The Pirate Bay, Featured in Vanity Fair

koregaonpark writes "Via the TorrentFreak site, an article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair about BitTorrent, movie piracy and The Pirate Bay. The Vanity Fair piece is lengthy, and covers the MPAA's struggle to stamp out piracy, Hollywood's increasing losses, and how the 'heartfelt testimony of Ben Affleck, a man who was paid $12.5 million to star in Gigli,' didn't help one bit. 'Pirates of the Multiplex' covers the saga of Pirate Bay in a very high-level, mass-market fashion. Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?"

Comments

You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dada21]

I appreciate this article because it shows common sense in how the market of distribution operates. Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie? But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful.

Regardless of what the State tries to do to create monopolies using force, you can't stop the commoditizing of a product. In the case of copyright, the commoditizing isn't the actual movie or song, but the distribution system. For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers. Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations. The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about. People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge. Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but his money came from his repeat labor of continuing his work throughout his life. Can you imagine if Shakespeare had copyright to protect his first book, and never returned to the writing desk to continue writing? That's sort of what we're seeing today with the implementation of ridiculous copyright laws -- forced monopolies that give the distribution system more power than the author or the actor.

After 100 years of copyright really dooming the amateur and the new content creators to obscurity, we're finally seeing distribution move from a coerced monopoly to the masses. We're moving to the day that everyone will have a level playing field in terms of their ability to market their product to the masses -- but no one will be able to "get rich quick" with only a few months or a year of hard work -- if you want continued success, you will have to continue to work. This is how income has always existed -- you work, you find a market/customer, you get paid, you continue to work and the cycle repeats. Copyright has destroyed that cycle for the top tier elite, and thankfully The Pirate Bay and the Internet at large is destroying that State-perversion of the market so we all can have access to the system of distribution -- if we work hard at marketing our product.

I can't wait to see what happens to the current distribution systems as our preteens and teens hit their 30s and 40s. They've grown up around knowing that information is readily available freely. For a short period of time, artists and producers may get harmed by this fact -- they will see much of their work copied freely without reimbursement. But this means we'll see more artists and producers moving to a repeat-labor market where they work for their dollar -- more concerts, more plays/live productions, more face-time with their fans, etc. You can copy the new Fall Out Boy album for free, but their concerts will cost you $30-$50 a ticket. Why? Because these famous, popular musicians have the opportunity to provide their customers with a unique experience, and the supply of this particular artist does not meet the demand for them -- the price goes up. This is a GOOD THING.

I'm paying $180 to see Prince in Vegas in March. We love seeing him play live. He made a good decision to go around Universal and the rest of the collusive monopolists in the distribution market -- he plays lives twice a week at his club. He sells it out. Good for him. I see Matthew Broderick and David Hasselhoff have embraced this market too -- instead of just making movies, now they act live in musicals and theater productions -- commanding high ticket prices for the truly scarce product. As I've said before, an artist might spend 3-6 months creating something new and unique, and they hope to make money on it forever without more work. A plumber might spend 3-6 months learning a new task to fix a bathroom sink, but the

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Microlith]

Good luck creating the equivalent of "live performances" for TV shows, Movies, games, and animation.

So yes, buy that pirate DVD. Send money to people who never put effort into the creation of that show. Encourage the actual creators to make less.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dada21]

Good luck creating the equivalent of "live performances" for TV shows, Movies, games, and animation.

Many games already have moved away from the "buy once" mentality -- subscriptions to multiplayer online games are the true source of income for the more popular games. As time progresses, I think we'll see more value-added items that people will be willing to pay for in terms of why they would pay for a game rather than "steal" it. One reason to purchase a product is for the physical items that entice people to buy the real deal -- Ultima always had maps and books that were interesting. Sure, the pirated versions had these in digital format, but the real fans (and the amateur fans) were happy to buy the real version to acquire these tokens. Also, as piracy is accepted rather than disparaged, people who like a given game and want to see a future one made will support the game in order to promote the idea that they want more of the same in the future -- this is already happening.

TV shows already have secondary markets for the stars -- how many stars of TV shows do you know that are doing theater productions and musicals? How many shows have fans behind them that want the show to continue but the show was canceled because the distribution company said so? Firefly comes to mind, as do many other shows. The fans will eventually be the financial producers of shows after the initial pilot and episodes are made. If fans want the show to continue, they'll purchase subscriptions that finance future shows. Cable TV currently limits this ability, but as everything moves to VoD, I believe this will be a viable alternative. The same is true for Anime, a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[tomstdenis]

What I hate though is that any media endeavour that doesn't make money is automatically the victim of piracy.

Maybe studios lose money because they're so f'ing out of touch with reality that people are entertaining themselves on their own terms.

Instead of paying $20 for a whole album where I only want select tunes, I'll use P2P. Then pops up itunes, which last I checked WAS MAKING A LOT OF MONEY. Maybe the studios should take a hint. Just because an artist slings together a couple good tracks doesn't mean you can cram with it 50 mins of filler and call it an album.

As for TV, most shows on TV are either shite or derivative shite [CSI, CSI NY, CSI MIAMI, CSI OKLAHOMA, CSI Alaska, etc...]. I get that they're trying to make the most amount of money without actually doing work, but sometimes that doesn't work.

Tom

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Microlith]

Pro-piracy arguments always seem to fall on their face for me because they seem to imply that the "fans" exist before the show does. Yet how many times have I read on this site alone that people would never have bought the show if they hadn't seen it before hand, and would never buy a show without seeing it first.

Without copyright you'll never see a show made without it being bought and paid for before production. Who knows what you'll get?

a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.

I've heard this argument before and I still think it's a load of crap. The people who download anime freely are most often those who are least likely to buy it. People forget that there was huge, HUGE interest generated after Bandai and Pioneer (now Geneon) on Cartoon Network. Far more than the mediocre audience garnered by digisubs in 2000. In fact I'll wager the reverse was true, all the digisub groups experienced an explosion in popularity once people realized they could go on and download it without having to pay for it at all.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[mrcdeckard]

i get your point, but no one pays for television anyway. advertising does. tv won't go away, but it may have to change dramatically.

i think the parent was coming from the viewpoint that music is shared more than movies on p2p nets. this probably has more to do with bandwidth than demand (ie. it could change when the "pipes" get bigger), so your point about movies is legitimate.

also, to be clear, we're not talking about "pirated" in the true sense of the word here (people who copy media wholesale and sell off the copies for profit -- like counterfeiting) -- we're talking about filesharing. no one profits off this (unless the people who distribute the clients are taking donations or selling advertising).

right now, i use netflix, and love it. if netflix is able to provide an "on demand" service where i just download the movie, that would be incredible. i would pay for it, and i think most people would.

i don't think most people who download from p2p nets do so because they refuse to pay for something, i think that it's because there's no middle ground reasonable option. iTMS is one, and it's very successful.

most of the people damning file sharing do so by taking the line that we, as consumers, should just suck it up and take whatever we're given, and pay whatever we're told, or just go without. this wasn't an invalid stance 20-30 years ago, but it is now -- the modes of distribution of information are changing.

mr c

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Volante3192]

if netflix is able to provide an "on demand" service where i just download the movie, that would be incredible. i would pay for it, and i think most people would.

Actually, they are. June or July this year. No details on it though on their site. Call me crazy though, but I don't think it'll apply to the likes of Armacord or Battleship Potemkin...

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Microlith]

i don't think most people who download from p2p nets do so because they refuse to pay for something, i think that it's because there's no middle ground reasonable option.

You'd be suprised. People given an option to download something for free or pay anything, and a lot of people will just download it.

It's the "if it's not nailed down..." theory applied to non-physical objects, sans the guilt because they logically haven't actually stolen anything.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[shark72]

"Instead of paying $20 for a whole album where I only want select tunes, I'll use P2P."

The mythical $20 album always pops up on these sorts of discussions. If your belief that albums cost $20 is driving your use of P2P, check your assumptions. New CD releases average less than $14 now. $20 will get you a special CD, with an extra DVD or some other value-add goodie. If you don't want the fancy $20 special edition, you can buy the $14 one. No need to be driven to P2P.

"Then pops up itunes, which last I checked WAS MAKING A LOT OF MONEY. Maybe the studios should take a hint. Just because an artist slings together a couple good tracks doesn't mean you can cram with it 50 mins of filler and call it an album."

If the iTunes store is making money, then the labels are, too. Either way, it's been a perpetual fact that bad artists will put out albums with just a few good tracks; the phrase "one hit wonder" isn't unique to the 21st century, the 90s, or even the 80s. If you've been burned by this and thus you feel that you need to resort to P2P, just do a little more research before you buy. I tend to buy my music a track at a time, but when I do buy a CD's worth, it's an informed decision that I don't regret. Either way, the top pirated songs (as tracked by BigChampagne) tends to match up with the top ten in airplay and legal sales, so it appears that pirates have the same healthy appreciation for crap as the rest of the populace.

"As for TV, most shows on TV are either shite or derivative shite [CSI, CSI NY, CSI MIAMI, CSI OKLAHOMA, CSI Alaska, etc...]. I get that they're trying to make the most amount of money without actually doing work, but sometimes that doesn't work."

The "90% of everything is crap" rule applies to TV, too. There was plenty of awful TV in the 60's and 70's, too. I presume the argument here is that since TV is so bad, people are opting to pirate it instead of pay for it. I take another approach: I don't watch TV. Don't even own a receiver. Those few shows I do want to watch, I catch on iTunes.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Microlith]

They may be out of touch but damning them to destruction in any case by eliminating copyright will get nothing done, since it would destroy far more than it would create.

The entire FOSS movement that relies on the GPL, for example. Or studios that actually produce GOOD works.

Yes I agree that the "lack of sales == piracy" BS spouted by most studios does no one any good, but neither does stripping a logical means of funding the creation of purely informational products.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Otter]

Maybe studios lose money because they're so f'ing out of touch with reality that people are entertaining themselves on their own terms.

Maybe, but the existence of people whose lives, group identity, self-esteem, moronic ethics and sub-moronic economic theories revolve around stealing Hollywood products suggests the movie and music producers are still producing things someone desperately wants.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[multipartmixed]

> Either way, it's been a perpetual fact that bad artists will put
> out albums with just a few good tracks; the phrase "one hit wonder"
> isn't unique to the 21st century

There are two problems with this statement:

1. Just because an artist does not release only "good" material does not make them bad
2. The absense of cassette and 45 singles IS certainly a 21st-Century phenomenon.
      The MAFIAA could certainly sell 3.5 CD singles at a reduced rate if they so chose.
      Making OHWs available ONLY on $15 albums means they're effectively charging $15/song.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[drinkypoo]

If you don't want the fancy $20 special edition, you can buy the $14 one. No need to be driven to P2P.

What if I want two songs, without DRM? I'm not paying $7 a song just because $10 a song was too much. And I'm not going to deal with the automatic reduction of quality inherent in backing up a song purchased from iTunes.

It would be better for the artist if I just downloaded their songs and then went to see them in concert.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[shark72]

"Composing and performing are two different things. People make music they don't perform. Your example, when extended to programming, would mean programmers shouldn't get paid for coming up with a useful program, but rather for the act of re-typing the code for others' amusement."

I think the standard argument here is that if a composer or musician can't or won't perform live, then they're not real musicians, and thus don't deserve the money. This is, of course, complete horseshit; my library is filled with lots of music by very talented people who, for whatever reason, rarely if ever go on tour.

Another common argument is that they'll send money to the artist (the other people who worked on the album and whose ongoing employment depends on the CDs success can go fuck themselves, I guess) and then buy a t-shirt. Of my friends who actively pirate music, I have not once ever seen them wear a t-shirt extolling the virtues of some band.

"Someone making techno in his basement will never see a fucking dime via your logic."

I think deep down, many people just want musicians to accept their new place in society -- a place that's a notch below programmers, IT people, etc. on the social and economic ladder. We have the technology -- the P2P apps and so on -- and there's more of us than there are of them. Notice that lots of the arguments are on the order of "musicians should just stop being so greedy and learn to make do with less?" That's a bit like what our ancestors said to the American Indians, and our ancestors also had the technology to make it happen.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Hoi Polloi]

I'll keep buying my Simpsons DVDs instead of looking for copies. Everything from the packaging to the menus are works of art with a great amount of attention paid to every detail. I consider it voting with my $.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Em Adespoton]

a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.

I've heard this argument before and I still think it's a load of crap. The people who download anime freely are most often those who are least likely to buy it. People forget that there was huge, HUGE interest generated after Bandai and Pioneer (now Geneon) on Cartoon Network. Far more than the mediocre audience garnered by digisubs in 2000. In fact I'll wager the reverse was true, all the digisub groups experienced an explosion in popularity once people realized they could go on and download it without having to pay for it at all.

Actually, I think these two opposing arguments point out something interesting: when produced for an original audience, copyright-backed protection fosters investment. In the case of Anime, this applies to Japan as the original audience. Those investing want to recoup their losses in that market, and if they don't, they will fold up shop and go home.

However, the US is known internationally as a mass media dumper -- losses are recouped at home, and any sales abroad are pure profit, minus distribution costs (which are often picked up by foreign interests).

In THIS market, copyright is a hindrance, since the content is already created. This is similar to Anime being subbed and distributed in the US in the late 90's. If it had been sold directly from Japan to the US market, it would have bombed. However, as the cost was 0, the profit was already made, distribution-by-piracy actually increased the interest in the shows to the point where the US is now becoming part of the primary market for Anime.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[morgan_greywolf]

Let's support this "piracy" for what it really is -- free marketing for talented actors, musicians, writers and producers. When you see something you like, either go and buy it directly from the actor/musician you like (say, on tour or at the theater), or pay to see them live. This is where the market has to go -- let the "pirated" CD/DVD be the advertising, let the official CD/DVD be the way that you compensate them for producing a quality product, and let the live performance be the way they realize a lifetime of income for a lifetime of work. While I agree with another poster in this thread that live performances don't work for every sort of copyrighted item that is pirated -- games and applications software being the big ones, I do think that there are sources of revenue that need to be looked at.

For example, merchandising has been used for years to make money for the studios. How many of you have officially-licensed Star Trek, Star Wars, B5 coffee mugs, t-shirts, costumes, models, toys, books, posters etc.? You've been paying their respective studios tons of money! Paramount wouldn't have to make money from a single new Star Trek movie, yet their cash cow would continue to be Star Trek just from merchandising dollars alone. This doesn't really fit your model (since it's copyright and trademarks that's keeping these dollars flowing), but it does show another stream of revenue that isn't based on the movie and music distribution cartels^Wsystems.

The way you frame the problem though, your solution not only cuts out the distribution system entirely, but it cuts out income for the producers, writers and directors. Those who produce, write and direct feature films are usually not the same sort who produce, write and direct live performances -- because these are very different businesses. There's a lot you can get away with on film that you can't get away with on stage -- and vice versa.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[shark72]

"2. The absense of cassette and 45 singles IS certainly a 21st-Century phenomenon. The MAFIAA could certainly sell 3.5 CD singles at a reduced rate if they so chose. Making OHWs available ONLY on $15 albums means they're effectively charging $15/song."

I don't follow. The media changes, but the concept remains. Our parents and grandparents bought 45s or cassingles; today, there's iTunes and several other similar resources. It's easier than ever to get just the track that you want. Back in the day, you were limited to just the singles (and maybe a B-side); now, the record companies are selling their stuff track by track. Anybody who thinks that they have to buy that entire OHW CD, and who thinks that it was somehow easier to get around this in days of yore, just hasn't done enough research.

The GP claimed that this is why the record labels are losing money, and why he pirates. If he wants to pirate so he can save money or stick it to the man or whatever, that's fine, but in case I wasn't clear, the rationale he gave doesn't hold water. If he's troubled by the perpetual fact that there's lots of pop music out there by ephemeral bands with just one good song, then he can research and buy better music, or get just the track he wants. And if he's just after one track, he has plenty of choices besides P2P.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

what a pile of shit. This is the old "artists should give music away and tour for money" bullshit. What if prince was sick and couldn't tour, but could still make albums?
As for copyright keeping control in 'the politically powerfull' thats just slashdot immature 13 year old bullshit. You could write a song right now, and YOU own the copyright. if anything, copyright is massively democratic. Its just thieving scum like you that cause problems.
fucking grow up.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[shark72]

"It would be better for the artist if I just downloaded their songs and then went to see them in concert."

Yes, that's a common rationale. If I may ask, how many songs do you P2P per month? If it's from just five artists, that's five concerts you have to go to in order to make it "better" for the artist. That sure can get expensive. What do you do if you want a song from an artist but you know that there's a good chance that you won't have a chance to see them live? Do you do without?

If I used the "I'll just see them in concert" rationale, I'd be in big trouble. I buy maybe twenty tracks a month on the iTMS. Trying to save money by P2Ping them instead would be a big time sink and end up costing me a lot more. But if it works for you, then great.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to pick nits, but the vast majority of Shakespeare's works were first published posthumously.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[operagost]

Can you imagine if Shakespeare had copyright to protect his first book, and never returned to the writing desk to continue writing? That's sort of what we're seeing today with the implementation of ridiculous copyright laws

That's EXACTLY what we've seen with today's authors, like Stephen King and Tom Clancy. One book, and they RIDE the huge profits into retirement!

The copyright concept actually arose during Shakespeare's time. In fact, copyright was quite a bit more onerous in the past, often lasting in perpetuity if the heirs of the author chose it to. I feel that you simply don't know enough about the origin of copyright and its positive uses to have written a multi-paragraph opinion of it.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

New CD releases average less than $14 now. $20 will get you a special CD, with an extra DVD or some other value-add goodie.

But only if you can shop at Wal*Mart, Best Buy, or one of the other huge discount retailers. Typical CD prices where I live (Close-To-Nowhere, TX) are $15.99-$17.99, only dropping below $15 for very old titles from the 70's and 80's.

