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MPAA Cracking Down on TV Torrent Sites
sallgeud writes "It appears the other shoe has dropped and the MPAA is now going after sites which link to torrents of TV shows. The beef with redistributing copyrighted material seems to make sense... but I'm wondering if it makes a difference in the world of DVR. The vast majority of downloads appeared to be of content that is broadcast free over the airwaves. I'm wondering how much different this is than going after Tivo? Would these sites have been hit with lawsuits if they had stuck to purely over-the-air broadcasts?"
Since there is nothing new to read, here's a story about cats.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you cat fanatics? I've been sitting here on my sofa in front of a cat (a sealpoint siamese) for about 20 minutes now while attempting to get it's attention away from a bug on the floor. 20 minutes. At home, with my labrador cross, which by all standards should be a lot dumber than this cat, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this attention seeking attempt, my children's attention is also held by the cat. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even trying to get the remote from my partner fails.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while dealing with other cats, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a cat that fetches as much as it's canine counterpart, despite the cat's faster ambulatory system. My terrier with one ingrown toenail runs consistently faster than this siamese at times, as the cat is often completely asleep. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the cat is a superior animal.
It's a dupe.
Oh, and there is a world of difference between a person recording something for themselves, and somebody passing copies of it to all and sundry
Dupe.
[insert witty remark about Slashdot editors, torrents, and the MPAA]
In the near future, we'll all be paying a monthly fee for having a memory, too!
ISOhunt has vanished overnight, have the MPAA bastards gone after them too?
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
TV shows are copyrighted, but is their distribution illegal? Decreased quality, the network label in the screen corner. After all you are not selling the same stuff after rebranding. I am probably missing some important point here.
Slashdotters should control themselves and boycott duplicate posts. Would it even be possible to have a story without any comments?
slashdots big news source seems to be every other site on the internet. Always a day or more late.
I think the main issue here is that the shows are being distributed with the ad-breaks cut out so there are a bunch of advertisers paying the TV networks to air their ads and the online people are getting them with no ads at all.
Have you metaroderated recently?
Stupid journalists, rtfirc :)
Tivo allows personal time-shifting of a broadcast program so you can watch it at a more convenient time. BitTorrent allows distribution of programs to others.
IANAL, but I suspect that fair use allows for the former but not the latter. In either case, the difference should be clear, in both intent and in practice.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Can you be sued if you havn't downloaded any content, and havn't uploaded any content, but provide a website that hosts .torrent files? The MPAA can send you a cease and desist order, can't they? but is there much they can do to enforce it.
I am not against dupes.
Not everybody checks slashdot with religious zeal. By having dupes the important stories can be shown to those who missed it (cause maybe the first posting was at a wierd time).
Or maybe the can come up with a better solutiuon for the important stories (a sidebar maybe)?
So we have a dope 24 hours apart? Is Taco training his replacement?
I like muppets.
I don't expect to give up downloading TV shows anytime soon. The real kicker is that if the broadcasters would instead offer bittorents of the shows (with a few commercials to pay for them) at the same time they are broadcast, they would beat the groups that are ripping them soley for "respect" from peers. AND they would have the control they are so desperately seeking.
TV shows are about the only thing I download via bittorrent (and a few books), mainly because I can't watch when shows are on, and it is more convenient than my DVR. The shows I watch already have logos from TV stations, etc., why not run a "drink coke" banner at the bottom from time to time instead?
If they were really smart, they would also provide their own bittorrent tracker server (complete with Google/Overture ads), making it unnecessary for me to go to other sites and be "tempted" to download music and movies as well.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Mickey Mouse is the poster child for one part of the abuse. In Mickey's case, they are extending the copyright forever so that they can continue to milk the mouse. If you don't like mouse milk, that's just too effing bad. They have also greatly extended the coverage of copyright against derivative work, again to keep the mouse (and friends) alive and "uncontaminated".
The Marx Brothers represent a different kind of abuse. That's a case where they use (extended) copyright to suppress distribution of works that ought to be in the public domain. In this case, those works would compete very favorably with the tripe Hollywood produces--so they avoid the competition by suppressing those golden oldies.
Who said crime doesn't pay?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Seriously how can slasdot editors not read their own site ?.
Slashdot needs to eat its own dog food.
As a very long time participant of slashdot, I can assure you that the editors will never read their own website.
The bastards. What unspeakable lengths will they go to next? Going after certain editors who are posting duplicate stories?!
On second thought, anyone have a torrent of Thursday's article?
The buggy whip makers still don't get it...
You know why I download a couple of TV shows every week? Because there's no way to see them in my area. They just aren't on any available TV network. And if they are, they are in pitiful NTSC format.
From the MPAA's point of view, it's probably immoral to watch television shows without the ads. I am guessing that this will all come down, once again, to an issue of "advertisers' rights"... basically resulting in a court judgment that a person has zero rights to watch an entertainment program without watching the advertising, even if it is broadcast over public spectrum.
When will this lunacy stop?
I missed Dr who number 8.
I am willing to risk Federal Jail and Extradition to the US to watch it, luckily the hassle campaign by the MPAA has had no effect and a quick search returns a torrent.
Copyright infringement should be a small time crime with a small time fine.
I buy some stuff but my rapacious fandom means I need more than I can possibly afford, so I download some stuff.
Perhaps I could agree to pretend I'm watching some adverts or something.
Not to burst anyone's bubble here, but I'm thinking that those sites probably would have still been busted even if they stuck to free to air content.
How many TV torrents still contain the original advertisements they aired with? I'm thinking in the region of.. hmm... zero? Now, how is all this "free to air" television subsidised? Oh? Advertisements?
Do you see now?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
#1) The commercials are typically ripped out.
#2) Even if the commercials were kept in you could still fast forward through them.
#3) They don't control it. Nor would they probably want such a model because it wouldn't allow them the same amount of power as before (i.e. with these so called "television sets").
The MPAA is planning to crack down on duped articles.
As much as I know it is still illegal and considered wrong. I live and work in Germany, and these shows and movies just aren't available here. I don't have the option of going to the local cinema to see a film, and when they do get here, they are always dubbed into another language.
When I do try to play by the rules and order a DVD from the US of a movie I want to see (ie.. incredibles) It won't play on my player because of the region code.
I am not saying that downloading and watching the dailyshow everyday is right, but there is definitely a moral grey area. Even with the most expensive satellite package, I can only get this 'dailyshow weekly update' on CNN.
I mean I can see how shows ripped without commercials would be frowned upon, but they advertise products that aren't available here anyway.
Not that anyone wants to waste mod points helping the local leper colony, let alone visit there, the parent is at least as informative and interesting as the primary duplicate story.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
You've got some insider information regarding Taco's dope habit?
when you say "a better solution for important stories" possibly missed by non-refreshers, you mean a solution like slashback?
MPAA is the movie cartel, not the TV people.
While they do show some movies on TV...
This link is being reported to be a backup of all of btefnet's torrents as of the day it went down. It appears to have several tens of thousands of torrents and is 24 MB.
B 7F 9B97482AF94535EA8930A|/
ed2k://|file|torrents.tar.bz2|24171559|75405CBD
Bittorrent is shut down, ED2K Forever.
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
I would see it differently. Extending copyright encourages creativity because it shows that if you can come up with good original concept that catches the popular imagination you can make an absolute mint off it. If that does not encourage people to create, or investors to back creative people nothing will. Disney have invested serious time and effort in building up a brand around their characters, why should they drop copyright and let others make inferior duplicates ad nauseum until the original concept is destroyed.
Preventing people from rehashing old ideas from the 30's and 40's is not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that true creators like Walt Disney only come along every few decades is far more stiffling to creativity than copyright.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I love public TV. Unfortunately, they have a lot of shows I like to see so late at night. Can these be happily re-broadcast via BitTorrent? There are not advertisements (except for the short "sponsor" messages in the beginning).
Nature, I Claudius, Colonial House... c'mon you guys love this stuff too, right? Commercial TV is 60% crap, even without the commercials.
However, transfering ed2k links *alone* (not asking to be subsidized for their transfer, like sharedaemon) does not violate American's 1st Amendment Right to Free Speech. It also shows teh imperviousness of the ED2K network to withstand such attacks.
When ShareDaemon went down, ed2k barely blimped and has largely regruoped. As far as I know, the bittorrent TV nets are all but demolished.
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
Even you/we in the afluent world might catch it some day, although thankfully the possibility is remote.
Try not to joke about things like this. You're just spreading public misconceptions about a very unfortunate disease and reinforcing AIDS-like discrimination against the people who suffer from it through no fault of their own.
Yep, this is happening even for downloaders and uploaders including myself.
t e for samples).
