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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."
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how can you claim a "loss" for pirated materials if the parties in question would nevcer have paid the retail cost for the materials?
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?!?
-rt
mpaa.com that is link to in the header seems to be a legitimate business, but mpaa.org is the cartel we seem to be concerned with.
.com and .org domain rules where .org's are supposed to be "non-profit!"
So much for the internic's rule of
I would like to thank Mr. Valenti for giving ammuntion and arms to the trolls for his "analog hole" remark. Only a true trolling genius could think up such a brilliant concept.
Mr. Valenti, your remarks will be added to the Troll Hall of Fame along with *BSD is Dying, Right Wing Maniac, and the page widening posts.
....that the link above points to Management Partners and Associates and not The Motion Picture Association of America
---------------
Vpered na Mars!
I for one, won't bother watching an analog (tape) copy of a film that's in the theaters, mostly because of the quality. I want to see it in it's full glory. However, thanks to DVD ripping, file sharing, and a cable modem, I sometimes will download a movie and watch it on my PC, as I can get a decent picture and sound. I rarely do this though, as I mentioned before that I like movies in their full glory, and sitting a few feet from my 17 inch monitor and my okay sounding speakers doesn't really cut it.
Then again though, I'll gladly watch a movie on my TV where I can lay on the couch or bed (that's what I'm talking about full glory) with just the TV's internal speakers.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The article says:
One of the most prominent and recurrent arguments of the copyright interests is that "digital piracy" is far worse than "analog piracy" and thus justifies the imposition of draconian paracopyright laws, such as the DMCA and CBDTPA. I refer to this argument as the "analog fallacy." The fallacy is that analog piracy is not nearly as threatening as digital piracy because analog copies degrade with every generation while digital copies remain pristine no matter how many copies are made. While true in a strict sense, the fallacy is that most of the assumptions necessary for this argument to be true are not realistic.
But surely the real 'threat' of digital media is actually the close-to-zero marginal cost of copying the original.
With a VCR each copy is a real, physical, medium. With digital everything is, well, virtual.
There are different responses to this - in software, free software is a response. Free software advocates accept that digital 'objects' can and will be copied, so build that in.
I'm not convinced that model works for music and movies though.
Free software is built on a pre-existing cultural norm - ie hacking - that doesn't exist for these other media.
Furthermore, no government contracts (the States), or direct support (elsewhere) is available to create the movie-making equivalent of MIT's AI lab.
In Australia, where I happen to live, download limits on broadband connections are heavily capped. The ISPs usually offer 1GB plans for about 55A$ and 3GB plans for 75A$. Why on earth would I spend almost all of my precious 1GB download limit on a single ripped movie? For the same amount of money, I can go and see four movies at the cinema AND have popcorn as well!
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Protect themselves how? By making laws that do nothing for the public good, instead only helping to line their pockets? How is making progams that have perfectly legitamite uses illegal their "right"? is that what you mean? Can you name a tool that can be used for illegal purposes that is illegal in the united states? Crack pipes? Guns? penises? Nope. Nothing. Why? becuase who is to say what a object's legitamte purpose is. Why do you want to be analy raped by huge corparations? I don't get it. Why would anyone defend the rights of an entity that isn't even alive? it's bizzare behavior.
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'
For years people have been watching pirated videos copied from studios or screeners. The quality was often not been great, but neither are a lot of the first digital copies of films to appear. People have been copying radio, tv, vinyl, tapes, cd's etc for years. Copying and sharing is not a new thing, but it's being made out to be by certain organisations. I remember people making a fuss when recordable audio and video cassettes arrived on the scene. Have these killed the industry? No, they've grown larger and created new industries. Methodology may have changed, but what people do has not, well, not a great deal. Maybe new avenues have been opened, but isn't that what the Internet is all about? Opening new doors, broadening horizons, breaking down barriers. Lets not use new technology to create extra barriers to peoples freedom and creativity.
>> $250 million seems a relatively small figure to me
:0) Wow, now I understand what kind of deep-pocketed-parent kids study there.
A quarter billion bucks is nothing for this Yale dude.
Yes, but the point of this article is to detour people from this way of thinking. The fact is, while digital copies may make things easier, it's no more or less illegal than analog copies, which is what the writer calls the "analog myth." I can remember getting most of my home music by borrowing other people's cassette tapes (audio, not VHS) and copying them. A friend of mine had two VCR's, and every night he would rent a few movies and make copies, and sell them for a few bucks to friends (just enough to get more blank tapes, no profit involved).
The fact is, digital pirating is likely just as difficult, just as widespread, and just as damaging as analog pirating. Actually, many cam rips (when someone sits in a theater with a camera and records the whole movie) are analog to begin with, then later converted to a digital format, and additionally put through some lossy compression schemes to bring it down below 700Mb to be put up on servers.
"It's much more of a danger to the Music Industry, and they have a right to protect themselves."
Actually, this article is about the Movie Industry, not music, I see you didn't take time to read it. And yes, they have the right to protect themselves, but suing KaZaA, Morpheus, iMesh, Napster, and so on for allowing this to take place is like suing UPS for allowing people to send drugs illegally through the mail. The fact is, they SHOULDN'T know what's inside the files that are being swapped, just as much as UPS shouldn't know what's inside a package they deliver.
