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Court Action Does Not Reduce File-Sharing
gollum123 wrote to mention a BBC report that despite numerous court cases, litigation does not appear to be reducing the amount of file-sharing. From the article: "The level of file-sharing has remained the same for two years despite 20,000 legal cases in 17 countries. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it was 'containing" the problem and more people were connecting to broadband."
The more people that take court action, the more bitter people will be, and the less likely people will buy from them.
Covenants must benefit all people, or they are simple applications of oppression from one group to another. Freedom to download is the cornerstone of the internet (right or wrong). That's why so many great bands are joining the clue train!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The people who get nailed in court for file-sharing seem very remote. It just doesn't seem like a file-sharing conviction will ever affect "normal" people who just use Limewire every so often when they need something. These people make up 99% of the file-sharing population.
I would have thought with the high standards employed by the RIAA in its lawsuits, it would intimidate anyone out of file-sharing.
True, the level has stayed the same .. but perhaps without the lawsuits and FUD campaign the amount of file sharing would have grown?
The number of users of iTunes and iPods music devices has increased, why hasnt the level of file sharing? Seems either lawsuits worked, or people prefer convenience of using the itunes store. I dont think it's healthy for the lawsuit factor should be blindly dismissed as ineffective.
The point I actually want to make is we have to be objective and have to know where the threats are. After all, no point in ignoring something that might be true. Maybe counter FUD is needed, or better file sharing methods?
I'm taking my w4r3z back to Usenet and IRC, where it's safe.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Mr Kennedy also warned that the music industry could sue internet service providers (ISPs) if they do not crack down on their customers who flout copyright rules.
I wonder what will happen when this and the interest the US Government is showing in the content of what people are looking at (here and here) and Bell South's interest in looking at the destination of your packets and no longer acting as a pipe intersect.
1. People don't think that it's a big risk if there's a 1 in 100,000 chance they'll be the next one sued (especially if they don't swap too much).
2. Suing people tends to piss them off, making them less likely to buy from you.
Court Action Does Not Reduce File-Sharing
You can also interpret the data another way from this, if you so desire:
35% of illegal file-sharers have cut back*
14% of illegal file sharers have increased activity*
*Jupiter survey of 3,000 people in UK, Germany and Spain
Well I think it's obvious what the people want, and that's less strict copyright laws. I'm pretty sure democracy is not about who has the richest lobbyists, so the RIAA can kiss my ass.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Yeah, those kids who steal cookies, comic books, and CDs always grow up and get involved in armed robberies.
And a resounding DUH rang round the world.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I find the last paragraph of the article mildly amusing:
[Mr. Kennedy] said DRM was a "sometimes misunderstood element of the digital music business".
I wonder if he knows who is misunderstanding it...
good thing copyright violation and theft are different things entirely.
They are called The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries? Wow, that explains the ancient mindset of the music industry. Imagine the automotive industry still refering to themselves as horseless carriage manufactures!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
The level of file-sharing has remained the same for two years despite 20,000 legal cases in 17 countries.
Maybe THAT is the reason why record companies are seeing their profits decline? Court costs are not trivial.
Wouldn't we expect the level of file sharing to go up, proportional to the growing internet population? If it has, in fact, stayed flat that would indicate something is creating downward pressure. Whether it's the lawsuits or not is another question entirely.
You can't outlaw something that people don't think is illegal. Just how outlawing liquor in the 30's made it more popular than ever.
Who moved my sig?
Frequently we all see AntiPiracy Companies based in USA & UK bitching about loss of sales, pirating on the rise and how it adds to the cost.
The same Anti-Piracy Ranting and Raving has been going on for the last 10 years .
People still pirate software(apps), games(PC and consoles), Media(tv shows,movies) and other files.
If game companies really want to make more money reduce the price of games,
also stop mass producing a load of cheap clone copies . ( Do we need 5000 WW2 shooters?)
Also if Movie companies want to make more money on sales and get more people to watch it instead of downloading pirate verisons . OFFER THE MOVIES WORLD WIDE the SAME DAY.
The const flow of bullshit that USA market needs to make money 1st and then delay airing in UK, Australia, Euro, rest of the world is a big reason why people download movies .
Why watch it in local movies when you can download the DVD Screener, DVD Rip or SVCD TC ahead of time of the local movies.
