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At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies
ThinSkin writes "Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past, according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans. A typical movie downloader is 29 years of age, while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female. Kaan Yigit, director of the study, observes, 'There is a Robin Hood effect — most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie downloading as a big deal. The current crop of 'download to own' movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services — otherwise file-sharing will continue to thrive.'"
Apocalypto.DVDSCR.XviD-iMBT
;)
Employee.Of.The.Month.DVDRip.XviD-iMBT
Just downloaded them last night
I suspect the number is higher. Free is very attractive. Doing something that is perceived as "criminal" and getting away with it is also very attractive.
Combine these two and you have a huge motivation for people to do this, regardless of their ever watching the movie.
It may be too late to stuff the genii back in the bottle. The result is that this becomes an "entitlement" that people expect. We are looking at a lot of people being out of work as a result. Not the "stars" but the studio grunts and the folks in the promotions and marketing departments.
we are FREEDOM fighters.
Movies are binary encoded Information.
And Information Wants To Be Free.
It is our right and our duty.
I can't speak for the Californian ones, but having looked over a friends here in Vancouver, that's an industry that desperately needs to trim the fat.
and I've only seen one last year! Where can I find the others? :)
Are these folks just too lazy to go to the library and rip DVDs from there? Young people today!
One of the reasons I personally pirate movies is it's easier. I don't have to mess around with anything, I just find a torrent (easy as pie), click 2 buttons and I have it within a couple of hours (on a good torrent under 1 hour). Why ever would I goto the cinema or to a shop to buy something I can get for less effort and money?
I like muppets.
Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past
...and roughly 34 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded the first few minutes of a full-length movie, then cancelled that download to try to find a faster one.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
The current crop of 'download to own' movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services
That's the smartest thing I've read throughout this entire entertainment industry / piracy fiasco. Treating the root problem, instead of the symptoms is sheer brilliance.
The sampling frame would have an inherent bias towards a higher percentage, as those without internet (ie. those who weren't part of the sampling frame, and those who are very unlikely to pirate) weren't even asked. No mention of accounting for this in TFA. Flawed study. Nothing to see here, please move along.
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And it has absolutely nothing to do with $10 tickets at the theater.
This is what the MPAA doesn't quite get. Most people I know over the age of 21 hate going to the theater. It's a fucking hassle.
So when a blockbuster is released like LOTR the options are:
a. suffer in the theater
b. wait half a year for the DVD
c. download the torrent
Just make the first runs available for download and guaranteed the piracy problem will be minimized.
Not at all. When you take something from Best Buy, you are removing a physical object that the store can no longer sell to someone. When you download a movie, no physical object is involved.
I really can't believe a figure of 18% of the US population. That's something like 60 million people. Considering scads of folks are still on dial-up, they must have been downloading the darned things for DAYS (only to find the crc is bad at the end of the download anyway...)
Gee, I wonder why people do not think that this is stealing. Maybe because loss of potential sales does not equal stolen product?
The reality is that these groups hate to admit that technology is devaluing their product. Basically, for the first time, these groups have realized that they are unable to set their price to whatever they like. Now that a consumer is able to download their product readily, their product is not as valuable as it once was. As hard as they try, this will not change because it is a structural issue...
It would seem the next generation of bandwidth rollout predicates the true boom of pirating, considering that official services aren't likely to drop you and can usually keep a good data rate. P2P and the like are too unreliable for downloading a huge movie to be worth the hassle to most people.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Unless the phone poll was conducted exclusively in Silicon Valley, this seems way too high if you ask me. Last I had heard, the U.S. was at about 60% coverage of the population having broadband. I think it's reasonably to say that, bar a few insanely patient people, only broadband users download movies. That breaks down to 30% of the people that reasonably can download movies, have, and I think it's totally absurd to say that a little under 1 in 3 broadband users have pirated a full-length movie.
Unpleasantries.
I think there is a point where something 'illegal' can be considered 'legal' because a high amount of people does it.
In the end, laws are made by people with the morals of society as a base.
... that surveys suck. When will people wake up that you cannot "survey" 2600 people and extrapolate that out as representative of the entire US population. This is such a small sample that it should be dismissed outright. What demographics did they survey? The fact that the survey was online and phone suggest immediately that the survey is skewed.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!
Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past, according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans.
Absolutely, positively false.
Any not because I consider people more honest than that - If you include people copying DVDs or even back in the days of copying VHS tapes, I'd put the figure closer to 70-80% that have pirated a movie.
But to specifically say "downloaded"?
18% of the US population either doesn't have a net connection anywhere near fast enough to download a full-length movie, or has no clue how to actually do so. The most inflated figures available only put roughly a third of the country as having "broadband", which includes quite a bit of the "anything faster than dialup" you see in rural areas, usually under 384kbps. And of those households with "real" broadband, fewer than half of the occupants actually have a clue on how to use the internet (either young parents with kids too young to pirate, or older parents who only have it for the teenager kids).
So no. 18% of respondants in an almost certainly urban area (much higher broadband penetration) have downloaded a pirated movie. The MPAA, however, needs to learn the meanings of "external validity" and "sample bias".
This kind of activity drives the market price for movies down to nothing. The movie industry already has done much to discourage piracy. In particular, DVDs are sold at extremely low prices (with hopes of making profit based on high volume sales). But even low prices can't compete against free when quality and convenience are not at issue.
While big studios creating mass market movies can absorb much of the impact of piracy by selling large volumes to people who don't pirate movies (at least not all the time), independent movie makers are hurt by this race to the bottom. Lower movie prices make it more difficult for independents to make any profit, reducing the possibility of funding. Higher volume sales of mainstream movies fills up the time of consumers who have less reason to be choosey about they spend their money on (especially when they don't spend any money).
When justifying piracy, people ignore that their actions don't just affect the studios who they are stiffing. Their actions affect the market as a whole, promoting a culture of mass mediocracy.
Agreed. Let's not forget that copyright is a recent notion, proposed by a few people in Western Europe only a few hundred years ago. It did not exist in antiquity--Roman poets such as Martial had no problem with their works being copied and sold as long as they were given credit on the title page--and even today most of the world finds it a nonsensical concept.
