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Director Attacks MPAA Piracy Claims
dipfan writes "Alex Cox, the writer/director of cult classic Repo Man and punk movie Sid And Nancy, writes today in The Guardian's media section that the movie industry's real pirates are the Hollywood studios and the MPAA - for squeezing out independents. He rejects the widespread claim that Spider-Man suffered from widespread net piracy, and asks: "Are [the MPAA's] claims of lost billions even credible?" (In a strange coincidence, Cox has another article in the same newspaper today, where he defends using 35mm film rather than digital cameras a la George Lucas, saying digital cinema gives too much power to the distributors and studios because the technology is less portable than 35mm.)"
Ha ha ha! Although the piracy claims are bullshit, as evidenced by the box office figures.
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Just make copyright unassignable!
Make laws that you cannot assign copyright to anybody.
They think that spiderman *suffered* from internet piracy? Jeezy Creezy how many box office records did it break?
Until a "sure thing" like Spider Man or Attack of the Clones sees *wide spread* piracy on the net and then flops like a Michael Bay crapfest, they have nothing to say. Maybe then they can cry foul, I have no sympathy for a movie's suffering when it was the fastest to hit $100 million (!!!!) *ever*.
Do those DLP projectors have firewire outputs? Hmm.. Let's see, grab a couple of 100G firewire drives, a powerbook and final cut pro... Maybe I'll go get a job in a theater.. :) Heck, even S-video or composite would do.
The unsig!
In the second article, he writes: "However, once the new technology is installed, Corelli will be beamed direct to screen one for the duration of its scheduled run, and will play to empty houses"
Could someone explain to me where he gets the idea that all movies will be directly beamed to the theaters at run-time?
I've always heard that the movies get shot in to mult-gigabyte hard drives.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
But the fact that this appeared in a major British newspaper is important: it may represent the fact that public opinion is stronger than we have judged and there may be a consumer backlash against the "content moguls".
Or not...
And if you think a mogul is a thing out of Final Fantasy, you're wrong.
graspee
Bud: Intellectual Property is a sacred trust, it's what our free society is founded on. Do you think they give a damn about their Intellectual Property in Russia? I said, do you think they give a damn about their Intellectual Property in Russia?
Otto: They don't have Intellectual Property in Russia, it's all free.
Bud: All free? My ass! What are you, some kind of commie?
Otto: No, I ain't no commie.
Bud: Good. I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either!
Freedom: "I won't!"
As a Canadian, it's easy for me to say "well, our politicians can't be bought that easily because they have to vote along party lines.", but the truth is that Canadian politicians can be bought just as easily as their American counterparts. But it appears now that the current government has finally learned that people want to see some accountability. The PM fired the Defense Minister today for giving an untendered contract for CDN$30K to an ex-girlfriend, and are drafting legislation to provide much more access to who gives the government money and who contracts are awarded to.
And like the author said: if Spider-Man is losing lots of money to piracy, the box office numbers sure aren't showing it.
How much longer will we have duped (or more to the point, paid off) Congressmen who let these big IP holders walk all over the rights of the American people to own recording hardware?
My God, if these people had been around 100 years ago, they would have made the ball point pen illegal since it can be used to copy books.
I seriously think that this issue will not be solved until there is a Constitutional Amendment that guarantees fair use rights for all media.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
I usually keep up with the entertainment news, but am I the only one to ask that question when this story came up? I would be more inclined to listen to these claims if he wasn't just some hack trying to break into a bigger arena.
What is this washout smoking? Who in their right mind considers CDs an "inferior technology" to vinyl records? I know of a few passionate nostalgics who subjectively prefer the sound of vinyl over CDs, but even they aren't stupid enough to claim that the technology is superior. You can't put data on vinyl. You can't play vinyl in your car, or while you're jogging. With this one, ridiculous comment, the author has lost all credibility with me, and has exposed himself as just another angry outsider who is upset that the Big Boys won't let him play with them.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
While I'm on the rant, it's a well know fact that if a movie studio DID NOT put out any films that it would be better off money wise. A studio invests lots and lots into crap like oh... Deuces Wild only to see it's flop at the box office. When something like spiderman comes around they actually make something, but it is not enough to cover their losses with duds like Super Troopers. It's gotten so bad that the studios now use the flops as tax write offs. Now would it be great if companies oh say like Enron could write off their failures as a tax cut? Wouldn't it be great if the average Joe could?
Download DivX NOW! SPREAD THE WORD PUT THESE TURDS OUTTA BUSINESS!
From the article "Most of the rights to the book - including all US rights - had long ago fallen into the public domain. Only the British rights appeared to be privately held: by a former rock musician who hoped to turn Wells' story into a travelling stage musical along the lines of Blood Brothers or Fame."
It is amazing to me that literature as old as War of the Worlds is still unavailable for the public (at least in Britain). I mean, I used to listen to the original radio broadcast on reel-to-reel when I was a kid. The amount of quality work that has been abandoned due to continuously extended copyrights has to be non-quantifiable. Tragedy, because, although he didn't get to make his picture, the large studios bought out the rock-star and are now making it with Tom Cruise. I want to cry.Put identity in the browser.
Hey what ever happened to Dick Rude? Send him and his gang after those MPAA "MELLON FARMERS!"
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
By Sunday, it's obvious that Correlli has tanked, and that Beckham is a hit. Naturally you yank Corelli from the larger cinema and put Beckham in there. The studios hate this, but can do nothing about it. However, once the new technology is installed, Corelli will be beamed direct to screen one for the duration of its scheduled run, and will play to empty houses.
Why, exactly? The argument about this that I've always heard is that it's the other way round. With a digital projector, there's no problem with running out of reels; it is technically far easier to copy bits that replicate a reel.
Of course, DRM may prevent the cinema from doing this, but surely it's acceptable for them to pay more for showing the film to more people, seeing as it's the ticket (and food) price that pays for the film in the first instance?
