Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Opens Anti-filesharing Website
PontifexPrimus writes "The MPAA's new advertising campaign against movie piracy has a home on the internet. Did you know that 'Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.'? Learn about the dangers of filesharing!"
....your Microsoft O/S is completely secure.
The be-all and end-all word: FUD.
Need I say more?
Bash script for FP whores
I ran a file share app, someone "hacked" my computer and put those .mp3's there. It wasn't me. ;)
;)
Anybody mirror the site yet?
For those of you who *always* wondered what happens When you download movies illegally:
:)
#1. You're cheating yourself.. absolutely, I divorce myself!
#2. You're threatening the livelihood of thousands.. just the MPAA member company shareholders/execs
#3. Your computer is vulnerable.. avi/mpeg/mov can carry a virus? Learn something new everyday!
#4. You're breaking the law.. >:]
The best part of their site was their "Music Games & More" section where they say "Did you know that you can download the latest songs", I wonder what the RIAA would think.
"Don't cheat yourself (the poor shareholders/execs) out of the magic (new yacht/ferrari). Movies - They're worth it (HONEST!)!"
I don't know about other people, but I know that all of the movies have downloaded in the past I had actually paid to go see them before/after I had downloaded it and/or bought the dvd if I thought it was good. Not even Kazaa can beat Dolby 5.1 and a dvd picture
The *AA can't have it all.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
...of the movie "Truman Show" where Jim Carrey is in the travel agency, and one of the posters on the wall shows a jumbo jet being hit by lightning. The caption on the poster read "This could happen to YOU!"
LOL! Sometimes FUD is funny.
In case this pathetic site (or routes to this pathetic site) get slashdotted, here is a mirror to the main page, but it's mostly flash so it probably won't do much good. Here is a mirror to just that one popup mentioned in the article. Like we're really going to need a mirror for all this...but hey. Just in case.
Have they, besides seeding the P2P networks with bogus files, also started spreading virii?
I wouldn't be surprised a bit.
-=- I heard rumours about an OS called "Social Life", heard of it? Is it stable? -=-
damn 12 posts and already the server's gone... I wonder if the MPAA used some of their moviemaking (ripping-off) profits and bought themselves a real fatpipe?.... guess not.
learned about the dangers of the slashdot effect.
If people take the films for free and the Studios can't recoup their investment, they may not be able to make the big summer movies we all enjoy so much; the TITANICs, the SPIDER-MANs, the JURASSIC PARKs.
:)
Who the f. cares if there is no more Titanic? And by the way - Spider man earned a LOT even in Kazaa times
called "Hot and Horney Trojan" and "It came from Outer Space and ate my hard drive" what do you expect?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I hope their security is up to scratch...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Posting an article on slashdot is a new method hackers are using in order to carry out DDoS attacks on websites they dont like. Will you be next? Protect your site today!
So that way we can have something "legitimate" to share using Kazaa/etc.
What a load of monkey bollocks.
Welcome to *AA where everything we say is canon truth, or else we'll sue you!
Somone needs to *wn this site.
Why does the MPAA care about Kazaa anyway? I think this is just to give their stockholders an excuse, as well as a positive outlook. Downloading a 300*240 mpg just doesn't compare to the vhs or dvd, let alone a movie theater. If anything, it *promotes* the movies.
Only produce movies starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, that way... No one will want to pirate them because they suck so bad!
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
I was worried when I read this article, until I remembered that I am immune to this kind of thing ever since I bought the software that prevents my computer from broadcasting an IP address. I'm so glad I clicked on that popup ad!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Hey, are these the same guys that put 'Hackers' and 'The Matrix' into theaters?
Just checking.
You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself.
So the riaa should really sue the riaa since they were offering songs for download when their website got broken into?
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen. The sound isn't right, the picture isn't in focus, people are walking in front of the camera, and scenes are missing. Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
Is what any way to experience the magic of the movies? Free? I think it's a great way.
Only 4 out of 10 films turn a profit.
6 out of 10 films suck.
Do you really want fewer movies to choose from?
Gladly. Maybe they'll be forced to make movies that aren't complete shit.
"Congress passed the first U.S. copyright law in 1790. Since then, nearly every country in the world has adopted some form of copyright law."
Well first of all that's not even true but let's pretend it was so I can make a snippy comment...
Ya, well America made the first atomic bomb back in the 40s and since then nearly every country in the world has them or is at least trying to make them. Once again thanks for leading the way to a bright future America!!!
Am I the only one that is glad that my well being, that "cheating myself" is so much more important than "breaking the law"?
I won't bother debunking 3 or even talking about 2... but don't you love how they try and manipulate priorities?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
You all realize that the MPAA is going to point to the slashdotting as proof that their FUD campaign is working.
Remember, people are only violating copyrights because they don't realize they're breaking laws and hurting artists.
Here's an idea MPAA. You can use this one for free, and I'm putting it in the public domain for you. Because you have such high opinions of movies such as "TITANIC" and "SPIDER-MAN" and "JURASSIC PARK", I have some news for you: Don't make movies that suck.
There is nothing that compares to the silver screen. Well, there wasn't, but home theaters are starting to come close. So, make movies that don't suck and people will still go to see them.
4 out of 10 movies don't recoup their investment because they suck. Gigli isn't going to recoup it's investment because it sucks. 4 out of 10 movies are going to suck. The other 6 are just going to suck less. Stop automating your script-writing, and be more stringent with what movies you actually produce and then people will still go see them in the theater and you will still make money. People will still pirate them, but so what.
The biggest thing people use pirated movies for: To find out if it is worth the $8. If it sucks, it isn't worth $8. I'm not cheating myself, I'm saving my damn money.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I'm going to set my browser to refresh the page every .5 seconds.
With movies taking in more money every year and with DVD sales growing by leaps and bounds, if those thousands of Industry employees aren't getting enough money I would think the problem does not lie with illegal downloads.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
How better to lash back at the RIAA's quest than to put a link to their website on /. cause its probably gonna fall victim to the /. overload.
This filesharing thing sounds as dangerous as needle sharing.
I just saw 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. 'Sometimes the right path, the right course, requires a little piracy'
about the slashdotting that is occuring to this website? Move along.
"No really, we're all becoming educated about copyright!"
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
I would if I knew it wouldn't get broken in transit. I wouldn't want to give the postman seven years bad luck!!!
Maybe you don't realize, in the 5 seconds it took me to post, 934089234 other people beat me to it. Redundant? Yes ..My fault? Hardly
and other excuses for entertainment and you won't have to worry about so-called piracy. Feels great to see them dying a slow death. Scenario, Year 2150: Mommy says to son while touring museum, "You see, Billy, back in the 20th Century, people used to buy music for $15 a collection!! They used to access their music on little round things called CDs!" Billy says, "Mommy, what's a Metallica?"
YAY! We slashdotted it!
Or, if you want, try this link.
You are not the customer.
Mispelling and a dig at python
Oughta do well.
We should all go here and download all the high quality movies.
A lot of the public will hear this tripe and it will slow down file trading a little... but I doubt in the long run if it really puts too much of a hamper on file sharing, since what they are talking about is lies... if anyone is intellegent enough to be file sharing at the level the MP/RIAA is worried about, they will know that you can't get viruses from movie files... It's a sensible attack though, especially targeting us teens... and it will work marginally.. but this will only help slow the bleeding.. the damage has been done, they are going to die still, IHMO of course..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
If I were sneaky, I'd log the IP of every comment made. Then go check out everyone who leaves an RIAA sucks to see if they were "sharing illegal content".
That would be a nice way to prioritise the millions of lawsuits.
They don't say that your system is insecure "while filesharing". They say that your system is insecure "while online". While some would call me a nitpicker for pointing this out, I think it indicative of the general anti-technology fears that the MPAA/RIAA "higher-ups" (Valenti/Rosen/etc.) hold.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
It's all about "we want it for free."
That's all. All this discussion of copyright reform and the "artists" is a non-issue. What it is really about is "we want everything for free."
People really think that if copyrights were repealed completely, that somehow the marketplace wouldn't change at all: that $200 million movies would still be made, people would devote 3-5 years to writing a book, and animators would spend tens of thousands of man-hours on television and home video.
Here's a hint: they won't. Sure, you'd have the odd street performer and concert in the park, but by and large, all professional creative effort would be pointless, and the people who are now making a living at it would have to find other work: probably a minimum wage fast food job, because as we all know, arts degrees are worthless in the "real world."
"All for free" is just as extreme, and just as absurd as "pay per play." But the argument will never be taken seriously, because it isn't about fixing things, it's about "we'll just take it, and then rationalize it with some bullshit straw man argument over the meaning of the word 'theft.'"
If copyright is repealed, it will render millions of man-years of effort totally worthless, and put tens of millions out of work. Dozens of industries will become pointless. That's not progress.
How about a real discussion of copyright reform instead of half-assed "nyah nyah nyahs" at the MPAA?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If you really agreed with this site, and made an exact copy of it, do you think the RIAA would sue you? I mean that would be pretty stupid since you'd be spreading the word, but then again, these punks seem a bit oblivous to the potential of the internet.
Yet another reason to prefer the MPAA over the RIAA. At least when the MPAA's profits go down, they try something new, like adding content to dvds and varying release dates. When I buy a dvd in a store, I don't feel like a complete sucker. WHen I looked at buying a CD, I felt like an ignorant "consumer". Yeah, pay $30 for 1 hour of content, 8 minutes of which I like. When I bought the extended version LOTR dvd, I got:
1. The theater cut movie + deleted scenes
2. 5, count'em 5, seperate audio commentary's
3. Something like 8 hours of additional "making of" video
4. around 2000 production photographs.
I got so much content in those dvds I have not even watched it all yet. Whereas with a CD, you are done in one hour, tops.
The MPAA may be doing some unsavory things, but at least they are trying, without ripping me off or treating me like a criminal. I am boycotting CD's, but I still enjoy movies, and will pay money for the quality and experience.
"$DarlMcbride"==false
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
Did you know any user can log the IP of any comment made to Slashdot?
Many people don't know this about Posting to Slashdot but when you make a Post to Slashdot some of your most personal information is included. Any troll, flamer or crapflooder can get your social security number, bank account password and a DNA sample from a backdoor in your post!
Apher, Benjamin, Backdoor, Duload, Fizzer, Hantner, Klez, Neuer, Nimda, Livra and Magic Eightball
Good to see they include viruses/worms that have no history of spreading via P2P, like Klez and Nimda. Hey, why don't you put Code Red and Slammer/Sapphire up there too?
It is about 30 minutes into the story being posted and the site seems to be a bit slashdoted ... anyone grab a mirror ;-)
man
No manual entry for
Sounds like the latest Microsoft EULAs. So let's see, trade songs, run Microsoft software. Same danger.
A bunch of ancient Greek story tellers complaining about how writing has made thier jobs unimortant. Who's behind the telling of Homer? There's the actual story teller, yes, but there's also the guys who make the roads so he can walk from place to place, there's the lady who sweeps the Rostrum so he has somewhere to speak from... when you buy a writen copy of a story you're putting these guys out of a job.
Fast forward a few thousand years. Every time you buy a printed version of your favorite book you're putting a Catholic Coligrapher out of business. Not only that, the travelers who buy the exotic inks, the ink and pen providers and he landlords. When you obtain a printed copy of the Bible, think of the writers that you are hurting.
Parent is not funny, it's your sense of humor that's broken. HaHAHAhAhAhAAAHAHAHA It's SLASHdoTTed!!! FUNNEY JokeZ!!! HehehehEhEhehhEE!! I hope you die a horrible, painful death. No, really, I do.
Back in the nineteen thirties, the President of the United States would read the comics to the kids on the radio during the depression. For all intents and purposes, this was a type of P2P. He didn't seek permission from United Artists because he was the President. No one got after him for doing it - in fact, they all probably thought it was neat.
I mean, a website with warnings like that is enough to scare the average, non-tech savvy person into not sharing files (who, in my opinion, probably shouldn't be doing that anyway if they don't know what they're doing). If this keeps the MPAA happy and shuts them up, I think it's a good thing.
Nope. Nor did I know that I can get music and movies online for free. Thanks for informing me, MPAA!
- Joe User
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
As I remember it, if the member companies of the MPRIAA see the same type of stuff (whenever one makes a purchase or buys a subscription), they enjoy the legal right to collect any such information a customer must give them and "share" it with marketers for money.
How come they only "seem" concerned when they're not the ones doing it?
You know, I bet MPAA lawyers could make a good case for sueing anybody who mirrors their slashdotted site. Hey, it's copyright infringement isn't it?
PLAY ON PLAYA YOU DAH MAN!!!
I SEE A +5 INSIGHTFUL AND 30+ COMMENTS IN CHO FUTAH!!!
WOOOOHOOOO TROLLIN' OF TEH HEEESSAY UP IN THIS PIZNEACE SUCKAS!!!!
# mportant Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
# Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
# If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal
There is a more serious MP3 buffer exploit in the Windows Shell of Windows XP (including SP1). All you have to do is hover the mouse pointer over an MP3 or file with a corrupted ID3 tag to trigger the exploit. Sure, that may not be the easiest way to spread a virus or a backdoor trojan, but what about code that simply formats your hard drive? I'm sure there are plenty of trojan EXEs that will gladly re-format your HD; now what if hovering your mouse over an MP3 could have the same effect? That would be a great method for "destroying" filesharers' PCs a la Senator Orrin Hatch.
Microsoft is quite innovative in the field of security. They find ways to open up exploits in all kinds of data formats that were previously thought to be safe: MP3s, WMAs, E-mail, etc. (Okay, that was a bit of a troll and extremely unoriginal, but what the hell.)
Have you clicked on MPAA's website link just because it made you feel *patriotic*? ;-)
OK, it's fairly simple stuff here.
