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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."
It's a pity that Film88.com's going to get my money instead of the MPAA.
"Derp de derp."
I'm sure Iran has better commercial 'net access available than just T1's.. If this company is serious about succeeding, and with those prices I'm sure they can, they most likely have a bit wider pipe.
In all honesty though, I doubt the FBI is going to come knocking on our doors with warrants saying "You're going to jail for streaming video from Iran."
Wouldn't the provider be at risk, not the receiver?
The point was: if you are an Iranian company, and send a bill to MasterCard in New York, they are *required* to ignore it and not to pay. Although you probably can get around it for some time, it's by and large a "sticky bit", i.e. if you're a German compnay who acts as an in-between, pretty soon you'll find yourself on the U.S. gov't ban list...
But isn't it interesting, that in their FAQ they murmur about trying to make alliances with content owners, in order to compensate them for the business they transact?
Also, I'm not 100% sure that Iran is a signatory to the international copyright laws anyway. So what exactly the MPAA could do is unclear...
Whatever method you used, look for the MPAA to try to interfere with it, or get the government to do the interfering.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There a a big difference between the philosophies of the software libre movement and the philosophies of people who copy files without the copyright holder's authorization.
Software libre is not about this. Yeah, RMS rants about how it would be nice if copyrights did not exist, but I don't think he would want to be in such a world. I do not think I would want to be in such a world myself. There is content out there that down right takes a lot of money to create. Movies. Music that uses an orchestra or session players. Video games. Content that would not exist in a world without copyrights.
Now, one of the things I love about the internet is that there is a lot of really great content out there which the copyright owners freely shares. mp3.com has a lot of really talented bands giving their music away (it's a shame that mp3.com is a borderline spamhaus; if you give them your email address, even when emailing a band to say you like their music, you end up on mp3.com's spam list). The whole software libre thing is about giving away some excellent software. Many authors are giving away their books. Free home-made movies. And so on.
There is enough free content out there that, dare I say, I do not think anyone needs to download copyrighted content without authorization to have a compelling internet existance. So it puzzles me that Slashdot continually links to "file sharing" programs and to pirates who share content without authorization.
I completely agree that the RIAA and the MPAA have always been overzealous about copyrights. The HRAA was an abomination; it killed the consumer DAT. As an electronic musician in the early 1990s that had to spend $1200 instead of $300-$600 for a digital tape deck because of the RIAA's actions, I am no friend of their copyright overzealousness.
However, the path of civil disobediance is not to copy movies en masse so that people can view movies without paying for them. Such self serving actions do not look very good in the harsh light of the courtroom; I think such activities contribute to the large number of lost court cases which are trying to fight the abomination called the DMCA.
If you wish to fight the DMCA and the even more evil children of the DMCA, it is important to make a clear stand that we are against this because the law is wrong, not because it gets in the way of having our pirated content fix.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
"Just because you haven't been provided with a service doesn't give you the right to illegially obtain it through other means."
In the same vein, just because the internet could be used for piracy, doesn't mean you have the right to call me a crook and try to take my rights away.
At this point, it's a question of mroality vs. legality. Am I right? Probably not. Do have a conscience about it? I used to until they tried to turn my computer into a set-top box.
Frankly, I have 0 sympathy for an industry that thinks it should take my rights away when I don't agree with it's ancient business model anymore.
"Derp de derp."
The US makes up more than 25% of the world's economy though. It doesn't matter if you can stream your pirated videos to a billion people in China if they don't even have computers.
I still have some downloads from when they were at movie88.com (they used HTTP streaming with Apache, not RTSP streaming with RealServer, so capturing the streams was trivial). They're typically encoded at 320x240, and their DVD rips were usually open-captioned (English voice, English captions...that makes a whole lot of sense). If it's something you can't get any other way, it might be worth archiving. Otherwise, keep looking.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
They're different from Blockbuster because Blockbuster pays more than the ~$20 retail price for a VHS tape or DVD in exchange for permission from the copyright holders (usually MPAA studios) to rent out movies (well, and for early availibility too). Film88 is more like pay-per-view than Blockbuster, but again, the PPV channel has paid for permission to broadcast the movie.
It's the permission that's the key here; simply buying a copy of a movie does not give one the right to make more copies or give public viewings (however you want to interpret streaming video), as the FBI warning at the front clearly states.
Iran is not a signatory country to the Berne Convention or Copyright Treaties so it would be tough to go after a company based there. However, those treaties do allow the copyright owners to enforce their copyright in the signatory countries, so a customer could be prosecuted under the laws of the country where they live. So for those of us in the USA, read that FBI warning a little more closely.
Some disclaimers: IANAL. I also don't think that copyright holders should be allowed to pre-emptively prosecute or otherwise limit the rights of anyone who 'might' infringe, so please don't read any more into my comment than I put there, even if it appears to go against the Slashdot flow.
Just my 2 rials,
Paul
This is just crap. Ever hear of Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven? They're these old dead guys who used to write some tunes. A lot of them, in fact. They even got paid for it. And they didn't have copyrights.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Let's define what information is then, shall we?
Directions to the nearest gas station;
When SciFi will be showing MST3K;
How much sugar to put in homemade lemonade;
Where the speed traps are on a highway;
How to install a modem in your computer
That's information. Information is not:
Eminem's latest CD (that's music);
Windows NT (that's software, or a utility if you wanted to call it that);
Spider Man (that's a movie)
Humanity reveres information sharing. Humanity looks down on theft. Get it right.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Morals are purely personal and can be revised at a moments notice to suit the individual. Arguing morals can be a fun thing to do, but in the end each side can quite correctly state they are moral based on their own personal code. Thus putting forth a moral argument about this matter is a mug's game.