And if the cinema has a shortage of digital projectors then that's irrelevant; it's just the case of the new technology maturing and becoming more widespread. Preventing progress because new technology isn't deployed widely enough is no argument at all.
The MPAA is evil alright, but this is not the kind of objection against war on piracy that anyone will take seriously. You cannot expect any industrial body not to take up a fight when they are losing money just because they are already "hugely wealthy."
I am all for MPAA-bashing, but I wouldn't expect anyone not already in the know to care about an article the stamps some entity as evil without provding any real arguments why this is so.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Furthermore, he gets that one pirated copy != one lost sale.
Still, I wouldn't expect Sony to allow copying anytime soon. Or even to rollback their laughingstock copy protection, for that matter. But it's nice to see somebody high profile talking sense once in a while.
It's 1394. People who use real computers call it 1394. Thank you.
Anyway, greetings and 88, Adolf!
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If I produced any non-essential in such an environment, I would expect sales to be somewhat depressed. Sorry guys, Cinema isn't an essential. Produce a good movie, such as Spidey then we will probably go and see it. Unfortunate the industry distrubutes a lot of rubbish. I say distributes advisedly because some good stuff is produced (even ocassionally inside the studio system). However, it often doesn't get out unless it fits the business model of the season.
I want more creatives like this guy to stand up and say where the MPAA is getting things wrong when it tries for ever more content protection.
Some people may have heard about the much trumpeted Spidey raid in the UK. What was being (expensively) copied onto DVD? The only version I have seen listed would fit into a small part of a CD and as someone else commented who has seen it, the quality was barely worth the effort of watching. Maybe the industry itself has problems with higher quality masters escaping?
Last point in this ramble, the Gruniad article made the very good point that having a secure digital chain between distributor and projector is a great way of locking other content producers out of the theatre.
From the second article: Bad technology sometimes beats out good. Consider the triumph of VHS over Beta, of CDs over vinyl, of the Microsoft operating system over the Mac. In each case, inferior technology triumphed because of huge corporate pressure.
I understand #s 1 and 3, but I don't understand why he would claim that vinyl is better than CD. Can someone tell me if I'm missing something?
IEEE 1394
Thank you, Alex Cox. We'll be forever in your debt for "Repo Man" but that's another story altogether. It's a shame this appeared in the Guardian rather than in the LA Times or some other place where it will do some good.
I know I have made a big deal about "Dogtown And ZBoyz" and Sony Classics' being the distributor, but damn, man...could it have only seen the light of day if one of the distributors owned by MPAA signatories had released it? I mean, probably "Revolution OS" didn't have that kind of backing, but it didn't go into fairly wide release like "Dogtown" did.
If the movie theatres are 0wned by the MPAA, then where do the truly independent filmmakers go to show their work? I am hoping that somehow or another technology will come to the rescue as it has several times in the past. The RIAA had DAT neutered and the DAT portastudio killed because it feared indie musicians with the ability to create really good sounding independent recordings. Guess what? Thanks to cheap, huge hard drives and computer technology getting cheaper and cheaper, you can go to Sam Ash and get a portastudio with a HD capable of storing hours of 16-track audio for $500 or so.
OK, so digital filmmaking on a massive, Episode 2 kind of scale is out of reach of indie filmmakers. You can still get Digital Video cameras for a grand, a Mac "Quicksilver" minitower for 2 grand and Final Cut Pro for another large bill and have the ability to make a movie, then send it to DVD-R for distribution. I still am talking Large Bucks but it's certainly not as expensive as it used to be to make movies on film. And if you opt instead for a big-ass Athlon MP system with a firewire card and a Pioneer Superdrive, Windows 2K and Sonic Foundry Vegas Video 3, you can bring the price of the computer down a fair amount and shave a few bills off the price of software. If it is not practical now to do this, it will become practical in a few years. Right now CD-RW drives and DVD-ROM drives are selling for only $10 or $20 more for the increasingly hard to find CD-ROM only units. I can see a day coming in four or five years where CD-RW and DVD-ROM will be universally replaced with DVD-R/RW (or DVD+R/RW depending on which standard wins) and you only save a pittance by going with DVD-ROM and/or CD-RW.
Of course, if the Senator From Disney, Don Valenti's Made Man himself, Sen. Hollings can get one of his horrible bills passed, this all might be moot. If all computers have to have an RIAA/MPAA-approved DRM OS running and hardware copy neutering, you won't be able to do much with that newly cheap DVD recordable drive. I kinda hope that technology will figure a way to get around it, just like the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it; and instead of DAT Tascam and Fostex used hard drives to create a digital multitrack recording device. But when computer technology itself is chained...I shudder to think of the consequences.
And actually Alex has a point...watching a movie in a theatre is way different than watching a movie on a computer monitor, on your TV, or on cable. If the MPAA has that all locked up, we are that much poorer culturally. So even if we win technologically, we lose an unique experience to the multinationals and their slaves in public office.
Millione di grazie, Don Valenti. Pardon me if I don't kiss your fsckn ring.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
In the case of Attack of the Clones, quality may not matter much since (a) almost all the shots are special effects shots done mainly by computer, and (b) the film is shite.
But try to imagine Citizen Kane shot on digital video (in colour, naturally), or Amelie, or Moulin Rouge. If its promoters are serious about the quality of their technology, let them put it to the test against the best work of contemporary and classic cinematographers - not against the worst.
My only regret is that we don't have the medical technology to give me a womb so that I can bear this man's children. I have never read such clear, plain spoken and informed articles about the MPAA agenda in a mainstream forum before. It makes me begin - begin - to hope that it's not too late to turn the tide of distributors controlling the very copyright laws that were originally and explicitely written to limit their ability to screw both creators and consumers. Alen Cox, I salute you.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Er, I'm an idiot.