Stargate Atlantis was one of the T.V. shows. Back in December 2004, Adelphia terminated my cable service account (for forever -- blacklisted) for D.M.C.A. because I was sharing two Stargate Atlantis episodes over BitTorrent according to BayTSP and M.G.M.'s hardcopy letter copy (http://www.google.com/search?q=baytsp+mgm+starga
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/5002/suetv.html
I just don't get it. If, and I know this is a big if, TV stations can make money giving away TV with advertisments, how can they not make money gioving away TV over internet. The cost of distribution has got to be massively lower, their market instantly becomes global. Which makes me think that the problem isn't the TV companies, it has got to be syndication people, who's job depends entirely on the limitations of current broadcast technology (and a smacking of DMCA to help keep it all sweet).
What I fail to understand is why there is a problem. Broadcast TV isn't going anywhere fast (although the broadcast flag may aid its decline). TV should have marked the end of radio, radio should have marked the end of newspapers. All of these media have an internet equivalent and yet people continue to use them because they fill a niche.
If I can watch and time-shift TV legally because I bought a TV and VCR / PVR, why shouldn't the same be true with my computer and internet connection?
Two companies are posied to take over the world if networks fail to absorb bittorent TV: Google and Apple. Apple know how to distribute low quality media in a high quality way for cash. Google know how to find the media you want and give it away for free whilst providing you with the ads that pay for the content. And if they don't do it, 90% of the people who are reading this article have the skills to do it for them and wrap it in a GPL - MythTV / RSS / Bittorent.
As a side note, has anyone else noticed the McDonalds adds that don't 'click-through' - now that is progress
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
You know, the **AA runs around screaming and crying about how we're stealing their property. I find this amusing considering that according to the liscense agreement we don't actually own anything.
If all the megacorps are running around bitching about how their precious intellectual property is being stolen, that's fine.
If it is real property, then it is subject to real property laws. They need to pay a tax on it, just like any other property. If someone buys a piece of their intellectual property, then they own it.
It's that simple.
But considering how the US is rapidly becoming fascist, I seriously doubt we'll ever see anything reasonable go through congress to this effect.
~X~
~X~
The MPAA can kiss my UKTV-torrent-downloading arse.
The natural extension of your "argument" is that the creative people should create one adequately "good" thing, and then they can sit on their arses for the rest of their lives. That most definitely is *NOT* the purpose of copyright.
Of course, I admit that is not actually a problem of the present system, since these days the actual creators have generally signed over all their rights. Most of them make pretty mediocre livings, but they hope for the second round effect: If one of their creations does very well, they can generally start negotiating for much more favorable contracts. The MPAA gang is quite willing to play along with those rules, since it's relatively more convenient to control a small market defined by a few "megastars".
I think the most extreme example is for manufactured "talents" in Japan, where some very mediocre artists are hyped to "superstardom". This has absolutely *NOTHING* to to with creativity, and *EVERYTHING* to do with brand marketing and profit maximization.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Has anyone wondered if IRC will be cracked down anytime soon? I mean, btefnet posts the torrents which are taken from IRC (#bt of effnet). People still can get the torrents from IRC (in fact, here is how the chain goes, the ripper will talk to someone in IRC, they will create torrent, then it is released to the masses on IRC, then it is posted on website, and then the whole world gets it. As far as I know, that is how it goes).
- Teja
The studios make a lot of money selling entire seasons of shows on DVD free of ads. Advertising isn't the issue here. The studios don't want free shows on the internet when they are trying to sell DVD's of what they broadcast on TV sometimes decades ago.
TV shows are FREE as beer, but they are the property of their authors or their channels.
...) for free, but why would that mean that you can download them without their terms ? They don't authorize you to watch the show without complying to their terms. They can.
They broadcast them on TV under their terms (ads, logo,
People don't understand that. You can argue P2P helps shows. I'm ok with you. Still, it's illegal.
So please somebody start a company broadcasting TV shows WITH ads under a CC-by-nc-nd license and bittorrent.
That already exists for music albums : http://www.jamendo.com/ and it rocks !
That's what you get for going with a provider which is necessarily in bed with the content producers. Cable....
Vita brevas, Michaelis Musculus longa.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
On this BBC news article it was stated at the end that "The MPAA says it wants to encourage legitimate download sites instead. Several TV companies are experimenting with legal peer-to-peer based downloads, including the BBC." This provides a bit of hope for those that were hoping to pay to see shows by paying legally.
- Teja
Are there any companies not in bed with them?
Yeah, man! Right on! If only Congress wasn't extending copyright to infinite durations to protect Disney, it would be just fine to copy and distribute new TV shows that were produced just this year!
Oh, uh, wait. Hmmmmmm.
I hope legal section on piratebay gets some fresh content. http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/
Taco is getting a divorce? When did that happen? Did he announce it on the site?
They can sue you for whatever reason, whenever they feel like it, where-ever. It's a civil lawsuit and I don't believe there are any restrictions. But, IANAL, so YMMV.
So if you post a bittorrent onto a site just keep the commercials in! If that happened from the start the MPAA wouldn't be sueing people over this. I like downloading shows, it's more convienent. If iTunes did TV shows I'd probably do that too.
Copying someone else's work, or distributing someone else's work, isn't creative.
If you want to create a show, as opposed to copying one, nothing the MPAA is doing will stop you.
Can't wait to see what happens with this. The replaytv 50xx series has the ability to share shows over the internet as well as being able to skip commercials automagically.
Just wait till the mpaa hears about this..
oh wait, they already did.
However ivs is still available on all 50xx units (removed from later version the 55xx's)
Can't wait till they try to force replaytv to remove this from the current replays (this went over real well when they tried to force removal of auto commercial skipping, replaytv users sued THEM)
I would see it differently. Extending copyright encourages creativity because it shows that if you can come up with good original concept that catches the popular imagination you can make an absolute mint off it. If that does not encourage people to create, or investors to back creative people nothing will.
Well, Disney began at a time when terms, among other things, were much less than they were now. Clearly he didn't need additional encouragement later, so why should there be a retroactive copyright for his work, especially long after he's dead?
But this really ignores the main issue: we don't want to encourage creativity too much. What we want is to best serve the public interest. But the public has several, equal interests. First, they want original works created. Second, they want derivative works created. Third, they want works to be unencumbered -- this means free as in beer, and free as in freedom.
Without copyright, we have fully satisfied the third, somewhat satisfied the second, and slightly satisfied the first. We can sum this up and determine the net satisfaction of the public interest.
If we then offered a copyright of, say, 5 years, we'd reduce the immediate satisfaction of the third and second, but hopefully increase satisfaction of the first by a greater amount, and also some satisfaction of the second. We can sum these up too, and see if the net satisfaction is greater or lower than in other scenarios.
What we want is to find the scenario that involves the least restrictive laws and the greatest satisfaction of public interest. This will almost certainly not be the point at which we maximize the first interest -- which is what you were talking about -- because there are other interests at issue as well. (And plus copyright holders don't like competition, so they're known to use their rights as a sword, rather than a shield, and claim infringement to keep up-and-coming artists out of the marketplace; maximum creation of original works is thus probably impossible)
Given that most artists will never see economic value from their copyrights at all, and yet are encouraged to create, and given that in the rare cases that they do, this is almost always realized immediately (the vast majority of revenue for any medium is made when a work is first released in that medium, and dies off days-months afterwards), I think that we could still get the vast majority of creation we see now -- maybe more -- even if copyright terms were extremely short. And we'd all be better off too, since this would encourage more work in derivatives, and more freedom with regards to created works.
Preventing people from rehashing old ideas from the 30's and 40's is not necessarily a bad thing.
It is actually, all else being equal. A lot of the best work is derivative, where people spend more time on polish than the underlying concept. For example Shakespeare's plays were virtually all either based on history, or earlier plays and stories which he made new versions of. He was not a big original thinker. That shouldn't be held against him -- he was good.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Here in Australia Doctor Who 2005 will be broadcast on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The ABC is owned by the government and there are no commercials on it, other than for the ABC, and they are only screened between programs. If I download the episodes and watch them before they are screened on the ABC who loses out? I have already paid my taxes that fund the ABC.
There's a posted speed limit in west Texas. Does it matter than the ONLY thing that will cross your path is a tumbleweed? Nope. The laws the law. Break it and maybe you'll get away with it, but if you get busted, don't cry foul. Change the law, or live with it.
Make the shows available for bittorrent. Include extra advertisement directed towards the Internet crowd. Put advertisemnet in another corner.
You have 4 corners. 1 for the network and three to sell. Also include small extra's that are not available on the TV show and organise a '7 differences for 7 shows' contest so peole want to see BOTH.
Learn wat viral advertisement is and abuse it so much people are not even interested anymore in bittorrent.
Embrace it, do not fight it. Talk to your marketing people and tell them you have 10.000.000 people who watch your show and do not watch TV. Ask them if they are interested in that.
These people will be humping your leg so fast you will not know what hit you. You can even sell these services to others in other countries, so they can do the same with subtitled or syncronised shows and programs.
These people are a new market for cross and deepselling my friends. As lomg as people watch, you have a place to sell.