When I found out that Hollywood regularly adjusts their accounting practices to show their movies all lose money, I decided to adjust my own checkbook to show that I paid for all the movies on my computer.
{ - Generic Guy - }
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
I think the reason people pirate (new) movies is not because that they think celebrities are already rich. Going to the theater is usually a not-so-great experience. Not only do you have to drive there, but you have to deal with annoying people, pay $8 a ticket, and suffer through ten minutes of bad trailers. Then, once you finally think you are going to enjoy the movie, the people behind you talk or chomp annoyingly loud on their popcorn. Not to mention that it seems the best movies these days often are a limited release, so your *only* option is to pirate it. Somebody needs to offer a nice service where you can buy theatrical releases for $5, that become unplayable in 24 hours.
The real competition for online legitimate media services is the ability for them to have what I am looking for. This is why napster was so successful--you could find anything on it and get it fast.
I buy music now on iTunes, not really because I think it is the moral way to download music, but because they usually have what I want, they provide me a way to find other music I might want, and I can download it from them fast. For whatever reason, I don't get great performance out of BitTorrent. But on iTunes, I can do a search, select a song and have it downloaded in about a minute or so.
That's my $0.02.
br/
What I love is that they called it the "Robin Hood" effect. Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor - not to himself.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I've never downloaded a single movie or song... I just copy them from friends, family and co-workers. Let's see the MPAA stop me! Come on you pussies I TRIPPLE-DOG dare you to stop me from copying DVDs. Asshats.
I just counted a few days ago and estimate I have around 850 individual DVD discs, with about 60%-70% being real store purchased DVDs, the others being copies of movies, shows and the MST3K DVD collection project (every MST3K episode ever, all going to DVD).
The reason I copy is so I can take my time with the "borrowed" DVDs and to watch stuff I would never be purchasing anyway. Nor would I rent them. How the MPAA can claim that they lost a purchase from someone like myself just goes to show what a bunch of useless, greedy douchebags they are. F them, I make plenty of real purchases. Perhaps I should just copy everything and never pay for it. Their tactics make a good case for me to just go all bootleg. *Then* what? Can they ever stop sneakernet?
no.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I like that Robin Hood analogy! Personally I was just stealing movies because I wanted to watch them but I didn't want to pay for them. But that Robin Hood thing is great, I'm going to use that sometime.
& I wish I knew the password to your heart . . . &
That's right, I'm a movie pirate! And I like movies rated ARRRRRRR!!!
While most people believe it's usually right to obey the law, most people would probably agree that there are some cases in which it's right to disobey it - especially if the disobedience takes a non-violent form.
To draw on an obvious but compelling example, few would suggest that African-Americans were wrong to protest segregation in the South by sitting at whites-only lunch counters and refusing to leave, or by refusing to move to the back of the bus.
Time will tell if civil disobedience of the DMCA and/or DRM is justified or not.
These results are meaningless! The article states that the "researcher" estimates the error rate to be plus or minus 2.4%. If it was a statistical sample, there would be no estimate of error rate, but instead an actual error rate. If this wasn't a statistical sample, then all that can be stated is 20% of the 2600 people surveyed.
It's also interesting that a survey that was taken via telephone and online is used to extrapolate to the entire population. Since not everyone has a computer, then they could hardly be included in the population (statistical not US). Furthermore, telephone surveys only include people with listed telephone numbers, so again, your statistical population is skewed. Online surveys do not work if they are voluntary (ie would you like to fill out our survey?) Since there is no indication of how many people who chose not to fill out the survey.
Based on the limited information given, it appears that this is another example of using statistics to get them to say what you want. Since most people are functionally illiterate when it comes to statistics, it's very easy for people to use bogus statistical methods to manipulate the data and ultimately the readers of the article.
For any sample to be legit and extrapolated to an entire population it has to be random and representative. If it's not both of those, then the extrapolated data is meaningless.
What they don't tell you, because the question is never asked because nobody would answer truthfully if it was, is that most downloaded movies are porn.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
If MGM or whoever owns the rights to it would rerelease it at a sane price, I would have bought 1984 instead of downloading it. After watching it, I decided that it was okay, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be (though whatsername...Jessica I think, looked pretty hot in her nude scene).
I definitely would not have been happy about this had I shelled out the $100 or more that the resellers on Amazon are asking for this title. This is certainly one that could use one more remake, and hopefully be a little more true to the book.
This space unintentionally left blank.
> There is a Robin Hood effect -- most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie
> downloading as a big deal.
In the UK 10 or so years ago there was a campaign against people copying music they'd not paid for, featuring people like Paul McCartney. As you can imagine, it wasn't taken very seriously.
Just wondering why they surveyed 2600 people and not 6900 people. =)
Civil disopbedience is very often criminal in nature. Criminal means Againsts the law.
So those blacks were legally wrong. However, sometimes you need to break a law to fix an injustice.
Of course, they were morally right, but that is different.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've mostly curbed my blatantly piratical activities and gone back into grey-area piracy (television, backing up my own DVDs, copying CDs to my iPod, etc.), but I think that's because the novelty has worn off. Yes, I can download using a torrent, but the quality is usually not as good as what I can rip myself from the original, so I give preference to buying/renting the media. BitTorrent is useful; it is unquestionably the best distribution network available today. My initial experience with it was basically "whoa! magic!", and I'm sure that's a major factor today. Everyone I've introduced to BitTorrent is equally enthralled.
People are curious about what you can get on the wide-open Internet. Free stuff is all over the place. Downloading gives near-instant gratification (well, unless you're on a modem) without leaving your house. There is practically no competition to the ubiquity and convenience of P2P file sharing. Satellite and Digital Cable aren't IP-based solutions, so it's an extra service on top of your Internet fee. None of the major television networks allow you to pay them directly and get an Internet-based feed, nor do any of the major motion picture production houses.
I think a more sane approach to P2P piracy is to increase the rate at which people get bored with BitTorrent. Offer competing, low-cost alternatives to buying or renting the media. Provide television service on the Internet. I'm certain that I would pay money for high-quality Internet-based content delivery. I *really* want to watch live sports on the Internet. I'd love to log into my local television network and download archived copies of stuff they aired. And I'm quite willing to pay for it. I've already chosen my distribution medium, and the pirates are the only guys catering to it. Don't complain about the piracy, offer an alternative.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
"That's the smartest thing I've read throughout this entire entertainment industry / piracy fiasco. Treating the root problem, instead of the symptoms is sheer brilliance."