And, forcing companies to create hardware that won't allow you to make illegal copies is stupid, too. That's like making Xerox put something in their copiers that won't allow people to make photocopies of of pages out of copyrighted books without permission (which is illegal, too). How does a DVD player know that the DVD you're playing in it is being copied to another DVD, and how does the DVD burner (in the case of copying DVD's) tell that the incoming signal is copyrighted material, not the owner's home movie of his son building a sandcastle?
The fact is, if something is being done illegally, the MPAA needs to go for the people who are committing a crime using these devices, not the people who make the devices.
The speed of time is one second per second.
In digital, you can create perfect copies and send them out to everyone you know... at the click of a button.
.1 FPS or so on a 1Ghz+ machine.
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
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.)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I've downloaded attack of the clones, I haven't watched the downloaded copy but I have seen it twice at the cinema, and I'll probably go again. I'll most likely watch my downloaded copy during the endless gulf between cinema and the time I can rush out and bye a copy on the first available day. My shelf is stacked full of movies and dvd's I've paid for, I've never downloaded a film I haven't previously or subsequently PAID to go and see at the cinema and rarely have I not bought the film on release and yet I am the enemy. Mr Valenti would have you believe I'm an enemy of the movie industry, Wake up! I'm your friend, I love the movie industry, I'm a fan, I pay my way.
If you thought my subject line was provocative think about it. The MPAA is exactly that, we are dealing with an organisation that is beating the drums of war. They point at a group of people and say "They are your problem, they will take your jobs, they will destroy your livelihood, deal with them and life will bed a bed of roses" . What we have is an organisation that is exploiting the same fears and weaknesses in the people they are exploiting as fascists and warmongers have done since the dawn of time.
Next time your watching your favourite (and presumably legally purchased if not legally played) dvd turn on the directors commentary and listen. Most of the time I hear people who care about the movies they are making, they care about the art form and they care about the people who are going to watch it. These guys are as much the victims of the MPAA as we are, keep making your movies and we will keep paying for them.
Some people might consider me foolish for admitting to downloading films and not posting anonymously but in my own way I'm standing up to the MPAA, supina slashdot guys, get my user details. Come to the UK, let 12 of my countrymen see my dvd shelf and then convince them I've lost you money. You'll probably win but I'll get a fine and you'll get a big stack of mud on your face.
This article, which I though was generally excellent, unfortunately stops short of naming the MPAA's true goal - continuing its monopoly on the production of blockbuster movies by ensuring that no high-quality filmmaking equipment falls into the hands of non-studio filmmakers.
Back in the pre-digital days it was easy for a determined independent artist to throw together some analog video equipment (eg consumer VHS decks, camcorders, and mixers) and make a film. The only thing you couldn't easily do is distribute the result to a wide audience...
Now, thanks to the internet, anyone who can compress some videos and set up a web server can theoretically distribute films.
*BUT* look at where the technology is going... There is no cheap digital recording and distribution system that is accessible to independent artists. (yeah, DV is fairly cheap - except for editing decks - but you can't *distribute* on DV). You can buy DVD burners for a few hundred dollars now, but consumer-level burners do not let you "author" a properly-formatted, CSS-scrambled DVD like the megadollar Hollywood systems can. And there is certainly no low-cost high-definition format on the horizon - HDCAM is insanely expensive, and HD DVD will be read-only. Broadcast digital video systems use obfuscated encryption methods and will only be accessible to studio productions.
It's in Hollywood's best interest to keep recording and distribution technologies out of the hands of independent artists. Using the cry of "piracy!" as a distraction, they are trying to pass laws that will basically make it illegal to use high-quality video equipment outside of the studio system. This way the MPAA companies will maintain their control over what films get made, resulting in fewer choices and higher prices (the inevitable consequences of a successful monopoly).
Incidentally, in my own production work I've already been hindered by the media industry's efforts. On two occasions I've had to perform a digital->analog->digital dub to record copy-protected music, *the rights for which I had legally paid for*... Also, I've been forced to reverse-engineer a high-definition video transmission format, because no such equipment is available to those without a studio-level budget.
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.
Just to point out, as the article details, a DIGITAL bootleg of Spiderman was out on the Net the day before it hit the theater. The result? The theatrical release STILL was the largest grossing opening day (and weekend) ever. Its second weekend was the largest second weekend for a movie ever. Its third weekend (this weekend) is sitting at $46 million which is, surprise, the largest third weekend ever.
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.
Ditto. Movie out in digital piracy a week before opening, and it still makes obscene amounts of money ($86 million this weekend and $110+ million so far).
Wanna check on the sales of Star Wars I: Phantom Menace when released on VHS/DVD? One of the best sellers; ditto for The Matrix -- both of which were floating the web in DivX format before they hit the theaters, much less DVD/VHS.
The last 4 years (1998-2001) are the best on record for revenue generated and attendence at theaters. DVD/VHS sales are thru the roof.
In the "perfect" world, where movies are uncopiable and you have to see it at the theater and/or purchase a legitimate copy, the industry would see only a paltry rise in revenue compared to today -- not the $3 Billion touted by Mr. Valenti.
Most people who get rips would either do without altogether, or wait until the DVD/VHS that THEY WERE GOING TO PURCHASE ANYWAY became available.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I think the funniest part of this whole "losses from piracy" thing is that newspapers around the country run a story about piracy whenever a big movie is bootlegged before its release and then go on to mention the "threat" that these bootlegs pose to the box office revenues of the movie... but they never do follow-ups saying, "Oh, I guess not" whenever that massively marketed movie breaks a dozen box office records in a single day.