Someone once posted here about the volume discounts given from the music labels to the big box stores that the mom-and-pops cannot get, how they work out to about $4-$7 per CD, and how their store has no chance at all at competing.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[TheRaven64]

Do you know how TV shows get made now? Someone makes a pilot (typically with low production values) with their own money and pitches it to a studio. If the studio likes it, they will fund it.

A few studios have started releasing some of these pilots on YouTube and funding the ones that get a lot of views. There is no reason why this kind of practice couldn't be institutionalised; put up a video and let people pledge a few dollars if production went ahead. If enough people do, then charge them, use the money to produce the series and then release it into the public domain. Series two should be easier to fund, since there will already be a large fan base (assuming series one was any good).

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I thought copyright has been around a lot longer than just a hundred years.

I don't know of anyone that's started out in any industry that's trying to have a perpetual livable income from just one work. Maybe Stephen King, John Grisham, etc. have enough to live on without writing more books, however, they still continue to write. I really can't think of anyone that is trying to make a living on just one work, so I really don't get your claim on that. Maybe the naive people think that.

I don't understand how one individual or company's copyright ownership of one work prevents another individual or company from making their own work. Instead, there are plenty of competing books, movies and CDs on nearly any topic or genre.

I have a very hard time jusifying paying as much as you are for a couple hour's worth of entertainment. I know a fan of Celene Dion and she said she was thinking of going to her Vegas concert, but then realized how many CDs that can buy. My impression is that live performances is not a good way of supporting oneself. I don't think they only get a very tiny cut of the ticket sales. Living "on the road" is a very tough life in my opinion, and I really can't support the suggestion that's the only good way that a musicians should make their money because of that.

I think one big counterpoint is that most of the SE Asian countries do not have anything you would call a domestic movie industry. There's no reason for anyone to bother funding a movies in those countries if they are going to be ripped off by the corner vendors selling the movie for less than $1 a piece. I certainly am not able to go to say, Malaysia to watch a Malaysian play, and plays aren't really my thing anyway.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[mapkinase]

stop reading after this:

"piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful.

More exactly, after the phrase "return of power to everyone". Indians would probably call you Walking Eagle.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[drinkypoo]

Yes, that's a common rationale. If I may ask, how many songs do you P2P per month?

I haven't p2p'd a song in months, literally, and the albums I've been listening to are all ones I've purchased (actually, my lady did.)

It turns out that there's not a whole hell of a lot of music coming out now that I actually want to listen to. Even the albums I'm listening to now are by bands which have been around a bit, as it's the latest from Jurassic 5, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Spearhead. So it's easier to live by these words than ever before.

Most of what I listen to besides that is by bands that aren't touring or don't exist any more (like Sublime or Morphine.)

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dabraun]

Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie?

I dunno, do they make pink sharpies?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[FlyingGuy]

Ahhh so well spoken by someone who has probably never spent a few years of their life writing a book, or a screenplay, or a play or a dozen songs.

So lets see, according to you, if I spend a few years of my life generating a creative work, I should not have any protection at all! YOU should have the right to just rip me off, seel my work, or even give it away to whomever you desire?

Thats not even a socialist POV, thats just plain stealing from me. You, in your notions are nothing but a thief AND an asshole!

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dabraun]

pops up itunes, which last I checked WAS MAKING A LOT OF MONEY.

You might want to actually check on that. iTunes (nor any other 99c music site) has never made 'a lot' of money. The margin is too thin based on the amount the content owners demand per-song. iTunes is marketing for selling more iPods - if they make anything it's icing on the cake (and I'm willing to believe that iTunes music sales are slightly profitable for Apple.)

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

The mythical $20 album always pops up on these sorts of discussions. If your belief that albums cost $20 is driving your use of P2P, check your assumptions. New CD releases average less than $14 now.

In your neighborhood maybe. I just checked, and the average price of normal, plain CD releases is ~20 euros around here. That's 26 American dollars... I don't use that as an excuse to get stuff from Bittorrent by the way, just wanted to point the different prices out. I agree with your "90% of everything" rule, and I'd go even further -- I'm pretty much convinced that popular culture is "better" today than it was in the sixties. Read Everything bad is good for you -- how popular culture is making us smarter if you want to find my reasoning.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[cpt kangarooski]

Of course, Shakespeare died in 1616, and the first English copyright laws that had anything to do with authors (as opposed to stationer's copyrights which had more to do with publishers and censorship) didn't arise until 1710. And I don't know where you're getting the idea that there were perpetual copyrights as a fairly ordinary matter. So before you point out the mote in the previous poster's eye, perhaps you should attend to the beam in your own?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[hahiss]

I've heard this argument before and I still think it's a load of crap. The people who download anime freely are most often those who are least likely to buy it. Yeah, that's probably true (I don't know much about anime downloading vs purchasing) but why doesn't that point to a different phenomenon: that if people were going to have to pay for it they wouldn't. A substantial amount of downloaded media simply cannot count as a "loss" to the artist/label/movie studio since it wasn't going to be purchased in the first place. I don't generally download music/movies illegally, but there are music and movies that I could see myself downloading that I would never listen to or watch if the only option was to pay for it.

And as the article mentioned in this post earlier today shows, there is probably minimal effect of P2P sharing on (at least) music sales:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/13/133221 4

And, really, the one line in the Vanity Fair article that says it all is the one about Ben Affleck's payday for Gigli.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[cpt kangarooski]

Except for the writing once you hit seasons 10 and later, that is. I might be willing to get a 'best of' DVD with the small number of good episodes from the more recent seasons on it, but it'll never compare to the old days when nearly every episode was a winner. Sometimes even the clip shows were good.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[binarybum]

I've heard this argument before and I still think it's a load of crap. The people who download anime freely are most often those who are least likely to buy it.

    maybe you were being sarcastic? But do you really know anime fans that feed their addiction soley through pirating? Are you sure they don't have ghost in the shell posters, dragon ball z t-shirts, rare DVDs, action figures, stacks of printed manga, DVDs from netflix, and assorted packaging lying around with postage from Tokyo on it. The anime market appeals very much to the collectibles consumer, and I have yet to see anime fans that haven't bought into this aspect of it to at least some degree.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Solandri]

Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie?

Actually that's exactly what I would do. The studios claim the DVD is a license (to view the movie as often as I wish in private), not a physical product (which I could copy or distribute as I wish). But if my daughter were to destroy the physical DVD and I try to get a replacement, suddenly they claim the DVD is a physical product and I must purchase another copy to replace the broken one; the fact that I already paid for a license to view the movie doesn't matter. Which is it? A license or a physical product? No answer? Then of course I'm going to copy every DVD I buy (using a tool they've managed to outlaw as illegal) and only use the copies for viewing while the originals are kept safe from the destructive hands of little children.

The software industry got this right. If you buy a piece of software, you get a license to the software. If you destroy the CD (or DVD), most software companies will send you replacements if you can prove your original purchase. If they ever upgrade the software, they recognize that you've already paid for a license and sell you the upgrade for less than a new copy. I suspect the reason they got it right is because the software industry is populated by people who think logically and reasonably. They treat me fairly, so I gladly pay for the software I use.

Contrast this with the entertainment industry. If you buy a movie/song, you get a license to view/hear the song. If you destroy the CD (or DVD) they require you to buy a new license at full price. If they ever upgrade the movie/song (new media format or an extended release), they require you to buy a new license at full price. This is called trying to have your cake and eat it too. I suspect the reason the entertainment industry does things this way is because it is populated by people who try to screw everyone (even their own artists) out of every dollar they can. Excuse me for not shedding a tear for the woes of such people.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, other than pirated versions, anyway. That bad quarto of Hamlet is still funny.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know of anyone that's started out in any industry that's trying to have a perpetual livable income from just one work

It's not exactly one work, but Harry Potter does spring to mind. JK Rowling will never have to write again in her life, and she will be more than set for life. She could probably even decide to not let the seventh book be released, and she would be set.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[bky1701]

Well, I guess that means they would have to bite the bullet, or make good shows, eh?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Poruchik]

Without copyright you'll never see a show made without it being bought and paid for before production. Who knows what you'll get? Isn't this how most business works? You try something and then the quality of your (car, show, shoes) determines success or failure. And of course there were no books written prior to copyright being invented?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

you wrote all of this in 1 minute?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[yuna49]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the iTunes -> iPods direction of causality. When my nieces got iPods at Christmas, they also received a number of iTunes cards as gifts. I wouldn't be surprised if the total amount spent on the cards equalled or exceeded the amount spent on the iPods themselves.

I'm sure my nieces contributed to the problems the iTunes site was experiencing in the week after Christmas.

iPods/iTunes seems like traditional razor-blade marketing to me. Every so often people buy a new razor system, but it's those blades that keep the revenues flowing at Gillette (oops, Proctor and Gamble).

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Moofie]

"YOU should have the right to just rip me off, seel my work, or even give it away to whomever you desire?"

You're talking about the record companies, right? Because they screw artists on an industrial scale...

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[jedidiah]

Studios that produce good work?

The most likely reason that someone would even see a quality movie is because their Tivo managed to pick it up for them "for free" off of some non-premium cable channel. That or bitTorrent.

The bulk of accessable venues are filled with Ben Affleck movies.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[T.E.D.]

Your example, when extended to programming, would mean programmers shouldn't get paid for coming up with a useful program, but rather for the act of re-typing the code for others' amusement.

That's how I've made my living for the last 18 years. The same goes for most other employed software engineers. Very few of us actually work on shrink-wrapped EULA software.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[jedidiah]

"desperate" would be stretching things a bit.

This is the basic problem with "losses due to piracy". You're trying to equate someone who is willing to spend ZERO dollars on something to someone who's willing to spend $20 or even a quarter.

In all likelihood, this "desperately" desired product is not even considered worth the disk space required for semi-permanently storing it.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[oh_bugger]

I'm planning to get the Simpsons box set when all the seasons are completed, but I own the Futurama Complete Collection which is of massive quality. I put this down to the creators taking care and wanting to put out a nice product for people to want to buy. The industry execs however have decided that even though I've paid for a legitimate copy, I have to be forced to sit through an unskippable warning about how bad piracy is and that you can't copy the DVD. From my point of view I've not copied the DVD and I should be rewarded by having an untainted product.

It is an insult to the people who buy things legitimatly that they get these messages (and a short video about downloading on the latest Family Guy box sets) when obviously they're the type of people who will pay for DVDs. The pirate is most likely to strip out this content because A) it reduces the file size, and B) it's very annoying.

It is my opinion that the warnings and videos are useless and should be not be put on DVDs and it just reduces the overall quality, making the DVD a less desirable product.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[pinkocommie]

I believe you misunderstand the purpose of copyright, its not to protect you or your labor but actually to promote production of creative work to in turn benefit the public. If there's another model that accomplishes the task more efficiently that should be the one adopted. Again its not about the producer of the content but the public. Compare the same to open source software. It benefits the public on the face of it, it flies against conventional wisdom, why should anyone give away the years of labor they put into something, yet as you I presume (being on slashdot) know its been a huge and growing positive in the world. The issue is as they innovate or die, the media producers can go head to head with piracy and win but they actually have to compete for that. For example if I could download HD torrents from abc / disney whatever on all their fare but with advertisements embedded , some people wouldnt forward (yes a small percentage) another smaller percentage of revenue would be realized by product placement so on and so forth. The point being it would be a model whereby some revenue would be generated even despite giving the product away for free and even without giving it away for free having it available at a low cost non DRM'd would cause widescale adoption. Why did the guy in the article start using UKNova cause it was easy to use and got him what it wanted, if there was a iTunes variant that offered him 10 cent uber fast downloads of anything and everything he wanted what're the chances of him going down the so called dark path?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[jedidiah]

Sure. Eventually.

That's how literature works. If you have a problem with that then you shouldn't be a writer.

Have you given Sophocles his cut? Or did you have the absurd notion that it was all your own original work?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[cain]

It sounds awesome, but I'm having trouble locating CSI: Okalahoma on the regular sites. Can you give me a link? What season are they up to? -- Thanks.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[iamhassi]

"Instead of paying $20 for a whole album where I only want select tunes, I'll use P2P. Then pops up itunes, which last I checked WAS MAKING A LOT OF MONEY. Maybe the studios should take a hint. Just because an artist slings together a couple good tracks doesn't mean you can cram with it 50 mins of filler and call it an album."

Exactly. RIAA needs to just shutup and deal more with iTunes.

Same with the movie studios. Hollywood will be fine, we'll always be willing to pay something to see our favorite actor in the newest movie, but the movie theaters are screwed. They're really the ones missing out. Hollywood will eventually have to move everything to a direct-download format if they plan on competing, but I think they'll actually make more money this way: which would you rather do, press "play now" and watch the latest movie for $5-$10, or get in your car, fight the crowds, pay $7 a ticket and $10 for popcorn and hear babies cry and teenagers shout vulgarity at the movie screen?

I think they'd double ticket sales if they allowed everyone to download movies to their DVRs. Those stuck with 25" TVs can still go to theaters, but the rest of us with our $2,000 52" LCDs and Dolby Digital would rather stay home.

Theaters will have to adapt if they want to stick around. My suggestion? Replay some classics. I went to a midnight showing of "The Crow" two years ago at the local theater and it was a blast, they did trivia for prizes and you got to hang out with other fans. Place was pretty full considering you can rent the same movie for a buck down the street and the theater charged full price.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[lupis42]

What if you p2p less than one album a year of new to you content. Mostly what I use p2p for is to format shift without having to find and rip my own CDs, or get book that I own in hardback in html, which is much easier to read while doing things on the computer. As for television, I follow all of three shows, and since the BBC has flatly and impolitely refused to make Top Gear available to the US market, and I buy the others on DVD once the opportunity arises, I don't think anyone is getting the shaft there either. As for games, well, when no demo is available, piracy is the only method I have of determining whether the game is stable, of adequate reliability, and contains the features advertised. After all, it's not like I can return a purchased game and get my money back, even if the multiplayer doesn't work at all.* I buy any game I play much, and there are quite a few I would never have expected to buy, as well as a few that are more than worth it. * A friend just bought Battlestations: Midway, and we cracked it and tried to get an MP game going. No luck. So he tried to play on the internet. No luck. Apparently, it's a known issue, and they claim that a patch will be coming in a few months. Fortunately, he's content with the single player.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

Our parents and grandparents bought 45s or cassingles; today, there's iTunes and several other similar resources. It's easier than ever to get just the track that you want. Back in the day, you were limited to just the singles (and maybe a B-side); now, the record companies are selling their stuff track by track. Anybody who thinks that they have to buy that entire OHW CD, and who thinks that it was somehow easier to get around this in days of yore, just hasn't done enough research.

There was a Huge gap in the late 80's and all of the 90's, record companies discovered "Album Oriented Rock" and moved away from "singles", which had been the primary driver of the market. Cassette singles existed but were rare, CD based "singles" were even rarer. You could argue internet sales in the late ninties made up for this, but by that time the concept was almost gone from public perception until P2P, CD burners, and digital players brought the mainstream back to the concept of focusing on the songs you like.

Which in some ways is bad, because it means less exposure to the non-mass market work of artists, maybe you see those other songs as filler, but it might speak to somebody else.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[ThePhilips]

Without copyright you'll never see a show made without it being bought and paid for before production. Who knows what you'll get?

Pile of B.S. Especially in anime/manga context. Anime/manga are precisely so perversive that most of projects are made on cheap that they are paid completely off advertisement. One episode of low profile anime (as I have heard) costs to produce $2500-3500. And that's precisely price of TV advertisement for 15/20 minute block. Show might get sponsors - but not all artists are so lucky. If it gets popular - it would of course attract more money, since prices on ad time will soar. With manga it is even simpler: manga production could be paid completely out of artist's own pocket. And that's what happens most of the time. And the market for amateur's manga - doujin - is good as ever.

Also, as sidenote, you have to remember that anime/manga are precisely blooming, because of "piracy" - in sense western legal right. While Disney's "Micky Mouse" (tm)(r)(c) remained unchanged for ~75(?) years now, thanks to free exchange of ideas in Asia (Japan in particular) drown art had made mile steps in years of computers and internet. You can make a parody manga for some high profile expensive anime - and try to guess it - you will NOT be sued to death by studio for selling it. Try to make a parody on Micky Mouse, put it on net and start counting before Disney Inc. lawyers will send you cease & desist letter. You will not need count for too long. Feel the difference.

a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.

I've heard this argument before and I still think it's a load of crap. The people who download anime freely are most often those who are least likely to buy it. People forget that there was huge, HUGE interest generated after Bandai and Pioneer (now Geneon) on Cartoon Network.

As anime fan, I can only say that you "least likely to buy it" remark isn't true. The real problem is that people in industry lost their touch with audience. And US' (as well as UE's) anime fandoms are such examples. First - quality of translation. Most of official dubbings are total crap. They kill redundantly characters turning funny and entertaining anime into boring freak show. Fansubs are several magnitudes better. Second. In Japan you can buy DVD for less than $10 - probably not new, but yet official DVD. In US you can buy for $15-20. And finally my beloved EU - 25-30€. Decent anime series runs for say 26 episodes. 4-5 eps on disk - that makes on average 8 DVD. In Japan you can buy them often when series are still running - even if it's new it is something like $20 per month. In USA/EU, DVDs are released in *bulk* - and if you want to get all of them you need to buy them all at one time, because later chances finding particular DVD of particular series are diminishing. 8 DVDs at price of $20 is $160. How many kids can afford that?? Well, prices go down - and you can in US snatch such bulk DVD series for about $100 what's more affordable. Here in EU prices have habit to remain high for *very* long time. I wanted to buy DVDs of one particular anime, but at price tag 30€ * 8 = 240€ - even on payroll - I can hardly afford it. And two years later there were no complete series available and several e-tailers had listes several (not all) of the DVDs. At the same frigging price of 30€.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Otter]

You're trying to equate someone who is willing to spend ZERO dollars on something to someone who's willing to spend $20 or even a quarter.

