You do however make it sound as if movie 'piracy' is considerably worse in Portugal though. Maybe the movie industry should focus more on foreign markets & pircay? (not to say that everyone does that there) But the US still lacks broadband even in some large cities (or at least some areas of large cities) & DVD's can be rented at the local video store even in the smallest towns these days... Making piracy less apealing (or at least I think so)...

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[Shadow99_1]

Yes, but the article only states profits in the US & the comment wasn't considering the extra money that comes from foreign markets (which can easily be twice overall what just US figures are). Hence my comment that you have to take into account foreign sales or the comment isn't a complete picture.

Also the original article (& the comment) are reffering to theatre ticket sales. piracy has little to no effect on ticket sales in the US... See the other 50+ posts sayign so below for a list of reasons...

Re:Big pictures vs Small

[Artik Vodka]

• DVD releases still take 3 months (or at least they do here in the US).

Here we have to wait about 6 months after it gets out of the theatre to have it in DVD.

In some ocasions it happened that people had the R1 DVD one day or two before it got in the theaters here. One of the guys that got a situation like this, never goes to the cinema. He just buys the DVDs as soon as they are available.

• You do however make it sound as if movie 'piracy' is considerably worse in Portugal though.

It aint that bad, but seams to me that some of the locals rather spend 90 minutes (or the time the movie takes) watching a movie through their computer screens than going to a nice theater. Maybe the situation is equal in the US but here (Europe-wide) we have that waiting period that allows copies to get here and probably takes some people out of the theatre. Not to say that they all would see the movie in the cinema if they didn't get the copy, but probably some would.

Even when the DVD isn't out, there are copies. Some are just video recorded from the theater and we even get to see people's heads and stuff :) wich seams to satisfy some guys.

If they released the movies worldwide (okay, where possible) within the same month, that would be okay. That way, people would not get pirate copies (or even official DVDs) in their hands before it gets in the theater. That could lead to more money for them.

not surprising

[ErrantKbd]

"with movie admissions reaching their highest level since 1959."

since we're pushing 300 million people in this country, twice the amount of people here in 1959.

And...

[slow_flight]

...if they could leverage national security or anti-terrorism, they would do that too. And they sure as hell wouldn't be the only ones twisting a human tragedy for there own greedy purposes. To paraphrase a senator: I'd call you a pack of whores, but that would be unfair to the whores.

I speak only for myself

[Treeluvinhippy]

I'll admit I'm guilty of "Movie Trading". It's how I decide what I'm going to buy. For example none of my friends have Neon Genesis Evangelion and I'm sure as hell ain't going to find it at my local blockbuster. Since 25-30 greenbacks is way to much for me to spend on something I'm seeing for the first time, and might not even like.

So I became one with the devil one fateful day and fired up Morpheus. And on that day the worlds biggest evangelion freak was born.

I didn't play with linux for two weeks, cause I didn't want to reboot out of my win2k partion so I could keep downloading. Eventually I had the entire series all mine for free, some were fairly decent quality too.

Did I stick it to the artists who created such an animation masterpiece? Well some would say yes. Some would say they deserve to be ripped off simply for the fact that they charge so much for a three episode dvd. I'm not going to get into that. Plenty of threads covering that topic as it is.

In my case it dosen't really matter anyways. I purchesed all eight dvd's, have an almost complete collection of evangelion toys (Just need to get Unit 01). And a gorgeous Askua poster in a black frame hanging on the wall above my monitor.

Maybe my case is an exception. I never would have bought all this stuff if I never saw the crappy divxes. I relize they're is alot of freeloading on the p2p networks, but because of software like Morpheus and Gnutella I shelled out quite a bit of cash at my local Suncoast. This stuff isn't cheap!

Re:I speak only for myself

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this and anime is that most box sets (Trigun one comes to mind) is $200, which is way too much for a poor highschool student (which are even more poor than the college students). I got Trigun from my friend in a mail trade, and if I had the money, I'd definitely buy the box set.

Re:I speak only for myself

[Microlith]

You are an extremely rare example.

I started off what was on Cartoon Network, but I never downloaded a series that was licensed (still don't).

90% of those who download Anime have no intention of buying it, and usually get pissy when you suggest they do.

"It's not worth my money," they say, but apparently it's worth their time.

Downloading anime actually hurts US companies a lot more than it hurts the MPAA because they don't have many (if any) theater runs, and it's really hard to get it on TV. And having it up for download does piss off the Japanese companies who then take it out on the US licensors.

Also, don't buy at Suncoast if you can avoid it, they're really expensive.

Re:I speak only for myself

[stubear]

While this argument might possibly fly with some, it doesn't address the future of this illegal piracy industry. What happens when video quality on desktops becomes DVD quality for only a few hundred megs and broadband access becomes the norm? Do you think people will still buy the videos in the store if they can just burn their own? You will see your case become nearly extinct and the numbers of poeple illegally trading and distributing the files increase exponentially.

It is for this very reason the SSSCA has been brought before congress. Enfocring copyright law on a person by person basis is a PR nightmare, regardless of the legality of the issue. The SSSCA makes it easier to go after the companies who make the illegal possible. Why cure the disease when you can eradicate the virus?

Re:I speak only for myself

[elandal]

I did that, too. Actually just aubing abma and some other anime newsgroups.. Then I ran out of diskspace ;) (that's not the only thing I need diskspace for, and sometimes work just takes precedence)

Anyway, if I hadn't started downloading anime off the net, and from Usenet, I wouldn't probably have spent the 20+k on anime DVDs I have.

I'm working on getting more diskspace online in my LAN, and streamlining my acquisition methods. Just to get anime that isn't available in Europe (or US) yet, and might never be. I was overjoyed when I read that Noir is licensed (and thus might come out on DVD some day) in US. Hadn't I seen the series already, I probably wouldn't be waiting anxiously about when I get to pre-order the discs.

Oh yes, I do buy stuff I've never seen. But not as much as stuff I've seen a couple of episodes of.

Re:I speak only for myself

[Thag]

You are an extremely rare example.

Actually, this sounds like a typical example of someone who actually buys anime. I know I can't afford to buy DVDs on speculation, and I generally can't rent anime from stores in my area. I have bought many many laserdiscs and DVDs that I found out about through the fansub networks, or saw at a convention. In fact, virtually all of my purchases happen that way, and I have spent kilobucks on the stuff.

90% of those who download Anime have no intention of buying it, and usually get pissy when you suggest they do.

Source, please.

Downloading anime actually hurts US companies a lot more than it hurts the MPAA because they don't have many (if any) theater runs, and it's really hard to get it on TV. And having it up for download does piss off the Japanese companies who then take it out on the US licensors.

It does piss off the Japanese companies, but I have seen no proof that it hurts the US companies. In fact, the hightest-selling US titles tend to be the ones that were previously most-traded as fansubs. Fans will fall in love with the show and want the high-quality legit version. Unless the US company completely FUBARs it, in which case a smaller number of the fans will get the Japanese legit version.

Also, don't buy at Suncoast if you can avoid it, they're really expensive.

Here we agree. Though my local indie bookstore's prices are worse :(

Jon Acheson

Re:I speak only for myself

[Amazing Quantum Man]

90% of those who download Anime have no intention of buying it, and usually get pissy when you suggest they do.

Source, please.

Didn't you know? 90% of all statistics are made up!

Re:I speak only for myself

[Microlith]

That and I hang in a number of channels that get people begging for fansubbers.

They say I want X series, where X is a series that is licensed.

I say: "Go buy it"

they laugh and call me a stupid fucker. Just about every one (save a small few) does that.

90% isn't accurate, hell I can't put a percentage on it, but that sure is what it sounds like.

And if you don't want to buy blind, go read reveiws. Check my sig for the single best anime dvd review site.

Re:I speak only for myself

[DrEldarion]

And a gorgeous Askua poster in a black frame hanging on the wall above my monitor.

Holy shit, I thought that I was the only one with Asuka hanging above my monitor... She's also face down on my CD-R drive, because she usually leans up against my camera, which I obviously needed for the picture.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:I speak only for myself

[Thag]

All I know is that most of the people I know that buy anime started with fansubs. Then again, this was before the current wave of anime on Cartoon Network, etc.

And if you don't want to buy blind, go read reveiws. Check my sig for the single best anime dvd review site.

Been there. Reviews really aren't worth much to me, except to comment on things like extras and video and sound quality. Whether I will like the show or not is an extremely subjective matter that I can only prove by watching a few episodes, or by talking to friends who have similar tastes to mine.

Jon Acheson

Re:I speak only for myself

[maxpublic]

So 90% of the people you hang out with are losers? I'd hardly apply this figure to the general public in this particular instance....

Max

other possible reasons?

[f00zbll]

I've been thinking about this and the problem is pretty complicated.

1. not all movies are block busters that people watch more than once and buy the dvd/vhs.
2. nitch movies like foriegn or art films may not make as much money in theaters. Most big theaters no longer play art films, unless they are produced and directed by famous people.
3. pirated version of "so-so" movies will have a harder time breaking even. Why spend 10+ bucks for a movie with no production value, which barely keeps you interested?
4. pirated version of popular or great movies tend to see a benefit.
5. pirating may affect movie budgets negatively and force movie makers to do more with less money.
6. pirating of movies before they are released to the public may kill any chance of it making money, let alone profit. Crap movies will be affected the most by this.
7. Pirating DVD disk image may become a bigger issue in the future, but for the most part it's professional pirating by organized criminals that are the biggest problem.

Just my opinion, but I think the movie execs just don't understand it and realize they need to change how they do things. In a lot of ways, art and foriegn films could see an increase in popularity if video on demand becomes reality. Someone might not spend 7.00 for a ticket, 3.00 for popcorn, 2.00 for a drink and 20 minutes to drive to the theater for an art film, but they might spend 3 bucks to see it at home. There are a lot of ways for the movie industry to re-invent itself and make more money. Now if only they would "think" instead of react, they could really see a whole new world of cinema.

I like watching short movies on the net, when they are good. I wouldn't spend 7 bucks on a questionable movie, but I would risk 1-2 bucks. As more people master the art of making short movies, the market will grow. Especially if hollywood continues to crank out formulaic junk.

Re:other possible reasons?

[Lysander Luddite]

Wow. Some good points in there. I hope you get modded up.

Along with the art film you might be able to see an increase in exposure to films that are not of the 90-110 minute duration. Maybe more shorts and other types of film would be able to make a buck for everybody. Heck, even foregin film (not even shown outside most large cities in the US) may be able to make some money.

Sadly I see the opposite happening. There are rumors Disney is behind the consolidation of HK DVD (which are almost always region free) distribution to a single vendor. I don't want that asset in the hands of any one entity, especially one with Disney connections.

Re:other possible reasons?

[ProfBooty]

Well, basically the result is that only the "best" movies (wether that is mass market appeal or truely inventive) would benefit and the "crap" would go away.

Sounds like a good idea to me, perhaps better quality movies would result. However, people would be less likely to take chances on risky films or sub genres.

Re:other possible reasons?

[f00zbll]

that's a difficult question which I have no answer. It depends on a lot of things right. Normally marketing will spin a movie one way purposely to get people in the theater to see it. If that same movie is pirated and available on the net, would it affect its ability to get a audience?

I have no clue. again if it's a good movie, it will probably do well. if it's crap, well you know. as much as I would like all the movies to be great or good, I doubt it will happen. but it will mean the consumer will know sooner than later a movie is crap :). Bad for movie companies, because there's always going to be a percentage of crap movies. The good movies still have to make up for the movies that suck. I don't know what those numbers are, but maybe some one else knows.