1) The MPAA would recoup its investment MUCH faster by encouraging people to come to the movies more often, and by reducing costs. How can they do this?
a) Reduce ticket prices. Lower tickets mean more movie-goers.
b) Quit paying the stars so fucking much money!!! Ben Affleck made TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS for Gigli, one of FOUR movies released this year that he starred in. In other words, he made roughly one THOUSAND times as much as a skilled professional with a post-secondary education. (Notice that the MPAA site doesn't link to any stars' opinions--just the grips and the stuntmen, making a thousandth as much as the stars)
c) QUIT MAKING MOVIES THAT SUCK BADLY!!!
How many times do you need to hear it? How many brainless sequels to brainless movies do you need to make before it sinks in that you SUCK, and that your movies SUCK?
Imagine this: A movie where stars are treated as skilled employees and paid roughly $200,000/year (hey, their careers aren't as long as some of ours--they deserve higher salaries for that), the writers are required to come up with original and innovative ideas to earn their pay, and the tickets are $5/seat, with affordable popcorn.
Why they might actually make a profit, and DESPITE all of the file sharing (that doesn't take away a single ticket sale), get people out to the movies.
As an aside, you might ask how does this NOT relate to the RIAA?
1) The RIAA actually is hurting (some) from filesharing. Most people are as happy with a burned MP3 as they are the original quality song, whereas nobody would seriously miss a good theathre movie just because they had a really crappy camcorder copy they can watch on their TV.
2) The artists don't get paid millions--they get paid SHIT. They get about a tenth as much as the tech staff, instead of a thousand times as much.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
. . . only provoked me to try and warez 50 movies off of IRC and Kazaa before 4 AM tonight. They need to learn from DARE that shitty PR campaigns usually just make people more curious.
Oh, and who wants to take bets on the number of hours before this gets DOS'ed or defaced?
First read the site the story links to.
Then read the parent post.
Then have some clue about how slashdot works.
THEN AFTER ALL THAT you can mod some shit.
Until then fuck off.
Kudos to you for opening up a whole new arena of trollery not previously known to exist.
also, the respectcopyrights.org website was mentioned sometime ago on slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72066&cid=6504 160
in packets of 50,000 byte frames or larger
> 'Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.'
Dammit! Did I put my_ssn.txt and my_bank_records.txt into ~shared AGAIN!? Damn the insecurity!
My other car is first.
(from the "music, games & more" page)
:D
Browse the links below to discover a whole world of entertainment available to you - legally - right at home.
Gotta love how they don't link to project Gutenberg on the books page.
I just saw American Wedding on friday (I'm not gonna give any opinions - I'm not a movie critic). They had one of these commercials just before the previews. This pne "starred" a set designer talking about how much he loves movies, and how he met his wife on the set of The Big Chill, and how "not everybody invloved in the production of a big movie makes 6-figures". and a lot of other stuff to put a human face on the MPAA side ('cuz Jack Valenti isn't human enough). It seems like they pulled out all the stops on this one. "Touching" music (sounds almost like something Williams would do), "artistic" font design, etc. This guy rambles on about how much he loves movies for what seemed like forever before he got to the point. Once he did, it became rather apparent that the plan backfired. The theater was packed (opening night), and several people started laughing openly at this guy say how stealing one copy of a movie online steals his ability to make a living for his family. I heard a guy behind me say to the person next to him that he was going to start pirating movies if this was the "sh*t these assw*pes are gonna make me sit through before they get to the f***ing movie". The person next to him agreed.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Did anyone else notice that "hear from the artists" didn't include people who would presumably be most negatively affected by filesharing? I'm talking about the people who get a cut of the profits, ie actors, diretors, producers, etc. All of the 'artists' they show are the people who get paid salaries. I wonder what Ben Affleck or Roman Polanski have to say? This looks like a cry of desperation. They can't stop filesharing. The more they fight it the more publicity filesharing gets and the more people are aware that file sharing exists so they have to fight still more people (their customers BTW). It's a self-feeding cycle. I'd love to have a 2000 movie home DVD library, but DVDs are too expensive. Maybe they should consider cutting the price of all DVDs by half. Goddamn, it may actually increase their profits in the long run. They'd sell a lot of movies on impulse alone. I sure as hell wouldn't pay $20 for Willy Wonka, but I'd pay $7.50 without thinking about it. Kids would love it.
Remember who these ads and websites are aimed at. The average /. reader knows the "truth" about back doors in software, and, more than that, knows how to share directories with granularity. The average computer user, I would posit, does not. Don't believe me? Hop on KaZaA, Gnutella, whatever, and do a search for '.xls' or '.wpd,' etc. See how many personal documents you uncover. We did that once and found a CEO's copy of the salary breakdown for his dot-com... No names to protect the clueless (and shareholder value ;)). So, it's FUD, but it's (if there is such a thing) justifiable FUD.
geek. lawyer.
I think it was offline before we hit 20 posts.. that has to be some kind of record.
How about the theaters stop putting ads in the movies. I used to go to the movies to have an ENJOYABLE experience and not suffer the same crap I have to on T.V. but since the ads started to come on I just can't stand to go anymore.
They say I could get viruses like... nimda! Well, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but wasn't nimda an IIS worm? I don't think I can get it by filesharing. Isn't that pretty much a lie (and the moment I close my browser window) Further... filesharing under linux? even less likely to contract a virus... I dunno... sounds largly full of shit to me. FUD anyone?
It'll be a couple days before this site is hacked I'm sure-the servers have to cool back down and come online before it can be found that the MPAA runs an unpatched copy of II5, on Windows 2000 with no service packs, and uses the admin password "password"
dontrespectcopyrights.org
In real life, I run a movie theatre.
At the tail end of last week I received trailers for "Anti Piracy PSA" from "respectcopyrights.org". No explanatory note or anything came with the trailers; they were just tossed in with my regular shipment from the film warehouse.
So I guess you can expect to see these trailers soon at a theatre near you; I'm sure I'm far from the only one who got them.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
As long as the RIAA is exercising its right to make people miserable at random, I figure I might as well exercise my right not to buy any of the "product" they are protecting as gifts this holiday season. A small thing, but mine own. There's more about why if you're interested: here.
You mean like this?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
While I haven't used any P2P networks for music or movies, I have noticed something interesting concerning the EULA of the Kazaalite program (please bear in mind that I have no legal experience). It essentially states that you, the user of this program accepts legal responsibility for the alterations which removed the ads from Kazaa. This is tantamount to saying that the user takes responsibility for the crimes of another person. Now, it seems to me that that is only the case when a person is that legal guardian of a minor.
So say bye bye to another reason why P2P networks are illegal!
They should get the same people that due the "truth" anti-smoking adds to do some anti-file sharing adds.
They can create some eye-catching adds to help promote the awareness of the hidden dangers of file-sharing.
"This is Timmy, he lost his job because evil File sharers up-loaded kiddie porn onto his computer and his boss found it. Now Timmy is in jail, and he spends his days constructing shivs out of plastic silverware and avoiding gang rape in the showers"
"This is Rich, he used to direct films for Universal Studios but since file sharing started, none of his films have turned a profit. Now hes turning tricks on sunset blvd to support his family"
If the public only knew how terrible file sharing is, they would never do it again!
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
No
This is no more dishonest than the pro-p2p crowd saying that p2p apps are used for legal reasons as well as illegal ones. Yes they are, but we all know what the most popular uses are, and they're illegal. It is equally true for the MPAA to say that p2p apps give people a back door to your hard drive (disregarding the awful 80s hacker movie terminology). Theoretically they do, although in most cases it would require stupidity on the part of the user.
You can't use semi-dishonest arguments and then complain when they are met with semi-dishonest counter-arguments!
(Well you *can* because you can do whatever you want, but your argument loses credibility.)
Complete, hairy, dangly, gently swinging BOLLOCKS, that would make the Daily Mail cringe with embarrassment.
"Remember, when you download MP3s, YOU'RE DOWNLOADING COMMUNISM!"
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
OK, Movies are making more money than ever(the good ones anyway), DVD's are selling like hot cakes, and the movie indistry is losing money HOW? Even if they were losing money, I can't feel to sorry about it when you hear about the leading actor(s) making 6 to 8 million dollors to star in it. Here is an idea, instead of getting some famous actor and paying them all that money how about trying out some NEW actors to play the part.
Getting a camcopy or a DivX complete can take days - if your time is worth anything (mine is), it's cheaper to get a couple tickets for a real cinema, or rent/buy the DVD. Goes better with girls too, they do not appreciate watching movies off the computer screen :)
Relax, MPAA, it's the RIAA who's in real trouble.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
anyone who visits the MPAA's and RIAA's website gets their IP scanned for usage in file sharing networks.
well they list these legal alternatives:
CINEMANOW
(http://www.cinemanow.com)
IFILM
(http://www.ifilm.com)
MOVIEFLIX
(http://www.movieflix.com)
MOVIELINK
(http://www.movielink.com)
have you looked at their selections??? i've looked at 3 of them (not ifilm) and they're horrible.
horrible horrible garbage!!!
-- troutsoup.com
From their website: "Copyright applies to most forms of original, creative expression..."
That rules out most of the movies produced today.
Move along now, there's nothing to see here...
Soooo that means that it wasnt me that was sharing, it was one of those evil 'network users'
that invaded my pc and caused it to share things..
So dont sue me.. you just said it isnt my fault. But thanks for telling me i have a problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I see there's a lot of posts about the slashdot effect and that the MPAA's site seems to be down. Yes, it's humorous, but with an organization this ignorant what are the chances that they're going to claim they got DDOS'ed (by "evil hackers")?
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
The MPAA website links to www.itunes.com as a source for legal downloadable music from Apple. Has Apple indicated whether there will be a website for Windows users downloads, or is Apple just developing a different iTunes browser client for PCs? The itunes.com site doesn't load and the whois lists an owner other than Apple, so MPAA website is probably in error with regards to the link.
it ... doesn't ... seem ... to ... go ... down ... do ... something ...
Save the website and drop it on kazaa. I feel like downloading it.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.
I knew I shouldn't have shared the text file I have on my computer with all my credit card numbers, bank account numbers/passwords, and address/phone number! Actually..now that I think about it..just having that text file should entitle me to shoot myself in the head.</brainless filesharer speak>
How does a file on your hard drive format the hard drive?
Okay, so maybe a program could attack a floppy disk in the drive to boot up and format your drive, but I don't see how a file on the drive could, itself, format the drive.
Anyone see irony here? --- Netblock info for respectcopyrights.org (66.252.129.188) ------------------ OrgName: WareNet OrgID: WARE Address: Box 4774 City: Mission Viejo StateProv: CA PostalCode: 92690 Country: US NetRange: 66.252.128.0 - 66.252.143.255 CIDR: 66.252.128.0/20 Sounds a lot like warez.net. Coincidence?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
I think the website is a great idea. What a good resource. In fact I think I will need to check this website many, many times a day. I would recommened we all do so. Keep going to the site and download as much of the valuable and correct information as we can, as often as we can. I just might have to tell everyone I know about it. If, per chance, the site can't handle the load we should all just keep trying, because hey, that set painter guy might lose his job, and even though the execs aren't in trouble of losing theirs, this important and truthful information might change the whole industry in favor of the 'little guy'. Because hey, that is what is at stake.
I would buy more if the CDs were reasonably priced and more of the actual money went to the artist that worked to create it.
Until they reduce prices to a reasonable level, compensate artists properly and stop harassing me ( as a customer ) then ill start purchasing again.
But in the meantime, ill download what i want, and send a couple of bucks to the artist directly so they can feed their family..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the RIAA and MPAA wish to "win the hearts and minds" of the public at large, it will behoove them to soften the tone of their discourse less they suffer the inevitable backlash from their blatant fearmongering. With the average p2p user being the not-so-computer-literate 13-15 year-old or the 45 year-old grandmother, the technical concerns (some of which are valid) the RIAA raise will be overlooked, and only the negative tone will be remembered.
Interestingly, Michael Crigley has written a book about the history of intellectual property in the United States, with a chapter devoted to the current IP battles being waged by the RIAA et. al., and how they relate to historical precedent such as cassette swapping, concert sneaking, etc.
atleast the MPAA is being more civil about file-sharing than the RIAA. There not going around with threats and other bull-shit. Of the two evils the MPAA is the lesser.
Secondly, most of the releases that come out on IRC, newsgroups, bittorrent or whatever are crappy cam recordings that people don't like anyway. Who wants to watch some washed-out version of a movie with bad sound anyway? If it's any good you'll go see it in the theater to get the real experience.
Third, most of the movies you find on the internet are in divx or some other format that generally only plays on a computer. Most people are not savvy enough even to burn a VCD to play in their DVD player, what to speak of building a dedicated home theater pc to play the divx movies. Most people do not want to sit in their computer room in front of a 17" monitor to watch movies. They would rather see it on the 42" widescreen in the living room, or in the theater.
Finally, movies is a social thing. People take dates to movies, they take their kids to movies. They like to eat the candy and sit in the theater with the big screen and surround sound.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
Notice how baseball seems to be suffering the same problems as the RIAA and the MPAA... inflated salaries, and less and less return on their investments (Only one major league team turned a profit last year... one) but MLBA can't claim piracy is causing their losses, because... well, that would be retarded.
Interestingly, however, the reasons for baseballs, and the RIAA/MPAA decline are identical:
1. Overpriced... seats/cds are too expensive.
2. Salaries, stars seem to want more and more lately...
3. THE MAJOR REASON: Recession! People don't buy cds, movies, or go see baseball games because THEY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY.
Baseball is adjusting, because it has to, RIAA/MPAA are fighting tooth and nail for legislation so they can retain their current business model....
STFU RIAA/MPAA.
