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MPAA to Launch Anti-Piracy Commercials
cfish writes "The MPAA is launching expensive 30 second TV commercials to preach about movie piracy. Featuring starving artists in the movie industry."
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Yeah I think their point is that its not just the directors and actors that have to be paid...
Now that is interesting. It must be nice to get free time on the major networks for a lobbying effort. JAV
I'm sure the artists are starving because people pirate movies and not becuase only the big actors and execs make money while everyone else barely scrapes by.
Hell, I want to see a commercial that shows starving Americans that were the result of the greedy corporations moving their jobs overseas.
How about that to "enlighten" people?
There's a bunch of free movies out there! All you need is a computer and an internet connection!
Now everyone will know that it's easy to get them.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
My local library has hundreds of movies on DVD, and thousands on VHS, that they allow anybody to view for free... does this mean that sweet little old lady at the checkout desk is a PIRATE???
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
These costs are coming out of the "starving artists". That's why they are starving.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Adbusters has been trying for years to run ads telling people not to buy crap... guess how much success they've had finding a network to carry the ads? Yes, they're willing to pay full rate card prices, but so far every major network has refused to air the ads. Good luck getting ant-MPAA ads on the air! (Hint: Unless you're willing to spend more on advertising the the movie studios, which spend at least $30 million promoting every new movie, media is going to follow the money and avoid pissing off bigger customers to makes a small group of "nuts" happy.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
She has written a few articles on her
expierence with the record companies.
The quick clumsy summary is that they exploit the artists badly.
She writes these days and plays in the band Loveless. I have seen them play a few times and they are great. Fun well written Pop/Rock. (I don't know exactly how to describe them)
lvls.com has a free MP3 to download with the bands permission so people can check them out.
A very different attitude towards file sharing!
--->Life is like that sometimes...
I'm pleased the MPAA is doing it this way. I really can't say that being forced to watch a few extra advertisements (Okay - I don;t live in the US, so I won't have to do that either) is going to do me a lot of harm, and if they have a case to make against piracy, they're welcome to make it, and try to convince me that downloading movies off the internet (most of which watch at the cinema anyway) is causing them great hardship.
Personally, I think they've got a hard fight on their hands. I pay for plenty of cinema tickets and DVD purchases. They don't actually have to fork out for the movies I "steal" from them, and I make no profit from them, so I reckon they should just find a way to cope with my watching a few movies without paying, but if they have a strong enough argument, I'm willing to listen.
Says the chariman of the Fox group "We feel very strongly about the need to communicate that [. . .] illegally downloading movies is a blow to creativity"
This fron the people responsible for the term 'foxing' a show. I think Matt Groenig, Joss Whedon, and Ben Edlund, among others, may have a thing or two to say about what exactly constitutes a blow to creativity. Hint: It's not piracy. It's Fox.
I'm so mad I'm going to go off and dwonload a pirated copy of Daredevil and NEVER WATCH IT!
I want the fire back.
If priacy is such a huge problem because it's so easy for someone to quickly and conveniently download a decent quality movie from the web, why doesn't someone slap together a business plan and create a cost based service out of exactly that?
The RIAA may suck, but at least they're giving that a shot with a few new services they're trying out for music. Granted, most of those services suck, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
If people are so willing to download movies all the time, why don't those fools at the MPAA simply make the movies available in a comparable environment (e.g. ease of download, quality of picture) at a reasonable price? This would be a much more constructive outlet than trying to cast all file-swappers as thieves.
Buy the President
Sorry to suggest an unpopular idea, but I think this is a good move on the part of the MPAA. Let's face it, copying a DVD for a friend (of copyrighted material) is illegal. It is, even if you don't want it to be. Nothing wrong with pointing that out, either in a Slashdot post or a movie theater commercial. This is America, land of free speech. They have a message they want to get out, let 'em.
I would much prefer them to put their effort into PR rather than lobbying, anyway.
Scene 1: Narrator "This is the actor that got paid $20 Million to star in this really bad movie. The movie Cost $500 Million to make, and lost $100 Million at the box office."