..
.. there is a grey area in which you could contend that vinyl is the superior medium
Thats what I meant to say. Sorry for the confusion.
"Old man yells at systemd"
>they could just go plunk down $5 and see in the theatre
That was 15 years ago. Its now $9.
I have never made alot of money. They don't pay the military very well. So I used to pirate alot of games. I just didn't have the money to buy them I would have I did. What did happen though, is even though the pirated copies of the games are a bit buggy it gave me a good I idea what the gameplay was like and from there I would save up and get the game I liked most. I think in regards to software the "try before you buy" mentality is esssential because most of the stuff out there is crap. and most stores won't let you return opened software. So anyone could easily sick big money into just finding what they need. But what do I know I am just a dumb Jar-Head.
It's all Politics
Heard of matinee?
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Did any of you happen to catch the History Channel special on the Kennedys Sunday night? One of the interviews was with the special assistant to LBJ at the time of the Kennedy assasination - a man named Jack Valenti who coincidentally looks _exactly_ like the evil Jack Valenti. I wonder if this man who once had the highest security clearance in the US government still has any friends/connections in government. Not that it would explain anything...
Piracy PR Company News Network, May 27th:
The half dozon hosts with Spiderman up for download in 800mb halfbakedTM quality clips have set a new internet speed record for transfering billions of $ of pirated copies in 2 weeks. 31331hax0r of Cult Of The Dead Movie says "yeah, we managed to upload the 160,000,000 gigabytes required to cost them a billion $ of ticket $ales, I even had to overclock my Pentium 266 and remove the 28k cap on my cable modem to do it". The MPAA reports empty moneybins and empty theatres all over the USA, "this is a serious trend for national security" reports Big Boss. New laws alowing the NSA to hack into piracy-terrorists are expected to be passed by congress today. "I'm afraid for the future of my children when multinational corporations can't make billions of dollars out of making overhyped movies" says a mother from Astroturf, California.
MaxiVision48 can switch on the fly between 24 and 48 frames-per-sec and uses a new film advance mechanism to eliminate jitter. The result is a super clear rock-solid picture. I wonder what became of it.
Yep, totally. It was called "Moviedrome" I think, and included some good David Lynch films (the earlier stuff) and some other rare stuff. True that the intros made the films more exciting than they were, sometimes!
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Instead of whinging, why dont we do something about it.
We could all agree to stop watching any hollywood films with their over the top effects, poor plot lines and predictable endings, and instead only watch films made by independent film makers.
If we stop giving them our money then they would be forced to rethink their business model. In the meantime cinemas (movie theatres) would be forced to start showing more independent films and the hollywood monopoly and control would be broken.
I for one could quite happily agree never to watch a hollywood film again. There are a lot more interesting and creative things to do with your time. Perhaps reading the original books that many films are based on instead, or make your own original films with your video camera instead of wasting your film videoing your family queuing at Disneyland.
If copyrights cannot be transferred, they remain with the artist or author, and have to be licensed from them by the publishers. Currently it is the other way around: artists often have to sign over the rights to their own work lock stock and barrel, to the publishers. Already, record companies have succesfully prevented artists from distributing their own work through alternative channels such as the Internet.
If publishers have to license rights from the authors and artists, the creative rights remain where they belong, with the creative people.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
IMHO, Sony's piracy is there to make it difficult for the average user. As they know stopping those who are going to do it anyway, is useless.
But even more so i is there to show intent of protection. Makeing them elligable to quiet a few anti-Corp.vrs.Corp stealing type laws. As the courts don't destiguish from can be cracked in 2 hours via any p100, and uncrackable in 1000 years via 2-teraflop'ed super computer. They just look at intent. The intent to protect, and the intent to brake said protection.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
Thanks for sharing your unwanted opinion! I'll be sure to not only look up to you in the future, but by golly I won't be seeing Spider-Man anytime in the near future based solely on your erudite (and topical!) review! What a guy! Thanks! The world is a better place now!
Wanna fuck?
When i were a lad ..... ,music.
bike wheel , plastic cup and a neadle was all i needed to listen to
Analog is easier to mix (by hand), Hey MR DJ put my CD on!!.
I'm sure you can work out all the other reasons, and if not maybe you'll never understand.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
George Lucas pimps out Jarjar who somehow got reprogrammed to sound like the hooker from Full Metal Jacket. (Not enough beers in the world for that one)
I see all the super stars driving around in a puke green 77 Chevy Malabu Classic 4 door with a hug dent in the right rear and a rusted out trunk. (My first dream car)
Life Styles of the Rich and Famous features this months cardboard mansion. (.COM era workers vacation home)
Instead of seeing how record braking the box office numbers were, I see instead no lines at the theatres and huge traffic jams on the internet.
The Episode 2 cast is working a McDonalds to make ends meat. (Something really scares me thinking about Samual L Jackson asking me if I would like fries with that after watching parts Pulp Fiction and Shaft.)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Read. Become less ignorant.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Quibble:
You can't put data on vinyl.
Actually, you can -- well, ok, you can for sure put data on wax discs, and I should think vinyl would be/have been easier. The problem is getting the data off again.
Apparently, for that you need a computer.
Main argument:
Still, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Cox has some good things to say about the MPAA's (lack of) distribution system, and their "my way or the highway" attitude when it comes to playing by their rules in the system they built.
Sometimes it's the angry outsiders who get most of the work done, or have you forgotten? If you're an American, I suggest you start with your own Founding Fathers. If not, I'm sure a little cursory research might turn up some more savoury examples for your delectation.
Incidentally, is Alan Cox more or less of an angry outsider than Leif Junker, (the late) Lucio Fulci, and Chas. Balun, all of whom had or have been talking about this stuff for years...?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Staggered releases around the globe are simply, in this day and age, stupid. There is no reason not to release everywhere at once now. If the studios can't handle it, tough shit! The market (legal or illegal) will make up for their errors.
sulli
RTFJ.