Put in a blue screen somewhere in the show that during normal broadcast is a building and on the bittorrent is an advertisement. I asure you, people from marketing and advertisement will go apenuts over this. You will be offerd so much sex, you wich you were impotent (well, you probably are, but you get my point).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I completly stopped using the ol' magnetic mylar strip method of recording shows and have switched to just grabbing the torrent a few hours later, as far as I'm concerned that falls under Time Shifting. I would zap (read: FF through, not watch; ignore) the ads anyway and the fact that they are cut out is just another thing I don't have to worry about. I love seeing sites like PirateBay continue to be assaulted by the MPAA, which can't touch them... Shame the non JUS based suprnova wasn't as smart.
It's the huge fear of losing control over distribution. Without control of distribution on one side, there can be no control of artists on the other. It's the frigging middle man getting squeezed out of the picture and fighting for his life scenario.
Wake up folks. It's not about their stuff, it's abotu your freedom. Why the hell do you think you don't have enough upstream bandwidth to support an ad-hoc, real time distributed distribution system?
I'll tell you. Because the TeeVee, radio, and theatre middle men would become extinct....The artists? They'd thrive because the demand for material is independent of the mode of distribution.
Dan Glickmon (sic) is recovering from surgery in his Cape Cod home after doctors removed 13 live gerbils from his rectum.
A new non-downloadable series, based on the life and times of this icon of the gay community is currently under development.
But that is NOT what copyrights are about. they are not about making tons of money at all, but to encourage creativity by allowing people a temporary monopoly on a work, but AFTER that LIMITED time it HAS to enter the public domain. What you are asking for an extention on, and what Disney has done will only end up stifling creativity because those raw ideas (like just asking to draw a talking mouse for example) will be locked away and any attempt to draw one of those [talking mice] no matter how un-similar to Disney's Mickey Mouse will end up in legitation.
Because they are not (mostly) original works. They were ripped from the public domain stories. the whole "why should they drop copyright and let others make inferior duplicates ad nauseum until the original concept is destroyed." thing is horsecrap as well, IMO. The original concept would be an intellectual though, like "what would it be like if a mouse talked?" Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse are all implementations of an idea, and disney alot of the work they used was actually ripped from public domain/NonPublicDomain stories, so look who did "alot of work."
Horseshit.
While good creators equal good creativity in many cases, which I agree, it is not the only grat cause of stifled creativity. Disney's lobbying to extend copyrights to not only protect their icon, but to prevent people from doing what they did, that is take and make into something big out of the pbulic domain.
Copyrights are not like what they were meant to be and you know it, instead of creativity and innovation, we get "innovation" and legitation. If we keep on extending the rights, we won't have things entering the public domain that we can use to build on, improve, and morph into something new in people's lifetimes eventually. Is this REALLY what the founding fathers wanted?
SUPPORT COPYRIGHT REFORM! ALLOW PUBLIC DOMAIN TO EXPAND!
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I think perhaps one of the larger issues here is that the vast majority of people who download TV shows have already paid in order to see them, because they subscribe to dish or cable. Other stations - the local ones - are free anyways: most people can pick them up on antenna.
I don't understand how the MPAA could sue someone who has paid for their right to view the program. Arguably, the MPAA and its cohorts would prefer to peddle the DVD sets rather than have people simply download every episode for free. If people have already paid for the right to view the program by paying a dish/cable subscription fee, shouldn't they be allowed to view any network programming for which they have paid at any time?
As previously mentioned in other posts, how is this different from simply using a VCR or DVR? It's a more permanent medium, they might say. Well, so is DVR. Cassettes can copied with no more of an investment than an additional VCR. Thus, they could be considered permanent. How is this different?
I could still see lawsuits out of this. If someone downloads a show, gets caught, and doesn't pay for service, sue them until their arses bleed green. Conversely, for someone such as myself who pays US$45/month for cable, I should be able to download shows from the channels for which I pay all I want.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
In Mickey's case, they are extending the copyright forever so that they can continue to milk the mouse.
anyone got the torrent?
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Why don't local affiliates brand the tv shows with their commericals and logo, and let people download them off their website.
That way local commericals are shown that matter to the advertisers in addition to the national ads.
Sure you could download an episode from another affiliate, but if you have one in your city, it would probably be faster download so why bother.
People who don't have an affiliate that airs said show can also watch it, but I'd hardly consider that a loss since your gaining a viewer who wouldn't be able to watch it in the first place.
worth the bother.
Yep, I would liek to watch 24 but my life does not revolve around TeeVee and I can't see every episode. It's too much of a hassle to remember to have a blank tape and program the VCR. It's agin the law and almost as much of a PITA to grab the torrent. so I say...
Fuckit and go fishing instead.
/. editors need to crack down on dupes.
LOL.
"Extending copyright encourages creativity because it shows that if you can come up with good original concept that catches the popular imagination you can make an absolute mint off it."
Yep, long after you're dead you're still raking in the jack and the empire you built is suporting 50,000 minimum wage, pimply faced, clowns in Mickey suits.
Give me a break. Where the fuck is Mickey Rat? Felix? Tom and Jerry?
The fucking mouse has them bound and gagged. Not through copyright so much as through his kingship not wanting any patina on his image...
Who's next? Ratbert? Rat who kidnapped Cathy?
You are aware that narely all of Disney's feature length cartoons are based on works that are in the public domain, right? Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan (which is still copyrighted in England).
When's teh last time Disney released something besides merchandice with Mickey Mouse on it?
The fact is, no matter how great the original Disney characters are, a great deal of the success of the company comes from taking a, "good original concept that catches the popular imagination," and "mak[ing] an absolute mint off it." If it weren't for public domain, the Disney corporation would not be nearly as successful as it has been.
This is the ballsy irony of the Disney situation. By getting copyright extended, they are working so very hard to prevent the very situation that created their success in the first place.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Oh yeah that's right. No one would go to see that shitty Sith movie if Marx brothers movies were in the public domain. But because they're not, evil corporate fascists like George Lucas can oppress the masses and get rich off the poor. O the humanity!!
Rogers & Hammerstein produced a musical version of Cinderella for television in 1957, Jim Henson, with The Muppets, in 1969. Talent learns from the past, it does not recreate it.
You want to be out there with the big dogs, become the next Brad Bird? Then write your own damn story, and make it richer, funnier, and more thrilling than anything in James Bond or The Fantastic Four.
The Marx Brothers...suppress distribution
The Marx Brothers films are available in two wonderful boxed sets released last year.
It was already explained in a far less insulting manner . .Miller-hogpot the third.
My son wants to be a coal miner
Oh the shame
He should be a good yorksire playwright like his father eyy bie gum.
Sighned A
Gala Luncheons??? I've 'ad more gala luncheons than you've 'ad 'ot dinners, my lad!!!
No matter where the shows came from, the MPAA still wants to shut the site down. After all, anything that allows people to watch episodes that they may have missed could possibly impact future DVD sales when the series goes onto DVD.
It doesn't really matter what the law says, as you can pretty much sue anybody for anything, but I suspect that it makes no distinction between shows recorded from TV and shows recorded from HBO.
Still, it could get interesting if it ever goes to court. I believe it's been shown to be `fair use' if you record something from TV and share it with a friend. I believe it's even considered fair use to record movies off of HBO and keep them forever, to pick an extreme example. But previously these were analog activities, and now that they're being done digitally, the courts might see them differently. After all, they (they = the law, the courts) have recently treated digital things differently (like with the DMCA), thanks to heavy lobbying from the RIAA and MPAA and others ...
Of course, I'm no lawyer ...
Now, now: there'd be some public-domain television
shows (from 1948 and earlier) if copyright hadn't been extended.
"Candid Camera"
"Toast of the Town" with Ed Sullivan
"Texaco Star Theater" with Milton Berle
etc.
But no, not "Desparate Housewives" or "American Idol"
for another half-century.
>;k
I think there's a difference between a Micky Mouse animation and yesterday's TV episode.
I agree that the earliear Mickey stuff should be out of copyright, but those protections exist to protect newer shows so that they can make enough money to justify production.
Love it cant get it in Florida, found it on Usenet and now I download it.
Corner Gas
Verizon. Verizon was willing to fight the media companies in court to not give up their of customers. And while we'd all love to think Verizon was doing it for the "right" reasons, they were doing it because it would've cost them more money to comply. Anyway, sometimes it's good to be a Verizon customer.
OLN flooded us with 'Lance' coverage last year, and this year have cut back severely on bike racing coverage. Cycling fans don't need to see 'Le Tour' 5 times a day, but we do like to see other races, like the current running Giro d'Italia (today's stage won by American David Zabriskie, fyi).
OLN is now offering streaming coverage of the Giro. Only $5.95 for all weekday stages, but I'm guessing you can't (easily) keep a copy. So I can pay for it (happy to do so) but if I want to watch it again, I have to re-stream it. And hope they keep in on their servers.