You're missing the point -- the Pirate Bay guys and their halfwit fanboys have invested their lives and selves in paying ZERO dollars for the entertainment industry's products. That's a far higher market value than $20 (OK, at least a bit more than $20), which makes it even sillier when they complain about the quality of the products they steal.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Lumpy]

I think deep down, many people just want musicians to accept their new place in society -- a place that's a notch below programmers, IT people, etc. on the social and economic ladder.

Huh?? they always have been that way. Before 1920 musicians were roving poor with the incredibly rare composer that was rich only because he was fancied by the rich that threw money at him.

Musicians being rich spoiled brats is a strange happening in history and they are simply getting reverted back to what they were less than 100 Years ago.

They were looked down upon by the upper class through most of history and were equals of the working man.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dabraun]

In the razor blade model they sell the razor itself for very little if any profit, and sell the blades for a ludicrous margin (they're up to something like $3-$4 per blade on some of the fanciest gilette razors now). This compares very well to the video game industry (though the margin on the games is not quite as crazy).

The iPod itself is most definitely sold at a profit. This is a core income source for Apple. The songs on iTunes may generate considerable *revenue* as per your example of your nieces, but for $25 of iTunes gift cards (assuming they are actually used) Apple is probably going to pay $20 to the RIAA folks, $2 to the retailer who sold it, $2 for bandwidth, and make $1 of profit. All approximations, but this is the sort of margin they (and everyone else) are getting on music downloads.

Now, gift cards are great for situations like this because some percentage of them will never be redeemed - and *that* is virtually all profit for Apple.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[mrcdeckard]

i guess there's no way to say conclusively without doing some bazillion dollar research project, and perhaps i'm overly optimistic. i just think most people that have the money to spend anyway, will spend some for the convenience and consistency. note that this implies that people who don't have the money to spend can't buy it anyway. i know i mainly listened to crappy cassette mix tapes when i was a punkrock kid in the '80's. 1) i couldn't afford to spend money on music 2)it wasn't available at the local wal-mart.

mr c

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Binary Boy]

In LA many of theold theaters have late shows of classics - I've been to at least 100 such showings, with everything from Casblanca to 2001 to a Jackie Chan double-feature. In every single case I already owned the films on DVD. In many cases the directors, or even some random extras, showed up to answer questions. Trivia games, prizes, all add to the event.

Nothing can beat a fun time out - whether at a fun, interactive movie screening or a live concert, and piracy won't touch these. In fact, in this day of more home theaters, I think people will also crave new reasons to go out. Sitting in a shitty corporate theater watching some forgettable blockbuster isn't enough - make it an experience and people will show.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[frank_adrian314159]

I see David Hasselhoff [has] embraced this market too...

You say this like it's a good thing...

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[crabpeople]

"I think the standard argument here is that if a composer or musician can't or won't perform live, then they're not real musicians"

I read alot of these discussions, and thats the first time I've heard that. For most musicians I personally know, they would much rather that their music be heard by people, that people visit their myspace page, and that they get a chance to be discovered and enjoyed. Sure they would love it if they got paid to perform or release, but they are content to work doing construction or selling phones in the mall. Music for them is like playing a RPG for me. I don't expect people to pay me for playign eve online, I just like doing it so I play!

One of the problems I have with music is the over abundance of supply. If you look at the new CD's uploaded on something like mininova, you see hundreds of titles a day. There will never be a time when people don't make music. It is fundamental to the human condition and most people respect you if you can make them feel something with what you create.
I dont think ive ever met a musician who didnt have a day job.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Serengeti]

Pro-piracy arguments always seem to fall on their face for me because they seem to imply that the "fans" exist before the show does. Yet how many times have I read on this site alone that people would never have bought the show if they hadn't seen it before hand, and would never buy a show without seeing it first. Isn't that a pretty strong argument for piracy, though?? I know this is not a new argument, but personally, I am sick of having to spend $13 at the theater before I realise that I don't enjoy what I paid for. You know what a lemon tastes like before you buy it, there's no risk in buying lemons. But I now refuse to spend a cent on a movie, or any form of entertainment, until I'm satisfied that it is worth the money. If it really is, I'll buy the DVD (and I do).

Call it "responsible piracy", if you will.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[chihowa]

I believe that they claim that you are buying neither a license nor a physical product. What they would contest that you are buying is the overlap between the two. Your rights to their product are thus less than you would get from either a license or a physical product.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[dwandy]

If they ever upgrade the software, they recognize that you've already paid for a license and sell you the upgrade for less than a new copy.

so I should get a discount on Balboa since I paid to see Rocky?
Oh wait, you said "upgrade".

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Archangel_Azazel]

--A friend just bought Battlestations: Midway, and we cracked it and tried to get an MP game going. No luck. So he tried to play on the internet. No luck. Apparently, it's a known issue, and they claim that a patch will be coming in a few months.--

"Hey, sorry your car engine misfires, it still works though and we're going to be getting the fix out for that real soon..." Somehow, I don't seen that one flying. Also, *shudders* look at MS Vista. MASSIVE, amazingly severe problems all over the place, yet people buy it and it's still for sale. It's a defective product that doesn't work as advertised...that simple. Yet, people still feed that market by buying the defective garbage and then waiting for them to fix it.

Something I just still don't understand...

A.A

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[MightyYar]

God forbid people stopped watching TV and they couldn't afford to make TV shows. Not to mention big-budget movies with $15 million paid just to the star. The human condition would really suffer. Honestly I don't know how people coped prior to movies and TV.

</sarcasm>

One of my favorite movies, "In the Company of Men", was filmed for $25,000. Somehow, I think that the art of movie making would endure even if the DVD market completely went away. Music was created long before copyright, and will continue to be produced well after our civilization fails. Television? It is going to have to evolve into an on-demand medium at some point, I think. The broadcast model will slowly become a niche. People will always pay some premium to see something first - the latest episode of a show, a live sports feed, the news. That HBO has managed to thrive even with all of the "free" TV out there supports this notion.

Don't let the pirates get you down - change can be bad, but it can also be good.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[aztec rain god]

I think this drives at the heart of the question of whether recorded music is a private good, or a public good. I think a logically valid argument can be made either way, but it will ultimately boil down to a value judgment. If the result of that judgment is that recorded music is purely a private good, than a purely capitalistic arrangement without state intervention or legal cartel protection in the market would be optimal. However, if there is a public benefit to recorded music, then I would say the optimal arrangement would be to have the government tax the listening public and pay that tax to the recording artists themselves; something sort of akin to the state subsidization of artists in the Soviet Union. I'm not saying one arrangement is better than the other, but notice- under either system, there is no need for a cartel like the RIAA. All they contribute is market inefficiency.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[soliptic]

I'm paying $180 to see Prince in Vegas in March. We love seeing him play live. He made a good decision to go around Universal and the rest of the collusive monopolists in the distribution market -- he plays lives twice a week at his club. He sells it out.

Um... yes, good for Prince to ditch the evil majors. Of course, he wouldn't sell out two concerts a week at $180 a pop, if he wasn't already one of the single most famous popular musicians of the last century - a position he achieved very much WITH the help of the RIAA gang.

So, yeah, your post is very much +5 insightful on paper, but things are a bit trickier in practice.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[FlyingGuy]

Ohhh so now its, "I am JUST ripping off the record company, so thats cool! Stick it to the man!!!!!!

Do you know why artists sign with record companies? So they can MAKE money you fool! Yes you can try to go it on your own, you can put up a website, pay the fee to get it built, pay the hosting fee and pay for that bandwith as people buy your music, book on PDF or whatever.

So now they have become a popular music group, author of whatever. How do does an artist protect their rights as the owner of the content, when some THIEF takes your entire CD or book or whatever and puts it on a Torrent Share? If its on a Torrent share, WHY would ANYONE go and PAY FOR SOMTHING THEY CAN PRETTY MUCH STEAL WITH IMPUNITY?!?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[soliptic]

I think the standard argument here is that if a composer or musician can't or won't perform live, then they're not real musicians, and thus don't deserve the money. This is, of course, complete horseshit; my library is filled with lots of music by very talented people who, for whatever reason, rarely if ever go on tour.

Another common argument is that they'll send money to the artist (the other people who worked on the album and whose ongoing employment depends on the CDs success can go fuck themselves, I guess)

Since I've already posted in this discussion, and you're at +5 anyway, I will instead reply to say: bravo.

I like a lot of music which either can't be performed live, or at least, if it could, it would be terrible.

Seriously, I've no problem with slashdotters who primarily enjoy (for example) your common-or-garden four-piece "rock" line up, a format which has always been heavily about live shows and tours, who release your typical a-few-good-tracks-and-some-filler CDs, saying that they download the good ones and pay for concerts tickets from which the band will earn more than the CD anyway. That's grand in my book, honestly - I am, as it happens, in a band, and if you did that to my band (hell, many people have, and told me as much), I'd be chuffed.

But, really, not all music works like that.

I would continue to ramble but I have a pub to go to.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[enjahova]

That's a bit like what our ancestors said to the American Indians, and our ancestors also had the technology t make it happen.

Oh please. So musicians losing their place in society is equivalent to genocide? As the Justin Timberlake song goes, cry me a river. I guess you want me to be sad that rockstars might go away, or even worse, you want me to support laws that ensure their continued existence? This isn't the first time I've heard this emotional appeal, it's quite powerful indeed. There is something magical about entertainers, content creators that incites us on average to put them on a pedestal. We want to see them showered with royalties and riches. Of course, if they stop getting their riches, the magic goes away. If we don't have entrenched distribution monopolies, why there wont be any more music in the world! Then the Grinch will finally get his wish, all the little whos in whoville wont have a tune to whistle.

blow me (a tune)

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[neonfrog]

[i]don't know of anyone that's started out in any industry that's trying to have a perpetual livable income from just one work.[/i]

Christopher Tolkien off the opus of his father.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[FlyingGuy]

Ohhh god yet another fool (YAF) that just doesn't get it.

I believe you misunderstand the purpose of copyright, its not to protect you or your labor but actually to promote production of creative work to in turn benefit the public. If there's another model that accomplishes the task more efficiently that should be the one adopted. Again its not about the producer of the content but the public. Compare the same to open source software. It benefits the public on the face of it, it flies against conventional wisdom, why should anyone give away the years of labor they put into something, yet as you I presume (being on slashdot) know its been a huge and growing positive in the world.

Copyright was developed so that an author would have a legal mechinism to control their own work! Yes this does very much annure to the public benefit because the artist gets a finite amount of time in which their work cannot be duplicated, reproduced or sold without their expressed written ( contract with a book or music publisher ) consent! This allows them to make money from that published work to feed, clothe and house themselves and thier wives and children while they create their NEXT work, which typicaly takes quite a while to do. What kind of contract they enter into with anyone else to facilitate that is their business and NOT YOURS!!!!!!

If I want to write the great american novell and GIVE IT AWAY on street corners or on a web site, it is MY right to do so, it is also my right NOT to do so, but to sell it in any legal manner I choose!

If I want to write some really cool software program and GIVE it away, it is my right to do so, AS LONG as I dont give away something owned by someone else in the process.

The issue is as they innovate or die, the media producers can go head to head with piracy and win but they actually have to compete for that. For example if I could download HD torrents from abc / disney whatever on all their fare but with advertisements embedded , some people wouldnt forward (yes a small percentage) another smaller percentage of revenue would be realized by product placement so on and so forth. The point being it would be a model whereby some revenue would be generated even despite giving the product away for free and even without giving it away for free having it available at a low cost non DRM'd would cause widescale adoption. Why did the guy in the article start using UKNova cause it was easy to use and got him what it wanted, if there was a iTunes variant that offered him 10 cent uber fast downloads of anything and everything he wanted what're the chances of him going down the so called dark path?

I dont like copy protection schemes anymore then the next person, they are a pain in the ass, but that is NOT THE POINT here. Everything you say is an attempt to justify being a thief.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[bytor4232]

As for TV, most shows on TV are either shite or derivative shite [CSI, CSI NY, CSI MIAMI, CSI OKLAHOMA, CSI Alaska, etc...]. I get that they're trying to make the most amount of money without actually doing work, but sometimes that doesn't work. Most stuff from all eras were shite. The good stuff will be remembered. Heck, if you watch tvland you would swear that the only thing on tv in the 70s was all in the family and the jeffersons. There was a lot of crap between timeslots. Ten years from now everyone will remember 24, Lost, and Jericho. I doubt anyone will remember CSI or According to Jim.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[lababidi]

Why would you go to their concert? You just stated you only liked 2 of their songs.

Most concerts I go to are usually of bands that I want to see/listen most of the songs they record.

I guess I'm the odd man out then.

Good Bye Karma.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Moofie]

"Do you know why artists sign with record companies?"

Because the record companies lie to them.

"So they can MAKE money you fool! "

Which, most of the time, they don't do.

I think you'd make more money if you concentrated on creating quality goods, and less shrieking about thieveses stealing your preciousss.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points so I could mod you as informative:
You post informed me that not only are you old, but cranky as well.

But seriously, there is probably a LOT of music coming out that you just haven't heard of, because you are not in the target demographic. To find good music, you have to go out and physically look. Hang out with people that like different kinds of music. Go see some shows of local musicians. Hang out with those musicians afterwards (hint... buying them a beer or a shot usually gets em talking.) Try out music of all sorts of genres, and I'm not just saying "Oh, like punk rock?" No, I mean like traditional Polish Gypsy, Cuban Jazz, Various genres of European Classical... the list just goes on. I have no way of actually backing up the numbers, but I've got a feeling that for every song you've heard, there's probably at least 10,000 songs out there that you haven't. And you can't catch up, because I'd bet that every hour at least a couple day's worth of music is recorded. That may sound pessimistic, but if you love music, you will continue searching. If music isn't your thing, then search for more of whatever it is you like.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[drinkypoo]

Why would you go to their concert? You just stated you only liked 2 of their songs.

Well no, I'm saying that I'd only pay for two of their songs. I might like the others, but not enough to actually spend money on the music.

In addition, there's songs on albums by bands I like that I skip, but enjoy listening to in concert. Something about the group experience enhances the whole. Spearhead is a lot like this. Also a lot of bands come off as canned crap on CD, but are great fun to go see...

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[drinkypoo]

I wish I had mod points so I could mod you as informative: You post informed me that not only are you old, but cranky as well. But seriously, there is probably a LOT of music coming out that you just haven't heard of, because you are not in the target demographic. To find good music, you have to go out and physically look.

Heh. Well, maybe I'm old before my time or something. And I didn't really provide all the information I should have; most of the mass-market music coming out now does not interest me, and I'm not really exposed to much of the other stuff. I don't get out a lot, it's true.

But then, that's okay. My life doesn't have to revolve around someone else's media. Also it's a bitch to even GO out around here - I live in Lake County, California, the county in this state people are probably least likely to ever have heard of or visited simply due to geographical restrictions... Plus our lake, which is the largest natural lake in California, is horribly nasty and ugly and smelly and makes my skin itch if I swim in it. It hasn't really been clear since the white man showed up and started mining mercury, then later borax, then mercury again... Now you can't eat any fish over about 8" because of mercury issues (I just don't eat any, I get enough mercury just living.)

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

Software, as in games, hardly treats you fair. I'm tired of having to keep the first CD or DVD always available for Copy Protection Verification. It got to the point I now limit my game buying to game I REALLY REALLY want to play. Even then if I suspect only for a few days and single player. I'll download.

Ever since EA started creating games under the Westwood name, I've given up on the theory I can pay money and expect another release.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Archangel_Azazel]

--What if prince was sick and couldn't tour, but could still make albums?--
What if I can only work for part of my 40 hours a week? Do I still get paid for the full 40? No, I don't... why? Because I didn't (or wasn't able to if I was sick) work the full 40 hours, so I don't get paid for the full 40 hours.
Artists are still WORKERS. That means if they want to get paid, they have to... work! I am always amused when a guy who makes over 500,000$ /yr wants to complain to me about how he doesn't have any money and he's soooooo starving. Give it up. From what I can see, it's people who want to work one time for less than a year of their life and get paid eternally for it. Sorry, it simply doesn't work that way, or should I say it *shouldn't* work that way.

--As for copyright keeping control in 'the politically powerfull' thats just slashdot immature 13 year old bullshit.--

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060808/1850214. shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070201/140812.s html

The first article is about Major League Baseball's fight for the STATISTICS OF A GAME. (and their subsequent loss as I recall.)
The second article is about Major League Football and their fight over the words Super and Bowl. They went so far as to sue a church because they had a screen bigger than 55" to play it on.

So absolutely, major corporations are NOT trying to 'own' every little thing that they can so they can get paid for it, it's just "slashdot immature 13 year old bullshit." (/sarcasm)

Sincerely,
"Theiving scum"

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[alphamugwump]

I think the real worry is that, instead of producing crap movies on a big budget, as they do now, the internet will be flooded with youtube stuff that is even worse, and nobody will be able to afford to produce real art.

And yes, I doubt that people would be willing to pay for an episode of something as soon as possible, when they could get it a day later on BT. I think the real source of revenue would be franchises (ie, overpriced t-shirts for die-hard fans) and advertising.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Hatta]

The studios claim the DVD is a license (to view the movie as often as I wish in private), not a physical product

Except that they don't. They claim that they have sold you a physical object that you may do whatever you want with, as long as it is legal. You can't copy your CD because it violates the copyright act. You can't break it in half and stab someone with the pieces because that violates laws on assault. Same thing.

If you want to argue intelligently about copyright, at least learn the facts.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[hey!]

Actually, the original poster was right.

The Statute of Anne was a copyright reform law. From 1556 to 1709, the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers had a monopoly on printing under a royal charter. A member who bought a work from an author enjoyed monopoly on that work in perpetuity, enjoying an exclusive right to produce copies of the work.