Is it? People demanded "try before they buy", and that still didn't stop people from pirating. The problem with your proclemation is that everyone both on and off this forum will quickly forget how "brilliant" it was when the problem still continues, and we move on to the next "well you should have done this". Maybe we'll be that "wise" species that we like to think we are, when the blame game runs out of "victums" and we're forced to look within for the "root" problem.
There is no equivlancy between propoerty and "intellectual property" other than a stupid name. It's wrong that it's illegal, which is why it's not only a right to copy, but IMHO a duty.
You could say the emperor has no clothes. They go around pretending that their monopoly control over information distriubtion is the physical and moral equivilancy as any property right. It's not only immoral, but outright vicious against progress in the information age and spit in the face on "real" culture vs hollywood manufactured culture.
18% sounds like a good start, I'd expect this number to increase to about 35-40% before the studios finally release non-DRMed versions for downloads (at lower than DVD prices).
This board (Slashdot) is filled with a virtual panoply of views on this subject. As is usual though, I think the truth of the matter lies in the nebulous neutral zone.
Let's face it, neither side has really taken the high road on this. People download and distribute movies like they were free commodities and the MPAA bullies people unreasonably and tries to make us all thieves.
I have to sit in theatre with my $12 ticket and watch the stunt double talk about his belief that stealing movies is wrong (I just paid $12 for this, talk about preaching to the choir). And then I blow 20+ minutes watching advertisements for other movies (AKA: previews). When I take a movie home, I have to watch the trailers (they lock out the buttons) for movies I may already have seen or in fact may already own. And then I can't complain and return the video b/c it's already open.
However, the vast load of downloaders are some mix of vigilantes and free-loaders, collectors and connoisseurs. So every solution proposed by the MPAA (i.e.: DRM) effectively blocks the good downloaders as well as the free-loaders.
In the end really, both sides are too stuck up to take the high road and fix the problem. So we'll just end up with 40% of people stealing music before the studios just give in. After which we'll be flooded with 5 years of low-quality movies until people start anteing up again.
Why not just skip the whole process, stop bad-mouthing everyone and figure out something that works. If I want to buy newly-released Italian movies for my family and I can't find them, then who can I lean on to get them out here? If I can't stand previews, then how can I organize around them? Can I show up late with a dozen friends and walk in near the estimated end of the previews? Can I take cell phone calls during the previews, I mean, it's not really the movie is it? You know the stunt double guy? I just stopped going to the theatre that showed him. Maybe I should start asking sales clerks about return policies on DVDs, or refusing to buy DVDs that are "not quite DVDs".
I'm a basketball fan, but I don't have cable. Once they start posting my Raptors games to the Net, then I will start buying them (so that I can watch them on the bus to work). But until then, I just don't watch them. I don't download them illegally out of some self-righteous belief that I can, I'm taking the high road and waiting for them to catch up.
Bloody hell, I'm glad they included the second figure, otherwise I would have been all at sea!!!
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
...make that 25 Million...and one.
: p
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I own an iTunes season pass for the current season of 24, but generally bittorrent each episode. Why? Because the "pirates" can rip from the broadcast, remove commercials, encode into xvid, and post on thepiratebay.org 12-14 hours before iTunes can get it online. That's a problem. I own the season pass because I love 24 and want to support the show. But it's just silly that people who go against the system can make it available before the people who do, when it's essentially the EXACT SAME THING. This is different from a telesync of a movie being posted before the dvd release. Since iTunes has the blessing of FOX and all the rest, they should have their downloads available at, say, 1 AM eastern the day after each show is aired. There is no excuse.
"...while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female." I guess that no hermaphrodites download, then.
Don't be fooled by imitations.
Most people believe that pirating movies and music does not hurt the big stars. Well, realistically it probably doesn't. But there are hundreds or thousands more people that work in/on movies than the big name stars and I'm sure their salary will be the first to be cut if the studios feel the pinch. You can save a few million by cutting salaries of all the other workers while keeping the stars' paychecks high.
Same deal when a company falls on hard times, the lowly employees get canned, raises are suspended, some salary reductions may occur if voted in (sometimes employees are given this choice instead of being laid off), but the CEO and the high-ups still make a crapload of money.
Not to say I'm a Saint or anything. Sometimes I get to thinking and realize I may be getting that one key grip laid off.
Perhaps, but "copiers" then were people who actually had to put the physical time and energy into manual reproduction. The disincentive there prevented much of the problem of cheaply copying an expensive idea and undercutting the originator, which is one of the primary drivers of copyright. It's only the age of mechanical reproduction, and the fact that it's unfairly easier to reproduce than produce, that makes copyright necessary.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
This website http://www.pgol.us/ uses some engines to let you search images but it displays the images one by one like dynamic wallpaper on the website. It goes beyond the mere search and publicly steal images. On the other hand, it does show many, many results rather than a few images without boring clicking.
I'm afraid that's a misconception. Roman literature was copied massively and sold throughout the Empire, with no money ever going back to the author. A large class of literate slaves made this easy. As I said, Roman poets knew that their work was copied and sold for profit, and had no problem with this practise, objecting only to other people taking credit for the composition of said verses.
No kidding. Too bad I can't modify -7 Tired Argument in my preferences.
This sig is exactly seventy characters long and a real waste of space!
Will you people please for the love of all that is holy get it straight.
Theft is theft, and copyright violation is copyright violation. If they were the same thing, we wouldn't need two different laws to handle them each.
To make it super simple:
Theft: The act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
Copyright Violation: The unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.
Quit buying into the idiotic *AA party line that copyright violation is the same thing as theft. It is not!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Aww, what a cute little AC MPAA shill-troll.
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I might be more willing to accept media piracy as "civil disobedience" if there was anything politically or morally demonstrative about it. For the greater bunch of illegal filesharers, though, it's pure, simple, "It's there, I want it" greed. If this was civil disobedience, it wouldn't be shrouded in anonymous protocols. It would be executed in a public and pointed manner, made to expose injustice and force the issue.