The same goes for TV Shows . Australia and UK are the biggest downloaders of tvshows
(90% of them american made/air'ed)
For Australian's for the last 10 years, its been always quicker to download and watch a tv show rather then wait for it to show here a half a season too 2 seasons behind( 3 months to a year) Downloading the show comes down in HDTV format, without ads, only uses 360 meg of data per ep, correct airing order and far ahead of local airing)
Also a lot of people that actually pirate software are low to medium income ,
were big large corp/business like BSA, RIAA and MPAA make millions of dollars .
The International Federation of the Pornographic Industries?
The following statement is false.
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to my world.
.... RIAA lawyers kill a kitten.
A block of code, sufficiently well-written, is indistinguishable from magick.
You would expect file sharing to grow naturally as more and more people use the internet. The fact that it has merely stagnated suggests that the litigation is succeeding somewhat. My own mother, who doesn't even use a computer, warned me not to file share the other day. She had "heard that people are getting sued".
Music piracy could be "dramatically reduced within a very short period of time" if ISPs took action against their law-breaking customers, Mr Kennedy said.
who's going to monitor every byte of each pc connected?
Kaetemi
You are gay. Actually, you are gay...so gay that you could have come from San Francisco bay, on which they lock up people like you on the isle of Alcatraz. Speaking of witch, my Alcatel stock skyrocketed today, and you are gay!!
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Something I did when I was a kid, which I'm ashamed of now, was shoplift just about everything that wasn't nailed down. And I was big into warez for a while. But now that I make a comfortable salary, my time is worth more to me than I would save by hunting down stuff online through nefarious means. (The shoplifting thing quickly faded as the risks grew when I reached maturity.)
/. visitors. I would guess that a large majority of those who are not students are, like me, nicely into middle class.
It would be interesting to see a demographic survey of
Anyway, the point here is that while I used to pirate a bunch of music, that too has faded. Now I mostly grab free music, mostly live stuff from etree. And I'm pretty embittered by the big music business. What fools.
However, unlike shoplifting or software piracy, I'm not really ashamed of the music piracy. All I was doing was something that was legal in the analog world. I was moving my own music from one place to another, or I was borrowing a copy of a friend's cd. And listening to a cd makes me want to go to a concert, and that's how their biz model should have worked.
Or they can just sue everybody.
Incidentally, I feel the same way about ripped TV shows. If I miss a show that was on yesterday, I still want to watch the show! All I'm doing is consuming what they air for free!
If they did, we would have stopped hearing about their proceedings long ago.
Insert self-referential sig here.
One spends money on things others can do more efficiently.
The price we pay is based on our assessment of the time it took to make the exact item/service we're getting.
Music live I can see paying $15-$50 or more -- supply is low, so demand sets the price.
Digital music has a near infinite supply. The market pushes costs to zero.
May not be the info you're looking for, but unhappy musicians are starting to raise a ruckus: (http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/19157)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
International Federation of the Pornographic Industries?
Now that would be an interesting institution to do research on filesharing!
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
internet exploder 7 beta2 preview
I'd be very careful before opening that rar file, for more than one reason.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
The number of users of iTunes and iPods music devices has increased
Hmmm, maybe because people are using the iTunes service, and downloading their music their. You're making the assumption that everyone will download either to "stick it to the man," or perhaps because to take for free rather than purchase for moderate price is what most would do.
I counter to say that people now have a more legitimate source of music, and they are using it. After all, the article is about filesharing... but music downloads as a whole counting iTunes etc have probably increased quite a bit.
your the one posting on /.
Carbon-copy court filing, are, however both rather inexpensive and easy to do. This is the tactic the RIAA seems to mainly use, as opposed to actually persuing things through court they bring forth an initial massive case and then an offer to settle things out for a less damaging sum.
Entities like the RIAA and IFPI hire spin doctors (and the media) trying to make the public equate file-sharing with illegal activities. But this isn't necessarily the case.
P2P file-sharing technologies are inreasingly being used for legitimate distribution of many large content objects, simply because it makes more-efficient use of Internet infrastructure: the free-for-download fan series "Star Trek: New Voyages" and World of Warcraft patches are just two examples that come to mind.
I expect there's plenty of Gene Research data and other such things using P2P by now as well.
