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Live from Iran, Film88
MemFun writes "The now defunct Movie88.com has became Film88.com. These are the guys that are streaming a ton of movies for $1 a piece (but not allowing you to save the movie). Of course, to avoid all the Tinsel Town Club baddies (mpaa) from shutting them down, they are now based in Iran of all places. We just finished watching the free Harry Potter movie they are offering. Question: Does this make me a criminal? I really like the selection of movies they have and stream or not, it's still pretty cool to have the ability to watch some those movies that are never on TV any more."
I can't help but wonder, will this service be available in Iran itself? How many of the movies offered online are illegal to watch in Iran (for promoting "sex," "immorality," and being "anti-Islamic?") Will local religious fundementalists shut down the service before the MPAA can?
I would agree with you, except that the MPAA's not providing a similar service! I want to view movies on the web for a reduced price. They won't give me that because they assume I'm a criminal. So not only are they not responding to consumer demand, they're insulting me in the process.
Come to think of it, I think intertainer.tv might be supported by the MPAA. Not sure, though. It's easy to overlook it when you have Senator Disney trying to pass heavy handed legislation to put a stop to it.
"Derp de derp."
How are they any different then blockbuster? You can't copy these movies and you arent suposed to copy the ones from blockbuster - and I would wager more people have access to VCRs and blockbusters then computers with net connections to do this.
They obviously bought the movie and now they rent it out
What did I miss? Oh, its digital so its evil
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Just because you haven't been provided with a service doesn't give you the right to illegially obtain it through other means. I'd write more but that's pretty much my entire point.
The MPAA is bad. I'd wager most of the technology-literate world has figured that out by now. They're moneygrubbing monopolists, no doubt about it.
The current system of copyright and distribution is broken - no doubt about it.
But when you steal something, you're still stealing it. No amount of arguments about how the Iranians don't subscribe to international patent law, or about the fact that Film88 bought the movies and are just renting them, will change that.
So through some miracle of legal justification, you may in fact not be breaking the law. That's for the courts (or politics) to decide. You're buying from a thief. That might not make you a thief by legal definition, but what does it make you by moral definition?
Oh, wait. I forgot. We're all geeks here, so the only moral imperatives are: 1) information wants to be free, and 2) anyone trying to impede my freedom in any way is evil.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
*Sigh* I think in the effort for everybody to prove me wrong (funny how Slashdot works like that), what I'm saying's being twisted.
I'm not complaining about the cost of DVD's. I own quite a few DVD's actually. That's not my complaint at all. Nope. 0. Zilch.
There are movies I'd prefer to rent. Renting, though, can be a hassle. This is especially true since I'm a pedestrian and don't want to walk 20 minutes 1 way to Blockbuster. I'd rather rent over the internet. My willingness to pay $1 as opposed to downloading the movie for free on Kazaa proves that my intentions are good. Heck, I today pay more than that, I'm a subscriber to www.intertainer.tv. (I think they're legit with the MPAA, btw... not sure tho.)
You can say I'm 'rationalizing theft' all you want, the truth of the matter is that I'm a consumer willing to spend money to meet my needs. Do business with me if you want my money.
"Derp de derp."
Thievery is when you take something from someone and they don't have it anymore, since you stole it. This is clearly morally and legally wrong. The taking of information is a much more grey area though. If I download Eminem's latest CD, rather than buy it at the store, is it stealing? Maybe--Eminem is out (a potential) $15. What if I download his CD, and can honestly say I wouldn't buy it, even if it wasn't on p2p? Well, in that case, he lost nothing and gained a listener. What if I've got $15 to spend and I pirate 3 different CDs, and buy the one I like the best? How about after hearing those CDs, I decide I just have to own 2 of them, and I scrounge up $30?
It's not a clear cut moral issue. What it really comes down to is this: are the labels and movie studios losing money due to piracy? All available evidence points to the notion that they're profiting from it. So far, that is. I figure the *AAs are working so hard to prevent piracy out of a (reasonable) fear that it will get out of hand and later on they will lose a lot of money from it. But until I see any evidence that piracy hurts the content distributers, I'll "pirate" with a clear conscience. And even after that, I'll buy from the musician-owned labels first.
I expect that Film88 buys DVDs, rips them, then streams them. So they have stolen nothing. What they are doing is circumventing the MPAA's business model, which may or may not be morally wrong, but it falls quite outside of "theft." We need new terms and new legislation to appropriately deal with this sort of thing.
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Not an original argument so I'll post my own words (originally from January of this year.)
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They may not have had legal copyrights, but they had methods to protect their music.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend the day doing whatever he wanted.
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.ht
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.