So this this 27-missing-pages-implicating-Afganistan.doc that I downloaded the other day from an ISP node in Maryland might actually the real thing?
Pretty saussy. Thanks RIAA, I didn't realize filesharing was so important to democracy, and Independance Day makes more sense now!
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Let's slashdot bastards!
(I'm not trolling, I'm serious!)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So, MPAA, instead of embracing P2P software you're copying the RIAA's decision to try and destroy it.
Boy, look at how successful they were. I'm sure this plan will really work, trying to convince tech-savvy folks that Kazaa will devour their unborn children and turn their souls inside out.
However, I am worried that if we continue to download good movies, they will stop making them. If no one turns up to see a kickass movie at the cinema that they watched three weeks ago on their computer, Hollywood will deem it a flop and pretty soon all the movies we'll be getting will be those people are still willing to pay money for. People whose idea of humour is nun farting. People who liked Crossroads for the plot.
Crap films, ladies and gentlemen. Our society will be reduced to sheer crap for our entertainment. We'll have Fear Factor and Jerry Springer on our TVs, with Gigli 4: Adrian's Revenge and Spy Kids 8 on our tarnished silver screens.
Now, which should be torn down, and a better system rebuilt in its place: P2P or MPAA?
Current Karma Status: Roadkill
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen. The sound isn't right, the picture isn't in focus, people are walking in front of the camera, and scenes are missing. Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
...
Funny, I could swear the last time I went to see a movie in a real movie theater that
* The sound was off (too much treble, no bass)
* Lots of "muching" sounds by people in the audience pigging out on snacks
* Random noise/chitchat
* Cell phones/pagers going off
* The picture wasn't in focus (it was slighly out of focus until the last 15 minutes)
* People would walk across my field of vision (in order to get more snacks or to use the bathroom)
* I missed scenes when I went to the bathroom
Now, what am I gaining by going to an actual movie theater? They need to come up with a better arguement than the one they're using, that's for sure...
do
'Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.'
they can also get this information even if you don't have it stored anywhere on your computer! I tell you, those nasty cr^Whackers can do anything!
This goes along the same line as morons telling you anyone can "enter" your system as soon as a port is open, i.e. an application is waiting for connections on it. No mention of the need for an exploitable bug in that application.
What a load of crap FUD.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
It is good things like this happen. We are human, so we should not do those things which are harmful to ourselves. First step is recognizing what is harmful.
I don't know, but the copy of The Matrix Reloaded I got off the net was good enough for me. I don't think I was cheating myself paying $.50 for cd-r's :-)
Yes, but what if the quality of camcorder recordings increases, because, I don't know, camcorders improve all the time? What if that follow-up to last year's multimillion dollar blockbuster somehow gets transfered from reel to harddisk by a disgruntled theater employee, who subsequently releases his near-perfect copy onto the Internet for everyone to share? In other words: what if the quality, or ease of distribution, of 'pirated' movies reaches a level that most people are happy to put up with?
Personally, I think the MPAA faces the same problem as the RIAA, or it will pretty soon. I fear that certain aspects of this problem pose an even bigger threat to the MPAA than the RIAA, and may even adversely affect us, the end consumers. When you go to a live concert (still the primary source of income for a lot of music artists, from what I've been told), that experience is almost impossible to duplicate. It involves a shared experience with hundreds or even thousands of other fans, reacting to - and, to a degree, interacting with - the artists and their music. For movies, it's slightly different. A lot of them can be equally appreciated in a movie theater or from a home entertainment system. It depends on the type of movie; I've found that some emotional or thought-provoking films are better viewed at home, while other mindless blockbuster FX movies require as large a screen as possible.
My fear is that if movie piracy becomes too easy and too commonplace, Hollywood will limit itself to producing mostly mindless FX blockbusters, because those are still best viewed in theaters. You can watch a grainy VCD rip of The Blair Witch Project on your PC monitor in the dark at night and find that it actually adds to the experience, but you can't do the same with Terminator 3 or Matrix Reloaded without losing some of the atmosphere.
I guess I don't really have a point, or an answer to any of this. I just don't think it's as clear-cut as a lot of the posters here present it, and I do have some concerns about the long-term effects on movie quality in general.
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
for example, they haven't yet finished the page http://www.respectcopyrights.org/howwestolecopyrig ht.html
or http://www.respectcopyrights.org/televisionisyourg odandweownit.html
Is the theft of your personal information worth the free movie?
Duuuuude...I can get free movies?!
Why didn't they tell me this earlier?
> Or, if you want, try .
:-)
jeeezz... you could have warned me about the sound on that site. For a moment i thought my harddrive was dying on me or something (with those scratchy noises).
Then i remembered i had opened that link in the background. Phew...
Why do all these companies paint hackers with abilities far beyond reality?
I mean, does the average computer user have a file named 'my private financial information.txt' on the root of C: with bank accounts, personal medical information, user names and passwords, credit card numbers, etc?
"Imagine that someone had spent two years writing a book. It would not be fair to let someone else make their own copies of the book and sell or give these copies to others without paying the writer. And unless the writer was very wealthy, she probably could not afford to spend so much time writing unless she could get paid for her work. In fact, very few people would ever create books (or movies, or songs, or paintings) if they could not earn a living from their work. If everyone copied the book and sold them or gave copies to others without paying for it, it would be hard for the writer to earn a living from writing, and ultimately that would mean there would be fewer creative works for us to enjoy."
What a piece of crap. So what about libraries, where you can borrow the book and read it for free? What about all that stuff like Project Gutenberg? What about millions of people who make a living by other means and spend years writing books as their hobby?
I just released a webpage. I spent 3 days on it, with breaks for sleep and food. It's a detailed instruction how to make a rope halter, best kind of halter/bridle for a horse ever. The page is available for free. The instructions are very foolproof, everyone should be able to follow them. The halters are available on sale for $30 or so. I'm definitely NOT a wealthy person - but I don't ask for money for accessing my page. I decided this thing is good for horses and it would be good if people used it instead of different cruel stuff they use, for free. I put a small notice at the bottom - "if despite these instructions you can't make that halter, email me and I'll make one for you for quite low price."
That's about it. Information can be free. I may be paid for work I put in things. Not for allowing someone to own them, while I lose nothing. I spent 3 days for making myself feel better - for making life of hopefuly several hundreds horses slightly better. Now if I sacrifice a hour of my time to make one of such halters and mail it to whoever is too rich, lazy or all-thumbs to make one themselves - I may charge them for my time and effort.
Copyright? Doh, if someone else starts making that halters and selling them, using my instructions, I'd be happy! Because I did it for certain idea. Not for money. But that's far beyond imagination of small brains of MPAA employees.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen.
The sound isn't right,
the picture isn't in focus,
people are walking in front of the camera,
[...]
Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
Reminds me a lot of my trip to the cinema yesterday to watch Pirates of the Caribean.. course that costed me 15 bucks after candy and a small pop.
music was composed and books and poems were written before there were ever any copyright laws. Shakespeare's works were never protected by any copyright laws. In fact, many of Shakespeare's works would have to be considered derivative in nature. The same could be said about classical music. A system was in place to allow artists to create their works and make a living even then. Shakespeare wrote plays and sold them to theater owners who put them on. Composers were sponsored by rich patrons. Even today, the vast majority of musicians make most of their money performing live and nearly nothing from album sales. The truth is, if there is a demand for music, movies, books, etc., then artists will find a way to provide them. How is a band's song worthless without copyright law? They can still put on concerts and charge admission. Movie theaters can still show movies and sell tickets and popcorn. People will still buy books and read them.
[Since I have never downloaded a full length movie from the Internet, most of this information is second hand. Some of it may be inaccurate. My comments are in braces.]
YOU'RE CHEATING YOURSELF
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen.
The sound isn't right, the picture isn't in focus, people are walking in front of the camera, and scenes are missing.
[Most movies on the Internet today are high quality rips from the original. Point invalid.]
Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
Only 4 out of 10 films turn a profit. If people take the films for free and the Studios can't recoup their investment, they may not be able to make the big summer movies we all enjoy so much; the TITANICs, the SPIDER-MANs, the JURASSIC PARKs. So, not only will the creators lose, in the end, you, the consumer, will end up with fewer choices at the multiplex.
[Slippery Slope. The Jurassic Park series is the only series in this list that I believe is decent. Spider Man is just not my type of movie and Titanic is a movie that should have never been made. The MPAA has no one to blame but themselves for their lousy sales ratio.]
Do you really want fewer movies to choose from?
[Seeing the current state of the film industry today... I'd love to see fewer but better quality movies.]
YOU'RE THREATENING THE LIVELIHOOD OF THOUSANDS
The entertainment industry isn't made up only of familiar actors, actresses and directors. It is made up of over 500,000 everyday working people that bring the magic of the movies to you.
[And most of those 500K people don't see most of the money. Plus, the MPAA is assuming that every download would translate into a movie sales. This is not true for some people.]
But, when movies are illegally downloaded from the Internet, these are the people that suffer the most.
It's the woman who does the make-up, the guy who rigs the lighting, the sound technician, the costume designer, the set decorator and the caterer.
[Wrong Answer. It's the stock holders, the executives, and all of the people that make a profit from sales that suffer the most. Most people working on movies do NOT get any of the profit from movies.]
Do you really want these people to lose their jobs?
[Slippery Slope. I honestly don't think filesharing is going to cause the movie industry to go bankrupt. They seem to be doing just fine, even though the economy is in a depression.]
YOUR COMPUTER IS VULNERABLE
Have you ever had your computer crash and had to replace it or reinstall all the files due to a virus or other such problem?
[Never had a problem with viruses... That is what Norton Antivirus is there for.]
The nature of "peer-to-peer" file sharing sites like eDonkey, Gnutella, KaZaA, etc., open your computer to destructive viruses and worms and annoying pop-ups.
Common Viruses:
Apher, Benjamin, Backdoor, Duload, Fizzer, Hantner, Klez, Neuer, Nimda, Livra and Magic Eightball
[Appeal to Fear. All of those viruses are easily detected by Norton Antivirus and other virus detection software.]
You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself.
[Unless you don't share any of your downloads. Then you are not "just as responsible".]
Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.
[Appeal to Fear. No real backing in the real world.]
Is the theft of your personal information worth the free movie?
[Sorry, most of the filesharing community has seen right through your FUD and know you are wrong.]
YOU'RE BREAKING THE LAW
-Valen
> 2) The artists don't get paid millions--they get paid SHIT. > They get about a tenth as much as the tech staff, >instead of a thousand times as much.
How do you figure this? I seem to remember Britney spears making millons and millions for her first CD, the those shitty boybands doing the same. Stones, U2 and them dont do any work and make a hell of a lot more then any tech working on their albums.
Remember Seal, he made one CD, the first single came out and he bought some exotic itallian car. Hundreds of Thousands of dollars for a 4 minute song that SUCKED TOTAL ASS.
The whole point is making music or acting just isnt that much work, not compared to those who really do work., its definatly not worth anywhere near what they get for it. For that matter professional sports stars arnt worth what they get paid either, but at least the major leagues arnt sueing all their fans.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Keep that dirty old Senator out of your hard drive! He might be trying to look at those naked pictures you took for your wife!
This is my sig.
Maybe that's why I use Kazaa Lite Instead! :)
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
I WAS RIGHT! DAMN YO I SHOULD GET ADMIRL POINDEXTOR TO SET UP ME TEH TROLL FUTURES MARKET!!!
I'D BE ALL RICH OR SOMETHING.
# mportant Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
# Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
# If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
Just wondering cause right now I think filesharing ain't that bad.
The site www.respectcopyrights.org is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
The risks of attending movies in theatres -- exposure to disease (SARS, tuberculosis, other airborne pathogens), risks to your sanity (insipid "previews," the idiot behind you with the cell phone, the gaggle of girls talking through the whole thing, bad sound and worse pictures), parking lot mayhem, $6 for a bucket of popcorn that's coated with the same stuff they spread on the floors to give them that wonderful, MPAA-approved tacky feel...
But then you didn't expect a balanced presentation, did you?
A great article on the corruption of the system
someone set us up the bum.
Here's some deee-lightful text from the site:
Hmmm... Have you ever had to replace your car radio because someone changed the presets? Have you ever had to replace your answering machine because someone changed the message? Have you ever had to buy a new guitar because yours went out of tune? Have you ever had to buy new clothes because yours were starting to get smelly after wearing them for a few months?
Um, let me think for a moment. Have I ever had to replace my computer because of a virus? Well, no I have not, because I am not a bone-headed knuckle-dragger who is too dumb to know the difference between software and hardware.
Perhaps the set designers, grips, make-up artists, etc, could all make a bit more if the big names stars weren't payed outrageuously. Arnold was payed around $30 million for his recent role in T3. Perhaps if they had skimped a bit and only paid him $29 million, the 'real people' could get paid more.
Seems like the MPAA is just a tad gluttonous these days.
The other point is that one can come up with much more appealing poster children if one can shop out of a casting catalog than if one is stuck with dull, drab reality.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It certainly will be if you install the Flash plugin that's required to view the site.
Anyone else find it hilarious that they're apparently not interested in getting their message out to the largest possible audience.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Wait... we haven't considered the possibility of them originating from RIAA or MPAA, have we? They just might be creating the "reason" not to share files!
RIAA, MPAA, you insenstive clods for no reason!
Yeah, about that filesize problem... I've been working on a new compression algorithm that will shrink the current crop of Hollywood crap to about 0,00000003% the size of a DivX rip. Instead of measuring data entropy it looks at the number of bits of information in and about the movie itself; stuff like actor salary, box office returns, number of car chases, number of explosions, level of gratuitous lovescenes, and actual plot development. So far I've had great success with movies from the past two decades - it even managed to shrink my illegal copy of Gigli down to 2 bits.