Down with the fucking French.
Alan Cox = Linux Kernel Hacker
Alex Cox = Independant Film Director and subject of this article
Hmm.. as you can see here, they studios surely aren't losing the amount of money they are ranting about. A lot of movies on the list are quite recent (last couple of years) and these figures DO NOT include rentals, DVD sales, TV rights etc.
>Alan Cox
He certainly would, if it were him.
This is *Alex* Cox (the writer/director of cult classic Repo Man and punk movie Sid And Nancy)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
It wasn't Alan Cox. Read the article.
Like most of the people here, I have a tough time sypathizing with the RPAA here, especially considering the movie ranked #2 in all time weekend box-office sales. My question is what do they really think they've lost? Sales? Not this early. The people who are going to settle for a crappy internet/VCD quality rip are people who wouldn't have gone to the theaters to see it anyway. It's the experience. Hell, they may still go, but it's way to early to deal the "$$$ lost to piracy" card. If the video/DVD were already out, maybe I could believe it. But the piracy bandwagon is getting worn a little thin. It's like saying that since I downloaded Photoshop 6, Adobe just lost $300, which isn't true since I would have never bought PS6 in the first place. It was simply covenient. Figures lie and liars figure, I guess.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What Cox is effectively saying - but he doesn't use this terminology because his background is film not computers - is that 35mm is an open standard whilst digital shows all the signs of becoming a proprietary one controlled by a Hollywood cartel (a la DVD).
Think Microsoft's domination of the desktop applied to cinema projection.
Whilst one reason Cox is against digital projection is because he doesn't think it's currently as good aesthetically. The reason he's expounding here is Open Standards versus Proprietary ones - something I would have thought most Slashdotters could understand and agree with.
Ah, children these days, they don't remember the computer magazines of the 1980s that had computer games on free flexidiscs. This was a bit before CDs became popular.
is it just me who read this wrong the first time ???
You're asking the masses to change their consumer habits? Piss into the wind some more, my friend, because unless it's something that's really painful, only time worn trends will change them. No offense, but the fact you could (but don't) illustrates the point.
"A guy goes to his friends house to see him. While talking on the porch, the guy notices his friends dog howling while simply lying there. The guys asks, "What's wrong with your dog"? The friend replies, "Oh, he's just sitting on a nail." The guy is a bit taken back. "A nail!?!? Why doesn't he move or soemthing!?" The friend replies, "Because it doesn't hurt bad enough..."
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Cox isn't saying the MPAA is evil, he never uses the word.
He's merely putting the claims of lost millions in perspective.
His argument in a nutshell
- the studios are crying wolf over money lost to piracy
- they already make millions whilst independent film-makers struggle to get finances to get movies made
- the measures they want to put in place to counter piracy will hurt the independents even more. In effect they'll be barriers to entry in the market.
I thought it was a well-written thoughtful article.
Everyone calls it firewire, because its bloody easier.
'fy-er-why-er' is a lot easier to say than 'eye-ee-ee-ee-thirt-teen-nine-te-for' or just 'thirt-teen-nine-te-for', both sylable wise & grammatically
Subtitling takes time.
(Not everyone in the world speaks English...)
Cheers -
Jim
-- My Weblog.
From: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20020506S0041
"The association signed a no-fee license agreement with Apple Computer Inc. to adopt the FireWire name, logo and symbol as a brand name for the IEEE 1394 connection standard, which has been given different marketing names by its roughly 170 member companies. "
"Under its agreement with Apple, the Trade Association received the right to sublicense the FireWire trademarks for use on products, packaging and promotion of the standard. "We decided [to] start calling ourselves what we think we are," said Snider. "
It strikes me that these two qualities actually contradict each other, which leads me to believe that net piracy of films is not that huge a deal at the moment, especially for easily-pleased fanatics. DVDs maybe, but films... no.
Boy.. I think he has some issues with distribution. Perhaps if his stuff was more readily picked up by studios and given more mainstream viewings, perhaps he wouldn't be singing the same tune.
I just saw Atack of the Clones in digital format. (had to drive 3 hours to see it) the picture was real sharp, but you could still see the pixels, that didnt bother me. the anoying thing was that the sound and video got out of sync for most of the movie. wtf? I know that with THX sound the film has electric markers every second to cue the digital sound. This way the sound wont get out of sync.
With all the time they spent engeneering the digital projector they never thought of putting sync technology into it. pathetic. not only did i have to sit through all those bad love sceens in the movie but their voices and lips did not match.
Where to start with this tripe? Let's begin with the notion that the studios, or any enterprise for that matter, has no right to complain if they are successful and have attained great wealth. Sorry, but the Great Socialist Utopia went to /dev/hell in the late 80's and early 90's. Wealth is not inherently wrong, and it's usually those that are pissed that it wasn't handed to them complaining the loudest about it. Next, let's tackle the notion that independant filmmakers are automatically getting the short end of the stick. Here's a fact. Studios want to make money. Studios are going to seek out people they think can make lots of money for them. This implies that they want people that will make movies people will LIKE. This is why they hire people like James Cameron, George Lucas, etc. And it seems they have a pretty good track record in providing the kind of fare the public wants. Do they always get it right? Of course not. Lucas, visionary that he is, has made some stinkers (Howard the Duck comes to mind). But Hollywood would be bankrupt if they weren't doing something right. As for the independants? There are plenty of venues for the display of their works, Sundance first and foremost. Looking back, I see many independants that used these venues, got noticed, and then became "majory players". Quinton Tarentino, Robert Rodgiguez are good examples. Has it ever occured to this man that perhaps too few people like his films for them to get truly major distribution? There's are words for what he's feeling, and they're as old as man himself; envy, and jealousy. And, what of his IMPLIED notion that because he's "independant" he has a right for exposure of his films? Sorry, see the Socialist comment above. This is just one more Euro-Leftist angry that the Revolution never came. The fact that this story came from the Gaurdian should have tipped folks off to that right away. There may be plenty of crap from Hollywood in my opinion and yours, but ours is not the only opinion. I may despise "Steel Magnolias", but there are plenty of people that genuinely like it, and will pay money to see it. This model in action is called a Market, and I suspect this is what Cox most despises.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The Nyquist Theorem says that the frequencies can be accurately measured by sampling at twice the highest frequency in the signal, but it doesn't say anything about the phase differences.
