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.)"

Comments

Spiderman suffered?

[roXet]

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*.

Re:Spiderman suffered?

[sien]

If you look at the simultaneous global relase of AOTC I think you can actually see a reaction to *wide spread* piracy.

Episode I was released in the US months ahead of the European, Australasian and Asian releases. The result was that a demand was created, and fulfilled, for high quality pirated net copies were available within 24 hours of the initial release. I was in Europe at the time and faced with waiting for 3-4 months for a release and watching a lower quality film, the lower quality easily won out.

In the European holiday belt from Spain to Greece, pirated videos of Episode I ran all summer before the official relase.

The film presumably did quite well at the box office regardless, but it is interesting to wonder if the altered release for Episode II was designed in part to combat piracy, and in particular internet piracy.

Hit the nail right on the head.

[NetRanger]

This is exactly what the real problem is. The MPAA wants it both ways: it wants to shove anyone who isn't big and bad enough to pay for their Jaguars out of the way, yet it wants everyone to love them and play exactly by their rules.

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.

Re:Hit the nail right on the head.

[kadehje]

Here's something really scary that I found in Senator Kerry's (from Mass.) reply to a letter I sent him shortly after the CBDTPA reared its ugly head:

"I believe that particular attention must be given to the writers, artists, and other creators of copyrighted material whose works are entitled to protection from piracy in the digital age."

My response to this: these parties already have this protection, and have had it much longer than four years (when the DMCA was enacted). It's called (oh, the irony!) "Copyright Law." It's already ILLEGAL to take that xxAA-produced "artistic work" and offer it up for public distribution on a P2P network, a Web site, a rare record shop, or a street corner.

The point behind the DMCA, CBDTPA, and other legislation down the pipeline is not to protect "Attack of the Clones" or "Oops! I Did It Again" from "piracy"; the five year jail sentence and $250,000 fine that pre-1998 copyright law provided for this action already is ample punishment for this regard. These laws rather instead attempt to limit the range of works that can be "pirated" (i.e. distributed) to only those with licenses to the "copy protection" technologies. Yes, the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA are trying desperately to prevent the "piracy" (i.e. appearance) of Linux, garage band MP3's, and independent films on the Internet. They don't give a flying fsck whether someone can see Spiderman over a low-quality connection, install Office XP gratis or download recycled Top 40 hits on the Internet; if they really cared about this, thousands of Napster users and Web hosts would have already been convicted of felony charges and be serving the hefty penalties mentioned above.

Until we can convince people that this battle is not really over licensing the use of content as opposed to licensing to create it, we have no hope of winning the battle to keep laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA out of the U.S. code.

Unfortunately, Senator Kerry's response to me indicates not only don't they accept our arguments, they appear to not want to hear them. I haven't even heard back from Sen. Kennedy regarding this letter. In November, I will be voting for the first time and making sure that I select anyone else but Kerry's spot for the Mass. Senate seat. Unfortunately, it will be four years before I get a chance to do the same thing to Kennedy.

One more thing regarding Constitutional Amendments mentioned in the parent post: the one you're looking for is not one regarding fair use rights; it's one where corporations have their right to "contribute to campaigns" legislators removed. All donations must be limited to a set dollar amount and come from an individual's finances. Period. Corruption in government created by campaign contributions has created more substantial problems than the inability (legally) to view DVD's on a Linux box. By far the biggest of these is the lack of integrity in the finance industry. What would be your bigger gripe: being legally harrassed for distributing DeCSS code; or having your entire life savings wiped out by your employer's corrupt management with no recourse or defense against their actions (i.e. Enron), not being given a fair chance to make some of it back (by the less-than-enthusiastic enforcement of anti-discrimination laws including those regarding age discrimination), and knowing (albeit after-the-fact) that the management will be walking away scot-free as a result of the favorable legislation and enforcement policies they (along with bigshots at other Fortune 500 companies) bought in the past 10 years. I certainly think the latter is a bigger injustice, and it's that along with other injustices Mainstream America can deal with that are going to give us a much better chance at getting part of this country back than any cry of "Free Dimitri!"

Vinyl trumps CDs?

[Kombat]

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

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.

War of the worlds

[Daengbo]

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.

From the article

[Theodore Logan]

When the MPAA complains that it is losing billions to piracy, my first reaction is, so what? The Hollywood studios are already hugely wealthy

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.

Re:Who the Fuck is Alex Cox?

[SirSlud]

> I would be more inclined to listen to these claims if he wasn't just some hack trying to break into a bigger arena.

Right, cause the only ones we can trust are the ones who've already attained financial success. It's a sure mark of intelligence, business accumen, ethics, and most importantly of all, righeousness and correctness.

It's pretty funny - on the one hand you have a huge monopoly that attempts to keep the lid on independant artists' noise level, and on the other hand, you have a generation thats been born and bred not to believe anything unless the production values are high. Talk about your catch-22s.

Good.

[sulli]

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.

who mentioned 'evil'?

[RatFink100]

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.