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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.
It actually disturbs me deeply that someone in the U.S. Justice Department is admitting casually that the war on drugs is useless and a waste of lives and money.
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?
Please, no moralising about whether copying movies is right or wrong. 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.
What *IS* wrong is the methods the MPAA will use against people who copy movies. Watch them chew up the courts redefining what is right and wrong
Most of the WaReZ and films released by these groups include details about what they need, how to get recruited, etc.
/good old days
I always liked the ANSI art associated with warez group BBSes back in the 1980s and early 90s.
MMMMmm Renegade BBS all hex edited up and looking perty.
...for all that stuff that is online. Now this is reporting!
what is the motivation for the alluded to 'top' level, something about buying a 15k camera for prestige of having an illegal copy first sounds like utter bullshit.
everything in this article about what motivates people to this depth seems wrong, except for MAYBE the high school kid, who does it for access to better sites..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
...and they finally get around to reading the .nfo. I guess they had been too busy wielding their prowess at layout.
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
Copying is bad. Someone call the FBI... :p
I had a roommate in college in the late 80's who reminds me of all these pirates. He was into cracking software, not so much to enjoy the software, as to prove he could do it. I'd guess he's probably one of those guys doing this today.
(His "crowning" achievement at the time was cracking a particular game in which the code was stored encrypted, then once loaded from disk, decrypted before running - basic self-modifying code. He dug around the assembly code and figured out how to copy the decrypted code back to disk, and disabled the decryption routines, so the disk only contained the real runtime code. This proves if it can be protected, it can be cracked...)
Also, I had a relative (now deceased, but not from anything the RIAA did... *grin*) who was into downloading these cracked films. When we were going thru the estate and cleaning his house, we found around a hundred CDs burned with copies of all kinds of current films. I looked at a couple and was shocked at how bad they were. I don't think he ever watched more than a few - he was a compulsive collector (like his hundreds of Elvis CDs) and just had to have them, not watch them. He never would have spent money on them.
So it seems to me that the danger from these guys is incidental to Hollywood. I can't see that they're really losing that much money from these pirates. It's about bragging rights, not enjoying the movies.
Now, this doesn't condone the practice. I still consider it to be theft (no, this isn't flamebait), since someone ends up losing money at some level whenever someone else doesn't pay appropriately to view a movie or listen to a CD legally. Depriving someone of legally due money is theft, no matter whether it's property that is removed or information that is copied.
But in the end, I suspect that the monetary damages due to this copying are less than the net costs to Hollywood from aggravated and disenfranchised consumers.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I know that media news about technical issues are rarely accurate, but this article's mistakes are a little bit exagerating, I think... "Unlike popular file-swapping networks where millions of files -- mostly for music -- are shared relatively easily, it takes more than a casual effort to even begin to find the right place to download a movie." -- what? "Typically, large movie files are broken down into text that appears to the naked eye as gibberish. Files are distributed through news groups or made available through so-called top sites or private computer servers accessed by File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, an early conduit for exchanging data on the Internet." -- half-right... There are other examples, and if one cares to think about it, many of the stupid statements (like the second one I've shown) only happen because they try to explain things too much. Who cares how the movie files are "broken"?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Oh come on! It's also just a freaking hobby man. How many of the new people in the media industry today got there thanks to learning to computer copy tv shows and edit out commercials of their favorite ones and so on? Probably every single one of them! Maybe I'm completely naive but what I used to d/load was Enterprise and the last season of Roswell because my cable company (Warner/AOL) doesn't have UPN! I d/loaded the occassional movie but they were always cheaply made, didn't keep me from seeing it in the theatre or dvd rental still and were just cool to see as a hobby especially when you see those asian language subtitles and stuff and occassional munching of the cameramans popcorn it was funny. I'm also convinced that some of them were intentionally distributed on the net by the production company as free advertising to generate hype for it. I dunno know, maybe I'm a rare case but I was at the movies yesterday and it was packed, not a seat left in the house so I don't see a dent in the movie business due to file sharing at all. If anything there profits are UP especially when you consider they make us sit through freaking commercials now instead of the good ole fashioned cartoon before the movies like the old days and yet our ticket prices keep going up. But as usual the media industry will fight new technology instead of grasping it and using it to their advantage.