THe advantage and problem of CD sampling is that the highest frequencies are muted. This is normally an advanatage because noise is often seen as higher frequency signals of flat intensity. The lack of noise on a CD is also a sign of its lack of high frequency components which are used to carry the phase differences which give a positional aspect to sound.
Your ears use the phase difference in sound to create a directional aspect to it.
Most people here feel that piracy *helped* spread the word on various companies products. MS windows would be nowhere as popular as it is if it hadn't been for rampant piracy. Someone further down pointed out that Sony admitted that piracy helped the PlayStation1 to become as hugely popular as it is. Most people point out that Napster gave them the opportunity to hear songs of CD's that they later bought, as opposed to Napster today that simply has no market left. I for one saw a pirated release of the Matrix at the company where I was working at the time the day after it was released in the States, but that (I should say "of course" but some people don't see the point) didn't stop me from seeing it in the cinema. I could go on.
Society is very much obediant to the physical rule that for every force there is a reaction or counterforce. You can try this out by standing in a doorway and pressing hard against the frame - it presses back. The same is true for increasingly repressive large corporations trying to avoid the obvious changes that technologies are forcing on them. Society is reacting like that dorr frame - it is pressing back. If the large greed corporations are violent enough to repress society enough that that hypothetical doorframe breaks, they are left with no door so to speak. There will simply be no market for their products and we will be left with a kind of neo-fascist society a la Orwell's 1984, where it will be illegal to even complain about the repression that said corporations are forcing upon us.
This is not to say that the tendancy to produce ever more expensive movies with ever more technical effects, or operating systems with ever more gimmicks, or ever more technically polished albums will stop. The problem with these things is that they are like heroin. Society builds up a tolerance level to them. More is NOT better. This is why a cheap film like the Blair Witch Project succedes but it's commercialised sequels do not. A huge technical effort and restrictive laws do NOT encourage creativity. They kill it fairly effectively. Is anyone else out there thankful that there never was a sequel to Blade Runner?
If they carry on the way they are, they will lose, even if we do nothing. The way I see it is that their only chance of survival is to "go with the flow". I for one, naive or not, am going to mail the RIAA, the MPAA and point out these things to them. Will you?
Someone's threatening my opinion about a movie and making me doubt myself! Better post a quick AC so that all is right in my little world!
I got quite amazed when a guy who couldn't tell "invincible" from "invisible" obviously got to subtitle episode II.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
It does however have very much to do creativity and desireability getting lost in the grips of large companies. Hollywood is successful *because* of their size, which allow them to reach far more people than any independant ever could, and to market any article to death with a budget that would feed a country like Madagascar for a year or, closer to home, give an unemployed techie from the dotcom bust a job.
It also has nothing to do with Europe as there are very many independants in the States as well who would appreciate the chance to get some more exposure. Projecting your hatred and fear on someone because his views do not coincide with yours does not give you any more credibility.
The problem with 'on-line piracy' isn't that people are stealing money away from studios, the problem is that it will force the MPAA to use a more ethical business model.
Think about it, you pay for the movie BEFORE you are satisfied with it, and you really don't have a whole lot of choice if the movie sucks. (Yeah, you could get your money back, but how often does that happen?) Just about any other business gives you a 'satisfaction guaranteed' policy. Don't like your video card? Take it back within 30 days. Was your burger at McDonald's cold? They give you a card for a new sandwhich at a later time. Don't like a movie you bought on DVD or saw in the theater? Tough shit. You already had your service provided.
The 'on-line piracy' that the MPAA is worried about gives people the chance to discover if the movie sucks or not, and decide not to go see it. I mean, think about it: There is no possible way that you can recreate going to the theater in your own home. I don't know many people who could fit a movie screen that large. And I don't know about you, but I like seeing a movie with an audience, particularly if it's a comedy. There is always value in seeing the movie in the theater.
If the movie's good, people will go see it even if they have seen a VCD version of it. The theater is a far superior version of it. On top of that, you may want to drag your friends to see it! Frankly, I think the piracy mentioned in this article is likely to make the good movies get more money, and the bad movies make less. This means that Hollywood will have to seriously raise the quality of what they are creating. Heh, you'd think with the >$100,000,000 budget of a lot of movies that quality would be of the utmost concern.
In short, what I'm saying is that the MPAA will be forced to use a 'Best Buy' style business model in order to maintain customer satisfaction. Until they do that, they will just have to learn to live with people wanting gratis advance copies of movies. Pity though, I'd be willing to pay half the cost of a movie ticket to see a 320 by 240 version of a movie off the net, particularly if I'm cautious about whether I'll like it or not.
"Derp de derp."
So you actually find it odd that a guy actually makes sure the actual artists he likes get some money, so they bother/are allowed to keep on?
And even more. If he's DJing, he probably makes money of it, right? I would feel like shit if I dj'ed pirated records. But that's just me.
I know moral, honesty and integrity are having hard times these days, but if buying music you like is odd, I'm defintly gone old-fashioned long time ago.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Guess what the Church tried to do when Gutenberg invented the mechanical press and mobile characters ?
Yep, forbid it. The reason at that time was that it could be used to print erroneous, heretic versions of the Bible (they didn't appreciate that people translate the Bible in other languages than Latin either... Parallel with ??AA trying to outlaw the conversion of digital music/video to other formats ?)
