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Movie Industry to sue File Sharers
Wack Valenti writes "SiliconValley.com reports that the motion picture industry, taking a cue from the RIAA, is planning to file copyright infringement lawsuits against file sharers it says are illegally distributing movies online. The first suits could be filed as early as tomorrow."
I look forward to the morning mail.
I got a warning letter from my friends at MGM and bay TSP about illegally sharing my 2 episodes of stargate atlantis. I thought, hey, they are tv shows, and they arent on dvd... why would they care. Well, they did care, and they sent me a letter. And you know what? because of that letter, I havent used a p2p app since. I think that if they just focused on scaring people with letters, they would get the job done just as well, without looking evil like the RIAA
this comes right after bush gets re-elected.
seriously though, it is kinda interesting that after a couple years of wait and see, they've suddenly decided to file these suits after bush (friend of corporations, etc) is firmly back in power
mod me down as flame-bait if you want, I just find it an interesting point, not conspiracy but it makes sense; they waited until they knew the party that would support them was going to be in power for a while before they moved.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
We all saw this coming. What's the surprise?
Personally I don't care anymore. I've quit sharing music and movies not because I'm afraid of a law suit but because it encourages my friends to support groups / movies they like. Yeah they groups may not get all of the money, but through the "process" they are rewarded.
It wasn't all that long ago that the EFF suggested that the entertainment industry should be suing infringers.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Shhh.. don't say anything about Usenet
NOOOO!!!! I havent finished downloading all the episodes for my "Doctor Who" collection..
Um, I think the point is that they are NOT paying customers...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If you are at a school that is an Internet 2 node,get on i2hub. It's only open to schools on I2, so the MPAA cannot get on to see what's going on. Additionally, d/l speeds are icredible, at about 300-400KB/sec.
I have fully moved to private networks like this, and my University's DC++ hub. I was shocked when i saw all these people at school using public networks like Kazaa (corrupted now) and Ares and BT.
I was told I was actually a target, by our dean of men here at my college. I have no idea why - I wasn't downloading or sharing any movies, nor could I even CONNECT to p2p networks because of the filtering systems in place (I use p2p to share security docs and my own music I have written). Yup. He said the MPAA had contacted the school and was prepared to sue if it was in necessary, or something like that. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if he was full of crap or not, won't I? :)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
'Sharing' of these copyrighted works is not legal in the first place. While it's not going to engender any great love for the film industry, this move is one of the many legal recourses that they have against copyright violators.
To be honest, I'd rather see a return to the days of 5 dollar tickets and extra extra buttered popcorn and a Coke for a couple bucks more than see the movie industry devolve into this legal sewer. With DVD sales doing well, it becomes more and more reasonable to watch a movie in your house. With the proliferation of file-shared movies online, the quality of playback becomes less an issue as viewers get attuned to the lower bitrates.
Personally, I'd rather go see the films in a theater and don't mind paying a couple bucks to do so. Lately, it's been getting outrageously expensive, well passed the point where one could argue that it was merely inflation. I'm not saying that file sharing would be curbed by cheaper theater tickets, god knows the addictive powers of the free movie drug. But I do think that they could really recreate the concept of the "blockbuster" with a little less take at the box office.
In short, file sharing copyrighted works is illegal. The movie industry probably shouldn't do this, but are well within their rights to litigate. I'd like to watch movies at the theater but not pay so much.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I always wondered why USENET is not targetted.
Rent a DVD from blockbuster
Play it with VideoLan client
Open up dvd smartripper
Rip the DVD
Run the ripped files through DVD2One
Burn to a DVD
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Golly, people whine on and on about the RIAA and the MPAA as if there is music and movies out there that are worth listening to or watching.
The fact is, the stuff that comes out of the "Entertainment Industry" is 99% A-Grade crapola, and the sooner people come to realise that fact the sooner we will cease to care what these dinosaurs do to their ever-shrinking customer base.
Get over it guys. Who cares what these numbnuts do? Go read a book and stop lining the pockets of these cretinous music and movie execs for a change.
They're simply not worth all the angst.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Interesting that this is upsetting. I read an earlier post that considered a spammer "stealing" their time as part of a justification for it being a crime. That may be debateable, they got a good mod though for the thought, but it isn't debateable that the downloaders are stealing some one's work. The work was done for the purpose of making a living. It was a legitimate business and harmed no one. Somehow the spammer is a criminal for stealing time yet the downloader is somehow extercising some nonexistent right of free exchange of information. How is this not a double standard? Just because one benefits you and the other harms you?