Personally, I feel the central point of the entire article (beyond the obvious revealing of the inner-workings of the scene,) was to reveal the POWER of the scene, and its distribution system. Specifically, near the end of the article, the article mentions a company named "JunGroup" that distributed MP3s over P2P, IRC, and FTPs to promote products. Now that consumers actually understand the basics of The Scene, they can begin to accept untraditional business models that utilize the piracy avenues for legitimate distribution. If you look at the JunGroup site, they have a link to their "The Scene" TV series, a TV series about the inner-workings piracy from a desktop perspective, revealing (graphically) the majority of scene practices (both good and bad.)
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 ...
We know from experience that nearly EVERY story in this months issue will eventually be a Slashdot article. Why don't we save time by posting a default wired link at the beginning of each month, instead of slowly trickling out one story each day?
And how, exactly, do you propose to keep any sort of reasonable industry afloat if said industry is required to make its products free? Are YOU willing to work for free, living off entirely random donations? I'll bet whoever employs you would LOVE IT if you were required by law to make your services free of charge and the only loophole they had to jump through was to figure out a way to balance the books such that it's impossible to show how your services contributed to the bottom line (a trivial task for professional number-crunchers, at best).
Idiots. It just never occurs to you pea-brains that regardless of who winds up producing content, whether it's a huge conglomerate like the *AAs or an individual artist, somebody at some point in time is going to have to pay for that production, and they're not going to want to do it for free. More importantly, it just never occurs to you that people don't WANT to see traveling musicians like in the 'olden days'. They want polished, professionally mangled music and movies which is why they keep buying the goddamn things.
Get the hell over yourselves you content-stealing jackasses. The majority of people would scream bloody murder if the professional content industries crumbled, and that's exactly what would happen if your communist "utopia" were allowed to happen.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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.
RIAA/MPAA would be so happy to shut down P2P... they probably wouldn't go after any newsgroups or IRC rooms.
There are a lot of similarities with the drug war ...
Except illegal drug distribution is linear, file sharing is exponential. Big difference.
The only similarity is that law enforcement agencies enjoy spending large amounts of tax payers money on campaigns that never end. It's fun!
/me wonders where the "war on spyware" is... now that'd actually be a useful way to spend $$$.
But the drugs business is number 3 in the world after oil and arms, and the "war" on drugs is mainly about protecting what has become a very lucrative taxation system.
Whereas drugs destroy entire cultures, the worst that movie piracy will do is close down the video stores. Cinemas will continue to flourish.
Still, the guys in the USJD love a fight and a new budget. Roll it on!
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
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.
Whoever wrote this technically inaccurate and morally juvenile article was surely interested in creating hysteria over nothing. For starters, IRC was not a precursor to USENET.
Referring to file traders as "gangs" and thereby evoking the aversion to violence in one's own neighborhood, is unwarrantedly hysterical when applied to people using computers and watching movies.
The sad part is, Hollywood's surrogates such as this article's author will likely succeed in creating this kind of unwarranted hysteria. It's all a part of your unnatural conditioning.
A more balanced article would have given coverage to the debate over whether anything is actually "stolen" during the process of noninvasive duplication... and whether the artificial concept of "intellectual property" has a basis in any reality other than commerce.
When commerce is not involved (i.e. copying for free, when one would not have ever paid for it anyway) it is difficult to understand how the owner of this "intellectual property" has somehow been deprived of anything whatsoever.
Yes, the duplicator also gains something for his efforts, but this is the inherent nature of information itself. It is something fundamentallly nonmaterial, which lends itself naturally to replication. Value can be multiplied, and for free.