This might explain an odd fact about Common Law. There is no common law copyright for published works. You have a common law property interest in unpublished works you have created, but once that work is published there is no common law protection. However, under the old Stationer's company, the guild monopoly would have protected the interests of the publisher, so that at the time of the Stationer's company, any work would be controlled from its inception to its selling by the author, and thereafter by the Company.

In any case the Stationer's perpetual monopoly was detested, and it was clear to most people that it made books expensive, rare, and shoddy. With respect to Shakspear, Lord Macaulay has much to say in in famouse second speech on copyright extension, from which I'll quote a choice bit of Macaualay's trademark ironical dialectic:

Why should we not revive all those old monopolies which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to their sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spirit quailed for the first and for the last time? Was it the cheapness and excellence of commodities that then so violently stirred the indignation of the English people?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[MightyYar]

I'm not concerned about budgets for movies disappearing - people still like to go to the movie theater. If I could pack 400 people at $10 a head into a theater for 2 showings every weekend for a month, that's $64,000. If I make a film that is shown in just 10 theaters and give them 50% of the profit, I have $320,000 to make my movie and make my profit. Considering that many movies are made for less than that, I'm not really worried. Oh sure, say goodbye to Mission Impossible and Independence Day... tragic. Pretty sure life will go on, though.

As for TV, in college we used to all get together to watch the NBC Thursday night lineup - Friends, Seinfeld, ER, and whatever poor show got stuck between Friends and Seinfeld that season. Some of us were so hooked on those shows (especially ER) that there is no way in hell we would have waited until the next day to download it. Also, even with every episode of "The Office" available on BT, I still know people (myself included) who have purchased it on the iTunes Store - instant gratification for only $2.

Finally, even if I'm completely wrong and both TV and movie production grinds to a halt, leaving us with a crap-filled YouTube ether, I'm still not worried. It sounds like there would be some profit to be had for pointing users toward the content that is not crap. Anyway, if this were to happen, I'm pretty sure that we could adjust copyright back the other way a bit to bring back some professional production.

But as others have pointed out, Shakespeare was pretty darn successful and he didn't have copyright.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of facts...

You can copy your CD. In fact, you can buy truck full of blanks and duplicate your CDs. What you can't do is to distibute these copies.

See the difference between copying and distributing the copies?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to stop talking about how much so-called "stars" make per film. Don't get me wrong, some actors are grossly overpaid for their talents and that should change. But there are also hundreds of other people that work on Films and T.V. shows. Carpenters, Make-Up people, PA's, Painter's, etc. It's their paychecks that are affected by this as well. It's a pretty myopic view of the industry when you think it's only "Ben Affleck" you are fucking over with piracy.

Look I'm all being able to copy a DVD to make a backup for yourself, or mash it up, take a song and put it on your home video, convert it to play on your mobile device or whatever but that's not what the Pirate Bay is. Pirate Bay is digital distribution on a mass scale, wrapped up as counter-culture plain and simple.

Do you think that if (Blu-Ray,HD-DVD,DVD) came without DRM, people wouldn't distribute it across the net?

Right.

What I want to hear from the Cory Doctorow's and Pirates of the Net is, what is the alternative? People bitch about media's business model but fail to come up with a new one to replace it. It's one thing to be a make buggy whips and then get put out of business because the car comes along. That's progress. It's another to make buggy whips and get put out of business because some one can clone your shit out of thin air for nothing.

My 2 cents.

Jack.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[cpt kangarooski]

That's true, it did reform copyright. But it reformed it so completely that there is a big break in copyright. The stationers' copyright died and pretty much all copyright since has been descended from or inspired by Anne, or other, later sources. This is why I did mention the stationers' copyright, but I didn't give it much credit, since it bears no real resemblance to what we think of as copyright, and didn't match the description of the earlier poster. Only the most dedicated of copyright historians even bothers to look past Anne, and the majority that ignore the pre-Anne regime don't usually suffer for doing so.

As for common law copyrights, there has never been very clear agreement or understanding about them. It's a very fuzzy concept, encompassing a lot of unrelated things, and fortunately is nearly moot now. While I don't mind stealing an idea or two from common law traditions, and I don't have a problem with common law generally, I think that we're all best off when copyright law is entirely statutory. Indeed, in this field I don't even care for secondary liability that isn't legislative in origin.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[doctorsmoothy]

I agree wholeheartedly. Watching that 5 minute drivel telling me not to pirate makes me wish I had pirated the movie and saved myself some rage.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[muuh-gnu]

> it is also my right NOT to do so, but to sell it in any legal manner I choose!

And it is my right to copy your work once you publish it however i see fit, and to give it away to whom ever I want.

> Everything you say is an attempt to justify being a thief.

Copying is not a theft. You people started to call it so in order to make it sound worse than it is because nobody gives a fuck about your copyright.

Your "copyright" is not something you _have_ but something which was legally taken away from _me_, i.e. a right to copy something. With the introduction of copyright your situation as a author didnt change at all. You could copy something before and afterwards, but my and everybodys right to copy it was simply removed without the public actually ever being asked about this removal of their rights. If challenged democratically copyright wouldnt survive a single night because everybody would demand their right to copy back. This is the reason "copyright" as we know it was never approved democratically because the ones introducing it knew (and still know) it woudl never be adopted by a majority (only by a minority like you who can profit from such removal of public rights).

"Piracy" as you call it is getting _our_ copyrights back, download by download. Calling people "thieves" and "pirates" will actually not help you, but just lead to even less respect for "rights owners" and accelerate the erosion of the copyright system even more.

I'd suggest you get another job, maybe this time one where people actually want to pay for what you do, and not having a state force them into it by enforcing artificial scarcity. And if you cant adapt, you parasite, just die off. Thanks for reading.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent doesn't specify who is making the money - in this case Apple take a little bit of profit and the music industry takes a large chunk of money for doing basically nothing. Even if the cost to produce/encode/transfer a song is 20c thats still 80% of the price going into someones pocket.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[redcane]

I will cite the current Australian tour of the TV show actors of "Little Britain". Performing live at venues all over Oz. That is your equivalent of a "live performance". Since movies are basically a medium change of theatre, I see no reason the reverse operation couldn't be performed. Would people go see "Terminator, live on stage at the theatre"? probably not, but you could put on such a show. AS far as games, you'd need to create a gaming league, like a football league, and run a yearly series with paid TV distribution rights. Animation.... well my creativity is out for today.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[grrrl]

Urg.

One thing stopping me from buying DVDs of TV shows are the menus (in addition to the trailers/warnings etc).

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[grrrl]

iTunes DOES make a lot of money - for the record companies!

Not much for Apple (though it's still a profit), but only because they get a tiny cut of the total price.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[FlyingGuy]

So let me make really sure that I have your position correct? You personaly believe that you have the right to walk into a book store, buy a book for an agreed upon price, then you think that you have the right to legaly start making copies of it and distributing it in any manner you like?

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[FlyingGuy]

Ohh thats a lovely line of thought. Lets see, a music artist signs with a record company, a book author signs with a publishing company for any or all of the following reasons:

• To cover the production costs.
• To cover the promototional Costs.
• To cover the printing / stamping costs.
• To cover the distribution costs.

In exchnage for fronting ALL of this money, which by the way no bank on the planet will loan you, The publishing company or record company writes a contract which specifies who makes what amount as a percentage of sales and for certain rights to publication. The artist can either sign it or not, thats the way it is. The artist can even try to get the contract drawn up with what they percieve to be more favorable terms. If the record / publishing compnay agrees, thats their business.

There is a HUGE amount of risk involved and the publisher / record company assumes these risks. For every Sting, or U2 or Cold Play, there are a hundred other artists who never sell, even though the publisher / record company still puts up the money for all the items as listed above. The record company takes their best guess at what they think wil sell, then bets a big wad of cash on that outcome.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[RotHorseKid]

*claps*

This was by far the best comment I've read on /. for years. Great insights, and written in a style thats distinctive but inobtrusive. If you don't mind, I'd like to translate it to german and use it in educating people here.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
RHK

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Moofie]

Uh huh. All above board, which is why you have gold- and platinum-selling records that somehow never make any profit. Right. Totally honest. No shady accounting at all. Record companies are paragons of integrity and virtue.

Note: I do not advocate copying music. I don't, however, equate copying music with eating babies. Sorry, it's just not that big of a deal. If it's destroying the record companies, maybe they need to do something about their business model.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[Snaller]

Good luck creating the equivalent of "live performances" for TV shows, Movies, games, and animation.

If they can't find a way to make money then it dies. There are several studies showing that TV is one of the worst influences ever to happen to society, so it might not be bad if it died out.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[jp10558]

You know, this may be the first time I totally 100% agree with what you are saying. I've posted basically this same argument to slashdot many many times.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of an item

[jedidiah]

I am missing nothing. That's the point. I realize that the "dedication" that you are speaking of is an absurdity.

That's rather the point. Marginal production costs of "intellectual property" tend towards zero. That's why attempting to shoehorn them into notions real property or physical commodities is so assinine. You have to engage in a lot of overhanded government intervention to counteract everyone's natural intuitive understanding of the situation.

The beauty of computer technology is the fact that you can make most (if not all) of the gruntwork disappear.

It would actually be LESS work for me to pirate rather than consuming my own legitimately purchased DVD's.

oblig.

[Rob T Firefly]

I don't feel like buying the magazine, anyone have a .torrent?

Re:oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you check ThePirateBay.org ?

Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I'm sure Ben Affleck is eating TV dinners because of Pirates Bay. I wish someone would smack that arrogant jack ass.

Re:Ben Affleck

[linzeal]

TV dinners cost more than normal food. I never understood why poor and unemployed people would use their food stamps on that crap when you can make a cheese pizza yourself for 2-3 bucks and don't even get me started on Salisbury steak, shudder.

When I was hard up for cash I always ate better than when I had cash because I had the time to cook. I figure when I am rich one day maybe I will eat better again, but working and going to school have made me eat some of the worst food ever.

Re:Ben Affleck

[jctull]

Maybe there is a correlation between eating TV dinners and being lazy...

Re:Ben Affleck

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Well there is truth to the statement that a lot of good jobs are in the movie industry and that there are lots of people from construction, lighting, writing, catering etc that all benefit from film production.

The problem is.. Hollywood themselves do not support American film makers. Hollywood at any opportunity will move productions to Canada, and other foreign countries just to cut production costs (cheaper crews)

So Hollywoods own pr is bullshit in many respects. Theres definatly some truth to it though. I do think piracy hurts them... but not as much as they claim. For example I havent gone to the movies much at all this past year... It's not because i've been downloading dvds like a dope addict... cause i havent been. Its because they havent inspired me to get off my ass yet. Spiderman3 i'll go see, theres a few others i'm looking forward to, but overall the way they promote films turns me off. I dont want to really go see a film that i pretty got the story from the commercial. I want to explore films, find ones that are interesting, not be told that this is the funniest film of the year... and have it not be.

Consumers are smarter... thats all. They have more options when it comes to seeing a film and not paying for it... so they need to really be fair with consumers, lowering the ticket prices is a good start.

My friends girl, buys dvds constantly. I mean 200$ at a time. All legal of course. We think shes nuts.... "you can rent them and copy them we exclaim" :) But she loves to buy them. I'm a movie nut myself and she outspends me, and i consider her a more casual consumer of films.... cause she buys lots of crap :)

DVD sales have slowed dramatically though. Most analysts will say that the dvd days are done. The sales are bottomed and they're hoping for HD and Bluray to spark that massive dvd like buying trend that took place with dvds.... I dont know if people are that willing to buy another entire library of films they already own... Sure some films... but thats asking a lot form a consumer in a format war.

Its possible that the saving grace to film sales, will be technology... a constant upgrade in technology.... Soon uncompressed 4000x3000 resolution laser displays! Freddy Got Fingered will have never looked better! (i love that movie.. its brillant... i know.. shut up)

Re:Ben Affleck

[eln]

Try cooking when you work 3 jobs. The people buying the crappy TV dinners tend to be the working poor, not the sitting on their ass doing nothing poor.

Also, making a cheese pizza for 2-3 bucks is a poor choice when you can buy a TV dinner with all 4 food groups represented for $1.50.

Re:Ben Affleck

[nomadic]

I figure when I am rich one day maybe I will eat better again

"When"? Unless that school you mentioned is a medical school, I wouldn't be so sure of eventually being wealthy.

As for poor/unemployed people, those are two different groups. A very large number of poor people work exhausting jobs that are long hours. If you've just spent the night scrubbing floors, the last thing you want to do when you get home is spend an hour making pizza margherite.

As for the unemployed, you're right in that fresh, home-made food is healthier and ultimately probably a little cheaper than frozen stuff. But I don't think you can make a pizza for 2-3 bucks; the cheese itself will probably cost more than that.

I don't have the time to prepare food for myself so I usually get a freezer full of reasonably healthy stuff--frozen vegetables, veggie burgers, etc.--stuff that I can nuke when I get home in a few minutes.

If I become rich, dinner will be the responsibility of my live-in sushi chef.

Re:Ben Affleck

[stratjakt]

The set builders and sfx guys can go f' themselves too, it's all CGI these days.

The costs of producing "big budget" films is peanuts compared to what it was. I guess that's just a statement I havent researched, but I don't see how it can't be true. Superman must have cost more to make than Spiderman - in the former, there were real special effects, in the latter, it was all CGI. Star Wars (A new hope) must have been comparitively harder to make than the jar jar binks bullshit, etc.

Everything about the production is cheaper. The only costs that keep going up are for the stars, and you can pin that on our "cult of celebrity", not "teh intarnet". Everything out of hollywood has to have one of these A-list stars, who wants 50 million to do three weeks of work. That's their decision, not the consumers. Personally, I think Ghost Rider could be good (probably better) with a relative no-name, instead of Nicholas Cage. But they assume they need Nicholas Cage, and maybe they're right - this country loves it's stars.

But there are so many stars, and they seem so easy to "manufacture", I don't see why they don't retire them once the salary demands get ridiculous, or at least reign them in to reality. Nobody will really miss Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson, both of whom have "crazied" themselves right out of the mainstream. We have a neverending line of celebrities to replace them with.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Lumpy]

Are you insane???

A $1.99 Tv dinner costs way less than "real food". I suggest you go out and look at prices of "food" and then the prepackaged garbage they pass off as food in grocery stores. Low grade veggies are cheap like iceberg lettuce. But Romane lettuce costs $3.00 for a head. Everythign else and fruits all cost way more than bujying the prepacked garbage that is made from the grade D vegatable pieces and Meat and then breaded and deep fried to hide it's horrible taste while making it even worse for you.

Poor people have bad nutrition because the cheap food is bad for you. It is expensive to eat good veggies, meats,grains. A loaf of crap-white bread is $0.89US a loaf of good multigrain is $3.25.. do I buy the good for you food and we starve for the week, or do I buy 2 loafs of the cheap crap and 1 jar of cheap peanutbutter (more sugar than protien) and at least have enough to make it to the next paycheck.

I strongly suggest you get a reality dose on how the poor people really eat. Because you seem to not have a clue as to what is in most things and the costs of them. When you start digging into things like this you become horrified and then disgusted.... and dont even look at the chain fast food, that stuff will make you puke when you find out how horribly bad it is... There is a reason they can sell you a hamburger cooked and packaged for less than $1.00...

Re:Ben Affleck

[Overly Critical Guy]

So the fact he was paid a lot for Gigli means you and others have the right to steal his work and make sure he's never paid for it?

If you guys reject copyright here, then you have to reject the GPL as well, since the GPL relies on copyright.

Re:Ben Affleck

[theguitarizt]

why would anyone bother even stealing gigli?

Re:Ben Affleck

[VJ42]

I figure when I am rich one day maybe I will eat better again

"When"? Yes, "When". I, like the GP aspire to be rich some day. Having ambition and drive is a good thing, I don't sit here thinking "I want to be stuck in some dead end job until I'm 65", I think "how can I better myself and become rich*, and how soon can I do it"

*not necessarily in monetary terms, "rich" means different things to different people.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Hijacked Public]

A packet of Myoplex costs less than $1 if you buy them in bulk on EBay, and each packet contains about half of the USRDA of more vitamins and minerals than I care to count right now. They also have enough protein to do whatever job you need protein to do.

I'm not sure if many people have the discipline to eat them very often but they can be made to be pretty satisfying.

Re:Ben Affleck

[nomadic]

Yes, "When". I, like the GP aspire to be rich some day. Having ambition and drive is a good thing

It's unrealistic to assume ambition and drive is enough. Talent and luck play a big part. Luck plays a huge part, though people don't like to hear that.

What exactly are you doing to become rich? Do you have a plan, or just a lot of optimism? There are very few career paths that guarantee wealth. It used to be certain degrees pretty much guaranteed you a very comfortable lifestyle for life: MD, JD, MBA, B.Eng., etc. Not anymore.

If you think you're going to become some kind of entrepreneur, be aware that most entrepreneurial enterprises fail.

Re:Ben Affleck

[operagost]

You people need to learn how to use coupons.

/me bought $170 worth of groceries for $101 last week (and it would have been $190 if the cat food I had free coups for had been in stock). By the way, that wasn't even my best trip in the last six months.

Re:Ben Affleck

[TheRaven64]

A loaf of crap-white bread is $0.89US a loaf of good multigrain is $3.25 In the UK, I pay around 70p for a bag of strong bread flour, which is around $1.40. Add in the other ingredients (yeast, butter/oil) and it comes to around $2 for three large loaves, which works out even cheaper than the cheap pre-made loaf.

Re:Ben Affleck

[VJ42]

I hear and understand all of what you're saying, but without a positive mental attitude to go with that talent and luck (mostly luck, I agree) you're going to get nowhere. The biggest opportunity could land in your lap, but unless you have a decent attitude, you won't even notice it, let alone have the ability to take advantage of it.