From the article:
"The movie industry has also tried to battle piracy by running ads in movie theaters and elsewhere designed to dissuade people from file-sharing films by stressing the risks of identity theft and liability."
How the hell is identity theft involved?
Well, what I find interesting is that they're going ahead with it, in the face of the RIAA's near-total failure. Sure, they screwed up some people's lives, but they haven't really done anything positive for their member companies so far as slowing the pace of file sharing. Come to think of it, they haven't really done anything positive for their members. But, hey ... maybe the MPAA figures that a double-whammy (music and movies) will be more successful. Personally, I doubt it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's not _exactly_ the first time.
The MPAA has been doing this for quite a while.
I remember when they sent a C&D letter to Pirate Bay, a filesharing site in Sweden for putting up the sound-track of Shrek on Torrent.
Ofcourse, the response was even better - classic Fuck You.
And I'm sure we all remember the fiasco of movie premiers being up on filesharing networks, and how the MPAA raised a ruckus.
Definitely not the first time, I guess they're just going to intensify their efforts more.
I will never pay for an MPAA movie in theater or on DVD again.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Just because they are downloading one movie doesn't mean they haven't ever gone to a movie theater or have never bought a DVD/tape. The music/software/video industries are just getting greedy. They're not happy with getting $700 billion (just a random #), they want $900 billion. They just want to steal more money from more people.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
First the RedSox, then Bush. And now this.
;)
So this is what the third horseman looks like
Ahoy, folks. The end is nigh.
Dear MPAA, My ipaddress is 199.2.120.89. My slashdot username is my real name. I download most of my movies off suprnova.org. Oh yea, and I'm not afraid.
It sure is going to suck when they try to take my neighbors to court. Someone doesn't know about unsecured wireless modems.
Now that we have proven we are sheeple who will roll over for just about anything as long as the spin is right, why *SHOULDN'T* they sue?
As far as I am concerned, at this point we should all be doing our best to hasten the decline.
Everybod jump on the pendlum and push. It's gotta swing trough it's arc before there will be any relief. The United States of America has to legislate and litigate itself into its role as a backwater far off the information super-highway, before anything here can get fixed.
The sooner the rest of the world leaves us in the economic and Intellectual Property [sic] dust, the better.
In fact, if the corporations can make enough of a mess SOON ENOUGH, it could even prevent the stupid legislation.
Sue Away, MPAA! (hey it rymes, it should be their new slogan! 8-)
As environmental pressure increases, the organisim is forced to evolve.
So it will be _best_ for the world if we can all get the pressure up as fast as possible.
Plus we know how much credibility the US now has overseas. The more they win here, the freer the rest of the world will be. They *know* (hopefully) that if they follow our lead, then they will enevitably end up with a Bush of their own.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
mount
Glad I live in Canada and not some oppressed nation where you can go to jail for stealing a movie. Boy, you guys should get some better leadership...oops sorry wrong day. Go ahead mod me to hell.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Fill me in here in case I missed something, but how are the movie theaters stealing money from anyone? I mean, at least you can claim (however implausibly) that stealing music is okay because the companies make rediculous margins and rip off the artists. That doesn't even remotely apply to movie studios though, it's not like actors are underpaid (in fact, I understand they have a very strong union), and the amount they charge customers is far less relatively speaking. I mean, paying a few bucks to see a $200million movie isn't a bad deal.
So to reiterate my question, how are the movie companies stealing your money?
So now the RIAA are going to go after people for violating copyright law and screwing them out of their profit. *Sigh* Not that it's the same people in charge now... but still. Anyone want to vote hypocritical bastards?
Interesting... my ISP just forwarded a C&D email from the MPAA aimed at my IP address. I'll be curious (an understatement!) to see if they are successful in getting my snail mail address out of my ISP after the Verison decision.
/had/ a wireless router running to provide access to anyone in range (it'll be back up after I get around to blocking off everything but 80 and 25, i guess), but I'm assuming that the whole "common carrier" exemption to network traffic only applies to corporations large enough to buy their own congressman.
I
So... is this the end of offering open access to your neighborhood? I have no interest in monitoring traffic over my network, but it looks like the buck stops at the little guy (as usual).
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Just a thought for consideration.