You'll notice that there is *never* any mention make of the use of portable storage devices, flash memory sticks etc., for the exchange of music files. Give the increase in the amount of storage that these devices are being upgraded to it becomes very convenient to copy MP.3s to these devices at your friends house etc. and to transfer such files to your computer, then iPod etc..
A draconian crackdown in online file sharing will only result the movement of file-sharing to an offline model.
I well recall the music industry wailing and gnashing their collective teeth in the late 70s, early 80s because of 'pirate' taping. There was much fuss, 'n feathers about electronics manufactures marketing dual well cassette decks. In the end CDs came along killing the cassette. Thus, the industry was placated for a couple of decades. Given the convenience of the CD, and the quality of the sound folks bought into the audio CD with a vengeance. They started replacing their music collection which had been on vinyl with CDs. This caused the recording corporations to reap a windfall, without having to develop new artist, paying for new albums etc.. About the time that the internet, especially broadband, got cranked up and really going the folks that were updating their music libraries to CD got caught up. Thereby causing a dip in CD sales. This was inevitable. Not that that placated the shareholders of the recording companies. Well the CEOs etc. in the industry had their backs against the wall, as they had failed to point out to shareholders that the retool to CDs was not going to last forever, and the CEOs had been operating on cruise control as per developing new sales. So recording industry fat-cats were staring doom in the face, heads were going to roll...
But Wait! We're not bad CEOs etc., it's those evil internet downloaders that are causing the drop in profit!
The fact is that the RIAA and its minion are doing *nothing* but scapegoating of a new technology, and its users so that oligarchs entrenched in an economic sector that is doomed for the scrape-heap of obsolescence can hang around long enough to be able to pop their golden parachutes.
It's not about morality, nor ethics. In the final analysis it ALL about $$$$$$ and maintain the oligarch's tasteless, but stately pleasure domes.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Yes and it did. That is a brief history of the 90s.
If it has, in fact, stayed flat that would indicate something is creating downward pressure.
What you see is market destruction and saturation. The big publishers wiped out their competition, so their primary market is left with bad choices and continues to make them at the same rate as always.
Don't confuse broadband adoption with internet access and don't think that you need broadband to swap music. Internet access itself has remained constant in the developed world. Everyone who wants it has had it for years. Broadband is needed for other activities that require instant feedback but music is not one of them.
Music sharing was big before broadband became common because songs are only a few megabytes in size. Back in the day, people would set their favorite client to download their music while they did other things. There's only so much free music a person wants in a given night and dial up worked just fine. A person using the old Napster was exposed to more new music than any commercial radio station can provide and often collected more songs than the average station carries in inventory. Having your requests met in minutes is not much more satisfying than your computer getting it over an hour or so. The thing that mattered was variety and price.
It's not surprising that "piracy" is still rampant because the greedheads turned everything else off. Legitimate providers like MP3.com were all shut down and replaced by greedy nonsense like ITunes and horrid clients like WMP. After years of stagnation, other legitimate services are finally coming back on line. Places like Magnatune are finally going to put money in artist's pockets and new music at your fingertips. In the mean time, anyone who really wants music will find a way. The tools only get better and the difference between what you can get on music sharing services and what's offered by the big publishers and broadcasters is still staggering.
The greedheads are losing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
consumers and artists
1.) artists need money to live and be productive
2.) artists need consumers who appreciate their art work, and pay for them
3.) consumers need artists too, because artists are the basic glue which upholds
and inspires our culture, every decade is mostly described by their artists,
and the artwork,
what you think of when I say 80s, perhaps there is a famous tune floating
through your ears, or you see a picture of the androgynous "Boy George",
or see a black pontiac transam cruising, it´s part of our culture,
or even parts of our identity.
<b>artwork belongs to both society and creator </b>
so as I wrote in the subject it´s a two way relationship where no side
can exist without the other, so from my point of view if you are an artist and create artwork, on the one hand you should have the right to sell your artwork,
and you should have the right to prosecute those people who sell
your creations, because this is a really damage in your oportunity to
sell your artwork, but persecuting private fileshares, which could not
pay for all artwork they have on their HDs aren´t really a loss,
because most of them still buy the artwork they appreciate most,
they are consumers who are willing to pay for artwork.
But accepting that you created artwork and release it to the public you also
must accept that since release you don´t own your creation entirely anymore,
it becomes part of the cultural heritage of a group, a society or even the worlds cultural heritage.