Re:other possible reasons?

[Anonymous Coward]

and really, is it so bad that the business model of producing crappy films might go the way of the dinosaur? i would personally relish not being innundated with ads for such classics as 'dude where's my car'

Re:other possible reasons?

[bryan1945]

Good points.

Another point they should re-think: their incredibly bloated budgets. $10-20-30 million for an "A" list star? Yes, a star will put butts in the seats, but would Ahnuld in "Aladdin 8" be worth $30 mil? The studios have got themselves in this snowballing effect of bigger stars, more effects, bigger explosions while forgetting that a well made movie always encompasses a good story. Take Titanic- DiCaprio couldn't act his way out of a bag, but the backdrop story and the (pretty good) drama made for a movie that I actually bought after seeing in on TV (first time I saw it).

Make a quality movie and people will want to buy it, no matter how good a ripped version is, unless they go the way of music and start charging $40 per DVD. I'm one of those people who has all 4 versions of the Evil Dead DVDs, because to me that movie is compelling enough that I want all material dealing with it.

But since 90% of what they put out is utter dreck, no wonder most of it is pirated- people place zero value on the material and therefor spend zero on it.

meh- I just wish that just ONE LoTR-quality film would come out every year.

Re:other possible reasons?

[Mandelbrute]

2. nitch movies like foriegn or art films may not make as much money in theaters

"Fellowship of the Ring", "Harry Potter and the PHILOSOPHERS stone", "The Matrix" - none of these were made in Hollywood. Foriegn films are doing better than you would think, particularly since most of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood now is a remake, and everything that is vaguely new comes out in triplicate (eg. asteroid films, or films about the enigma code).

A little more attention to detail would result in less crap films. Even "Titanic", with an enormous budget and hundreds of people working on it had things like the ship going under a bridge that was at the level of the bow. In the past this would be called a mistake - now I think they have a belief that mistakes don't matter, the customers are idiots that will swallow anything. Why should people with such an attitude be protected?

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[mericet]

Are you serious? The can only hurt the sales. Think of all the crap they are producing. Would anyone buy that after they saw it?

OT: Re:Don't forget Am�lie !

[CoffeeNowDammit]

Amélie is cute for its own good - to the point of being totally fucking boring. (Does anyone here know the French phrase for "script doctor"?)

Sorry to piss off all of France here, but the reviewers at The Onion's AV Club site said it best. They likened this flick to "doing laps in an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with maple syrup."

There are plenty of other good French films that came out recently, like The Closet and With A Friend Like Harry. Just ignore the saccharine-coated butt ball called Amélie, okay?

Re:OT: Re:Don't forget Am�lie !

[liquidsin]

No, no. BakedBabies put it best when they called Amelie "a 'Fight Club' for chicks".

Re:OT: Re:Don't forget Am�lie !

[Shade, The]

*bottom lip trembles as if about to burst into tears*

B-b-but I liked Amélie!

Same Journalistic Error as Post-Y2K

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

When the world didn't cease to exist at midnight on Jan 1, 2000, many of those in the media declared the huge coding effort and Y2K campaigns that cost billions of dollars a complete waste of money.

We all know that it wasn't a waste of money. It had the desired effect and major tragedy was averted.

Now draw parallels to this article. To quote the poster: "Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?"

No. Piracy is NOT putting them out of business. But it might if they didn't take action.

I think.

Pigs at the trough (part XXXIV)

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise: a hugely profitable industry manufacturing a crisis to squeeze out another penny a share for its shareholders. I'm sure glad that doesn't happen much.

But, really, what can you expect from an economic system founded on the dubious principle that individual greed, left to its own devices, will produce a common good?

Unbelievable

[billcopc]

Funny, I think 2001 is the first year I didn't see at least one movie per week, not even one per month, presumably because 95% of them sucked shit.

It's quite telling when a bunch of chums (some smart, some dumb) look at the 24-plex' listings and all say "there's nothing worth watching". What's even more telling is that the economy is supposedly in a tight spot, yet admission prices have jumped 25% in most cinemas. Are the movies 25% better ? nahhh, they just hurt more when you realize you've just sat through 2 hours of crap that cost you 12$ (canadian). I'd much rather watch 2 hours of Family Man back-to-back for the same price, at least I'd walk out of the dark room with a fresh smile.

Piracy has very little to do with it. I think it plays on the 'value threshold' as I like to call it. Some movies might be worth seeing on a big screen, others you think "hmm nah, i'll wait for the DVD/VHS". Now if one finds a DivX of that second-grade movie, and it's relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, then why not ? At the same time, this sends a faint monetary message to the movie industry : "we're not going to invest in movies that suck". When thousands of people start doing this, the execs will notice, they might start grasping for more legislative strings to pull, but the message will get across one way or another.

Re:Unbelievable

[(void*)]

No offense, you make very good points. But has it occurred to you that the year in which you don't go to a movie a week anymore, is the year in which you've grown up?

I'm just pointing out the fact that people change and mature, but Hollywood does not.

Re:Unbelievable

[billcopc]

Bah.. perhaps, but I'd still go weekly if there were something worth half-watching, but there isn't. Instead I've been filling up my 'entertainment' time playing DDR at the local arcade.. which is even less intellectually stimulating. oh well

Piracy does not influence box office sales

[Shimrod]

Box office sales and loss to piracy are pretty much totally unrelated. Downloading a movie just cannot compete with seeing that movie in a good theater. It can, however, compete with seeing that movie off a bought or rented DVD or tape.

The big losses that are being complained about are not the loss of ticket sales, but the loss of DVD/tape sales and rental. No big Hollywood production can recoup it's production cost from ticket sales alone, not by a long shot. Most of the actual revenue is made trough sales, rental and especially through related merchandise.

What about GNU violations?

[FJ]

It's funny, but I bet a lot of the same people who don't see a problem with movie & music piracy are the same people who complain bitterly about GPL violations in software.

The person (or company) who creates the product gets to determine how to distribute it. Get over it.

Also, just because the movie industry is bringing in more at the box office doesn't mean they are making money. It costs lots of money to make movies today. I'd be interested in knowing what their profits are compared to 1959, not their sales.

Re:What about GNU violations?

[psamuels]

It's funny, but I bet a lot of the same people who don't see a problem with movie & music piracy are the same people who complain bitterly about GPL violations in software.

Hmmm, maybe there are a few people who fit both descriptions, but from what I can tell, those who actually create GPL software (i.e. those who have any right to complain bitterly about GPL violations) are not lame enough to hold those two conflicting views.

It certainly seems to me that there are two distinct groups of "free software" people: those who believe in free software for its freedom, and those who see it as basically equivalent to pirated software or download-for-no-charge software like Adobe Acrobat Reader.

(If you haven't guessed by now, I am in one of these camps and have a certain amount of contempt for the other.)

Re:What about GNU violations?

[SuiteSisterMary]

No, just the ones who use the terms 'open source' and 'free' interchangably.

Re:What about GNU violations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no shit, I mean come on - they can copy your code and do anything they want with it and it doesn't affect you, they weren't going to buy it anyways, right?

Slashdot has always been the home of wildy unrealistic, inconsistent, hypocritical ideologies.

Re:What about GNU violations?

[spitzak]

We aren't trying to get laws passed that say it is illegal to make a compiler that compiles GNU code without posting it to the net. We are not passing laws that say it is illegal to copy data.

If somebody copies GNU code and gets caught then the law applies. The same thing should be true for movies and music. They are perfectly in their rights to shut down web sites and arrest people who are copying their copyrighted works and distributing them for free. They are not in their rights in trying to control how I use my own copy and computer.

Napster as well

[gorehog]

Funny thing, now that the popularity of napster has waned CD sales have gone down. Dont get me wrong, I know there's still plenty of music sharing going on out there, but I remember when DJ's at radio stations were developing massive libraries of music off of napster. Now that napster is by the wayside and music sales are dropping the industry still blames piracy for waning sales although, when music sharing was up and popular sales were high, now that sharing is dying sales are going down. It is odd how a scapegoat remains a scapegoat long after he's been served up with mint jelly on the side.

Re:Napster as well

[checkyoulater]

but I remember when DJ's at radio stations were developing massive libraries of music off of napster.

I thought that radio stations got CD's for free from the labels. Naturally, the labels that provide more 'extras' get more play. Half of my vinyl collection has Promotional Use Only stamped on the sleeves, all cast aways from radio stations that upgraded to CD's. I'm sure most of their CD's have the same notice on them.

Re:Napster as well

[pgrote]

As Napster was gasping the last breath of life it had before the shutdown I was downloading songs from the library. It came in extremely handy for the 50 or so original CD cases I had where my CDs were scratched broken or otherwise lost under my car seats ...

Anyway, I struck up a conversation with someone I had just downloaded a song from. He was a DJ for a radio station and used the newer songs he was getting for a show he does on unknown music. The response he was getting from listners was amazing he said.

We both lamented the fact that we'd easily pay $25-$50 a month for access to a library like this.

And that is the problem ... the RIAA and record companies want to control the distribution. They need to change their thinking and understand that single songs are assets that they can license.

Re:Napster as well

[terrymr]

actually many radio stations don't use cd's anymore - it's all stored in computers and downloaded from the record companies, that's how they control the playlists.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Raindeer]

Can DVD sales suffer from internet piracy? Possibly. Can box-office sales? Nope.

Though I mostly agree with you I want to add a bit of insight from a different location in the world. Here in Europe (and most of the rest of the world not being Northern America), we have to wait a couple of weeks to a couple of months, before a movie that has been released in the US, is shown here in the cinemas. If it ever shows up in the cinemas at all, because many movies, even good ones, go straight to video here or never are released at all. If you download a movie during that waiting period and watch it, you generally won't go to see it in the cinema, nor rent the DVD. So here downloading movies is hurting (in a small way) the sale of cinema tickets, though in my opinion it is mostly because the studios restrict when and if we can see a particular movie.

The big record, movie and tv-companies haven't yet caught on to the fact that the world is a village and that people want to see and hear stuff when it becomes available, not when/if a company decides they can see or hear it.

How could it NOT go up?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to compare the numbers properly. How many movie screens were there in 1959? How much did it cost to go and see a movie in 1959? How about in 1989? 1999?

I don't have all the numbers but someone here must. Through the years the rising cost of admission and greater numbers of cinemas and potential seats cannot help but to increase the overall admissions revenue at the box office.

Plus, how about the hype that the studios create during the opening week? They get a higher percentage of the box office revenue through the first weeks of a movie.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Artik Vodka]

• Can DVD sales suffer from internet piracy? Possibly.

Actually, most people that buy pirate movies, wouldn't buy them if they couldn't have them for a cheaper price than a DVD.

• DVD sales can be seriously hurt by P2P sharing. The MPAA has a few things they can do to prevent that, though. Loading DVD's up with features is one idea. The DVD still has value if the movie's getting downloaded, but the extras aren't. (Or am I in the minority of DVD purchasers because I care more about the bonus footage and making of scenes...?)

Personally I think that people who buy pirate movies just want to see the movie. They are not interested in Director's Commentaries or Technical Aspects that are covered in the extras.

People who are seriously into cinema prefer to own an original copy DVD, rather than a cheap Divx/VCD rip they can only see in their computer (not everyone has a video board with tv-out).