The very term "intellectual property" therefore contains a contradiction.
Though it is possible to keep secrets, ultimately nobody can truly "own" information.
If I memorize a song I hear on the radio, and later sing it with a friend while driving, have I somehow "stolen" this song? I'm not even pretending to have written the song; I'm simply repeating it for pure enjoyment. That is an innocent act. I'm sure that similarly, movie traders all have the dignity to leave a film's credits intact.
If you really believe that duplication constitutes stealing, then whenever the owner of the song I was just humming finds out it is missing, they should try to file a police report on the missing information, and see how far THAT gets them.
Oh wait... nothing is missing? Well then!
Interestingly, the entire modus operandi cited in the Wired article falls apart in the case of BitTorrent. The article admits the same thing too. However, the article claims that:-
"Without this duplication and distribution structure providing content, the P2P networks would run dry. (BitTorrent, a faster and more efficient type of P2P file-sharing, is an exception. But at present there are far fewer BitTorrent users.)"
Huh? When was this article written? In Jan 2005, when this article was posted, they don't consider BitTorrent a major P2P player?
Members of these so-called ripping groups, also known as warez groups, have created a community referred to as "the scene." It exists primarily on the Internet's back alleys -- private Internet Relay Chat, or IRC
"There are a lot of similarities with the drug war," said David Israelite, chairman of the U.S. Justice Department's Intellectual Property Task Force. "You never really are going to eliminate the problem, but what you hope to do is stop its growth." I'm not sure wheather to laugh or cry. Remember kids, dont copy that floppy.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
...where prisons are commercial institutions, a lowering of crimerate is not economical.
Think about that for a while...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
The only thing which I really need fixed for movies is to reduce the amount of commercials before the show starts and (although I know it's really not feasible) some way of allowing me to watch at my own convenience rather than picking from a small set of times which don't start until well after work is over and largely conflict with other things I have to do during the day. *wry grin* Again, the amount of commercials is a factor. Theoretically, I can watch a 2-hour movie (when you can find one that long anymore) starting at 4:45 and still get to 7:00 play practice. Then the previews start, followed by commercials, followed by more previews. I know many people who don't even bother showing up for movies until 10 minutes in because they know the movie won't start until then. It says something that The Passion of Christ actually had to advertise that there were no previews or commercials before the movie. (Which was nice, particularly as this was one of the longer films)
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Here it is: http://www.examiner.com/article/index.cfm/i/102904 b_spyware
*power drill whirring* I'm afraid it's going to have to come out. All of it.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If what the wired guys say isn't true, at least it's completely logical. Now if you say that the wired article is a lie, can you tell me when and how did they lie? Can you give us the facts if you know so much?
Oh, by the way. You're planning to discredit a Wired Article by signing as "anonymous coward"? Yeah, right.
Agreed. Now, let's talk about *real* theft - let's look at how much is taken from society as a whole by the incessant extensions of copyright terms, and the now-accepted Congressional opinion that copyright holders and their heirs should profit from their creations in perpetuity instead of returning them to their legal owner, society in general. The ??AA members have managed to buy themselves legislation that flies directly in the face of the design of the copyright system as defined in the Constitution, and then have the nads to bitch and whine that the public is stealing from them? Puh-leeze. What really galls me is that a lot of the MPAA members are simply recycling content that was already in the public domain, and thus they're playing the copyright card from both sides of the table. You never see this aspect of the copyright situation discussed in these articles, and the annoying painter and stuntman that we all get subjected to in the theaters sure as hell aren't talking about it.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
sounds to me like those who pay for their tickets, buy the DVDs, are being bled by the leeches who get their movies free.
lol :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
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.
The back alleys of internet. PRIVATE IRC network. ITS DANGEROUS THERE!
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
I agree with you, but I also have another perspective.
