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Online Groups Behind Bulk of Bootleg Films (& Games)
xasper8 writes "First it was the RIAA, now Hollywood is cracking the
legal whip on online piracy." There's a better article about this in the recent issue of Wired that gets more in depth on this. Basically, good background on how file releases get made. <update> Yes, we did have Wired link yesterday as well. My bad.
Aside from what this says about the drug war, which is another post entirely, this pretty much sums it up. People are always going to find ways to get access to movies without paying for them.
In the bad old days it was one person goes into the theater and props open the emergency exit door so all their friends could sneak in. (And this probably still happens.)
These days one person goes into the theater and copies the movie and distributes it in DVD or VCD format so all their friends can watch it from the comfort of their own couches. Which are much nicer than those cramped movie theater seats, don't you think?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
How can you be disturbed by the truth?
War on drugs is a huge waste of money and can never be won. You will not even get close. It would have been much better if they accepted the fact that not all drugs are the same and differentiated between soft and hard drugs. That would ofcourse empty the prisons of a lot of people and make room for the real criminals rather than a potsmoker. But then the statistics would not look good...
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
How is saying "we're trying to keep problem X in check" the same as saying "we're just wasting your money by spending it on problem X"?
That was quite a "logical" leap you made there. Are you superman? Because that was a hell of a chasm to cross to come to the bizarre conclusion you did.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Let me be the one to point out (and point out with my identity shown) that copyright is protected by federal law. I'm not going to talk about right and wrong, but I am going to point out that the monkies out there who have a copy'n'paste "copyright is a civil issue" for every piracy story on /. have no idea what they're copying and pasting about. You may now continue with the rationalizations of your illegal activity already in progress.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
What do you say to the investors that took enormous financial risk in funding the production of the movie you are copying? How are they supposed to recover their cost of production in a world where you are making free copies without their persmission?
Here is some homework for you: Produce a popular new multi million dollar feature film. Allow free copying from day 1. Report back to Slashdot on how you are recovering your production cost.
From the article:
Private Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, which is a precursor to the modern instant messaging software, or Usenet news groups that function like bulletin boards.
I still think of instant messaging software as a dumbed down version of IRC and of webbased bulletin boards as poorly implemented frontends for usenet.
I must be getting old ...
The MPA and the RIAA need to keep things in perspective! The article acknowledges that these 'groups' are hard to gain access to - >>"The scene is a very close network. Everybody knows everybody else but they haven't met them," said Bruce Forest, a Norwalk, Conn., digital media consultant who says he belonged to the scene for years and now advises entertainment companies. "It can take years until you can get access." will loose their jobs and not get paid b/c you are stealing their income" is ridiculous. In an industry that produces a product that can generate $100 million in a matter days - not to mention the amount of money that is generated over the entire run of the film + additional revenue to movie rentals + 'over seas' releases is hardly in jeopardy b/c a hand full of nerds download a few films.
s s
.00001% of total revenue. To put that in perspective, to put that number in dollars and cents... for every ONE MILLION dollars gained the studio lost 10 CENTS!
.0013% of total revenue or $13 dollars for every ONE MILLION dollars gained.
Look at the numbers:
http://us.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegro
Keep in mind these number are just for domestic lease - only in the United States and do not reflect global sales or rentals.
#1 is Titanic - $600,799,824 in domestic sales. Breath taking - now lets say 1000 people download the movie and 'stole' $8 ea. From the studio... the studio 'lost' $8000... that's
Now lets say the article is wrong and these groups are rampant and it's easy to get ahold of these pirated movies and 100,000 people download them (I'm being very generous here)... so now the studio looses $800,000... that's still
Granted Titanic was the #1 movie - look at #100 on the list - you can do the math at home... the number are still unreal...
To further my point in 1999 Michael Eisner was paid $589 MILLION dollars for his annual salary. If the poor set designer is worried about loosing his/her job to internet privacy, maybe they should stop looking online and start looking at the real pirate.
This is nothing more than greed - who is stealing from who here?
Don't even get me started on the RIAA...
Instead of raising your voice, try strengthening your argument.
A leap of logic, yes... but not completely unfounded.
The "war" on drugs has been charactarized as something that was winnable. The cost and the damage to people and society is a reasonable one because someday it won't be needed. Try to remember back to Vietnam (or civics class for the youngins in the audience) and remember when we were stuck in a war where we had no clear conditions for success and no exit strategy or conditions to impliment it in case of failure.
This statement shows an official admitting that there is no clear strategy for success in the "war" on drugs, it is essentially a quagmire where we keep throwing resources at the problem without a net gain. For many this change from a winnable situation to one with no clear resolution would doubtlessly cause their view of the situation to transform from one of useful expenditure to wasted money.
I agree completely. Now if people would realize the "war on terrorism" is not, and that it's a war on muslim-extremists with a vague title allowing the "changing of the enemy" whenever more tax dollars are needed, we'd be off to a good start.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Copying files may be legal sometimes; maybe the guy has permission ,maybe the file represents something more than 80 years old, maybe it's some other kind of 'fair use', maybe it's a file produced by the US Government, etc. Matter of opinion, for a judge to check every time. It is a civil problem; I don't want my tax dollars used to stop it, and I don't want my prisons filled up by someone on the wrong side of this law.