I'm not American, but the phrase "the American dream" comes to mind; you can only live the dream if you try though. If you just sit back and think "I'm not ever going to do any better" you never will.

Re:Ben Affleck

[spun]

How much is your tme worth? I make bread, too, but because it tastes better and is better for you, not because it's cheaper. A lot of prep time in bread making is waiting for it to rise, but there is quite a bit of kneading involved, at least 15 minutes by hand. Plus mixing and checking to see how it's rising every so often, punching down, more kneading, shaping & putting in loaf pans, more rising, and baking.

Or did you perhaps invest in a bread machine, or a Kitchenaid mixer? Are you counting the opportunity cost of that investment? It's like the thing the trolls say about Linux: it's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. Of course, some people find bread making relaxing, and there's the free whole-house aroma thereapy (is there anything better than the smell of baking bread?) but still, it's a really a hobby, not a money saver, and poor people working three jobs just don't have the time for a hobby like that.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Eagleartoo]

I agree with what you are saying about actors outpricing themselves, but as a CGI artist, CGI is not cheaper. One frame in Monster's Inc took 90 machine hours to render. That's a lot of friggin power and time. It's not the same, I know, but when you consider employing graphic artists that work on compositing one explosion, unless there's some magical formula out there that I don't know about it takes quite some time to get it looking good enough to where you don't laugh and walk out.

I grew up in a live theatre surrounding and work in the video production business now, and there are EXTREMELY! creative ways to cut budgets to pieces which if there were good producer/director teams out there, that's what they would do. CGI should only be used when you are trying to do something that can neither be composited, or done with SFX.

As far as set building goes, again director/producer's can get creative. I bet one of the cheapest movies to make (excluding talent) was the bourne identity stuff. On location shooting with a well trained group of grips and lighting technicians, and the shots weren't even "beautiful". So minus what you had to pay Damon, that could have been a very lucrative production. "Bourne looks through scope, shot of the street, shot of this and that. . ." I guess that's all.

Re:Ben Affleck

[spun]

No, the fact that he even made Gigli means that every single person in the world who so much as had to sit through a commercial for it has the right to kick him in the nuts, repeatedly and with steel-toed boots.

Re:Ben Affleck

[bogjobber]

5lb. bag of rice, 5lb. bag of beans, and some fruits/veggies. Cheap as hell and extremely easy/convenient to prepare a variety of different foods. People have enough time to make food. There are very few people anywhere that do not have 15 minutes to cook a simple meal. TV dinners really aren't that much of a time saver, and are expensive. More importantly, they are often absolutely horrible for you. Even fast food, when you take into account the time spent driving to/from the restaurant is not that much quicker than cooking.

I eat about 3-4 rice-based meals a week and it takes me a month to go through a ten pound bag which costs me $8. Stuff like beans, pasta, and fresh fruit and veggies are also extremely cheap and easy to cook.

Re:Ben Affleck

[cpt kangarooski]

If you guys reject copyright here, then you have to reject the GPL as well, since the GPL relies on copyright.

No we don't.

For example, we could say that copyright doesn't apply to individuals making or distributing copies for personal use, but that it does apply to commercial activities and to non-natural persons (e.g. corporate entities). While this would arguably permit people to ignore the GPL in some instances, they likely wouldn't bother; after all, copyright law is actually pretty unfavorable to the GPL now (e.g. you can make changes to software under 17 USC 117 without having to agree to the GPL, so long as you qualify for that exception), and it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect.

While some people do reject the entire notion of copyright, I think that more people merely reject the present implementation. Since there are relatively few boundaries on what copyright laws Congress may enact, almost anything is on the table, including massively scaling back copyright but still preserving some portions of it. The important thing is ensuring that whatever implementation of copyright laws we have serve the public interest better than any alternative implementation; it's not important to serve the interests of authors, however, or to not reduce or alter the laws, save for how those might best serve the public interest.

So don't think of it as an either/or kind of thing. Hell, you could have copyright laws that specifically singled out and preserved the GPL, if that's what we wanted.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

your bread flower is not that good. get the stone ground high fiber content whole wheat. Now it costs much more. use honey instead of preprocessed sugar and you see where I am going.

the discussion is real food not the processed until it's nutritional value is gone products. white sugar = bad, white flour = bad (grab barley flour, cheaper and better for you and tasting.) etc... Everything you see as cheap, there is a reason for it.

fresh veggies are expensive, good grains are expensive, meat that is not all scraps and fat is expensive. butter is expensive compared to the flavored axle grease they sell as imitation butter or margarine as they call it here.

Now the years is free... simply grab your own from the window with a bowl left out overnight. and sourdough yeast tastes far better than the crap you buy.

Lumpy is spot on. a Bag of oranges to give you one a day can feed a poor person with cheap food for 2 weeks. they get sicker but are not hungry because they cant afford real food only the garbage in theboxes.

Re:Ben Affleck

[linzeal]

I do robotics, I am mechatronic engineering student. My current job offers are in the 60k-70k range after school. That is rich to me.

Who makes pizza sauce when you can buy pasta sauce for $1.50 and use that for 3-4 pizzas?

Re:Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

---I strongly suggest you get a reality dose on how the poor people really eat. Because you seem to not have a clue as to what is in most things and the costs of them. When you start digging into things like this you become horrified and then disgusted.... and dont even look at the chain fast food, that stuff will make you puke when you find out how horribly bad it is... There is a reason they can sell you a hamburger cooked and packaged for less than $1.00...

Ok, I work at Starbucks and I think it's a bit higher than 'chain fast food'. Ok, yes we do use whole milk for every latte/cappuccino we make, but that's standard. Well, we get 10 minute breaks along with a lunch (lunch is 6.25 or more hours/day).

During a 10 minute break, I used to buy a pastry or 2 and snarf it down quick. Now, these are "Starbucks" quality, at least compared to taste. I used to go after peanut butter stacks and lemon loaves. Fine fine, until I recently looked at the calorie count. 500+ kcal PER dessert. I was eating half my recommended daily allowance in calories.

Everybody thinks that Starbucks is trendy and healthy and stuff... only if you get brewed coffees. And you know how much calories a Venti (large) white mocha has? Try around 600. Ugh.

Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Moofie]

If we got rid of copyright, the GPL would be redundant. And you also wouldn't need it.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Yartrebo]

"While some people do reject the entire notion of copyright, I think that more people merely reject the present implementation."

Any belief system that believes in 'from all according to ability' must totally reject copyright to avoid being a total hypocrite. For a person or entity to copyright something, they are saying that they are going to produce fewer copies than they are capable of.

Since 'from all according to ability' is a core tenant of communism, this means there aught to be a lot of people against any sort of copyright just based on communist ideology.

Re:Ben Affleck

[nomadic]

It's not bad, but I hope that you'll be living somewhere with a reasonable cost of living. That kind of salary won't go far in a lot of high tech centers. And there are more ingredients in pizza than the sauce. Throw in the dough, and oil, and cheese, and you're looking at a lot more.

Re:Ben Affleck

[cpt kangarooski]

Now, now. You're invoking communism, but that's just a red herring. After all, if you believe in free, unregulated markets, then you must also reject copyright as a state-backed monopoly meant to eliminate a market in commodities and subsidize particular actors in the market. But that's pretty extraneous to this discussion as well. I'm not a communist, and AFAIK most people who like the GPL aren't communists, nor are most advocates of copyright reform, nor mere pirates. How about you address the issues and arguments that are actually part of this discussion, and you don't put up straw men that you have apparently pulled out of your ass.

Re:Ben Affleck

[jedidiah]

Pizza/marinara sauce is easy. It's just about knowing what spices to add to the canned tomatoes. You can better control the end result and don't have to worry about the local grocer running out of your prefered brand.

"pasta sauce" is usually more expensive than "just marinara" (even in cans).

So it becomes 50 cents for 6-8 pizzas.

Re:Ben Affleck

[1point618]

Ease of getting something really matters when people are buying something, especially food. If they have to buy it off eBay, most are never going to notice it exists. What's more, when Myoplex is sold in stores, it's usually sold in the health food or body building food section, not in the "regular" food section. So yes, while it is excellent to buy and eat as a meal and still get many nutrients (I used to do the same thing with other protein shakes myself, not trying to change my weight at all, just not having time to eat until dinner, so I'd do that for breakfast and get through the day that way), it won't become viable as such until it is marketed correctly for that.

Re:Ben Affleck

[kchrist]

My plan is to save and invest wisely. How much money you make (beyond a certain point, obviously) isn't as important as what you do with the money you have. Investing 20% of my pay (safe and diversified, of course) will give me a very good chance of being quite comfortable later in life. I'm probably at the low-to-mid salary range for tech jobs here in San Francisco and I'm still managing to do this.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Donniedarkness]

Yeah, but that still pales in comparison to my $.20 pepperoni sandwhiches (one for a snack, two for a meal!).

Please don't make fun. That's my meal plan for this semester.

Re:Ben Affleck

[MathGod]

Sell your goddamn computer and eat some real food, dude.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Hatta]

5lb. bag of rice, 5lb. bag of beans, and some fruits/veggies.

Rice takes 20 minutes to cook, beans need to be rehydrated overnight
then cooked for 40-60 minutes.

There are very few people anywhere that do not have 15 minutes to cook a simple meal.

15 minutes is a bit optimistic. When you add in the time it takes to make the rice & beans
interesting, you're still looking at an hour.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

With a name like Myoplex, its gotta be healthy/delicious/safe!

Re:Ben Affleck

[StikyPad]

That's because they're all a bunch of Film Actors Guildies in the US.

Re:Ben Affleck

[StikyPad]

There is a reason they can sell you a hamburger cooked and packaged for less than $1.00...

There sure is. It's because they sell you the 15 cent soda and the 25 cent fries for $0.90-$1.00 each.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Yartrebo]

What strawman? Is communist a dirty word to you or something.

And yes, ardent believers in free markets must reject copyrights on ideological grounds, but since there are very few of these people around in the world, I doubt it effects the numbers much. On the other hand, socialists and communists make up a very large share of the world population.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Tsagadai]

There is such things as fast cook rice. It's all natural just a different size, takes about 5 minutes to cook. Beans can be bought precooked in cans at about the same price.

Re:Ben Affleck

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

i'm the OP, and i'm also a CGI artist. (3d animator and director) It is certainly true that CGI is expensivo :) Most shops work from project to project and can barely afford the cost of all of the hardware that needs to be constantly upgraded along with software, and the large number of extremely talented artists...

There are very high costs in CGI because you're asking someone to always be at the forefront of technology and artistry. People change seats often because new talent have adapted to newer techniques while you were still finishing up your project. In other words, your team didnt have time to "learn" they had to work with what thye know... mean while new techniques are being developed...

Its a crazy cycle that costs lots and lots of money. Most cg shops close if they dont have their next project lined up. Its not a good buisness to go into unless you have lots of high profile clients, or are a very small team of artists. It's just so expensive to maintain a cg company.

The worst part is that clients still think you push a fucking button to make Jar Jar fart. It's still that bad :)

The problem with CGI is... the talent in these art departments is huge... FAR MORE TALENTED THAN MATT DAMON or BEN AFFLECK, OR ROBERT REDFORD... We're talking about people who can act, sculpt, paint, animate often those talents are found in a single artist at a cg shop. There are some extremely talented people out there making films successful, and they barely get a penny compared to the actors.

Its rather sad. The post production team is an actor these days.... except you have such a large number of people dividing up a budget. Look at the list of post production artists next time you see a film. From character animation down to wireremoval and color corrections.... EVEN DIGITAL MAKEUP RETOUCHING...

I mean its not cheap because of the workload they dump on you... which is always far more than the hassle is worth. You dont make a lot of money, no ones getting rich in the cgi world... and yet you often sleep at the office cause shot s36b-s6-w of spiderman 4000 has to be done by the morning.

Luckily people like doing the work... but shit.. pay up suckers. We make your films :) Or you could just go and have spiderman in a fucking spandex suit hanging from a wire ;) Most cg artists love to make this stuff... it would be nice to see them really rewarded... Up keep costs are so fuckign high.

Venn Diagrams.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?"

Since when do geeks read Vanity Fair?

Re:Venn Diagrams.

[Aqua_boy17]

You may be joking, but I've recently been quite impressed by their level of professionalism and the timeliness of their articles. Recent editions have included stories covering a wide range of topics including the war on terror, government corruption, drug diversion and other topics that interested me greatly. And they do it quite a bit better than Faux News or a lot of the other talking head outfits out there IMHO. My wife was given a subscription some time ago and that was when I learned that VF is more than just a fashion rag.

Of course, because I'm such an avid reader I tell her that I want to get Playboy just for the articles, but I don't think she's buying it.

Re:Venn Diagrams.

[evilgiu]

Man... If we don't, perhaps we should. This is one of the best articles on the piracy-p2p-industry issue I have read in a loooong time. Kudos to the author!

Re:Venn Diagrams.

[Aptgetupdate]

Frylock does.

I figured I might read something about it.

[Spazntwich]

But I thought it would be an article about Kiera Knightly's vagina, not copyright infringement.

Re:I figured I might read something about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

this thread is worthless without pics ;)

Re:I figured I might read something about it.

[TheViciousOverWind]

Troll?

I actually found that comment very funny. I wish I had mod points, but you can have this endorsing reply instead ;)

Re:I figured I might read something about it.

[Spazntwich]

I appreciate replies more than moderating anyway, since funny mods don't count towards karma.

I admittedly do my fair share of trolling, so I think there are plenty of kneejerk mods out there who just mod me troll post unread.

Pirates!

[Anonymous Coward]

But where did all the rum go?

Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[Funkcikle]

Single page version.

Why on earth /. doesn't just link to these where available, I will never know...

Re:Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[anonicon]

Why on earth /. doesn't just link to these where available, I will never know...

Because the users who submit the articles either don't know or don't care about the uni-page alternative when they're sending their story link in, and the editors are still coming down off last weekend's methamphetamine bender with a gaggle of prostitutes, a case of tequila, and a goat named Rhonda.

Re:Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[Davram]

You know Rhonda, too?! Rhonda is cheating on me?!

Damn you, goat! I am going back to the sheep!

Re:Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[joshetc]

If they don't like to the single page version one lucky soul per story gets to karma whore. Seems like a good reason to me...

Re:Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

s/methamphetamine/caffine/

s/prostitutes/roleplayers/

s/tequila/jolt/

s/Rhonda/goat.cx/

Re:Annoying pointlessly multi-page articles.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Natalie Portman and hot grits, you insensitive clod!

Answer: No.

[nherc]

What bizarre form of nerd reads Vanity Fair AND /.?

Re:Answer: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Me, too. Vanity Fair, aside from the ads and articles about high-end fashion and the fashionable, is an excellent magazine. Possibly the best magazine being published today.

Re:Answer: No.

[Mex]

Oh, stop complaining, I'll read what I want.
What's next, I can't wear lipstick and a skirt to work?

http://www.skirtman.org/gallery.html

Besides, Monty Python did it first.

Re:Answer: No.

[minus_273]

gay ones

Re:Answer: No.

[JKConsult]

What bizarre form of nerd reads Vanity Fair AND /.?

Heh. You know, nerd is as nerd does. My magazine/newspaper subscriptions:
Wall Street Journal
Forbes (Hey, they offered it for $10 a year. It sucks, but you can't beat that.)
Playboy
Esquire (gift, but a fine magazine)
Sports Weekly

And I've obviously had a Slashdot account for years. We don't all hate sports and business. Some of us are huge sports fans with business degrees, you know!

Re:Answer: No.

[mapkinase]

Those who can type "PirateBay" http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=pirate+ba y&btnG=Search+News and get 302 article first of which is of course /. and second is, voila, Vanity Fair.

Re:Answer: No.

[MrMarket]

Right here. They have the best international affairs long features of any US magazine -- especially their Middle Eastern coverage. Skip the cover an check out the TOC next time you see one.

Re:Answer: No.

[Myself]

Hey, Esquire ran "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" in 1971. Occasionally the big rags catch onto things happening in one subculture or another.

Bah

[Gerocrack]

I'm waiting for the article on Slashdot to come out in Cosmo.

Re:Bah

[Coucho]

Cover of Cosmo: Slashdot nerds reveal all! Page 28! *turn to page 28* *blank page*

Yes

[robably]

Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?

Yes, but I make lists of these things.

Neal Stephenson interviewed in Carpet Steaming News about his cat hair problem.
Jerry Garcia interviewed about curtains through a medium in Woman's Own.
Tony Blair interviewed about cheese through a trumpet in Lego Builders Weekly.
George W Bush interviewed upside-down from a flying carpet through a Chinese pipe in Hanglider's Review.

Actually, no. What a bloody stupid question.

Thanks

[ACQ]

FTFA: "Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?"

No, because I do not read Vanity Fair. I do appreciate you saving me the trouble though.

In the words of Weird Al

[dethndrek]

Solid gold Humvee and diamond studded swimming pools...These things don't grow on trees. Maybe Vanity Fair should focus on the large scale squander of real dollars by the wealthiest 1% instead of the fictitous dollars "lost" to "piracy". That would be a far more interesting cultural op ed IMHO. Oh wait...MTV Cribs already beat them to it. Damn.

Re:Answer: Yes.

[Nananine]

Err, me...

Going off-topic, Vanity Fair is a great magazine. It shocked me how they could take subjects that I wouldn't be remotely interested in and make them readable. I read an article on the Gumball 3000, a rally that includes dozens of millionaires unsafely driving ludicrously expensive vehicles through public streets, causing accidents and death. Yet it was written like a fascinating first-person travel diary, with the author at first terrified and skeptical of the event, but eventually giving in to the spirit of the rally.

I mean, I didn't and still don't care about this crap (the accounts of rallyers paying off local police for causing numerous accidents are pretty outrageous), but the author made it interesting.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was always under the impression that piracy would hurt the publishers if it hurt anybody. The content creaters are usually paid a flat fee for their services and are out of the loop before dime one of the profits have been acrued.