It figures they'd use a catchy beat for the intro. Now the RIAA can sue me if I get the song stuck in my head.
Yeah, and what does an ADR editor do? They could probably get rid of that too. And what are Gaffers? Best Boys? Unit Publicists? Rigging grips? Video Assist Operators? Executive Producers? That's a lot of wasted money, right there.
Not sure where you are, but pretty much everywhere I've gone the seats ARE about $5-6 a seat.
At leats the little picture of a ticket on the right of the page says so, I beg to differ. Any one who keeps up with Fark, has realized that hollywood is running out of ideas, and they just add more T&A and some explosions with a one liner after it.
So ask yourself, Are movies REALLY woth 'IT' (ie, your $$$)
> what to speak of building a dedicated home theater pc to play the divx movies
it's sooo easy with the Xbox media player. Output in hi-res with AC3 sound. You don't even have to buy a mod chip anymore to run unsigned software such as XBMP.
With the exception of the few who are "important" enough to get cut in on a percentage of the net, these are union people who get paid by the hour and get paid rather well while work lasts. Their payment does not depend on whether or not the movie sells or is pirated.
You are saying that no more movies are going to be made if somebody downloads a low-quality copy of the next Matrix movie? What are you smoking?
The RIAA argument you're trying to make also requires you to demonstrate that significant losses in sales are occurring due to broadband downloads of movies.
EVIDENCE PLEASE, other than studies paid for by the MPAA to PR firms.
Your argument also, carried to its illogical conclusion says we have a moral obligation to buy even movies we don't like or these poor, starving industry employees will be out of work. Do they have the obligation to buy software from companies that employ us whether they like it, want it, or need it?
Or how about computer people just like us, who work on the special effects, or just install and support the computers for the people involved with a movie?
You either expect to make enough from your share of the profit to afford to take the risk of their not being any or are getting the certainty of a pretty good paycheck. Either way, you are not my problem, any more than any failed dot.com I wasn't personally involved with is.
Tech Public Policy stuff
What!?!?! I am uncircumcised AND Jewish! They figured that when I was born, I'd need every bit I had.
Another inch, I could've been a king.
An inch less and I'd have been a queen.
Again, as with most security, the is a failing of the user not the application. I'm willing to bet that people with that level of computer knowledge can have their data compromised in other ways. It also isn't a back door for software to function as advertised. If the purpose of Kaazaa is to share any and all files in the directories you specify, then it is doing its advertised job. A back door would be if I told it to share only my c:\stuffiwanttoshare directory but it also decided to share my My Documents directory.
I love how they mention Nimda, even though it spread by infecting systems by directly injecting into the system over IIS with a malformed URL. What does this have to do with eDonkey, Kazaa?
Though I suppose it's just mentioned as a "Common Virus", not something actually spready by P2P software.
# Erik
Ok, I know this might be anal, but out of habbit, I just peeked the code behind thier main page here. And besides the BLATANT lack of standards compliant code, there isn't even a DOCTYPE specified! Then I ran the sites' pages through the various validators at w3.org, and, well... needless to say... it's bad. For shame RIAA.
ugggg, so i just saw one of the commercials on teevee, gawd.
the show the bottom rung people about how will they live.
but they don't say about the greedy corporates at the top of the pile, and the overpricing of the dvds.
of course they don't mention the overpaid A-list stars either......
-- troutsoup.com
I have an idea. Why don't we have the government set the fair and reasonable rate for what movie stars make. They shouldn't be able to get filthy rich like that. And mandate the salaries for the techs working on the project. And perhaps the government can follow your idea, and set a law which limits the maximum price for movie tickets, CDs and DVDs. Brilliant.
Oh yeah, we live in a capitalist country.
Ok try this. Get a bunch of investors together. Make a movie, paying the actors close to the salary you envision. Only send the movies to independent theatres that charge $5 a ticket, and don't put out shlock. What's that, there's a thriving independent cinema in this country putting out many good & great movies? Huh.
The fact is, there are options out there. If you don't like mass-produced entertainment, don't pay for it and follow independent artists. However, most people complain until they are blue in the face about the high prices charged by the entertainment industry, while completing ignoring the independent stuff. You can't have it both ways. So quit your belly-achin, and quit trying to tell other people how to do their jobs.
I was just starting to respect the MPAA because of their IMHO excelent anti-piracy comercials featuring movie employees. Now they have to start with the FUD. What a shame, I was beginning to think they were somehow better than the RIAA.
What signature defines me as a person?
Slashdot should post daily stories -- even repeats, or trivial ones -- if at all possible on all of our enemies -- Microsoft, the US government, RIAA, MPAA -- so they can be humbled by the slashdot effect.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
and enough to get it to post....
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
While you're rgiht that Linux is not perfectly secure, you must admit that those are rather different classes of vulnerability. The two Windows ones were a remote root exploits in the default configuration, and a root exploit that could be easily used by a webpage/email. The Linux ones were mostly DOS vulnerabilities, most of which would require substantial access (ie, a shell account or more) to exploit, and many of which are not present in a standard configuration (eg, you have to have NFS turned on).
I would say that considering the kinds of vulnerabilities we're talking about, Linux's track record is at least as good as Windows' in this department.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
He holds the car keys of all the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Jags, Lexuses (Lexi?), and Mercedez-Benzs for the actors and actresses while they are filming so that no one can steal their car.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
what is it with the MPAA and RIAA and all this talk about backdoors? sounds like somone's got a fetish
"movies these days suck, so its ok to steal them". Hm, Fords suck, lets go steal some cars!
Where the hell are peoples sense of ethics and morals? Most of you claim to be intelligent self thinkers, but you stick by the sheep mentality of "everybody else is stealing it, so i can do it as well".
You think that because the movies companies make huge profits, that the little guy doesnt get hurt? Well then fuck all of you who complain about large companies sending work to India. The little guy doesnt get hurt, since those companies are making good money.
so fuck it, i got karma to burn.
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
I snagged the screener of T3 that's floating around, and it was pretty damn good - the DivX codec has improved the quality of pirated movies tremendously. With a 19" monitor and some ok harman/kardon speakers, it made for a better movie experience than having to pay $9 to sit in front of dipshits who chew with their mouths open, talk constantly, leave their cell phones on and repeatedly kick the back of your chair. The best time to go out and actually see a movie is in the afternoon after it's been out a couple weeks and the kids are still asleep and have lost interest in the movie.
Common Viruses:
Apher, Benjamin, Backdoor, Duload, Fizzer, Hantner, Klez, Neuer, Nimda, Livra and Magic Eightball
Add Metallica.
-Valiss
As a Grip, Key Grip actually, one of the "artists" listed on the site as being against the piracy of films, I am all for piracy as long as the studios aren't offering an alternative.
(Notice they didn't use actors as the artists that are being harmed by piracy? What, you don't feel sorry for Ben Affleck?)
I have to innovate to keep my job. The producers demand more efficiency from the crews and the "creatives" demand more creativity from the crews or I am not hired on the next job.
I can't sue someone that is doing a more efficient or more creative job than I am like the MPAA/RIAA are.
Fortunately "Respect Copyrights" reeks of "Just say No to Drugs."
We know how well that worked.
BTW-A Key Grip is the Head of the Grip department. The Grips are in charge of on set engineering. We build cranes to fly the camera, munt cameras on cars, fly lights from the tops of buildings, string light controlling cloth over a city street, etc.
I'm sure a site with a bit of balance could be put there by someone more talented (and with more money for a legal defense) than me.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
If I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to go see The Hulk, the question of how much it will cost me comes into play. I may go see it at a $4.00 matinee price, but definitely not at $8.00. $8 is way too much money to spend on an hour or two of disposable entertainment; I'd rather go pick up a couple magazines or a book for that price... I can go back and re-read those over and over again, long after I've initially purchased them. Now, if somebody offers to take me to a movie (ie, it's free for me) and pay the $8 admission for me, then the chance is much greater that I will go.
What I'm getting at here is that there isn't money in my budget to go see a movie that costs $8 and leaves me at the end with nothing more than break-room gossip. There is however room in my budget for what is free. If there were no sources available for me to get a movie from for free, I'm still not coughing up the 8 bucks to see it in a theater, though, and I believe that's where the MPAA's reasoning has gone awry.
The MPAA seems to believe that for every time a movie is downloaded off the internet, there is at least one person not paying the $8 that they would otherwise pay if the movie were not available for download; but this is just not the case. If the movie isn't available for download, it doesn't get downloaded; however if people don't have room in their budget for an $8 movie, they still won't spend the money on the movie even if they can't get it for free.
Now, if I downloaded some movie and I gave it rave reviews to all of my peers, maybe some of them will have the $8 required to go out and see the movie in a theater; or the $3.50 to rent it; or the $20 to buy the DVD, or whatever. I'm just pointing this out because I know that it does happen from time to time, and it is probably a phenomenon that the MPAA is ignoring. This puts movie downloaders in the same seat as movie critics; people who see movies for free and then pass on their opinions. If I tell a buddy of mine that I know is into sci-fi movies that there's a sci-fi movie that I saw that he might enjoy; he may just rent it and check it out, because he respects my judgement of sci-fi films. It would probably never stand up in court, but if each movie downloader can drag some witnesses up onto the stand to testify that the movie downloader's recommendation is what solely motivated a ticket / dvd purchase, that might take the ball out of the MPAA's court.
So back to the subject of the comment: theft. What am I stealing? There was never $8 set aside to go see a given movie in the first place, so by my downloading it and watching it, what have I stolen from anyone?
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
I too have seen the pathetic infomercial by a paid actor telling me the woes of piracy before American Wedding. I guess the MPAA failed to figure out everyone watching the movie obviously FUCKING PAID to see it. I dispise paying a theater 8 bucks to then get called a pirate, or potential pirate.
Just more proof these guys dont really have a clue.
The MPAA is missing the same opportunity that the RIAA ignored. Years ago, the RIAA should have noticed people downloading music and looking into why people do it. They then could have provided a better service and made a profit off it. Nope, they labeled it as thievery and attacked. Now they face a massive boycott. Lovely. That boycott will do more damage than P2P piracy ever could.
The MPAA has a little more time, seeing as how movies are 700 megs or so. Upload caps are still at 256k roughly so they've got some time to come up with their own service. And to an extent, they do. I found a site last night where I could 'rent' movies to watch on my computer. Damn cool really. I've been aching to watch Terminator again, and that'll only cost me $3. I won't even have to worry about returning a tape!
They're going to need to do more, though. The on-line equivalent of HBO would be nice. Pay $10 a month and get access to some movies. Heck, I'd pay my $30 month cable bill to a VoD service. Maybe more if their selection is really good, even with commercials.
The point is that if movie downloading is so popular, despite how painful it is, they need to look at WHY. Are prices too high? Are people obnoxious in theaters? Do people have time to sit and watch a 2.5 hour movie? Do people want to spend $8 to watch an iffy movie? (Sort of like the prices are too high, but it did suck that Star Trek Nemesis fell to the bottom of the heap when Two Towers, Harry Potter, and James Bond blew a gaping crater into people's movie budgets.) Can college students even make the time to go see a movie?
With the answers to these questions, the MPAA could do something shocking, like provide supply for the demand. Who'd want to download a movie off of P2P when they could spend $5 and get the Hulk streaming down like right away? I know that in my house, a good deal more money would go into watching movies. Right now I have to pick and choose a movie in the same way I pick and choose a new computer. That sucks.
"Derp de derp."
The truth is, most studios are sending movie jobs to Canada, due to the cost of production being so much lower. Agreed, Set Designers, Costumers, Grips and whatnot are having trouble getting jobs. DUE TO THE STUDIOS!!! You really think Piracy has anthing do to with it?
The RIAA hasn't figured out yet that if you have a movie, and the DVD for the movie costs $12, and the soundtrack for the movie costs $17, which one are you going to buy? The $$ that the average american spends on home entertainment hasn't gone down, it's gone UP quite a bit. The problem is that it's not being spent on CDs anymore. It's being spent on DVDs. If the studios would lower the price of their average CD to $5, they wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves. And don't tell me that they can't turn a profit on a $5 CD...
So what, if they gotta get a "regular job" like everybody else. Everybody esle adjusts to new market conditions. What makes them immune? The biggest myth ever invented is the notion that only Hollywood can produce high-quality movies, and that their movies actually cost what they claim.
Thanks to technology, it's a bigger lie today than ever before.
We're currently selling short videos featuring Hawaiian Tropic models on Altnet/Kazaa. With all the excess footage that's already been shot, we could release a full-length HT video every month with different models, interviews, etc., for the next six months at least. Wanna know how much money all parties involved in this proposed project need to be happy? Total? $40,000. Maybe less.
Now, how much did they pay Ms. Rosen to run the RIAA? I'll bet it was more.
Also, please understand that there are thousands - if not millions - of creative people out there, just like us, who would love to establish the "middle-class income" bracket of the arts & entertainment industry. P2P can make this happen, and I promise you, it's the last movement on earth Hollywood wants to see come to fruition.
Now, imagine what this collective "we" could have done with the money Hollywood pissed away on Gigli, or a thousand other Hollywood "films". Probably establish a brand new cable network. Seriously.
Don't believe the hype, Slashdotters. If P2P stays alive and establishes synergy with all the independent creative eneergy out here - the kind that Hollywood skips over - consumers will have more choices, artists will have more opportunities and prices will be drasitcally cheaper per unit.
The only difference? Affleck et al will no longer be the beneficiaries of $12million checks for movies like Gigli.
Do THOSE guys need OUR pity? I don't THINK so. lol
SoSoHot.com
First of all, you're looking at a really tiny handful of musicians. Count the number of musicians who make more than a few thousand dollars of profit, and you're into the range of about 25 people, maybe 50.
