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Movie Studios Unveil New Anti-Piracy Lab
PaulusMagnus writes "According to the BBC Walt Disney, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal and 20th Century Fox have formed a new organisation called the Motion Picture Laboratories. They've also given them a nice tidy sum of US$30m to play with to develop new technologies to combat piracy." From the article: "There are thousands of new concepts floating around the hi-tech community about how to develop tools to fight piracy ... Researching and developing these technologies now will help save the major studios and other motion picture producers and distributors money in the future."
MOD DOWN
This is entirely incorrect. The taxes in dividends were reduced, but that did not have the effect described above.
Previously, the tax on long term capital gains was less. This means, instead of dividends, companies paid out profits to share holders by either buying back stock, or holding onto the cash (thereby increasing stock value). The problem with this, is that it placed pressure on companies to increase stock price, instead of simply paying higher dividends. The problem is that a higher stock price can be created through manipulation, whereas higher dividends can not be faked. This led to Enron and others, which is why the law needed to be changed.
The point of the story is that before, a hypothetical company would go from $100 to $125 whereas no it is more likely to go from $100 to $100 with a $25 dividend payout. The main point is that all the tax break did was change the channel through which the same money traveled. It did not have the effect described in the parent post.