Perhaps the RIAA's actions are objectionable not because they are protecting Intellectual Property rights, but because they are using illegal search techniques and shotgun accusation techniques in a clumbsy attempt to do so.
I for one would have no objection to the MPAA suing people whom they have determined are offering copyrighted material for download based upon public web pages or other public directories. And where they have actually downloaded enough of the file to verify that it is indeed the copyrighted material and not just a matching file name.
Probably because hard disks capacities are so large and DVD burners are now pretty much standard equipment on PCs. There must be a corresponding increase in movie pirating, critical mass must have been reached.
Me, I wish they had a "burn on demand" (BOD) model where you pay a minimal fee (think rental cost, ideally cheaper) and get to burn a movie on DVD. No case, no extras, just the movie.... I guess video-on-demand is almost the same...
Speaking of lawyers: Vioxx is Prozac for lawyersFor making nothing but shit, year after year.
Poor government knows no party.
This is incorrect. Poor government is on a first name basis with at least two parties.
USENet isn't really all that centralized, and it isn't as well known. Nobody _really_ "administers" it and nobody with money really runs it.
It is peer-to-peer and egalatarian as hell, but everybody (with linux anyway) already has the software and you have to search it *by* *hand*. It is SUPER EASY to forge a message, especially if the forger is an admin of a host system.... *any* host system in the net.
Nobody really has the power to unilaterally remove any of the content in particular, and even the venerable "cancel message" can be blocked. As long as any USENET backbone exists almost any message can "pibby-back" through the "blocked" parts of the net as a crosspost.
It is just too soft a target to really take any action against. Don't beleive me, just look at what is flowing there. The borderline kiddy-porn that is in the alt.binaries.(whatever) group is unstopable.
Besides, there are enough stupid people involved that you can't keep titty-pictures out of alt.sex.pictures.erotica.gay.male. What a dumb waste of time to try to *send* those pictures in that forum. What a DUMB waste of time trying to STOP those pictures from being sent in that forum.
What an _incridible_ waste of time trying to filter, find, and catch every single USENET server site in an attempt to really trace the sources of movie fragments....
If *you* had to "go after" USENET where would *YOU* start?
P.S. Remember: Drugs, Terrorisim, and Kiddy Porn are the root passwords to the US Constitution.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Let me get this straight, you are violating copyright and watching movies for free and THEY are stealing?
Who modded this interesting? Have I just been trolled?
I actually got a letter from my ISP for p2ping a episode of a tv show. Now this is getting extreme.
One way to fight the movie industry is to use freeway blogging. The movie industry is different from the music industry. A lot of their revenue comes from concentrated sources--namely these huge cineplexes that are frequently located near high traffic areas such as freeways. You could hurt them and cost them some money by placing signs on these high traffic roads near the cineplexes. The signs would tell people about the lawsuits.
More on Freeway Blogging.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Yeah, damn them for having to pay money to make their movie.
Damn them for asking money in exchange for viewing their film.
You see, it's not a matter of the method being easier, it's the matter that PEOPLE WANT SHIT FOR FREE. That's all.
No. Consumer DVD burners cannot burn the CSS key data required by the studios.
Yeah, but I wish you could. Or somebody could. I mean, when you go to BlockBuster and they're out of the movie you want, why can't they just burn a new copy on the spot for you to rent?
EricHow to Detect Firefox
Does anyone know which networks the RIAA and MPAA are generally monitoring so I know to stay away? I DC++ is a pretty safe bet, but what networks are "lawsuit-safe"?
TerraIM - my pet AIM client project.
The RIAA has been doing this for so long, why is the MPAA only doing this now, I wonder?
Hey, who cares? No self-respecting geek clutters up their hard drives with the drivel that the MPAA members produce. Now if the Porn Industry Movie Producers (PIMP) start cracking down on sharing Miko Lee and Jenna Jameson flicks, then us geeks are really going to be in trouble.
watch this
I think, the point is, that BECAUSE they are "not paying customers", they represent ZERO lost revenue.
The presumption that the ones who don't buy, WOULD buy if they couldn't download is specious at best.
The total, _ACTUAL_ "lost revenue" to movie snarfing is almost certianly LESS than the cost of one lawyer for one case.
These people should be persuing the people who MINT and SELL full bootlegs. This online trading stuff is literally NOTHING.
It's actually probably even a net gain from word of mouth.
(And I have *NEVER* downloaded a movie via USENET, any p2p application, or similar. I BUY DVDs.)
