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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.
In the near future, we'll all be paying a monthly fee for having a memory, too!
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.
Going to http://www.isohunt.com/ takes me to http://www.torrentbox.com/
;)
Maybe they felt like a change?
Have you metaroderated recently?
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.
Well, they do usually cut out the commercials, which is what most networks get their money from.
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").
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.
when you say "a better solution for important stories" possibly missed by non-refreshers, you mean a solution like slashback?
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.
The MPAA must really hate the BBC then :)
No commercial ads on it - at all.
Mind you, its paid for through a license fee, so wouldnt it be reasonable to assume that since its been paid for already through the license fee, that UK people have a right to watch anything on the BBC however they choose.
Even torrents of the shows.
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.
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
Stories aren't reposted because they're "important". They're reposted because the editors are careless and didn;t notice. If I can't read Slashdot for a few days, I just browse through the "Older Stuff" stories linked conveniently on the right side of the front page.
I get annoyed at this because Slashdot regularly asks me to moderate posts, to improve the quality of the site, but provides no usable mechanism to moderate the editors. Even the email address on is encouraged to send warnings of dupes and errors is rarely answered, sometimes bounces, and is ignored in almost all cases. So now I rarely boither to mod at all; why should I care about the quality of the site when the editors obviously don't? In work I've found it similarly disheartening to be concerned with quality when the managemnent doesn't give more than lip service to the concept.
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 !
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
I hope legal section on piratebay gets some fresh content. http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/
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.
Let's see:
So let's see section 106:
So yeah -- unless there's some applicable exception here (I wouldn't bet on it) -- it's illegal.
-- 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Many many moons ago, I lost my mod privs for modding up the "post of death". I did it because I got a hackerly thrill out of adding my mod points to a post with literally thousands expended on it.
It actually made Slashdot more fun; I am the honorable type and felt compelled to use the mod points responsibly (when not enjoying multi-K pileons), so I browsed at -1, etc. Since "the community" told me to screw off, I'm relieved of that responsibility.
Just chill and enjoy the ride. Barring a major change, Slashdot ought to be superceded or unrecognizable in two years. The owners are making a lot of very classic mistakes, and they refuse to recognize them as such because they result in this slow, long term degradation of respect, not the instantaneous loss of revenue. By the time they understand, it will be too late, Slashdot will already have passed the inflection point. Slashdot may never "die", but I'm sure it will make a hell of a lot less money.
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
I understand, and I don't care that you don't care. And so on. I think I understand why the editors dupe, it's because they're jaded and don't give a shit, not because they want to give you a second chance to read a story. (This isn't radio, you know. Stories don't need to be repeated on the hour, you can just page back and see every story ever posted if you feel like it.) I do care about the lack of professionalism. If you don't like that; put me on your foe/freak list, however that works (I've never bothered to find out), maybe it'll filter me out.
I get annoyed at this because Slashdot regularly asks me to moderate posts...
I get annoyed that it never asks me to moderate posts.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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
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.
"GMail prevents MSIE from remembering your password. GMail sucks. "
Firefox and Safari both remember it just fine. MSIE sucks.
MSIE respects the tag autocomplete="off" - if Firefox and Safari doesn't, they may or may not suck because of that - but GMail certainly does for putting it there in the first place. (And Firefox sucks for putting configs in 'my documents')
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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.
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.
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.