I'll agree for people like those who write the software and crack the encryption, and who host the information on it against the DMCA, as well as the people who put themselves on the line by hosting torrent trackers and other such hubs. I've found the "RIAA Sticker" and other such information campaigns to be a very innovative form of disobedient protest. Just clicking "download"? No.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Who says we aren't doing our part to stop global warming? ;)
Did they include me?
Who was stupid enough to admit to that over a phone survey where they have your name, address, and phone number?
63% male/37% women? Almost all of my male friend know how to use bit torrent and often download movies and TV shows with it. About 10% of my female friends know how to do this. A sizable proportion of my male friends do this macho thing where they show off how much of the hard drive space they have is filled with pirated material. None of the women I know do this. So I don't believe that 37% of downloaders are women.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
AC post, pointless panic laden rhetoric. Somebody please mod this down, and keep /.'s signal to noise ratio up.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My god, can the mods not spot troll/flamebait posts at all?
that they won't even sell in the US - or watch TV shows they refuse to broadcast on my local cable channel - then, yeah, I'm surprised it's so small a group.
Information just wants to be free (apologies to my brother-in-law who's in AFTRA and SAG).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Surveyor: Have you illegally downloaded a full-length movie?
Random Individual: (nervously) Um.... no?
Without more details as to how this study was conducted, we really have no clue whether these results are reasonable or not.
Perhaps you should try this one: go down to the Ford dealership, get a few salesmen to talk to you about their most expensive truck, and then invite them to come watch you buy a Chevrolet down the street instead. They'll be upset too, but that doesn't mean you should buy a Ford just to make the salesmen happy. They'd like to make a sale, but that doesn't mean you owe it to them.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Ok, now, everyone! Stop buying movies and pirate what you want to see! They can't lobby if they got no cash!
/suppliers/ into not distributing movies, but I doubt even that would work too well.
*removes tongue from cheek*
No, seriously, a 'radio tax' would be lovely; there are precedents that say that's the only charge they can make for a given medium.
And because of the fundamental flaws in DRM, I highly doubt we'll see the end of pirated anything, ever. Maybe if they smartened up and started using compression-resistant steganography instead of DRM, they might be able to scare enough of the
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This is neither troll nor flamebait. This is the standard explanation of why the theft of an actual object is not comparable to the copying of so-called "intellectual property". As copyright is a recent invention limited to Western countries, this is how most of the world has and does think of things.
I'm a bit curious, since they've already taken the effort to do a study like this, why did they not also ask what percentage of people have a large collection of legal DVDs and perhaps how many of them use their downloads to screen movies they would consider buying? I only ask, as I know a number of people who do exactly this.
I happen to agree with a lot of other comments, the percentage of people they accuse as to be a huge download mafia is dramatically inaccurate. Even the most conservative math would make their guess unreasonable.
With such a small sample group (which could have been 10-100 times larger if done as a serious internet poll), and the other points mentioned, this is just clearly meant to "shock" people into being more honest. It's a well known trick of manipulating the numbers and hiding behind the guise that it's a survey which MAY be inaccurate. This is also why they didn't bother asking people about how much they spend on legal products.
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
Ahhh...the indescribable sensation of sneakers on a floor well-coated with the sugary remains of a 1/2 gallon "small" Pepsi
Pirate movies are great! Especially the one with Christie McNichol. ;-)
And as everyone already knows, any study's results can be interpreted any way, if filtered properly.
So, until they've actually visited every house, business, hovel, wireless hotspot in the country, they CANNOT claim with ANY degree of certainty that their numbers are accurate.
As a matter of fact. I can declare without a study, and have the same level of accuracy.
Less than 2% of all Americans fileshare movies / music.
However, IMO, 100% of all MPAA and RIAA members are out for 1 thing and 1 thing only, to RIP OFF the consumer to pad their seats by thickening their wallets through underhanded, immoral and nearly (sometimes actually) illegal methods.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Damn right.
Seriously. I'd have never gotten through the Sci-Fi drought of the fall without a little bit of Torchwood.
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For most adults going to the Theatre stinks, the seats are too close, the 30 minutes of commercials are annoying and by the time you pay for one ticket, an 8 dollar tub of popcorn and a 5 dollar drink its cheaper to buy the dvd 6 months later.
When I was a kid I would go to the movies a couple times a month, now its a couple times a year. I actually have more free time to do so, but the negatives far outweigh the positives so I stay home.
Legal downloads are insane, most of them are more expensive than DVD's, have crappier resolution, and have so much drm they are basically useless. If streaming movies were available day and date with DVD or PPV releases at a cost similar to PPV it would probably go over much better.
I know Divx (Not the encoding but the format pushed by Circuit City) wasnt popular in the store, but something similar would be a pretty decent solution for downloads, a limited play but burnable download for $3-$4 sounds alot more attractive than driving to a rental place.
Whatever happened to Mark Cuban's experiment with day and date theatrical releases? It sounded like a good idea, I really dont think the theatre crowd will shrink much, the few times I go it seems its mostly teenagers there for the hang out so they will still show up. Movies that have to be experienced on the big screen will still draw crowds.
I suspect alot of the fear with day and date releases is that streaming or downloads will even the playing field, at the theatre you get anywhere from 1-20 choices where with an online service you could potentially have hundreds, suddenly art and independent films have the same marquee as the big studios which will only hurt the big studios.
I've done some impromptu surveys at social gatherings over the holidaymas. At every single one, *everybody* said they pirate movies. I'm not talking geek here. There were business people, tradesmen, mechanics. One coworker said on the bus he overheard two old people talking. One said "Well, ya gotta use 'DVDShrink' ya see"
Yes, everyone is doing it. I'm amazed really. The Anti-P2P companies are very efficient in finding downloadable movies and sending warning notices. They say in 85% of cases the people who get them, even though the notes are usually anonymous and quite calmly written "please remove this", they panic and never go near bit torrent again. Pretty much every Donkey server in the U.S. is run by Anti-P2P companies. Privacy Firewalls like BlockManager and PeerGuardian do blacklist the IPs used by these companies, ad companies and web trackers too, but that's fringe stuff and I seriously doubt most people are that careful or even know. "Whats an IP?"