The people who will buy, buy. The people who won't, don't. The people who *may* don't exist.
Only the industrial bootleggers represent actual lost revenue. The "traders" are only a threat the the CERTIAN DREAMS OF AVERICE of certian ??AA organizations.
So it is STUPID to piss off your customers and splashing them with shit because you are chasing the shadow of a penny you _thought_ you _might_ _have_ seen rolling down a sewer.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
If you are new to this topic, check out Downhill Battle or EFF or my website. By the way, the Xmas season is almost upon us. Time to remind people that CDs make crappy presents.
Test 1 2 3 4
Thank you MPAA for telling me abt that fabulous site.
Wanted : A Signature.
Am I the only one who is spooked by the number of posts here that claim that gee whiz, "we got a letter from the MPAA or RIAA, or just plain got scared of getting arrested, and now we have completely stopped filesharing"? And don't we feel so much cleaner?
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Three Squirrels
Well, if you're going and paying that, you must think it's worth it. If you're not going, well, then you clearly haven't been robbed of anything at all. Besides, $13NZ for movies which can cost tens of millions of times that to produce is hardly unreasonable. Nor is $40NZ for a DVD, and the simple fact it is illegal so complaining "how dare they accuse me of being a criminal" when you pirate the movie is rediculous, since you quite simply are a criminal for it.
I should add the note here that I do have a number of downloaded movies off the internet, so I'm certainly not passing moral judgment on people for doing that, since it'd be simply hypocritical. What pisses me off isn't people who download copyrighted material, it's people who are self-righteous about it, convinced they have a god-given right to do so, and think any copyright owner who dares try to stop them is evil for doing so. If I got busted for piracy, sure I'd be pissed off, but I wouldn't think it unfair, any more than I'd be annoyed at getting a traffic ticket for driving 10kph over the speed limit, it's annoying, but a fair cop.
Back when the RIAA started suing file sharers, the Slashdot party line was that the RIAA should learn from the MPAA. The MPAA, it was argued, wasn't suing its consumers, but was instead producing a higher quality product that was actually worth buying. Unlike CDs, where you paid $14 for only one or two tracks actually worth owning, DVDs came chock full of goodies that made people want to shell out the $20, like alternate endings and director's commentary.
At the time, I called BS, and said that the only reason that the MPAA wasn't suing yet was because video piracy wouldn't take off until Internet connections got a bit faster - given that video files are much bigger than audio files.
Well, guess what, that was exactly the case. I assure you, if FTTH becomes a reality, this will become an even bigger problem. Please, let's stop fooling ourselves that pirates are making a pseudo-moral decision that pirating from certain evil companies is ok, but pirating other products is not ok because those products are actually worth the money.
People pirate what is easy to pirate. That's how I pirate! Audio and video cassettes made pirating copyrighted materials easier, but not particularly easy, because it takes too long to copy and distribute copyrighted materials that way.
Computers and the Internet made this type of piracy an order of magnitude easier. Each time we get faster connections to the Internet and bigger hard drives, it gets easier still.
Stop pretending that the companies can offer you something to stop you from pirating their products. Or next, will you be saying that, actually, while the director's commentaries and alternate endings are great, DVDs are too expensive at $20 and need to come down to $10, otherwise you'll pirate them?
And then, what will stop you from demanding $5?
Listen, either you're ok with pirating copyrighted works, or you're not. But stop pretending that you're only ok with it because the system is rotten. Because there is no evidence that if the threat of lawsuits were lifted and prices dropped, anything would change.
And, also, please stop pretending that it's because the RIAA and MPAA are fighting the Internet or computers or modern technology. Last time I checked, Outkast just went platinum from online mp3 sales. iTunes sells millions of songs per year, online. The RIAA and MPAA have no problem with modern technology. But they need to make sure it works in such a way that it doesn't enable unrestricted piracy.
No, this is Slashdot.
Nobody takes away the God-given right of a Slashdotter to share music and movies, not to mention watch movies for free. And anybody who makes money out of anything that has anything to do with the movie or music industry is evil, and it is the right of a Slashdotter to rip them off and distribute the spoils among the poor downtrodden geeks of the Slash-wood forest.
On the other hand, when EFF suggests the same thing, these same people stay quiet and not say a word.
