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MPAA to Sue BitTorrent Tracker Servers
Mirkon writes "The Register and Reuters report that the Motion Picture Association of America is planning to begin a legal assault on websites that host BitTorrent trackers for copyrighted movie files. An announcement is supposed to be made by the MPAA President/CEO today, along with help from CEO of private P2P network developer Red Swoosh, and the CEO of BayTSP, 'which offers file-branding and -tracking applications.' Not that they have any vested interests in this of course. Though the articles take care to mention that this action is not against standard users, how long is it until BitTorrent itself is targeted?" Apropos of nothing, I saw a movie in the theaters a few days ago. At the official start time, the lights dimmed. Then there were 14 minutes of commercials (Pepsi, hair mousse, cologne, etc.) followed by 13 minutes of movie trailers (which are also advertising), followed by a few minutes of junk, followed by a 100-minute movie. I can't imagine why people would want to download movies when they have that great theater experience to compare against.
Please make sure you do not link to Bittorrent sites here on Slashdot, such as suprnova.org. If you do, then Slashdot will become liable as they'll be linking to a site that links to copyright materials.
Also, if that happens, please make sure you remove all links to Slashdot, or links to sites that link to Slashdot, as you'll also be liable.
P.S. michael, we're sorry you didn't like Blade Trinity, but Triple H was pretty hot, right?
Wow--heavy, insightful stuff. Looks like somebody is gunning for a Pulitzer!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Apropos of nothing, I saw a movie in the theaters a few days ago. At the official start time, the lights dimmed. Then there were 14 minutes of commercials (Pepsi, hair mousse, cologne, etc.) followed by 13 minutes of movie trailers (which are also advertising, of course), followed by a few minutes of junk, followed by a 100-minute movie.
How many of you remember MTV, Nickelodeon, and other cable-only channels were originally commercial-free back in the early 80's?
Just because these media conglomerates are making money off of you directly doesn't mean they won't try to make it indirectly as well.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
So, the MPAA is putting comercials in the movies, sueing people that might help support the effort for movie sharing. Are they hurting for money????? I have not seen any reports on it.
So, is there a way to reform that indusrty? Or, are we just screwed. Will it become like tv where the movies get shorter just to make room for more comercials and how long until there are comercials in the middle of movies?
Evolution or ID?
I do not see this as a threat to bit torrent as it is not removing the arguement of having other, valid uses.
Again, I must proclaim this awesome website I found a few months ago:
WWW.MEDIACHEST.COM !! It's awesome. You can catalog (even use a CueCat if you got one) your entire movie, book, CD, game collection, and place the titles online for others to browse. Meet people in your neighborhood, get together with them, and swap your stuff. Watch each other's movies, read each other's books. Last I checked there is no law against that. (Yet).
And you get to venture outside, and blink haphazardly at the bright yellow object in the sky that you may not have seen in a while. And maybe make a new friend with like interests.
(Check my sig for a link to the website)
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
But the sites themselves do not carry the files. They only have information about the trackers, and are not involved in the actual distribution or sharing of the files.
So how do they plan to sue them?
As far as the last paragraph in the article... I don't know what to say... Let's say I wrote a new program to copy files from one destination to another and someone used it to copy a bunch of MP3's and movies, I guess the RIAA/MPAA can knock down my door and come get me... even though I had the totally benign idea to simply copy files from one place to another...
I guess they should attack any file transferring program no-matter how benign it is? That's like saying let's put the gun in prison instead of the guy that fired it.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
The only ad that pissed me off is the one about copying movies, getting really tired of seeing it, and I see it several times a month. I don't copy movies, I go to see them in theatres. Yet after giving my money to the theatre I need to learn a lesson about how stealing is wrong.
/rant
ugh.
I bought the Shrek 2 DVD, and Disney forces you (at least on my non-modded DVD player) to sit through several minutes of adversting under the guise of previews/trailers before the movie starts. Skipping the previews is a prohibited operation. I can understand how they might do this on a $89 rental copy, but not on MY (MY) personal $19.99 copy. I should NEVER be forced to watch previews.
Then there were 14 minutes of commercials (Pepsi, hair mousse, cologne, etc.) followed by 13 minutes of movie trailers (which are also advertising, of course), followed by a few minutes of junk, followed by a 100-minute movie.