Secondly, even most of them don't really make all THAT much money. Britney Spears made millions--most of which will go pay off the advance she was given, as well as the LOAN from the label to make her CDs. Musicians--even the highest of the high--have to pay for their own studio costs, band costs, mixing costs, packaging, and promotion. When someone is made into a star, it's done so entirely on credit.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Libel is illegal, last I heard.
Unless they're documenting which software has these vulnerabilities (in letters big than 1pt, of a color visible against the background color, and less than 2 clicks away) I'd like to see them sued for it.
FUD is one thing, and many many companies and people get away with it. Libel and Slander *are* illegal.
...entertainment never existed before the advent of the music and motion picture industries. Music is not new. Theatre is not new. People have been doing it for thousands of years. Only in the last century have corporations gotten involved. To listen to your statement you would think that the music and movie industries invented entertainment. Real artists will continue their art with our without the RIAA or MPAA or copyrights. Why? Because it's their passion ... not their paycheck.
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
The theaters are so filthy, we go there early to find a clean seat. We used to be able to hold a conversation before the movie. While the theater showed a slideshow accompanied by music, it was quiet. Now, there's 20 minutes of commercials, followed by 10-15 minutes of trailers before the movie, and it's so loud you can't talk over it.
The sound systems are always broken or set improperly (front speakers only). The movie is never in sharp focus (no, it's not my eyes). If there's a problem, you have to wait 15 minutes for the projectionist to show up. We recently watched part of a film burn up, because there was no one in the booth. When there is a problem, they skip ahead to keep the movie on schedule, so you miss part. Sure, if you complain they will give you another ticket, but that's two hours of your time.
I've called the THX number and emailed the theaters to complain, but nothing is improving. Of course, the admission price is going up. It now costs less to buy the DVD than it costs for my wife and I to see the movie in the theater, and we get several hours of extras on the disk.
We obviously loved going to the movies, but with the increasing cost and reduction in quality, it's hard to justify. I can see why people are bootlegging the movies.
If the MPAA wants to stop the bootlegging, they should just release the DVD at the same time as the movie is in the theaters. Let the market decide how they want to see the film.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Oh! I understand now.. so if we were to move copyright back to the original term of only 14 years, all the people pirating movies would suddenly stop and think, "Hey, rather than downloading the movie and seeing it for free now, I think I'll wait the decade and a half so that I can do it legally."
Let's be serious, this has nothing to do with whether movies suck or not. People pirate the movies because they want them for free. If the movies don't suck, they'll just want it for free more.
Though I'll admit, it's a lovely way to rationalize the consumption of someone's hard work without that messy detail of paying them for it.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
"Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get."
- Frederick Douglass
Translation: It's OK for us to rip you off, but you can't rip us off.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"When people copy movies, whether on VHS tapes, DVDs, online or anywhere else, they are taking something from the artists who made those works. This just discourages the creative expression that we enjoy so much."
Just a little note but, isn't (shouldn't these days) creative expression about the creative expression itself, not about money?
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Anyone remember the War on (Some) Drugs? It used to be the big, bad thing for keeping us under control.
This site is almost as funny (and bizarrely scary) as the D.A.R.E. propaganda. I wonder if the MPAA will come out with the same wacky and embarrassing bumper stickers?
"Proud Parent of an MPAA Anti-Piracy Terror Corps Kid!"
Ick.
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
Say no more
nt
dude its like 9 bucks at a tuesday noon show in most major cities. 12-14 for a major release primetime. i can also go see second run movies for 2.50 so i dont mind that much. maybe you should move to a city.
MPAA is as responsible for content being pirated, as are those who pirate after the fact of an initial illegal copy hitting the 'Net. I say this because apparently the MPAA is ignoring the fact that *TEST* coppies of movies which wound up on the cutting room floor actually make it to the 'Net before the final production release. Are you telling me that it's *our* fault, and not the keygrip, or the sound man, or whomever that works on the movies that are at fault for that as well? It seems a blind eye is turned to that by MPAA maybe? I mean, how is it possible that many of these movies they complain about are actually released on the 'Net *days* before the actual release date? How's that I ask of those bastards at the MPAA!!
--SuperBug
The one thing about movie piracy is that it is not very easy to reproduce the whole theater experience. Downloading music and burning it to CD is just as good as buying the original (minus some album art) but downloading a movie just gives you a pixilated file to watch on a 17 inch monitor. Granted some people get high quality rips and burn then to DVD, but not all of us have DVD burners. I imagine some people also hook they computers up to a tv or home theater.. not most of us either. So the way I see it, a night at the movies always has the upper hand.
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
Ok, so the MPAA is trying to convince the public that downloading movies means movies won't be able to make a profit.
Yet, thanks to very creative accounting, the people that the MPAA represents very rarely have ANY movies that make a profit.
There is a reason that the stars, or producers, or key people in the project go after percentage of GROSS and not NET. Even Stan Lee got burned on Spiderman because his contract was for a percentage of NET and according to the studio, the movie didn't make a profit.
If a movie doesn't make a profit, it is much more likely it is one of: (1) creative/slick accounting; (2) intentional overspending; (3) bad business decisions out of ignorance; (4) intentional bad decisions to drain money; (5) illegal financial transactions of one kind or another; (6) or perhaps the movie just stinks!
I find it quite funny how upset MPAA gets about people "stealing" by downloading movies, but does not care in the least when the people they represent effectively steal from people they've made deals with by artifically charging up expenses and other costs to prevent a movie from making a profit, thereby denying the artists, writers, or whoever might have been given a percentage of the NET.
Talk about a double standard. But of course, that's what we've come to expect now days isn't it?
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I have painstakenly researched each of the viruses mentioned on their site, and written a rebuttal on my site. There is a weak connection at best between P2P software and these viruses. It's almost laughable that they even chose some of them for the list at all.
Read the Anti-FUD on the front page:
http://erik.la
# Erik
is the way they complain about money. I could see arguing that it is morally wrong or that it is illegal, but saying that a company that makes $50 million on a good movie on opening weekend doesn't have enough money to pay its workers because of p2p apps is just rediculus. If they really can't pay the lighting crew, maybe they should stop paying the "stars" $30 million a pop for a crappy job.
SIGFAULT
www.redvsblue.com
These guys have put together over a dozen episodes of a sitcom based on and in the XBOX game Halo. It's funnier and more entertaining than 99% of what I've seen on TV in the past year. They've done it all for free, although you can choose to support them if you want to.
See, the problem isn't that people won't create for free, they will. The problem isn't that people won't pay for the creations of another, they will. The problem is in the ratio of how much you have to pay to what you get... how much bang for your buck, if you will.
I've been watching the Red vs Blue episodes completely on the creators' terms. They decide if and when I ever get to see another episode. They are doing it for free, so of course this should be the way. How can I expect them to make more episodes for free? I can't. I just hope they do.
However, just as soon as money changes hands, the whole deal changes. Now that I have spent my hard earned money on something, I have some control over the deal. To what extent is for lawyers and philosophers to figure out. Personally, if I spend money on a creative work of another, I feel I should be able to decide when, where, and how often I can experience that creative work. Your opinion might, and most likely does, vary.
Ok, I'm talking about money changing hands and you are talking about no money changing hands, I'm not off topic, just hang in there....
People used to barter. If I wanted a loaf of bread I could go to the baker and offer him a dozen eggs. he could then accept or reject that offer. If the quality of his bread went down I could offer him less eggs and vice-versa.
People no longer barter. We are, for the most part, paid a wage of whatever corportate America decides and we use that money to purchase goods from corporate America at whatever price they choose. We are then instructed by corporate America when and how we are allowed to use those goods.
We have become slaves to corporate America. As of today, they own us.
I'm not anti-America, I love America and am proud and thankful to have been born on her shores. However, I am growing more and more tired of 'corporate America'. As they tug harder and harder at my leash, I grow increasingly resentful of their presense as the dictators of my intended to be free nation. I become resentful of their patenting and copyrighting, their market cornering and price fixing, and most of all, their blatant outright purchase of our elected officials.
Corporate America uses and abuses every law that was put in place to protect my rights. Patents were created for me, so that I, the little guy, would have some hope at competing with their unlimited resources. Copyrights where created for you, so that you might have some chance
at competing against their unlimited budgets. Our elected representitives are supposed to represent the opion of the most people, not the people with the most money.
The problem people have with paying for creative content isn't in the act of payment, but in the terms of payment. We no longer have any control over the terms, it's their way or the information super hi-way.
I can see a light at the end of the tunnel though. Although corporate America has a monopoly on conventional means of production, promotion and distribution of creative content, with advances in technology your average Joe now has access to new forms of production, promotion, and distribution via computer and the internet. Corporate America's strangle hold on entertainment is dwindling, Red vs Blue may very well become Red vs Blue Vs. Corporate America.
The guys over at Red vs Blue don't need a dozen private jets to shuttle VIP's and public officials around, they just need a cheeseburger and fries. Therefore they do not need to make 8.5 bazillion dollars on the next episode to stay in the black.
A system that made it easy to find and pay for quality content direct from the manufacturer is all that is needed. If th
Cubicledrone, you have been accused of "ad hominem" fallacy, and have thus far failed to disprove the truth of this claim.
...
"It's that simple"
This is the major claim of most ad hominem fallacies. "Isn't it obvious? Everybody knows it." Since THIS point has been contested, it is this point you should address. What lets you know that everyone who wants copyright changes want it because they want free stuff? Or, to weaken your claim to a point you can stick, what makes you sure that most people who want change want it because they want free stuff? Keep in mind that personal anecdote, such as "I've studied it for 10 years" is generally not considered valid as evidence unless you have expert qualifications. Are you a copyright lawyer without reason for bias?
How does infringing on copyright help artists? It doesn't. That's an irrefutable chain of logic.
This is rather ironic, don't you think? A chain of logic requires a claim, evidence and a conclusion to be considered valid. The claim is implied "Infringing on copyright doesn't help artists," and the conclusion is stated: "It doesn't," but there is no evidence. I can therefore refute your claim simply because no evidence has been presented.
In 200 years or so,
Okay, this looks like a conclusion, and as far as I can tell, and trying to piece together the several claims from what you've got:
Removing copyright law will remove incentive to produce creative works (no evidence given for this - nothing is even mentioned that might be considered such evidence)
This will result in a loss of jobs and a decline in the literacy rate (no evidence given for this either because a list of people who would go out of work is not evidence that those people will go out of work)
Once again, you have failed to provide any supporting evidence.
I have systematically eliminated every point you have made on the grounds of lack of evidence from your second point, proving that your post lacks merit as a argument for copyright laws (because there are no valid arguments). I leave it as an exercise for the reader (Fun game!) to verify antiMStroll's claim on Cubicdrone's original post.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Exactly. While most people can't tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD, everybody notices the difference between a divx and a dvd.
I've already got my personal rebuttal and thoughts written down.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
But I don't think it's as simple as making the copyright length 14 years.
To my mind there should be at least two major considerations in deciding how copyright should work:
I'd argue that shorter copyright laws would likely cause the creation of more crap and not less in that companies would tend to pump out stuff that seems likely to earn a profit right now rather than in a couple years.
If there's no future, there's no reason to keep much of a backlist in print, and no reason to nurture an author/band/whatever... Just sell whatever's hot now. Also, you can distribute stuff that's lost copyright cause that way you don't have to pay the creator...
Worse, to my mind, having an author lose control of their own work in 14 years just seems unfair. If you created it, you should be able to control it as long as you live--at least if it's art...
Copyright for the lifetime of the author seems like a better idea to me. That way, the various distribution companies will do their best to get things sold while the author is still living and can actually benefit...
Lifetime of the author plus 20 years also has some good points in that if an author dies young, at least his/her family will recieve royalties for while.
I read the article again to be sure, but I don't think the MPAA said anything about theft of automobiles. Your criminal responsibility, and your civil liability, for the conduct of your friend in that scenario may be dependent on a number of facts, but it frankly doesn't matter -- we are discussing copyright infringement.
To that end, you face serious problems with your jus tertii defense: (1) Copyright infringement requires no state of mind, not intent, not knowledge, not even negligence -- liability is strict liability; (2) even when you are not liable for copyright infringement, you can be liable for contribution and vicarious infringement.
Trust me, as between your legal analysis and MPAA's, theirs is far closer to the mark. Of course, each situtation depends heavily on the particular facts of each case -- however the "myth" that slashdotters seem so anxious to keep alive, that there is no liability for file sharing as a general proposition, is wrong.
That's a load of bullshit. The only CDs I've bought in the past four years have been as a result of having heard the MP3's, not despite it.
I challenge anyone who claims that the RIAA is hurting as a result of the free advertisement that P2P provides to prove that someone who downloaded a given song would have purchased the CD anyways.
Realistically, the only instance in which I'd be prevented from buying a CD as a result of having downloaded the MP3s is if the CD sucked, and wasn't worth buying.
I'm willing to pay for music, if it doesn't suck.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
How precisely does anyone have a backdoor into my machine? If (and I stress that-IF) I run a P2P app, people connecting to my machine see only what I want them to see. Of course, I'm also using a Mac, which means my system is about 100% more secure than any Windows installation.
Besides, only complete morons keep sensitive information like bank accounts and social security numbers on their machines. I may be an anonymous coward, but I haven't been suckered into using the Internet to do my banking and pay my bills. I never will.
Piracy is wrong. Now for my comment:
About 10 years ago, I read in an accounting journal that a fixed amount of money is added on to the "cost" of a movie for advertising. But this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with how much is actually spent on promotion. Maybe that's why the "four out of ten" movies didn't recover their investment?
And shouldn't the "toy figurine money" that McDonald's or Burger King pays the studio reduce the cost of advertising, instead of being "merchandising income"? (Remember all that stuff in Mel Brooks' "SPACEBALLS"?)