;)
Gee, could these big corporate newspapers be writing in the favor of their even bigger corporate owners?
Someone please mod this parent up! You are exactly right - comparing the ripping and encoding of a CD to that of a DVD is apples and oranges. Any 8th grader with a copy of Musicmatch can rip the latest N'Sync album to MP3 but their head would likely explode if you asked to to DIVX a copy of The Matrix. The process has a steep learning curve and encoding takes a long time and a powerful machine! This is to say nothing of the fact that WAV -> MP3 has a lot less apparent loss of quality than does VOB -> MPEG4. The MPAA does not have the same problem as the RIAA.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Why does no one ever seem to bring up the Constitution in these matters? The Constitution 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;
The progress of science and the useful arts.
Securing for limited times.
Authors and inventors.
The only copyright that is Constitutional is one granted for a limited time to the author or inventor for a limited time for a product that promotes the progress of the useful arts or science. The rest are not Constitutional.
If it's not a copyright to the Author or Inventor, it's not valid.
If it's not a copyright granted to promote science and the useful arts then it's not valid.
If it isn't for a limited time, it's not valid.
Even if one were to agree that internet piracy is decreasing the revenue of the RIAA and MPAA, even if Microsoft (yes, they are doing a similar scheme with their new licences) were actually right about the dangers (to microsoft) of OSS, in my opinion it boils down to a simple problem: Resitance to change.
Why are they resisting the change? Because of revenue. All the above organisation's profits are dropping for various reasons and they are trying to stem the loss with either restrictive laws or restrictive licences. As I posted in another topic, this only changes the response to the laws and licences, but does not stop the actual process itself. Trying to exert control, by American companies, of personal devices and media, in an effort to stop the growing digitalisation of society will only result in even more resistance by consumers and the general move of innovation away from the US and bitter infighting amongst the industry. Trying to outlaw devices such as the general purpose PC, will drive parts of an entire industry, into insolvency (Software and tool developers above all) and will make the US an unpopular place to do business in and shift the impetus of media away from there.
I'm not sure but I think that whichever way they go, they will have to face restructuring in the long term and this means losses. There are so many examples that one could fill pages with them- The steel industry trying to stop change with protectionism (only resulting in retaliation from overseas traders), The car industry trying to stop unionisation with violence and anti-communist propaganda (didn't win there either), the English monarchy trying to stop the US from gaining independance, AT&T trying to hold onto it's monopoly in the communication business. - In the long run it mostly backfires. Musicians who earn next to nothing from the RIAA can and will use these restricive laws to further their own poularity by speaking out against it. Companies moving to OSS because it's cheaper and less controlled. Developers not making products for sale or use in the US due to the restrictions there.
I think, in the long run, laws such as these, are immensly damaging to the very organisations trying to enforce them now, because your average person, who doesn't pirate, will get ticked off that he has to pay more for a DVD or CD (or did you think that they were going to implement all these copy restrictions for free?), the same guy will get ticked off that he has no access to independant media, that everything he does on his non-general purpose computing device is watched and controlled by someone. Programmers in the US will be the laughing stock of the world if they can only code within a strictly defined set of parameters that entails very little freedom.
I'm not a fan of Science Fiction analogies but "Flow my tears the policeman said" by Philip K Dick is good reading for the case that these restrictions become law.(Especially the epilog)
Funny you should bring up Xerox....rumor has it that color copiers have special circuitry to prevent counterfeiting money, and JJ Johnson (Nevada libertarian candidate for senate) seems to think that copiers print an invisible serial # on every copy you make, allowing the feds to trace it if necessary. The imprint goes there even if you're not copying anything illegal. I have no idea if any of this is true, but it wouldn't surprise me...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with piracy is not now, but in the future. At the moment, due to bandwidth and hard disk size, most videos have noticable artifacts and have lost details in compression.
Now imagine the future. Bigger hard disk, more bandwidth. Now imagine high quality video piracy.
For example: at the moment I'm addicted to a series on UPN. Locally, UPN is unavailable to me, and due to living constrants, a DSS feed is unworkable. So, I go to a certain IRC channel and download the latest eps. They might be poorer quality, and it takes awhile to download, but at least I can watch the show. OTOH, there is no commercials and no trailers.
Now imagine the world 10 years from now. I'll probably find a different show to be addicted to, and there will be other changes. If I wait for DVD, I'm probably waiting years between when the show airs and when the DVDs are pressed. With the DVD I get trailers that some players won't skip over, and I have the problem of copywrite protection and the whole region-x hassle. OTOH, if I go online, I'll find the show within hours of it airing, it will be without commercials, and in a choice of formats that will play on any computer and probably easily be burned to a DVD.
So, for a mental exercize, assume that the DVD is $20, and the online stuff cost $25 for, er, bandwidth costs. What would you rather buy? Now, realize that a broadband connection is less then $100 bucks, which means our $25 figure is rather inflated.
Piracy is a problem, but it is partially because the pirated stuff is a better product. Else, why would I spend hours downloading/burning when I could just walk into Walmart and pick up a copy? I'm not *that* cheap.
Just my $.02
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.