Scene 2: (Cue pic of 3 people living in an alley, 2 adults, one 3 year old girl) Narrator: "This is the gaffer who worked on that movie. The studio cut him to save money on their next film. Now little Amy doesn't have a home..."
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Okay, I'm going to get flamed for this one. Most people take an extremist viewpoint with respect to file sharing. One one hand, the MPAA and RIAA, along with their political lobby are decrying file sharing in general. On the other hand, the "information wants to be free" camp is decrying copyrights and reproduction regulations of any kind.
I take issue with both. Sure, you may not think it's cool that the MPAA and the RIAA want to make money off of music, movies, etc; And you may even justify this opinion by saying "well, they are exploiting the poor muscisians in the first place" or "they have been found guilty of price gouging", etc. But the fact is, if the MPAA wants to educate people as to the illegality of movie piracy, on the level of principle (and within the laws of this country) they have every reason to do so given their business model in a capitalist economy.
Don't get me wrong...I have nothing against P2P networks, file sharing, etc. Many forward-looking artists are encouraging the free flow of their music through these avenues. The notion of punishing all file-swappers because of the actions of the few, as some legislators have recommended, is assinine.
Balance is what is needed in this argument. The extremist arguments and knee-jerk reactions from the geek community at large will only make the big media companies more worried and more interested in blanket remedies, IMHO. Likewise, the blanket remedies proposed by the big media companies and their lobby will only make the citizens want to lash out all the more.
flame away
It's hard to tell the cool to chill, my favorite hotel room has a view to an ill.
This is similar to showing the unskippable FBI warning on frigging DVDs. People who pay are further annoyed, pirates do not notice this at all. Great idea!
This just goes to show how completely and utterly out of touch with reality the MPAA is.
I AM a starving artist in the film industry, and it's not because of piracy, I can tell you that much right now.
Nobody has stolen my work. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if someone did, because at least I'd be getting exposure...
The main reason why artists in the film industry starve, is pretty simple:
THE STUDIOS ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY, NOT ART.
So, they will hire those who make the most money, not the best artists. Why else do you think Michael Bay gets to direct? It's not because he's an artist (Far from it). It's because he knows how to stage action, and action sells tickets.
It's the same bullshit story as with the music industry. A handful of people get promoted to death so the corporation that they have a contract with can make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time.
In the meantime, real artists, whose appeal isn't as bland and generic (read: mainstream) are left to fight for the crumbs.
So, these commercials do nothing to end the starvation of artists. They are primarily designed to further the wealth of the few that are already getting paid more than they're worth.
I'd go so far as to say they have a better chance of increasing the number of people who starve.
It's not because of piracy that movies lose money. Movies lose money if they don't have a marketing blitz promoting it. Even the biggest bombs at the box office still break even for the studios through video sales. The only movies actually LOSING money are independent features that might have something to say other than "hey look at that explosion, isn't that cool?".
The studios are not STARVING... not by any stretch of the imagination. The ones starving, are the people the studios screw over.
The attitude here is "we could be making more".
-- This sig for rent.
Jack,
...I'm glad we had this talk, now let's go play another 9 holes!
Ole boy... You know we like you, hell you put on a great show. But times are changing guy. They're on to us... they know they're being ripped off, and they're sick and tired of it.
So here's the deal - stop pissing away even more money trying to change their minds. It isn't going to work. All that will happen is those schmuck attorneys will get another Bentley in the driveway...
Just price your stuff fairly, keep the quality at a reasonable level, and forget about wasting money on that useless shit called encryption - one nerd jerking off in his mother's basement is all it takes to make *that* investment completely worthless. And for god's sake, don't even think about suing your customers like those crackheads at the RIAA - that's a bad move, one that irritates them, and forces you to have to get in bed with the only thing worse than lawyers -- Congress.
Save the money that you'll piss away on encryption, and Congressmen, and Lawyers - put it into movies, and cutting the costs on DVD's and they'll come back....