The whole bulk of piracy done in here is not DVD bootlegs, or even ripped online stuff. It's cheap VCD's recoded versions of the movies, available for $5. Some are even recorded at the theaters (you can see the shadows of people walking).
Frankly, how many people download ripped & divx-encoded versions of a movie, if they can just purchase the thing (either legally or illegally) and put it on their DVD or VCD player? (cheap chinese VCD players are sold at local markets, too - and I DONT mean supermarkets, but common cheap markets with low-profile merchants).
Taking into account that nerds who spent hours in front of the monitor, are a minority of the global population, the MPAA shouldn't worry about online distribution of the movies. The "complete DVD ISO" downloads usually take _HOURS_ to download. Who will download 4.5 or even 8 gigs of a ripped DVD? come on! IMHO it's much more convenient to go to the store and purchase the thing. I can purchase Shrek 2 at my local walmart for $21.95, and a VCD rip for $5.00 with the merchants near the subway.
(A very different thing is legally purchasing anime episodes with prohibitive prices, specially if you don't live in the US).
Maybe what the MPAA fears is that the next generation of DVD players will be DivX enabled. But I bet it won't be until 5 years when these babies get mass marketed, and only THEN common people will start downloading divx rips of their favorite movies.
So, if purchasing the actual DVD from a local retailer (or a copy from a black market merchant) is much easier than movie piracy, what the heck are the MPAA complaining about? Are online groups REALLY the ones they should be going after?
Now *THAT* (blaming income loss on online piracy) is what I call a "load of bullshit".
personal use is limited by the amount of content any one person can watch while still doing things like sleeping, eating, working, studying, etc...
if an individual watches more than one "copied for personal use" movie; listens to more than one "copied for personal use" CD; etc, then the impact to any one particular artist/studio/prouducer, etc... is reduced even further. If an individual downloads something but never listens to it or watches it, as is a fairly common practice, or deletes without ever watching or listenting it, I would like to see someone explain how anyone had an injustice committed against them -- an explanation involving something other than wordplay and dictionary definitions from some imaginary dictionary.
One could argue about the effects of personal copying in aggregate; adding up everyone who is doing it - but that too, is limited by the popularity of the movie. The more popular the movie, the more "copying for personal use" there is going to be, so the percentages for any types of real or potential loss should remain approximately the same regardless of the popularity of the movie.
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.
Doesn't HURT anyone? How do you figure that? Nobody is killed or maimed? For the sake of argument, say that EVERYBODY downloads digital copies of a movie at no monetary cost. I'm not convinced there is no harm done. You give absolutely NO argument supporting your conclusion. Where would the money come from to pay the actors and writers? Do you expect the manufacturers of camera, sound and lighting equipment to volunteer their time and materials toward the noble cause of completing the next great Star Wars movie?
I'm not saying that I agree with MPAA's stand--I think the traditional distribution and marketing system is antiquated and obsolete, and that studios and A-list actors make an obscene amount of money. I also think that using judicial and legislative means to force consumers into dealing with this antiquated system is immoral and short-sighted. However, protection of creative works is essential and the authors of these works MUST have the right to be compensated and/or recognised for their efforts--so long as it is FAIR AND REASONABLE (today, it isn't going in that direction unfortunately)
Lets carry your argument further--I'd say by making your statement you support SCO's attack on Linux:
* Digital copies of both the source and executables of Linux are out there and we can get them free (this is in fact encouraged)--we cannot stop SCO from doing that.
* SCO and their ilk can do whatever they want with these files and we can't actually STOP them Copyright be dammed--let's ignore it (and the GNU terms of that copyright) and use it as we please (distrubute binaries without source, try to claim the source as our own--we did spend preciouis hours downloading it after all)
* Those nice people at SCO aren't actually HURTING anyone, right? Not Linus Torvalds, not the FSF, not the thousands of coders out there, not the distro packagers.
