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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!"
The be-all and end-all word: FUD.
Need I say more?
Bash script for FP whores
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
...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.
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.
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.
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.
No, I don't think many people on Slashdot agree that copyrights need to be repealed completely. While no doubt some do, that wouldn't work in today's world.
Copyright needs real reform, however. Film, music, and art has a significant impact on our culture, so much that these things become a PART of our culture in a very short time. This is why I have a problem with insanely long copyright terms.
The original term for copyright was fair. Let a piece of work remain copyrighted for 14 years, and then let it fall into the public domain so that society can utilize what has been added to its culture.
Elvis is dead. He had plenty of time to profit off of his works when he lived. His music has become a part of our culture and should belong to society, not some record company who will continue to take advantage of copyright extensions to charge for Elvis' music until the end of time.
Likewise, Hollywood has made a crapload of money off of its hits. Titanic, Jurassic Park, etc. all have made lots of money for studios. I doubt it would REALLY hurt Hollywood if Jurassic Park were to enter public domain in 2007.
Perhaps if the RIAA and MPAA knew they only had 14 years to make a profit off of a recording or film, these groups would focus on making quality material rather than being uncreative.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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???
umm no, 2 windows vulnerabilities in the last month. 9 potential linux vulnerabilities axed in the last month.
The fact that vulnerabilities get found and fixed on linux is hardly a blackmark.
No, you are guilty of contributory infringement. Having a filesharing program running, and sharing copyrighted files from it - you are knowingly distributing copyrighted materials. By the law, you do not have that right, only the copyright holder does, unless they have specifically given you that right.
It is in no way comparable to loaning someone your car, because the primary use of loaning your car is legal. If you knowingly give people access to resources that you are aware they are using to commit a crime, you are generally guilty of a crime as well.
The key word there is knowingly. You pay someone to kill someone: you have broken the law. You give them a gun knowing that they are going to use it to murder someone, you have broken the law. You give them the keys to your neighbor's house, knowing that they will use them to rob their house - you have broken the law. If you loan them your car knowing that they will use it to rob a bank, you are not only incredibly stupid, but also guilty of a crime.
You'd have to be pretty naive to think that people aren't going to use your filesharing of "J-Lo and Ben Affleck Cavort Around, Pay Us Money" to download it illegally, and stupidity is not generally a legal defense. In otherwords, you are knowingly facillitating the commission of a crime, and would be extraordinarily hard-pressed to argue otherwise (unless you were distributing licensed, or free media - in which case the **AA isn't your problem).
In the least, all these actions are "Aiding and Abetting" or criminal negligence. In the worst, they are conspiracy. Filesharing of copyrighted works is no different, although of considerably less gravity then the above crimes.
Please people, a little sanity here. The **AA are overblowing things, but distributing copyrighted works with normal, restricted distribution rights is illegal. Period.
Yeah, I went to a preview of American Wedding and they showed it then too. I cracked up. Aren't those guys all union members anyway? I don't see them taking a pay cut anytime soon. The only possible way that movie piracy could affect them is if people simply stopped going to movies and just downloaded them instead. I would have to happen on a scale that caused the industry to just stop making movies (and thus not hiring all those union guys). That ain't gonna happen. The quality is generally (very) inferior and you don't get the big screen/big sound system effect either. Sure, some people have home theaters worth more than a nice car, but they're few and far between. Then there's rentals. I could possibly see this impacting those, but even then it's a long shot. You don't get all the extra features and stuff that a lot of people like (and one of the few things that the movie industry is doing right). So I think the poor guy will still be able to put a crust of bread on the table for his wife and kids for a long time to come. Hollywood needs to handle this a lot differently and quit pissing people off. If they would simply create good movies and keep improving the package deal you get when buying a DVD, then they should have no problems.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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
You'd have to be pretty naive to think that people aren't going to use your filesharing of "J-Lo and Ben Affleck Cavort Around, Pay Us Money" to download it illegally...
/. You could toss your site into freenet and post the key, or set up several torrents for it and post links to the torrents.
Of course, what if I'm sharing mp3s of my garage band? Or a friends' garage band? Or if I got all the garage bands in my neighborhood together and put them all up?
See, it is not as hard as you'd think to come up with a sane, nonillegal use of filesharing. If I had a garage band it would be natural to post my music online to spread awareness and to see what other people think of it. Take a look at the Minibosses or God Ate My Homework.
Or, lets say you have an incredibly popular site or you know your site is about to be hit by
So now, to mangle one of your analogies, since its obviously illegal to loan someone their car to be used in a bank robbery, should you be banned from ever loaning your car? Should filesharing be banned because it could lead to copyright infringement? Just because the legitimate purposes aren't popular at this point in time, who knows where it could go from here?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.