Bloody pirate hypocrites. ARRRRRRRR! x-(
The entertainment industry realizes that they are being hostile to the internet and offending many potential consumers with the lawsuits. The problem is that there is no viable alternative at the moment.
Honestly, look at the alternatives they have:
Put heavy copy protection on DVD's or TV broadcasts.
Overturn Betamax - make all recording illegal.
Shut down the programs which allow filesharing.
Lower prices to point of where it is not worth stealing.
Sue downloaders / sharers.
The only one that seems to be non-hostile towards the internet is lowering prices, but that one also hurts the industry the most. Betamax and heavy copyright protection would annoy the whole populace as people would not be able to record or have to upgrade their dvd / tv / vcr players. Shutting down the programs has already been tried and that failed.
Therefore, it kind of makes sense that they sue the users. It is a fright tactic - one that they will use until a better alternative pops up. It only hurts the guilty (for the most part - there are exceptions...) and does not cost them extreme amounts of profit.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I think it's more to do with declines in cinema attendance. By the time a movie is on DVD, people aren't going to see it at the cinema anyway, and the industry still profits from DVD rentals..
:) I really don't have a problem with this though, since the last time we took the whole family out to a "new" release it set me back over $40. (back in 2001 anyways) Another on the cheap, at least here in Montana is I get unlimited dvd rentals for a whole $20 a month from the local store. Then again, I live in the lowest wage paying state in the union. ugh!
Actually, here we have a "dollar" theater, so Monday through Thursdays it $1.00, Friday - Sundays it's $10 for two adults, with a large popcorn and 2 sodas. (kids under 12 are still a buck btw)
Of course, all movies come to this theater AFTER the dvd is released, but then again... some movies are a must see on the big screen.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
It is not as flawed as you presume. The period is highly unstable and subject to external forces, but eventually it swings.
When you repress your own businesses, the market goes elsewhere. That is the free market theory at least. To date the swing of the pendlum often leaves countries totally devistated in its wake if it goes to far, but the regions recover even if the political systems don't.
I beleive that the current economic trends are tanamount to disaster and if the "ugly" can come on fast enough to be noticed by the populace they may act to fixe it.
We are boiling frogs here (to mix a metaphore). If the "Broadcast flag" (for instance) were to "suddenly go live tomorrow" it would be gone in a year. If we let it ease in slowly we may be stuck with it for decades.
As it is now, the "rising rate-rate of litigation" (yes, rate twice) is enough that our economic partners around the world are starting to notice and scatter. But consider that this change of rate has been exhibited almost solely in my lifetime (or more correctly in Ralph Nader's professional lifetime). It has not yet become ensconsed in our "perminant" way of life, it hasn't outlived a generation cradle-to-grave. It isn't "tradition", so it is possible to escape it *IF* we can get the public to see the precipice.
I don't really "wish" for the colapse as some kind of nielist orgastic ideal. I have just become convinced that it is essentially enevitable.
(To continue to mix metaphores) we *really* need to pull the band-aid(tm) off quick, or we are going to lose a _heck_ of a lot of hair... 8-)
But even if the entire United States colapses economically (which would be hard to do given that we grow lots of food) business and creativity will simply rise somewhere else.
It's not a pretty pendulum. It's not a "local" pendulum. But the cycle persists.
Wehn it gets totally out of wack, we (editorial we not royal or possessive we) throw a war...
Oh wait...
How many wars does any given "we" get before the world calls a time-out? 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
And if the govt. of Sweden is convinced, it is their own stupidity, don't blame some kid in Europe trying to protect his rights.
If Iran sent me a notice saying that I'm violating so shariat laws, I'd send an equally vocal and Fuck-you letter to them.
Your argument tries to shift the blame on the people responding, rather than the industry and the government that actually supports these laws.
Blame the RIAA and MPAA and our government - do not blame some guy in Europe for retorting back. If anything, we need more people like this, who can show how ridiculous this whole thing is.
"I've wisened up to the fact that, even though they may charge horrible prices, I might still be stealing."
"might be"?
Fuck you,
Laws don't make things right or wrong, they just make things illegal.
In this case it's clear; they are abusing the copyright system to assert more money for themselves, while alienating you from your natural rights. They are using this system to blot out freedom of speech, chill research and stifle innovation, because technology no longer fits their business model.
It's only "stealing" because they've muscled laws into place making it such, freedom of speech is a natural right, a corporations "right" to profit and manage intellectual property is not.