The same thing happened to me this weekend. And just when I was getting frustrated I thought, "But, wait, I'm still here and until it get's bad enough for me to stop going to the theater they're going to keep shoveling the crap on us."
I read Slashdot for the articles
The fact that the RIAA and MPAA are now going after the people breaking copyright law instead of writing legislation aimed at crippling technology and suing service providers is a good thing.
Now, of course there are still some stupid hybrid technological/legal measures they're pushing like 5C encryption and the broadcast flag. But if unlawful uses of file sharing/copying/archiving diminish due to fear of individual suits, then legitimate fair use will become a significant part of what is being prevented by these measures and they'll hopefully stop or be forced to stop them. Hopefully.
MPAA: What happen ? ....
Minion: Somebody set up us the Tracker.
Minion: We get packet.
MPAA: What !
Minion: Packet Sniffer turn on.
MPAA: It's you !!
Torrents: How are you gentlemen !!
Torrents: All your MOVIES are belong to us.
Torrents: You are on the way to destruction.
MPAA: What you say !!
Torrents: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Torrents: Ha Ha Ha Ha
MPAA: Sue every Tracker!!
MPAA: You know what you doing.
MPAA: For great PROFIT.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Century theaters do not show TV ads before their movies. AMC is absolutely intolerable because of their advertising practices. I absolutely refuse to go to AMC theaters because of this. Century has all the same movies with a much better experience.
You probably went to suprnova.com or suprnova.net which are pay sites pretending to be suprnova. Suprnova.org looks like it still is the same as usual.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
I thought I was!
But apparently suprnova is now going to get sued because of it.
sic transit gloria mundi
Someone suitably creative could create a website that tracks how much time commercials and crap take out of a movie, and POST it for all to view. The idea being that people know how many minutes they can skip before the feature starts, and avoid all the commercials. I think the very existence of a site like this, and a good amount of traffic to it, could send a powerful message: "We are NOT a captive audience!". The caveats being A) someone has to initially watch the commercials to time it, and B) you could lose a good seat :P
Tuesday, 14 December 2004
Early this morning National Bureau of Investigation and BSA have busted finnish BitTorrent link site Finreactor for distributing copyrighted material worth of million euros.
According to sources, NBI raided the admins homes today and seized all the computer equipment and storage media for further investigation, but released the suspects shortly after the raid. The site itself has been down since early hours of today. Site had over 37,000 registered members and had links to more than 6,000 pirated releases on BitTorrent network.
Read the Full story.
PS. If you are finnish, read this.
"Never give up, never surrender!"
.. that the BitTorrent trackers will just migrate to places like Russia and China, where there are no intellectual property laws to speak of, and where the Clerk of the Court would laugh if a lawyer for the MPAA tried to file a lawsuit against people for running trackers.
What are they going to try next? Snooping on people's personal net connections at home? They'll add a trivial encryption layer to BitTorrent - just try and prove what's being transferred over that link to Russia. Firewall China and Russia off from the rest of the Internet? Make encryption illegal? I don't think (or rather, I desperately hope) that people will accept such measures.
The information genie is out of the bottle. Business models that rely on the sale of information are doomed. It may take 50 years for them to finally give up on these models - they'll fight tooth and nail to save them, since they essentially rake in mountains of cash for doing nothing except copying digital media, which is now practically free. The long, slow decline of the viability of selling information has begun.
On the other hand, the active propagation of disinformation in schools has successfully managed to convince many people that "drugs are bad, mmmmmkay..." in the absence of any rational logical supports for the arbitrary classification of certain drugs as "bad", and others as "not drugs". (Only certain drugs - caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol are socially acceptable and legal; marijuana is (somehow) not, even though alcohol clearly has far more deleterious social and personal health effects).
Perhaps they'll wage a similar disinformation campaign to indoctrinate our children to believe in the sacredness of intellectual property, and thus get people to accept that encryption should be illegal, to prevent information piracy....
> Why not just quit paying actors millions per film?