Copying files and then taking money off someone under the false pretence that there is permission is a crime, though, becuase of the 'money' side, and also if intimidation happens along the way. Also might become a tax crime later, if the 'money' is not declared.
Use my tax dollars to stop the money-changing-hands fraud, the intimidation-if-it-happens, and the tax-evasion-if-it-happens.
Unless you are some kind of Christian scientist, I presume you are only refering to recreational drug use. Regardless of whether or not you personally would choose to drink beer, smoke pot, eat magic mushrooms, etc. I don't see what gives you the authoritity to declare them 'inherently bad'. marijuana != heroin. Have you been listening to your politicians again?
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
These digital files of movies released are out there, we can get them free, and it won't be stopped. It's not much use defining something as wrong, because it doesn't actually HURT anyone. Not the studios, not the actors, not the writers.
/. raise if MS started taking parts of the linux kernel and integrating them into windows w/o releasing the changes? It wouldn't actually hurt anyone. In fact you could argue it would help everyone who uses windows.
That's funny. What kind of hell would
You're confusing "mistakes" and "exaggerations" with "complete load of lies". AFAIK, the term "bullshit", and the phrase "load of bullshit" is used for lies, FUD, and similar stuff. Not for "inaccuracies" and "errors".
:P IMHO this article is just a badly-phrased summarization of the longer wired article we saw yesterday (which personally I did enjoy reading).
/. article on that yesterday, didn't we?). If you think ripping a movie from DVD or whatever is EASY, you're completely off track. Rippers see themselves as ARTISTS. They want to achieve perfection: Practically null visual defects while achieving the most compression. They tweak the codec, possibly adding postprocessing filters to get rid of blocking artifacts (due to MPEG2 compression) in the original DVD, etc (I won't talk about anime fansubbers here, but I think the same criteria applies).
Example: Frankly I don't believe the "broken down as gibberish" stuff... if it meant breaking it down as BASE64 posts on usenet
I've done a few reencoding of *unlicensed* (read as: legal) anime episodes (fansubs), just to test the capabilities of Divx and xvid (we saw a
So yes, they're organized. Yes, they meet in private chat sessions. Yes, they do rip dvd's.
Another fact: Pirated DVD's are *obviously* cheaper than original DVD's (otherwise people wouldn't buy them). So I don't think one of these rippers would buy an original - unless it's a title they *love*, and want to immortalize themselves by ripping it and distributing it.
So is the article a "load of bullshit"? I don't think so. Irrelevant? Probably, we all (or at least those of us old enough to have used irc at a time) know such warez invite-only channels do exist.
And yes, I know Wired isn't "news for know-it-all uber-geeks who already know how things are done". It's a good article for common people. Let's not forget that.
But you're aware that the vast majority of drugs are legal? You're saying that all drugs are "inherently bad" and should be eliminated? That anyone who has ever consumed a relatively benign drug like tylenol or marijuana or caffeine has "fucked up" their lives? That if I grow mushrooms in my house and eat them sometimes, I am receiving some sort of financial benefit (how?) and committing a bad act? None of this makes any sense.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
In 2002, I watched a movie nearly every week. They were good for a while, then I noticed that more and more movies really sucked.
In 2003, I tried to watch a movie nearly every week. I was disappointed nearly every week.
In 2004, I watched about three movies in the theater.
The quality of movies took a sudden nosedive in mid-2002 and has never recovered. IMHO, the reason that piracy of movies online hasn't taken off at the same level that it did for movies is that by the time the bandwidth became available to make it practical, there were so few movies worth pirating that it wasn't worth it.
And the lack of originality in movies is starting to become apparent. Hollywood has run out of good movie ideas at this point. The movie I saw last night on the airplane was... well, the same basic idea, the same primary plot twist as another movie I had seen the night before, except that the other movie was from 2002 or so and was actually a good movie. The newer movie was a blatant rip-off in a different setting. Instead of being funny, it was mostly dull. I laughed about four times the entire movie. Thankfully, the flight was three hours late, so they gave us the movie free. I would have been seriously pissed off if I had paid money to see that piece of junk. (Of course, I was seriously pissed off for other rather obvious reasons, but that's another story.)
In any case, to the MPAA, stop trying to blame the public for your ineptitude. It's only going to get worse. The only way to compete with "free" is "good", and if you don't figure that out, your industry is going to collapse. Inept corporations should die, though, so this is a good thing. They will eventually be replaced by corporations that actually understand the needs and desires of the consumer, and all will be well.
Here's hoping the airline industry is similarly permitted to go bankrupt and die. Cheers.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
When I was a kid in the 70s, our prime social activity was going to each others' houses and taping each others' records. When VHS took over in the 80s, everyone shared movies this way too. Nothing has changed.
People who could afford to buy new did so to avoid the hassle, and they do now too. Most grown ups with jobs and other responisbilities don't have the time or inclination to fuck around on Kazaa. It's easier and cheaper to just buy or rent a DVD. Also notice how the $20 CDs sit for months, while the ones in the $7 rack sell like crazy. The problem with first-run music is that it's too aggressively priced.
Copying is mostly done by people who were never going to be customers in the first place, because they don't have the money. But copying reinforces their interest as fans, which the media corps will profit from eventually. A pirated CD today leads to a future concert ticket sale, etc. Even the media corps' own marketing people know this.