Speaking as an accountant, changing your outlook (and a few numbers) can do wonders for your books (but outside of Hollywood or Washington, D.C. this could lead to a jail term).
I think this story (or a new one linking to the website) should be posted on Slashdot every day. That way we can achieve a continuous Slashdot effect, and no one can read this bullshit. Wonder if that could be considered a DOS attack...
Sounds like "REEFER MADNESS" all over again.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
Quit slashdotting the site! We're so busy taking the money from the children of the MPAA that the MPAA can't afford to run a good computer to host this site on! How can you be such insensitive clods, you filesharers!
This sig no verb.
WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
Well, let's put it this way: when you're a big hot-shot movie producer, you're busy and you don't have a lot of time. You need a few assistants. One to bring you your food, one to carry your scripts and so forth, one to handle your phone calls..you get the point.
And let's just say your "key" needs "gripping" sometimes and you're a little too busy to do it yourself. That's the job of the key grip!
heh, the slashdot effect is much better than a DDoS attack :)
"Stars" as you seem to think exist do not exist. Actors work from job to job, bit part to bit part, for many different employers. Out of thousands, a few make it big. How are you going to give all actors a yearly salary?
I like original and innovative ideas as much as anybody else, but come on. People like seeing the same types of movies, and even seeing the same movie remade. That's why so many sequels were made this summer, and why movie makers stick to a certain formula depending upon the genre - the formula generally works(this summer's bad sequels nonewithstanding).
Today was my last day at a movie theater for a summer job, so about the popcorn - yeah, that's where my paycheck came from. Movie theaters make their money off concessions. The concession workers and ushers all make under 6 dollars an hour. If transportation is any measure, the GM doesn't have a huge salary, either. The theater is NOT trying to rip people off, and realizes that lower prices mean more sales. However, they are a for-profit operation, and so a small popcorn costs $3.50(Tip: Buy larger quantities and share - don't divy up money so everyone can have a small ___).
Valete!
Who the fuck cares?
I do. He does. It matters. Disprove or (your argument) die(s). (Score: 0:1)
A valid logical argument requires at least one premise and a true conclusion.
Just how do you propose to logically deduce the validity of your conclusion without evidence, or a reasonable related parallel? You can't. (Score: 0:2)
This is the fallacy of "appeal to authority," or more specifically "appeal to anonymous authority."
It holds just as much water as the former - that is, none. (Score: 0:3)
Ten years of study stands as an expert qualification on it's face.
I've "studied" gameplay mechanics for fifteen years! Where's my six figure salary? Experience equals mastery? Illogical. (Score: 0:4)
Oh, so if I were an attorney, I would be disqualified if I had an opinion?
No, but you might otherwise know what you're talking about. As it is, everyone has an opinion. (Score: 0:5)
How about the 400 years of copyright law?
(2003 - 1776 == 227)
(227 < 400)
Hm. Something's wrong. (Score: 0:6)
I'd say there's an 80% chance this whole thing was a troll, but I'm bored anyway, so whatever.
Troll, ignorance, or just plain stupid; if you're referring to your own posts, I'd say this is probably the only valid statement you've made in this thread. (Score: 1:7)
The MPAA's new advertising campaign against movie piracy has a home on the internet.
Not any more it doesn't:
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.respectcopyrights.org/
The following error was encountered:
* Connection Failed
The system returned:
(60) Connection timed out
The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.
Your cache administrator is root.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Maybe I shouldn't, since most of the world isn't the city ;)
Actually aside from going to the theater in dallas I've never paid more than $6 for a seat. There I had to pay $7 at the 100 screen theater. But ummm ALL movies at any theater I've been to are the same price. They only vary if your a senior, kiddy, or it's the matinee in which case it's less.
$17.00CDN to sit through a movie that has a 60% chance of being crap? I wonder why people pirate?
I know this will sound incredibly n00bish of me, but I have no freaking idea what IHBT stands for. Numerous Google searches turn up nothing but Indian universities and German hairdressing colleges.
Could someone explain it to me?
Do these jokers really believe their website will ever be up?
This has got to be the #1 site for script kiddies to target!
It's either been Slashdotted or someone has beaten me to the idea already.....
#include <sig.h>
... at next year's campaign.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Yes! Slashdotted!
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Where do you live?? I want to move there...
Our local Muvico 24 Theatre is really comfy and all, but they just bumped their price up to like $9 a person, and I lose my student discount soon...
I've never actually seen a working drive-in...really wish we had one.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
So by your logic, if some network administrator knew that any illegal activity was going on, they would have to shutdown the entire network? There are usually far too many students or employees to be able to afford policing all the traffic (nevermind the privacy issues).
Furthermore, it is not a crime to install or run a p2p app. It is only a crime to knowingly engage in copyright infringement. Do you think your average kazaa (not slashdot) user knows how to turn off uploads or even know that they are allowing uploads at all?
I don't believe you.
OK. I just fired up Kazaa and searched for ".xls". The first document I opened appears to be the log of an anesthesiologist who works for a plastic surgeon. I've got the guys name, city (it's a small town), and 191 of this patients listed by name, age, sex, date of surgery, procedure done (lots of liposuction and something with abbreviation BAM going on in that little town!), duration of surgery, duration of anethesia, and a few other columns.
google says... BAM=Breast Augmentation Mammaplasty
Fascinating.
Looks like the guys mortgage payments are on another doc and he put his sons college expenses on another. Too bad the Norton Anti-Virus he bought on 12/10/02 doesn't keep him from storing his personal stuff in the shared Kazaa directory.
You're right. I guess they don't teach you how file systems work in anesthesiology school.
For the ultimate insult we have to forget about mirrors and instead distribute it on Kazaa and through bittorrent.
Does this
What I'm getting at here is that there isn't money in my budget to go see a movie that costs $8 and leaves me at the end with nothing more than break-room gossip. There is however room in my budget for what is free. If there were no sources available for me to get a movie from for free, I'm still not coughing up the 8 bucks to see it in a theater, though, and I believe that's where the MPAA's reasoning has gone awry.
.
The MPAA seems to believe that for every time a movie is downloaded off the internet, there is at least one person not paying the $8 that they would otherwise pay if the movie were not available for download; but this is just not the case. If the movie isn't available for download, it doesn't get downloaded; however if people don't have room in their budget for an $8 movie, they still won't spend the money on the movie even if they can't get it for free.
Great post . . . and in fact you can apply the argument to all forms of 'piracy,' at least for me. Someone like my mother probably hasn't bought any music since she was in her early 20's (she's in her 50's now); she's quite content listening to whatever comes on the radio. It's not like Kazaa made her stop buying music, she was never a potential consumer in the first place, although she might dl an mp3 or two now. If anything, Kazaa and other p2p programs get people hooked on a bad copy of a song/movie, and prompts them to buy the DVD or CD.
Out of all the mp3s I've dl'ed, none of them would've been worth me investing even $1 into if Kazaa didn't exist. Same deal with software -- I'm quite sure if Photoshop was unobtainable by the average home user on IRC, Gimp would become 10x's as popular, or if not gimp, a program that has a low cost, like PaintShop Pro. Most of the people who warez something like PS don't need all of its features anyway . .
When you find a good product you believe in you don't have a problem spending on it -- which is why I bought 2 Macs within the past year and a half, along with legal software. That would've never happened when I was running Windows. I supported Linux similarly, buying a couple distros in the box instead of dl'ing them. Bottom line is what everyone has repeated a thousand times here and on other forums: make quality, innovative products, and people will pay for them. Make the same boring shit over and over, and people won't feel guilty warezing it.
It's the accounting.
We've seen articles on slashdot lately about the music industry. Everything the artist needs is a loan against future royalties. Is the interest rate fair? Royalties assume 25% breakage, even though we stopped shipping fragile 1940s vinyl years ago.
As for the MPAA, I read in an accounting journal about 10 years ago that a fixed amount of money is added on to the "cost" of a movie for advertising. But this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with how much is actually spent on promotion.
The MPAA has learned the accounting profession from the RIAA. I wouldn't trust either of their figures, even after a full audit. The reason for setting up the deal a certain way, their estimates and projections, their "costs", I question all of it.
If I did business this way, I could get the same tennis instructor as Martha Stewart (Federal prison). Worse, I could be her doubles partner!
I don't know how the market should decide which musicians or movies do well. But with music payola and only a few good movies, the market really isn't deciding now.
Stupid me. Openness only applies to software....no other creative work. How could I think otherwise?
genious...
Nice try, smartie.
Need a wake-up call ?
Okay, I wont make a big deal about the poor spelling. But this is a really common misconception of the market economy. Sure, it might not seem fair that making music and acting are easier to do than other jobs and yet are paid better. But they are paid what they are worth, because someone has decided that they are worth it. That's how the market economy works.
Actors and sports players and musicians get paid a certain amount of money because they draw in a certain amount of sales. If a studio decided to just not pay its actors more than say $200,000 per film or anything, all the big-name actors would go do movies at other studios, and that studio would make more money because people generally like to go see movies with established names attached to them.
When you start talking about paying people only according to the actual amount of labour they do, judged on arbitrarily, say by the number of hours they work or something, you're basically talking about communism.
tommer
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
"When you start talking about paying people only according to the actual amount of labour they do, judged on arbitrarily, say by the number of hours they work or something, you're basically talking about communism."
Uh... no.
I suggest you go away and read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Then you might actually have a clue what communism is.
Being paid an hourly rate isn't communist than wearing red is.
Home theater systems have come way way down in the past years, and for the price of a used Honda you can get a pretty good setup. I am running an NEC HT1000 system at home on a 100 Inch screen. With DVD's it rocks....with DIVX...well lets just say I won't be giving up my DVD collection anytime soon. In a large screen environment that is running the same number of pixels as a typical computer screen, quality counts! Surround sound certainly counts. Viewing movies downloaded from Kaaza will not change my movie going habits. I go to see new movies in the theater environment. I go to take my Girlfriend out on a date. I go because even on a decent home theater system, sometimes you have to see it on the BIG screen. I was actually purchasing DVD's but perhaps my money is better invested in the guys who make media and burners. At least they never nag me.
The Studios may at any time revise these Terms and Conditions by updating this posting. You are bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to review the then current Terms and Conditions to which you are bound.
They could revise the terms at any time and I'd be bound to them!
Yikes!
I'd better take their advice and periodically go back and get a fresh copy of their terms. What do you think...is every 100ms is periodic enough? Of course, if they could change them at any time I might miss a short lived change. Maybe I'd better check back every 10ms.
-- MarkusQ
Since most airliners are made of metal, it is both likely that they will get hit by lightning and completely benign. Electricity tends to flow on the outermost surface of a metal object, so sitting inside a nice metal airplane is a very safe place to be.
To bring this back on topic, I continue to be amazed at how motivated the RIAA/MPAA are in alienating their audience and destroying culture. Music, as a form of communication, very likely predates spoken language. It was transmitted around the world by word of mouth, drum, and instrument. Sharing of music "files" dates back to the stone age and before when visiting tribespeople learned new songs at the campfire while visiting remote villiages.
After nearly a century of repressive corporate control of music, it isfinally achieving freedom once again. The most successful record company twenty years from now will be the one that got it first and provided useful added value to globally shared music.
Well, good to know someone has a parody site up at DISRESPECTCOPYRIGHTS.ORG, huh?
....did you know that the DRM-flavored EULA opens a back door to your hard drive to enable MS to maliciously modify/delete software at will? People who invented intrusion by searching-and-seizing IP's of fileshareres now lecture about security. ironic
"I seem to remember Britney spears making millons and millions for her first CD"
But... he said artist.
If everyone copied the book and sold them or gave copies to others without paying for it, it would be hard for the writer to earn a living from writing, and ultimately that would mean there would be fewer creative works for us to enjoy.
This reminds me of that time when I found myself in the middle of an argument between screenwriters. Being newbies to the industry, they were flush with cash and felt they had something to prove to everyone. I don't recall how the argument started, but I do recall angry words just before the three of them stormed off to their Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Aston Martin. Now that I think of it, the lamborghini driver may have said something about the Aston being a "pansy car," certainly not a suitable vehicle for a person as powerful as a screenwriter.
If only I had followed dad's advice and studied at the art academy, I might have made something of my life. As it is, I keep myself busy serving coffee and dispensing the odd IOS command. Such is the lot of an education wated on engineering...
You're absolutely right! I just got back from seeing Tomb Raider, and it definitely fits into the category of "movies that suck that'll make a profit anyway" (though it did have Angelina Jolie, which alone is enough to happily entertain everyone in my house (male & female alike) for a couple of hours).
Before the flick, however, was the MPAA ad with the guy who met his wife on the set of "The Big Chill". The ad was a riot! I couldn't believe what I was seeing and couldn't stop laughing!
Hell, I'm gonna go see if I can pull it down from KaZaA right now!
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
In the flash intro(http://www.respectcopyrights.org) there is "gang boss" in the list of people who make movies... is that really a job? Or is it an Easter egg someone put in there?
Anyone who puts too much personal data on thier PC is not the brightest penny in the bunch !
Sure, you have to have a certain amount of data on your box, but the only damaging data would be related to emails about illegal activities, account numbers and details, your home address etc.
All you need in business emails is one landline number and your return email.
And if you don't have a hardware firewall AND a software firewall between you and the net, your not doing yourself any favours.
People don't walk around shopping centres with big signs saying "This is my bank account and credit card number, I live at this address and this is my phone number", so why do people persist in leaving this info scattered all over thier computers ?
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
...but I had worked up a response the their campaign last Friday, I think. It's called Shout at the Screen. Basically, I suggest using their ads as a platform to reclaim the public domain, or at least make people aware of the issue.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
How about respecting our rights? Ah, a little parody is good for the soul, if not the legal bills.