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.
Ironically enough it's the members of the MPAA who are using science and engineering to advance while the computer industry stagnates and refuses to pay any attention to consumers except for video games. And the video games industry is more a product of Japanese society--Americans are just resellers.
The motion picture industry in the past decade has accomplished the switch to having special effects be the real stars of movies. This results in a more uniform and dependable product where the consumer is guaranteed to at least have some payoff. The mass media also embraces scientific marketting where demographic segments are separately marketted to based on gender, age, etc. The American computer industry on the other hand has disinvested from consumer technology except for Apple. Resellers such as HP/Compaq and Dell add absolutely nothing of importance to their products. If there are cheaper and more powerful devices it is due only to the entrepreneurial hustle of Taiwanese, Koreans, and Japanese, not Americans. The basic PC experience for users of all categories remains a hellish nightmare of incompatibilities, nonfunctionality, and blatant lies.
The most elementary advances in the computer industry are made impossible by the industry's stubborn denial of mistakes and a refusal to adopt to technology even decades old. As a small example, the original programmers of C developed the language and Unix on a machine whose capabilities are laughable compared to modern machines. The operating system cut back on features that had been planned for the failed Multics project. In such a restricted environment decisions such as deliberately forgetting the true length of arrays were required just to have an operational system. There is no such excuse today, yet the computer industry persists in trying to sell to consumers knowingly defective products which are compromised by simple buffer overflows. The computer industry thinks its just fine that consumers should have to constantly try and engage in a futile endless quest of "upgrading" to patch security holes that would not exist if a proper computer language had been used to write the base system.
It is the computer industry that in recent years has suffered a complete collapse in revenue and valuation. It is the American computer industry that thinks marketting to consumers rectangular beige or black boxes with no style or gender customization is just fine while in Japan there is no reticence to market electronic devices directly to females.
The only reason the American computer industry didn't have a day of reckoning sooner was the incestuous selling between corporations for IT spending, with the last hurrah the bubble caused by Y2K sales. But that opportunity is now gone and the computer industry is openly admitting it has no new ideas. The motion picture industry for the most part spends the money to develop new movies that for a few hours can satisfy the dreams of its customers. The computer industry can't even make a reliable PC. The motion picture industry eventually embraced DVDs and has changed the economics of the industry so that even apparent flops eventually earn more money than was spent to produce them. The PC industry's idea of progress is removing serial ports, parallel ports, and floppy drives because it can't figure out how to otherwise manage the pathetically small number of IRQs. The American PC industry is quickly heading towards Dell being the only reseller to consumers and businesses while Apple fills a niche upper-class market. Meanwhile the motion picture industry keeps on churning out monster hits such as Spider Man and continuations of franchises such as Star Wars and The Matrix, not to mention potential new franchises in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. So who are the dinosaurs and who are dying? It's not the motion picture industry.
Yes, analog Pirated copies degrade over time... but this is a NON issue to the pirate. by the time their origional copy degrades to the point where a good Pirated version of a film is no longer marketable (or even in some cases as good as the video tape released) noone wants to buy it anyways.
Film pirating hurts the studios as much as Piracy hurts the software industry... The little guy with grand ideas that he/she will become a billionare will get the slap of reality from the piraters and the big rich guy will not notice that the piracy happens except for the pretty impressive numbers magically pulled out of an analyst's ass. Look at the Recipts of Spiderman already.. it has surpassed EVERYTHING else at the box office.. What the hell did they expect that piracy stole from them?? another trillion movie goers? BAH, nothing but FUD again from a journalist that is trying to not look like a industry puppet. If attack of the clones fails it's because it SUCKS... I personally felt it was nothing more than TITANIC revisited with a star-wars theme... I dont care about the teen-aged angst and the repeated attempts of our hero to get in the protaganists pants... I saw it to see things get blown up, people chopped in half and hopefully to see jar-jar die...It will not fail because it was pirated, digitized and then shared on Kazaa at a horrible bitrate and over-compressed audio track.
Please, someone take these reporters out of their offices and show them what 90% of the pirated stuff is, and then they'll write a column that "worries about pirating are unfounded unless you like to see films of the backs of people heads, crappy-out of focus, pixelated.."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I spent about a week downloading the Buffy musical DIVX on my modem. I still watched it on TV when it was on here in Australia. The VHS copy I made while it was on TV is significantly better than the DIVX copy (for now at least, obviously it will degrade over time if it's watched enough). When it arrives on DVD I'll likely add it to my DVD collection which, quite frankly, I've already spent enough money on.
I love DVDs. I enjoy hearing the Smashing Pumpkins talking about their videos while I'm watching them. I enjoy the countless remixes with each video on my Beastie Boys anthology. I enjoy Robert Rodriguez pointing out all the snafus in Desperado (shadows of a camera on a boom passing through a shot, the same extra dying multiple times etc). I like the features.
There was a thing on TV here the other day about cinemas in Australia not being able to afford the equiptment to show digital movies, so we get AotC on analogue film rather than the original digital. People go to the Cinema for the large high quality picture and the sound, in short the experience. If cinemas here can't afford the digital technology, what percentage of people are going to have anything approaching it in their own homes?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
First off, my video encoder can encode at 6Mbps full frame MPEG2 better than DVD quality. it is a Pentium 133 with 64 meg of ram.