Lot's of people who buy this DVDs are into the interviews, comments, deleted scenes, alternate endings and the stuff that usually gets on DVDs. Dispite that, DVDs are versatile to the point they can even have little Games themed to the movie for us to enjoy.
You can see that by checking the number os signatures of this petition to convince studios to leave extras in the DVDs.

• Another good approach would be to get a handle on why people download the movies. Are they just curious if the movie is any good?

I think they want to see the movie, have it at home, and don't wana go to the theatre spend some bucks to see it on a big screen.

just my POV

What products continue to climb in cost each year?

[psxndc]

Off the top of my head, it's

• Movies (box office, not video)
• CDs

what else? Video games (the majority at least) have remained at about $50 since forever (though gameboy games have climbed). Hardware, just about any type, is always dropping. Magazines (for the content based argument) seem to sell for approximately what they always have. What else out there continues to climb in price year after year?

psxndc

What a shocker

[MikeDX]

I'm no big fan of piracy, however we all know it can be very useful to get pirated material of things not available or no longer available on the internet or wherever your piracy needs are filled. However, this just goes to show that there is still no positive link between the amount of pirate movies and how many people visit their local cinema. Remember a few years back (mid 80s?) when nobody was going to the cinema? They blamed the video store. Pirate movies have been around for years and years and years and years and... snip. They'll blame steps splitting up on mp3.com next

Could it just be...

[Anonymous Coward]

These fuckas keep complaining about losing money. couldn't it just be that people are just not going to watch many movies or buying DVDs/CDs lately because most of the movies and music are fucking pathetic.

I think most people are getting tired of the typical "horny kids want sex" kinda movies and those annoying little fucking whores like britney spears and mariah carey who have no talent but have to take their clothes off to sell music.

I think it's simple. If someone thinks the album is really worth it and they love the entertainer, then they more than likely will make a legitimate purchase. The notion of people pirating movies/music are no different from Intel making "X" amount of chips from a wafer. You will always have a small loss, and should account for that. And if these fuckas want people to buy their shit, they maybe they should come out with some fucking worthwhile music/movies.

Quality issues

[paule9984673]

I ripped lots of my own DVDs in order to slow them down from 25 fps (PAL) to 24 fps (FILM). You would be surprised how noticeable the difference in the voices can be.

Despite the loss in video quality I consider these rips BETTER in quality than the original DVD.

Re:Quality issues

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you manage to slow it down man? Is there like a fps option on the software you use to rip the DVD, or is it in the playback software?

Re:Quality issues

[paule9984673]

see this thread for instructions. Reading there, it seems that not everyone is equally bothered by the audio being sped up for PAL. I'm pretty sure I am, though.

Actually

[mlylecarlin]

Actually, last year the record companies made more money but less profits than in previous years.

mlylecarlin

Re:Actually

[radish]

I think you must mean "had a higher turnover" - "making money" is synonymous with making a profit.

Re:Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

And your proof is?

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Artik Vodka]

If they did that, some people would lose interest on the film. Lot's of people go to the cinema and dislike the filme they saw. Companies still get their bucks. If they gave you a look at the first half of the film, lot's of people would lose that interest

• "wow, this sucks, I'm glad I didn't go to the movie before this half-movie-preview."

and they would lose some bucks.
That's what happens in Europe. We can have copies (divx, vcd, ...) of a movie release in States in some days, but to see in the theaters we have to wait some nice period of time. Some people who buy those copies just don't see the movie after that.

Trailer's are used to get your attention. Good trailer equals to a good box office income, because people will be atracted.
That's why trailer's usally show the best parts in the movie, best f/x, the dialogue that makes you wana know the rest, and all that.

Shit happens, Americans escape into fantasy.

[crovira]

Its been that way since the depression. People who couldn't afford a loaf of bread could afford to spend a few hours in a darkened room forgetting about their troubles.

One more thing that moron Valenti's wrong about. Gad. Can how can you be that full of shit and live?

Re:Shit happens, Americans escape into fantasy.

[Pig Hogger]

One more thing that moron Valenti's wrong about. Gad. Can how can you be that full of shit and live?

Simply because he represents a bullshit industry...

impersonators?

[yerricde]

There is only ONE David Schwimmer. If you want David Schwimmer you need to pay good money for him.

At one time, there was only ONE Elvis Presley. Now there are hundreds. The only thing keeping celebrity impersonation from making a huge splash is the right of publicity, effectively a trademark on a likeness of a living person.

Re:impersonators?

[hagardtroll]

I couldn't agree more.

There really isn't just one Brittney Spears. There are actually many of them. When it comes to blonde teeny-pop musicians, they are a dime a dozen.

Its just that the recording industry decided to market and sell the hell out of the particular one THEY picked.

They created the demand by promoting this one. They limited the supply by controlling the industry to prevent other blonde fake-boobed teeny pop musicians from getting exposure.

And the kids fall for it every time.

Looks who's talking

[magullo]

Why dont *you* read the thread?

there is enormusly huge difference between a movie and music cd

Not when it comes to exaggerating piracy figures nor when trampling all over fair use nor when lobbying for outrageous measures.

The laws being passed in the USA don't matter

[Moderation abuser]

If copying overseas is the main problem then why are these companies hitting their most profitable and loyal home based customers?

Re:The laws being passed in the USA don't matter

[zummythegreat]

If copying overseas is the main problem then why are these companies hitting their most profitable and loyal home based customers?

Maybe they are trying to setup a pay-per view system. It would not be very difficult with the changes they are purposing. Think about it, if they charge $5 per view (which is cheaper then the local movie theater even at the economy rates) then they would about double their profits after playing the movie 4 of 5 times.

If one day they just announced all electronics would be equipped with devices that would charges $5 in order to play the movie you just purchased, a large number of people would be upset. But, if they claim the devices are there to prevent piracy and slowly introduce a pay-per view system afterwards, they just might get away with it.

But of course no film ever makes a profit!

[JeffRC]

Remember, this is the same industry in which no film ever makes a profit, thus negating the need to pay royalties, yet somehow nobody ever goes bankrupt.

Re:But of course no film ever makes a profit!

[phillymjs]

Remember, this is the same industry in which no film ever makes a profit, thus negating the need to pay royalties...

Yup, just ask the guys who wrote Forrest Gump (the novel, and the screenplay)

The movie industry is like Microsoft with concession stands.

~Philly

Watermarks will solve that

[yerricde]

Someone walks into a theater with a freakin' cam corder and films the film. Or, they borrow the actual film from a friend who works there and they do the transfer that way. How do ANY of the proposed DRM (Digital Rights Minimization) tools going to prevent that?

Same way the SDMI watermarks were supposed to work. There would be a watermark on the content itself, and if an SSSCA compliant device were to detect the watermark, it would look for a digital signature detailing the license terms. No sig, no record button. And Congress can circumvent extraterritoriality limitations on its IP laws with import sanctions: "You break our copyright law, your entire country loses the U.S. as a market."

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[Anonymous Coward]

"many people are predicting the demise of the recording industry entirely."

I can't wait!

Difference between music CD and a movie?

[yerricde]

but there is enormusly huge difference between a movie and music cd

But what about a music CD and a music video DVD? What about a music video DVD and some of the early Disney animated films (Fantasia, Melody Time, etc.) that were essentially music video collections (and would be up for expiration soon were it not for the Bono Act)?

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[leviramsey]

Magazines (for the content based argument) seem to sell for approximately what they always have. What else out there continues to climb in price year after year?

Magazines have historically tended to increase in price when the advertising market is soft. One portion of the price of magazines is the cover/subscription price. The rest is the ad pages. Magazines generally don't like raising subscription/cover prices (as circulation declines), so if their costs increase dramatically, they look to sell more ad pages. But when they're having trouble selling ad pages to begin with, the only solution becomes to increase the prices paid by readers (although some "insider discounts" may be the first to go). The reason why magazines have seemed constant over the last 5 years is the strength of the ad market, largely led by the flood of dot-com money (think for a moment about how much your average high-profile startup burned with magazine and TV ads).

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[MeNeXT]

You make a good point since most of the marketing hypes up the movie to expectations that connot be met by the crap that is being produced. It just seems it's all cookie cutter productions.

Re:NOW HEAR THIS

[BattleCat]

Well, does it means we had to drop nuclear bombs on Afghanistan back there in 1980s ? They were capturing and executing our soldiers, lots of. We fought there almost ten years (1979-1989), while you screamed loudly about human rights, invasion and so on, supporting Taliban with firearms, military instructors and money. So, you're having what you paid for.

International copyright + Region-locking

[yerricde]

they could schedule some 2-year period (hard-coded on the DVD, if they want) during which the DVD would only be playable in a given place, but after this period, it could be played worldwide with *no* limitations...

I've considered this angle, but it's probably not as important as the fact that DVD region coding isn't about protecting the theatrical market but instead about the inability of studios to secure worldwide rights to some works because of different copyright laws in different countries. (Read More...)

Re:International copyright + Region-locking

[Steve B]

I've considered this angle, but it's probably not as important as the fact that DVD region coding isn't about protecting the theatrical market but instead about the inability of studios to secure worldwide rights to some works because of different copyright laws in different countries.

That's irrelevant -- inability to secure rights in Country X merely prevents the studio from selling through outlets in Country X. It doesn't create an affirmative duty to prevent someone from buying a copy in Country Y and bringing it to Country X in his luggage (if it did, the system would require one region for each country).

history repeating itself!

[ma_sivakumar]

There is a big film industry in Tamil Nadu (southern India). The same shouts and whines are going on here about piracy here.

The movie industry guys get together and decide that no actor should give interview to the satellite TV channels (people prefer to watch their actors in the TV rather coming ot the movie halls !!).

In Radio talk shows, directors call those who watch movies in VCD as doing prostitution at home !!!. The whole thing of not understanding and going along with the technology but resist till they are dragged along kicking screaming is painful

These guys copy so many techniques from Hollywood. But do not look at how the industry there went through the same process and learnt to bring the fans to the movie hall inspite of all the VCDs.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[zsmooth]

You're exactly right. In fact, even though studios show press screenings of movies weeks before the movie opens, they ask reporters not to post their reviews until the movie actually opens. Of course, they can't force the reviewer not to print it, they just say "if you do, you won't be going to any more screenings..."

It's obvious why they do this. They don't want bad reviews sinking crappy films before the first day. A crappy film is going to have it's best take the first couple days of its opening before everyone has had a chance to hear how horrible it is. The movie studios can't say "you must wait until opening day to release your review UNLESS it's a good review" so they make you wait with all of them.

Here's an explanation from a reviewer I know.

The flaw with their argument is...

[Svartalf]

...that Jack and Co spouted the same, now tired, tripe when VHS came out. It didn't destroy them then (it actually made them stronger once they embraced the technology...) and if they play their cards right now instead of the protectionist bullshit they're trying to get made up for them it'll be a repeat performance.

Let's not confuse things here

[Shoten]

They're talking about box office revenue, which has nothing to do with the kinds of "piracy" discussed here. I think, like most of you, that Jack Valenti is one of the lowest forms of scum to walk the earth, but it won't do us one bit of good to sink to their level of calling apples oranges and oranges apples because we think it may help our side in this whole conflict. Truth is, it won't help, and it only harms our credibility.

Re:Let's not confuse things here

[SuiteSisterMary]

Not at all, because one of the things they're complaing about is '0-day' rips of movies showing up on the P2P networks a week before movies actually open.