Because the presence of those actors almost always has a direct correlation to the amount of money the film brings in. I know, I know - you're one of those people who thinks that they should cast an unknown shlub in every movie that comes out, thereby slashing the budget and enabling you to go see movies for $.50. But eventually one of those shlubs is going to be interesting/talented/attractive enough that more people go see *his* movies than anyone else's and *then* some crackpot capitalist will realize that casting that guy = more box office and offer him more money than the unknown shlub that nobody cares about - but not you, no-sir-ree! You go see movies based solely on how low-paid the actor is, because that's the kind of appreciator of fine cinema you are.
Stupid hippie...
If that ad really bugs you, just download a cam version of the movie...they usually edit out the commercials.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Additionally, ads are appearing in front of DVD movies
Here's little tip:
Even if the DVD advert has disabled the fast forward buttons and the root-menu button, you can still hit 'stop', and then 'menu', which will bypass the ads. Maybe I shouldn't leak my secret, or they'll come up with a bug(feature) for that, too.
'Course, if it's a VHS tape, you can use a pair of scissors... Snip!
Why should it be surprising to ANYONE that a PAID EDITOR OF SLASHDOT gets a certain amount of leeway in editorializing in articles?
Guess what? This website doesn't just have editors around to pick and choose which articles are allowed to go to the front page. A well-written script could do that.
Jesus Fucking Christ. If you don't like it, LEAVE. Slashdot is NOT a part of the commons.
+++ATH0
I normally shout out during the "dont steal movies" commercials "WHY ARE YOU TELLING US?! WE ALREADY PAID!!!"
It usually gets some chuckles from the audience.
no
The way to deal with it is vote with your dollars.
Unfortunately, this will not work. If that were the case, then only cars that don't need to advertise are the only viable ones to buy (Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Bentley, etc) And even those may advertise in higher dollar markets that I'm simply not a member of.
However, money protests may work if people demand their money back after watching an advertiser supported movie. I simply refuse to pay a rental fee for any rented movie that has ads that are blocked out by the remote. That has got to be one of the most annoying things out there. I hear that Disney does that with thier store bought DVDs.
I believe that there are simply too many mouths to feed and not enough real jobs to fill them. Its getting to the point that I feel like I'm being accosted by a begger everywhere I go, but the people begging are typically people that have more money than I do. Salesmen lying to me and badgering me all the time. Telemarketers. SPAM. Billboards. Ads are _everywhere_. Baseball has greenscreened the infield to overlay different ads, because one was not enough. Tickmaster shoves more ads down my throat and these people are a monopoly in providing different random (I love those 2 terms together) numbers to people, and asking me to PAY MORE for printing the damn tickets on my own printer and paper. Ads have been integrated into movies for some time as called "product placement" ads. I only see people drinking Dunken Doughnuts coffee in movies. Sometimes they are downright distracting to the point that I think I can hear the marketing dweebie from the paying company in the background yelling "Please keep the product label visable at all times!"
Oh, and with the MPAA. Go for it. What are you going to sue for? What are you going to get? I've never downloaded a movie off of the net because I consider it a waste of time. If I really want a movie that bad, I'll pay the $20 at a store for it.
It is about time that the members of the ??AA groups start thinking about what they are going to do about their stupid antiquated business model. Its not that difficult, but I guess these people are simply that stupid. There is supply and demand and cost is relative to that supply and demand. The demand appears to be there. I mean people spend a great amount of time downloading low quality crap all the time where the downloads don't finish, the quality is worse than they thought, the movie just sucks, and so on. If these people can't figure out a way to entice people to pay something for their product, then they deserve to go out of business like all other businesses that can't make it.
Ah, but you forget that they need encryption for their DVDs. And here's the beautiful part: once they add an encryption layer to BitTorrent, it will be impossible to sue anybody over movie sharing. Thanks to the DMCA, if they sue you, they obviously illegally broke encryption somewhere along the line and would be liable themselves (as well as nullifying their evidence). So they're heading to an oh-so-delicious Catch-22. If they lobby to repeal the DMCA, it will become legal to crack DVDs. If they don't lobby, they can't legitmately find out who's actually trading movies.
Of course, they'll then sue for the movie rights.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
30 solid minutes of ads?? Sorry, I don't buy it (no pun intended). I might see a one or two movies a month, and while I've never put a stopwatch to it, there is no where near an entire sitcom's length of ads before a movie.
It really depends on the theater.
Near the place I live there are several movie theaters. One is an oldish small theater. One is a big shiny megamultiplex or whatever they are called. Obviously the megamulti has bigger screens, better sound system, etc. etc. Yet I don't go there to watch movies. Why?
