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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?
...for all that stuff that is online. Now this is reporting!
...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.)
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.
I agree, no moralizing this. To be blunt, DVD sales are not hurt by piracy, and they have not been proven to do so. Basically, DVD sales are independent of online sales, and there is only a small correlation coefficient between the two variables. Those end-users who were planning on buying the DVD will buy it, and those who download instead were not planning to buy the product in the first place. This puts in place the face of "social darwinism." Those movies that earn the high ratings, successful stories, plots, cinematography, etc, will be bought by the enduser (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, anyone?) In contrast, those movies that bomb (who wants to pay to see Fat Albert?) will 'die off' because they were not fit to compete in the marketplace.
It's fairly simple to realize the reasoning that Hollywood is putting this false emphasis on piracy causing the downfall of their 1.5-5 rating IMDB movies, because scapegoating is extremely easy to do. By pointing the finger at piracy groups online in order to 'save themselves,' they no longer have to have the self-realization that their movies have been dropping in quality while increasing in quantity for years now, with few exceptions.
I am not attempting to convey that piracy is positive, or even legal, trust me. I know the laws state that copying someone elses intellectual property, and spreading it around is illegal when the product is licensed. Yes, I know that. My argument is simply attempting to realize that instead of making an enemy out of this FASCINATING underground, why not befriend it? Use it's amazing power to distribute legal content to all, rather than squashing one of the most powerful (if not the most) distribution systems on the Internet.
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
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
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.
Copyright doesn't exist to make media moguls rich.
If the originals goals of copyright no longer require the creation of media empires, then such empires should crumble from the face of the earth.
The "industry" is ultimately irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They do it because its a hobby. With ANY hobby, once you finish your objective at hand, you feel a great sense of accomplishment. Whether its knitting quilts, coding an open source project, or even pirating movies. The people who do this take pride in the fact that they feel like they are achieving something, that they are actually GOOD at something. As with any hobby, people are willing to spend money on it. I personally enjoy video editing, and I've spent far more on it than I care to admit. My little videos don't really have any actual value, but they sure give me a good feeling on the inside. I'm pretty sure its the same way with these guys.
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.
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".
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.
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.
If a law isn't performing its intended function of providing for the general good of society, but a minority has managed to keep it on the books & enforced for their own personal enrichment, then what should be thrown out first - the rights of the society, or the stupid law?
I'm making my argument in the context of REAL capitalism: "law" of supply & demand. Basically, if you provide a good or service that people desire at a cost that people think is worth it, then people will buy it. If you want people to keep paying you, then you have to keep producing a good or service at a cost they are willing to pay for.
Relying on government enforcement to make people pay you money that they wouldn't be willing to pay you in the context of a fair trade is just greedy.
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.
from the no shit cat today water is wet and the sky is blue
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
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.