Yes you heard me. Pentium... IT has a SCSI-II hard drive array that will hold 4 hours of video. and a set of 3 full length PCI video capture and audio capture cards. I insert the video tape (Betacam or 3/4 for old stuff) set the start timecode, set length of capture or end timecode and press the BIG RED BUTTON. encoded in realtime perfectly.
It was horribly easy to make a digital rip. I can teach a 12 year old how to do it.
You said..
don't say that making a digital rip it easy, because it is not.
well it is... with real hardware not the toy stuff available to the general public it is mind-numbingly easy....
Yes the encoding station I speak of can be bought for $36,000.00 today with a wasted Pentium III in it... but the new version can let you spit out a DVD of the encoded video after encoding....
Remember, EVERYTHING is easy if you have enough money to throw at it... and even thinking that video encoding, something done constantly by every network, broadcast company, cable company, and TV station, is still hard is plain silly... Please chekc out modern video production equipment.. it's much different than the consumer or pro-sumer crap that is available.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How is making more laws going to HELP? It is ALREADY ILLEGAL to copy the stuff and give it away. Dont belive me its written on every cd vhs dvd I own. Laws that are not enforced do NOTHING. Digital is just a new way to store things. Why in the world do we even make a distinction? Technicaly there is but from Joe consumers point of view one just looks better than the other. He give a rip if one is digital or analog. They just want a better product!
Their WHOLE busness model was based on content distribution charging/control. They are just starting to realize it. Which is why they are lobying VERY hard for new law to 'help' them. When distrubting it costs almost nothing, and they do not control the proces of getting music, the price WILL and MUST go down. They are whining as their busnesses can no longer sustain the higher costs of their OWN system they setup. Also given we are/were in a economy downturn im surprised they are doing as well as they are. There were LOTS of companies that lost ALOT of money in the past few years. However in the past few years in the eye of competion from a new startup basicly (napster/kazaa/gnutela). Did they do what all smart busnesses do when someone else comes out with a similar product? Did they inovate, lower prices, anything? No they bitch and moan and try to pass more law.
Ill quote danny deveto from other peoples money IMDB "I'll bet the last company that made buggy whips made the best damn buggy whip ever." While it may or may not be true. His anaolgy from the movie is. And if I remember from economics the only times price of product will go up in these conditions. is Increase in production cost, higher demand, or monopolistic controls. They can control 2 of those. One we the consumer controll. If 'piracy' is such a big problem why are their prices going up? Prices tend to go down or level out during recessions. Also if your market share is going down you tend to lower prices to try to attract more people to it. If your a monopoly you can put the price wherever you want. Something else is going on and I do not think piracy is the answer.
My question is simple. Why are they raising prices and therefore pricing MORE people out of their market. As they are moving the wrong way on the demand curve. They make CD's for what 10-20 cents EACH, if that. Then sell them for 15-20 BUCKS each? Their marginal revinue probley does not equal marginal cost. When that happens you are either loosing money or you could be making more. I had that grilled into me in every econ class I took. And if there is an alternative cheaper source of the same as or close to same as copy of the product available, loosing customers to other forms of media that they do not control?! Ill use the pizza example they grilled into me also. If Bob's pizza joint one sells slices of pizza for 1 dollar. And Mikes pizza joint down the street makes very similar pizza for 2 buck a slice. The Bobs pizza will do more busness on a whole baring other cirumstances such as atmospher, help working there, freebees, etc... Both will probly make about the same amount. Now Jimmy makes a magic box that he can setup on the corrner and make pizza for 10 cents a slice. While not AS good as the compition but decent. Little jimmy will make and sell ALOT of pizza. But jimmy _could_ be making more money at it. But he is happy with what he gets. Soon the market will start to change, people will want 10 cent pizza. They will ask why cant the other two places make 10 cent pizza. Why buy from them? The other 2 busnesses will either have to come up with something pretty good or move away from Jimmy. Or try to put Jimmy out of busness with law. Do either hold the patent or copyright on pizza? They may try to ruin Jimmy with health violations etc...
We are seeing from the music/movie industry is a lack of imagination (funny considering what they do!). So if you can not inovate litigate...
DRM hardware/software amounts to a tax on non-media industry businesses
Nations which already turn a blind-eye to copyright infringement will likely omit DRM measures in hardware for regional markets. This wll put foreign countries at an IT procurement advantage
The trend of closed hardware makes the media industry less competitive by raising barriers for small independent artists. (alright this one is a stretch, but its large media conglomerates who cater to the lowest common denominator.)
I also have about 60 odd episodes on my hard drive. I like to be able to watch them more often than I'm given opportunity. Presumably, these AVIs and RAMs and ASFs that I've downloaded off iMesh and gotten burned on CDs from my friends are illegal, pirated episodes... But if I'm giving them money every opportunity I get, how can I possibly be said to be STEALING from them for watching The Simpsons every day, instead of the lame every week (if I'm lucky) that it's on in the season? Off-season, it might not even be on at all! Same holds true for the (not all that many) shows that I actually enjoy on the babble box.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Not only that, but there was a shoot out in California a few years back that ended sucessfuly for the police only because there was a gun shop near by that had more powerful weapons than they did
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You mean like in Germany where, despite their immensly strict gun control, they still had a kid go psycho on them and kill his school-mates. Yeah, gun control works nicely doesn't it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Obviously you haven't spent any time downloading rips. Any one who has can tell you most of the digital files you get are crap. People some how manage to scew up the process of moving a file from a CD to an MP3. And most Divx rips are really low quality. On top of that, any file that you download has the possibility of having missing data bits. I can't tell you how many files I've gotten that have random blips in the file or fades of soud etc. Digital piracy is no better or worse than analog piracy. The only reason the MPAA and the RIAA are after this is because they already lost the battle for VCRs and Audio Cassetes, they need a new target to keep their profits higher than the market equilibrium price.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Yep, that surely is one of the most widely held misconceptions about the Internet that I have seen. But usually they are non profit, out of habit, and .com's are more desirable for businesses.
