The MPAA and EFF Cross Sabers

wigwamus writes "Motion Picture Association President Dan Glickman and Electronic Freedom Foundation co-founder Johh Perry Barlow lock horns, then knock lumps off each other over the movie business' attitude to the Internet. From the article: 'These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices.'"

Comments

Ar ye pirates....

[packetmon]

The hackers want to break Hollywood on the wheel of their collective ingenuity and show the suits who is in charge. ... Big media wants to make money from the internet like it does with every other outlet, or at the very least not have piracy forever draining away their profits.

Isn't it ironic that hollywood is seeing some of their biggest profits in ages, and as time elapses they continue to make more and more money. I know that they do lose money due to piracy, but most of that piracy comes from organized groups with huge copying and distribution capabilities. For those in NYC, how often have you seen "bootleggers" in front if the federal building, state office buildings even near police precints selling pirated copies. Why doesn't hollywood focus on finding the sources of these centers and shutting them down. If the government under hollywoods complaints can go and bother 17 year olds, how difficult would it be for the same government to find out who is buying multirecording DVD burners on a large scale. Let's get real.

Both sides have it wrong...

[Churla]

The EFF is painting a picture of people who are pirating for teh sake of pirating becauase they feel it's the right thing to do. None of the people I know who actively copy movies and songs have every mentioned once screwing any institution. For them it's "I can watch this new movie at home, on my big screen TV, with my popcorn and drink and not fork over $25 for my wife and I to go to a theater and probably have a better experience" or "This let's me have tons of music I wouldn't go buy just so I can listen to it and see if I like it" and things like that. There's no magical army of "copyfighters" out there. Just people who want free media.

The MPAA and RIAA and various other organizations have it wrong in thinking that they will out-litigate these people because simply put, these people know what they're doing is illegal and choose to do it anyway.

I do agree with the concept that they need to make it possible for people to buy media in a conducive manner without an undo cost and they will make money. ITMS and several others are proving it's possible.

The MPAA can go ask the software industry exactly how profitable "stamping our piracy" has been for em. Or they can ask them how much inexpensive downloads have helped good software spread.

Re:Excuse me

[oneiron]

As someone who recently was a 17 year old "electronic Hezbollah", I can say ideology had nothing to do with my choice to download and share movies. I did it, and still do, because it's easy and costs basically nothing. Sure I don't like the MPAA but I would still torrent if they didn't exist.

Visit any piracy-centric message board, and you'll find countless arguements about the ideologies that justify sharing copyrighted content. You'll even find it here on slashdot most any time there's a story like this one. You may not be doing it for those reasons, but many others have convinced themselves that they are...and are quite vocal about it. Look at the collection of legal threats sometimes flaunted on the front page of piratebay, for crying out loud... It's just human nature that we tend to dig for excuses to justify our actions so we can avoid the feelings of guilt typically associated with them...

Re:Aw geez.

[mcmonkey]

I wasn't trying to be funny.

Currently in the US of A, being a terrorist means you have no rights. You can be a US citizen, arrested on US soil, for alleged acts committed in the US, and have none of the ordinary rights 'guaranteed' to someone in that situation.

You can be put in civilian prison, or a military prison, or sent to Gitmo, or sent overseas. You have no rights. You don't get a lawyer; you don't get a phone call. You don't even get a trial. You can be held for YEARS without the government even admitting you are being held.

You can be tortured. No interrogation technique is off limits.

You won't get to question witnesses or review the evidence against you. If you do happen to get a trial or hearing, the government can submit 'classified' evidence you won't know about. And the judges will assume all government evidence is true until you can prove otherwise. (How do you prove something you don't even know about is untrue? Well, that's your problem.)

And if that's how the US treats its own citizens--registered voters even!--think what we might do to the rest of the world.

So, if you've ever downloaded a movie or CD in a situation of any questionable legality, or used any kind of hack or work-around to perform any sort of replication of a DVD or CD, attempted to play a DVD on linux, even if you think your actions were covered under fair use, Barlow just said all the above should apply to you.

I'm not laughing.

Re:sooner or later the industry will give in...

[sorak]

that's a good point; although I'm going to pull you up on the "If you make it too difficult to watch a movie or listen to a music, people won't buy it." bit... It is already far too hard just to play DVDs that you own; you have to jump through hoops like watching "you shouldn't copy this" etc. and then on Fedora because of the copy protection it won't play strait off (you need an update from livna). And the copy protection means that I can't use my RIGHT to hold a copy of the material I have bought... which meant that when I lost one of my Futurama DVDs all I could do legally is buy another... they don't deserve to have any customers.

Unfortunately, most people use standard DVD players, or their playstation 2, if they have one, and will never know or care about the pains of trying to play DVDs on a Fedora install. As for the FBI (or interpol) warning, well, originally, a selling point of DVDs was that you could skip past the previews and go straight to the movie. Now that VCRs are going extinct, the movie industry is designing DVDs that make you watch the previews anyway, and people are still sitting through it, to get to the movie. The point is that if they are willing to sit through five minutes of previews, then the FBI warning is no obstacle for them.

The only thing they really care about is that they can't make backup copies of their stuff. Most people however, are more cynical than idealistic, and so they just assume that because most people do not make backup copies of their cds and dvds, and because most of the people who do copy them, give copies away, that it is fair for the industry to do whatever they can to protect their content. Point is, the grassroots resentment toward the MPAA/RIAA isn't getting any better, and most people will jump through whatever hoops they're given.

I'm also wondering how long it will be before the RIAA comes up with a new media distribution format (a sort of super-audio-CD) that does something for the customer (maybe raises the sampling rate from 44k to 48k), and also uses a CSS-style encryption. Such a system would be cracked in no time, but the purpose of it would be to make mp3 rippers and unlicensed players illegal (through the DMCA ban on decryption software). Of course, they could then license the rights to microsoft and a few other companies to create software (some of it would come with WMP) that could rip the music into a heavily DRMed format, so that end-users would get just enough freedom to make them use the format. The funny thing is that Microsoft would warn people that they no longer support mp3 ripping of this new media because it is "insecure", and people would eventually stop using mp3 because they perceive it as an outdated technology.

Re:sooner or later the industry will give in...

[Mr. Flibble]

sooner or later the industry will give in...

I doubt that. The real battle is that the RIAA/MPAA style companies are in are to preserve themselves. What they are really afraid of, but you never hear them say so, is the destruction of their business model.

These companies pretend to exist under the banner of "protecting" the artists and IP. In truth, they often take the IP away from the artists themselves, and take by far the lion's share of the profits. Nothing really wrong with that as it is just a standard business practice.

However, with the advent of P2P technologies and the like, distribution is becoming decentralized, which is what the MPAA/RIAA specialize in. Their position as those who control the distribution of media is threatened, and that is their entire business model. If artists sell music directly to the public via P2P or similar technologies, the industries will have no revenue stream, and they will go out of business. The artists will get more revenue, and the distribution companies will get little to none.

In the long run, artists will have more control over their work, and become wealthier for it. A free market for media is arising, and this is just what the distribution companies don't want. So, the "pirating" is giving rise to more of a free market system, and this could destroy the RIAA/MPAA.

If they really wanted to help artists as they claim, they would roll out a distribution system based on P2P, and hand all the control to the artists of this system, and merely monitor the P2P network to keep it working. That of course, would reduce their profits, and make the artists more wealthy, and they cant cut their own revenue stream now can they?

So, instead, the market acts around them, and this system will arise all on it's own, and destroy them just the same. It is just a matter of time.