Since last time I checked morality is an absolute, it does not bend for copyright law.
I would say the main reason e-books haven't taken off has nothing to do with piracy. The fact is that media formats change so frequently and the battery life on an *expensive* piece of equipment is so poor still that the reliability is so poor you're better off just sitting at a computer to read stuff (and even then, you'll possibly complain about the contrast not being high enough).
In fact, book piracy does occur rather rampantly for the "popular" stuff. It's by no means a fast process, as you've well demonstrated, and even if it were possible to rip a book in a matter of minutes, only the collectors would likely amass many books. Why? Because reading books takes a rather enormous amount of time. In the space of d/ling one song you can d/l 5 novels which in total will take hours to days to read. This slow absorption rate is probably a large reason on why the average reading rate of people is so low.
I would say that the selling of mass music as an actual marketed good is the main cause for this. In the past, people had to actually go to concerts to listen to music or go to the theater to watch plays. Shakespeare wrote for the regular urban masses. Because people have to pay for music, they don't find it offensive when bars or clubs don't actually have a band. And the economics of the record industry (admittedly not the focus of this article..) show that it's not even the artist who is making the bulk of the money on all those recordings, so the economic dispersion of wealth conglomerates away from the actual performers, piddly as they might be.
In any case, e-books are still DOA for the same general reason the Apple Mac of 1984 only received a relatively small following. Until people begin to value books again and be willing to treat copied movies and music like the samples which they are, the existing piracy will be relatively minor.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
The MPAA should stop suing people and instead concentrate on hooking people up with boyfriends and girlfriends.
Couples got to the movies more often than individuals.
In part that is so they can stop having to talk to each other for a while without risking offence.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Let's be honest. The costs of tracking these people down, having lawyers send out letters and to even bother to threaten legal action in parallel to the RIAA is far too expensive.
What's the average settlement been for people sharing Britney? Roughly 3000$? Its not a viable source of revenue, its certainly not PR friendly and it definetly won't get people into theatres.
It would be much nicer to see that incentive put in to making movies affordable. Up North here, its about 10$ for a movie ticket. Now take your wife and 2 kids to see the new Disney crapathon, buy a coke and a popcorn for everybody, and you've just hit 60$ to take the kids out to a flick. Its terribly unaffordable.
Not that its a reason to "steal", but even then, the product downloaded (unless its a DVD) isn't comparable to the product the RIAA puts out. A cd is a cd in your discman or in mp3, ogg (insert format of choice here). You can't yet substitute a screen the size of Brando's ass on your computer yet. I've downloaded a couple of flicks to see if they were worth seeing on a big screen with friends, and they weren't, but just like music is now, I have a means of checking before buying. Critiques of films mean nothing, everything gets 3 thumbs up.
This litigation is totally out in left field relative to the problems (if any) downloading causes to theatre revenue, and irrelevant to the people who download significant amounts of movies.
I'm just guessing (yeah, dangerous) that the MPAA picked up the people off kazaa or something. I doubt it was BT, seeing as the RIAA hasn't tracked anyone down through that anyways (I could be wrong).
And truth be told, if you're significantly downloading DVD rips, its not off Kazaa.
You know if you read revelations it says that the anti christ will be seen as a savior and that the majority of the people will follow him.
Something to think about next time Bush talks about god.
evil is as evil does
Since the lawsuits have started, I have quit buying any products from companies represented by the RIAA. Now I will also boycott MPAA products.
So far, my quality of life is no different than before. Maybe slightly improved by the additional money in my pocket. I spend some of it to see live music. I buy wine and books with the rest.
It's gotten to the point where the best thing to do is to shoot your TV and spend more time taking the dog for a walk. And don't buy another CD or DVD until they end the shakedown. 86 the bastards. It's a luxury, not a necessity.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Lesssee here. You willingly re-elected a president who has done more damage to the bill of rights than any person in the country's history. A man who has shown a clear preference for the interests of large corporations over the people he is supposed to lead. So the *AA's abusive and heavy handed tactics are surprising... how?
It seems that this is clearly the kind of thing Americans want. If the capacity for outrage doesn't exist for prisoners of war abused in Iraq, if it doesn't exist for voting machine manufacturers pledging money and support for only one party, if it doesn't exist for the zero accountability expected of the Enron, Worldcom, and Haliburton criminals... why should any American give a second thought to the people who will be fscked by the MPAA?