If the numbers are true the copyright laws are broken, by sheer virtue of the fact so many people are breaking them. I guess most people don't mind paying for movies, so long as the prices are fair. If you give people the option of downloading DVD-quality movies for a fair price *that they can watch over and over again without DRM trying to limit that*, on a very high speed network (many seeders means high-speed, and legal means many seeders), you could have a winner. Jack Valenti, if you're reading this, lay off the DRM crap. Look at bit torrent a way to sell a DVD without WalMart and the distributor taking their 75% markups, and you could have a winner. When it becomes cheaper and easier not to pirate, people won't pirate.
How different is downloading a movie compared to programming your VCR or TiVo to record a channel at a certain time for a movie? In either case, you end up having a copy of the movie for yourself. The only difference is that the downloaded movie is unedited, uninterrupted by commercials, and at your convenience. So from this perspective, why would anyone think that movie downloading is a big deal?
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
Their brick-and-mortar stores have given me too many shitty DVDs that get half-way through before cutting out and yuo miss like 10 minutes because someone's crotch dropping scraped the disk.
I'd rather risk the RIAA and MPAA before I give another cent to Blockbuster and their hateful religious agenda.
I consider my downloads payment for the industry's collusion with politicians to take away the 'fair use' back-up rights I once could not be prosecuted for exersizing.
Don't worry, I buy plenty of DVDs too.
Blar.
If it's not good enough for me to want to buy outright or see in the theater I'm not going to add to their argument to infringe on my rights by downloading it illegally.
Now if they'll only stop the ridiculous notion of "this film/TV show/album isn't available here because of this contract," I'll be able to get rid of my torrent client entirely. There's no way I'm waiting more than a year for a butchered version of Dr. Who or Torchwood.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
If there are really that many movie pirates, why is global warming still occurring?
Because they refuse to wear eyepatches. Everyone knows real pirates have eyepatches. Even pirate fish.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
But I still vote with my dollars too. I think I wouldn't be in the minority to say that I buy the ones I liked, and don't buy the ones I don't like enough to buy. YES, the MPAA sees downloading movies as an unexploited opportunity to make money and I'm not particularly sorry about it either... at least I'm not until they send me letters or summons or something.
The public wants to be able to be more picky about where and how they spend their entertainment dollars. Who really wants to buy something only to find that later they didn't like what they bought?! To the MPAA, I propose this:
Let me download a movie and watch it. If I liked it, send me a bill and a DVD. If I return the DVD without payment, you'll know how I voted. What is it with this constantly increasing vampire-like thirst for revenue exploitation!? Back when I was younger, companies once valued the good-will exchange with their customers... why has this changed?
1. I have no interest in going to the theatre. I hate the noise and commercialism and it's way too expensive. 2. I hate video rental stores (or should I say Blockbuster, because they put all the good rental places out of business and charge over 5 bucks to rent a movie). 3. I refuse to pay 30 or 40 bucks for a DVD. We all know that a big chunk of that goes to the retailer, another big chunk goes to the studio, another big chunk goes to the star and the director, and a few cents go to the rest of the people who worked on the movie (the ones I'd like to see paid). The internet makes the physical production of discs and packaging, and the distribution and retail obsolete. The only people who need to get paid are the creative talents behind the movie, ie: the ones who make a few cents in royalties. Anyones whose business is production/distribution of movies (and music for that matter) are SOL, they can follow the railroad industry into oblivion. Fsck 'em, they don't make good movies anyways.
"...while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female..."; There, we have it, Hermaphrodites are honest folks.
1. Survey is an online survey - people online are not representative of the general population (for one thing, they're online) of the US - most people don't answer online surveys unless they are on one side or the other of the issue (survey bias) - respondents are not randomly chosen.
2. Why would people illegally download full-length movies? Basic reason - much is pr0n. People might be willing to pay for said movies, but don't want: a. incriminating movie CD/DVD that shows what it is b. incriminating record on credit card so spouse or SO finds out c. don't want FBI able to find out from rental store that they got it.
Now, after showing how the survey itself is not just flawed, but hilarious, can we admit that reality doesn't match the survey and get some tech stuff instead?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I started to compose a large counter-argument on intellectual property, but I decided to delete it. Arguing copyrights with someone of your beliefs quickly reaches stalemate because of fundamental lemmas that you believe to hold, which I don't.
"To draw on an obvious but compelling example, few would suggest that African-Americans were wrong to protest segregation in the South by sitting at whites-only lunch counters and refusing to leave, or by refusing to move to the back of the bus."
You've nailed it. By pirating movies rather than going to see them in the theatre, we're right up there with Rosa Parks. Saving money is just a fringe benefit. The 60's civil rights protests obviously come to mind here.
I'd love to sit in on a meeting between your average "pirating all my entertainment is my form of civil disobedience" teenager and somebody who was actually there in Montgomery or Selma, facing down the police with the firehoses and the dogs and whatnot. I'd really like to see the look on the latter's face when the former tries to assign any equivalence to the two.
"Time will tell if civil disobedience of the DMCA and/or DRM is justified or not."
Stick around on Slashdot long enough and you'll find that it's extremely justified by those who do it... and that's really all that counts. Collectively, humans are very good at justifying their actions. I think it's an evolutionary thing.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
We both have fixed opinions on the matter, no doubt after much thought, and yet I hold "fundamentalist lemmas" while you, presumably, are the epitome of reason? Come off of it, two gentlemen can acceptably disagree on some issue without one being some kind of religious fanatic.
"while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female."
I read that 63% are male and immediately wondered 'What are the other 37%?'. Then, lo and behold, they tell me. Thanks for clearing that up, I'd have been up all night.
Dude, I live in Europe and I saw maybe 80% of recent and noteworthy German and French cinema productions and I must say they sux to the bone compared to 'benchmark' set by Hollywood. God thank we've got those California productions, also there is the music and other aspect of the Hollywood film making that is still beyond compare to anything in the world with a small exceptions like New Zealand (LOTR) or Prague (CasinoRoyale,Hellboy) studios. Or may be take a look at the film crap that is produced in Asia, 'take tour', you will be enlightened..
Maybe you are trolling here - I said "fundamental lemmas", not "fundamentalist lemmas". There's no religious fanatic connotation to the first.
- Pirates of the Caribbean 1
- Pirates of the Caribbean 2
- Pirates
- Hook
I could go on, but I'm sure you see what I'm getting at.--Edward Dassmesser
THANKS GRANDPA!
