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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.'"
The bottom line is that if I can see it or I can hear it, I can find a way to copy it. If you make it too difficult to watch a movie or listen to a music, people won't buy it. They'll eventually figure out that they have more to gain by making things easy to use rather than creating ill will and incompatibiity by trying to stamp out casual copying.
No longer will copiers of electronic media be referred to as 'pirates'. They are now to be escalated to terrorists. That way, the MPAA & RIAA can get federal anti terrorism money to help in their fight against these evil people.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You can hear extended audio of Glickman v Barlow on the Newsnight 9th June podcast, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in. Download from http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewPodcast?id=136697142
I think Glickmans comparison of music to clothes and cars is where his argument fails.
Copying a song does not deprive anybody of the item - only the entity that controls how money is made from the transaction
See the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
KFG
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.
if you change one word I think your point becomes fallible.
People with old world business experience going up against young idealists
In either case, new ideas actually quite often do win.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
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.
Dear EFF: It's probably not such a good idea to align yourself with terrorist groups. Remember:
"But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"
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.
Infiltrated dot Net
The real thing the 'AAs have lost is the power of distribution.
20 years ago if you wanted a movie you had to hop in the car. Even for home viewing of a VHS you had to go to the video store.
The MPAA and RIAA need to face the fact that the internet is essentially a broadcast/time-shifted medium which casts to a broader audience than ever. And how do broadcaster's make their money? Advertising.
This may or may not be a popular notion - but it is my opinion that the best way to support movies and music in the future is via product endorsement. Yes, that's right. You might see wayne's world-esqe product placement rise - but isn't everyday life just product placement anyhow? look around you and count the consumer items that have no labeling on them. Our movies and music should follow suit and become freely distributable.
They cannot hold back the tide forever - I think it is inevitable.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
I'm generally a Barlow fan, but that's some of the most poorestly chosen words in the history of language. Just what the MPAA, RIAA, et al. and their paid governement servants need, a little more help getting the little guy who just wants a backup copy of a movie sent to Gitmo.
"Look, this works. I have proof."
"I refuse to believe it can work."
If they can't listen to reason, we'll have to wait for them to die, it seems.
You can't take the sky from me...
The reason why the movie industry is getting clobered, and the music industry got clobered: they didn't offer legal alternatives to the service.
To say it's a battle between free and paid is oversimplifying: iPod + iTunes is wildly succesful. It's paid, but it leverages the ease of the internet to get legally downloaded music.
If these industries had tried to embrace the new tech instead of surpressing it, most would go to them, and the black market would be a fringe issue.
For movies, the choice right now is either online and illegal/unpaid, or offline and legal.
A lot of people are choosing online, not illegal.
Example: if they offered movies for download, or online streaming movies and paid subscription, and the price wasn't retarded, a LOT of people would ditch piratebay et al.
My $0.02
I think Glickman makes a really good point here. I'll roll with the obligatory car analogy since everyones already familiar with the laws of 'human nature' as applied to cars. Suppose you left your Subaru parked outside your house on a public street.. Now suppose i had a replicator machine which could replicate any solid object and I came along in the night and replicated your Subaru and then got into the new Subaru and drove off into the night. The next day you might get into your car, and start driving along. But all the bonds between the atoms would have worked loose as a result of the replication, and also Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle. Your car would just evaporate into a pile of chrome dust on the highway. You would be screwed.
I know this analogy doesn't apply to digital media, but it might.
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.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
You can tell Dan Glickman's age in his speech:
- Microsoft: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005
- Washington Mutual: 2 dollars given out in $2 denominations(the $2 bill)
- Gentleware: Poseidon(Community Edition)
- Wal Mart / Sam's Club: Sampled foods from selected vendors
- Arby's: Chicken Fingers(?)
- Google
It doesn't defy the law of nature, it's a useful technique called marketing!Old man should see this
In a contest they would.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Glickman: You are powerful, as the Emperor expected. But you are not a Jedi yet.
Barlow: You'll find I'm full of surprises!
Clash of lightsabers, sparks
Glickman: You don't know the power of the DRM Side! Join me!
Barlow: Never! I'll never join you!
Glickman: It is pointless to resist!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
often, but not always. with movie piracy I am reminded often of what happened in Canada many years ago with cigarettes. Big business (the Canadian gov't) lost big time on that one and the little guy was triumphant.