12 mil must be nice

[Mahkno]

Of course maybe part of the problem is that Ben Affleck isn't worth $12 million. Maybe.. just maybe movie stars are making waaaaaayyyy too much. Surely you can find someone with talent to star in a movie for a more down to earth salary of ... say $100,000 a year? or less. If you are losing money.. maybe its because your overhead is too much. Stop blaming your 'customers'.

Re:12 mil must be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Jim Carrey got paid around $100,000 for his lead role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, now what is he worth? Oh and Ben Affleck can act? ;)

*sigh*

Re:12 mil must be nice

[OldeTimeGeek]

There's a reason that Ben Affleck makes $12 million. It's the same reason that Michael Jordan, Luciano Pavarotti or anybody else famous could demand the salaries that they got - people will pay to see them. When you fill seats, you can demand any price that you want.

Will one of your $100,000 wonders cause people to watch the movie just because they're in it?

Re:12 mil must be nice

[Darlantan]

Hey, I've watched movies just because Bruce Campbell was in them. I'm not sure how much he makes per movie, but I'm pretty sure it isn't anywhere near 12M.

Re:12 mil must be nice

[Slashamatic]

It is down to the star system. There are any number of good actors knocking around and Bruce is one. Hollywood likes to create a shortage as so many people like to live off percentages. There have been plenty of good stars too, but Hollywood prefers a person who has looks but little real talent, so is emminently replaceable.

Re:12 mil must be nice

[shutdown -p now]

There's a reason that DVDs are so frequently pirated. It's because people will not pay what the studios want them to pay to see them.

Hollywoods increasing losses?

[stratjakt]

I read not too long ago the industry was making record profits.

Of course, the piece I read was in a business magazine, and seemed aimed at potential investors, not consumers.

Guess the message changes depending on who they're talking to.

I'll read about movies shattering box office records one day, and then read the sad, sad, tale of how Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Glazer "only" get 25% of the net from Da Vinci Code, instead of 40%, because it didn't make the box office they'd hoped and the studio wanted more bucks. This is all because of internet piracy, not because it's a shitty formulaic movie based on a shitty formulaic novel that many people were sick of hearing about.

I don't support pirating DVD rips, because IMO, unlike the RIAA, I actually think DVD's are priced fairly. They sell very well, as I'm told, and as far as I can see from anecdotal evidence: In our mall, the two music stores are gone - and a suncoast movie store just opened up, and another gamestop.

Whatever, they can whine about piracy and we can whine about how we feel justified in pirating, etc. Nothing is going to change, though. If the big studios cant compete they'll close down, and others will take their place.

Re:Hollywoods increasing losses?

[bogjobber]

It's difficult to tell how much Hollywood is making because they try and hide their international ticket and DVD sales as much as possible. There's also the famous Hollywood accounting system where profits are juggled through intermediaries until the film isn't making money anymore. Overall it's pretty much impossible for outsiders to get an exact figure of how well they're doing, but judging by the fact that they are still cranking out very large budget movies by the dozen (many over $100 million and a few over $150 million) I would say that they are doing very well indeed.

No, that's the whole point...

[solevita]

Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?

The news would be pretty dull if I expected all of it. I guess that's why they call it "news".

"Hollywood's increasing losses"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahahahah hahah ahaha *gasp* ahahahah ahahahaha... hehehe.... *snicker* *snort*

bravo, well said

[circletimessquare]

i'd like to also add that the movie experience, the theatre, is still an experience people are willing to pay tickets for. in other words, the DVD aftermarket for movies is obsolete, exactly as you suggest. however, the movie house is not obsolete, as you suggest

forget the internet for a moment: television was supposed to kill cinema in the 1950s. why is it still alive? why did it in fact boom in growth after the 1950s?

psychologists have done studies showing that people actually subconsciously like the ooohs and aahs and laughs and startles of their fellow popcorn munchers at a movie. yes, a site like slashdot won't admit to the fact, but people apparently have an enhanced emotional experience in a packed theatre... subconciously

consciously they won't admit that fact. they will complain about babies and cell phones, but that's what a lot of people do: whine and bitch and moan... and still go to the movies. people whine about greenhouse gases and global warming, but they still get in their cars every day too. people whine. and then forget about it. cest la vie

look the experience of watching a first run movie at a giant screen surrounded by other people as emotionally enthralled as you. you've never seen it before. everyone else is anonymous to you, their reactions are real and honest. it's almost like church and you're a religious ecstatic: the presence of others and the overwhelming audio/ visual media greatly enhances your enjoyment

ok, now compare: you're going to sit, alone, in front of a 19 inch monitor, in your basement, with your computer whirring in the background, and watch lord of the rings

oh joy

see my point?

add popcorn. add a friend or two. make it a projector. add a booming sound system. it's stil not the same. really

every single slashdotter who ever complains about cellphones and babies and loud rude jerks is still going to go to the movie theatre. again and again. i will bet money on it. in fact, their emotionally strong reaction to the ringing cell phone or loud rude jerk in theatre tells you exactly how important the movie theatre experience is to them. they don't want it messed with. people loudly proclaim how they will abandon something the love dearly if they are hurt or wounded. but they always come back, because they still love it

the cinema isn't going anywhere. look only for future growth. that's a fact

even if the MPAA magically said tomorrow they were completely abandoning DVDs and releasing all movies for free on line in highest quality the same day as release in theatres. people are still going to flock to movie houses, and movie houses will still grow. point of fact

so like you talk about prince giving live concerts, or matthew broderick in the producers on broadway: i say to you that the movie house experience is just as much still alive and kicking and unthreatened by bittorrent and just as irreplaceable

Re:bravo, well said

[drinkypoo]

add popcorn. add a friend or two. make it a projector. add a booming sound system. it's stil not the same. really every single slashdotter who ever complains about cellphones and babies and loud rude jerks is still going to go to the movie theatre. again and again. i will bet money on it.

I haven't been to a theatre in over a year, literally. I can be disappointed in the crap coming out just as easily at home, and I don't have to pay a shitload for the privilege. In fact, I have discovered that I am not missing out on anything by not watching that schlock until it comes out on video, either.

You may paypal the money to my listed email address.

Re:bravo, well said

[StarvingSE]

Actually, I never go to the theater. I know that doesn't mean other /.ers don't either, but all I'm saying is that I haven't been to a movie since star wars ep III, and neither have any of my friends.

The reason I did go to star wars is because of what you said: it was an experience. Standing in line with fellow star wars geeks, looking at the costumes, and being able to say "hey, I was there opening day." It was worth the $9.00 for the ticket.

For any other movie, the $9.00 is just not worth it. For most movies, there isn't a crazy obsessed fan base. It is simply normal people, who gab on their cell phones, kick the seat, talk through the movie... etc. No one dared talk through star wars, everyone was a true fan. Most other movies, they are just there for something to do.

Movie theaters are declining. In my area alone, most of the smaller theaters have gone under, or are converted to dollar shows. They are replaced by two main gigantic 30 screen cinemas. I have to believe that this consolidation is due to lack of demand for the theater experience.

I don't want to see the theater die for the simple fact that there are some movies, such as star wars, that I would want to see there. However, they either need to lower the outrageous ticket price or add more to the experience. My suggestion is to have theaters that are 21 and older. This way, the teenie-bopper problem is taken care of, and they can serve alcohol. This way they can lower ticket prices and more than make up for it in bar sales. Its a lot better than going to some local bar where they charge you a cover to see some crap local band play covers.

Re:bravo, well said

[hairykrishna]

Exactly. This weekend myself and two housemates each paid £6 each to watch a special screening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the cinema. We own two copies of it between us and have a projector + big fat sound system. It's not the same. It'll be a long, long time before coinemas lose money.

Re:bravo, well said

[Em Adespoton]

Funny thing... I haven't gone to a theater in around 5 years... I used to go when the re-runs were $2/movie, and went to the $14/movie screens when something was coming up that was a "big screen" experience. Then the $2/movie showings went up to $5, and then $7, and I stopped going to those, and rented the DVD instead, as it was cheaper. Eventually I realised my imagination was way more powerful than a large screen, and stopped going to the "big screen" movies too. I found that it was much more enjoyable to watch a projected movie with friends in the comfort of my own home with clean sofas, a pause feature for intermission, and cheap snacks. I also didn't have to worry about getting home after the movie -- you see, I had already become fed up with cars, so driving wasn't an option. I found that as long as I didn't watch movie ads or talk to other people about the "latest movie" coming out, when I went to rent movies, I could ask an employee's opinion (or check it out online) and get a "post-hype" opinion, and watching it was still seeing for the first time.

I don't miss driving or movie theatres at all.

Re:bravo, well said

[nomadic]

they either need to lower the outrageous ticket price

I don't know, I honestly don't find $10 THAT egregious a price. For 2 hours of entertainment?

Re:bravo, well said

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Not everybody enjoys the movie theater experience. For not much money (to me anyway), I can have a nice theater in my home that will last for years if not over a decade where I don't have to deal with cell phones, babies crying and many other nuisances.

Even the low budget movies with big grass-roots promotion can't make their money back at the theater, so I am incredulous that cutting all DVD income will come to net null result. For several years there, a movie made more money on DVD than it did in the theaters.

Re:bravo, well said

[Wildcat J]

My suggestion is to have theaters that are 21 and older. This way, the teenie-bopper problem is taken care of, and they can serve alcohol. This way they can lower ticket prices and more than make up for it in bar sales.

I agree, and in fact there are some theaters doing just that. Check out the Alamo Drafthouse. It started in Austin and seems to be expanding to the rest of Texas (fingers crossed for expansion to Arizona). They don't necessarily play the current blockbusters, but if it's really catching on, maybe others will start to emulate them.

Re:bravo, well said

[Moofie]

"every single slashdotter who ever complains about cellphones and babies and loud rude jerks is still going to go to the movie theatre."

Well there's a scientific assertion if ever I've heard one.

I go to the movie theater IFF I get an experience worth paying for. When I stop getting that experience (which I have, at the big multiplexes) I stop going. And I really like movies.

Re:bravo, well said

[jedidiah]

Except it's not. It's $10 * n where n happens to be the number of people in
your party. Plus that's just the ticket price. There's also he concessions
to think of since without those the theatre would go under.

The theatre gets pretty much zilch of that $10.

Like always, we civilians are mere amateurs when it comes to theivery.

The media moguls got us plum beat.

OTOH, I can get a $20 movie DVD and that will be good for multiple showings
of multiple people. TV DVD's are even better: $20 or $30 for 26 hours of
programming that can be watched by n people y times for the same flat rate.

Pay per view sucks. Pay per view per person really sucks.

Most Hollywood dreck just isn't worth it.

Re:bravo, well said

[ceoyoyo]

Plus there's the social aspect, and going out to do something. Unfortunately theaters seem to have gone the route of trying to milk the last penny out of their customers too. Expensive tickets, expensive food, can't bring in outside food... and yet the employees are all minimum wage high school students.

Remember the $1 theatre somebody set up in England? The one that the MPAA refused to sell movies to unless they raised their ticket prices.

Re:bravo, well said

[Makawity]

Watch Lord Of The Rings? What, three movies about people walking?

Remember, there is only one Return, and it ain't of the King, it's of the Jedi.

-m.

Re:bravo, well said

[penglust]

I will agree with this summation with one stipulation. The movie theaters are going to need to make the experience better than it now is. I can overlook most of the popcorn munching noises (I do it myself), the sticky floors, and load comments. What I can not overlook is being crammed into a seat that is too narrow, no leg room and in a room that holds a hundred or so seats. The screen in the front needs to give that theater experience and it often does not. Being a bit older I remember the theaters that had a REALLY LARGE screen in the front. Star Wars would not have been the same in most of the "modern" theaters. The last movie I saw at a theater was Star Wars Episode 3. I admit I saw it the last week it was playing but the screen was very minimal at a Ciniplex with 30 or so screens. I just watched it recently on DVD and I enjoyed it much more.

Re:bravo, well said

[StarvingSE]

Its not that $10 is breaking the bank, and its not even the fact that we are getting 2 hours of entertainment for that $10. Its the quality of entertainment. For one thing, I think everyone can agree that most movies aren't worth paying to see. The other thing is noisy rude people, sticky floors, tall people sitting in front of you (non-stadium theaters), etc etc.

For those who play video games, $40.00 for a game usually equals at least 15 hours of entertainment, which is roughly $2.50 an hour. Looking at it that way, a movie is still overpriced.

Re:bravo, well said

[SeaFox]

psychologists have done studies showing that people actually subconsciously like the ooohs and aahs and laughs and startles of their fellow popcorn munchers at a movie. yes, a site like slashdot won't admit to the fact, but people apparently have an enhanced emotional experience in a packed theatre... subconciously

I'll admit it. I do enjoy it. So much so when a highly anticipated movie comes out I'll make a point of going to see it during one of the packed shows (Fri/Sat night opening weekend), getting a big tub of buttery popcorn or nachos and a drink. I remember standing in long lines to see the second and third Matrix movies with my sister. That emotion isn't there later on (3-4 weeks into a picture's run) because a lot fewer people are there and many are folks seeing a film for the second or third time.

But lately I haven't been going to the theaters, and it's directly because of the movies. I don't even recognize most of the movies on the Oscar contender lists. As much as I enjoy the opening weekend experience, it's expensive and I haven't seen any movies lately I'm interested seeing enough to pay even matinée rate for (and even that is getting outrageous).

Re:bravo, well said

[WreathOfBarbs]

Why would you not take the extra effort to locate a stadium theater? As a matter of fact *most* of the theaters in my area are stadium theaters, so that is a non-issue for me. Personally, I am not that critical of a movie if it provides at least a modicum of entertainment for me. It's an opportunity for me to get out of the house and either socialize with friends or meet new people. The hours spent after a movie discussing it and all the myriad related subjects that come up in the discussion are worth the price of admission regardless of the movie itself. Heck even the rare movie that is totally ruined by some jerk becomes fuel for stories that are recounted many times over the years to your friends and family when the subject of movies comes up.

All the different factors you mentioned just make the movie going experience more interesting in the long run, as it gives me something to bitch and moan about to my friends. I don't find the experience of watching a movie nearly as satisfying at home where there are an equal number of distractions, many of which are much harder to ignore (important phone calls, visitors at the door, kids and pets).

As far as the price of movies versus games, I don't think it's as clear cut as that. You have as much chance of getting a crap game as you do a crap movie, and the initial price point is often much higher, $40-60. So if you don't actually get that 15 hours of entertainment you lost a more significant investment. Second, a well done movie is an order of magnitude more engrossing than a well done game, particularly as far as emotional involvement with the characters in the story go. Computer games are an art in it's infancy and has a quite some time to go before it is mature enough to compete with movies as an art form. This is coming from an avid gamer and World of Warcraft addict.

Re:bravo, well said

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, they opened one in Houston, life is good. :) They are looking to expand, if you want one in Arizona, call em up, set one up yourself, no doubt you will get a hardcore following of adults. Who wouldn't? An adult movie theater. Brilliant!

Re:bravo, well said

[Phoobarnvaz]

psychologists have done studies showing that people actually subconsciously like the ooohs and aahs and laughs and startles of their fellow popcorn munchers at a movie. yes, a site like slashdot won't admit to the fact, but people apparently have an enhanced emotional experience in a packed theatre... subconciously consciously they won't admit that fact. they will complain about babies and cell phones, but that's what a lot of people do: whine and bitch and moan... and still go to the movies. people whine about greenhouse gases and global warming, but they still get in their cars every day too. people whine. and then forget about it. cest la vie

Am in my mid-40's & used to goto at least 2-3 movies a month off & on for several years. Now...I find nothing which interests me being released for me to waste my money & time going out to the cinema.

The babies/cell phones/teenagers are all things which I have brought to the attention of management at the cinema when they bother me/party. Usually...I'm told they have as much right to be jerks as I have being there as well. One of the best cinema experiences I've had recently was during the release of "The Passion of the Christ". The reason...the jerks who usually mess up the "experience" didn't goto the same showings I & my party went to.

look the experience of watching a first run movie at a giant screen surrounded by other people as emotionally enthralled as you. you've never seen it before. everyone else is anonymous to you, their reactions are real and honest. it's almost like church and you're a religious ecstatic: the presence of others and the overwhelming audio/ visual media greatly enhances your enjoyment

It used to be that way & whenever I attend the same type of movies they show on IFC...I do agree with you. Have found that people who enjoy these types of movies are not the same ones who attend the number one movie that week.

ok, now compare: you're going to sit, alone, in front of a 19 inch monitor, in your basement, with your computer whirring in the background, and watch lord of the rings

I do this as well...since I have a Tuner card on the PC. Plus...my favorite channels are TCM/IFC/FMC. For some reason...don't have to deal with the jerks at the cinema & I find the classics I love & others I discover just to wish cinemas good luck.

Re:bravo, well said

[Plutonite]

I'm saying is that I haven't been to a movie since star wars ep III

Your condition may be purely psychological. Lots of people haven't stepped into a movie theatre since star wars - they weren't about to live through that kind of experience again.

But I kid of course: Cinema will exist as long as social life does. It's part of "going out", whether the movies are getting shittier or not.

Re:bravo, well said

[bythescruff]

"cellphones and babies and loud rude jerks"

You forgot about sticky floors, uncomfortable seats, expensive tickets, ludicrously expensive snacks and drinks, smells of stale snacks and drinks, smells of members of the public, feet of members of the public on the back of your seat, lack of foot and elbow room, etc, etc, etc.

I don't even have HD or surround sound. All I have is a nice big telly, nice big stereo, half a dozen friends round at whatever time we feel like it, comfy sofas, beer, wine, microwave popcorn (my one weakness!), the occasional fat spliff, and oh-so-very-important: the ability to pause the damn film if someone needs a wee or a refill.