It's funny you should say this. People really don't think what the ramifications for the SSSCA (CBDTPA) would really be like. Under either one, Xerox would be obligated under law to produce such a magic chip, and not manufacture any new copiers with the capability to copy copyrighted information.
Personally, I can't imagine how such a copier would function. But, it's an interactive electronic device (some new copiers are, in essence, desktop computers with special software), and one capable of displaying and copying copyrighted material. It would be illegal under the SSSCA, unless Xerox could somehow manage to keep you from copying so much as a page from any book in your local library.
Sounds absurd, but you could easily hand copy the information, and as the current 2600 rulings have shown, the right to a fair use copy does not obligate you to a copy in the highest fidelity possible. You could still copy it, but it would be slow, and in your crappy handwriting.
I wonder if an electronic typewriter would be prohibited from letting you plagerize. I don't know how you'd stop it, but they are interactive digital devices, and the words on that page are copyrighted... it wouldn't be hard to make copies.
-------------------------------------------------
The whole $$$ lost due to piracy is just a fabrication... Here is my crazy theory:
The record companies don't care about me, you and john down the street downloading songs off of Napster/AudioGalaxy/Kazza/Whatever. The songs we download and don't pay for only make up the smallest percentage of the companies revenues. Even then, most of us (well I know I do) still go out and buy the damn CD. I believe what the record companies are really scared of is losing THE ARTISTS.
Here in Australia, if an artist is signed to a record company, and they produce a top album, for all their hard work they receive less than $2 per copy sold. Each CD retails for $30+ each. Of this $30, the record company, the distributor, the retailer and even worse, the government take their share. This leaves the artists with very little. In this brave new world, the artists will not need any of these people. They will be able to go into a studio, hand over their $$, record an album and distribute it online, all without the need of some giant company threatening them with contracts, intelectual property etc. Even if they sold online copies for $5 each, and every second person gave it to a mate for free, they still make more money than they did under the record company reign of terror.
The record companies have realised this, but they can't go to the press and tell the public 'Stop Napster, cause it will send us broke, and you will be able to buy albums for $5 each'. The public wouldn't care less for their plight. So, they make up these figures on how much it is costing them, and how piracy is the reason you pay so much for music.
This, I see the same with the large movie distributors like Fox. They aren't concerned with us pirating Star Wars or Spiderman.. We will all still want to go see it in the cinema with the sound, the screen and the atmosphere. They just use this excuse to cover the fact that soon, people will be able to make and distribute movies without them.
What can I say? I love a good theory.
A/./
You can also apply the same argument to the music industry. Right now, you can record, mix and master a high-quality album on an off-the-shelf computer, and either have it pressed into CDs or distributed online, with total expenses under the credit limit of a platinum Visa.
What hasn't been mentioned enough is that passage of the CBDTPA would cripple that model. Because any equipment capable of performing an analog recording could be used to pirate music, future audio packages and digital microphones, etc., will need to be RIAA-approved. Will anyone outside a recording studio or a major label be able to invest in recording if that happens?
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Events have passed you by then www.whirlpool.net.au
According to reports from The Age, SMH and Australian IT, NetStats will be phased out on July 1 and 'soft limits' will be placed on the OptusNet Cable service.
An Optus spokesperson revealed that the plans for Optus Choices subscribers will be as follows:
550MB - $54.95
3GB - $69.95
5GB - $134.95
10GB - $265.95
Australia, the continent of the 3gb 'Broadband' Internet
The fallacy is that analog piracy is not nearly as threatening as digital piracy because analog copies degrade with every generation while digital copies remain pristine no matter how many copies are made.
Have you ever downloaded anything? There is a slight chance that your copy won't work or something has gotten screwed. Considering most pirates may have Cable, DSL or higher, better access - they are likely getting non-corrupted files.
But! If these digital copies are always so great then how come there is sfv [crc] checking, par files and the rest?
Digital copies aren't exactly 100% point-click-error free-copying. In both cases better equipment makes for better copies.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I submitted this there as well, just so you all know. I was interested in the responses I might get from either forum.
First, this is a very good article! I have often thought about this, but never really was able to put it quite as well the author did.
Second, I would like to add a piracy method to your collection. Pre-release DVD
screening copies are distributed in advance of an actual DVD release. These
copies get duplicated, or ripped by someone in the chain then are sold for as
little as a dollar overseas. The interesting thing is that these screening
copies are clearly marked as such with additional contact information for those
viewing them. "If you have rented or purchased this DVD, please call
1-800-MPAA-NO-COPIES"
Clearly the quality of the copy has little to do with the incentive for piracy.