So concluding this, and citing what was said in a thread above, the more people you take to court the more bitter people there will be, the more consumers
you will lose.
<b>The copyright has gone mad since the "Mickey Mouse" - act induced by Bono.</b>
In germany we call the copyright "Urheberrecht"
Which means the right of the creator on his creation, but why should
the copyright last longer than the creator lives, because he is dead,
so he and his work were and are part of our culture, he participated
on the wealth of the consumers of his artwork, so why after his death
his artwork shouldn´t be public domain ?
Artwork isn´t pure commercial, because it´s part of our culture.
a.) I´m against commercial copyright violators
b.) I provide an allowance of private and fair use,
perhaps using a culture flat fee, where you pay non directional
so creators of swapped artwork get a compensation
c.) many artists owe their public success to the napsters and eDonkeys
of the world, for example "Gorillaz"
d.) music industry is stuck into a total commercial way of thinking,
they forgot that those private file swappers they sue, are also mostly
consumers, and that private fileswapping can boost record sales
e.) we even have recuded file swapping rates, but the record sales
are still decreasing.
<b> Copy doesn´t kill music,
Copy is a sign of life,
Hearing & Copying is a sign of appreciation,
</b>
and leads to prospering business.
It's not just an ancient mindset, it's an ancient industry. It's foundation is limitation of publication of physical media. From the broken presses of Gilbert and Sullivan sheet music presses to CD burnings, the industry has existed only through the intervention and support of government. In the US, the establishment clause of the constitution somehow has given us eternal copyright, three broadcasters and three big music publishers with much overlap. It has enriched a few at the expense of all those excluded from their free market share of popular culture. Just ask Courtney Love. The internet has pulled the rug out from the pigopolists and they are going the same place your record player has gone. You, me and the artists are going to win this one.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Also, when I saw "Phonographic," I thought it said "Pornographic." :-)
Blame the user, not the software.
The fact the level has remained the same is a massive victory for the RIAA.
The way file sharing was growing with Napster and Even with Kazaa it's a wonder they didn't go out of business.
Well here's hoping someone compiles ALL free music and formats it well somewhere and they take down the RIAA.
I've heard of this thing somewhere else.
But, since we're off topic, lemme point out the Uncertainty Principle applies to prostitution listings on websites -- the very act of noting them collapses the wave function and they cease to exist. this would be eerie and Grant Morrisony, but it's not, because of course the cops can read websites as well as you can.
Just one idea that seems, at the moment, to make sense. You're a music company, now. You sell CDs. You advertise them on the radio by passing out major bucks to corrupt DJs and so on. This works? For teenyboppers. Thus the boy bands, the Britneys, all of that. Hey, it's smokin' when you're 14. But it doesn't work with core music buyers. So what to do? Simple. Sponsor sharing networks. Pay people if they recommend things that get downloaded a lot. Give them download credits for uploading. Get into commercial deals with websites, and pay for their servers, give away prizes, all that stuff. It'll be a whole lot cheaper than KISS-FM, that's for sure. Now, if it's legal, why buy? Simple. Check out what's on pirate boards: nada. Three or four hundred albums and their songs, all current with teens and young adults. But servers cost money. A catalog costs money. Quality costs either bandwidth or straight money. Hardware, software and music companies should all take a piece of establishing the "music promo" environment, and get money back in hardware, software and music sales. The Hit Parade is dead. Top 40 radio is dead. Pirate Bay? Not dead.
Scientists have confirmed that the earth is indeed round.
I've thought about this from time to time. I share because I don't have money, which is only a temporary excuse because I'm cheap. However, I wonder if artists might make a living by giving out their music for totally free, and permitting file-sharing.
It appears to me that most companies that market to teenagers actually attempt to market culture. It seems to me that what teenagers want more than anything is culture. That explains MTV and all the weird and eccentrical behaviors and speech from teenagers. Teenagers get into music and style. This is culture to them. They fit in. That is, they are properly encultured. Now they are acceptable by their peers.
Now a company attempts to market to teenagers. If the company succeeds, their product becames culture so that all teenagers who wish to be "in" must have that product. The company makes a lot of money.
The solution to all this file-sharing delima that I might propose is that artists give away their music for free and then contract with companies that sell clothing and other goods. These companies would make shirts with their artists' names on it. The artists could do all the other things like concerts like they always have and do now.