This reminds me...

[MongooseCN]

This reminds me of a caller that called into a radio show. She remortgaged her house and used the money to do day trading. All her money from the mortgage was lost to day trading. She then called up the radio show and asked how she could get her money back! The host just laughed at her and basically said she was an idiot for doing that.

The point is, too many people rely on the government to solve their financial problems. Most people think that if they lose all their money the government will step in and get it all back. Same with corporations. If the corp is losing profits they expect the goverment to step in and give them all their profits back. How about making a better product than trying to get the government to force money out of people for you?

Isn't this a given?

[thunker]

Someone please tell Jack that since 1959 the population as grown and so has the number of movie theatres.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[X86Daddy]

Pirating a movie in the theaters cannot hold a candle to going and seeing the movie. Frankly, if somebody is going to download the pirated movie, then the chances are they aren't going to pay to see it. It is too big of a hassle.

True Story: I had no intention of seeing Kate & Leopold. Then one evening, when my girlfriend didn't want to go out, she asked me to pull it down from Morpheus. After we watched the first few minutes at DivXed camcorder quality, and enjoyed the content, we hunted down the showtimes, and went to see it anyway.

Coworkers of mine who also are into downloading films have related the same type of experience (going to see the movie because they had downloaded it first)

It's not like we didn't help ...

[Anonymous Coward]

with all the crying about the MPAA on here, it's not like us flocking to LOTR in herds of 10+ geeks at a time didn't help them keep funding their ridiculous 'schemes'

industry solution - genius!

[vena]

here's the plan, boys! we'll make tons of absolutely horrible movies, take Queen of the Damned for a recent example. then, we'll hype them up so much that everyone in the world goes to see them in the theatres. the kicker is - they wouldn't have bought the stupid DVD anyway, but at least we got their money at the box office!

Lots of products' prices undergo inflation

[yerricde]

What else out there continues to climb in price year after year?

Services. Because of the wage-price spiral, the price of labor (and thus the price of services) will increase over time. This is called inflation.

Labor is an input cost and makes up part of a product's Cost Of Goods Sold. Because the costs of labor tend to increase, the costs of goods produced with such labor will also increase, especially in mature industries where there is no Moore's law to drive down prices of a particular good.

Watermarks can be stripped out...

[Svartalf]

Just like SDMI's watermarking was proven to be ineffective at keeping people from filing the serial numbers off and impairing quality, the same goes for video. If it's invisible to the user and is identifiable, it's removable as well.

Anyone in Broward County, Florida?

[Mynn]

Monday, March 18th at 7pm, one of the Vice Presidents of the MPAA will be speaking at the main (I think?) branch of the Broward County Library with the public invited for a question/answer session.

Of course, if you listen to WLRN for any great length of time during the day, you know this ;)

3%

[Shuh]

3% loss in revenue over last year. That's what the music industry is worried about. Nevermind that there was an economic downturn this year and many more industries lost more both in percentages and money. Of course the rest of the industries in the economy aren't lobbying to have our rights taken away... or are they?

Re:3%

[the eric conspiracy]

3% loss in revenue over last year. That's what the music industry is worried about. Nevermind that there was an economic downturn this year and many more industries lost more both in percentages and money.

Of course the movie industry (like the beer industry) is normally completely recession proof - economic downturns often give people more leisure time to visit the theaters.

Re:3%

[vena]

Of course the movie industry (like the beer industry) is normally completely recession proof - economic downturns often give people more leisure time to visit the theaters.

absolutely. the great depression saw the boom of the film industry as people went to films in droves. and then, of course, the introduction of television gave the movie industry something to bitch about :)

Re:3%

[Anonymous Coward]

How did music sales drop 40% yet revenues only drop 3%?

That doesn't mak sense.. I didn't see any huge increase in CD prices....

Not with the DMCA they can't

[yerricde]

Just like SDMI's watermarking was proven to be ineffective at keeping people from filing the serial numbers off and impairing quality, the same goes for video. If it's invisible to the user and is identifiable, it's removable as well.

As I said, the movie industry will be able to get import restrictions on such devices. Heck, they could even circumvent the First Amendment by paying a judge to say that information on circumvention poses a clear and present danger to the movie industry.

The difference is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that we are going to win. You loser.

Re:The difference is...

[BattleCat]

You're just _going_ to win. You're nearly not there, despite your media/politics say to you.
After all, USA teens will consume Afghan-made heroin, crack and weed, mostly, produced by USA-proposed Afghan government. Taliban strictly prohibited "henry/horse" production, due to Muslim laws, new Afghan govt is free of this religious regulations - and they need money, desperately - so new fields are seeded, daily. Think about it, when your neighbor's child will be found dead gripping a needle (see BBC story about similar case).
Winners, eh...

Re:The difference is...

[Fuck You Faggot]

STFU

Re:The difference is...

[voinageo]

Take your heroin you junkie and stfu.

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[Sabalon]

paperback books.

I have a copy of some thick book like Dune or Magician that was about $2.99 in 1979. Now that book is about $10.

Same book - possibly new cover art.

They'd find a way

[psamuels]

How would you enforce this. The work around could be as simple as changing the date on your computer?

A lot of software is licensed for thousands of dollars per seat per year. Naturally, some people try to cheat by setting back their clocks. So some software keeps track of when it was last run, and if current time is before that date it knows you've been screwing with it. CATIA, for example, refuses to open a CAD model whose internal timestamp [not the FS mtime / ctime] is in the future. I heard of one package that actually sabotages itself when it detects time-tampering, so you have to reinstall it.

These sorts of checks would be annoying enough to deter casual region-code hacking. (Yes, I realise that setting the clock too far into the future is harder to detect / prevent, but there are ways.) The more serious "violators" (and I use that term loosely, since I see no moral problem with circumventing region coding) aren't deterred by the current scheme anyway, so what's the difference..

Re:They'd find a way

[dbateman]

God what horrible minds some software developers have.

This is not really on-topic, but I can see a horrible potential problem with the scheme of self-sabotaging software you're talking about. Two people working on the same files, without time synchronization between the machines (eg ntp). You could easily fall into a condition where the clock between the two machines was out. Even a few minutes out could cause this self-sabotage you're talking about!

A worse case might be dual-boot machine, where one OS stores the CMOS clock in UMT and the other in local time. We see this one all the time. So there you'd have potentially 12 hours of time error.

Frankly, I think software like this is dangereous to my data. I'd kind of feel obiliged to crack the software just to protect myself, rather than for any motives of piracy.

D.

Re:They'd find a way

[psamuels]

This is not really on-topic, but I can see a horrible potential problem with the scheme of self-sabotaging software you're talking about. Two people working on the same files, without time synchronization between the machines (eg ntp).

Mind this is just hearsay. A couple days ago someone told me about some package that "stopped working and we had to reinstall it" when they set the clock. I don't know for sure that the software did this intentionally as a way to punish the would-be cheater. I don't even remember the program name. Wasn't in my department.

Frankly, I think software like this is dangereous to my data. I'd kind of feel obiliged to crack the software just to protect myself, rather than for any motives of piracy.

I support that sentiment. Time/node-based licensing is a PITA around here; a few cracked software releases would make my job much easier. But not enough easier to justify the time it would take me to do it....

Flaming hypocrites

[Pussy Is Money]

Yeah. That probably means you.

"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing^W taking away from him such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

Re:Flaming hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

At least tell everyone where you got it from, though you did put quotes around it.

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[ethereal]

Sure, sure, and *BSD is dying too. I'll believe it when I see it :)

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[kerrbear]

Also, one thing you'll notice is that the MPAA isn't making exactly the same claims that the RIAA was. And honstly movie piracy isn't such
What the MPAA is saying is that movie piracy is going to hurt them in the future and it's also keeping them from jumping on the digital TV, movie thing (thats why we need the SSSCA!).

I don't think movie piracy will ever really hurt the movie industry even when it does get as easy as ripping off songs. The reason is, you just cannot duplicate the movie going experience on your DVD or home computer. When LOTR comes out, I don't want to see it on my laptop- I want to see it on the big screen with a big crowd.

Sure I might want to watch it on my laptop later- but I will buy or rent the DVD with all the cool extra footage and quality. A friend of mine actually did download a copy of LOTR and he showed some of it to me- but somehow it cheapened the experience. I thought "Gee, I really want to see this in the theatre again before I see it on the small screen.

Downloading songs is completely different. You can duplicate the exact experience of listening to the CD. Or near enough where it threatens the sale of the CD.

Just my .02

I work in Broward County....

[Cybersonic]

i may want go to this... :)

i work in Fort Lauderdale, a few miles away from the library

Anything i should listen out for? :)

Re:I work in Broward County....

[Anonymous Coward]

Gun shots?

David Schwimmer

[markyd]

Yeah, but why would him? He can't act.

Re:David Schwimmer

[Stonehand]

To boost the female audience, perhaps?

SOMEBODY MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing to see here... move along....

uh sooo how about a price cut?

[SquierStrat]

I mean really, I'd see every movie that came out if it didn't cost me 8 dollars to see them! Really, they'd probably make MORE money if they'd cut prices!

This seems so dumb, we're making millions of dollars off of this amount, so let's raise ticket prices, pay movie theater employees next to nothing (they don't even have to make minimum wage and I know many who don't!) and tell people who are supportng us by buying DVDs that it is illegal for them to decrypt them so they can enjoy the product they paid for!

Perhaps there's another take

[mazachan]

on this.. I think the MPAA and the RIAA realize the full potential of the internet. If they went down without a fight, how would that look? How would that look to the public? In going down kicking and screaming, they are deterring the average joe while they can get something else in place. I think they probably are buying time right now. If they had let up, then everyone and their mother would walk all over them given the chance. While there is actually no proof, what's there to say that they aren't working on an mp3 sites where you can pay 5 bucks a month?

Re:Perhaps there's another take

[z0rak's_Eyeball]

I'm in agreement that the demonic duo are doing all they can to slow things down, but I highly doubt any real technical juggernaut is at work behind the scenes. It would be more likely that they are hedging their bets and waiting for the one-two punch of the DMCA and SSSCA to make things easier for them. I mean, why go through all the trouble of solving the "hard" problems of secured distribution and usage when you can force the hand of all the major technology players to do the work for you, with just a little money donated here and there to the right congressman.

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[the eric conspiracy]

What else out there continues to climb in price year after year?

College tuition, health care, cable TV.

Yeah, Right

[composer777]

I'll agree with luck having something to do with it. But please, those guys don't work THAT hard. I've done factory work before, and land scaping, ditch digging, it's not THAT fucking hard. Our country has one of the best student financial aid programs in the world. The idea that someone can't go to their local university, take a loan, and get a degree is ridiculous. Now, in India, over there getting in college is tough, where maybe one in ten thousand get to go. But telling me that someone over here is too poor to go college, when I paid my way through and got two degrees, is absolute bullshit.

Dumb-ass moviegoers!

[Myxyplik]

A record-breaking year for the movie industry, and yet half the movies that came out last year was crap! Shall I name a few? Jurassic Park III, Tomb Raider, The Fast and the Furious, and yes, dammit, Shrek!!! All this may give one pause to wonder what that says about the people who watch movies.

Don't forget demographics...

[icey5000]

Lobbying is a long-term game. The recording companies & associations are also looking at their long-term profit potential, which is fairly soft 5-10 years out. It has nothing directly to do with piracy, it has to do with demographics and greed.