Since when is "suck badly" an insult? Two +5 comments have featured it, but did anyone sit down to think exactly what it meant?
"This movie sucks" -- implies that 'sucking' is a bad thing
"This movie sucks *badly*" -- the movie is bad at sucking?
It's a stupid insult.
If 'sucking' isn't enough, try:
"This *really* sucks" or "This is the suckiest suck that ever sucked suck!"
how many of those linux holes are still around. The linux folks all hunt for them and PATCH them asap. The M$ folks? Should I even bother to ask how many holes we DONT know about?!
how many of the microsoft ones? File Sharing has NOTHING to do with the holes present in OS's. And btw... since WHEN do they have access to my banking info? I do any important accounting offline on a machine meant to print checks not watch movies on. If I were to run any of the file sharing services I'd say they'd be the least of my risks in the case of my W2000 rig/SMB fileserver.
They still have network holes from the RC1 of Windows 2000.
Difference is the Linux holes are released to be patched. The MS holes are covered up in attempts to hide them and make users feel secure until Windows 2004 can patch the Windows 2000 holes.
-Khye
I can respect copyrights just as soon as all of these big companies respect my right for privacy. For example, I tried to purchase music online. Fortunatly I am a linux user so iTunes was out of the question and buymusic.com REQUIRES IE so they can load ya up with DRM and other (spyware cough cough) active X components. Then if you want to actually buy music, have fun giving up your first, last, middle, address, zip, email, phone, mobile, shoe size, girth, first born, bank account, 3 witnesses, next of kin, lease to house, pink slip to car, and concent to their 100,000 page list of "you are not allowed to...". All of these companies want everyone to stop pirating and start paying for the material they are listning/watching. Thats fine, but these companies are CRAZY if they believe that the end users will pay AND give up all their personal information for free just so these companies can add us to the unholy DB of privacy invasion only to be spammed, monitored, and telemarketed to death. I think once Hollywood and the Music Industry learn to respect the privacy of the people who use their products, then piracy might actually mellow out (maybe). Keep pissing us off by data mining and selling us out, they will pay the price...
Goebels would be proud of them.
Ethically, I'm so confused...
Godwins law doeesn't say anything about winning or losing - it merely states that at some point in any heated internet discussion someone will mention the Nazis. At this point the conversations/argument no longer has anything useful to be said and has most likely become a slanging match.
There is nothing about winners or losers.
Read all about it: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw
Yes, the MPAA could do better than spreading FUD.
Yes, the MPAA could do better films.
Yes, the MPAA could do a thousand things better than they are right now.
Does that give us a reason to pirate their movies? NO! If you don't like the movies or think that they are too expensive - don't buy them and write them a letter about your opinions. But just because you think you know what they are doing wrong does NOT give you the right to pirate their movies.
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
Everyone, Keep hitting the URL every day or when-ever you get a chance!
Keep it slashdotted and they can't inform anyone of there precious new web-site..
Woohooo
Power to the slashdotters.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Commenting on the stars getting paid so much,
when you can get people to pay $100 million total
to see you doing your job, then you should also
consider asking for $12 million to do your job.
Arnie had 5 consecutive $100 million movies. After
that he was able to charge between $20 and $30
million per movie.
Sounds reasonable to me.
The rest I agree with, lower prices and better movies. I just rented Daredevil. OMG, I want
my 2 hours back.
Vip
Oh, I'm scared.
Shut it down, just the same way we keep the RIAA in Internet limbo. The MPAA is no brighter than the RIAA.
They can't beat us. The needs of the many outweigh the greed of the few.
MPAA MPAA TADA TADA TADA
The Blair Witch Project was made for about $30,000 IIRC. Terminator 3 was probably 10,000 times that. They wouldn't need to sell anywhere near as many BWP tickets/DVDs to turn a profit.
What we are seeing here are the death throes of a dinosaur. Companies that have been price fixing and charging exhorbant sums for CDs for decades are now about to have their hefty profit margins axed for good and these are their last, desperate measures to stop the irreversible tide
Who the hell chose the biohazard symbol for "Your computer is vulnerable"? Do these people know that a computer virus is not the same thing as the AIDS virus?
Instead of kilobits per second, how about they rate broadband connections at stolen revenue per second - i.e. I got a 1.7 srps connection, means I can download $1.70 dollers worth of illegal songs per second?
You are a network admin and you want to turn all the PC on in the call center, install the latest software revision, and then turn them off.
However, they did this by depicting their customers as a bunch of dirty, littering pigs. Excuuuuse me? Did I just pay a lot of money to be insulted?
As a result, I have visited precisely two movies in the last two years (the two Lord of the Rings movies, which I wanted to see on the big screen). For the rest, I honestly don't care about movies anymore. If I want to see them I can always rent or download. Usually it is not worth the hassle either way, and I read a book instead.
Moral: if you insult your customers don't expect them to come back. I know it worked for me.
On this page:
http://www.respectcopyrights.org/faq.html
"In addition, be [...] of the many legitimate sites included in the "Enjoy the Movies" area of this site. (hyperlink to Enjoy the Movies)"
Say, I like this one:
Have you ever had your computer crash and had to replace it or reinstall all the files due to a virus or other such problem?
Yes, after inserting a copy-protected cd-single into it. But those systems will get better of course... and why should you care since we are not talking about movies?
Shouldn't it be www.respectcopyrights.COM instead of .org?
For most of the P2P programs I have seen, you have to have actually downloaded the file yourself to become a distribution source.
It's also possible that they are trying to say that if you install a P2P program on your computer, you become liable for any and all illicit material posted on that network, whether or not it actually resides on your computer. That seems like a pretty nasty blanket statement to me.
IANAL... But I play one on
Is the theft of your personal information worth the free movie?
Since my edonkey client is reporting a max user count of around 1.5 million... I think the people have spoken.
YES IT IS!!!
That is such a strange line I had to read the followups to work out why it was funny.
Heh, that won't get read anyway (too late) but I'll express my thoughts anyway.
Isn't it illegal to spread wrong claims? I mean, imagine if I'd open up a site and wrote some conspiracy theory about Microsoft which is technically plain wrong, they'd surely have some way to sue me and shut the site down.
Likewise, if the RIAA tells me that people get my credit card number when I share 3 or 4 songs in Kaazaa (or something), that is plain untrue and it can be proven technically.
Remember, in Germany they already shut down parts of the SCO website because they spread FUD, so don't you think this would be possible here also?
Why have they registered an .org domain, when they are clearly only out to maximize profit? They aren't doing this to be nice or educate people. They are doing it to spread FUD and make more money.
Clever signature text goes here.
why is the RIAA going to such lengths to subpoena the real identities of file-traders from ISP's and universities? Why not just get on the network and grab social security numbers and names right off everyone's hard drives?
what the RIAA need to do now is stick a 64K file on kazaa with the filename: j-lo&affleck_jordan_preteen_metallica_britney_agui lera.mp3.asf
that takes you to their website. that'll teach 'em.
Why would scenes be missing? Does the camcorder guy take a wizz every half hour?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Actually, the MPAA's path here is not all that out of whack. They are, in all reality, unconcerned with cam copying. In those *rare* instances where good cam copies get made, its movies that are better to see in the theaters anyway. Noone's going to bother going to the trouble of making a cam of American Wedding -- at least not one that's worth watching.
What they're concerned about is DVD copying. Just like the difference between live performances and recorded music, what the MPAA is worried about is that DVD rips will be shooting across the 'net just like MP3s are now. Sure, there is filetrading now, but its not something your average Joe Schmoe is going to do -- it takes too long, too much effort, and the storage space is much more than Joe has on his PC. Its a public awareness campaign -- to try and convince the public that movie swapping is wrong. Will it work? Hell, who knows, DeBeers used advertising to convince hapless billions that compressed carbon was worth something...so hey.
However, in the next few years, as faster broadband becomes available, better P2P networks are developed, and 250+GB hard drives become more common, Joe Schmoe will be trading movies like MP3s are traded today, and the DVD market will suffer. And don't pull the "recording industry isn't hurt" arguement, either. Anyone with half a brain will tell you without a signficant change in the recording industry, widespread DRM, or castration of all P2P file sharing, the recording industry is dead.
That being said, te DVD market will probably be much more resilient than CDs. Older movies can be picked up for less than $15 (got Boondock Saints for $10 the other day...woo!), while a copy of the Beatles White Album is still going to set me back $25. And even new releases are pretty reasonable. Plus, the rental and [soon] disposable DVD markets make them even more affordable.
Let me stand on my soap box for a second.
All kidding aside, the RIAA and MPAA have totally missed the point. I know I don't have to tell ./ers this but filesharing means just that. Sharing of files! It's not exclusively movies and music, although, to be fair, that does seem to be the major focus of programs like KaZaa. Furthermore, the movie and record industries has had rampant pirating of their material going on for decades. Yet not only have they survived, but they have flourished. Movies make more now than they ever have before ($10 at the door plus concessions) and has anyone been to a concert lately ($50 is a drop in the hat)?
Anybody remember the stink the Record industry made when tape cassettes first came out. "Oh no, some one can steal our material off the radio with one of those things."
The same thing happened with video tapes.
And CD burners.
And MP3s.
ad infinitum
The only difference with file sharing is that it is usually done with total strangers and thus seems to be more widespread when a single person can share the file with hundreds of others.
Yet once again they fail to see how to use the technology to thier own advantage. The only music I've downloaded has been from artists I've been unsure of the quality of the other work on thier CD (I've bought too many CDs of one-hit wonders to shell out $20 a CD for them anymore) and the only movies I've downloaded have been ones I probably wouldn't have bothered to see otherwise.
Net Result: Some of the music has prompted me to buy the CDs and some of the movies I own on DVD now. Why would I bother you ask? It's nice to own a copy of them and many contain extras that you just don't get with file sharing. That is the positive side to the file sharing. But of course, 'They' are too blind to see the marketing potential.
And of course I am still evil in their eyes since I share my files! ;)
Seppuku: Your solution to my problems!
Woooooooooo! they've been slashdotted..
;)
Anybody mirror the site yet?
Mirror their site? Absolutely not. If they can't keep their own webserver running, I dont think anyone should help them get their message out. After all, their message is to not share information
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I'm pretty sure that people downloading movies helps the movie industry quite a lot. I know personally I like to watch any movie thats worth a crap more than once, and even though I have 60 gigs I don't have room to leave dvd rips (the only even mildly watchable versions) on my HDD for too long. This may be hurting the rental industry, but I doubt it. It certain won't hurt dvd sales. The MPAA should look into how the Anime industry embraces fan subs. D/ling movies means people will watch and maybe even buy movies they may have never bothered with before. I wouldn't rent a movie if I didn't have a good idea how much I'd like it, but I might d/l and if it's good I'll buy. I'll shut up now.
M.D. Inc.
Completely off topic, but..Did you watch it? The "No Man's Land" you got is a lot better than the "No Man's Land" you thought you were getting.
Shouldn't respect be a two way street?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I couldn't help but think, how ironic. I'm wondering if movie makers in the year 2203 will romanticize movie pirates...
On a slightly different note, it seems kind of hypocritical for an association which makes movies glorifying violence and killing to treat copying as a capital offense. What's even more interesting is that they claim that pirates are putting them out of work, but who really cares? They've produced movie after movie in which theft is glorified (Gone in 60 Seconds, Out of Sight, etc...), and then they act appalled when their viewers go out and do the very things their movies espouse. After all, isn't theft (illegal copying?) really okay if your heart is in the right place (Robin Hood)?
Sorry, MPAA, but I can't feel sorry for an organization that does everything thing within their power to promote theivery and then complains that people are "stealing their work". If you want people to stop "stealing" your movies, maybe you shouldn't make movies glorifying theft in the first place.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"Mommy: "I don't know, Billy, but I sure wish I could find work. I used to be a writer, [...]"
But mommy got addicted to crack and became a crack whore. And that, Billy, is how you were born...
Now here's some more for you...
The MPAA and the RIAA aren't against ALL uses of the filesharing networks, they are against the sharing of THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. They could give a crap if someone was distributing their garage band music, (That may not be commercially viable, or is past being commercially viable.) or their EXTREMELY low-budget personal movies. (Which are rarely better then many direct to video movies.)
See you can trade those movies and mp3s all day long and both of those organizations won't give a hoot. Of course, if you name your garage band songs the same as major A-list acts songs, then you will likely have some issues, that will be pretty easy to resolve. Just as if you were to film a movie and name it the same as a recent Major Motion Picture.
They only care about their own profits from being diluted by deluded people that think it's okay and fine to steal their work. Sure, they are going pretty hardcore against those that are trading and are acting like fascists about it, but that is their livelihood and they still have the right to protect their livelihood.
However, I don't see what is wrong with allowing poor copies of songs via mp3 to be traded over the internet, since that can spur people to go out and buy the actual CDs, which is something that I did with Napster. I bought more CDs when I used Napster then I had in nearly 15 years. (Which was zero CD purchases.) During my brief use of Napster, I picked up 20 CDs. When they talked of taking the list of Napster users to court, I dumped Napster and I also dumped CD purchases.
I lost the ability to chat with people about new music and lost the ability to expand my music horizons through those chats and sharing. However, that's the way that the RIAA wants to play. They lost my business because they took away something that exposed me to new music in a way that I was comfortable with.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Sorry, you fail the cluecheck.
Ticket prices are set by theatres, as are concession prices. Studios charge theatres per reel, not per seat. If studios charge less, they get less. There's no upside. Theatres are limited in the number of seats that they have. If they lower their prices, they get more full houses, but less per full house. They also need to hire more staff. There's no clear upside to them having full houses all the time. If there were, do you think that none of them would have realised this already?