I wouldn't even mind a pay-per-download 'legal' torrent site, if I could pay a reasonable amount for shows I WANT. I don't like the idea of paying for 50 cable channels, when I want about 5.
out of context, yes it's "off topic". perhaps you didn't bother to consider the context. i see this idiocy all the time on newsgroup and mailing list threads.
Madonna called. She says "What the FUCK do you think you're doing?"
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
I was wondering....if these sites just started posting magnet URI links to distributed hash networks like the one that azureus now uses, is that illegal?
and the last time I had my daily dose of /. was yesterday, and I still see the same news, w00t!
Does this mean /. is slowing down? XD
The Motion Picture Association is not just "of America". Please read the "MPA" column on this page.
Yes, they are the MAFIAA.
* Reads longwinded post about Mickey Mouse and extended copyright
* Goes back to downloading "Enterprise" which was broadcast last night.
You can see (...) how to determine whether there is a fair use by using the four listed factors at 17 USC 107.
...is pretty useless to a layperson. It lists four criteria, but given a specific use, doesn't really say how these four would weigh in. To do that, you have to read a lot of legal context and case history, and what you are left with is still an unqualified opinion, see a lawyer and you will have a qualified opinion, but no more than that. Before the Betamax case, who could tell whether a VCR was legal? It was completely undeterminable and took a 5-4 decision in the Supreme court to settle.
That, and the circumstances also apply as well. To share a VHS tape with friends or family is different than distributing it losslessly to the world, even if both acts as such are identical by the factors (private, publicly aired show, whole work, given to someone who does not alrady have a copy). It all makes fair use something the MPAA can claim barely exists, while others claim it nearly nullifies copyright law. So overall that makes it extremely difficult to understand what 17 USC 107 really means.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think I saw the same show two days ago. Are we already in rerun season?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Of course a smart company(ies) would have realized the market potential and started to sell their own downloads, but I guess that would make too much sense.
How long before other sites pick up the slack?
Actually, the latest Dr. Who last night downloaded faster than it did the weeks before. So far I only see an improvement in download.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Infringement of the End-User:
.torrent and tracker server is probably closer to Napster than Grokster. Time will tell.
If you violate an exclusive right associated with a copyrighted work without consent, you are liable for infringement unless you have a defense. End of story. Commonly asserted exclusive rights are the rights to copy, to distribute and to make derivative works.
Thus, even private copying would be an infringement unless it were subject to a defense, such as fair use. Fair use is available for "time-shifting," as settled in the Betamax case. But it is probably not available for copying from a friend's library, and certainly not available for copying from a stranger's library.
Liability of the provider of peer-to-peer distribution technology:
Ordinarily, the provider in a p2p context doesn't actually copy or distribute, they merely facilitate the same by providing software, pointers and so forth. It is the end-users who do the direct infringing.
But studios typically go after the "enablers" anyway, on theories of secondary liability, such as contributory infringement (based on material contribution) and vicarious infringement (based on the relationship between the infringer and the enab lers). The law here is funky, but it seems to be divided between those who maintain some degree of control over how their services are used (old Napster) and those who don't (Grokster). We'll know a lot more about this after the Supreme Court decides the Grokster case.
Anyway, it is likley that the provider of both a
The difference that you ask about is that it's legal, with legisation backing it up, to record tv shows broadcast over public or cable television, and tivo certainly falls into that category. Yes, there is quite a bit of grumbling about the ease by which commercials can be skipped through, but for the moment, all is kosher on that front.
However, nothing gives anyone the right to redistribute the recorded shows. If I download a show, I didn't have to buy a tivo, and chances are good I'm not going to have to even skip through advertising. Studio makes no money off of me as the advertisers aren't going to consider downloaded commercial free shows in their rating calculations.
For fear of overextrapolating, should the trend continue unabashed, they choose not to embrace a new distribution medium and instead look for other ways to cut costs, they'll instead create more shows that have low overhead budgets and appeal to a demographic less likely to use computers for obtaining and watching television shows. That's right, you'll probably end up with more reality TV.
I'd personally prefer a different distribution model. Even a subscription based service would work. As the trek fans were pointing out in their ill-fated effort to save Enterprise, even with the abysmally low ratings the show was getting, if everyone who watched it paid slightly less than 50 cents per episode, they'd have enough to fully fund a season. That's pretty cheap entertainment, and far far less than they charge for the DVD sets of the same seasons years later. Heck, millions of people willingly pay more than 50 cents for a SONG. It's not out of the question to assume they'd do the same for a TV show that was worth watching. But as long as they want to stick with the old medium, you can expect them to fight it tooth and nail until they're forced to either adapt or die.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Now *that* would be an interesting test case (if it hasn't already ben made).
Think of the mess this problem makes! Do companies depreciate their software purchases? If they can, then they must be considered real property, no? If some person in a state that taxes real property (that includes an itemized list of "stuff" in one's household) pays taxes on their CD and DVD collection (which can get huge), then they should be considered real property and allowed to be treated as such.
Not only does this affect consumers, but also those who hold "inventory" of IP. And not just media IP, we're talking DVD players and X-Boxes (hacking the hardware), cars (hacking the onboard computers), plants, and anything else that the DMCA has been thrown at to protect. We either own it, or we don't. If we own it, we get taxed on it. If we don't, the IP owners should pay taxes on the huge values they tout when they're determining damages in downloaded legislation.
Let's get the IRS involved! (Did I just say that?!?)
I'm obviosly no lawyer or CPA, so those who are could craft a much more concise case that those I've stated above.
Method of processing duck feet
The basic assumption of the MPAA is that their product is the greatest thing on earth. They truly believe that every single living person would rather watch TV shows and Hollywood movies than do anything else. Therefore unprecedented measures must be taken to prevent this "consumption" without "payment", and deep punishments must be inflicted on those who would even attempt to indulge in the transcendental magnificence of their productions.
Uh, maybe so...now.
But if they continue to go to such lengths to harass people showing an interest in their little dramas, they may find that people will take the hint and find something else to do.
Then they will have to reverse their focus and actually come up with ways to get people to watch their shows. For free.
They sell their shows to advertisers and therefore depend on the largest possible audience viewing the show. Then they pass laws with huge fines and lengthy jail terms for anyone watching and distributing their shows.
They want to stop downloading of Hollywood product? Fine, but they should be a little careful about what they ask for, because they just might get it.
I'm not sure if they have a right to do that. This is a service that uses public property (cable tv lines going over publically granted right-of-ways).
Might want to explore legal options.
I'm living abroad and bittorrent was the only was I had to view my favorite shows from home. Since I have a residence in the US where I pay for cable TV, I don't feel like I was doing anything unethical by watching the shows I would be watching if I lived there. Is it really any different from my friends sending me tapes?
Anyway, now I'm looking for a replacement. I figured one option would be to set up a server at home with a web interface and capture card (possibly 2), that lets me select shows to record, transcode them to a low bitrate format, and then make them available on secure ftp. I don't think MythTV is capable of all of this out-of-the-box, so does anyone have any suggestions for Windows or Linux software that can handle this kind of setup easily?
It's a balance thing, though, and I think you're focusing too much on the public's rights here (which given what you're replying to is very understandable). The missing piece of this puzzle is how you compensate creatives who put themselves on the line for the enjoyment of others.
.avi you downloaded, would you? Ads? Subscription? Do you have a fundamental issue with that, or is it just that no one made it viable?
The purpose of copyright, from my understanding, is to keep Company B from taking my idea and turning it into a series of books and selling them all over the world, and not paying me a cent. The advent of digital media meant that the distinction between btefnet and Company B was blurred, but there's still a giant difference: Company B is SELLING my idea, whereas btefnet is just giving it away. 14 year copyright is still a great idea to help creatives use the sword against commercial piracy, but is a foolish tactic against one's own audience.
The thing is that the public needs to realize that creatives need money to survive, too. If you had a reasonable avenue to compensate the cast and crew of "Lost" for every
Copyright needs to exist to allow authors to stomp on true piracy, but at the same time the public and the creators have to dial down the rhetoric and talk about how the system can work for everyone.
(P.S. I don't mean "you" as in cpt kangarooski, I mean "the one reading this post")
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Tivos HMO allows moving a show from one tivo to another.
I put my moms (charlotte) network into mine (NJ) with a VPN connection, and they can move shows (ALBEIT VERY SLOWLY) from one unit to the other.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
have DOCSIS 2 here and rate, while detemined by the CPE, is(not, can be) controlled and MONITORED, by the head end. It's hackable but there are so many fewer upstream channels that any useable hack would screw the neighbors. The upstream channel number is political, not technical. The bi-dir distribution amps are capable, it's just a matter af adding more upstream channels at the head end. The equipment cost is a drop in the bucket of overall hardware costs.
Although seldom used, every story on /. has a link to an article on another site. The only content /. provides is a headline and a blurb. (Which are generally written by the story submitter.) To get any real information you have to click the link and read the article on the other site.
Of course, you could just skip that part and go right into the comments, but most of those people didn't read the article either.