Nah, it's just that your argument is totally off the mark.
Stealing physical products deprives someone of something. Downloading doesn't. Stealing requires an attitude that says it's OK to harm others. Downloading doesn't. The only common thread is that they both make people upset, but that isn't inherently bad: every time you choose not to buy something, you disappoint the person who wants to sell it to you.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
RIAA sues 50% of america for pirating movies!
But games would have it rough. No profit-driven game corporations, just independent people and studios that run on donations. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of great freeware out there, and the effort the open source community goes into making games (and other software, of course) is just amazing. That said, there's a lot of great games out there that just wouldn't be here without the resources that only large, profit-hungry corporations can afford.
I'm not defending anything that the **AA do, or that downloading movies is the morally "wrong" thing to do all the time (or any of the time, it's up to opinion), but the legal backing behind copyright makes a lot of sense at a fundamental level. Maybe there should also be laws to limit RIAA's (etc) power, but that doesn't deteriorate from the legal reasoning of copyrights.
(Cut off about 45 years from that period before expiration though)
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
To tell you the truth, if I had to watch cartel product, I'd prefer "pirated" movies to store bought DVD's simply because I am not forced to watch or skip all of the damned advertisements. I have seen these movies on home made DVD's at other people's homes. I am amazed at their high quality. It should be high time that the movie and music industry stop suing and start listening to their customers. They can start doing this by removing Digital Restrictions Management from their products and stop overcharging. The only reason why these cartels have gotten away with their overcharging for so many years is because they have shut out any competition. Thankfully, those days are over.
With that said, I also want to state that I download video and music from the Internet all of the time. Just about everything that I download however, is not owned or copyrighted by the entertainment cartels. This is not because I have any moral qualms about doing so, rather, it is because most of the stuff produced by the entertainment cartels is pure unadultrated crap. It is a good thing that there are so many people "pirating." I hope that the piracy rate goes even higher until the entertainment cartels finally get the message. When the cartels finally accept the fact that they can no longer overcharge for their product and put unreasonable controls over how their product can be watched, they may regain some of the customers they have lost.
Much of what has been put out by the cartels these days has been little more than glorified reruns. If I want original entertainment, I go to the Internet and such sites as You Tube. The entertainment cartels will most likely never again make the kind of money that they once made now that they have competition, however people will be better off, and new producers will be able to enter the market. Yes, "piracy" is good, and no, it is NOT STEALING.
Anyway while it may not be stealing from (insert slashenemy here). It's certainly stealing from the honest who do pay.
So you're suggesting that the reason why movies cost what they do is a function of how many people download them? There's a magical ticker in Hollywood that says 492,781 people downloaded "Herbie Fully Loaded", so we have to sell it at $17 instead of $15? Do you honestly believe that?
Conversely, if nobody downloaded a movie, do you think the industry would suddenly slash prices in appreciation for everyone's honesty? Give me a break.
Something to think about while you're going for a "freebie".
Cry me a river, astroturfer.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Have you "illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past"?
Yes.
Ask the guy who wrote Forest Gump. the movie studio rigged their accounting so he didn't get a cent. Peter Jackson is suing Newline for ripping him off on royalties. This is called "Hollywood Accounting"
;-)
Yes, piracy is stealing, but so are the studios when they steal from these guys. I doubt the Forest Gump author would shed a tear if you told him you stole 'his' movie
There is a Robin Hood effect -- most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie downloading as a big deal.
It's not so much of "rich already" but more of "richer than me". Most movie pirates don't give a jack downloading movies because they know the producer and the crew would probably still have proper meals after "we" rapez their screener.
While some of us watch movies hungry.
"you know: the people that type in their search queries in their browser URL field because they can't tell the difference."
You know: if you do that in Firefox 2.0, that's the fastest way to do a google search. Try it!
So I guess those people are pretty smart after all...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Let me enlighten you on the process...
"Win a free zebra! Fill out this online survey now!"
random click... random click... random click...
[submit]
Seriously, and telephone surveys are even worse -- they call at supper time and ask long-winded, multiple choice questions while you're trying to eat Taco Bell and watch Family Guy.
body massage!
The numbers do not seem impossibly high. In fact the numbers could be much higher. But: how did the "study" determine these numbers? Did they ask people if they pirated movies? Did they just make the numbers up? Is it a WAG based on the numbers of movies sold this year, as opposed to last year? These sorts of "studies" are never specific about that sort of thing.
What happened to that headline? Oh wait, we're expected to lay down and take it up the ass, quietly.
Suppose you're in your car, stopped at a red light, when someone walks up and washes your windshield. You never asked him to do it, and he never made an offer; he just starts doing it. Then, when he's done, he demands $10 for this service. Do you owe him $10?
I say no. That's not how working works - you don't do the work first, unsolicited and without a promise of payment, and then demand that whoever benefitted from it has to pay you.
If you want to be a janitor for the city, you can't just go pick up some garbage at the park, and then march down to city hall demanding to get paid for the hours you put in. You have to offer them your services first and come to an agreement as to what they want you to do and how much you want to get paid for it. You have to face the possibility that maybe they aren't willing to pay you as much as you think your time is worth, and if that's the case, you can choose to spend your time doing something else.
It's the same with this. If you want to get paid for writing a song, it's stupid to write the song first, for free, and then demand payment from everyone who listens to it or downloads it. You can't demand payment later for unsolicited work you did earlier. If you want to get paid, you should find someone who'll agree to pay you for your time, then start working. Or are you ok working hard all day and someone else using it without paying you?
Just curious... See, I don't have that problem, because my employer and I have an understanding: if I do X hours of work, I'm entitled to Y dollars. If my employer doesn't want to pay me anymore, then I don't have to do the work anymore. (Of course, he still has to compensate me for the work I did while the promise to pay was still in effect.)
A person downloading music, however, has not made any promises to the artist. An artist is not morally entitled to payment just because the downloader listened to his song, or made a copy of it, or shared that copy with a friend. The downloader didn't ask him to write it; the artist made that choice on his own, perhaps hoping to get paid, but knowing full well that he can't control what other people do with his song once they hear it.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Of course they had no problem with it... the number of people willing to go through the effort of doing it back then was small enough that any publicity was good publicity. You talk about massive amounts of copying occurring prior to the invention of the printing press, and doubtless having an army of people manually copying and verifying the integrity of copies certainly would have made a substantial impression... compared to what anyone else might be able to achieve at the time.