As has been said by people more eloquent than I, it's too late anyway.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Tired of the boring ol' "Spot the Fed" game at Defcon? In this article, we can play "Spot the Astroturfer"! No t-shirts, just pride, but then again you don't have to try to expense a Vegas trip to an increasingly suspicious finance dept. So I think it works out even.
Pay special attention to phrases repeated by supposedly different posters (even though that's also a staple of genuine Slashdotters), and ACs replying to themselves with "I agree!".
Get spotting, and post your Astroturfer-spotting tips here!
Um..no?
/mnt/movies/
Seriously though, vobcopy -l -o
Thats what big drives are for (I really only hoard a few movies at any given time..)!
Quack, quack.
>>Why no speeches of how downloaders are taking the very food out of porn star's mouths?
Because they have enough in their mouths as it is.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, what do I get out of copyright as it stands today? Public domain is stale with little adding to it while production of copyrighted works and profit from them is at an all time high. The works I want aren't (legaly) avainlable here anyway, not to mention insane prices compared to typical income. What do I get? Marketing to get me excited over things I can't buy, thank you copyright!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
how many copyright infringement lawsuits are carried out in asia where pirating has been going on for years? could it be that asian organized crime is to powerful to mess with while us normal people are easier to pick on. is the peer to peer pirating far more harmful that the organized pirating that goes on all over the world. or is it a loss that the entertainment companies have the guts to go after. can u imagine the entertainment lawyers insisting on going after pirating operations in let's say....north korea, how about nigeria,serbia, armenia, burma or china! yeah right. it's alot easier to go after mom and pop on the cox network for the songs their kids are down-loading.
Again, completely wrong. Patents give monopolies, copyrights don't.
There's nothing stopping you going out and making another movie about the Titanic, another war movie, another cop movie, another really bad Hugh Grant chick flick, or any other kind of movie you want. Sure, you can't copy the exact movie, but that's simply because in essence that would be like stealing the ice cream itself, skipping the entire cost and effort required to produce it in the first place. No matter how you put it, there's nothing stopping you from going and making your own near-identical movie (within reason), so there certainly isn't a monopoly by any margin.
A monopoly *does* exist when the barriers to entry are high. Your post seems to imply that it would be no more difficult to get a movie into your own cinema than to open up an ice-cream parlour?
C'mon
Actually, the middle ground does exist. I have downloaded movies that I was on the fence about seeing. I have then not rented or bought the movie because I already saw it and it didn't impress me enough to see it again. But they certainly lost at the very least a rental, if not a movie ticket from me being able to download the movie. I know many people who saw the Matrix Reloaded by downloading it and hated it. While they had little hope for the movie and had heard the terrible reviews, they took the time and effort to find and download a good copy of it, and keep the copy after they had watched it. These people would have seen the movie if they couldn't download it, regardless of how they felt afterward. If you care enough to find and download the movie and keep a copy using your disk space, there is a good chance you would have at least rented the movie or watched it on PPV.
And don't worry, they are going after the people who mint and sell bootlegs (just as they have been for years). But just because they are going after them doesn't mean they should ignore you while you trade movies with other people online. Having someone worse than you in no way makes what you are doing any better.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
When you can walk into a store, pay $16.99 for a DVD, new release, or less for an older movie, and you get not just the movie, but trailers (who watches these?), commentary, featurettes, and subtitles, I think this is a reasonable price to pay for a DVD. I see no reason to share these movies with strangers.
Now, paying $16.99 or more for a CD with 10-12 songs, 9 of which I couldn't care less about, that's another story. While I haven't and won't share, I can certainly understand the argument.
So I don't really have a problem with MPAA doing this, as long as the prices stay where they are as a result.
They are going after the wrong people. The could stop about 3/4 of the piracy by cleaning up their own studios. A lot of those early DVD screeners all get out because of insiders and movie cam captures are a problem with theaters. Stop piracy there not at the end.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Amen brothers!
Are there any P2P clients out there that are effective in hiding your identity as a sharer? I know I read that when the RIAA started suing people that it was just a matter of time before someone invented a client that protects those who are sharing files, but I wonder if it's even technically possible. The Gnutella protocol effectively made SEARCHING for files anonymous, but actually transferring a file establishes a connection to the IP address, which can always be traced. Any ideas for accomplishing something like this? Is it technically possible? I am familiar with the freenet project, but to my understanding this isn't really for large file sharing. Any thoughts?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules