The Two Towers Hits the Net

tfreport writes "The Drudge Report is reporting that The Two Towers has already began to be file swapped online. This is four months before the movie is set to debut! An executive in New York promised if this is indeed part of the film that they would be punishing anyone and everyone that downloads the film or distributes it to the full extent of the law."

Comments

Useless

[koh]

We already know such declarations are not to be taken seriously. What will they do ? Sue 4,500,500 gnutella nodes ?

Re:Useless

[ceejayoz]

Yeah, 'cause everyone had cell phones in movie theaters in the 1950s, right?

We survived without cell phones for the past 100,000 years, banning them in movie theaters (or just blocking them) is hardly going to cause the downfall of society.

Well...

[echophase]

Why don't they focus their efforts on finding who leaked it rather than going after the people too anxious to wait till the release (who are likely to go see it when it comes out anyways)?

Re:Well...

[mirnav]

That sounds awfully similar to the UK anti-drug policy - go after the dealers, not the users. The thing is that the UK anti-drug policy failed miserably, as evidenced by the 50% decline in the price of hard drugs over the past five years ("The Economist", an issue of the past few months).

Going after (and hence scaring off) the customers is their only chance. Otherwise, wherever there is demand, there will ALWAYS be supply.

Re:Well...

[Reality Master 101]

If it is that good that pirate copies are in circulation, do they really need a marketing campaign?

Sheesh, dude, the LOTR geeks make up a VERY small proportion of moviegoers. If just the geeks saw the movie, it would be dismal failure. Marketing it to promote it to normal, once-to-couple-times-a-month movie people as well as the I-go-to-movies-when-there's-something-good people (I wouldn't be surprised if the latter is a majority of people).

This is just pathetic...

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

And we wonder why the RIAA and MPAA are screaming at their senators to kill P2P systems? Movies have always partially made it into the Internet before they were released, but only now with the relative ease of file-swapping have they been so readily pirated. If we want to convince *anyone* of the legitimacy of P2P networks bull**** like this has to stop, now.

Re:This is just pathetic...

[echophase]

Oh, and next we should shut down usenet. Then we should shut down our highways, because they transport criminals. Also shut down grocery stores, as they provide food for criminals (it's against the law to aid a criminal, right?) Hell, let's start cutting fibre right away. Go troll somewhere else

Re:This is just pathetic...

[desolation angel]

If this is legit material, than perhaps the movie industry should worry more about security than howling after the fact

The logic of this is that if I leave my front door open and somebody steals all my videos, it is my fault for being stupid enough to leave the door open. The level of security breached is irrelavent, the fact that theft occurs is.

Who wants to watch it anyway ?

[theefer]

I'm one of those guys who is buying a DVD player partly because of the LOTR DVD, who spends some time reading a Quenya (elvish) course. But I suppose the question concerns most of us.

Who the hell would like to view an unfinished, probably mostly-SFX-free, score-free, unperfect version of the Two Towers ?

I want to watch it in the better conditions possible, not a shitty tiny pre-alpha version. I would watch that even if I was forced to. This is just ridiculous.

Cinema is art. You don't steal somebody's unfinished painting just to have a peak at it before anybody else, do you ? Let's wait for the final, fully worked movie. That's what we are wainting for.

Re:Who wants to watch it anyway ?

[Taurine]

How can you balance liking LotR so much that you spend time learning an Elvish language with not thinking the first film was an insult to the source?

Low points for me were having Frodo transported into Rivendell by Liv Tyler when in the source it is one of the defining moments of his character as he resists the Riders on his own, and the way that every journey appears to take exactly one day, and the film in total about a week, despite the source taking place over some months.

The film was made for people who are distinctly non-fanatical, people who have not read the books. Its only redeeming feature is that it may bring more people to read the books and come to see how poor the film is.

This is all relative to the books. On its own, the film is reasonably good, but by claiming to be a film of that story it is very poor.

Re:Who wants to watch it anyway ?

[ChrisJones]

Can I just start by saying that I hate purists of almost any form :)

Film and print are extremely different mediums. It doesn't matter if you waffle on for a few dozen pages describing a week long hike across a vast track of middle earth. It does matter if you waste 15 minutes of a film covering the same journey.
How many people can read FOTR in 3 hours? Probably not very many. How many people would sit in the cinema for a few days to see FOTR? Probably not very many.

To suggest that the film is "an insult to the source" I think degrades it needlessly. It is an excellent adaptation and one that I doubt many people could have bettered.

I read LOTR many years ago and re-read it before FOTR opened. I noticed the differences, but they didn't drive me to the brink of madness.

Interestingly though, when you see a film first and then read the book, your mind already has a frame of reference for imagining what's going on - I saw Jurassic Park and then read the book. I now can't remember which scenes were in which (and they are way more different than FOTR was) because my mind can show me the scenes from the book, but in the style of the film. I do not in any way consider this to be a bad thing.

I wonder how many people complain about audio versions of the books because the empheses aren't in the same places they would put them, or the rhythmn isn't the same.

I would love to thank Peter Jackson for making an excellent movie and what I hope will be a stunning trilogy. I would also like to thank Tolkein for writing three pretty damn good books (except the songs/poems, I hated them ;)

Basically, it's all good :)

Re:Scary stuff...

[WhistleBlower]

Well, they did it to Jon Johansen (in Norway I think), so I don't think Sweden is such a safe place either.

Re:You'll only screw yourselves...

[gilesjuk]

I wish people could sit and watch a film without eating, drinking and talking. It ruins the enjoyment of a film. A friend of mine saw Episode 2 on VCD then at the Cinema, he said he enjoyed it more at home as the Cinema was too full and he was sat by a aircon duct freezing his bits off.

DVD rip of FOTR

[nojayuk]

The first one, The Fellowship Of the Ring, was also leaked well ahead of time. The copy was a rip of a screening DVD, and was distributed in DVD quality.

If I recall correctly (and if I don't, I expect I will be politely corrected...) the rip of FOTR came from an Academy (read: Oscars) DVD that was circulated to possible voters. It came out quite a while after the cinema release of the movie itself; the first FOTR rip I saw was at a party in February, and that was from a camcorder.

Right now there is no complete TTT movie to send to Academy voters on DVD. There *might* be a rough-cut (no SFX, duff music, gaps with a whiteboard reading "big battle scene here") but that's all there is. Peter Jackson is still fine-tuning the release version (come on guys, you know what it's like trying to get finished code out the door...)

The movie experience

[Xebikr]

Someone could hand me a perfect DVD quality rip of this movie, and I would still wait until it is in the theaters to see it.

Dammit, I've waited 30 years to see this movie done right on the big (not just large) screen, and I'll gladly pay the $15 for me and my wife to see it in the theater on openning night.

Re:Why is it....

[LMCBoy]

Two points:

1. Can you point to one positively-moderated comment here that's "cheered" the theft of the movie? Maybe I missed it, but the closest I saw was someone calling the studios morons for saying they were going after downloaders instead of trying to plug the leak. And that's not close at all.

2. Despite what you may have heard, the people who post on slashdot do not share a mind. They may therefore have a wide range of conflicting views on any number of topics, including copyright law. That is not hypocrisy.

Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[slashnot007]

Why is this not theft. why do so many slashdotters think it okay to steal. just because it's easy and all they have to do is push a button does not make it honest or legal. If you knowingly receive stolen goods that is a crime. And you know you are --there is no reasonable defense. and No not it's not sticking it to the "man" or an act of noble protest.

Why has this anrachaic "free love" notion got perverted in to greedy self absorbed and self justifed crimminal behavior.

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you knowingly receive stolen goods that is a crime.

goods: n.

1.
1. Something that is good.
2. A good, valuable, or useful part or aspect.
2. Welfare; benefit: for the common good.
3. Goodness; virtue: There is much good to be found in people.
4. goods
1. Commodities; wares: frozen goods.
2. Portable personal property.
3. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) Fabric; material.

As you can see, 'goods' is more a matter of durable goods, not data. If you think I am being flip, I am. But this is not just semantics. If the 'goods' are 1's and 0's the line between personal property and just plain information becomes less clear. Now we have laws like copyrights and patents to protect the rights of artists and producters, but then the laws about theft don't apply - the laws about infringement apply. And infringement is something a lot fewer people give a fsck about.

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[Rogerborg]

1. Your response has nothing to do with the parent post.
2. A copy of a thing is not the thing. This is not "stolen goods" but "copied information". Stealing a physical item is a criminal act. Making a copy is (perhaps) a breach of copyright, leading to the possibility being sued as a civil action. The DMCA criminalises breaking copy prevention mechanisms to allow copying, but once it's out there as a divx, it's civil.
3. Some - not all, but some - of us really truly believe that copyright law has been reversed so that it now punishes creators and consumers for the benefit of the very publishers that it was intended to restrict. Given that, and given that it's getting worse rather than better, the only response is civil disobedience. Sticking it to the man, if you like.