Nyquist's theorem reproduces a complete signal. You know, F(t)? Where did you get that it only "measures" frequencies? Phase is implicit if the function F(t) is known.
I was in Cannes on Friday, at a panel session organised by Wired mag, on the effects of broadband on the entertainment industry. Wim Wenders made the same points (more thorough writeup at www.59tv.com). Directors who are not slaves to the machine are starting to point out the obvious - that the status quo doesn't necessarily suit everyone, especially when the MPAA and other organisations like it are using their power and position to artificially maintain the status quo. Digital Cinema, in particular, offers a way to break these bonds and open up distribution - if cinemas can be brave enough to install digital screens, and accept for viewing tapes from people off the street.
I got a letter back from Kerry too. He also said something to the effect of "it would be preferable for a solution to be found in the private sector." I don't take that as strong support for the CBDTPA, but I'll be watching him in the coming months.
Kennedy, on the other hand, is pretty useless on tech issues and also privacy and civil rights. And he has never responded to any email or fax or letter.
Think about it, you pay for the movie BEFORE you are satisfied with it, and you really don't have a whole lot of choice if the movie sucks. (Yeah, you could get your money back, but how often does that happen?) [...] Don't like a movie you bought on DVD or saw in the theater? Tough shit. You already had your service provided.
I have gotten free passes for seeing a movie with sound problems that didn't even bother me--because other people complained, and they gave them to everyone as we left after the show. I have gotten free soda and popcorn from the concession because the film broke and the audience had to wait an hour to see the rest of the film. (and anyone who chose to leave got their money back)
I have never, ever gotten the "tough shit" reaction when there was something wrong at a theater.
--
Benjamin Coates
At least if you're going to knock CDs do some research first. Lookup quantization errors. Also lookup dust and scratches because vinyl doesn't have much of a chance at accurately and consistently reproducing a signal like a CD can.
If you read and understood that paper (which you obviously didn't) you'd realize why 96khz sampling doesn't make a difference and probably uses more bits per sample thereby decreasing the quantization error and making the sampling window problem even worse.
At least that is what members call IEEE.
From their web site.
The IEEE (Eye-triple-E) is a non-profit, technical professional association of more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. The full name is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., although the organization is most popularly known and referred to by the letters I-E-E-E.
(appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
It is a continuous function and Nyquist's theorem only applies completely to continuous functions when you have a perfect sample (no error in measurement of samples because of finite precision). The most important result of this is that the discretization of samples appears as a phase shift.
It also only only applies to sine waves which, of course, can be used to model any waves if enough elements of the Fourier series are measured. But try to simulate a simple square wave with a band width limited fourier series. You will always have distortion, no matter what the sampling frequency is.
I've seen both Ep 1 and Ep 2 in the theater, and the one big difference that stood out in my mind was significantly less color saturation in Ep 2. Both films have a lot of color, but Episode 1 really popped. The colors in some scenes looked almost painted. I didn't see that once in Episode 2, even though there were similar shots. Now this may be due to a production decision -- different color palettes, etc. Based on my discussions with cinematographers however, the #1 complaint I hear about HDCAM vs. film is less saturation ... and it makes sense.
It's well known that current CCDs don't have the same exposure latitude as film, both in overall brightness and color depth. Granted they could have corrected this in post before going to film, but it looks like they didn't. There were even a couple of scenes where things almost starting looking like a news report for a few seconds.
24 FPS progressive scanning goes a long way towards making video look like film, but until they get better exposure on CCDs (and figure out how to do good high-speed photography) I don't think they're quite there yet.
Remember Disney, and their little issue with cheating the copyright holders?
The copyright holders went to yank permission to Winnie the Pooh, and *surprise*
Disney said that though the contract only licensed it, they were taking it to be assigned. Thus,
they continue with Winnie the Pooh.
It seems that copyrights only benefit the big bullies. Who do, admittedly, like the status quo.
I'm getting tired of theft being supported in the name of capitalism. Capitalism is good, theft is not. But when a country uses mass socialism [the US *does*], and wrongfully takes freedoms from its citizens and gives the benefits, unearned, to corporations, I am pretty sure that that is called fascism [as opposed to Naziism, a particularly horrid brand of fascism.]
Anyhow, I used to be a conservative libertarian. I guess I still am, but my liberal uncle did manage to convince me that America was more fascist than anything. Definitely not free-market, anyhow. But it wasn't just my uncle. It was the WTO, the putting down of the riots, the isolation of the leaders *in every location* from their people, the WTO/NAFTA laws that are anything *but* free trade, but benefit specific favorite-son companies, and America being at the head of it all.
It was also Waco, Danny P. Scott ['92, LA Times], Harry Lamplugh, Vicki Weaver, the drug seizure laws [the father of a friend of mine, a junkyard owner, had $5000 seized from him while on a purchase trip. No charges, just seizure]... It's the anti-imigrant laws, the imported farmworkers who must work for Mexican minimum wage on our farms, the drug war, the use of prison labor, the use of God's name to uphold the president's decisions for war [is that backwards or what?]
It's the high taxes, the huge number of laws, and -- now, more, but significant before -- the constant fear that Americans feel, especially of the IRS, but in general of their government.
It's how the government defines every part of life.
So I guess it wasn't just my uncle after all.
But those copyrights have to go.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I have gotten free passes for seeing a movie with sound problems that didn't even bother me--because other people complained, and they gave them to everyone as we left after the show. I have gotten free soda and popcorn from the concession because the film broke and the audience had to wait an hour to see the rest of the film.
Care to present an ON-TOPIC response?
Re-read his post - he says (and you quoted) "you pay for the movie BEFORE you are satisfied with it, and you really don't have a whole lot of choice if the movie sucks."
What does a broken movie theater have to do with the quality of a movie?