I've been to the cinema exactly once since the last Star Wars film, and that last visit only hardened my resolve never to go back. Okay, the fact that the film was Casino Royale might have had something to do with it...

Re:bravo, well said

[LordSnooty]

Yeah, I remember that - the EasyCinema launched by Stelios the tycoon with the impossible surname. Here it's claimed that it closed down last year. But they were getting the big releases in good time before the end.

In the Easy tradition it was cheaper the earlier you booked, so an impulse decision to go to the cinema wouldn't have secured a cheap berth. And it was £1, making it about $1.96...

Stupid answer to a stupid question

[guspasho]

Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?"

No, because I always knew that if it ever happened, Slashdot would report about it so I would never have to.

Legal battle in Sweden

[denoir]

The battle of piracy laws in Sweden is far from over but there have been a number of defining decisions and events that will affect the end result.

The first major blow to the anti-piracy lobby was when the courts ruled that collecting IP addresses was a privacy violation.

The second blow was when the courts fined a guy that was engaged in sharing movies. The big point was that they didn't send him to jail. By Swedish law for a search warrant to be issued, the suspected crime must be punishable by jail. So no search warrants for copyright infringements.

The third blow was that the courts found that electronically collected evidence was not enough for a copyright infringement conviction. Hard evidence was needed (computer hardware with the violating media installed) - which was not possible to obtain because of the previous ruling.

The pirate bay spectacle has come at a huge political cost for the involved. The former minster of justice Thomas Bodström is facing hearings suspected of "ministerstyre" - as a minister putting pressure on civil servants, something excessively illegal and unconstitutional. It's major league stuff.

Furthermore the pirate bay case according to almost every legal analysis is non-existent. They didn't even have any copyrighted material on their server - just torrent links - which is not against Swedish law. So why hasn't the case been dropped? Because everybody got so scared over the political shit storm came down crashing following the raids last year. Nobody involved wants to touch it and much less admit that it was because of political pressure. So the prosecutor is pushing on with the case although it is blatantly obvious to everybody that there won't be any convictions.

If this all above makes you think that the battle is over and has been lost by the anti-pirating lobby, well, you'd be wrong. Swedish law is much less precedent based than for instance US or UK laws. The text of the law is more important than previous cases and you need a shitload of precedent before it becomes relevant. Right now we have something that amounts to anecdotal evidence. The anti-piracy lobby groups are trying to get convictions that would go against the existing precedents and it is not entirely impossible that they will succeed.

The political situation is a bit different as file sharing is really on the march in Sweden. Some 1.2 million were estimated in 2005 and 2.5 million in 2006. That's a lot for a population of 9 million. You can't make nearly a third of the population criminals and the politicians have recognized that. Through that and because of the pirate bay scandal all the Swedish major parties have expressed the wish to find some form of general solution (a tax of some sort has been suggested) for both allowing people to freely download and for the artists to get paid. While this is far from being implemented, the idea of a "war on piracy" is very dead. The anti-piracy groups will do their thing but they can't expect any political support.

Re:Legal battle in Sweden

[drinkypoo]

You can't make nearly a third of the population criminals and the politicians have recognized that.

Uh, what? I don't know much about Sweden, or frankly the rest of the world (I've never been able to afford to travel) but here in the US, practically everyone is some type of criminal. They've created this position quite deliberately. The government has no power to compel the innocent.

Re:Legal battle in Sweden

[erdraug]

Swedish law is much less precedent based than for instance US or UK laws. The text of the law is more important than previous cases and you need a shitload of precedent before it becomes relevant. Right now we have something that amounts to anecdotal evidence. I'm glad somebody else recognises the increasing gap between common law and civil law. It's the second time i come across it today, the first being this article http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/13/00 39247 about a blogger and his rights on his material being subpoena'd etc. etc.

You might think it's irrelevant, but it isn't. It all boils down to legal principles. I don't think there is hope of reconciliating slashdotters from different countries (hence raised to believe in different principles about what is fair and what is not) anytime soon.

Re:Legal battle in Sweden

[Markus Landgren]

You can't make nearly a third of the population criminals and the politicians have recognized that.

Close, but not completely true. They claimed to recognize that, right before the election. Now everything is back to normal and I don't expect them to recognize it again until in about three years.

Surprisingly good articles in some mags

[smellsofbikes]

I'm consistently impressed with the tech/geek articles that show up in VF and The New Yorker, both of which I subscribe to. A lot of people move back and forth between the two, so I guess I should expect it. Similarly, New Scientist does some good work (although often pretty shallowly and without a lot of fact-checking.) But I find it reassuring that a number of fairly high-end magazines, that are read by the rich and influential, are all saying things very like what I read on slashdot, usually with a lag time of about two years. It gives me hope that at least some people who are making Big Decisions have at least been exposed to data from people who actually know what they're talking about: it's not just business flacks and PR people, whose biases are worn on their sleeves, feeding data to the decision crowd.

hehehe...

[Simulant]

"And what father would give his little daughter a copy of the 20th-anniversary edition of The Little Mermaid with the title scrawled in Sharpie?"

This one.
To not do so would be hypocritical on my part.

  The "end of the entertainment industry as we know it" does not strike me as a bad thing.

Re:hehehe...

[stratjakt]

Get a burner with lightscribe, or an inkjet that can print on discs. I have the latter, and it can produce pretty amazing results, a casual glance and you'd never tell.

Of course, I store all my movies (ripped from dvd, I find downloading torrents to be a pain in the ass and unnessesary risk) on a server I put together, and my kids know how to watch them from their computers, on TV via xbox360, modded xbox, or tivo, and so on. I just wish there was more coherence in the consumer marketplace. My modded xbox an play anything, tivo only plays mpeg2, xbox360 only plays WMV9 (though tversity's realtime reencoding does an acceptable job for movies/shows - can't ff or rewind though). More and more devices are out there that can play divx directly over the network. I'm nearly positive eventually the 360 will be able to play divx - the PS2 and nearly every DVD player can, MS will eventually follow suit when they see it hurt their bottom line.

Handling discs is so... 20th century. These guys need to start looking at other means of delivery more seriously. I've rented 3 HD movies since Xmas over Xbox Live marketplace. BluRay vs HDDVD? Neither. I will buy my movies online and download them, and store them however I want. That's the future. The internet really is just a big truck you can dump stuff on.

Re:hehehe...

[Anonymous Coward]

"And what father would give his little daughter a copy of the 20th-anniversary edition of The Little Mermaid with the title scrawled in Sharpie?"

The head of a movie company?

Seriously. If you want to see the homes and offices where burned discs flow most freely, check the homes and offices of those in the record and movie industries. I shit you not. You simply can not imagine the amount of burns passing around those places, and I'm not talking about burns of stuff that particular company holds the license for, I'm talking about everyone elses' content too.

The sheer hypocracy within these industries would surprise even us /.ers.

judging by your ridiculously negative tone

[circletimessquare]

i'd say your problem is not with movies, but with people

therefore your opinion seems to be limited to that of cantankerous shut-ins

sorry, my offer does not extend to your demographic

Re:judging by your ridiculously negative tone

[drinkypoo]

i'd say your problem is not with movies, but with people therefore your opinion seems to be limited to that of cantankerous shut-ins sorry, my offer does not extend to your demographic

Ah yes, the ex post facto disclaimer, used by cowards everywhere who, when faced with the truth, refuse to revise their beliefs because it would be inconvenient for them.

Your argument was that people enjoy the crap that happens when they go to the movie. This may be true of sheep who only live to follow the herd. I honestly prefer to not have to deal with those people when I don't have to.

If that makes me a cantankerous shut-in, I guess I'll live with that label. But at least I'm not a disney lemming.

Re:judging by your ridiculously negative tone

[operagost]

And that's a straw man, inferring that only sheeple who watch Disney movies like going to the theater. Clearly, the great unwashed like seeing all sorts of movies in the theaters or we'd be seeing blockbusters going direct-to-DVD by now.

Re:judging by your ridiculously negative tone

[drinkypoo]

If that makes me a cantankerous shut-in, I guess I'll live with that label. But at least I'm not a disney lemming.

And that's a straw man, inferring that only sheeple who watch Disney movies like going to the theater.

1. The reader infers. The author implies.
2. And anyway, it was a reference to the fact that lemmings don't throw themselves off cliffs en masse, they were chased by Disney employees specifically to make them conform to believed behavior for the purpose of a specific film. I guess it was a bit too obscure for you (and probably others) but it was a reference to the fact that the people who are buying into the MPAA's bullshit are going precisely where they are led.

I sure do!

[Stoutlimb]

"Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie?"

I sure do! It helps daddy save up for the pony.

i could rebut you with words

[circletimessquare]

but i'd rather rebut you with the simple truth about the "dying" movie house

Re:i could rebut you with words

[drinkypoo]

Looks like you are my nemesis in this thread. I shall now go on to dismantle this comment.

If we look at 2005 and 2006 we can see that the number of tickets sold in 2005 was down 8.9%. It rose only 1.4% in 2006, although the number of movies released was something like 10% greater. Thus there was actually a net loss in tickets sold per film.

You have presented evidence that, in fact, people are going to see movies less, in an attempt to show that they are going more. Nice work there, sport. Perhaps you should be a slashdot editor.

Also, a rise of 1.4% after falling more than 10% (total) over the past three years, with losses each year, does not a trend make. So I'm not sure what you were trying to say anyway. But actually looking at the numbers in some useful way would have shown you the folly of trying to use the statistics to support your untenable position.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[ciggieposeur]

Thanks so much for providing our daily dose of "Poor People Suck" to offset all the empathy around here lately.

to paraphrase:

[circletimessquare]

"i relish your description of me as fringe, and yet i still think for some reason that my fringe behavior should be more important to your opinions than the behavior of people in general"

okaaay, delicate snowflake. whatever you need to tell yourself in the morning to get out of bed, i'm not going to mess with it

you're special and unique

just like everyone else

(snicker)

Re:to paraphrase:

[drinkypoo]

okaaay, delicate snowflake. whatever you need to tell yourself in the morning to get out of bed, i'm not going to mess with it you're special and unique just like everyone else

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in this joker quoting fight club to point out my supposed conformity in nonconformity instead of using his imagination and coming up with something new?

Re:to paraphrase:

[Moofie]

"you're special and unique

just like everyone else"

Maybe I'm just not jaded enough, but I've never understood the implied disconnect between these two statements.

Re:to paraphrase:

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Maybe I'm just not jaded enough, but I've never understood the implied disconnect between these two statements.

I think that's not necessarily because you're insufficiently jaded, but that you're more perceptive. The fact that you are special and unique and the fact that other people are special and unique are orthogonal.

But the original post seems to be trying to make a declaration of nonconformity, wrapped in an ironic defense. I see a lot of people who have invested a great deal of their identity in nonconformity railing against "conventional nonconformity."

Somerset Maugham wrote that the true nonconformists weren't even really all that conscious of their nonconformity. They just don't care what other people think. After all, a conscious decision to be a non-conformist is merely conforming in inverse -- if the crowd thinks X is cool, to preserve your nonconformist cred you must believe X is not cool, thus you're still a slave to popular belief. Of course, Maugham's nonconformists are all basically sociopaths.

Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland have shown that conventions of nonconformity are outstanding marketing tools. It's an interesting problem.

Re:to paraphrase:

[Moofie]

I tend to agree. (Guess that makes me a sheep. Whatever.)

If you determine that you'll do exactly the opposite of what the "herd" does, your actions are just as dictated by the herd as those of its members.

Stated differently, "Quality" (or "relevance to my life") is orthogonal to popularity. I don't care if something's popular...I care if it's GOOD.

So, basically, what you said. : )

Right but

[KKlaus]

There's that key word "represented". As a college student, I can tell you I felt much much better on average once I stopped eating cheap processed crap that pretended to be healthy and started cooking for myself. It was a good trade of for me, I guess is what I'm saying.

Although it sort of defeats the purpose if all you make is a cheese pizza.

It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[ThinkFr33ly]

It seems to be a fairly common sentiment that while stealing is a bad thing, stealing from the rich is OK.

If you honestly think that movie stars get paid too much, don't steal the resulting work, just don't buy it.

How much a DVD costs is determined by what people are willing to pay for it. Period. You can whine a cry about these idiot movie stars making 50x what you make, but if you go buy their movies anyway then you're just being stupid.

Re:It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[EWIPlayer]

You're telling me not to steal it, and not buy it if I don't like what they get paid. Clearly, I'm not buying it if I steal it. I'll keep stealing it then, thanks.

And, just FYI, it is very much OK to steal from the rich, because it's not stealing. All we're doing is taking back a smal-assed percentage of what they stole from us in the first place. You can't claim that the price of an object is motivated purely by demand as though "demand" were some concept that is completely under the control of the consumer -- it's not. If it were 100% under my control, then the billions and billions of dollars spent researching (hell, forget what it costs to implement) marketing techniques would be a huge waste of cash, and it's not.

Re:It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[crabpeople]

"don't steal the resulting work, just don't buy it."

Well I never go into stores like best buy, but I'd imagine they are pretty hard to steal from. Dvds however are small and im sure if you could get it out of its case, you could probably stick it down your pants - sans magnito tag. So I dont buy DVD's, and I dont steal them. What I do do however is copy them from various sources, including the internet. This isn't really depriving anyone of a product since I tend to return the favour whether by uploading, sharing other media to dvd lenders, or simply returning the dvd that they have lent me. Also, no money changes hands so I do not feel as if I have bought anything. I assume all this puts me into your "dont steal, dont buy" guideline.

Do you really think that people breaking into stores and stealing physical DVDs is a huge problem for the industry? Who is saying stealing from anyone is OK? The article has not put forward that point. Perhaps you are using the wrong terminology when you say that this is "stealing" as I am having trouble understanding your phraseology.

Re:It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from a bunch of raging liberals who like to use Socialist governments in Europe as an example of what to do.
Seriously though has Sweden produced anything for the world in the music/movie or other technological stuff for the world than leech off of everybody else.

Just a bunch of retired programming grunts around here who were all layed off after the Internet boom of the 90's and like to talk about how good it was back in the days and how everything should be Open Source or socialized for free.

Re:It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[Chandon Seldon]

Let's go over this again:

Copyright infringement is not stealing. It's not even *like* stealing.

Say I do two things: I build a car and I write a book.

If you steal my car, I no longer have the awesome car I built. I will be very sad.

If you make a copy of my book without my permission, I still have my copy of the book. Sure, you didn't give me any money... but you normally don't give me any money. The case where you have a copy of my book isn't special.

People complaining about the money they lose because people violate their copyright are basically the same as Ford complaining because I bought a Honda instead. "Buying a Honda Civic is THEFT. We lost $8,000 because you didn't buy a Ford Focus. We here at Ford lose billions of dollars a year because of those damn pirates at Honda."

Data has a natural price of near $0. If you want to compete with that, you'll need a business model that works. Government protectionism isn't a valid business model, unless you're Verizon. Sorry.

Re:It's OK To Steal from the Rich

[mandelbr0t]

Stealing isn't bad. Getting caught is bad. If I can steal without getting caught, then I'll do it. Stealing from the rich is much better, since I minimize my risk (assuming equal risk for each endeavour) while maximizing my potential profit (because the rich have way more stuff to steal). Obviously the fact that laws exist to prevent me from doing so is irrelevant, since there's some other factor that's driving me to ignore the laws. In my case, it's because the DMCA blatantly favours the rich. When the law fails to protect the average citizen (explain to me how being deprived of entertainment because I'm too poor is protecting me), it's an unjust law. Unjust laws have the added benefit of not causing any guilt in the perpetrator. At least not for me.
</pirate>

Of course that's assuming we're stealing. Which we're not (see above).

i love those phrases

[mapkinase]

'heartfelt testimony of Ben Affleck, a man who was paid $12.5 million to star in Gigli,'

Depending on the context:
heartfelt testimony of Ben Affleck, a man who was paid close to nothing to star in Good Will Hunting,

For example, let us take someone from somehow opposite spectrum.

blablahblah of Garofalo, who starred (or blah blah blah) in Dogma or
blablahblah of Garofalo, who starred (or blah blah blah) in Suspicious

Give me a break, idioto-journalists.

Interesting that the founder visited the USA

[loshwomp]

In the article, one of the founders makes a reference to a visit to San Francisco. If I were in their position, I'd be terrified to visit the USA.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[MrMarket]

You're intentionally missing the point. TV dinners are about nutrition/time value. I only work one job and don't have time to cook. My lunch is 15 mins. of /. while I down a Trader Joe's burrito. TV Dinners (or should I say Desktop Lunches?) are a compromise between eating out and finding time to cook.

Shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so tired of the dime store analysts on Slashdot who find any excuse to justify piracy, and act like they understand how the movie industry works. They also act like Hollywood is the only movie industry out there. There is no justification for piracy. Period.

Re:Shut up

[flyneye]

Usually I ignore anonymous cowards,but you have your point.
The truth is,we don't care how Hollywood works.
It's time for a change in how we get our entertainment.
We don't care if we get another "Hollywood" movie with another plot thats been done and done and done to death.We don't care if Hollywood people have to go get a real job instead of pretending they're important and irreplacable.So out of boredom and filling our time,we the people,will continue to download as we please till its gone!If they don't want us to download the movies,paying what they're truly worth,they should just quit making them.
So just like the music industry,it will be absorbed till nothing is left and entertainment will come from the people.
Sorry,truth as far as it will go.

Re:Shut up

[sketchman]

I think Youtube has proved that we don't need to pay for Hollywood's overbudget films to be entertained.

I'm not going to argue right or wrong on the subject of d'ling something that usually costs way to much. I'm just saying that I can go to Youtube and be entertained by stupid little movies made by independant people for NOTHING.

And, better yet, there's no commercials.