Yes, it seems you have decoded the the exact purpose of Slashdot, congratulations.
but Doctor Who will be on in Australia, with, wait, you guessed it, NO ADS
as it will be on the ABC, publicly funded
Not Free SF Reader
Go ahead... MOD that UP... Hands down most entertaining post on slashdot, I was just so excited...
damn now I have to shit.
What a horrible thing the ESRB just did to the game industry.
I totally agree with you, although the common perception seems to be that making more money is in fact "promoting the progress of the arts and sciences." Maybe somebody could prove that's not true. In court. That'd be nice.
I would see it differently. Extending copyright encourages creativity because it shows that if you can come up with good original concept that catches the popular imagination you can make an absolute mint off it.
That means that greedy people try to create, not creative people.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's a balance thing, though, and I think you're focusing too much on the public's rights here (which given what you're replying to is very understandable).
.avi you downloaded, would you? Ads? Subscription? Do you have a fundamental issue with that, or is it just that no one made it viable?
No, the only interests here are those of the public. The balance is merely in figuring out how to best serve the public. Whether this makes artists happy or not is quite unimportant, save for how that factors into the public interest.
The purpose of copyright, from my understanding, is to keep Company B from taking my idea and turning it into a series of books and selling them all over the world, and not paying me a cent.
Your understanding is wrong then.
The purpose of copyright is to benefit the public. It doesn't protect ideas, by the way (see the statute to this effect at 17 USC 102(b) and also note that the constitution would prohibit such a thing).
Having people reprint books is actually good for the public. Copyrighted works are basically commodities; there's not a significant difference between a DVD made in some factory with the authorization of a studio, and a DVD made in the same factory, without that authorization. But if everyone can make copies, there is competition, and this produces desirable efficiencies and low costs of copies.
So there needs to be a very good reason why we would want to grant a monopoly which impedes this. That reason is that we need the work to be created before we can put it in the public domain. We still want both, of course, so we balance how much copyright to grant (purely so as to spur creation) and how much we don't grant, and how rapidly the copyright expires (so that the work is as unencumbered as possible and we can enjoy that competition asap).
But we don't care about artists for their own sake. Why should we? Why should the public at large have to suffer, just to prop up some artist? If the public ultimately benefits, then that's a good reason. But just as artists say that they don't want to take a loss, neither should the public have to take a loss.
The missing piece of this puzzle is how you compensate creatives who put themselves on the line for the enjoyment of others.
We don't, quite so much. At most, artists merely have an opportunity. Most artists would be financially better off working 9 to 5 jobs. They don't get compensated at all usually (with regards to their copyrights) or in rare cases, just a little bit. Being an artist and hitting it big is on par with winning the lottery.
The advent of digital media
I hate it when people say this. Books are digital media (unless you've noticed a continuous spectrum of letters between A and B). You mean something more like machine readable media.
The thing is that the public needs to realize that creatives need money to survive, too.
Which is why they get, at most, a chance to get money. Actual money depends on whether they do well in the market. And the size of the chance is limited by what's in the public's best interest. It is acceptable for some artists to decide not to create stuff, if the public benefit is more satisfied without them than with them.
If you had a reasonable avenue to compensate the cast and crew of "Lost" for every
If I didn't have to? No.
This might result in the show no longer getting made. That's fine with me, so long as I'm ultimately better off. Some things come at too high a cost, after all. That might be one of them.
the public and the creators have to dial down the rhetoric and talk about how the system can work for everyone.
Working for the public is, by definition, working for everyone. Artists get to enjoy other artists' works on the same basis as everyone else. Maybe even a better one, if they can create unauthorized derivatives, which reduces their costs of creating works.
But special breaks for artists, at the detriment of the public? I don't think so.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
BBC has a large collection of stuff, like EastEnders, which they could easily increase revenue overseas with by actually licensing it to be viewed. They don't seem to handle that appropriately.
BBCAmerica - just a company with rights to rebroadcast some BBC shows - was airing, when they did, years-old EastEnders episodes. In 2000, they were showing 1994-1995. When they ran out of those, they started replaying in 1994 again. They alternately claimed it was not profitable(?) and/or that the BBC wouldn't allow them access to the later stuff, or that it was too expensive. However, they had nonstop groundforce/changing rooms because it was cheap. In one 24 hour period, they showed 17 hours of either groundforce, changing rooms or shoot - one other reality-show-type thing. They repeated the same Changing Rooms multiple times per week, and kept repeating the same seasons over and over. Carol Smiley was pregnant for nearly 2 years, IIRC.
So, BBC, sell it direct. $1/download per episode. You'd increase your revenues and give people less reason to torrent your shows. Just give us access - we're ready to pay.
creation science book
"its simply a fact that everyone goes at least 80 or higher and that cops are only interested in people worth pulling over"
This is NOT enfocing the law.
This is using the law to support discretionary, and in reality, often capricious, behaviour on the part of the police.
You've made my point with the quoted remark.
The cops USE the law. They don't ENFORCE it.
Yes, I'm aware of 4th amandment(USA context if it wasn't clear from 'Texas'.
They USE the law to circumvent other laws.
There is tacit agreement to this, all the way up the chain of opppression. If the law were really there to 'serve and protect' there would only be one 'law of the road'. It would be, 'you drive safely'. With video in police cars, cases would be easy to make. The asshole passing on the right in rush hour, even though he is not exceeding the speed limit would be penalized while the guy running 110 in broad daylight, on an open road with no traffic, would be perfectly within his rights to do so.
In some countries the approach to speeding is to license the top speed of the vehicle based upon the vehicle and the driver. You'll see big trucks limited to 60kph, small economy cars to 90, and that Aston Martin DB-5 without a limit. Of course, 'unsafe operation' is still an offense and makes more sense than the friggin concept of zero-tolerance.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You are free to record the shows yourself and watch them at a later date. However, you cannot get a copy of the shows from someone else because they are then distributing the copyrighted content. The copyright holder has a monopoly on copying and distributing their works. You can make a personal copy because of Fair Use.
No, the only interests here are those of the public. The balance is merely in figuring out how to best serve the public.
Which is where the balance is: if the public's interest is in watching another season of "Lost", and the only way it can be produced is if all the people working on the show can earn enough to survive, and the only way that can happen is if copyright exists to defend the creators long enough to make money from the show... then it is in the public's interest to keep Company B from copying an episode off the web and selling it on the street corner for $3 ahead of the DVD box set hitting stores. The public's right isn't nearly as clear-cut as you're making it out to be. Without protection from COMMERCIAL piracy, artists can't afford to create, and there is very little art made, and culture suffers (except in very odd, isolated cases)
Having people reprint books is actually good for the public.
It all depends on who's copying the book and for what purpose.
Copyrighted works are basically commodities; there's not a significant difference between a DVD made in some factory with the authorization of a studio, and a DVD made in the same factory, without that authorization.
This assumes that the people that made the content on the DVD are being compensated in both cases. Let me give you a much clearer example: I make a short film, release it for free on the web. Universal snatches it, puts it on a DVD, and sells it at Best Buy. I don't get any money. I need the right to go after them because they're essentially stealing my hard work for financial gain.
But if everyone can make copies, there is competition, and this produces desirable efficiencies and low costs of copies.
I would say there's a big difference between making a parallel product to Star Wars and re-packaging and selling "Sith" bit-for-bit. You may drive the cost of the product down that way, but unless you're passing something on to the people that produced it, the only person benefiting is you (because you're likely taking all the profit yourself). Not in the public's interest, not in the artists'.
But just as artists say that they don't want to take a loss, neither should the public have to take a loss.
Neither the artist nor the public has a right to anything. It's a social contract that has become distorted with time. The artist goes out on a limb to entertain and enlighten the public with the unspoken understanding that appreciation will be shown with money dropped in a hat. Introducing physical media like DVDs put more of a focus on inventory and distribution costs, but the web has loosened that again. But all the same: a DVD is not purely manufacturing costs... the expensive part comes in what is ON it. Would you stand and listen to a street performer for 10 minutes and then walk away without leaving something?
You mean something more like machine readable media.
True, sorry. I talk to luddites all day, so my language is upside down on this subject.
But special breaks for artists, at the detriment of the public? I don't think so.
I personally believe in most of what you're saying, but I think you're too far in the direction of "damn the artist, they're screwing us over!". I work in entertainment, and most of the people I know make way less than those in programming, and spend half the year out of work while the actors go on vacation before the next season. They just barely scrape by. If the next ep of Lost doesn't get made, real people are going to hurt in a very big way. That's the public there. They're all part of the system, and they shouldn't be demonized because they work under a nasty umbrella.
That said, the people that need to be attacked are not the downloaders, not the people who skip commercials or anything like that. The people who should be chased for copyright infringement are those that actively and directly try and profit from the resale of creative works without passing anything on to the creators.