Having viewed one of these, I was surprised that anyone could get anything for
them at all. The questionable legality of these things is right there in the
viewing experience!
Finally, my point. I agree with the basic premise of your article in that the
RIAA / MPAA proposals will do little to solve the problem. The answer, as I
see it, has little to do with piracy however.
I believe the primary motivation behind the increasingly draconian copyright
legislation is about control and profit. Media conglomerates in general see
digital technologies as a powerful enabling technologies for "Pay Per View"
(PPV) delivery. PPV technologies provide long tern annuity profits from every
item in the catalog. PPV combined with copyright extension and litigation are
not aimed at protecting anything but profit. If we are forced to get our
content from the source each time, that source is guarenteed profit for as long
as their media content is of any relevance to society.
One more point to consider: Hollywood is not producing new content at the same
rate it is being consumed. WIth analog media, this is a concern, but not a
problem. They get annuity profits from the replacement and resale of older
media. The primary selling point of digital media is long life and high
fidelity. These present a problem today in that the average purchase may
likely be good for the lifetime of the buyer. Our rate of media consumption
is greater than their rate of production. In the near future, if we are
allowed to own personal digital copies, we will only be purchasing new content.
The rights we currently enjoy and the long media life will combine, through
media resale and trading, to sharply reduce the high annuity revenue the media
industry currently enjoys.
It is this future loss of revenue that lies behind the current barrage on our
rights today.
Their answer will be new formats, and delivery methods designed to lead people
away from the durable open media we use today. The switch from analog (vinyl
and VHS) to digital (CD and DVD) made a lot of sense for both sides. Future
format changes have few advantages for us, and many for them.
"Of course I could be wrong..." --Dennis Miller
Blogging because I can...
Stop saying "I defend my right to shoot my neighbor because if I didn't have a gun I'd stab him" and start saying "I defend my right to bear firearms."
I completely agree that the principles themselves should stand without explination. The problem is that the few people who haven't made their minds up need something to point them in the right direction. The right to bear arms is severely challenged right now, as are many other rights which were sacred to the old white men who founded the US.
Slashdot has its flamewars, but when we talk rationally we tend to agree on a few basic things which we might be tempted to call common sense. These things are not obvious to the rest of the world, and "because I can do it anyway" is one way to begin explaining why prohibition, strong gun control, extreme intellectual property laws, and other victimless crime laws have never worked and never will. The ones who've made up their minds will trot out their "if it saves one kid" and their "we have to do something", but there's hope for the others, and these arguments are a start.
There is another element of your post which I should address. Your original point seemed to be that we should be campaining for our rights to do harmless things instead of defending the implied rights to do what might be destructive things. That is, the right to bear arms, versus the right to use them against others. This distinction is also lost on far too many people.
There are two sides to this. One is the "prohibit everything by default and allow only what is sanctioned" school of security. Why would you want to own a gun? There's nothing good that could come of it. Why would you want to grow that plant? Why would you want to drink that toxin? It's for your own good. This approach to security assumes that the rule-maker knows everything, and that the rules actually restrict the ruled. These are easy assumptions to be trapped in!
The other side of the lost distinction between freedom to choose and freedom to choose poorly is that people assume that there is a way to elect "better" choosers to make the decions for the "worse" choosers. That is, "we" elect "them" to protect "us" for our own good. The obvious problem with that is that if we are poor choosers we are likely to pick the wrong people. There are many other problems with this, but my post is getting too long and has almost nothing to do with digital vs analog piracy.
Crack pipes are most definately illegal in the US. If you have a crack pipe on you and a police officer finds it, you can, and probably will get charged with Possession of Drug Paraphenalia.
There is a fourth group. That is the group of people who "collect" bootlegs. People did it with warez and they do it with movies, TV shows, and music albums.
This article, while furnishing some interesting info about the numbers, was a sickeningly typical lawyer nitpick. Instead of attacking verbiage with better verbiage, I wish these legal geniuses would address the real issue, which is whether or not copyright enforcement benefits the general public to an extent that justifies taking away other things.
America has always been big on law enforcement, but there have traditionally been limits, like search and seizure laws and rules of evidence. The rights-ownership industry (we're not talking about creative artists here) appears to think that protecting IP should become the central goal of law in America. Privacy doesn't matter -- it could be used to hide infringement. Innovation doesn't matter -- it could be used to defeat protection. Opensource doesn't matter -- it's an evil socialist plot anyway. Everybody's behavior must be restricted so as to guarantee that people like Jamie "skipping commercials is theft" Kellner get a nickel every time anybody reads, views or hears anything other than their own bodily functions.
We ought to do follow the advice put forth in some recent article posted here (can't remember the freakin one) that advocated focusing political contributions to defeat legislators who act as toadies to the entertainment industry. Every time a new tendril appears, cut it off. Blacklist the entertainment industry and see how they like it. Does anybody know who Hollings' opponent is going to be in the next election? Send him or her money. Send letters to every other senator notifying them that you are doing this and why you are doing it.
American politics tends to be a series of one-issue campaigns. Our lawmakers understand that principle very well. Make the defeat of the copyright industry your one issue and let them know it.
TS (Telesync). Handheld cam for video
Telesyncing is actually a pretty 'offical' process, it's one of the more popular ways to convert film to video (where the main problem is the FPS conversion). A pretty standard procedure, but quite a specialized one. In a closed space you project the picture onto a screen and film it off the screen with a camera (like a good Betacam or something).