People would be allowed to freely distribute the music or you could buy the CD if you really want to from the store still. It's just that you could download the music from the website or whatever.
The money is made in the tangible goods. Tangible goods always wear out so there's always a demand.
The RIAA knew that the lawsuits wouldn't work even before they started using them. The people working for RIAA knew that the music industry had lost the file sharing wars, but when the music industry pays your bills, you go ahead with a strategy even when you know that it is pointless.
The same data can actually play right into there hands.
How? The RIAA can now claim that existing legal options availible to them are
not sufficient. This gives them the oppertunity to claim enhanced measures like
broadcast flags, root kits etc are required to protect their revenues.
I am a glass half empty kind of guy, and this is the first thought that came to mind. They can play the victim quite well.
i'm sorry, but i will never buy digital media in my life ever again. i haven't bought a single CD since i fired up Napster in 1999. my formula for not being caught is two-fold:
1. load your shared folder up with porn
2. if you must download linkin park or flipsyde, the kind of stuff the riaa is sniffing?:
a. stop all of your downloads except that song you want with the most sources and the best connections
b. suck it down in under a minute
c. immediately get it out of your shared folder
d. if you do it fast enough, all the porn suckers you have cultivated will flood out and anyone trying to get that drop of water pop song in your sea of masking porn
e. and the riaa only goes after those who make pop songs available, not those who download it, don't forget that
additionally you are a filesharer of good ethical standing: you ARE sharing files people want, you are just segregating what you share/ don't share according legal risk
and speaking of pop songs? i have the BEST solution for beating the riaa on that subject matter: i embrace world music, i let my mind wander. currently, i'm into japanese pop music and european techno: love that armin van buuren and ayumi hamasaki (i live in new york city)
the thing to do is is to expand your musical interests to things beyond the usual pop crap of your native country (and embrace pop crap of other countries, heh), and you are also therefore using the new file sharing technology to its greatest benefit: connecting with resources that otherwise would be beyond your grasp in the pre-internet universe. file sharing is exactly what the digital utopians dreamed about in the heyday of the internet: the free exchange of world culture, bringing people together in large and small ways. file sharing is the promise of the internet. the only people who lose, are media conglomerates. every one else wins, INCLUDING THE ARTISTS. because a real artist does it for the art, not the money
so embrace world music, and you win two ways:
1. you won't be on the riaa's radar
2. you'll grow new brain cells as you develop an awareness of a world beyond your nation's borders, of music beyond your stupid local music industry
there really is a lot of good stuff out there. free your mind and give the bastards who want to keep you in a marketing straightjacket the finger in the process.
and for those of you with a holier-than-thou attitude about me ripping off musicians from other countries? get around this chicken and egg situation: if it weren't for the filesharing networks, I WOULD NEVER BE EXPOSED TO THE ARTIST I AM LISTENING TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. solve that quandry and get back to me with your holier than thou attitude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The more court action they do the more people won't buy. You can't bite the hand that feeds you!
Looking at it form a statistical stand point they are correct. If more people are using broadband internet connections but the number of people using peer to peer file sharing services is the same, then they can consider this a success because the PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE IS DOWN because of all the people who could possibly file sharing at high speeds, a lower percentage are than before they began these law suits. Also a major flaw of this study is that it does not mention if people are still using peer to peer file sharing networks are sharing more or less files than they used too, which would indicate that they were being deterred by the threat of lawsuits.
Anyone who says these lawsuits are not having some effect needs a refresher course in mathematics because they dont understand how to calculate a percentage.
It's not the trading of music, it's the sharing/subsequent uploading of the copywritten music that constitutes copyright violations by most courts.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What? Are they gonna sue everyone? In fact, they have tried, with ignominous results. They have sued people for the stupidest reasons, confusing innocuous filenames for recent hits. All they have done is create bad press!
Will they quit? Nahhh! It just means they must try harder! My friends, we are looking at the last desparate thrashings of a dinosaur.
This comment is a repost of an earlier comment, found using Anti-slash's Database tool
For every file that you don't download, I'll download three!
planet texture maps and more
It's not round Damn it. It's pear shaped!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
did u experience any problems? the exe file is signed and everything is fine with this package.