So this begs the question: How many times have you personally received a refund from a theater because you didn't like the movie?
Seeing as your only examples were "when the movie broke", I'd guess the answer is zero.
The reason all kinds of scientifically valid double blind tests are ignored is that the so-called Audiophile has the attitude of "these were other people testing, I am superior to them, therefore that test is not relavant to me"
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Let's talk about "THE BIG LIE". The big lie is a lie so big that gets repeated so often that people start to believe it. If you're talking about how piracy won't be stopped by these laws or how the movie companies are making lots of money despite the piracy, you've bought into the big lie.
:)
The truth: It isn't about piracy. It's about competition.
These giant companies have had a long run of huge profits because it is so expensive to make a movie or a record. Technology can change that.
Cheap high-quality digital recording equipment can eventually be made, and massive bandwidth will mean that those things that are recorded can be sent all over at very little cost. It can happen.
However, if this happens, the movie studios and record companies can lose out, because people might be willing to pay less for good indie things. It could end up like the open-source movement where eventually an entire industry of hobbyists starts making extremely high quality movies and songs. (Although it would also create al ot of crap...also like the OS movement.)
Therefore, they have to stop the introduction of high-quality recording and editing and distribution equipment (unless it's under their control).
Fortunately, The same equipment you can use to copy the content of the current regime is the equipment you will eventually be able to use to make cheap high-quality alternatives to the products the current companies.
That means they can attack their real enemy: "competition" by setting up a straw man: "piracy".
You might be wondering why they don't just go after the "competition" angle directly and state that they're scared of the possiblity of people making high-quality movies and distributing them without the blessing of the big studios. They're scared that there might be too many choices out there that are good enough that people aren't willing to give money to the mega companies anymore.
To understand this, you have to ask yourself a question:
If we eventully live in a world where it is possible for creative people to make and distribute high-quality movies and record cheaply, this technology (hinder/not affect/promote) the progress of the useful arts?
Pick one of those three. I say it will promote the arts. I admit, although the vast majority of things that get created will be crap, there will be more gems than there would be if the reation and distribution channels were still tightly controlled by the studios and record companies. So, I say
allowing technologies to come into existence that let people create and distribute high-quality art cheaply will promote the progress of the useful arts.
That may be an odd way to look at things, but it's actually the only way that counts. You see, there is no moral right of authors or companies to benefit from their works. Copyright only exists to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
That means taht you can't use copyright to hinder the progress of the useful arts.
Therefore, you can't use copyright to prevent new technologies that will promote the arts from coming into existence.
But, as I said before, fortunately for the big media companies, the technology that you could use to make illegal copies of their content is the same technology that could be used to promote the progess of the useful arts by giving cheap easy access to creation tools to more people.
So, that is the problem: The thing they fear is something that they can't attack directly. They cannot use copyright to hinder the progress of the arts. But, fortunately for them, they can attack the technology for being used to pirate their works and get the same effect without going against the Constitution and the only reason that copyright even exists.
So, please in your discussions of the various laws and **AA's don't mention piracy anymore and how these laws won't stop it. If you do that, you got suckered into believing THE BIG LIE and you're fighting on their turf.
Instead focus on the loss of creativity and expression that will occur if they don't allow the technology to exist. The key is to expose the big lie for what it is and repeat the truth enough times so that other people can see through the big lie.
PS: All they care about is money, so please stop going to the movies/renting/buying movies and CDs and tapes. If you're giving them your money, you're helping them.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I pay $4 for every movie I see, matinee or no
$5 if I dont have my Student ID
... a reason for that.
.br
At least here in
WARNING: Im not defending this practice, Im just try to explain why, at least here, this makes business sense.
We dont have as many screens as in the US. Thus, in order to make the most money out of the big hollywood movies, they get released here in "small doses". So, two weeks after the US premiere of Spider-man we had our premiere, and AOTC is going to be relasead by Jun 15, I believe. It makes sense; I went to see Spider-man yesterday and half the screens in a 16 screens theater had it; the place was crowded. Imagine having this AND AOTC at the same time. So, they wait two or three more weeks to release it, so that the spidey-mania has died down.
Then there are the weird occasions when we get a movie MONTHS before the US (It happened with Jason X) or years later (Scream 2 took two years to be released here).
"The half dozon hosts with Spiderman up for download in 800mb halfbakedTM quality clips have set a new internet speed record for transfering billions of $ of pirated copies in 2 weeks. 31331hax0r of Cult Of The Dead Movie says "yeah, we managed to upload the 160,000,000 gigabytes required to cost them a billion $ of ticket $ales, I even had to overclock my Pentium 266 and remove the 28k cap on my cable modem to do it". The MPAA reports empty moneybins and empty theatres all over the USA, "this is a serious trend for national security" reports Big Boss. New laws alowing the NSA to hack into piracy-terrorists are expected to be passed by congress today. "I'm afraid for the future of my children when multinational corporations can't make billions of dollars out of making overhyped movies" says a mother from Astroturf, California. "
I don't care if I get modded down for defending this post. This post was modded down as Troll, but I don't see why. It was satirical and it was funny! This is the line that cracked me up the most:
"yeah, we managed to upload the 160,000,000 gigabytes required to cost them a billion $ of ticket $ales..."
It was satire, not an attempt to 'Troll'. I really wish that some moderators would read these posts a little more carefully. This is an honest constructive criticism, not a flame. I too have made mistakes reading posts and blown up at people I shouldn't have simply because I skimmed the post too quickly.
"Derp de derp."
That's very interesting. What does this have to do with phase or your original post?
Let me remind you of what you said:
"The Nyquist Theorem says that the frequencies can be accurately measured by sampling at twice the highest frequency in the signal, but it doesn't say anything about the phase differences."
