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MPAA Fights Pirates with Gentle Threats
Gillious writes "Wow! It seems the MPAA has learned from the RIAA's mistakes. It seems we aren't going to get mass-lawsuits for grandmothers and 12-year-old kids. I find this quote most interesting: 'The movie industry, he said, has to ask itself what the music industry should have asked years ago: 'Why do they want to steal from us?' The answer, he said, is simple: 'Because you won't sell them what they want.' The technologists say that what went wrong with the music industry can easily go wrong for movie companies, too.'"
The movie industry, by comparison, estimates that it has at least 18 months before high-speed Internet access and high-capacity hard drives make grabbing a movie almost as quick and easy as grabbing a song.
Do they mean there will come a day when one can download a 700MB Linux iso in less than 5 minutes? If my math is correct that's a 2333.3 kbps download speed!
$cat
I would be MORE than willing to part with a couple of bucks an episode if CT could let me download every Samurai Jack episode, or every ATHF episode in a format I can either watch on my PC, via my PC, or have the option to burn to a CD or DVD to watch with my DVD player.
Hear that content providers? As Samurai Jack currently stands, I'm willing to give you $100 right here and now. But alas, you seemingly don't want my money.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Or perhaps he's a college-educated, 60-hour-a-week working South American in a country like Uruguay, Peru or Argentina. My own (Peruvian) relatives earn about $800 a month doing work that would get paid about 10 times that in the US (lawyers, doctors, financial professionals). For paying for housing and food and even internet access, that's all well and good, because the costs are relative. For things like consumer electronics, DVD's and CD's, videogames and the like, those are even more expensive in real terms than in the US, and are essentially true luxury items. If I were them, I would be almost exclusively watching movies I downloaded online. Those goods were priced for US markets.
My brother in law always gets me BestBuy gift cards for the holidays. So since my bd is around this time of year to I normally end up with a couple of them. While shopping around I was going though the DVD section and saw all sorts of great deals. DVDs for ~15 USD and many even closer to ~11 USD. While some did get a little more costly they were all very reasonable for what they gave. A movie, which was produced at a rather high cost on average, some bonus material that is always fun to have, and lastly the knowladge that even though the silly DSS is there the quality of both the sound and picture will be quite good.
Then I was looking around in the music area and the prices were at least +5 to +10 dollars on average higher than the DVDs! And some of the albums that they were selling for clost to 20 USD were quite old. Many had to actually come on 2 CDs due to the size. Also, while for the majority of the CDs I saw there was no real protection on them, the quality could be kind of iffy depending on the metholigy they used to make it. (AAD, ADD, DDD. Thanks for not telling us anymore!)
So, after a bit of thought I game up with a few generalizations. I can buy a DVD with more content, the knowladge that this movie at some point had a lot of cash sunk into it (At least as much as it would take to record an album.), more than likely some extra stuff, and on average a better price. The only bad part is the DSS and the region but whatever. They are pretty trival to overcome if you care that much.
On the other hand I can buy a CD that is old tech, for typically more money, of questionable quality sometimes, but with no real protection to speak of.
Now maybe each respective orgnization can do a survay of what is right and wrong about each diffrent model and figure out how exist without continueally pissing people off but of the two I choose the lesser evil, the MPAA, as being able to survive. The RIAA is wayyyyy to far behind in the game to even come close to pulling their heads out of the sand.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
And this is one of the big issues region encoding was *supposed* to address. If it worked, your relatives could buy DVDs for 1/10th the US price, as the studio still makes a profit at that level. Region encoding would prevent people from importing cheap copies to the US, and everyone's happy. Sort of, anyway.
Well, sort of. The intent was to segment the market so that the studios could sell at multiple pricepoints, because they wouldn't otherwise sell to the third world at all. This isn't the whole reason, else USA, Europe, and Japan would be one region. The additional thing they can do is segment release dates, so they sell the DVD here while showing the movie there, then gouge the Japanese for $50 to buy it.
The problem is that, should you have a DVD that the owner only wishes to sell in one region, then you have to get a second or a third player, rather than just paying for the disc. Thankfully, most DVD players in the civilised world are region switchable, so all you need to worry about is PAL-NTSC conversion.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Off of usenet or another machine on my ISP, less than 30 minutes. Less time, in fact, than most people spent downloading an album during the Napster years. And we all know how unsuccessful that was, because people only want "instant gratification" :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
What, you can't afford a DVD, but you can afford a computer and broadband internet access?
Seriously, the relatively low price of a DVD, coupled the hassle of finding a quality rip of a movie I want to see and the nuisance of waiting hours (or days) to DL the rip is one of the reasons I continue to prefer buying DVDs and watch movies in theaters. I've had plenty of opportunities to DL ROTK, but I'd still rather see it in the theater first and buy the DVD later. Keep the quality of the product up, and that won't change..a lesson the recording industry still hasn't learned. Dling movies is still just a curiousity, not a preferred method of aquisition.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Stelios Haji-Ioannou opened a cinema (aka movie theater) in Milton Keynes, England which offered movies at very low prices by forcing customers to book in advance online. This cuts down the staffing costs. They also, initially at least, didn't sell refreshments and food and encouraged customers to bring their own food purchased elsewhere.
The movie industry saw this and, noticing what Stelios had done to the airline industry with his previous company EasyJet, refused to supply the EasyCinema with the latest releases to prevent them from creating a precedent forcing a decrease in prices at other cinemas.
EasyCinema is still around, which perhaps takes some clout of of my post, but it just serves to demonstrate that the movie industry is able to hurt cinemas which don't play along with their rules without requiring laws. EasyCinema still, to my knowledge, does not get movies on their day of official release, but I don't live in Milton Keynes so I don't pay that much attention! :)