Of course, in the pirate world, this just means you stick the camera onto a tripod, hook it up to the sound system and roll.
I've seen a bootleg Lord of the Rings that's a screener. DVD-quality audio and video
That's because it was a DVD. A *lot* of Academy members and movie reviewers don't actually go to the cinema, they just sit at home and watch screeners on TV. Now, for years screeners have been VHSes - mainly because... well, that's how it's always been done. Most popular format, and all.
A year (or two) ago this started changing. Studios realized that most Academy members/reviewers probably have DVD players and would apreciate a DVD more than a VHS tape. So many top oscar contenders (like LotR) came out as DVD screeners.
I'm sure that there's more than one Academy member ready to make an extra couple of hundred bucks every now and then by letting some guys copy one or two of his tapes. Or borrow his DVDs.
A bootleg's quality is directly proportional to the time spent creating it.
A bootleg's quality is directly proportional to the media being copied. You will not make a DVDRip like DivX out of a screener even if you capture each frame by hand. High quality DVDRips take a few hours to do, even if you run a double pass codec on them.
If you want to dump it out into another format, say MPEG-4 or DiVX, there are a lot of fiddly bits, as regards how to get the best out of lossy compression. A non-action film may compress much better than an action film, trade-offs must be made. However, you can end up with 1-2CDs of data that are quirte viewable. It may take a couple of attempts though.
See my journal, I write things there
What are you trying to do, take /. to new levels?
free the mallocs!
The only remedy to that is to prevent digital copies from a camcorder, even if it is for a legitimate, non-Hollywood content use, such as making low-cost digital copies of the images in a patient's medical record for the benefit of that patient. Sheesh, how about a copy of my daughter's birthday party to send to her grandparents. Isn't that the PURPOSE of purchasing a camcorder?
Despite what the MPAA might hope to accomplish, it'll backfire as long as there are sufficient numbers of independents who desire to create content. As you said, you can now buy a DVD buner for under $400. This was absolutely unheard of until the end of last year. It doesn't burn in the DVD "authoring" format? So what? If the resulting disc plays your recorded work on people's DVD player, that's all the end user cares about. (If it doesn't always work due to compatibility problems, that'll resolve itself as the general public applies pressure for compatibility. People don't just sit back and accept it when products don't work "as advertised" -- and there's an understanding that the DVDs you make can be played back on typical DVD players.)
To put it quite simply, the MPAA has no way to ultimately control what types of equipment fall into the hands of the public. If they manage to get laws passed that outlaw use of their proprietary equipment, it will instantly become irrelevant. People use formats that they have access to - not ones that they don't.
Um, sounds like your district alrady has a party that has a shot of winning -- the Republican party, which has steamrolled Mr. Goodlatte to victory over and over again.
I agree that voters should not suffer the constrictions of the two-party vote race, but it sounds to me that your district has already chosen a preferred representative in Congress. I'm sorry that he's not who you would have chosen.
Hmm. So, if they "protect" themselves, they make it harder for "little people" to create art because the things that record and copy sound and images will be crippled for everyone except the big boys. I don't call that "promoting the progress of the useful arts." If they get rid of computers, it will be much harder to make technological advances because computers are used everywhere to advance society and the sciences. I hardly call that "promoting the progress of the useful sciences." If we took away all devices in the world that were either designed by or manufactured with or include the kinds of machines the copyright industry wants to outlaw, we would be in much worse shape. We would go back to 1950 in terms of technology and freeze the calendar there.
Remember that the only reason copyright (and patents for that matter) exist is
to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing, for limited time, to inventors the exclusive right to their respective discoveries.
You can't use copyright to do things that will hinder the arts and sciences. There is no right to "protect yourself". You can get some limited protection if you promote the arts and sciences, but you can't do things that will hurt society by retarding progress just to keep your obsolete business model functioning.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
> But when one CD costs me 3 hours of work (at minimum wage, for us "middle class teens") it's easier to spend an hour looking for a good quality rip.
And when a Z6 costs me a year and a half's salary, does this justify me spending an hour looking for a good quality Z6 (for me to) rip (off)?
Kudos for rationalizing your theft, but don't bullshit yourself into thinking you're some kind of freedom fighter because you're stealing. I don't agree with IP/copyright laws in their current state (you may not but it's more likely that it's just convenient to say you don't and hedge your justification) but it's still theft.
And what's with decrying the $16+ for 9 song pop CDs? CDs are easy to find cheaper (christ... I can walk into a Best Buy and find plenty of fine CDs for $10-$12) than the exorbitant rates some places charge and if people want to buy overpriced crap, let them. Are you one of those folks buying tripe?
You're still a consumer, just not a paying one.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
The current Bitzi catalog/service is in preview mode. It'll be more comprehensive once we get past that stage.
[disclaimer: I work at Bitzi]
urlview could do that, but I don't know whether anyone has integrated it or similar with mozilla. It'd be cool if browsers optionally aggressively made links out of text that looks like a URL but isn't a href'd. These inferred links wouldn't even need to change the look of the page, e.g., they could be accessible via a contextual menu -- exactly how urlview works inside an xterm.
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Or go to Japan, with its stricter gun control, where some guy cut up a class full of children with a kitchen knife. It's not the guns, it's people.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"