What exactly did you mean when you said Nyquist's Theorem doesn't say anything about the phase differences? Be very specific so I don't misunderstand. Nyquist is for band limited signals digitally sampled. Since you said that Nyquist "measures" frequencies does that mean you have no information about amplitude? You have amplitude, you have frequencies, and you have the time at which samples were taken. How does that imply you don't know about phase? Again you have F(t) which is the complete signal! First make sure you're clear on how Nyquist's Theorem works, in theory, and then after you understand that we'll try to work on your understanding of it in the real world.
I still want to know what you think "phase differences" means? Be very specific so I don't misunderstand. Did you mean time base jitter? If so remember that turntables use motors that cause the exact same problem as digital time base jitter. Even if it were audible on normal turntables or cd players (and it is not...) higher quality turntables or cd players will correct this to levels far below audible relevance. So again, what was phase referring to?
"The most important result of this is that the discretization of samples appears as a phase shift."
This is the most curious part of your posts. Is this a result of Nyquist's theorem or of the sampling function? What happens with delta function samples? Are you talking about quantization error? Be very specific so I don't misunderstand. Again, first make sure you're clear on how Nyquist's Theorem works, in theory, and then after you understand that we'll try to work on your understanding of it in the real world.
About your square wave, if can be reproduced with an infinite sampling rate. Obviously not realizable but make sure you are accurate about things like this. Also do you understand that every single components in your audio system is a low-pass filter. From your needle on the record to the amplifier, to the crossovers to the speakers. Getting anything resembling a square wave out of your tweeters or even head phones is laughable.
It sounded like an interesting idea that would have been fun to go to, but my friend couldn't make it. Still, it was an intriguing way out of the problem you're describing.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is perhaps the last refuge for the idea that a movie can be a social event now. That and first-day showings of movies like Star Wars.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Most disinterested experts agree that digital projection sucks compared to film.
I even read that one reviewer slammed a movie for being really terribly shot, it turned out he just had the misfortune of seeing that movie in a digital projection theatre and had to apologize to the filmmakers.
You go on autopilot flaming some imaginary "socialists" without even trying to understand what the issue is.
"This model in action is called a Market, and I suspect this is what Cox most despises. "
Actually if you payed any attention you might find out that this "market" you talk about is what the studios despise the most.
OK, how many of you too read: "Alan Cox, the writer/director ..."? Hands up, now!
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Had they made these demands 100 years ago, they would have been in imminent physical danger. Gun owning citizens 100 year ago were far more militant about protecting their civil rights than they are now.
Are you implying that the difference between a piano and an organ comes from frequencies above 20khz? Remember that 20khz is the aproximate limit of human hearing.
If any analog equipment could perfectly reproduce sound well above 20khz (or 25khz for the women and children) why would it matter if nobody but my dog could hear it?
Pretty soon, the eternal corporate entities who want to own all copyrights to everything will strangle the artists. (A remake is much cheaper to make than something risky and original. [A rerun is cheaper still.)
Soon the only recourse for an artist will be to copyleft their work and to create their own distribution channels. (FTP with a commercial protocol sending an email to the artist about the copy just transmitted.)
If you're artist, its better to get $1/copy from potentially a lot of people than to sell your rights away for this month's rent and to get squat else FOR EVER.
Once the media outlets own the work, that's it. They live forever so their copyright never expires, unlike a real human being who eventually dies.
Even at that, reselling, rerunning and re-issueing is a lot more profitable than supporting creative artists so look for acquisitions to wind down.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The MPAA has money and absolute power, and when you have money and absolute power you've got PAYOLA!
My solution is simple: education and double-blind tests. That way we can resolve the debate about CDs and vinyl.
For you is this a debate of what is accurate or what sounds lifelike? If you want lifelike, I'll give you an equalizer or a DSP and make it sound however you want.
Unless you and any audiophiles out there tell us what exactly is better about vinyl and can quantify it, we have no chance of ever making CDs improve. Right now we can't even determine if vinyl is in fact better than CDs.
Amelie looks wonderful, doesn't it? The unreal use of colour in the movie must be a tribute to the flexibility and power of 35mm film?
Actually no, the colour was done digitally after filming was complete. No clever lighting, no messing around with optical effects when the film was developed, just some computer software and a lot of talented people.
If it was cheaper and easier (which, so far, it isn't) Amelie could have been shot digitally and the "film effect" applied as an additional stage in colour correction.
In the absence of a cite to REAL evidence to support all of your whining, your position (however sound it may be in terms of mathematical theory or physics)
I don't know how things work on your planet, spaceman, but down here on terra, we consider "physics" to be pretty much synonymous with "REAL evidence."
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I didn't, but I did wonder just how many A. Cox's there were in England.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
The fact that AOTC is digital means that it is easier for the studios to distribute the film in a more timely manner doesn't it? I thought that was one of the attractions of digital media for the studios. As well as getting the product out there faster (and therefore getting money in sooner) they get the added promotional advantages from close releases (eg news of record breaking box office takings in America hitting us in Australia close to when the film is actually released here).
Of course, this is another reason why region encoding on DVD's should die. When movies start being released to cinemas simultaneously around the world there should be no reason to region encode DVDs in an effort to "protect" markets that are months behind.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
He does not make crappy films! Repo Man was fucking awesome. Who could forget:
"you do not want to look in the trunk"
cop opens trunk
bzap
cop dust in jack boots
????
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
W00t! Thanks for the link, man. Both the Landmark and Laemmle chains are still indie. This means that there are literally DOZENS of indie theatres in Los Angeles to patronize.
You'd think that in LA there would be a nice, big film festival to go to each year. Hey, this is where the Industry is, right? Wrong. We haven't had a big festival since Filmex folded its tent. Thanks a whole freakin' lot. I bet the MPAA has something to do with this...sort of like how the Illuminati have something to do with just about everything in Robert Anton Wilson's immortal trilogy.
Thanks!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.