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New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars
An anonymous reader wrote to mention CNNMoney's coverage of the latest round of MPAA lawsuits targeting end users. From the article: "The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out."
My god, that's completely insane. Why not just charge twenty bucks plus court costs? That'd prove far more agreeable to the users and pirates - it's the same price as a DVD, and you can claim Fair Use with what you do with it.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
I remember seeing/hearing this speech by Michael Greene in 2002. I suspect we'll hear the same this year, should you be watching the Oscars.
I'm nout surprised that they are targeting file swappers... I mean, it would look bad if you had to sue your own people after they leak the movies.
Apparently, they're currently targeting the distributors who are selling illegally copied films.they should stick to that strategy, as it 1) focuses the attacks on what hurts them most (since black market targets customers who pay for the stuff) and 2) less likely to make consumers hate them
you're actually better off by breaking in and stealing 1000 dvd's!
but virtual crime seems worse...
Privacy is terrorism.
I'd like to see some high-profile news articles about MPAA suing the producers, the screeners, the guild members who leak out all those freebie discs. That'd be good for the debate, but I'm not gonna see CNN (a division of Time Warner) covering this sort of thing.
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I can see it now, "We've lost an estimated $2 billion so far this year; all due to peer to peer file sharing." There's a big flaw in their argument. Who is to say that users would pay for these movies in the first place? Let me explain. I have downloaded a few movies and songs in my day, but I would not have paid for them in a store. The studios are claiming lost revenue, but the reality is that the people are downloading them simply because they are there and a movie may be cool to watch. I have downloaded exactly one (1) movie that the MPAA would consider theirs, but I never would have paid to see it in the theater or purchase it at a store. There was no lost revenue, not even close. So, as we know, these numbers come straight out of people's asses. I suspect that many others share similar views about the movies. They are downloading them becuase they are there and may be entertaining, but would never actually pay money to see them because that would be a waste.
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Unfortunately (stupidly?), the *AAs are looking at both up- and down- loading as equally wrong.
"Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders' exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, 106(1); and distribution, 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs' reproduction rights." See A&M RECORDS, Inc. v. NAPSTER, INC., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001) (emphasis added)."
Untill just recently, they've taken a "kill the head and the body dies" approach by getting the big uploaders.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
(1) someone is downloading a particular movie/song/etc and not simply a file named as a movie/song/etc? I mean, someone can simply be downloading a file containing PI to the 10,000th digit or something stupid like that? How can they tell that what they donwload is the movie without actually looking at the file themselves? And if they are looking at the files that were download then are they not packet sniffing and hence breaking into people's computers (essentially)?
(2) Secondly, what if someone owns a particular movie on DVD but does not have the ability to convert it to avi or mpg format for his computer...he then downloads it from the internet so he can view it on his trips, etc....does he not already own the movie? How can they sue him for downloading it since he already has it, he just needed a different medium of it!!! To take that a step further...how can the MPAA prove that he doen't own any of the movies that he downloaded? Maybe he does and maybe he broke all his disks or his kid scratched them up...should he be forced to buy new ones when he already bought them before?
Seems to me, that these suits require people to prove their innocence rather than the MPAA having to prove their guilt...that is unconsitutional!!!
"The next contestants may not be very well known to the general public, but they will be after our lawyers finish tearing them apart. Ladies and gentlemen, here they are:"
Lights out.
"John Doe One. This 15 year old criminal downloaded a crappy hand-filmed DIVX version of Spiderman 2. He agreed to sell one kidney and both his eyeballs to pay the 150k fee."
"John Doe Two. A medschool student (still), the IP of his machine was found in the Lokitorrent logs. That's proof enough that he is guilty. He will spend the next 106 years making Texas license plates to cover for the fine."
"John Doe Three. 35 years old, still living with his mom, has a valid Slashdot account. Since all Slashdot users are geeks and all geeks download illegal contents from P2P networks, he's guilty as hell. Sentenced to 25 years in the Russian unranium mines."
"John Doe Four. Farmer, age 42. His computer contained the infamous BitTorrent software. He claims his 12 year old nephew has installed it without his knowledge. Both are in custody at a high security location, awaiting the decision of the MPAA board."