Whether it is a good thing, well, that depends. Sharing with an 11 year old a method of creating poisonous liquids is *NOT* a good thing. Much of what we deem good is situationally dependant.
As far as US law goes, check out The 'No Electronic Theft' Act. It looks like the law considers this theft now.
Also, the legal definition you quoted is correct, but not complete. You used the definition for larceny, but missed the ones for robbery, burglary, and piracy. It helps if you bring all the information to the table so that people can make up their own minds.
Finally, just to give a more useful definition, I'll quote from *the source* for the English language and leave you with the appropriate Oxford English Dictionary's definition of stealing (theft being the "act of stealing"): "take (another's property) illegally or without right or permission, esp. in secret".
Personally I think the existing copyright system in the US is out of whack. I'd prefer one of the older systems, such as 26 years for a copyright with a renewal of 26 years going automatically to the original authors/musicians/etc. Let 'works for hire' run a flat 50 years. Let the copyrights tilt back towards a more reasonably balance between creators/copyright holders and the public at large.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
They're all information. Different types of information are valuable for different reasons - some may entertain, some may educate, and so on - but they're all information.
The key factor that distinguishes information from almost anything else is that it cannot be taken - sharing increases the world's pool of information, without bound. Economists call this "excludable" vs. "non-excludable" - my use of your car excludes you from using it, my use of your song does not. That's why using your song isn't theft - it isn't possible to "deprive the rightful owner of the same".
There are different ways to manage excludable resources. One way is to create the concept of ownership and enforce it through laws. Another way is to hold all property in common. There are blends, such as societies where mobile property is held privately but the land is held in common. None of these has really been proven to be better than others. Similarly there are different ways to manage non-excludable resources. But excludable and non-excludable resources are fundamentally very different, and making leaps of logic like "we do X for cars, therefore X is the best way to handle songs" is not a good argument.
It's a matter of opinion to say that creative works should be treated differently from facts. In the U.S., commercial database vendors [vendors of information, not vendors of database software] are trying to change U.S. copyright law to protect facts. If the law is changed so that saying "The Yankees won today's game, 6-5" is illegal - which is literally what they're trying to do - will you still feel that the law aligns with your moral feelings?
Most artists *don't* want to get paid. They want lots of people to experience and appreciate their work, which is rewarding beyond money. Most singers, most painters, most writers, never get paid a cent for their art and are perfectly happy with that situation.
I'll just close by noting that all intellectual property is recent - none of it existed before the 1700's. We did acceptably well without intellectual property - had the golden ages of Rome and Greece and China, had the Renaissance, etc. Last night I attended an Indigo Girls concert in Radio City Music Hall. Since my seat in the Hall is an excludable resource, I paid for the privilege of occupying it. The Indigo Girls will still be able to profit from concerts *no matter what* society does with non-excludable resources.
You are not a "thief" or a "pirate" perhaps, but you are still morally wrong. It is their movie, to be distributed and sold as they please, at the price they want
I see your point when it relates to any artist alive today, or any label who bought the rights to an artist's work and needs to make a return on their investment (even if they screw the artist out of all their royalties in the process), but what if the people who invested time and/or money into the creation of the work are all long gone? For instance, I would love to set up a site where people could download mp3s of old blues tunes. These songs are hard to find, and much of the time you have to buy a whole CD to get the one song you want to hear. This can get very expensive. Now, the original artists are all long dead and for the most part have no kin to speak of. The original record companies who pressed the 78s so long ago are for the most part long gone bust, and sold their rights for a song to whatever major labels own them today. This is maybe the first pure american music, and most of it's not getting heard, in the name of power, control and money. What's more, musicians all over the world are unable to hear many songs that would inspire them to make more music of their own. The way I see it, it's immoral not to spread these recordings to as many people as possible.
c-hack.com |
"I'd like to have a car for under 1000 $, and as this isn't offered, I should be able to take my remote replicator (which doesn't hurt the replicated object.. in fact, the replicated object doesn't even notice) and copy yours."
*SNORT* damn dude I almost had to wipe Diet Coke off my screen after reading that, heh. Do you think the United Federation of Planets had to deal with that issue? Heh. (It might explain why there's no money in the 24th Century...)
"Derp de derp."
I don't care if you have "0 sympathy" for anyone. The fact remains that you are breaking the law. Period. End of story. That makes you, under any definition I've seen of the word, a criminal. If you feel you have some moral authority to be a criminial, you can go on believing that and doing whatever the hell you want to do. Be my guest. However, don't be suprised if the companies whos legal rights you're infriging upon with your crime do their best to protect those rights. Kill or be killed, and you're an idiot if you believe the MPAA will or should just lie down and take it. It's their right and priviledge to fight like a mad dog for whatever they want, same as you.
Just don't try and spin your attitude toward this as some kind of passive resistance crap for the good of us all. It's very plain to me, and to the rest of the people reading this, that your motives in this matter are purely out of base self interest. You want your movies for cheap and if they aren't provided that way, by the gods you're going to make your own way to them. Learn a bit of self control. How about getting up the courage to actually not see whatever blockbuster movie the studios you hate so much are putting out. That hurts them far more in the end than you pirating. Sacrifice. It's a part of life.
Of course, neither those idiots like you, nor the MPAA appear to be familliar with the concept, so we're going to have to struggle with the karma your greed saddles all of us with. Thanks a bunch, pal.