I don't see the point in all the who-har around music piracy. Up until 1920s people in Spain would have played music via instruments in town squares joyfully, people shared music and shared the enjoyment of it. There was no complaint of reproduction of music. Later came the tape cassette, so shortly there after the bootlegger. Now we have CDs, at incredible prices and people just boot leg via mp3. There is some reduction in quality and there is also the colour injet to make the inlays.
Whats the point though, why all this fus, it's just people trying to share enjoyment. It's not like money makes people happy, if the artists are good then they sell tickets, that's where the real money is.
I'd rather move to Spain and try to catch some of the towns people reproduce music their way, that has to be more original.
But on this note, why should the consumer pay to listen to some remake of an old classic for a rediculous price, it's not original work and therefore as much IP theft as someone who boot leggs music.
And no, I do not copy music, kazza doesn't run on Linux, I listen only to shoutcast streams, and freeview channel 18.
Why UNIX?
It might raise the question, but it does not "beg the question." I know that there is some acceptance of your common usage of the phrase, however, it still makes you sound like an idiot.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
The free-radio industry is looking at moving to digital broadcasts (like that's going to save them).
Imagine a TiVo-like device that records everything off of the radio, digitally.
Now imagine I skim through this "data" for songs I like, save them to my hard drive and I'm done.
No RIAA beating down my door. No lawsuits. No illegal activity.
that's exactly what i was thinking of when i wrote that ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
However, most feel that their work should be protected and they should get some sort of compensation from it (a perfectly justifable argument. Can't make much music if you're starving)
Why should people get compensation for their "work" just because there are musicans? Should people be compensated for doing "work" even if nobody else could care less about their work? That would be like paying people, who like digging holes, if they spend all day digging holes on their own land.
There's also nothing that says a musician can't have a "day job". Someone being able to support themselves entirely as a musician tends to rely on both talent and luck.
The idea of royalties is somewhat questionable. It would be like if people were excepted to tip architects and builders every time they entered a building
Frequently we all see AntiPiracy Companies based in USA & UK bitching about loss of sales, pirating on the rise and how it adds to the cost.
.
.
Yet the sales and profits of the companies involved tell a different story...
Some "pirates" wouldn't buy at the price being asked, some wouldn't buy even at cost price. In these cases there was never any potential sale to lose in the first place.
The same Anti-Piracy Ranting and Raving has been going on for the last 10 years
It started well before 1996. Just that the words and the "machine of all evil" has changed over the last few decades.
Also if Movie companies want to make more money on sales and get more people to watch it instead of downloading pirate verisons . OFFER THE MOVIES WORLD WIDE the SAME DAY.
In many cases the companys distributing movies are large multinationals. It's most likely easier to do this for a movie than for a book, yet book publishers manage to do so. There's also a level of hypocracy in constant lobbying for "harmonization" of copyright laws, whilst at the same time allowing distributers to be able to arbitarily pick and choose where (and when) they are prepared to distribute.
The const flow of bullshit that USA market needs to make money 1st and then delay airing in UK, Australia, Euro, rest of the world is a big reason why people download movies
If this were the case then shouldn't movies have the highest ticket prices in the USA?
Why watch it in local movies when you can download the DVD Screener, DVD Rip or SVCD TC ahead of time of the local movies.
Sometimes even before it would be released anywhere. The point of screeners appears at least partly to be to allow tame reviewers and awards panels to see finished movies before the "plebs". Which is also inconsistent with the idea of a movie needing to make back its production costs ASAP.
The same goes for TV Shows . Australia and UK are the biggest downloaders of tvshows (90% of them american made/air'ed).
Remember that "American made" often equates to "Made in Canada". Even with the USA recently getting the short end of the stick, e.g. Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, the MPAA dosn't appear to get it.
For Australian's for the last 10 years, its been always quicker to download and watch a tv show rather then wait for it to show here a half a season too 2 seasons behind( 3 months to a year)
Australians get a very raw deal. With it possibly being quicker to send things across the Pacific in a leaky rowing boat! With this still going on after Australia has messed up their own laws in the name of a "Free Trade Agreement" with the USA.
Downloading the show comes down in HDTV format, without ads, only uses 360 meg of data per ep, correct airing order and far ahead of local airing)
Typically within less that 24 hours of the programme airing anywhere on the planet. Possibly quicker than flying an airliner, with recording equiptment, to record the broadcast and bring the recording home.