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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!
...and they finally get around to reading the .nfo. I guess they had been too busy wielding their prowess at layout.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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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...