Sorry, that doesn't fly with me. It IS wrong to ignore the terms of copyright. If you cannot live with the terms set by the copyright holder then JUST SUCK IT UP AND DON'T WATCH THE DAMN MOVIE. People should be allowed to control their own works--but on the flip-side they shouldn't be protected from the consequences as the MPAA and RIAA would like. Even Free Software depends on reasonable, equitable copyright law in order to exist and flourish.
"What really galls me is that a lot of the MPAA members are simply recycling content that was already in the public domain, and thus they're playing the copyright card from both sides of the table."
You can do the same thing too. You can adapt your favorite Grimm brothers fairy tale into a movie, a Flash animation, an RPG or adventure game, or you can write a poem, short story or even a novel based on it. And then, after you have expended this effort, you can distribute your work any way you choose. If you think it's good enough, you can even ask to be paid for it.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
How about the real issue here. The value proposition. This is consumers saying that paying $13.95CDN (or $9USD on AMC's web site) for a movie isn't kosher. This is consumers saying that paying $20+ for a DVD isn't worth it.
Movies are repetative and much worse than they ever were. I never find myself leaving so dissatisfied so often from so many movies out there.
Stop wasting money fighting this process, realize that just because you made money at the expense of consumers in the past does not mean that you should for the rest of time, and lower prices.
By the time a family of four (2 kids, 2 parents) gets their tickets, drinks, and popcorn, you're already up at $75-$100 for an evening of entertainment... What costs that much? I can go to a hockey game for less- and that's a product put on live!
Lower prices, and people will go. All this started when the $4-$8CDN movie prices disappeared and magically became $10.50, $12.95, $13.95, etc.
I'm not saying it's right to copy music/movies/software ($800+ for Office? $250 for windows? What is Adobe software nowdays?), but I'm saying that price really is the driving factor. Getting a group of 10 friends at someone's house with cheap popcorn and a free movie means you save 150-200 collectively... That's a lot of cash that could be spent elsewhere.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
I think I had a point there. It might have been that I, as a consumer, was prepared to spend good money on this movie (see it twice = $18.00, DVD=$25.00), but Hollywood's obsession with control meant that I could only buy one ticket, and I had to wait around for the DVD. There was a small chance I would have settled for the cam rip, if it had been better quality, and then there's more lost money.
It would be interesting to see the studios release films on DVD right after the theatrical run finishes, but then they would bitch and moan about "nobody watches the movie because they're just waiting for the DVD." They won't be satisfied until they can erase our memory of the movie when the closing credits roll, and charge us for each viewing.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I take it then that you feel non-violent robbery shouldn't be punished by the government? If someone breaks into your house and cleans it out without hurting or threatening anybody, the onus should be entirely on you to locate and sue the perpetrator, correct?
And, before you use the bizarre "copyright infringement isn't stealing" justification to look like less of an imbecile, the point here is that both result in a value loss on the part of the victim. I fail to see how the method of the loss is relevant when the ultimate effect is the same (loss in value of the victim), as is the intent (gain in value of the perpetrator).
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Maybe if they sell you the ticket "and for an extra $15 get the DVD!" it would be a heck-of-a deal. And the DVD would be a "special limited edition" with autograph or something, and the later DVD's would be "normal". Yeah, that'd be cool :)
what is the reason people make personal multi-thousand dollar investments to do this?
1 Because they are low-life/no-life people who choose movie piracy as a hobby. I know hardcore raver types who fill gigs of drive space with songs of all types--even like Partridge Family and Neil Diamond--"just because". It isn't really revenue lost because they would never buy that stuff and they are lucky if they've heard some songs even once. I don't get it, but to each his own I guess.
2 Because the MPAA's antiquated, greed-driven distribution system restricts distribution (no world-wide releases, etc etc. Some people want to see a completed movie before the general public in their locale can. In some cases, a movie might never reach some places at all. Same with TV and music (cable company monopoly won't carry station X with show Y so I can only get it with BitTorrent). Piracy fills the vacuum MPAA and RIAA are to dense and short-sighted to fill themselves. Rather than try to shut down pirates they should embrace their methods and fight fire with fire. Apple proved there is a market in the music space with the iPod now MPAA should consider this a fire lit under thier asses.