"John Doe Five. He posted a nasty anonymous comment about MPAA on a well-known forum dedicated to freedom of speech. Why anonymous, John? Do you have something to hide? Thankfully his ISP has been forced to disclose his IP under the Patriot Act, and now the 28 year old security consultant faces the death sentence under accusations of theft, identity stealing (Mr. A. Coward was appaled to find out you used his name, buster!) and digital terrorism."
Lights in. Humorous comment from the host.
"And the loser is...."
Just
The bigest security hole in Hollywood does not come from it's customers, nor the "Analog Hole". It comes from insiders who either stupidly distribute the material to those who ask for it, or those who are bribed to supply it. Pro Pirates can come out with copies of DVDs before the official ones hit the street. How? Because they pay someone working in either the DVD authoring or the DVD pressing to send them a copy of the DVD.
The other way is actually quite funny. My boss has been working in TV for a few decades now. Back when he worked in Network News, they called up the company that produced Star Wars: A New Hope (yes, the first movie) to get some footage for the news. The studio sent them the whole movie over the satelite (which they recorded to 2" tape). Mind you, at this point the movies was still in theaters, and they had their very own high quality copy.
Before the MPAA can do anything about piracy, they need to fix their own security holes first. Consumers aren't going to be doing this proffesionaly and on a wide scale. The people who get to the material before the DVD that gets pressed are.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The stuff off the internet is usually at best described as low quality with choppy motion, questionable sound and video artifacts from the compression schemes used.
Absolute bollocks. 1.4Gb XviD, DVD-R rips or HRHD (that high definition rips in high resolution off HDTV) are sometimes _better_ quality than national TV in many countries - and HRHD rips rival _anything_ available to buy here in Europe (while still being playable in HDTV resolutions with an Xbox and a projector/plasma/lcd-tv).
Why buy something of lesser quality when you can download something that actually makes use of the expensive toys you bought?
it's in my head
Are there any capitalists who aren't scumbags, or is a large business automatically evil?
Large corporations are not necessarily "evil", however one wants to define that term, but in my experience the vast majority of publicly-held companies are amoral, meaning there is no real sense of right/wrong. There is only a sense of what increases the bottom line. These are the kinds of companies that will, for instance, continue to spew pollution as the fines for it are cheaper than actually lowering emissions. Another example would be of an automaker that saves money by settling with plaintiffs as opposed to making a safer vehicle. In general, the law doesn't mean a whole lot to them if it's cheaper to break it than to follow it, even if they get caught. I wouldn't categorically say that all large companies are evil, but I would say that it's a safe bet that most will do whatever makes them the most money, regardless of right or wrong, and unfortunately the upper management of said companies could be considered to be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they didn't.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
In just about every creative work, evil is archetypical. Take vampires. They have an insatiable thirst for blood. They can never get enough. Same with werewolves. Same with demons. Same with The Flood from Halo. Same with the Aliens(TM). Same with the Cylons and the Goauld. Same with the Necromongers and Voldemort. They take what they want, by any means necessary, and won't stop until they have it all.
So what does this mean, culturally? Do we find things that consume without end to be evil? There's one thing that knows no limits to consumption; that doesn't know the meaning of the word 'enough' and doesn't have any qualms about using whatever means necessary: A corporation.
By now you're probably thinking "but corporations are run by people, and normal people aren't asshats." Well, corporations are designed to shield individuals from prosecution, and are motivated to maximize profit. Individuals in a corporation who make profits go up are rewarded, and ones that make profits go down are not. And, for the most part, they use a short-term view.
So what you have is a race to the bottom. People who are willing to work the hardest for the least amount of money get the jobs. People who are willing to sacrifice their morals for increasing profits get rewarded. People who are willing to exploit others and make messes and not clean them up and even break the law (if the fines are less than the returns) are rewarded. In this environment, it's hard not to become "evil." This is particularly true in large organizations, where red tape and bureaucracy and sheer size make it impossible to monitor everyone's behavior.
So, if you use the literary archetype of evil as your definition, corporations and the capitalists who run them are, in general, evil.
I'm just sayin.
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