But that all changed with the invention of the printing press, which made copying possible on a scale that was utterly impossible for even a whole building full of people to accomplish in their entire lifetime lifetime manually. To manage the scope of the potential amount of copying that was certain to occur otherwise, copyright was created almost immediately afterwards. Or do you think it's a coincidence when copyright was invented?
Misconception? No... it's quite thoroughly supported by the evidence of where and when copyright actually began.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I like games and some movies too, and I'm sure that some of the things that I really like simply wouldn't be here without copyright, but dammit, don't sell out our freedom and liberty in the information age for the sake of a game or a song or show. If it was about anything less, I might be OK with it, but it isn't. This is an all or nothing game and they know it. This is about control of information in the information age.
The stars are a limited commodity, so their pay rate will fluctuate with demand. A lot of the crew are just grunt work (say, grips), and the only reason they're making more than minimum wage is the union atmosphere. That's fine if you have a giant cash cow. They want their piece, and they've gotten it. If the golden goose goes away, that attitude has to follow.
I forsee the content industry having a lot less excess cash to throw around in the medium-long term. People just aren't going to be willing to pay the same amount with the cost of distribution so obviously at 0.
This isn't a bad thing. The movies worth watching, and music worth listening to, doesn't really need all that. Britney Spears and Waterworld aren't going to be feasible, but I don't think that's much of a loss.
Even if everyone had broadband, 18% of the population couldn't find, say, Swordfish nor any other movie file on the internet to download if you had a gun to their head as punishment for failure and oral sex on tap as a reward for success.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
re: Robin Hood Effect... The day the two guys who spend 8 months in post-production editing the fancy master piece movie, gets near similar salary to the actors who spend 2-3 months filming, is the day I'll consider the ramifications of the actions when it comes to people downloading movies from big Hollywood production studios.
Then it's their problem to figure out a way to make money out of people download the movie. Honestly: It shouldn't be that hard.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
I have timed recently, that it took a longer time of "user interaction" to get a DVD bought at Amazon out of it's "theft protection" packaging without damaging the clamshell than it took to download and burn the movie.
;-)
Granted, the download and burn process took longer than that, but the shipping of the bought DVD took even longer, so the "I want to watch it right now" doesn't work either.
So about the only reason for me to buy stuff is when after I have seen it I decide that that was great, and I go buy it so they make more like it. And that would surely work better if I knew the money wound up at the right spot, at the artists, and was not spent to hire some lawyers to sue people.
in GP's defense, I originally parsed it as "fundamentalist" too. Too much time on science.slashdot.org, apparently. ;)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Pirates of the Caribbean was certainly enjoyable, but Keira Knightly's going to look very haggard by the time she's made that many sequels. Oh, wait...
boakes.org
That's a lot of movies. Yet Hollywood still manage to survive, pay actors huge paychecks, budget multimillion dollar films. I think it's going to take a lot to cripple the industry. Downloaders don't stop going to the movies if they enjoy a night out in the first place.
No Sig Required
Private patronage and government subsidies have ensured the creation of many great films which were not likely to make a profit. Not only does content still exist when a studio can't make a profit, it can be of a high standard indeed.
Multi-million dollar special effects-laden films are crap compared to decent cinema and I for one look forward to their demise.
No, they do. Have you travelled in the third world? That's most of the world population right there, and you can see how little respect people have for copyright. Ditto for the whole of the former second-world, Eastern Europe (no, not a remnant of Communism, but a trend established long before 1917). Even in Western countries like Spain or Italy it is entirely usual to buy pirated films on the street.
I had no idea pirate movies were so popular I must really be out of mainstream culture!! I knew Johnny Depp had made a few sequels of "Pirates of the Caribbean", but I didn't realize it was in the millions. If Hollywood can keep producing these things I say go for it. But one thing that puzzles me is if Pirate movies are so popular why haven't eye patches come into style. My wife is certainly looking forward to that. She hates having to wear that glass eye.
... according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans.You mean people really admitted to pirating movies on the phone from some "survey center"? Imagine...
**phone rings**
You: Hello?
Phone: Hi, yes, my name is, phile, err, phil mcracken, and I am doing a survey about online movie downloading, do you have a second?
You: Sure!
Phone: Ok, great, tell me, have you ever downloaded a copyrighted movie using, say BitTorrent?
You: Oh yeah, you kidding, I do that all the time, in fact I am burning several movies right now that I plan on selling to my friends...
Phone: Oh great, well thanks for the survey data! Have a good day!
**10 minutes later**
*BANG* (Front door kicked in) "FBI, freeze! You are under arrest!"
Seriously, who the f- would say they downloaded movies?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
While skimming the titles, I read this as:
"At Least 25 Million Americans Like Pirate Movies"
That sounds like good news for Johnny Depp.
In effect, you are agreeing with the film industry that illegal copying/downloading will destroy the industry and that the only movies you'll get will be amateur ones or else the product of some Ministry of Film.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Of course the teach statistics in the states. On the other hand, binomial stats and standard deviations, etc. only apply if one has taken a random sample. If the data isn't random, then the error rates are meaningless. If they are random, then an actual error rate should be produced via a formula and there should be no estimate or approximation. The fact that there wasn't an actual error rate, but only an estimated error rate seems to be strong evidence that there was a problem with the sample being valid statistically. Most likely, it wasn't random.
One should not assume that government subsidies produce only arts that are sympathetic to the government. European funding for the arts is extremely generous, and ministries care less about what the final product is. Just look at IRCAM in Paris or the entire Swedish film industry, they turn out works which aren't populist or propagandistic at all--rather the opposite.
If 1/5 of the population does something that is against the law, it's time to change the law.
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
There's an old saying that you reap what you sow. The MPAA is now reaping, in droves, what they sown for the past 20 years.
When they treat their customers like criminals; when they automatically assume their customers will pirate content, then why in the world are they shocked when people start to do that very thing.