3 Donating $15k can get you access to top-level sites and thousands of movies, shows and songs so it is probably a $1 or less per file--still cheaper than retail by a wide margin. What would a single person do with more content than they could watch in a lifetime? See reason 1.
4 Psychololgical reasons. At the top level, some of the players exhibit obsessive-compulsive and other abnormal behaviour. Left untreated, people with OCD will spend hours of time and in some cases even thousands of dollars or lose their jobs because of their compulsions. If it's out there they NEED to have it. Some crave attention to the point of phychological disorder. Some parents make their kids sick purposely to draw attention to themselves--perhaps some pirates satisfy that sort of craving for attention through the credit they get for a good movie rip seen by thousands.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but the motives and methods behind this kind of theft are obviously more complicated simple shoplifting, so the solution is going to have to be less dense and simplistic than the MPAA is embarking on now.
If tens of thousands of people were using bootleg copies of this game before it's official release, then it wasn't the 'pirates' who were at fault, it's the software developers.
Here is a situation where thousands of people would have paid some money for copy of the product while it was still in development.
The software publishers should have identified this market and sold to them a copy of the game in its pre-release under-development state. That way they would have been able to actually sell the game (at a reduced price) multiple times over the course of its development and received valuable feedback from its most committed and enthusiastic fan base during the development of the final product.
Instead the game developers ended up receiving next to nothing from the thousands of people who actual took the time and effort to track down a copy of the product while under development.
Software Games are not movies! Until software companies realize this important difference then they will continue to lose money. Not due to 'piracy', but to missed marketing opportunities resulting from their refusal to understand exactly what their best customers want and are willing to pay for.
"Our local "Cinema Saver" (that is the actual name they operate under) gets all the new releases about two or three weeks after they hit the mainstream theaters."
Most of these get the print they run from a 1st run house that has had it in heavy rotation for those 2-3 weeks. They range from slightly scratched to almost unwatchable. Add to that the typically poorly set up projectors, poor sound systems, etc and you no longer have a reason to see LOTR in all its glory and may as well wait for the DVD.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Squatchman wrote...
>>making it available to thousands(millions?) of users at once.
Blaming a small underground group is crazy... you know who is a blatant violator of providing copywrited material, books, music CD, and DVD's to millions of people everyday? Your public library...
Maybe the RIAA and MPAA should shut them down.
Instead of raising your voice, try strengthening your argument.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
/ v1ch16s25.html
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.
----------------
Sorry folks, this is my canned response on this topic. Because yes, some of us really do not "get it." Thomas Jefferson is the man you are quoting, and you clearly do not understand the kinds of radical limits he placed upon IP rights. And right, the intent of the person quoted is of no consequence...
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.
It's not my fault those things exist.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Apparantly "Frank" as interviewed in the article is not a Matine member, see here.
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.
What are you talking about? Smoking a little too much weed lately? From the most fundamental rules that govern a CIVIL group of individuals, you are taking something that DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU, you are GIVING IT TO OTHER PEOPLE (most likely against the wishes of its owners), and you are DEPRIVING ITS OWNERS the right to do with it as THEY see fit. The MPAA has a right to use whatever (legal) means necessary to pursue people that steal its property.
If you don't like the idea that a movie is property, maybe someone else won't like the idea that your car is property.
from the no shit cat today water is wet and the sky is blue
This article had just enough in it to get the "Media" interested. Which means fear-mongering and incorrect information passed down to people who dont know any better. And then the Net 2 can finially be made.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Movie theaters have become unbelievably abusive. They show commercials. They have extremely poor quality refreshments at very high prices. Any loss from a few people pirating movies is far, far less than the loss from abusing customers.