Because in the oldish small place they'll show me two-three trailers and then show me the movie. That's what I came there for.
In the megamulti I'll have to sit through tons and tons and tons (yes, 15-20 minutes) of commercials before they even get to the trailers. Really stupid and obnoxious ones, too. So I stopped going there.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Then I remembered, I started going to a movie theatre that caters to movie enthusiasts. I can't remember the last time I saw an advertisement before the feature movie. I also can't remember the last time someone talked during a movie or was disruptive or anyone under the age of 18 was in attendance. No screaming babies either. Maybe because they don't allow children under 6 at all, and no one under 18 without parents and they are very intolerant of bullshit and very responsive about complaints.
Somehow, they still manage to charge about the same price as every other theatre in town. No wonder I go there for every movie -- and if it doesn't show there, I wait for DVD.
There are good movie theatres out there, you just have to find them.
-------------------------------------------------
The DVD ads are particularly frustrating for those of us with small kids. Picture the following scenario. You've just gotten the 2.5 year-old twins and their 1.5 year old younger brother buckled into the minivan for that long drive, and you're lucky enough to have them all clamoring for, say, a Wiggles video. You fire up the DVD player and here come the ads...
"No, I don't want to see Barney, I wanted the Wiggles"
"No, let's watch Barney"
"No, Wiggles!"
"Barney!"
"Wiggles"
A great wailing and gnashing of teeth commences. In the back, the kids are also upset as they ads roll on.
"Wait - where'd Barney go?"
"Look, it's Blue's Clues. I want to watch Blue's Clues."
"No, where'd Barney go? AAAAaaaahhhhhh!"
I've had good luck with Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer videos letting you get right to the content, but that's the exception, not the norm...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Um, no, that's not voting with your dollars, that's taking someones work without their permission. Voting with your dollars is supporting theatres that don't bury you in ads, supporting things such as the Indepedent Film Channel (or whatever it's called - I don't have TV so I'm not sure what it's called these days).
Don't pretend you're on some kind of moral high ground. Ghandi didn't take British salt, he made his own.
And the movie industry wonders why movie theaters aren't performing well.
Take the family of four(I live in a cheap area): Tickets: $18 (two adults @$5, two kids @$4)
Popcorn&Soda: $20 (easy, for four drinks & two large popcorns).
Total: $38
At home:
Buy DVD: $20
Popcorn: $1-4 (air popped/butter or microwave)
Soda: $2-3 (couple two-liters)
Total: $27, and you get to keep the movie.
If you rent: ~$10-12?
I don't read AC A human right
My concerns lie with the enforcement of overly-restrictive legislation It is my belief that I have the freedom to do as I please with my digital data, so long as I do not attempt personal financial gain from someone else's work.
Surely everyone can agree that downloading a DVD rip of, say, Shrek 2 and selling copies of it on ebay for "cheEp" is horrendously immoral and wrong. In line with that, no one would rightly complain about copyright legislation that prevents such scenarios *through civil remedies, not criminal!*
I see no reasonable argument for preventing my from copying CDs/DVDs/etc for my own personal uses (whatever those might be - stripping off forced commercials, the stupid FBI warning, editing out graphical sex scenes, etc).
Further, I see no reason why I should be prevented from obtaining a work online that is not available through other means (old roms, old movies, etc), especially if I already own a copy in another format already.
I think we all agree that "w00, free movies!" is not the point. Today's reality has brought us criminal punishments for civil crimes, the inability to legally watch movies in Linux, inability to legally even talk about bypassing encryption schemes, and other ridiculous craziness with the DMCA that frankly pisses me off.
The *AA's have made themselves representatives of all of the least-sensible aspects of current copyright legislations, and so it's not surprise that people hate them. If the legislation made sense, and we didn't have to worry that we might face criminal charges or ridiculously huge fines for doing something that used to be Fair Use - well, that'd be nice, wouldn't it?
-ZOD-
When I was at the Return of the King midnight showing:
Poor underpaid stagehand: Please don't download movies off the internet Someone in audience: Did anyone get that on video? Someone else: Yeah, I'll put it on Kazaa when I get home.
That was a rowdy crowd that night.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
[Paul Anka]
To stop those monsters 1-2-3
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
[Lisa]
Guarantee void in Tennessee!
