MPAA Calls for Ban on Screeners

neoThoth writes "The MPAA is calling for a ban on all screeners for awards ceremonies. They state piracy as the rationale for killing of this tradition of the industry. It's interesting how this is never mentioned in their cries for tougher piracy laws. It's own members are the main source of piracy. 'The Directors, Writers and Screen Actors Guild all get screeners, as does the Golden Globe-selecting Hollywood Foreign Press Association and various critics' groups.'" Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.

Comments

As much as I hate the MPAA,

[Frederique Coq-Bloqu]

they should have the right to influence something like this at a private function like the Oscars. This doesn't strike me as provocative or unscrupulous in and of itself.

Re:As much as I hate the MPAA,

[startled]

But why bother? The studio mailing out the tapes is the studio whose movie gets illegally distributed. There's no need for an MPAA recommendation; if a studio thinks its movies are being distributed by screeners, they can stop mailing them out, or take whatever other measures they deem appropriate.

Re:As much as I hate the MPAA,

[amRadioHed]

The problem is that a movie that gets sent out as a screener has an advantage over movies that don't when it comes to oscar time. Therefore, a major studio isn't likely to stop sending out screeners if the other studios are still sending them.

Then their is the concern that if somehow screeners are banned entirely that would put the indie films at a major disadvantage due to the difficulty of getting to one of their limited screenings.

Not only actors?

[caranha]

Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.

Whithout entering the merit of piracy itself, isn't this argument a fallacy? Aren't only high-profile actors/diretors/etc rewarded a percentage of the movie income, while all the others receive the same no matter what?

Don't want to enter the issue "but piracing will make movies spend less money" (which I doubt, based on current trend), but I got curious by this part.

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No sig yet. Bear with it.

Re:Not only actors?

[SWPadnos]

Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.

...

Don't want to enter the issue "but piracing will make movies spend less money" (which I doubt, based on current trend), but I got curious by this part.

This is the only argument that can possibly support the original statement. Only the people at the top level get any residuals - everyone else works for a daily wage and that's it. In fact, most people are working as subcontractors hired for the duration of the project (or their part in it). The grips, production assistants, special effects people, camera assistants, caterers, craft services, drivers, extras ... are all essentially self-employed. The unions help by providing health insurance and pension plans, and collective bargaining.

So, the only way that the "bottom of the pack" people get affected is if the industry as a whole goes into a slump because of piracy.

Not in a million years...

[JayBlalock]

Being able to stick "200X ACADEMY AWARD WINNER!" on your DVD package moves too many units for any studio to do ANYTHING to handicap themselves in the Awards race. The MPAA might push for this. The studios might even "agree." But they'll get the screeners out anyway. Paranoia will rule the day - no one will actually expect anyone else to abide by the agreement, so they'll all break it.

It's foolish that they're even TALKING about this. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that this means the movie industry's own people are the ones bootlegging movies. "If the people who make the movies are putting them out there, then how's it wrong for me to download?" (rhetorical, exampliary question) Bad, bad, BAD move.

Remember, piracy hurts X

[Chromal]

I never really got how piracy hurt X. There's a large segment of pirating acts that occur largely because the pirates aren't going to purchase something. If they aren't going to buy it, or they aren't going to buy it but still pirate it-- either way, the net income is exactly the same. If consumers can afford something, won't they typically go out of their way to own it? A DVD or CD album is always nicer to have on your shelf than a DVD-R or CD-R copy, after all.

Re:Remember, piracy hurts X

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

There's a large segment of pirating acts that occur largely because the pirates aren't going to purchase something.

Neither you nor the MPAA has proven that either way, last time I checked. The MPAA (and RIAA and BSA) likes to say that they lose revenue, whereas copyright infringers justify their behaviour by saying they wouldn't pay for the crappy movie/game/software/music anyhow.

I call BS on both those statements. I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle...

other screeners

[sdibb]

The other screeners are the ones that work at the local movie theater.

Before every movie is played in the theater, the projectionist has to build it and *someone* has to watch every single movie before it's played to make sure the reels aren't put on backwards or in the wrong order or something like that. Anyone who's worked at the movie theater knows what late Thursday nights are like.

Do we still purchase the DVD?!

[fervent_raptus]

I think the MPAA is totally overacting. How many geeks out there are actually going to substitute a DivX for the cinimatic experience of going to a movie theater?

Personally, I know people who had access to the LOTR DVD screener rip, and downloaded it, but waited to watch it until after the movie came out.

They then proceeded to watch the movie in theaters 3 or 4 times before ever playing the DivX file.

It wasn't until the period between the movie leaving theaters and coming out on DVD that the DivX file came in handy.

These friends not only purchased the regular version DVD when it came out, but also the extended version DVD.

IMO, if the MPAA want's to stop the popularity of DVD Screener rips, they should release the movie in DVD the same week it comes to theaters.

Re:Do we still purchase the DVD?!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You're right, of course. But it is an article of faith among the entertainment cartel that 1 copied file == 1 lost sale. Just as the RIAA is unwilling to consider the idea that file-sharing might actually help sales of good music (people do go out and buy albums after hearing a couple of good MP3's off those albums; but the albums they buy are more likely to be from obscure bands rather than whatever insipid Top 40 pap is currently getting all the advertising bucks) the MPAA is unwilling to consider the idea that a movie made to be seen in the the theater (as the LOTR films definitely are) might, if first seen on a pirated DVD, actually help draw people into the theater to see it. This is not a rational cost-benefit analysis on their part; it's a matter of paranoid ideology. The long, sad history of how paranoid ideologues react when confronted by sweet reason does nothing to convince me that they'll change their minds any time soon.

Actually, it's not just the entertainment industry that think this way. How many times do we hear M$ et al. claiming "Software piracy cost us $XX billion in lost sales last year," as though everyone who burned a copy of an Office CD would otherwise have gone out and bought the damn thing for full price? At least in the software industry it's a little wink-wink nudge-nudge, though; e.g., Adobe knows full well that all the Photoshop copies out there are training the next generation of Adobe customers. But the entertainment folks are dead serious in their wacko worldview.

Remember...

[wozster]

The auto industry doesn't just hurt the "Horse and Buggy" industry, it also hurts the wooden wheel maker.

It is NOT piracy

[gessel]

It is not possible, legally or physically, to "steal" data. It is not possible to "pirate" data.

It is guerilla antitrust.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It may be illegal, but it isn't theft.

The MPAA is taking a legally defensible and appropriate action to control the dissemination of data.

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Quotes from Thomas Jefferson To Isaac McPherson; Monticello, August 13, 1813.