The demographics are simple: there is a fairly large cohort of baby-boomer's kids in the premium 14-24 age group. Five to 10 years from now they will start to move out of this age-group (en mass). To the MPAA & RIAA this is a nightmare. People between 10 and 30 are their core market. SO, 5-10 years from now, their profits will plunge (and I do mean plunge) -- after all, who can afford to spend 100's of dollars on CD's, music and entertainment when you've got kids and a mortgage.

So why do the execs care? Greed and security. Even though the average exec (exec, not owner) couldn't give a damn about their current company 5-10 years from now, investors do. So, to to justify their huge salaries and bonuses, execs have to look out for the long-term interests of the company. If the industry/industry is considered a bad investment, you can't make as much money on the stock markets. If you can't make as much money on the markets, the executive pay shouldn't be as high.

And, this issue is industry-wide, so if they want to keep working in music (which I assume most of them do), there is a career crisis.

So what do they do? They look for new revenue sources. And P2P payments look great! In fact, it looks like a money tree. The profits will only grow, even if the demographics shift, since you can creep up pricing over time. And, your marginal costs will drop over time as the technology gets cheaper and cheaper.

Too bad for the rest of us that their idea seems more like taxation by corporations rather than a fee for a service or product.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Lysander Luddite]

What percentage of the movies you download are in commercial release (shown intheaters) at that time?

And

[Lysander Luddite]

If SSSCA is passed you won't be able to afford to make your own digital content becuase creating it could also be used to circumvent copy protection. Ergo, you pay to see other people's stuff, but can't make your own without paying commercial rates to create it.

McDonald's

[falser]

Whatever a big mac combo costs now, it will cost between 2 and 5 cents more next year. It has been rising by this range every year I can remember.

Wrong... So Wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Types of Wealth...

Inherited Wealth: Second generation or later family who's wealth is derived from the generation before. Rarely do these people work a full work week over the course of a year. They people to protect their money and make them more money, figurheading what they do.

First Generation Wealth: Defined as someone who has worked a certain period of time to build their monetary and physical assets to the point that they car considered wealthy. Some of these people did not neccessarily 'work' to get it in the traditional sense, while some did. In todays electronic based informatino society, I bet less than 1/2 of the current first gen rich got it through manual or long duration labor.

Stumbled Into Wealth: Lottery winners and those who acquired their wealth in a totally non-traditional manner. This could be through compensation based on some type of law suit (alot of those in todays sue happy society) or some otherwise odd or unconventional way.

Illegally Wealthy: Those who have stolen or other wise committed a crime or crimes to get their wealth. Several of the biggest second+ generation wealthy families are based in part or whole on criminal activities (white collor or otherwise) when viewed through the lens of modern society and law.

That being said, there are alot of people who in fact do not work hard to gain or keep their wealth. They pay other people to manipulate the systems of economics and law and keep their wealth safe and growing.

The average working joe, who is still far and above the backbone of any society, work harder, for less reward and typically shorter lives of less pleasure and enjoyment. This due to the simple fact that there is only so money to go around and that rich people do not like to loose any wealth to the average joe. Rich people almost exclusively are rich because they covet their money and material items...

Do you really think someone needs a billion or more dollars? There is collectively very little a person can do with that kind of money that would drain it away and make him/her poor. And yet they struggle and fight and backstab and do what ever it takes to keep that money and make even more, even though they really have nothing they can do with it. It's power in the end, and they are mad with it.

The average person may not aspire to be rich... this should not be interpreted as a lack of intelligence or ability. I would attribute it to a over abundance of common sense, and maybe a smidge of a lack of ambition.

The average joe certainly wants to be comfortable and often speaks of becoming rich, but if you were to give 1000 average joes 1 million dollars, I bet less than 2% would invest and save and truely try to make it grow so they could be considered a powerful, wealthy person. Most would splurge and make themselves and others happy, maybe saving a bit for their kids and using interest to augment their own income.

There is no shame in working at making a steady living. Hard work is just as rewarding, and surely less psychotic than being rich and hording your money, lording over those people you deem less than you due to a false perception of power. In the end, we are all the same, and you can't take it with you anyway.

What's the point of piddly screens

[Anonymous Coward]

the size of my friend's TV set? (he has more comfortable seats too). I generally only go to see blockbusters in *big* screens (with arty films like Amelie I have to make do with medium sized ones). Ideally, go to Poitiers (futuroscope) where every screen is an iMax with extra features (e.g. 360 degree full colour stereoscopic film, or high speed high resolution film (good for helicopter cruises)).

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[stubear]

Movies and CDs increase in cost because the production costs increase. Post production costs have grown and special effects are creeping into some of the most unlikely places in movies. Recording studios use the latest technology to improve the fidelity of the music they record. Do not compare what can be done on a laptop or desktop with what can be done in a full blown studio setting (both for music and film).

Look at the real issue...

[pinkUZI]

Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?

They aren't claiming that piracy is putting them out of business, they are claiming that it has the potential to cause them more and more loss of profits with the emergence of broadband technology. Something that they have the right to be annoyed about because this happens to be America a country known for its success with the Free Enterprise system.

I'm so sick of hearing people bitch and complain because somebody charges a few bucks for a movie they spent millions to make. This isn't communism, Hollywood and everyone else that watches their movies doesn't have to support your movie habit. Just pay for the show if you want to watch it, would ya? And quit complaining that somebody is making money for his innovation. Those are all principles that this country is built on, if you don't like them, GET OUT!

Re:Look at the real issue...

[tempest303]

And quit complaining that somebody is making money for his innovation.

Woah, slow down there Mr. Balmer... I thought we were talking about the MPAA, not software.

Those are all principles that this country is built on, if you don't like them, GET OUT!

That's funny, I don't see a whole lot on the "right to profit" in our constitution... We do, however, have LAWS that are supposed to protect our fair use rights. Perhaps it was these principles you were referring to?

Telling people to "get out" of the country when they don't agree with the status quo is plain bullshit. Tell me you've never once complained about the way the Gov't is run. Bet you can't - so why don't you just LEAVE? See, Democracy is all about being able to *change* the laws to suit the times. If one doesn't like the system, it is that person's right to try to change it!

Re:Look at the real issue...

[pinkUZI]

I don't see a whole lot on the "right to profit" in our constitution...

No, I believe that was in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The unalienable right to pursue hapiness should not be challenged by your perspective on what hapiness is or by your belief in the welfare state.

Re:Look at the real issue...

[tempest303]

The unalienable right to pursue hapiness should not be challenged by your perspective on what hapiness is or by your belief in the welfare state.

Nice troll. Where exactly am I advocating a "welfare state?" And I'm not even going to TOUCH the compairson between the "right to profit" and the "persuit of Happiness". Happiness is now a purchasable, tradable commodity? Attitudes like this are part of what helps America SUCK MORE AND MORE EVERY DAY. grrrr!

Re:Look at the real issue...

[poot_rootbeer]

...potential to cause them more and more loss of profits ... Something that they have the right to be annoyed about because this happens to be America a country known for its success with the Free Enterprise system.

You do know that "Free Enterprise" implies that the government does not put its hands in which companies can make money and which can't, right?

The MPAA has every right to be annoyed about their profits not growing as fast as they would like to.

They do NOT have the right to push legislation that gives their profits any king of legal protection.

Re:Look at the real issue...

[pinkUZI]

Ok...
{deep breath}
Point taken on the 'welfare state' accusation. That was more a reference to the article and to the idea out there that everything should be free. The idea that we all share the wealth created from the efforts of individuals is commonly [pun intended] referred to as communism.
Sorry.
The Pursuit of Happiness often involves the obtaining of money as it is the means to most ends in this country. So, for instance, if happiness is time with your kids, take a look at what you are spending more of your time doing, is it making money or playing with your kids? If its making money, which it is for most, then maybe you should make a movie, make a couple million dollars, and take the next couple of years off.

Oh, yeah, btw... Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 6. There you go - free trade as defined in the constitution.

Re:Look at the real issue...

[gmhowell]

I rather hope this was joking...

Go back and reread the Federalist papers, Declaration of Independence, etc, etc. The US was founded by a bunch of whiners and complainers.

The difference is, they did something about it. So the correct answer to complaints is not "GET OUT", but "fix the problem".

Re:Look at the real issue...

[tempest303]

Oh, yeah, btw... Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 6. There you go - free trade as defined in the constitution.

While I appreciate the citation, I wouldn't call that a "right to profit" as we discussed. Free trade is a method of encouraging the growth of business, but it's not a right to profit. However, Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 says: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

Not the limited Times; I think this contradicts the concept of "Profit Uber Alles", and promotes a view that Arts and Sciences are good for MORE than just their "market value." This notion of balance is very important - it is a recognition that the end all and be all of our lives should not be the simple persuit of profit, but that some things are worth doing for the sake of doing them, or for the benefit of the whole of society. On the other hand, however, it strongly states that the authors, film makers, scientists, et al, should be fairly compensated for their work, and that money is one way to encourage the advancement of the arts and sciences. To forget or ignore either half of this notion is, IMHO, to miss the point completely.

Re:Look at the real issue...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

The unalienable right to pursue hapiness should not be challenged by your perspective on what hapiness

Exactly...and one thing that makes ME happy is being able to make use of material that grows up into a public domain work, after my tax money (and of course, that of my parents and relatives and so on, and even other corporations) pays to maintain its "owner's" monopoly (can't really say "author" or "inventor" here, in light of "works for hire"). You DO realize its our tax money that pays for criminal investigation of "blatantly criminal" copyright violation (e.g. bulk sales of copies of material made without authorization by someone besides the current copyright holder), pays the judges' salaries, pays Congress' salaries (etc etc), as well as the fact that WE are the ones serving on juries when these issues reach the level of a criminal trial.

From my perspective, WE have a duty to take up material that finally reaches the end of its long journey to the public domain, and use those works to create new things, generate new ideas, and so on (the "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" part of the constitution.) "Promoting" this progress is the law's job, but GENERATING it is ours...and certain corporations (who I'm pretty sure don't fall into the category the writers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote "men") are using their influence to interfere with this duty of ours.

A strange way of looking at it, maybe, but it's an angle that seems to have been completely overlooked so far...

Re:Look at the real issue...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

[...]'welfare state' accusation. That was more a reference to the article[...]

I read the article. I didn't get THAT from it at all...

What I got from it was the notion that "ideas" and expressions are not, and should not, be "property" (in the same sense that my car, my house, etc. are "property"), but that the laws governing what is currently, sadly, referred to as "intellectual property" are intended to "bend" the definition of property JUST ENOUGH to encourage the flow of "intellectual" expressions.

In the case of patents, for example, the CONCEPT is that without protection, someone could do a lot of work coming up with an invention, only to have it stolen by a non-innovative but powerful entity (person or corporation), and said inventor might instead keep his or her invention secret, rather than sharing it with the rest of the world. The "loss" that Patent grants is supposed to protect the country from is the loss of widespread access to the ideas contained in the invention (I don't think ANYBODY is arguing that the physical "thing" that has been invented isn't actual "property"). The REASON this is a loss, is because ideas fuel other ideas. Therefore, patent law makes a bargain - "We'll 'bend' the definition of property for a little while, so that you can be protected for a limited time to keep control of, and make profit from if you so desire, your invention, but in return, the ideas embodied in this invention will become available to the rest of the country for use, study, and reworking once this 'limited time' is up".