Talent prices are set by the talent. Go ahead and offer Ben Affleck $50,000 per movie. Unless he used to sleep on your couch (Kevin Smith), he'll laugh in your face then date rape your sister. Granted, I wouldn't pay Affleck $10, but some people demonstrably like watching him.
And that's the problem. People are dumb. Understand that. They know what they like, and it's more of what they saw last year. And here's a dirty little secret for you: theatre chains commit to taking reels from studios months or years in advance. They don't wait for the reviews. They just look at who's involved - actors, director, producers, scriptwriters - and they make their decisions based on that. They only care about how good your last movie was, not your current one.
If Affleck's in a film that makes its money back, then he becomes worth that money to a studio, because he ensures that they can pre-sell the film, which gives them more time to cook the books. It all works rather well.
You should really do some basic research into your subject that ain't broke before deciding how to fix it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
>I seem to remember Britney spears making millons and millions for her first CD, the those shitty boybands doing the same
You misremember. They were loaned millions, most of which was recouped in production costs. Any real money they made was from whoring themselves independently.
Also, remind me who Britney was again? What boy bands? Can you remember the names of the guys in them? What are they doing now? Opening malls? Stacking shelves in malls? Giving handjobs for crack?
A very, very few artists make money at this, but they don't make it from their labels. And there's no reason that they should, given that the vast majority of them are dancing meat puppets doing work-for-hire. Session musicians and backing singers make more over their careers (net, directly) than a typical boy band clone.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
MPAA creates web-defacement target. Hilarity ensues.
Their web site is slashdotted. Can someone please post a BitTorrent link for the document?
oh, yeahhhhhh baby. Finally a server that morally begs for the slashdot effect. c'mon boys!!
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
THEIR SITE IS DOWN!!! Either the Slashdot affect has taken a toll on them or some (uber cool) kid has launched a DoS attack on them with some phreaky program he found on the net...
Sweet.
the RIAA released less CDs in the year 2000 than in 1999 (the commonly used years to show that downloading hurt sales). The profits per release actually rose, which means that it is entirely possible that if they had released the same amount of CDs, their profits would have gone up.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
All architectures
* No problems identified yet.
i386, alpha, mac68k, sparc, sparc64, hppa, hp300, mvme68k, macppc, vax
* No problems identified yet.
Is starting out calling the other guy a Nazi.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
but you should consider going to a different theater. your results are not typical.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
This doesn't always happen. Sometimes movies go into production before they've been pre-sold to theatre chains. Those are the movies destined for "straight to video/DVD" status, although very occasionally, a small film is picked up by theatre chains to fill a hole where a pre-sold movie hasn't made it out of post-production in time, usually because some snotty director mistakenly believes that it matters that it sucks. When this happens, we tell ourselves that the system works, and that it's vitally important that it continue to work in just this precise way, for ever and ever, otherwise society will fall apart, cannibalism will ensue, cats and dogs living together...
And nobody ever asks what happened to all the music hall performers when movies came out. Nobody cares what became of the movie theatre pianists when talkies appeared. We don't recall the MPAA saying that the VCR would spell the death knell for the movie industry. We don't wonder whether movie theatre box office takes might be being transmuted into DVD and home theatre sales. We don't dare to consider that people will spend exactly the same amount of their disposable income on entertainment, but that they'll spend it in different ways.
We just accept the line that the system works, that it's always worked, and that it must go on working exactly the same way - whatever the MPAA declares that to be - until the end of time. Or it will be cats and dogs, living together...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
from the first paragraph, even:
"whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress."
The truth doesn't care what I think.
I also just saw the Pirates of the Caribbean. I could not help but laugh at the irony of the huge "Do Not Pirate, Movies are Worth It" campaign ad they ran during the previews. Nothing like a sappy scripted ad to make me feel sorry for those Hollywood-types.
I have to say though, I did enjoy Pirates...Arrrrrr....
I didn't know Bill was moderating here?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Forget the time to patch after the bug was reported: look at the time between when the software was written and when the vulnerability was found...One of these windows bugs was in Windows NT(!!!) NT is so old they stopped supporting it! Who says security^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hobscurity doesn't work?
"Battlefield Earth Content Protection System" (the first method ever to yield a 0% piracy rate.)
At least Battlefield Earth has value in a "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" kind of way. Someone somewhere must have pirated it for that purpose.
The current Afflek/Lopez movie doesn't even have that.
MLBA can't claim piracy is causing their losses, because... well, that would be retarded.
What if someone rebroadcasts MLB with implied oral consent instead of express written consent?
From Nitpickers Anonymous, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GrammarNazis Inc.
Sounds like the beginning of some beautiful propaganda huh?...
I read a study on the site. It said that file sharing will:
- make you have bad breath.
- Be uncool.
- Make all the pretty girls date other guys.
- Cause your head to explode.
- lead to the end of democracy as we know it.
- Help the darkness of communism spread across the land crushing the spirit freesom, of God Mom and Apple Pie under it.
The study was based upon the best research that Money could buy. It even closed with an informed quote from Britney Spears and and Britttany Murphy: That sold it to me.You just mentioned Nazis. This discussion line is officiall terminated. Please step away from the submit box.
Gee, when I try to visit the MPAA site all I get is a load of SPAM from Macromedia trying to make me download their, um, crap.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
that I've been burned by some insecure lawyer working for microsoft and fearing he may soon have to find a "just" cause to defend... one not made just by the sheer amount of money spent on propagating stupidity and ignorance among its customers.
It's all good bro.
-Khye
Enough said.
Let's not just look like pirates, but act like them & bone up on some of the lore.
Maybe teaching people how bad the pirates really were will help counteract this hysterical retoric coming from the "content" industries' trade associations.
I'm reading a lot of posts along the lines of "Most movies suck so I'm not going to pay for them," or "Maybe if the majority of movies didn't suck so much there wouldn't be so much piracy," or "Movies aren't worth paying for because they suck so bad."
But if these movies suck so bad, why are you wasting your bandwidth downloading them, your hard drive space storing them, and your time watching them?
To me, the real argument some people posting here should have is ""I'm a cheap bastard and $8 is too much for me," or "I don't care if it's illegal or who I hurt because I'm a k-rad rebel," or "Anyone who makes more money than me is evil," or "All content should be free. OpenSource forever!"
But all those arguments are obviously weak so people have to come up with some crap about fighting against "the man" and pretending they're some sort of digital Robin Hood.
I don't like some of the methods of the MPAA/RIAA either, but sometimes I think these P2P philosophers are just as bad with all the crap they spew.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
How they thought television was going to obliterate the movie industry.
My rights don't need management.
Yay! Another sitting duck DDoS target for the 1337 5cr1pt k1dd13Z.
I was so impressed by the website that I just had to write the MPAA and let them know how I felt about it. I thought the /. crowd might be amused by the email I sent, so here it is:
Thank you so much for your website, which accuses me of being a thief, or at least an idiot unable to grasp the concept of copyright law. I enjoyed having my intelligence and my integrity insulted by the same group of geniuses who produced such timeless masterpieces as Legally Blonde, Dumb and Dumberer, Glitter, Moulin Rouge...I could go on for a while.
Would you like to know why your industry is never going to see another penny from me so long as I live? It isn't because I use file-sharing programs to steal movies. It's because I wouldn't even watch the steaming tripe your industry produces if you were paying me. Your website mentions the "magic" of the movies several times. Please explain to me what exactly is so wonderously magical about paying ten dollars to sit through half an hour of SUV ads while the smell of rancid popcorn grease works its way into your clothing and the chorus of screaming infants present in every movie theater begin their cacaphony? And that's even before the movie begins! Oh, the magic of two hours of vapid celebrities, product placement, overdone gratuitous CGI, and plotlines devised by mentally handicapped toddlers! Who wouldn't want to take some of those fond memories home with them by buying a DVD? And who would buy just buy one forty-dollar piece of plastic that cost ten cents to manufacture, when there's the Special Edition, the Extra-Special Edition, El Edition Supreme, and the Limited Gold Foil Embossed Collector's Edition to buy?
In short, people are robbing your industry because what comes around, goes around. They're stealing the silver spoons right out of your children's mouths, and instead of doing anything to justify the cost of the drivel you produce, you call all of your customers thieves and idiots. How my heart bleeds for you. Your website mentions the thousands and thousands of people who work so hard to make movies, who all get hurt when the industry gets hurt. Well I hope you all starve.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I wonder when they'll blame file sharing for the lack of success of Gigli. I mean someone probably uploaded the film to the web so everyone could just watch the film from home. That is the real reason why the film flopped!
9 Linux vunderablilites in the last month
That's 9 annoying gnats vs a Predator(tm) and Alien(tm). I think I'll trust my computer with the Linux 'exploits' today.
What it takes for MS to declare a security vulnerability and what it takes for the Linux community to declare a security vulnerability are two entirely different animals. Microsoft tries to argue against bugs being declared bugs, and then screams "blindsided!" when somebody combines two exploite that MS pooh-poohed months ago and manages to do combine them into abritrary remote command execution.
The Linux community, on the other hands, considers getting parts of random packets (that were probably sent across the internet for everybody in the middle to see anyways) to be a security problem requiring immediate closure.
To put this more firmly in context, one of the two Windows vulnerabilities is soo bad that Homeland Security almost declared it a Weapon of Mass Distraction. With 'security' like that, who needs enemies?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I haven't bought a CD in seven years thanks to file sharing. I don't really ever plan on buying one again. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're losing money becuase of the Internet. You're all deluding yourselves if you think otherwise. At least acknowledge that your actions, and the actions of others are directly and negatively affecting the industry... and that it's not ALL simply a matter of them putting out poor quality music.
Acknowledge it and move on.
--
RumorsDaily
As soon as the price of CDs comes down to a reasonable level, I'd be more than willing to purchase CDs, as opposed to downloading MP3s.
CDs can be played in my car (and my girlfriend's), and MP3s quite simply cannot.
If I could have a CD for $5 a copy, it would be worth my time to purchase the album, rather than to try to locate and obtain every individual song, then burn it to a CD.
I don't write music to CDs, it's a pain in the ass. Congratulations on being cheap, but not everyone is just out to get as much as they can for as little as possible -- some of us do actually value the physical media, and won't go to huge lengths just to save a few bucks.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
"CDs can be played in my car (and my girlfriend's), and MP3s quite simply cannot."
Not to nitpick, but CD/MP3 players have been available for cars for years, and at roughly the same price you'd pay for any other replacement CD player. I don't have one myself since I drive a crappy little Escort and it's not really worth doing, but I'm planning on getting an upgrade relatively soon and there is going to be new deck put in it if the "stock" cd player doesn't play MP3's. One disc can hold much more even with descent quality encoding like 256vbr. You can usually find the decks in almost anything like a Best Buy or Wal-Mart even, in my experience.
this company is said to have a contract to maintain the RRIAA website
http://www.newtechusa.com/ppi/talent.asp
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
That's true, but my girlfriend's 2002 Accord doesn't play MP3s as far as I'm aware, and the 4-year-old Aiwa head unit in my '89 Crown Vic doesn't either.
My point really is that buying the CD does provide some benefit, including more universal playability.
At current prices, I buy very few CDs. However, if CDs could be had at, say, $5 per album, my music purchasing would probably increase by an order of magnitude -- I'd love to have the entire Pink Floyd catalog, and the whole Beatles catalog wouldn't hurt either.
The artificially high price of CDs has kept me from buying CDs. The few that I have bought in recent years have generally been as a result of the MP3s, not despite them.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
and calls them new versions... aka win98 to fix all the bullshit they charged you to fix (aka giving you an upgraded file system, etc). Because Microsoft has bought HPFS from IBM and STILL hasn't updated the standard filesystem one bit.
Oh and because microsoft waits until a new plus pack or whatnot is out or a service pack.
Linux patches are usually out within the week with a SCANT few so far being out later than that for any flaw that's affected my servers.
Nevermind that you can custom tailor your software and you're not forced to pay 200 bucks anytime you feel like getting a new word processor.
-Khye
PS - microsoft software sucks, microsoft legal strong-arming and litigation KICK ASS!!
From the mentioned website:
"But, when movies are illegally downloaded from the Internet, these are the people that suffer the most.
It's the woman who does the make-up,
the guy who rigs the lighting,
the sound technician,
the costume designer,
the set decorator
and the caterer.
Do you really want these people to lose their jobs?"
BULL-[censored by the MPAA]!!!
99 percent of the movie pirating that's done is done long after the film has received it's peak revenue in the theater. And if you haven't noticed, movies are still setting highest records for the highest revenue per week/weekend.
Since most of the pirating is done after the movie is finished in the theaters, the only place where they might get hurt is in DVD/VHS sales.
Last time I checked, the technicians, grips and caterers didn't receive ANY royalties for DVD sales.
So basically what they're saying is that the extras, grips, caterers, technicians, personal whores and hired monkies will get fired if they lose a few bucks on the "extra" millions of dollars they make after the movie has left the theaters.
How about if they just cut the actor's or producer's or director's or executive producer's salaries by what... 10 million?
That should cover EVERY OTHER PERSON WORKING ON THE MOVIE.
UG..UG.. Bad spirit come, takem all files if you online. Bad.. Bad online you share files! I pity the poor everyday Joe who's family I am depriving of money by illegal downloads, mainly because the head honchos are making them do stupid things like setting up the abovementioned web site. I honestly have no compelling reason to download copyrighted material beyond giving the poor saps at the RIAA a reason to humiliate themselves in order to stop me. This isn't about intellectual freedom anymore, you can't buy entertainment like this folks! Sadistic, probably, but it's just like the Army, the officers think they're in charge, the non-coms run the universe. [-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
No they (the bugs) are in emacs - linux is only the device driver. :) That was funny - now laugh darn it. Coming back to the topic, MPAA might have opened it's anti-filesharing site but look at what the world is doing...
ProFS