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[Chasuk]

Your reply is so disingenuous as to be laughable.

Let us assume, for the moment, that copyright infringement is a perfectly moral thing to do. It isn't theft (and I personally believe that it is, but I am suspending that opinion for this hypothetical example), so the law takes no steps to prevent it occurring. In this hypothetical world, Blockbuster rents you the DVD burner along with The Two Towers. You get the blank DVD media for free if you rent TWO films. They are making money, you are happily making your copies, and no one suffers at all.

Erm, except for perhaps Peter Jackson, and the hundreds of cast and crew members who spent years laboring to make the film that you didn't pay for. Of course, I'm sure that Ian McKellen and Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies and Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee are all philanthropists: they don't care that you deprive them of a sizeable percentage of their livelihood.

If you really don't care that such films are made again, download and copy away. All of the rest of us will be so happy that you are "sticking it to the man" that we won't lynch you in the streets as our own act of civil disobedience when your actions cause such films to no longer be made. Really, we won't.

If you take something from me without my permission, and against my will, then you are a thief, pure and simple. That "something" doesn't have to be tangible. However, what we are talking about here IS tangible: the profits that you are depriving me of. Or Christopher Lee of. Or Peter Jackson of.

Any other argument is pure bullshit, even if the perpetrators have lied to themselves, self-brainwashed, I would call it, to justify their theft. Remember, it is possible to justify almost anything if you lack morals and you feel that your need is greater than that of your victims.

Just my .02 cents.

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[joss]

In the short run, [say, next 30 years or so], you have a point.

Property itself is an invention of society. IP is a more recent invention. Property rights are enforced for the good of society.

Property is an essential part of capitalism, one cannot have a functioning capitalist society without strong property rights.

The concept of IP [copyrights, patents, trademarks] is enforced to bring IP into capitalist framework. It works fairly well, however the fact that IP can be copied for free makes a big difference to the optimal balance that can be achieved.

Capitalism is successful principally because it is a good mechanism for optimal distribution and use of scarce resources. If the resources aren't intrinsically scarce, introducing artificial scarcity [through IP laws] might not be the best option.

As the world advances virtually the entire output of society becomes IP. With nanotech and replicators the IP content of material goods will be even more significant component. In such a world, allowing everybody access to all IP would make everybody massively richer.

Then one is left with the problem of incentive. Without IP laws what incentive is there for people to create new stuff. However, in post scarcity society, one would function in a gift economy anyway. Once basic needs are taken care of people do stuff for sense of worth and status, creative types are not just going to sit on their asses even if IP is abolished.

For the moment this just seems a bit far out, but in a 100 years it will be obvious [probably]. It helps to understand that this is a desirable direction to move in, even though we're not quite ready for it yet.

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[Eil]

Not that hackneyed old BS again. The Money that you would have paid for the services that were performed in creating the media has a very real aspect to it. when you take the media without paying for it, it's theft of services, and no different than an employer that refuses to hand out a paycheck to a programmer after a month of coding because it's just ones and zeros on a hard drive.

Sometimes I really wish there were a -1, Dumb Analogy moderation. I could use up a lifetime's worth of mod points in a single thread with that one.

Here's the deal. Try to follow along as best you can, please. I personally own quite a few legally purchased movies and music albums. I also openly admit that I own quite a few "illegaly" obtained [1] movies and MP3s.

Lets start with the "legal" copies. These are movies and music that I purchased (albiet at a fairly high price) because I believe that everyone involved in the production process of this content--from writers to editors--put a lot of hard work and dedication into the creation of the content and deserve to see the results of their work in terms of sales and royalties.

Now on to the "illegal" copies. These are copies of music and movies and whatnot that, 99% of the time, I have not watched or listened yet to but am at least curious enough to try it out. How many people in this slashdot discussion are seriously wealthy enough to go to a movie or CD store and pay $20-$30 for a single title that only might be worth it? Please. That's ridiculous. I choose to download "illegal" content not because I'm some sort of cheapass, but because I want to be able to sample what's out there without completely breaking the bank.