Online piracy?
Peer to Peer file sharing networks?
:-)
None of these.
It was a first generation copy from a DVD master at an official movie distributor. Made by a permanent employee, with no payments, etc. I am told he/she was just "doing a favour". Lord knows how many copies were made! We just borrowed the disk, and gave it back.
If Hollywood cannot get their own houses in order, then I really do not see how they can reasonably point the finger at anyone else. Personally, I would not stop at Hollywood, but would include the RIAA also.
For what it is worth, I will now buy a copy (when it is officialy released), since the kids (and I) thought it was so good
"Why prop up the middle man when he's no longer nessecary?"
Good question. Why DO artists keep propping up a middleman that's sooooo unnecssary. Why DO consumers keep propping up a middleman that's soooo unnecessary?
More importantly, perhaps, is this: if people really want what you say, how does it matter if the RIAA or MPAA enforce their rights on their content NOW?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
You may not believe this, but black people go to the movie theater to watch the movie, just like white people do. I know they're all scary-looking, but you'll get used to it, I promise.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
A question:
Netflix are in the business of renting DVD's, so why would they be ripping and storing movies on a server?
Yes, I've noticed this.
For example, a first-time novelist may, in a good year, sell a few hundred copies of a great first novel. But a good review in a journal read by librarians will cause sales to the libraries to reach thousands. If the libraries are buying the majority of the copies, then it doesn't matter how many people read the book at the library 'for free'. Book publishers and librarians have had this symbionic relationship since Ben Franklin opened his first public library before the American Revolution.
The RIAA and MPAA is made up from a different class of people than the book readers and publishers. They tend to be meaner, sleazier, and far more short-sighted and narrow-minded. The RIAA/MPAA are the kind of people who would demand that the libraries of the world buy multiple copies of music and DVD disks at inflated prices and then pass laws forcing them to be removed from the shelves of the libraries. They would do this as 'fair compensation' to themselves in response for the libraries unwillingness to conform to the new standard of 'one person, one view, one full payment, forever' that they feel that they are owed by the public.
I really don't think that we should underestimate how sleazy and greedy the RIAA/MPAA people really are. That way we'll never be surprised by what they do; and we'll be able to predict what they will do in any given new situation.
The RIAA/MPAA is not MicroSoft, where the corporate tone is set by a character defects in its charismatic leadership. It's a true sleazy and greedy mentality that has always been and continues to be at the heart and soul of the entertainment industry. Just because they consolidated into five single global corporations doesn't mean they developed a sense of global noblesse oblige.
Except what are the hard drugs? Deaths in 2002: Tobacco 400,000 Alcohol 100,000 All illicit drugs combined 20,000 Alcohol and tobacco are the most dangerous, which is why they are legal. The dangerous ones are the ones people want to abuse most, which therefore have the largest constituencies, and therefore immune from banning.
These continual discussions posted under "your rights online" need to be moved to a new topic of their own. I mean, what does this have to do with rights? since when does infringing upon someone elses product become a right? Since when has freely ditributing someone elses product without their permission or become a right?
... In addition, I agree that all those fatcat movie producers are more-than-likely scum and make too much money, along with those over-paid actors/actresses. I guess if money is your problem, then either boycott the movies, or become and actor/actress or producer.
I suspect that this term right is being used/misused very loosly, see Websters' definition:
" something to which one has a just claim: as a : the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled b (1) : the interest that one has in a piece of "
I don't see how walking into a movie theatre, paying the money to view the movie, recording the movie, and distributing it to all who want to participate in thievery to download it constitute any type of right. Right?
"something to which one has a just claim"
Please explain how anyone other than the people directly involved in the production of a movie apply to the above? Is it because they paid the $8-$10 to see the movie?