Everyone has become too polarised on this subject, and it's going to hurt the public in the long run unless we resolve it peacefully.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
No, make that, sue them so we don't have to *think* about change!
Almost four years ago I was telling my friends that the tack the movie and television industry should take was to offer downloads of movies and TV shows, with tiered pricing tied to display/file size and release them ahead of, or at the same time as, the "real thing".
This would, at the least:
Cut the "pirates" off at the knees (for the most part) by taking over their distribution channel.
Create a new revenue stream.
Possibly attract market segments otherwise disinterested in the usual delivery methods (I know *I* wouldn't miss finding Junior's lolly stuck to the underside of my shoe).
Foster better overall content and possibly increase the variety of content reaching the audience (though this would mean that Hollywood would actually have to rely on story telling, rather than retreads and special effects)
But noooooooooooo...we'd rather support our lawyers and subpoena our customers.
There's an interesting piece over at Mindjack addressing this very issue and how the MP/RI/AA and the rest of the dinosaurs are missing the boat...again.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Since I can get an entire season of pretty much any show I'd be interested in on Amazon used for around $20. I stay legal and the MPAA's affiliates still don't make a dime off me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You'll notice that the first time this story came up, it was merely to point out the MPAA's actions in regards to sites that listed TV shows. In this article, a quite valid question has been raised regarding the fact that these shows have already been broadcast - ie I pay for cable, I pay for cable broadband, so what's the diff? The business model is still the same, the cable company gets my money either way for the same content.
Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.
- Archimedes
If the law were really there to 'serve and protect' there would only be one 'law of the road'. It would be, 'you drive safely'. With video in police cars, cases would be easy to make. The asshole passing on the right in rush hour, even though he is not exceeding the speed limit would be penalized while the guy running 110 in broad daylight, on an open road with no traffic, would be perfectly within his rights to do so
Man, where are my mod points when good posts like this come out? Someone mod this guy up!
Now that's just stupid on their part.
Now they've created a customer who is more likely to bittorrent in order to get their TV. A customer who was formerly paying for his TV, now must get it for free...
On a side note, if I were you, I'd try to get DirectTV, maybe having your wife try to get DirectTV so it's registered in her name (they probably didn't blacklist her). Or your girlfriend or any close friend of yours who is willing to call up DirectTV and pretend they live there...
Or move to a place that is under a different cable system. But moving is such a hassle.
I can understand the MPAA suing distributors for supposed "loss of revenue", but cutting back their tv access - for which they were paying for - is just downright stupid. People will find a way to get their TV. It's just encouraging you - and others like you - to bittorrent more.
Tepp
No, the public wants several things: They do want to watch Lost. They also want to watch any versions or sequels of Lost that anyone creates. And they also want to get it for free, and for it to be in the public domain. And these interests are equal.
The balance is in how to get as much of this as possible, since it's pretty unlikely that they can get it all. (Though that would be ideal)
Given that what we're really talking about are works generally, and not any specific work, it might be that the way to get the most original works, the most derivative works, and to have the least amount of copyright (in terms of scope and time) will support many works, but not Lost in specific.
Certainly we don't have the kind of copyright laws that could make it economically possible for me to rearrange the stars into exciting new constellations. And no one cares, since it would be art that comes at too high a cost. High budget TV shows might also turn out not to be viable when copyright laws are optimized. That's unfortunate, but not a really bad thing.
The public's right isn't nearly as clear-cut as you're making it out to be.
Yes it is.
Without protection from COMMERCIAL piracy, artists can't afford to create, and there is very little art made, and culture suffers (except in very odd, isolated cases)
No, some artists can't afford to create. Others can. There is always some creation going on regardless of competition. Hell, the idea of copyright didn't even exist anywhere until 1710 -- but there's a lot of art that was created before then.
Besides, copyright harms culture too, by preventing people from getting copies for the lowest possible price (or free), by preventing people from creating derivatives without authorization, by impairing the preservation of works since people can't make and disseminate copies, etc.
Again, the trick is to find the solution that is best for culture. What's best for authors is by no means what's best for culture.
It all depends on who's copying the book and for what purpose.
No, having competition for making copies is always good for the public. It lowers prices, where the copies are identical, and allows different publishers to target different parts of the population. There's no natural monopoly argument in copyright.
It's just that it's difficult to have this in combination with very high levels of creation of original works. But ideally, we'd have both.
Certainly I cannot think of a situation where, if it would not affect creation of original works, it would be good to artificially restrict the freedom of the press with regards to creative works. Care to name one?
(n.b. we're not talking about things like libel, obsecenity, etc. which apply even to the original authors of such materials, regardless of copyright)
This assumes that the people that made the content on the DVD are being compensated in both cases.
No. I'm saying that when a publisher does not have to pay the author, publishing that work is a lot cheaper. These savings can be passed on to the public.
For example, I can download the complete works of Shakespeare from all over the place on the Internet for free. I c
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You can still get all of your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent from search sites like Torrent Spy.
If I get a friend to tape a show for me are we breaking the law?
Hell, the idea of copyright didn't even exist anywhere until 1710 -- but there's a lot of art that was created before then.
Yes, but a great deal of art created under such systems were propaganda made for the benefit of patrons, which is not in the public's interest either. The best thing that happened to art was when it was turned into a viable career for anyone to pursue.
Besides, copyright harms culture too, by preventing people from getting copies for the lowest possible price (or free),
That's not culture, though, that's the pocketbooks of consumers. We have to distinguish between the public's need for culture and the public's need for things to be free. I want apples to be free, but I can't go into someone's farm and pick a bunch and go sell them at half the going rate because it benefits society. I agree it would be GREAT if that's how the world worked, but it doesn't and all it accomplishes is putting an apple farmer into the poorhouse.
preventing people from creating derivatives without authorization
This is where copyright went all wrong. If I write a book about "Bob", I don't see why you couldn't write a story about him too. In fact, I would hope you WOULD. I would hope we could work together to make Bob a better-developed cultural fixture, without worrying about licensing and other silliness. On the other hand, I don't want you to take my book and sell it word-for-word without paying me anything. The two do not need to be tied together (though they currently are, in today's world).
Either way, the price is now effectively $1 since rational people will not pay more than they have to.
It's funny you say that because I have learned that people seem to think that ANYTHING is worth $1, no matter what it is. I can't say why, but everything gravitates to that. Now, on DVD, that's hard to hit, because it's too close to production costs. But for purely torrent-based distribution, $1 is actually a doable price point for media. That's the beauty of online sales of media: it cuts out the person trying to profit on the backs of artists. The downside, though, is that it's a slippery slope into $0. Which is where the social contract comes in.
where they want the producers to get the minimum possible reward that ensures that they'll keep making more movies.
I would suggest that the public is not properly aware what the minimum possible reward should be. But that is very much the fault of $20M actors and special effects at the sake of art. It still doesn't change the fact that $0 is not going to pay the colour corrector's rent.
Sure. In fact, I bet that if you watched, you'd find that most people don't pay street performers.
And fewer would if the performers had large thugs holding pedestrians hostage till they paid for overhearing a song on a public sidewalk, which is what the current system is like. But I don't think we WANT it to come to the point where all the street performers disappear before we realize what we've lost. If we re-balance the system, we will have art and artists without anything unpleasant... but that means dropping a buck into the hat voluntarily, even if you COULD get it for free.
I'm interested in how copyright can best serve the public interest. Not in providing jobs for the crews of TV shows, or whatnot.
If the public's interest is in watching more Lost (rightly or wrongly), it is also in their interest to take care of the people who make that possible. I think the public has largely forgotten about all that because of years of "buy this record! buy this tape! buy this DVD!"... which masks the people behind the medium. Copyright is meant to serve the public's best interest with the artist in mind, not despite them. This is why there is a temporary monopoly, and not a simple declaration that all art must be shared immediately. But I think we agree on this point...
If optimum copyright la
The world's only surviving livewriter.
I have Verizon, but I am way too far from the CO (20K ft.) nor is FiOS available. I am on dial-up now which totally sucks and hasn't improved over the last decade (still 3 KB/sec).
Sorry, I meant to say Internet part not the TV part (which I did not have).
you can always use cron, after you get your v4l device configured...hauppage devices usually work well. Do a little research first.
If you have a show that is shown weekly you can just make a little cron script with mencoder that outputs to a file in teh form
show name - %(date[see man date]).avi
works great for weekly shows
enjoy
man crontab
man date
man mencoder
works great for weekly shows
might want to get something like freeguide to see what timei the shows start
Yes, but a great deal of art created under such systems were propaganda made for the benefit of patrons, which is not in the public's interest either.
Well, that still happens today. And at any rate, it doesn't really matter. Copyright is concerned quantity, not quality. You don't want the government making decisions as to which pieces of art should get the most protection. Whether you see high art or low art, it should be the public that decides, and this is basically a matter of where money gets spent. (And of course, one man's high art is another's low art, and there are shifts over time)
The best thing that happened to art was when it was turned into a viable career for anyone to pursue.