Without going into much detail, or even providing a link (i'm that lazy and at work so I shouldn't even be here) - Canada decided smokers would pay out the ass if they heavily taxed cig's, i mean heavily, i think at the time it was early 90's and suddenly the price of the dirty cancer sticks jumped a couple of dollars. they still paid. for awhile. than, oddly enough, people found some stores that sold cheaper slightly less taxed (OK, not taxed at all) cigs at some stores. Canadians liking to save money like everyone else opted for the lower cost. I inquired into it a bit and discovered that pirate rings for cigarettes had been established - in some cases it was local reserves, others it was smuggling from the US, and local stores were frequently buying quantities of cigarettes of people who sure didn't look very official.
the gov't saw this happening and took immediate steps to stop it that succeeded, they dropped the tax on the cigarettes and learned a valuable lesson - when you charge a lot for crap, people stop buying it. now to bring this up to today, in the article the MPAA advise that they need to pay these people salaries so they will continue to produce, i whole heartedly agree, but not million dollar salaries, if you need to make several million for working for a few weeks and can't get by without it, than screw you and the horse you rode in on. if the product was priced more on par with the value the consumer got from it than they wouldn't be having this problem.
People are powerless when they are convinced they are powerless.
Join Tor today!
A few things that should be noted: the Grateful Dead do NOT give away ALL of their "product". But, giving away some of their products gives THEM much exposure and helps others see that what they have to offer shows skill and has variation each and every time. From this they are able to build greater customer base and support and from that sell more of their other products.
For instance,
With unhappy people, they may copy and distribute product out of SPITE, but with happy loving fans they only do what allowed out of happiness with group, and help police themselves out of happiness too. THIS is what the Grateful Dead have achieved (now some may find a few fans distributing stuff they shouldn't but it is the small minority)
To address the quality point, the Dead allow people to bring in equipment and mike stands, usually up to 6ft or 12ft. People spend thousands on equipment. Files are made using LOSSLESS formats (not mp3), and some copies are even distributed with 5.1 sound-- these are NOT low quality copies!!!
InfoPort
and the opposite goes for teeth, I guess.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
The funny part is (at least to me) that this is not about an industry so much as it is about the *AA and associates trying to maintain a fully disfunctional (in light of current and future technologies) business model.
The real deal in all this mess is that content creators "REALLY DON'T NEED THE *AA ANYMORE" since for not much more than a data center contract, any record label, including independents, can set up their own music distribution system over the Internet. The entire need for a music and movie distribution organization (i.e., the *AAs) no longer exists.
US Telephone users are finally going to get to stop paying for the Spanish American war, but when will recording artists get to stop paying for 'breakage of vynl disks' on their contracts?
Its not about DRM, its about stolen wealth, and the *AA is currently stealing it, blatantly stealing it. They counter claim that because they were unable to steal it from content buyers, it was stolen from them.... I'm calling BS.
Now, the price of content is high because of the *AAs of the world, but if content providers could get out of the draconian contract they signed, and start providing content over the Internet at reasonable costs to users for the 'PURCHASE' of said content, most users would happily just purchase the content as its not worth the effort to most people to be illegal or even figure out the ins and outs of stealing it. Additionally, any kind of licensing setup that allowed fair use (backup copies, multiple players, etc.) would be accepted easily if the price was low enough (see iFanboi rhetoric for an example).
Its pure "pot and kettle black and white" when it comes to the *AA claiming downloaders and file sharers are stealing from them.
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They're also very rich men. Perhaps they actually believe that every download is a lost sale because they can afford to buy every single piece of music which they like. Is it possible that they're totally out of touch with the idea that many of us had to budget our CD purchases? It's been said before, and I'll say it again: They need to start selling ten times as much music for one tenth of the price. Unfortunately, some people don't like to change.
Look, to assume that artists are going to stop doing what they're doing because there isn't wealth in it is stupid. People who enjoy creating and sharing art will continue to do it so as long as it remains enjoyable for them and they can get enough money to fund their projects. And technology is making that easier not harder. So to say that music, movies, writing, story telling, dancing, painting, sculpting, and anything else that contributes to a culture is going to die because of piracy is silly. We have the history of civilization to prove it.
What we observers know is that models and technology pass from existence, not art. Mr. Glickman represents a bureaucracy that currently dominates western movie production and distribution. He'd like us to think that he is doing something noble but his intentions are not. He isn't fighting to save art. He isn't even fighting to save the industry. He is fighting to save the model on which the industry is currently locked into.
Every bureaucrat hates innovation. They hate new ways of doing things which are more productive. Innovation makes the old people and old ways look incompetent, and no one likes to look incompetent.
I have no doubt that movies and movie makers will survive. Mr. Glickman might even survive, but not by trying to fit his old model over the new one. I'm sure he will land on his feet either way.
I thought I would say it because I don't think that Mr. Barlow did an adequate job.
Right. The Americans still weren't done killing off the natives so the Americans could rule with their own imperialist corruption. Luckily they got the job done in the end and we can all enjoy a nice McDonald's burger while sipping a Coke and watching Fox News. Good stuff.