[All]
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
www.es5.com
They are based in palestine which REALLY PISSES off Hollywood. They hate the jews.
Absolutely and unequivocally. Anyone - *anyone* - can go to school, amass a certain amount of technical knowledge, and become a perfectly serviceable doctor or teacher or what have you. Yes, it's a long, hard road to get there, and I don't mean to diminish the contributions that doctors and teachers make, but there's really no barrier to getting there other than "do they know the material?" Can you take a test to be an actor? Where do you go to apply for a position as a matinee idol? At any point in an actor's life there are dozens of people who can instantly end their job that day (or that week, or their career as a whole) because of a reason no more substantial than "I don't like his eyebrows" or "her tits are too small." If Miss Bliss' first-grade class turns out to be a bunch of simpletons and half of them fail then Miss Bliss won't find herself blackballed from the entire teaching industry for life, but do you think Halle Berry will get the same break after "Catwoman?" You can coast on your past record for a while in Hollywood, but eventually it all comes down to putting asses in seats. If you're not a box-office draw then you don't work - period. Now how many of you can name *horrible* teachers that you had who just keep going year after year because of tenure? Or doctors who are heartless, arrogant assholes who keep working because they can get the job done? Yeah, there are terrible actors (and writers and producers...) who keep bringing in an enormous paycheck, but can you name one who's been doing it for more than a few years? Sharon Stone? Stallone?
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the day 20 million people will spend their weeknight in front of the TV watching Polly Perky teach algebra, *then* I'll believe that Tom Cruise (or Barry Bonds) is overpaid.
That is a beautiful sentiment. I completely agree. This isn't much but a "me too" post but I think your premise can extend to every area of your life.
I kind of realize how much help and enjoyment I gather from the internet and all of it's multitudes. So I decided I needed to start writing down my own knowledge (in my case, running, computers, books, etc.) to sort of give back.
I would gladly pay more for all the information I find on the net than the I would for the latest movie.
And yet the information is freely given while the 2 hours of enertainment sold by hollywood continues to go up in price.
Even the law refers to the act under discussion as "copying" rather than "stealing" for a reason--so it would be conducive to the discussion if you would stick to the more accurate terms already in use
This would be a whole lot more interesting if I'd used a word such as "steal" anywhere in my message.
the loaded terms that a small group of corporations are attempting to push into use
Actually, the majority of my music industry clients are small independent groups who are either completely independent or on small, specialized labels such as Sugar Hill. And they tend to use words such as "steal" and "pirate" to describe those that make unauthorized copies of music. Some of them choose to make their entire catalogs available for anyone to download, copy, or share. Some do select songs, and some don't want anything they do copied. That's their choice. But they're certainly not getting rich or part of any giant media corporation.
show me one moral code in all of recorded history that even took a stance on this intellectual fraud known as "intellectual property".
How about the golden rule, which you'll find in most major religions in one phrasing or the other?
If you want to look at recorded history as your guide of how humans should behave, you'll see that generally we've been rather poor in our treatment to each other and that someone powerful has kept other people in abject poverty in order that they might benefit. There are problems now, but I'd certainly rather be alive now than 500, 1000, or 2000 years ago.
Most of the composers that are now considered great from years past lived on the whim of rich patrons. Mozart died in abject poverty. Is that the standard you'd like to return to, that great artists have to choose between finding some rich person to kiss up to, die young and pennyless, or give up their dream of creating great works and work a day job?
Next, there isn't much of a history on the concept of intellectual property because technology has been enough of a limiting factor until recently that it's not been a major factor in lives. Most people's jobs consisted of dealing with physical objects and most methods of duplicating text, books, etc. were so prohibitively difficult, lossy, or expensive that there was little incentive to do so.
A very large portion of this country's economy is now based on non-physical objects, including your work, from the look of it. There's no actual difference in the bits that make up a wave file to your documents that hold your database analysis to your ruby programs - it's all just a string of 1s and 0s. The difference between what puts food on musicians' tables and your table is that virtually no one cares about what you produce (this isn't a judgement on your work, just saying that it's only meaningful to your clients) whereas music is appealing to a [comparatively] wide number of people. Lucky you. It's easy to cast slings and arrows at others when you have nothing to loose, isn't it?