When did that happen? Most art is economically worthless; most artists can't treat art as a viable career. The stereotype of the starving artist exists for a reason.
That's not culture, though, that's the pocketbooks of consumers.
What's the difference? You can't make significant objective statements about culture. Certainly the government shouldn't try. But if you can get anything you want for free, however, then at least you can get access to as much of whatever you like; if it cost money, you'd have to prioritize. This lets individuals make their own decisions as to culture.
I want apples to be free, but I can't go into someone's farm and pick a bunch and go sell them at half the going rate because it benefits society. I agree it would be GREAT if that's how the world worked, but it doesn't and all it accomplishes is putting an apple farmer into the poorhouse.
Ever watch Star Trek? They have those replicators that can make apples by rearranging tanks of various raw materials. If we had those starting today, apple farmers would indeed go out of business; why pay them to grow an apple, when you can just get perfect apples, every time, at the push of a button? Putting them out of work, while in the process solving world hunger, seems like a good plan to me.
Creative works are like this now. They're non-rivalrous, meaning that we can reproduce them forever, and no one loses anything. The materials we fix the works into might have some cost associated with them, but it's often pretty minimal (just as the replicators technically need a power source and raw materials, though they can recycle the latter).
Jefferson drew a comparison with fire. If only one person has fire, he can charge people to use it. But everyone can light a taper from his fire, and get their own fire, without diminishing his. This puts the first guy out of business, but now the whole world has illumination.
Copyright isn't intended to help artists. It's intended to get them to create new works (by giving them the incentive of a monopoly) but to also get those works in the public domain as fast as possible, for it is in the public domain that the works can do the most good.
If we gave artists too much of a monopoly, it would directly prevent the works from being in the public domain as fast as possible. If we didn't give them a monopoly, or enough of one, not as many works would be created within the timeframe that is acceptable to us for getting works into the public domain.
But no matter what, we're always looking at the public interest. Whether there are many successful artists or just a few doesn't really matter much. The public wants art, not artists.
This is where copyright went all wrong. If I write a book about "Bob", I don't see why you couldn't write a story about him too. In fact, I would hope you WOULD. I would hope we could work together to make Bob a better-developed cultural fixture, without worrying about licensing and other silliness. On the other hand, I don't want you to take my book and sell it word-for-word without paying me anything. The two do not need to be tied together (though they currently are, in today's world).
What happened was that people started making translations of Uncle Tom's C
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If we (all of us) wanted to, we could kill the MPAA in no time. All it would take is to stop going to movies for a while. I mean nobody would attend a movie, rent one, or buy one. Do it long enough and they would either die or raise the white flag.
They need us a hell of a lot more than we need them. Trouble is there are too many idiots out there who do stupid things like camping out for Star Wars tickets. We prove our weakness doing stupid shit like that and they know it.
Please provide a way for us to see episodes of shows we missed without waiting a year for them on DVD, before suing these folks. Thanks!
Daily Show downloads every night in 5-10 minutes, pretty much right after they had been aired. It was nice to be able to check out some of the other shows, like the Simpsons or South Park, but for me it was only about The Daily Show. I can't afford (and flat out refuse) to pay $44/month for one single show that I want to consistently watch.
The MPAA is fucking up royally. It's not just about the TV shows. I bought America the Book, and it was Jon Stewart fans like me that helped keep it at #1 for so many months. I saw Lewis Black when he came to Portland a few weeks ago. I gladly support the artists and producers making this material, but I'm not going to regress back to an outdated business model that tries to suck the consumer out of every last penny. I'm not going to pay $29 for the DVD Indecision 2004, which doesn't even have all of the episodes and happened more than six months ago. If I can't get The Daily Show in a reasonable amount of time for a FAIR price, then I'm forced to find it online, like the millions of other who used these sites, and the millions around the world who don't even have access to Comedy Central.
MPAA (and RIAA, take note too), until you change your strategies, this is my response:
When Revenge of the Sith comes out next week, I'm downloading the pirated version (which will probably hit the internet before the movie is actually released anyway). I was planning on seeing this in the theater, but now I think it's time to start getting all of the new movie releases over the internet as much as possible. And I'm keeping my eye out for the next good BitTorrent site (hopefully in an Eastern European country this time).
This isn't about what's illegal, it's about what's right.
Ever watch Star Trek? They have those replicators that can make apples by rearranging tanks of various raw materials. If we had those starting today, apple farmers would indeed go out of business;
Ah, but you see that's a different issue altogether. If I could solve world hunger, I could put farmers out of business and guarantee they'd always have enough to eat, and never worry again. The only way this connects to freely copying art is if any artist is able to walk into a restaurant, perform or deliver some kind of art, and freely take food without paying actual money.
Copyright isn't intended to help artists. It's intended to get them to create new works (by giving them the incentive of a monopoly)
I would argue that incentive is meant to help artists. If you don't help artists turn their work into money (if only briefly) then you reduce the number of artists dramatically. The majority of "great" art created over the years was done by those who were either paid to produce or were using their art to make a living. If you completely gutted their ability to monetize their work, none of them would have kept at it.
If someone had been in the audience during the first performance of "Hamlet" and taped and re-distributed the play to everyone who wanted it, free of charge, Shakespeare would never have existed the way he does now. The risk to the public interest is that by dismissing the value of creative works and their creators, they may be discouraging the most brilliant artist of all time from taking a shot. An artist is not necessarily someone who opts to starve for their art.
I myself often find derivatives that are excellent, perhaps even superior to their sources.
What would be truly useful would be a mindset that let the creators of derivative works communicate with the original artist so that they could bounce ideas off each other to make something far superior to the first product. That was one of the worst victims of modern copyright... the inability of artists to collaborate unofficially, for fear of being sued.
Yes, except that [$1 for a movie] way too high
Yeah, I would prefer to see a complete decoupling of the service and payment myself. If you can get access to the work, enjoy it. If you enjoy it, pay something to the artist. In some cases the medium will require an up-front fee (like DVDs), but you as the consumer set the price. Most people have no trouble supporting the artist that made their favourite show or song or book. I just wonder if $1 as a suggested starting point is a good way to kick it off. I find that people today need to be told what to pay, even if they'd prefer another price. That's a whole lot of social engineering right there.
after all, how many times over do they want to get paid for the single act of creating a single work
This was the biggest problem that drama faced when it started getting written down and reproduced. It used to be you had no choice but to see the artist hard at work to appreciate their art, because you had to see them live. Once we started recording things (especially movies and TV), that personal connection got lost. Someone making a TV show shouldn't expect to be paid seven times for the same work by the same person, but if ten million people watch their show and enjoy it, they should expect that some of those people appreciate it enough to pay for it.
People in that sort of work [colour correcting] aren't the kind of artists we're talking about here. They merely provide a service, and that has nothing to do with copyright.
Ah, but it does. If I create a show and I have a crew of 100 people making each episode, and I can't keep Company B from selling it for $1 on the street corner, I can't make my next episode, and those 100 people are out of work. And those people ARE artists... that's just the point: you can say that a singer is just one person able to make their own way, starving on
The world's only surviving livewriter.
I hadn't heard of these sites, gonna check em out right now!
Natural Law gives everyone the right to redistribute information.
Luke-Jr
"Hell, the idea of copyright didn't even exist anywhere until 1710 -- but there's a lot of art that was created before then."
But nearly all of the art that survives from the pre-copyright era was commissioned by wealthy individuals (the patrons) and wasn't made available to the general public, in some cases for centuries. Using this to argue for the "public good" is ignoring the historical context; before copyright, public good was not even a consideration in the creation of art.
"When cars came along, all the people that worked at the buggy whip factories were out of jobs. That doesn't mean motorizing was a bad idea. It just means that those people needed to find a different line of work."
Except that in this case those involved in the production of art aren't being put out of business by an alternative or superior technology. Writing still takes authors, music still needs musicians, films still require actors and crews; there is no technology that has supplanted the need for human talent, imagination and effort in the creation of art.
I think everyone's interests would best be served not by eliminating or even severely restricting copyright durations (though I think 20 years is adequate), but by introducing a system where exclusive distribution contracts are prohibited, and anyone can make commercial copies as long they pay the correct royalties to the artists and a fixed percentage of the sales price to any party that provided investment capital to produce a work. That way there would be genuine competition, production costs get paid without sacrificing quality, and derivative works would also be possible without authorization or fear of litigation regardless of the original creators' desires; everyone wins.
Blank until
Duh. Mickey Mouse was basically copied from several sources. Actually, the original name of the mouse was (if I remember correctly) Steamboat Willie, which was more directly related to one of the major sources. I think it was actually Buster Keaton, and the mouse was supposed to be an animated version.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
What you said is basically very sensible, but I will add one minor comment by way of extension. I am not at all convinced that we need to encourage creativity these days. Modern technology allows all of us to have quite a bit of free time. Some people want to sacrifice it to extra work to make more money, some spend it with their family, others want to kill the time being couch potatoes or in other ways that I regard as less useful. A few people will use it for creativity, creating just because they love to create.