The point of the article is that the purpose of Copyright law is the same - to PROMOTE THE RELEASE OF IDEAS AND EXPRESSIONS, on the basis that the better "flow" of idea exchange there is, the better the rate and quality of new ideas that will result (and that, obviously, the country as a whole will benefit from this).

The fundamental flaw with the apparently perpetual copyright grant extensions is that the length of time now being used to define "limited" has gone WAY beyond the point where there is a "net benefit" to the Country as a whole in exchange - which I think is true at this point...especially considering the additional impact of making criminals out of people who common sense says are NOT criminals. (example - I have a Linux machine. I buy DVD's. I've watched some of these DVD's on my linux machine. The DMCA says I'm a criminal, because I had to use a "circumvention device" to do so, but I think most people's common sense would say "watching a movie that you've paid for doesn't sound like a criminal act to me...")

I mean, honestly, would Disney REALLY quit making movies and go out of business if they were limited to, say, even 50 years of exclusive rights to material they've hired? If not, then the extension of copyright to well beyond a normal human lifespan has no benefit to "the progress of science and the useful arts", and in fact, may make Disney complacent - with some of their material growing up and heading out on it's own into the public domain, Disney would likely be encouraged to produce MORE new material to maintain their profit levels (resulting in more stimulation of the economy overall).

I don't see anywhere in this that says "everything should be free-of-charge to everyone and everyone should be living in a commune"...

Re:Look at the real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

{QUOTE}
I'm so sick of hearing people bitch and complain because somebody charges a few bucks for a movie they spent millions to make. This isn't communism, Hollywood and everyone else that watches their movies doesn't have to support your movie habit. Just pay for the show if you want to watch it, would ya? And quit complaining that somebody is making money for his innovation. Those are all principles that this country is built on, if you don't like them, GET OUT!
{/QUOTE}

I vote with my dollars. I do not go to the movie theaters that charge $4 or more just to see a 2 hour movie. I go to a second run theater in which I pay $1.50 to see a movie. I also refuse to buy VHS tapes because they don't last very long. I HAVE just recently started buying DVDs but I refuse to pay $10 for a single movie. My price point is $5 to $7 for a DVD. I still haven't seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because it never went to the second run theater and stores want to change $20 for the movie on VHS or DVD and I refuse!
I live on a very strict budget, I spend maybe $35 a week on entertainment. I will use this money to buy books and DVDs and go to the second run theater and a few other incidentals. I try to get everything I can for my money so I don't go if I think they charge too much. The entertainment industry seems to think that it's okay to cheat the content creators and then turn around and again cheat the consumers. I don't like it and wont stand for it.
The entertainment industry isn't the only game in town. I enjoy learning and I enjoy playing with electronics and programming and reading. I have so many interests that if the entire entertainment industry went away, I would still find ways to be entertained. And since they all seem to be having a Marie Antoinette moment, I say LET THEM EAT CAKE!

Re:Look at the real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't claiming that piracy is putting them out of business, they are claiming that it has the potential to

Hmmm.... then I think I'll sue GM and Seagram's, because I have the potential to get run over by a drunk driver. :-)

Re:Look at the real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence also wrote that ideas could not, in principle, be a subject of property -- and that society could choose to extend exclusive rights to the profits, or not, according to its own benefits/convenience.

So I think it's safe to say that the "pursuit of happiness" wording is not an endorsement of DMCA or SSSCA type proposals. On the contrary, those pieces of cruft would have Jefferson (author, inventor, President) rolling over in his grave.

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[Cylix]

Not entirely correct.

I was able to snag "backup" copies of the fast and the furious from kazaa within 15 minutes. Split into two files each roughly 600mb in size.

With a beefy connection (ds3@65mb/s) I was able to get multiple feeds of various parts of the same file from different users.

For this to work of course there have to be a good chunk of users with fast connections for me to abuse.

Troll?

[Bunji X]

Why was the above marked as Troll?

How trustworthy is Valenti?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have said before and will repeat now.....Valenti is a snake, watch him most carefully. He is really a politician in disguise and the consummate Washington insider. Why do i say this? How do i know this? Ok...i'll tell you. Remember the picture of LBJ and Jackie Kennedy on AirForce One when LBJ is being sworn in as president? If you look in the lower left background you'll see a much younger Jack Valenti!!! I don't think it necessary to talk about where you fit in the scheme of things to even be aboard AF-1, let alone have sufficiently free reign to wander about the cabin so as to be visible in said picture...particularly in light of what must have been quite formidable security.

Although the picture is not at this site you can nevertheless read the confirmation of my assertion in Valenti's own words here:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/feature d_ articles/19981123monday.html

Re:How trustworthy is Valenti?

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct URL should be:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/feature d_ articles/19981123monday.html

Re:How trustworthy is Valenti?

[Anonymous Coward]

FSCKing spaces, again, the correct URL should be:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/feature d_ articles/19981123monday.html

Re:How trustworthy is Valenti?

[Anonymous Coward]

I give, take out the space after the underscore.

Simple Comment

[djascii]

For arguments sake, just because they made a ton of money last year doesn't mean they are not also losing a lot due to piracy. (I hate using double negatives)

That's just evil (mod parent up)

[No Such Agency]

Creative accounting to cheat an author out of any money from the movie based on their book?! I'm sorry, but what separates that kind of behaviour from swindling retirees out of their pensions? Nothing, in terms of morality. Pirate "Forrest Gump", and distribute copies to all your friends! Why not - you're only stealing from thieves and con artists, not the original content creator. Buy a copy of the novel to go with your VHS tape dub or DIVX copy, if you really want to help "level the scales"!

Of course!

[rzbx]

Duh, what should we expect? Of course this was going to happen. Just make a wild guess what will happen this year. They will make more. Now how much more all depends on what they decide to do about piracy. If they attack piracy, their profits will not grow much, if they allow piracy to continue, then profits will increase substantially. Go ahead MPAA, take on the pirates and see what I mean. No amount of number crunching by your bean heads will prove anything. There is more to this whole thing than you'll ever understand.

Even More Complexity

[virg_mattes]

> So how come executives of companies that are making losses still command huge salaries?

Generally there are two reasons. First, the pay for a CEO is commensurate with responsibility. Because they make decisions that guide the entire company, they get paid better, because mistakes are much more costly at this level than down on the shop floor, so companies are willing to pay quite a bit if that's what it takes to get a qualified person in the job. Second, companies don't generally keep CEOs if they feel that the CEO is the reason the company is losing money. So, in the case where a CEO stays on the job while a company racks up red ink, it's usually because (A) the company doesn't directly blame the CEO for the loss (for example, when the economy tanks), or (B) the company is buying the talent to engineer a recovery.

> Or why do civil servants get paid so well when they don't make any profit for anybody?

Civil service isn't a for-profit venture, so the "profit" isn't monetary. In public service, the goal is to maximize service levels within a budget constraint, so a civil servant who can do this well is earning the "profit" of lower costs and better (or more) service.

Virg

Re:Even More Complexity

[meehawl]

because mistakes are much more costly at this [CEO] than down on the shop floor, so companies are willing to pay quite a bit if that's what it takes to get a qualified person in the job.

All these Business 101-derived reasons you state are well and good, but in real life, how often do they apply? Did they apply to Enron? To Global Corssing? Will they apply to Genuity?

I see plenty of people destitute because of idiotic CEO decisions, but I don't think I've ever seen a destitute CEO.

Without personal responsibility for their mistakes, insulated by millions of privileged, dilution-protected options, CEOs in the 90s boom reminded me most strongly of pigs feeding at overflowing troughs.

Language of the Spin

[prisonercx]

I'm not telling anyone here anything they don't know already, but it just makes me shake my head and sigh every time I see this: When an article is about how an industry (recording, movie) is being negatively impacted, you can bet there will *always* be a mention of piracy. You need proof? Look at the press releases and stories about the music industry for the last year and a half. 10 to 1 odds that if the article is even slightly negative, and possibly unrelated in its scope, the piracy card gets played. Not once do you see piracy mentioned here. To be honest, I'm kinda surprised its not, but I guess ol' Jack is trying to drum up sales by pointing out how much they are all loved. ;)

I get so pissed when I see stories (e.g. about a settlement of a pissed-off purchaser of a copy-protected CD with the industry) turn into a screed about the evils of the Internet and how it's screwing artists out of money. That part of their argument always pissed me off. It seems to me like they've pretty much led by example in the screwing of the artists department.

PrisonerCX

i'm gonna bring them down

[circletimessquare]

hey doodez...

i just spent the laugh half-hour downloading the divx version of "panic room" with 6 unexplained jumps/ black-outs, graininess, audio that sounds like it's on the inside of a washing machine, and some guy standing up in front of the handicam 30 minutes into the movie to go to the bathroom. i'm burning it on my cdrw now man!

come on over to my place, i'm showing it at 1:30 pm today on my 17 inch! the movie tends to hang in a few spots because my cdrom is a scsi, and i can't figure out which of my scsi devices down the chain is causing this periodic freezing, but no problemo! we're gonna bring down the movie industry man! you'll see!

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[Anonymous Coward]

Candy. Back when I was a kid you could get three bubble gums for a penny at the corner store.

the largest flaw...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in their reasoning is that if John Smith dl-ed a song off the internet, that means that he would have bought that if he had not been able to "steal" it.

not true. I still buy DVDs and CDs but i dl a bunch of stuff that i would not otherwise buy. Most of it i just want to "try" and see what it is like. i really would never buy most of the crap i download, but i won't listen to it again either.

last count
-680ish cds
-130 dvds
yet they still complain.

Re:NOW HEAR THIS

[Stonehand]

The Taliban did not exist as a cohesive group until the early 90's, when they formed as a reaction to the corruption and chaos *after* y'all pulled out. Get your facts straight, bucko.

If you want to finger an Afghan as causing problems for Afghanistan -- go read up on Hekmatyar.

waaah!

[Anonymous Coward]

You all piss and moan about the MPAA, until the next movie about hobbits or time-traveling cyborgs comes out, whereupon all of you on Slashdot will spooge in your pants and brag about how long you waited in line to see it. You complain and complain but in the end you're all to happy to bend over for Jack Valenti. Flame away, but you know in your heart it's true.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[NanoGator]

Yes, I see your point. I am a bit spoiled there.

You don't happen to know the main reason a movie's released in US first and delayed elsewhere, do you?

Does anybody? I would find that bit of information interesting.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Artik Vodka]

And the funny thing is they know their movies suck (not all, of course) and people won't like it.
Still they produce them :) wich makes me think they should read a couple more times the scripts that are proposed to them.

Population

[foldedspace]

Ya know, I think the population of the world has gone up a bit since 1959. Duh. Even if a smaller percentage of the population go to see movies, it's possible that the number of people seeing movies could still increase.

BTW I've never downloaded something that wasn't intended to be free. Yes, I'm a goody goody.

Re:Population

[Anonymous Coward]

But they don't get paid based on population, but on the number of people who go to movies. So if more people go to movies then profits will still increase. Or if I double your salary would you say you don't have any more money because there are more people around. I don't get these comments at at all.

Rants about the Movie Industry

[Cygnus v1]

Cinemas: Both ticket prices and the amount of advertising before the movies has increased in the last few years. I'm definitely not opposed to seeing three or four previews before the feature presentation, but advertising products totally unrelated to movies or showing more than five previews shows is insulting. I went to a showing of "The Count of Monte Cristo" at the Regal Transit in Buffalo, NY last month, and I had to go tell one of the cinema workers to start the movie (I'm sorry, the advertising, previews, and the movie) 15 minutes after the movie's start time. I think many cinemas can afford to stay in business this way because the public (myself included) want the experience of seeing certain movies in the theater as opposed to home. And many patrons appear to be less picky than me, based on the box office figures.