I tell you what, if I spent $50M to make a movie and some schmuck with a $500 CamCorder and a broadband Internet connection was caught up in a frenzy of unauthorized movie distribution with a group of his cyber-buddies, I would exercise every power I could to take that group down. Let's face it, computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds, bandwidth is on the upswing as well, eventually, if this was left around and ignored, it could become a problem.
" the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled "
there are way too many people with the sick beleif of entitilement, again, if you paid the price to produce the film in some way, shape or form and you have an agreement with the production company, I would say that their may be some sort of entitlement, and if you are not getting your share, then I suggest you open up the yellow pages because their are piles of lawyers out there that will get the payment you are entitled to.
"the interest that one has in a piece of"
You more than likely did not contribute anything in the line of creativty or monies, you have no intrest therefore you are again, not entitled
"ok, ok, but this should be a matter if civil leagality, not for the government to step in..."
I would suspect then that we would not be talking about rights rather than some breach of contract, or negligence.
just pay the money, if you don't like the movie, then shrug it off, no one owes you anything
Please though, don't hand me the line that any of this is some type of right.
A history of warezing in mp3 format that will educate you youngster the history of warez and consequences there of.
Check it out here. The warez song...ahh...the good old western days of the internet...
The life, liberty, and happiness (= property) quote is T. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence (it actually has a slightly different title in the original). It seems perfectly reasonable to me to mention some other things that T. Jefferson might have said and thought about property rights. Do the words of men like Jefferson not form the basis of our political thought, despite their personal shortcomings? I'd say their words are foundational, but they must also be fully understood.
BTW, I would never quote those religious books you mention because (to paraphrase Thom. Paine) each of those religions "accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." 'Nuff said.
As to the Articles of Confederation, they have been superceded have they not?
Anyway, next time try saying something of substance instead of this stuff that is in the way of an ad hominem attack.
And where did you, anon cow, make your points so well before? I reread the last time I posted my canned reply on Slashdot and read little of value from the opposition there.
Just because 200+ years ago you would have been my bitch-slave and I your owner, doesn't make you right and me therefore automagically wrong.
I honestly believe the idea of intellectual property rights will not survive much longer because ideas are not created in a vacuum. Ideas are an outgrowth of culture and of scoiety as a whole. Very occasionally some one individual seems to make a leap forward, but usually such people are of the precise line of work and of the precise turn of mind that make those seeming leaps possible.
Since this article is dealing with movies produced in the United States, US law is quite relevant here. These are American organizations protecting American companies and their interests. Your own country's laws are perfectly valid within their jurisdictions.
I find this funny because I knew about topsites for awhile. I know of people involved and that they exist but I myself don't have any access. I just communicate with a few of them. They are very careful and these aren't your average hackers or wannabes. These people have been in the game for a long time. You have to have something of value to get access. Writing encryption algorythms from scratch that law enforcement can't crack is one example of something they like to see. They bury themselves quickly and most topsites exist outside the US in places like China. There is a group of them located in California mainly for the purpose of getting the content but once its been stolen its uploaded to locations outside the control of US law enforcement for a very good reason.
No they didn't, but the nfos consistently failed to load into the registry...
This signature available under the Creative Commons
Foreign films in my experience are hit or miss. Spirited Away had an excellent dub job, but Pinocchio was so offsync that it just fell apart; the only line that lined up was "No, Pinocchio," because it's the same in the original Italian.
I can get 1 kg of pure Coke for $1.39 at Walgreens.
In Jan 2005, when this article was posted, they don't consider BitTorrent a major P2P player?
With Suprnova and several other major torrent directories dead, BitTorrent's visibility has in fact taken a hit.
Is "The Netflix Project" affiliated with Netflix (ie aims to rent time limited DRM movie files)
You're thinking of the VOD plans I mentioned.
or a hacking group taking advantage of Netflix's system trying to build up their own collection?
"The Netflix Project" is the name for the warez project aiming to rent and rip every DVD offered by Netflix, which I read about on the third page of the Wired article.