My own belief is that there are plenty of enthusiastic amateurs and they would create enough new work to satisfy most of the social needs for things like mystery novels and paintings and songs. Yeah, most of it would be pretty amateurish, but most of everything is under the 80:20 rule. However, I also think the best of those creators are going to find support for doing it full time, whether or not they can be regarded as "professionals" in the way the current system sees things. Remember that these people would be doing it for love of creativity.
I frankly think we would not (and should not) miss such commercial "creative" endeavors as Desperate Housewives.
Actually, I just thought of one more thing that should be noted. Modern technology is making creative resources more accessible to average people, so the argument about "needing lots of money to do creative work" is also increasingly specious. Really creative people will *NEVER* feel like they have all the resources they can use, but we are already reaching the visual limits. As Lucas put it, the current state of computer graphics is already adequte to allow him to create any image he can imagine. The cost of such computing power continues to decline, but it's also easy to imagine shared P2P projects to provide cycles. "Like this movie? Please let me have some of your unused cycles for my work on the next one. Go to http://www.moviegrid.org/ and register to help." (No, there isn't any such URL. Yet.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Ah, but you see that's a different issue altogether. If I could solve world hunger, I could put farmers out of business and guarantee they'd always have enough to eat, and never worry again. The only way this connects to freely copying art is if any artist is able to walk into a restaurant, perform or deliver some kind of art, and freely take food without paying actual money.
I think that's a bit bizarre.
If the marginal cost for everyone to create copies of material things is at or is very near zero, and there are no monopolies on things, then everyone will be able to have all the things they want at minimal cost, but there will be little economic incentive to create new things. That is to say, the person who invents a new kind of apple will have little economic incentive to do so.
Similarly, if the marginal cost for everyone to create copies of creative works is at or is very near zero, and there are no monopolies on things, then everyone will be able to have all the works they want at minimal cost, but there will be little economic incentive to create new works. That is to say, the person who writes a new novel will have little economic incentive to do so.
Still, these scenarios aren't terribly bad. In the first, no one wants for food, clothing, or shelter. Space exploration would become very affordable, and you could probably start building terraformed planets easily. (Of course, I'd be worried that we'd kill each other with the things, but that's not a problem with regards to works) However, no one would create new kinds of things, at least not expecting to sell them or the plans for them later. So on the one hand, some invention might stagnate. OTOH, if anyone can experiment cheaply, and needn't worry much about food or shelter, we might see a wealth of amateur things get made. As well as professional things, where you simply paid for people's labor.
In the second, no one wants for creative works by and large (some things are easier to make copies of than others -- it's hard to print out life size marble sculptures right now). This reduces creation of original works for economic reward, though you'd still see people doing it for fun, or for art's sake, or to gain critical acclaim, or whatever. And people can make derivatives, so there's a wealth of amateur works too -- sampling and covering music, making sequels to movies or books, etc. Again, professionals would have to charge for their labor, rather than expecting to be able to sell copies at a significant profit.
In both cases, if you sold someone an apple, or a book, then you'd be able to count on never selling another of the same to that person again. And that that person would spread copies near and far. But you'd at least be able to use copies of other people's stuff.
It's possible that neither scenario is ideal, but they're both livable and extremely similar.
Anyway, I think we're getting off track.
If you don't help artists turn their work into money (if only briefly) then you reduce the number of artists dramatically.
Well, remember that the help we provide is merely an opportunity. Most artists don't money out of their copyrights. And fewer still turn a profit. Even fewer really gain wealth. Artists are notorious for ignoring opportunity costs. This is convenient for everyone else, though.
The majority of "great" art created over the years was done by those who were either paid to produce or were using their art to make a living. If you completely gutted their ability to monetize their work, none of them would have kept at it.
Oh, I don't know. The first kind -- the ones paid to produce -- are simply providing a service. Hiring an artist to paint your portrait is not materially different than hiring a plumber to unclog the drains. They're being paid to do a job, and that's the end of it. The plumber doesn't get a royalty every time you flush the john.
In fact, such an idea is especially ludicrous when you bear in mind that eac
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I am not at all convinced that we need to encourage creativity these days.
Well, there is a baseline of creation, it's true. Some people make art for art's sake, or for glory, or because they're given money for their services, or whatnot.
Still, if we can pay very little for a whole lot of creation, then that's a good deal. The issue is just how little, for how much. We don't want to get too far into diminishing returns territory, and we sure as hell don't want to pay more than it's worth.
Payment, here, is copyright. The more copyright there is, the costlier it is to the public.
So long as we get the mostest for the leastest, as it were, then I think that's okay. Of course, that doesn't invalidate opting for less creation and having less copyright, either.
Yeah, most of it would be pretty amateurish, but most of everything is under the 80:20 rule.
I think the 80:20 rule is probably hopelessly optimistic with regards to creative works. Sturgeon set it at 90:10. It might be higher.
I frankly think we would not (and should not) miss such commercial "creative" endeavors as Desperate Housewives.
Meh. I'm happy with quantity. Something will always turn out to be good, but people will differ on what it is.
Modern technology is making creative resources more accessible to average people, so the argument about "needing lots of money to do creative work" is also increasingly specious.
True. Of course, the tricky part, as always, isn't the medium, it's the message. Even a high budget movie can be ruined by crappy writing; good writing, OTOH, can work even with a low budget affair. You see the same sort of thing in all kinds of art.
Btw, have you looked at chanel101.com ? If those guys have a budget, you could've fooled me. House of Cosbys is pretty funny, though.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But nearly all of the art that survives from the pre-copyright era was commissioned by wealthy individuals (the patrons) and wasn't made available to the general public, in some cases for centuries.
;)
Well, that's true for high art. For popular art, I dunno. There's a decent number of surviving plays, stories, songs, etc. I think a bigger factor would've been affording copies of anything, and literacy rates.
there is no technology that has supplanted the need for human talent, imagination and effort in the creation of art.
Give it time.
More seriously, the overall point is that less copyright can result in a better deal overall. It frees up originals so that people can make derivatives, may not significantly impair creation of original works, and makes the public more free to do as they like. It depends where on the curve we are.
a system where exclusive distribution contracts are prohibited, and anyone can make commercial copies as long they pay the correct royalties to the artists and a fixed percentage of the sales price to any party that provided investment capital to produce a work.
Getting the numbers right is a pain, though. And honestly, I think more attention needs to be paid to noncommercial parties. Some fan might write a brilliant set of prequels for Star Wars instead of what we've been getting, but the mere fact that they send 'em out for free shouldn't be used against them, IMO.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Steamboat Willie was the name of the first short starring Mickey Mouse that had sound. Originally Walt created "Oswald the Rabbit," a creation which was appropriated by his employer who then fired Disney. Disney worked on his own then, creating "Mortimer Mouse," though the name was changed to Mickey Mouse at the suggestion of Walt's wife.
From where does the MPAA derive their authority?
If they are allowed to make themselves protector of all filmed media, what's next? Do they get to be stewards of digital media? To allow the MPAA to exercise this kind of artifical authority is to hand over control of everything, potentially, to whomever demands control of it.
I disagree that this post is a troll. Misplaced, yes, but troll? No. The guy is complaining about someone posting lyrics on random discussion pages. Honestly mods, click the links before you jump to conclusions. Not everyone requesting something bad happen to someone is trolling.
I joined the lawsuit that the eff.org did a couple years back. It was sort of a preemtive lawsuit.
0 109_end_case_pr.php
Basically, I can skip all the commercials I want and share my shows forever.
A little from the article:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/Newmark_v_Turner/2004
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Advisory
San Francisco - A federal court today ruled to end a case brought by five ReplayTV digital video recorder (DVR) owners after 28 entertainment companies promised not to sue them for copyright infringement for using the "commercial advance" or "send show" features of their DVRs.
"Skipping commercials is not illegal and neither is sending television shows from your home to your office, as one of our clients does," said EFF Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze. "We're pleased that we were able to protect our clients against unjustifiable copyright claims for exercising their fair use rights."
Doesn't say that they have global reach at all, just that they have offices in "Brussels; New Delhi; Rio de Janeiro; Singapore; Mexico City; Toronto; and Jakarta."
This is far from having any say at all in these countries.
Just because [org] has [an office] somewhere does not mean any legal action can be taken.
Replace [org] with USA, [an office] with embassy, and you se what I'm getting at.
Yes, they can influence, but the courts in the UK are likely to go "pffft" to any request to extradite a personal downloader of BT files.
Set up a server in the UK, mind you, and I'm sure there are some H&S laws, tax laws, whatever, that could be used to close you down - with pressure from the MPA.
But real legal teeth? I doubt it.
IANAL.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
just came accross this piece on piracyisnotacrime.com - seems that someone actually has some info. Its here - http://www.piracyisnotacrime.com/tvtorrent.php