You proudly support the FSF and even have a few bits of code posted under what I'm guessing is the GPL, but the GPL is just another form of intellectual property, albeit a very liberal one. If you view intellectual property as a "fraud," you should support placing all code completely in the public domain without any restriction, right? Think your clients would object to adding that clause to your contract?
The spread of large digital media and bandwidth have also changed the game. As a teenager, taped copies of music were passed around by my friends, but no one viewed them as a long term thing - they didn't sound great, they degraded over time, and they weren't convenient when you wanted to hear the 4th song on them. And importantly, each copy took a fairly good amount of time to create and the copies were given to a very select few. MP3s have changed all of that. (They don't sound great to me, but I'm pickier than most.)
Because without the act n
Strange situation, when you consider how these guys are so famous for "caring" about the less fortunate, and so infamous for demeaning the "greed" of OTHER industries.
But just consider this: How irreplacable are the extras in those fast food commercials? How about the boom operators or the production assistants on those movie sets? Have you ever witnessed a Hollywood set in action? Can you believe the number of people who are, half the time, doing essentially nothing?
And no, it's not necessarily because the work they do requires the most unique skills.
If the culture of Hollywood weren't so fundamentally wasteful and profuse, more movies would get made, more people would get hired, and consumers overall would have more venues to enjoy a more robust selection of movies. Hell, just take a silly union like SAG out of the picture, and we'd see a difference overnight.
The central problem here, from Hollywood's point of view, is that the instantaneous "what you want, when you want" free market environment of the Web is intrinsically antagonistic to their culture. After all how many Hollywood productions would survive in a free market environment like the Internet? Far fewer than what we see today. I can guarantee that.
Hollywood isn't interested in free markets or anything similar. They want to continue producing as little as possible for as much money as possible. And the nature of the Internet threatens them at the most fundamental level.
If they have to sell the public and/or the governments a bill of goods like "Piracy is harming artists at all levels" or whatever, they will do so. If they have to sue everybody and their mother throughout the world, they'll do that, too. They'll do anything OTHER THAN adjust to the new environment.
Which is another way of saying that Hollywood's days could be numbered. Hollywood could easily become a shell of itself in a few generations if they don't wake up.
Which would suit me just fine. =)
Actually, with the morons running some of these theaters nowadays, it isn't that hard to beat the sound and video quality of a theater. The sound is the worst, with bass cracking , tweeters screeching, mid ranges washed out, and their respective volumes all inconsistent. If you properly analyze a room in your house, setup the speakers accordingly, and then fine tune them, you'll have a 10x better experience. And what is more, you can add in an infinite baffle (IB) subwoofer system for the same price as a good quality box sub and you will hear bass like you've never heard before (if you have an attic or similar). As far as the video, half the time the screen hasn't been cleaned in ages (simply because it doesn't need to be done every day or week, so the theaters don't think about it much) and you end up with gradients of clarity all over the place. On a freshly cleaned or new screen, a properly calibrated picture will jump off the screen at you. Picture quality can be kinda bad sometimes as well ... at the very worst some parts of the picture may even be out of focus!
And that's just the technical details. You also have all of these dumbasses talking on their phones and letting their kids run around screaming like apes. Take control of your freaking brats you negligent morons. And the floor is sticky, and the seats are ANYTHING but comfortable. And if you don't get there early enough to get the sweet spot, then you'll be watching the whole movie with your head tilted up or to the side 45 degrees.
Yeh, home theater is the way to go. For about $1k you can have a pretty nice setup with a projector, few speakers, screen, and you'll have a blast with it every weekend - parties with friends over, etc. Sure, if you're struggling don't get one, but then why spend money at the theater anyhow? If you've got a steady job with a decent income, it's pretty easy to set aside $1k over the course of a year to invest in a theater system.
If acting required that much talent, there would be no room for nepotism in hiring practices, yet Hollywood, mainstream music, and politics are filled with it. For comparison, there is absolutely no nepotism in sports, because there is such strict competition on talent that selection by any other means would mean sacrificing talent. In Hollywood there is an abundance of talent. Tom Cruise is expensive because he's popular, but hundreds of people could have taken his place and become just as popular. They didn't, so they're not expensive, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter. Fame is something of a natural monopoly, that's all.