DVDs: I'd like video rental stores to apply the amount I paid for a rental of a DVD to the purchase of a new copy of the same DVD title, if I decide I like the movie enough to add it to my library.

Re: the impact of downloads

[dickDragon]

It should be easy to calculate now.
Just look at the difference in sales of CDs, computers, electronics, and bandwidth since
Napster was shutdown.

It is my impression that they are all down (and many of these losses are by the same companies who broght the suit.)

They're lying.

[El Camino SS]

Hey, lets not forget that the RIAA was bitching the same bitch and making the same kind of profits a year ago, and now. Now things couldn't be bleaker, many people are predicting the demise of the recording industry entirely.

Think of this as the last days of disco. NO real musical acts got signed during disco... and it was all performance music. Everyone thought it was great at the time, and Arista and other groups cleaned up.

Everyone loved disco. But like all fads, it got old really quick. Then they got tired of it. Then overall record sales slumped. Then they had to find real musical acts... people wanted to listen to real music instead of dance. The same analogy can be about raving. It used to be about dancing, then it became all about the drugs. Very quick.

Do you think anyone will care about Britney Spears in five years after we have been Britney bombed? Honestly, did anyone care about the superbowl ad? I personally am getting tired of her ass, bigtime. The rest of America is too.

It's limping. The proof? O-Town. That fucking boy band couldn't make it, even with 50 hours of network television to back it. See? Aren't we all just getting a little tired of Justin Timberlake? Aren't we all just a little ashamed that we know his name when we see his face?

In about a year, they'll have to look at real musicians again... whereas my little hometown of NAshville, TN will just keep chuggin' along. But even they had a country fad about 4 years ago... and yes, they whined that they were "dying" afterword. Yeah, after record breaking profits.

Give it a year, and make sure you turn off MTV so that those idiot rappers that talk about thinly veiled anal sex references to nine year olds watching MTV don't get any money... although I think that they are propped up by all of the morons out there. That is the one trend that I wish would die, grassy knoll style. Because I cannot put up with a woman flapping her ass on camera to crappy Casio SK1 sounds.

Re:They're lying.

[ewhac]

Aren't we all just getting a little tired of Justin Timberlake? Aren't we all just a little ashamed that we know his name when we see his face?

Who?

Sorry, pretty much all I use my TV for these days is watching The Prisoner, Dr. Who, and -- Lord forgive me -- ElimiDate.

Schwab

Re:They're lying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I gotta ask this: I know The Prisoner, I know Dr. Who, (and I approve!) but what the heck is ElimiDate?!

Re:They're lying.

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally am getting tired of her ass

You MUST be gay.

Re:They're lying.

[Graymalkin]

Where the fuck are you getting this from? It wasn't like the music industry had some sort of epiphany as disco was dying out and signed any "real" music acts. The music industry is ALL about fads and always has been. Occupying the same charts as Abba and the BeeGees were Aerosmith and KISS. The big music companies sign bands for dollar signs, not artistic expression. Real music acts, you must not have gotten out much in the 80s. Every couple years the record industry shits out another brick for consumption by those who want to be the status quo. Those who don't go for one fad will go for another fad, those not wishing to be part of any of the other fads will find yet another fad to mode themselves into. There's fads and minifads. The only way you're ever going to not be part of a fad is if you sit at home and make your own music by farting on a snare drum which will probably itself become a fad. If you don't want veiled references to sexual acts you better just turn off the radio. Music is and always will be (hopefully) filled with sexual inuendo.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Deosyne]

Yeah, but you guys can actually order the Ali G videos since they are only released as PAL cassettes and Region 2 DVDs, so quitcher bitchin' ;) Sacha, if you're reading this, make those bastards release Region 1 DVDs!

+5 Insightful

[Dikarika]

This is one of the best comments I've ever read on slashdot.

Too bad you posted it as an AC...

Oh well...

noise makers

[zoftie]

every place has them, every company, organization. too bad these got up this high. as in our compnay other division bitches and complains how slow and incompetent we are and raises false alerts all the time. So do we. these noise makers are way at the top, trying to earn a better place for themselves.

besides when you go that far you want to:
1. maintain presence
2. look like you actually doing something
neither take great intelligence, but brawn.

Internet is paradigm shift, people always complain about new things, if they don't help them right away, like learning computers, unsing phone.
Phones were a controversy in their own time, just
like internet is now.

So I say not to pay attention loudmoths, but those who develop, create technology and enlighten the world with it.

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?"

No.

Stronger, but not strong enough

[Anonymous Coward]

When you buy a VHS tape you can watch it again and again and again without giving them any more money and they are seriously pissed about that.

Piracy is a straw man. Once a strong authentication system is in place, they can start billing your credit card for your usage.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[epsalon]

So maybe, just maybe they start making actually *good* movies, with less marketing and just screen some substantial part of the film on TV and/or the net.
There's nothing more driving to see a movie than seeing it to some point. That's how TV commericals work. People want to finish what they started.
So the process is: 1. Hype the movie. 2. Screen about half of the movie on TV/the net. 3. Bring movie to theatres that evening and see how many viewers will be eager to see the end.

Hmm...

[mlylecarlin]

I can't remember where I got it, though I know it was a link from one of the RIAA, SSSCA, or Morpheus/Kazaa articles in the last week. However, in looking for it, I found http://www.exmodels.com/paparazzi/article.php?sid= 14 [exmodels.com, a site I can't vouch for since it's new to me] which contradicts what I said. Apparently the RIAA reported both lost sales and lost profits from *CD singles* and not actual albums, for which they were up 3.1% profit from last year. I humbly admit my error.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that when Jack was whining to congress about the kazillion movies downloaded every day, he mentioned that some movies were online within days of their US theatrical release.

How stronger DVD protection would fix this escapes me, but I don't have the benefit of having my head up my ass.

Cinemas and CDs will survive: End User Experience

[al_d]

"How much revenue does that divert from sales? Likely far less than it generates"

I'm not so sure about that; I download lots of mp3s, but I also buy many CDs. The experience is very different:

On the one hand, I can listen to a clock-radio-quality mp3 through my crappy powered speakers over the noise of my PC's fan. I can even burn it to a cheap, non-durable disk, that'll sound and look equally bad.

On the other hand, I get the anticipation of struggling through the cellophane wrap, dropping a disk into my stereo, and sitting back (in a comfortable non-computer chair!) to check out the inlay booklet while hearing some half-decent quality music, without having to fiddle about with a computer that I spend far too many hours per day in front of.

It's just about the end user experience, and I'm willing to pay for that. That's why cinemas will still exist no matter how many cheesy home cinema systems are sold, because sitting on your own couch with (maybe) a few friends, getting up to answer the phone half way through, trying to block out the light with the curtains, etc., will never quite be the same as going to the movies.

(btw, to improve the experience of playing a CD they should be made from vinyl, a bit bigger to allow for some decent cover art, and do away with all that digital stuff...)

waah

[Anonymous Coward]

waah. waah waah. waah waah waah wahh.

Just like Cable

[andaru]

They pulled off the same scam with cable TV. First you pay for no commercials. Then, they gradually slip the commercials back in untill you are just paying for what used to be free (only butloads more of it). Plus, you get the cable station's logo floating annoyingly in the corner DURING THE CONTENT.

Sigh, let's all go back to drawing cave pictures for each other and banging rocks together. Lower quality, maybe, but fewer commercials.

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[Razzak]

Gas, Fast Food.

I mean really, why am I paying $7 for a "value" meal?

getting better all the time

[lipbone]

yesterday it cost X amount of dollars to see a movie. Today it costs 2X dollars to see a movie. yesterday a movie was released in major cities at major theatres. today a movie is released in as many theatres as possible (they even note it in press releases). yesterday track runners wore basic tennis shoes, shorts, maybe a t-shirt. today track runners wear highly advanced running shoes, a tight fitting, aerodynamic body suit and concentrate the better part of their young lives training. Is it any wonder that the scores are getting better? Is it really a surpise that world records keeps being broken. Is it really that profound that the movie industry is making more money. To adopt a robin hood attitude because it suits your needs discredits you. That myth is based on a man who wasn't nearly as altruistic as we'd like to believe. Neither are the motives of those who pirate movies and music. "I did it for my country, for my people, for....FREEEEEEDOM (guts being wrenched out by the queen's executioner).

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean really, why am I paying $7 for a "value" meal?

Because you're not *really* supposed to DoubleSupersize it, *and* get the extra onion rings.

revenues, crackdown

[coltrane99]

It will be interesting to see if, like the music industry, efforts to crack down on consumers will result in reduced sales numbers.

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[Our Man In Redmond]

Check food prices at your local supermarket.

entertainment popular during bad times

[Dr. Awktagon]

I thought that was a well-recognized phenomenon: when times are tough, entertainment becomes more popular. Recession, war, terrorists, etc., are all unpleasant things that people like to escape from. It happened during previous wars and the Great Depression.

To all the conspiracy theorists: forget President Bush funding the terrorist attacks to better his popularity rating, how about Jack Valenti staging 9/11 to improve the MPAA member's bottom line?

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Artik Vodka]

• There's nothing more driving to see a movie than seeing it to some point. That's how TV commericals work. People want to finish what they started.

Unless it sucks. If it sucks (or you just don't like it) you don't wana go to a theatre, spend some bucks to see the rest of it.
In TV, if you don't like it, you ain't paying more, so you don't mind checking it until the end - or you just switch channels.

• So the process is: 1. Hype the movie. 2. Screen about half of the movie on TV/the net. 3. Bring movie to theatres that evening and see how many viewers will be eager to see the end.

A movie doesn't even have to suck for people no to like it [there are good movies that I don't like much]. If they saw a sunstancial part of it on TV before they got to see it on theatres, they could choose if they are interested in seing it - this time more informed about it than usually. Because usually, they just have access to the trailer, basic plot info, maybe friends's opinions.
So, they rather have lines of people that wana see the film, than give them half of it for free, because this filters a lot of people out.

But maybe the money earned from publicity in tv-showtime would be enough to cover those tickets that get to be empty.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[cyber-vandal]

Not really because if they can sell crap they don't need to bother making good stuff.

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[AntiNorm]

I mean really, why am I paying $7 for a "value" meal?

Because you are contributing to McDonalds's 'Lawsuits due to food poisoning' fund.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Fjord]

While this is true for some movies. Special effects bonanzas will better be seen on a big screen. But I got a 0 day copy of American Pie and possibly because of that I never saw it in the theater. I certainly stopped wanting to see it theatrically. (This is kind of a bad example since I later bought it on VHS, and AP2 on DVD)

Re:Cinemas and CDs will survive: End User Experien

[$0 31337]

I can even burn it to a cheap, non-durable disk, that'll sound and look equally bad

You may wish to check in to A] a little more expensive CDRs or B] buy a new CDR drive because the quality of burned mp3s isn't crappy at all for the majority of people that take the time to burn mp3s to a CD. As for the cd booklet, I'm suprised to see that some people waste their time reading great artist quotes like "I thank god for getting to where I am" (or in the case of Morbid Angel, Satan), or looking at stupid, computer altered photos of the band memebers on stage.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Raindeer]

I would suspect it is partially because this way the studios find out what the audience thinks of a particular movie and doesn't need to spend money on movies that won't make it here. So there is a bit of a profit motive involved and that is OK. Saves us from some of the crap in american cinemas. On the other hand, the European audience has a different taste than the US audience. So it might actually become a hit, would it ever be released. That is how British, French and Australian score. It is almost impossible for them to score in the US.

