File Swapping and the Analog Hole

forehead writes "Lawmeme is running an interesting piece on piracy in the digital age. It covers a number of the logical fallacies often cited by the major media companies and certain lawmakers."

Comments

Anybody else notice....

[Fenris2001]

....that the link above points to Management Partners and Associates and not The Motion Picture Association of America

Digital is different.

[Burgundy Advocate]

In digital, you can create perfect copies and send them out to everyone you know... at the click of a button.

With analog, you actually have to work at it. You'd have to tape the tape (lossy), make copies (lossy), and give it to friends/fellow pirates manually.

Computers make things much easier for pirates. That's why there's so much focus on swapping music digitally. It's much more of a danger to the Music Industry, and they have a right to protect themselves.

Re:Digital is different.

[Warin]

You create a perfect copy, yes. But a perfect copy of what?

The vast majority of digital files traded over the net with ease are sub par. Have you ever watched any of the bootlegs out there? I dont think I have ever seen one that matches even 3rd generation VHS copy quality. Especially in the case of video, making something small enough to be easily swapped also means making it of such a low quality that only the cheapest of person would use that as an option to seeing the film in a theater, or renting it on VHS/DVD

Don't buy into the strawman being put up by the MPAA! They are looking for ways to screw us all for even more of our money...and it's time that the public says 'enough'

Re:Digital is different.

[Com2Kid]

In digital, you can create perfect copies and send them out to everyone you know... at the click of a button.

With analog, you actually have to work at it. You'd have to tape the tape (lossy), make copies (lossy), and give it to friends/fellow pirates manually.

Computers make things much easier for pirates. That's why there's so much focus on swapping music digitally. It's much more of a danger to the Music Industry, and they have a right to protect themselves.

Uh huh.

BULLSHIT

It is A LOT easier to make an analog rip (put tape in machine, hit record) then it is to do a digital rip.

First off there isn't any "Big Red Button" solution to doing movie rips that are of a high enough quality that ANY self respecting movie pirate would use.

Doing even a DECENT digital rip requires extensive knowledge of a large variety of programs and a good deal of work, not to mention the patience to wait while your video sits there and encodes at .1 FPS or so on a 1Ghz+ machine.

Now if you want to do a GOOD rip (a GOOD digital rip will look better then the original DVD, many rippers take pride in that they can correct errors made in the original DVDs mastering) then you had better know a ton about mathematics, some basic data theory, a good deal of color theory, have an intuitive understanding of at least some parts of matrix mathematics, and know how to combine it all of those skills together to create one nice highly polished product.

This is not even going into how you are using primitive tools that range from being everything from crash prone to inducing video or audio errors into your stream if you push the wrong button or select the wrong option. (not that that option should induce errors, but. . . . Betas are betas and all, and the programs you are using likely will never be out of beta stage).

Yah sure now the couriers may have a somewhat easy job (though it does depend on how you are transferring the files) but hell;

don't say that making a digital rip it easy, because it is not.

(of course good Analog copiers have to go through similarly difficult troubles, just hitting record on a VCR doesn't cut it if you want quality goods.)

Re:Digital is different.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much more of a danger to the Music Industry, and they have a right to protect themselves.

At the expense of everyone else's fair use and unrelated activities?

They presently have a flawed business model that relies on poor technology to protect their income. They've always had this model, and they're afraid to change it because they've never tried anything else.

But if others are innovative and creative enough to improve the technology over time, which was obviously going to happen because that's the nature of technology, why should everyone else suffer as a result of a few mega-sized media companies' bad business decisions and lack of strategic future thinking?

If they want to take reasonable action against people stealing their IP, then fine. But don't let them tear the world down just to save their small profitable island.

Nice troll.

Re:Digital is different.

[man_ls]

Bootleg is a relatively ambigious term here.

There are several levels of quality in the underground world:

Cam. Handheld cam for video, audio from cam's mic. Level of insiderness required: None.

TS (Telesync). Handheld cam for video, but the audio is picked up from a "remote source", frequently a lineout in the projection room. Level of insiderness required: Small. You have to work at a theater, but don't have to be important.

Screener. Ripped pre-release copy of the movie, either from a "for-review" copy of the film reels, a preproduction disk, or from the a/v outs of a projector. Quality is usually just below DVD-quality. Level of insiderness required: High.

DVD-Rip. Decoded from a DVD, obviously. Great quality. Level of insiderness required: None. But it takes time for the movie to come out on DVD.

I've seen a bootleg Lord of the Rings that's a screener. DVD-quality audio and video, with an MPAA copyirght warning scrolling randomly down the bottom of the screen about every 20 minutes. It's great.

I've also seen Resident Evil on a Telesync. Crappy quality, sound wasn't bad though. Glitchy, artifacated video stream. Sucked, but it was okay for re-watching after I saw the movie in the theater.

A bootleg's quality is directly proportional to the time spent creating it.

Re:what the hell is the loss?

[Burgundy Advocate]

This consistently boggles my mind, all these companies saying "piracy costs us $500 mil a year". Listen, some third world family that makes $100 a month isn't going to pay $700 for office, alright?!?

Oh, and I'm sure that it's the third world families that make $100/month that are pirating music.

On their C-64 from 1986.

Much like our good friend, JUNIS FROM AFGHANISTAN.

Sorry, but most of the piracy is middle to upper-class teenagers and students... people who could pay for the music, but choose to pirate it.

I have very little sympathy.

Not complete without a mention of my Congressman

[browser_war_pow]

No debate about the DMCA is complete without discussing my Congressman, Bob Goodlatte of the 6th District, VA. He is a fantatical support of the DMCA and has called me a thief and a supporter of theft in public because I stated my opposition to it. He is on his 6th term IIRC and he has currently no true competition worth even mentioning. The Democrats probably ran a guy against him last time in the hopes that they could raise some quick cash because right now he is totally unopposed with no hope in sight. That is bad, it means we have in the house a nearly institutional barrier that dearly loves the DMCA.

He comes from a generally right wing district (though one that is generally quite secular, the most religious person I've met in my area supports marijuana legalization for example!) and not even the LP will try to steal his seat. He has the luxury of having a district that is not dependent on government subsidies and doesn't have a large techie population therefore he can propose stuff like the DMCA and NETA safely (he is directly responsible for the latter and claims to have been heavily involved in the house version of the former).

People like Goodlatte are proof that we cannot rely on either party, we need a multiparty system where at least half the parties have clear cut political philosophies like the LP and Green Party. The LP IIRC is staunchly opposed to the DMCA and all legislation like it. It is the third largest party and that is a constant. The Green Party doesn't have even half the number of people in pubic office that the LP does. The LP is admittedly not very large, but it doesn't need a "celebrity" like Nader to get politically active people to remember that it even exists. In the last election, I could vote for the LP for governor, lt. governor and IIRC attorney general. The same could not be said about the Green Party. We need a party that has a shot of winning and we need to support it whenever possible.