The MPAA could mitigate most of the "illegal downloading" problem by treating their customers fairly, and allowing fair use on copyrighted material. This would require them to give up their greedy, money grubbing attitude, but it would certainly make the world a better place.
is that the transgendered and hermaphrodites of America appear to never pirate anything.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I find this an absurd estimate. Examine how the survey was concocted, conducted, sample was generated, etc. for ridiculous, if unintentional, bias. No way has 18% of the population downloaded full-length movies. This statistic is useless, anyhow. A useful ratio might be the number of "pirated" movies _watched_ compared to all movies _watched_. SSDD... just like claiming copied software is lost revenue at face value times number of copies, regardless of whether the copier ever uses or even installs it. A downloaded movie is not necessarily lost revenue.
That does at least make it a better analogy. I also like your bit about Prince John. Seems a bit too clever for someone named after a feline. Did you steal this particular bit of intellectual property?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
At the risk of belaboring the obvious:
It costs money and time to create content. We may disagree about appropriate pricing of content, but a studio and its' employees and/or contractors spent resources to create content for others to enjoy.
The argument "Oh, I bought a DVD and can do what I like with it" is valid on its' face - you bought it, do what you like. Rip to your iPod, etc. This is where DRM sucks.
There is an argument to be made for accountability - you buy a DVD of "Pirates of the Carribean II", rip it, and make it available to your friends to watch (lend it) or have them over to watch it. Muddier, but really, no harm, no foul - this is still part of the normal use of your *single* copy of the video.
End case - you rip the DVD to a full-quality copy using Handbrake and make the archive available online to anyone. Now, the argument goes, you are making a product available for free that anyone can access - people who would otherwise have to buy it. Do we assume people are ethical and will try it, then buy it if they like? Is it fair to force a corporation, who is out of pocket tens if not hundres of millions of dollars, to make that assumption?
I am not saying the studios are 'good guys' at all - but the notion that IP theft is not *really* theft is wrong-headed and counterproductive. If I were a content-creator, and I saw my margins dropping because users felt free to copy and redistribute as they saw fit, I would happily remove any DRM and make it easier for them to trade that content - but I would alter my content so I could generate more revenue from alternate sources. In other words, my 'movies' would incorporate a lot more ads, sponsorships, product placement - I would add marketing garbage until people actually revolted and stopped watching. In case no one noticed, this has already begun - but the popular palate for trash (in the US) is pretty forgiving. Hell, I am listening to NPR right now, and THEY are doing sponsorships ("This American Life is brought to you by...")
Pick your poison - DRM, ads or ethics.
For my money, ethics is the least painful and easiest to work with. If you download and like the product, you should go buy a 'legal' copy. If not, delete it and call it a day - your dollars were not spent encouraging the production of garbage. 'Try before you buy' applies to pretty much anything else we pay for, why not media content?
"Roughly 81 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally viewed a full-length movie at some point in the past by theater hopping"
Although I made that up, theater hopping must cost the movie industry MUCH more than illegal downloads.
Where is the outrage at all this thievery???
My wife and I still do theater hop whenever there are two decent movies out at the same time (which is pretty rare these days)
No, copyright is a notion that is wrong-headed and counterproductive. Most of the world for most of the history of the world has not believed that content creators have a right to make a profit from the copying of their works.
No, there are other ways. In Europe, government subsidies and private patronage are the traditional means of funding for much cinema. Only someone who was already set on producing popular crap with no meaning besides entertainment would stoop to product placement, anyway.
If you download a movie you never would have paid to rent or buy, does it make a sound?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Copyright law says that you may not copy an artist's work without the permission of the copyright owner. By living in a society which has copyright law you implicitly agree to those rules. If you do not want to follow them you have three options:
1. Violate the law and accept the risk of consequences.
2. Work to change the laws.
3. Leave the society for another society.
Let's extend this analogy to work/money. The law says it is illegal to steal and that you have to engage in commerce to make money. If you do not like this, you have three options:
1. Steal from rich people and hope you do not get caught.
2. Work to change the law so that your society becomes communist/socialist/monarchist (where you are the monarch) or whatever other social system allows you to get something for nothing.
3. Leave the society to join a commune or found a cult or something.
So then...do pirate sharks wear eyepatches over their laser beams? And does this impede the firing of said laser beams?
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
of course not, the laser beams are mounted on the heads of the pirate sharks.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
F the RIAA
Choosing to live in the country where I was born is nothing like choosing to sign a contract; any implicit agreement would be made under duress, because there are significant barriers to moving away, and not many places with more agreeable laws.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If you believe this, then I should probably inform you that by putting on pants tomorrow, or at any time in the future, you agree to pay me $100,000. If you decline this agreement, then you must refrain from ever again wearing pants. See slashdot has this persistent myth that the only contracts are the ones that have a signature to them. Myth? Try fact. You have no moral obligation to abide by a contract that you never agreed to. The fact that the artists didn't get your permission to create doesn't entitle you to anything no matter how you argue it in the court of public opinion. I am entitled to remember, record, replay, and share any information I happen to receive, unless I explicitly promise not to. That entitlement doesn't come from the artist's behavior, but from my existence as a human being. Just as we all have the right to use language, math, and science, so do we all have the right to share information. We can go back to the patron system (which is what your really arguing for) but we'll never have the scope and depth that we have now. What I'm arguing for is that artists work for their money, just like everyone else. My employer pays me to work - does that make him a "patron"?
As for "scope and depth", I'm afraid those aren't worth much when you can't do anything with the works. Who cares if you can go to the store and buy copies of a thousand items for $20 apiece; what really matters is how free you are to use them, share them, and build upon them. Shakespeare's works are more valuable than Toy Story precisely because we're free to use them. One could argue that since open source meets your "unsolicited" criteria, anyone is free to do whatever they want with it irrespective of what the GPL (copyright) has to say. Indeed, one could. In a world without copyright, we wouldn't need the GPL - the GPL gives back the freedoms that copyright law takes away.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
So you choose option #1. Fair enough.
jesus, you seriously want to do away with copy protection on DVDs in favour of "state control over what entertainment will be produced"
It's called communism BTW, just so you understand what it is you support here.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Government funding of the arts != "state control" or "Communism". If it did, the perfectly free countries of Western Europe would be Communist. The possibility of private patronage always remains.