Furthermore I would suspect that there is some arrogance from those studios involved as well. The way they operate, they generally see the US as their market and the rest of the world as something that creates a nice revenue, but nothing more. American companies in general have trouble dealing with the fact that the rest of the world is not one market with one common language etc etc. But instead of having a regional organisation that is independent to do what it wants, like the car manufacturers, the movie industry keeps their non-american branches on a tight rope and most of the decisions are made in the US.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Raindeer]

Well, do what we do if we can't get what we want, because of stupid regional codings and other restrictions. Download it! Ofcourse you should also buy the DVD, to keep everything legit. ;-)

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[epsalon]

On the other hand, they win people who liked the part they saw on TV and wouldn't have come to the film otherwise.

I don't go to the movies that much, but if I would have seen, let's say, the first half of "Memento", "The Sixth Sense" or "Fight Club" on TV, I would have ran to the cinema to see it.

Mod Up Parent!

[cgori]

Damn I wish I had the points to mod the parent up.

To be honest, I wasn't even concerned with the article, just more MPAA-posturing, until I got to the part where MSNBC started to quote the logic-impaired John Fithian.

First of all, I suspect that people who watch R-rated movies (a large number of whom are are adults, by design), happen to not have enough time to go to the theater (gasp! horror!). Instead they either a) wait 3 months and rent it on satellite/cable PPV, or b) wait 6-9 months and rent it from Blockbuster or Netflix. Of course, the movie industry wanted to kill the VCR when it first came out because it would damage their primary market (the theater). Now rentals are the primary market (from a revenue standpoint).

Second, the R-rating inherently limits the potential audience of a film. For Fithian to claim that "R-rated pictures do not sell" is bizarre. In absolute terms, he's probably right, PG- or G-rated films have higher total admission figures. But if you looked at the ratio of viewers to total possible viewers, would R-rated movies be better or worse than G/PG? What about if you removed over-17's from the "total possible viewers" for G-rated movies. Then what do the numbers look like? I would bet R-rated movies do just fine, thanks.

If the movie industry (and its partners like the theater owners) want to focus on movies-as-business, then please don't come asking for the protection of movies-as-art (copyright extensions, etc). Fundamentally the ratings system is a business-oriented policy that results in some chilling effect on what kinds of movies are made, and that is always bad. Remember that because of the influence of the MPAA, unrated movies often cannot be advertised in many suburban (and even urban) newspapers (for anti-porn purposes, supposedly). So the indie director who doesn't want to submit to the MPAA has no choice, if she wants to get her message out to more than a handful of viewers.

Sigh. Please support your local arthouse/indie films. And don't choose blockbuster, they only further the ratings problem by not stocking NC-17 rentals and requesting alternate/edited versions of even some R-rated films. Hooray for maturity!

Competition

[4of12]

The movie industry should stop trying to hold back technology just because it's paranoid about its current revenue stream.

They should look to ways of making the theatre goers experience an improvement over what can be delivered to most homes. This should not be hard to do.

Sheesh, I've already paid several times over for the same movie just to get a better experience throught the magic of technology: once at the theatre, sometimes for VHS rental, sometimes for VHS purchase, repeat rent/purchase with DVD.

It's ludicrous how many times I've already paid for the movie, but until now I've been willing to do it for the improved experience and the convenience. But if the movie industry stops improving my experience and starts encumbering my hardware, you can bet my willingness to pay will decrease accordingly.

Responsibility

[virg_mattes]

You choose a few examples of companies where politics, graft or outright criminal deception threw things off, but you're avoiding the central tenet of the situation. Barring privately held corporations, when has a corporation crashing ever injured the top management? The answer is that it generally doesn't, because the people who pilot the corporation aren't very often the people who get the profits (and losses). They get a salary, just like you and I do (assuming you don't own your own business), and they often get bonuses when times are good, but they don't own the company for the most part, so they don't own the debt. If your company died tomorrow, your salary would disappear, but I doubt they'd try to invade your bank account for money to pay creditors. That's why even bad CEOs don't end up on the dole.

So, the answer is that they always apply in real life. If you have any gripe about how much big company CEOs get paid, it should be addressed to the law that limits personal liability for corporate losses. Of course, that same law protects small business owners from complete loss, so be careful about suggesting sweeping reforms.

Virg

Off-Topic: ElimiDate

[ewhac]

...what the heck is ElimiDate?!

Take the shows Blind Date and Survivor, and you've pretty much got ElimiDate . It's an embarrassing guilty pleasure.

Schwab

circumventing

[prototype27]

Couldn't you just advance your computer's clock two years to get around this?

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can DVD sales suffer from internet piracy? Possibly. Can box-office sales? Nope

That may be true for the 'states, but it's definitely NOT true for the rest of the world.
I could have accessed a pirated copy of starwars episode I like three months before it came out here in theatres. It was actually offered to me by several people in different situations. Had I watched it before the premiere here, no way in hell would I have wasted money on the movie ticket.

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

The claim made by the Movie industry is that it is not realistic to be able to reproduce the movie rolls fast enough, and transport them to all the cenimas in the world. So they release in US first, and hold off on other countries as the reels are made available.

IMO, this is totally bogus. It's a matter of money, not time. And now that theaters are going digital soon, they will no longer have these excuses which are totally BOGUS in the first place..

Attention moderators! +5 Insightful!

[himi]

Damnit, why don't I have mod points when I need them . . .

himi

Re:Is this the same industry claiming losses? No.

[HKTiger]

I think you're right there: the US sees us (ie the part of the globe that *doesn't* lie in the continental United States) as some sort of supplementary market, much like video/DVD. They'll make some dosh out of us, but not enough to justify actually releasing films at the same time.

Which, of course, is another thing (like region coding) that winds up anyone not in the US: we get the hype about a film, because the media report on it (fancy being the last station to talk about the latest craze!), but we can't actually *see* it until some Hollywood suit decides we can...

Re:What products continue to climb in cost each ye

[psxndc]

I don't think gas really has if you don't take the absolute last two years into account. It's been pretty steady. Fast food though has gone up (yet they all have $0.99 menus now).

psxndc

BRING BACK CARTOONS BEFORE THE MOVIE!

[ChrisCrosby]

If I have to sit through a Pepsi ad, I want to be able to sit through an all-new 7-minute cartoon short, too.

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[Anonymous Coward]

> I want to see it on the big screen with a big
> crowd.

Yeah, those crowds just kick so much ass.

Like the kid screaming because she dropped her
ice cream, the couple going down on each other
because the movie is boring them, the people
throwing stuff at other moviegoers because
they're bored as well, the dumb cunt who can't
open his rustling bag of chips in under 20
minutes...

I love seeing movies on a big screen, in a dark
room, but what a crock to claim the CROWDS make
the experience more enjoyable.

More of the same idea...

[HKTiger]

You bring up an interesting point there: what proportion of movie viewage makes us feel cheated, and how would that compare to the number of films we'd miss because of innappropriate trailers? I know I've seen my fair share of films that look, from the trailer, to be whizz-bang actioner type things, and then turn out to be slow drama of some form. Not that I'm against drama per se, but I'd prefer to know what I"m in for: kind of like knowing whether what I'm about to bite into is going to taste like chocolate or wasabi (and, taking the movie analogy onwards and downwards, this makes it so much worse when what you actually get turns out to be more like pureed cockroach).

So would they win more viewers (and possibly more-than-oncers to boot) by targeted trailers that give a *good* idea of what the film is like than they lose by cheating people into thinking it'll be other than it is? Hmmm, must think more on this one.

As for the theatrical trailer for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, well I'm sure I saw it back several millennia ago, when I was young, but Mr Memory won't stretch quite that far now, alas, so I can't say whether or not it was tres funky. I've also seen the film boggins of times (being a true sci-fi junkie geek). As I feel I'm about to descend into a mumble along the lines of "They done made better trailers in them days...", I'll stop.

Oh, yeah, glad to be of service ;-) Now if only I can clarify my own thoughts, I'd be laughing...

Re:Well, The RIAA was having the same luck a year

[I Want GNU!]

And how many people have a 65 mb/s connection? I have a cable modem capped at 2 megabits and most people on cable/dsl, who are on the fast end of consumer ISPs, it would take 32.5 times as long as it would take you.

Then again, according to my calculations, your 15 minutes for 1200 megabytes only gives you a total of 10.7 megabits/sec.

Not a contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU people do not get made when you download their software for free. Movie people do. Movie people want to make you pay. GNU people don't. How is this a contradiction?

Re:Not a contradiction

[psamuels]

GNU people do not get made when you download their software for free. Movie people do. Movie people want to make you pay. GNU people don't. How is this a contradiction?

My giving you the right to copy my copyrighted work does not imply that I should have the right to copy your work without your permission. By and large we seem to be law-abiding people, even if some of us disagree with some particulars of the law (i.e. the insanely long copyright term).

GPL people don't mind if you copy our software and obey the constraints of the GPL. We do mind if you copy our software and do not abide by the GPL. You are then doing something we have not explicitly authorized.

So the contradiction here would be if I were to become indignant when you refuse to follow my copyright license, yet I blatantly ignore someone else's copyright license. That would be hypocrisy of the worst sort (well, all hypocrisy is of the worst sort, right?) and I would be surprised to find out that any serious GPL users (and by "users" I mean "using it for one's own work") have that flaw.

Re:McDonald's is not an example

[Anonymous Coward]

B/c if you count for inflation, it's not going up. Inflation is about 3% per year, so it should increase by about $0.09 a year, and remain the same in real dollars.

I want a welfare state

[Anonymous Coward]

Where rich people fly around at the rest of our expense. Where rich people claim losses and whine to the govt when they can't make a profit so the gov't takes away our rights.

How about clear cutting of national land. By who the poor? No the rich are getting all these sweet deals. They just change the name around, but if it's the gov't helping you then you are on welfare. If you own a car, then you are basically on the same level as a cracked out welfare mom.

DVD v VCD

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Industry is so worried about piracy, how did my Lady Friend manage to get a brand new Sony (they are a big movie company, right?) DVD system which can play VCD's?

Why would all of the companies with a vested interest in legal movies put this option in their DVD players?

Silly bastards.

But Hollywood Isn't Doing So Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to take my rumors from my brother-in-law, who runs a lighting and grip company in North Hollywood. The movie industry may be raking in the money, but Hollywood is taking it in the shins. Where does he lay the blame? Not on piracy, but that production has left Southern California for greener (cheaper) pastures. He claims: "Where have most of the major box office hits been made? ... Out of country." He additionally blames labor unions and local taxes that have priced Hollywood out of business. His main example? LoTR, where the producers in New Zealand didn't have to pay union scale for the Hobbit and Orc 'extras' in the film. Laissez Faire economy at its finest. He says his rates for lights (movie industry lights) have gone down from $500/day to $200/day, which he also claims is less than the wear and tear so he can't make a profit. He also points out several camera (movie industry cameras) shops have closed down. What's the next thing? He also thinks the entertainment industry in Southern Calif. is going to implode, with the worst hit being the tradesmen sector with the resultant civil unrest that usually accompanies Los Angeles.