How about this factual scenario:

A friend on mine on IRC offered to send me a mix tape of Tori Amos music, an artist who I previously had no knowledge of. Under current US copyright law, this is a completely illegal act. I listened to the tape, decided that she was a brilliant artist, and now have well over $100 worth of her albums in my "legal" music collection. That one "illegal" copied tape earned the record compay a decent chunk of change and ended up getting me the kind of music that I wanted... the very cornerstone of a capitalist economy.

This is not an isolated incident. It happens all the time, and continues to happen for me. So before you all you moral holier-than-thous start screaming "piracy!", you might well consider the nearly direct correlation the past few years between the increase of online file trading and the increase of the record and movie studio profits.

(And, btw, I do have a bone to pick about the relationship between content distributors and artists, but that's a different thread altogether.)

----
1. Yep, obtained from The Devil Himself!

Re:Why do SLASHDOTers think is is okay to steal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once we fought for food, it was the "bread and butter" of our society. One day food became easily replicable given land and work

Then we fought for land, it was the "bread and butter" of our society. One day land became much more exploitable with much less manual labor.

Now we fight for green, it is the "bread and butter" of our society. To do so we try and produce a good that progresses the state of humanity.

In our hypothetical "utopian fantasy world" the only cost will be knowledge. Current IP laws will have to be completly rethought, because they are based around "copying paper", instead of "copying dinner(/houses/bridges..)". We are no were close to a perfect goverment, but for our current day what we have works well enough. Someday a new paradigim will come around and change that.

If you really think about it, computers were the advent of free information sharing. Our society has greatly shifted based on this, even if we haven't done away with the record industry. I expect to see much more change before we fully integrate everything they can offer. Some day another paradigim shift will come along and we will have to rethink everything.

If you want to argue, I will close with one more point. The advent of cheap long distance person/good transport totally restructured our society. The advent of cheap long distance data transport totally restructured our society (in some ways that have not been realized even yet). The advent of cheap long distance creation of goods will do so even futher. One day we might hit utopia, but until then I'll keep fighting for what I think will advance our current state.

We would love to see this one

[Pac]

We have been waiting for years now for the music and movie industries to completely lose their evil minds and follow the path you suggest.

Up to now, public awareness of the privacy and freedom problems posed by these two sectors of society is close to inexistent. The general public does not care much about this or that law, as long as some Britney has a new CD every six to nine months and the theaters have some new movies every summer.

Now, if you start jailing their sons and daughters, confiscating their properties and suing them into poverty for the sake of Disney, Sony and such other oh so poor companies, I believe we will see a backslash these guys won't forget for generations.

Some suggested the public reaction to the war on drugs should be seem as a sign that nothing will happen yet again. But I think these are two very different issues. Drugs and its criminal status are linked to issues like poverty, racism, mental illness and heavy health hazards. Britney is the opposite of it, as is Mickey Mouse. Jailing people for not paying a few bucks to very rich artists and companies will not be easily sold as a "Save the children" issue. Whose children, will ask John Doe, Hillary's? The Emperor's clothes will get pretty invisible here.

After that we will probably see the tide that will finnaly make some young executives sit back and start thinking about a new business model capable of keeping the money flowing instead of new laws.

Re:SLASHDOTer's CAUSED the DMCA

[syd02]

Nobody but the people who created the DMCA "caused" the DMCA. Think for a moment about "cause" and "effect". We might just as easily say that we "caused" them to lower their prices, or that we "caused" them to put their products online in a form that would be as useful to us as the pirated reproductions, but none of that ever happened.

They "caused" the DMCA by deciding that radical technological developments didn't justify adaptive business models/practices. They decided it would not be for them to change...even though it could be argued that nearly a century ago their own industry, coupled with technological developments, spoiled the potential markets for live music performance, musical instruments, sheet music, etc...they decided it would be for society to change.

They would rather render new technology impotent to create new market realities. Did they consider whether or not this was the right path? No, I don't think so. It's just enlightened self-interest working its selfish magic. Surely the only question that they ever asked themselves was whether or not they had the political capitol and lobbying muscle to pull it off. They're doing a bang-up job, and they're not even close to being finished. They'll wine about piracy until they experience ever-expanding profits (pay no attention to the larger recession or the fact that they haven't shown anything valuable to distinguishing music "consumers" in years).

What bothers me the most is voices like your own, demonstrating the extent to which they're winning the PR war as well. They're taking away your freedom to use technology for perfectly legitimate purposes (betamax VCR "legitimate usages" = "legal product" precedent, R.I.P. Now, if it can be used for pirating we have to do something about it...obviously bad for technological development), and you're worried about them. It's so sad.