Re:All you F'ing foreigners

[cosmocain]

you really think that someone needs filesharing/piracy/copyright laws "to spit and crap all over the US, its policies, etc"?

gooooooooooood moooooooooooorning, vieeeeeeetnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.
err.
just to recite some hollywood-stuff.

umm...

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[spun]

You have no idea what it's like to be poor, and your snide comments merely show your ignorance, not your superior problem solving skills. Don't think you are mentally superior to everyone who is poor.

I'm not poor (now) and I still eat frozen dinners for lunch because it's economical. $0.80 to $1.00 per cheap dinner, 350-500 calories per dinner plus decent amount of vitamins and minerals added. I love to cook, but figuring in my time, cost of ingredients, and so forth, the dinners are far more economical than what I can make. Not nearly as tasty or good for you, but I'm a busy guy so frozen dinners make sense for me.

Beer and pizzia at the movie theater!

[vinn01]

If you're going to serve alcohol at the theater, don't forget the pizzia: http://www.brewview.com/ .

I love that place....

Hollywood's increasing losses?

[mpapet]

Funniest thing I've heard this morning.

I know people in the industry and they all tell me, without reservation, that some of the most creative accounting in the world happens in the entertainment industry. If you live anywhere near the Westside of Los Angeles it's easy to see there's a class of entertainment-folks doing quite well.

Hardly an authoritative link, but you'll get the idea. http://www.dailyhaggis.com/2003/07/02/my-big-fat-g reek-lawsuit/

Or, let's take a look at the price of mega-corp sony. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNE&t=5y Since stock prices are forward looking indicators of performance, I'd say entertainment is doing just fine considering the price hasn't gone down.

ah! fight club

[circletimessquare]

a great movie

and like most social commentary, not actually meant to be lived or worshipped or to be taken so seriously

the words i used against you long presages fight club and wasn't even remotely in my mind when i was writing you

but far be it for me to doubt your sacred texts, no?

go listen to your pixies little angry man and fark off

because you're entire index for social separation seems to be just as derivative as what you rail against

you're the sheeple dude, you're the derivative consumer demographic

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[mrsbrisby]

With that much money coming in, a single person or even a couple could afford to eat better.

How much money coming in do you think 3 jobs gets you?

When its said someone works three jobs doesn't mean they're working 40+40+40 hours a week. They're probably only working about 60-70 hours a week. If they make minimum wage, they're probably barely scraping together 1000$ a month.

That's not a lot of money, but it's significantly higher than the poverty limit. It's barely enough for an extremely modest mortgage, utilities, toiletries, 90 or so "2 dollar cheese pizzas", and 30 gallons of gasoline. They even have some money left to splurge and buy a book once in a while.

Did these 'working poor' get raped on a mortgage because they really couldn't afford to own a home but wanted one anyway?

A mortgage should always be cheaper than renting: why would you possibly think your landlord's mortgage was higher than your rent?

Did these 'working poor' simply not get educated on how to eat affordably? Buy a whole freakin' chicken. Buy the 30lb bag of rice. Buy the huge bags of frozen store-brand veggies. There you go.

Check prices on those things. The cheese pizzas are actually cheaper per-meal- and likewise- so are the TV dinners.

Did these 'working poor' have children when they couldn't afford to have children?

Maybe, or maybe they lost their jobs when the President gave tax credits to companies who outsourced American jobs overseas. Maybe they lost their jobs when their office building was blown up by an airplane. Only a fool would pretend to know.

Minimum wage is supposed to be the minimum necessary allowence to have an "acceptable" standard of living, and at minimum wage it takes quite a bit more than 40 hours of work, but you seem to think that's okay.

Just exactly how many hours a week does someone need to work in order to afford a house? Healthy food? Clean water? A child?

Or do you really believe the definition of capitalism intends for people to degrade themselves below the acceptable standards of living when someone wants to buy a book?

speak for yourself.

[diesel66]

Speak for yourself. I don't enjoy herd mentality emotional experiences, no matter what you claim. And you loose that bet, because I *don't* go to movie theaters anymore. I haven't been to one since Mystic River came out (2003), and I'm not going back. $20 bucks to see an abused print with scratches all over it while the lady in front of you won't stop asking questions about the plot? Are you fucking kidding? I'm going to pay three dollars less, own the movie in excellent condition, and not endure nit-wits all around.

I will take my big-ass lcd monitor and fat sound system over a movie theater any day. I can pause whenever I want, or rewind if I missed something. And best of all, I don't have to deal with you kicking the back of my seat.

They should make it cheaper

[guruevi]

They should make movies, music etc. much cheaper and without DRM, especially the main stream media. Sure they can say, that it costs a lot to create stuff, but if we give the performing people according to what they do and not what they look like, that would make the costs plummet. I always hate when they talk about an actor, getting $13 million for maybe a year long project. I probably won't ever make that in my life. I currently think I am paid pretty well (70k+) and I can support myself. I can understand that they probably need/want/deserve more but anything over $2m/year is a little overrated for me.

Also, eliminate organizations like RIAA, MPAA and other shills that are not adding any positive value to the process (that includes DRM, ratings etc). Look at any standard business model, any piece in an organization that is not performing or delivering any added value (short or long term) to the organization is (usually) cut loose.

Re:They should make it cheaper

[east coast]

They should make movies, music etc. much cheaper and without DRM, especially the main stream media. Sure they can say, that it costs a lot to create stuff, but if we give the performing people according to what they do and not what they look like, that would make the costs plummet. I always hate when they talk about an actor, getting $13 million for maybe a year long project. I probably won't ever make that in my life. I currently think I am paid pretty well (70k+) and I can support myself. I can understand that they probably need/want/deserve more but anything over $2m/year is a little overrated for me.

Then don't go. Boycott. Protest. Shake your fists at them a bit. Why do you think someone else should or shouldn't have to do something because, in your eyes, it's over rated? Actors make big bucks because it draws a large fan base. If you want to make a statement about it don't have it be that some unknown power should stifle the entertainment industry because you, Guruevi, don't see the value in it.

Maybe you're right but I, for one, would feel better about letting the market forces decide. I vote with my dollars and I sleep well at night knowing that I don't need to call on some government to control how much money Chuck Norris will make for doing Sidekicks XVI. Anytime you invite anyone to regulate anything on your behalf, instead of taking the matter into your own hands, you're just asking to get bit on the ass.

Also, eliminate organizations like RIAA, MPAA and other shills that are not adding any positive value to the process (that includes DRM, ratings etc). Look at any standard business model, any piece in an organization that is not performing or delivering any added value (short or long term) to the organization is (usually) cut loose.

Ever notice that it's not lobby groups? Again, vote with your dollars. The RIAA and the MPAA are privately funded organizations. You're not going to get them outlawed in any form. It's an unrealistic solution.

And do you think for a second that even if the RIAA would find itself in the unemployment lines tomorrow that it would stop Sony or whomever from using DRM? At this point and time it almost seems like the RIAA is outliving its usefulness not because the public is taking a stand but rather because legislation and technology is going to help the large recording firms get their own way without the need of a lobby presence up on the hill.

When the day comes that the RIAA closes its doors because labels have no use for them don't bother to celebrate; that's the day that your ability to listen to large label music will decidedly bought from under you.

If that thought doesn't bother you than you shouldn't be bitching in the first place.

Re:They should make it cheaper

[shutdown -p now]

Pirating movies is voting with one's dollars.

Re:They should make it cheaper

[east coast]

Pirating movies is voting with one's dollars.

You can call it that all you want but it's not going to stop the current way of doing business by the MPAA. In fact, you're fueling their fire, giving them the ultimate legitimacy.

We've seen and heard that pirating music/movies/software is taking a stand. I don't see it working well as the efforts to beat down the violators continue.

But do what you want. You know the rules. Don't come crying about it once you become a perp instead of a pirate.

You can't stop piracy of an item

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no reason why this kind of practice couldn't be institutionalised; put up a video and let people pledge a few dollars if production went ahead."

Hmmm, yes. Just what the young, white, male, with disposable income, and broadband needs. Another outlet for their opinion. Besides as already been demonstrated time and again on this very forum. Pledges don't work. People talk the talk, but that's it.

"Do you know how TV shows get made now? Someone makes a pilot (typically with low production values) with their own money and pitches it to a studio. If the studio likes it, they will fund it."

I know there's more to TV than just episodic TV. I also happen to know that piratebay is about more than just getting free TV.

Re:You can't stop piracy of an item

[TheRaven64]

Pledges don't work. People talk the talk, but that's it. Depends how it's implemented. If it's anonymous people on a web site saying 'I pledge $5,' then it obviously won't work. If the money is paid into an escrow account and either refunded after 6 months or sent to the producers if the required total is met, then it would work. I'd throw a few dollars at each project I thought was interesting.

PI.R.A.tes?!

[cianjo]

FTFA: "...the prosecutor responded in hysterical Valenti mode, comparing Pirate Bay to the I.R.A. ..."

WTF... Seriously. The IRA (Well all the different factions thereof) is a criminal organisation that has *killed* thousands of people. (Or is this some pacifist Swedish I.R.A. that I'm not aware of?)

The Pirate Bay has caused no loss of life with its intellectual property infringement. Unless you count the despairing MPAA executives jumping to their deaths. That prosecutor has no fscking idea what he is talking about. Seriously.

It's basically the same as comparing Bush, Blair, [insert disliked politician] to Adolf Hitler, or calling certain groups Nazis (that don't actually have an anti-foreigner agenda). Totally asinine and downright dangerous in any case, except when the groups involved are *actually* Neo-Nazis of some shape or form.

Stupid comparisons like this cause people to forget how horrific some things were, and cheapens the lessons that history has taught us at so great a cost.

[Disclaimer: I'm Irish, so this is a particular gripe of mine.]

Re:PI.R.A.tes?!

[emilv]

No, it's not a joke. The prosecutor compared The Pirate Bureau (a piracy think tank) to Sinn Féin and The Pirate Bay to IRA.
That was of course really stupid and he never used that analogy again.

But _did_ use some really terrible comparisons later when he in court compared this case with a car theft in the 80's where the police had to keep the car for a long period of time during investigation. Of course that's just bullshit because they can't copy a car but they can (and do) copy the hard drives for investigation and leave the computers untouched, so they could have returned the computers right away (as was The Pirate Bay's demand).

Re:PI.R.A.tes?!

[hauntingthunder]

I belive that the UDA was/is involved in dvd piracy as well as a few other activities.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[BZ]

> A mortgage should always be cheaper than renting: why would you possibly think your landlord's
> mortgage was higher than your rent?

It's not, of course. But if the landlord bought the property before the recent bubble, his mortgage is lower than anything you'll be able to find yourself.

Plastic Sporks

[jkiol]

The RIAA and MPAA need to realize what they REALLY need to do: make stuff cheaper. Places like allofmp3.com prove people are willing to pay for stuff. I think the prices on allofmp3.com are VERY reasonable and those prices are what I think the disposable stuff that comes out of the RIAA is worth. The same goes for movies. When I can download a full length movie for the price of what on demand streams it to you for... I'm only going to watch it a maximum of twice anyway. What I'm getting at is the media companies should realize that their stuff isn't worth more than a plastic one time use spork to the average user, and sell it as such. I imagine they will see returns way more than what they cut the cost by. Imagine if iTunes cut the cost of an song to 20 cents, I'm willing to bet that they will sell WAY more than 5 times the amount of songs. In fact I'm willing to bet the average consumer spends more then they would at 99 cents.

God, you guys are young.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the GP talking about digisubs in 2000, then the parent talking about late-90's distribution. Neither of these would have happened without the ridiculously widespread VHS duping that was going on a more than a decade earlier. It was that duping that educated the vast majority of North American fans on the very existence and then on the breadth and depth of anime. Without that duping, it is arguable that a commercial market for anime would EVER have existed in North America.

Re:God, you guys are young.

[Em Adespoton]

100% true... I only went back to the late '90s as I generally think of Akira and a growing fansub base as being the tipping point.

Without the decade of VHS duping, there would have been no media base on which the later movements could build.

Then again, without the invention of VHS and the cheap dubbers that came out of the Porn industry's adoption of the technology, the VHS Anime scene would never have been possible...

I think this argument could be taken all the way back to "When I was young, this guy in the cave across from me stuck a pointy rock on the end of a stick, and used it to kill animals. Without that pointy stick, it is arguable that people would never have even survived long enough to have existed in North America."

"Borat" proves piracy helps box-office sales

[Coco Lopez]

This article opened my eyes. The MPAA should really study the case of the "Borat" movie when re-tooling their business models. It exceeded the industry expectations for box-office earnings, but look what terrible odds it had against it:

Episodes of the BBC and HBO Ali G shows have been actively traded on filesharing sites for *years*.

Its target demographic, Ali G fans, are in the range of 18-35; what the media would call "computer-savvy", and no doubt well-experienced with internet file sharing.

Why then didn't we all stay home and download 0-day cam versions, why did shell out the ~$10 and go to see it in the theater? Because it was a genuinely funny movie that we wanted to see --- it was a product we would buy. (In fact, maybe we did download the cam version, and maybe we *still* went to see it in the theater --- maybe we even went twice.)

Hollywood: if you want to stop "losing" money, stop making shitty movies. It's that easy.

Piracy != $ Losses uber crappy movies = $$$ Losses

[PortHaven]

I've been wanting to see a good movie for the past 6 months. In fact, I keep finding myself wanting to go see a movie and week after week scrolling thru and finding nothing of interest to watch. The few movies of interest have often either been limited releases not in my area (One Night with the King & Pan's Labrynth) or disappointments - or both in the matter of those two films.

I've longed for a good film. That said, I've found myself having wasted my good hard earned $$$ on some really just not worth films. Most of which I knew were at best "rentals" but well, as far as I was concerned there wasn't a film outside of that rental category in a while.

I think the last movie I wanted to see, and saw, and left the theatre thinking it was worth it was Adam Sandler's "Click". (Which if you haven't seen it is actually quite profound and terrifying in it's concept.)

I feel as if I've been relegated to movies like "The Wickerman", "The Fountain", "Because I Said So", etc. And to put it mildly, when I wind up looking back on most of the films I've seen in the theate and list "Because I said So" as one of the more enjoyable ones. Than something is royally !@#$% with the film industry.

Now, let me clarify, I don't mind good drama. But I don't find much reason to watch it on a big screen. Renting it from Netflix is good enough for me. I like going to the theatre for movies that are either spectacular or fantastical. And I don't just mean explosions and effects. They need a matching story. And we've just not seen that for a while.

The second half of 2006 was uber-depressing for film fans. Thankfully 2007 looks a bit more hopeful (ie: 300, TMNT, Transformers, Rise of the Surfer, and the list goes on). I am hopeful that I will get to actually go see some movies again. But trust me MPAA you are NOT losing money due to piracy but rather due to the horrendous crap you've released.

I mean, when I can't even find a good stupid movie to go and enjoy (ie: Wild Hogs, which I will likely see as mere stupid brain fodder) and even that caliber film is absent from the theatres. How can you expect to lose money to piracy. Most of the films released in late 2006 aren't even worth the time to pirate.

AND DEAR MPAA, why do you feel it necessary to release the few good films you make in the year between May - September. I mean, when we are able to do numerous other activities outdoors. You release the good films. When we are cooped up during the winter with nothing to do and would like to get out and want to see a fun movie...we're left for nigh 4+ months with nothing but crap.

????

PLEASE EXPLAIN THAT LOSS

What? No South Park reference?

[walterbyrd]

No references to that episode of south park where britney spears had to downgrade from a gulfstream 5 to a gulfstream 4, due to music downloading?

Slashdoters must be slacking.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[jedidiah]

Most people that are poor are infact morons.

That's why they're poor. They don't value education of any sort and are adept at making pisspoor choices.

Those that aren't, escape and don't look back.

Right now you are abusing your body for the sake of a little percieved convenience when even something as simple as a "foodie" lunch sandwich would be much better nutritionally, probably cheaper and not require an ice block -> food conversion process.

When I was officially poor I did better than TV dinners in cost and quality just by using cheap staples and applying about 10 minutes worth of effort.

Cheap staple foods are why our ancestors survived long enough to subject the world to either of us.

Oh Really?

[FatSean]

I wasn't born poor, but my parents were. I've plenty of stories from them about how they grew up in the projects in NYC, and how their neighbors kept having kids despite having so little money that those neighbors would burn fires in ashcans to heat their apartments. The scum and trash they shared these tax-payer funded buildings with would simply destroy everything they could. They moved in when the building first went up and within a year the elevators were iffy and there were practically no working hallway lights...all smashed and vandalized.

Believe me, I may have not been poor, but I have an understanding of what it is like.

As to your 'economy of processed food', I would call it a false economy. Consider the salt and preservatives in these meals. Isn't it worth your time to cook up something healthy?

Re:Oh Really?

[spun]

I do cook healthy food for myself, just not every day. Have you looked at how much salt and preservatives are in the brand of frozen dinners I eat? Oh, you haven't and your just making shit up? I see.

As to the stories your parents told you, is that the fault of the individuals involved, or the system that degrades and dehumanizes them? "They're just bad people" as a theory has very little explanatory or predictive power. Understanding the circumstances that lead people to behave in certain ways is far more productive. Unfortunately, this practice conflicts with the fantasy stories people like to tell themselves about why they are "better people" than others who are less fortunate. If we started looking at things rationally, we might feel like we had to do somethign. If we stick to the "They're just bad people" story, then we've absolved ourselves from having to do anything or even feeling empathy. Much easier. I don't have time for cooking every day, others don't have time to empathize with the less fortunate. It's all a matter of priorities, I guess.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[FatSean]

Mortgage is a luxury. Owning a house is a luxury.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[Anonymous Coward]

A mortgage should always be cheaper than renting: why would you possibly think your landlord's mortgage was higher than your rent?

This is almost never the case. On a strict cost to buy vs cost to rent comparison, renting should almost always be cheaper. However buying a house has a number of advantages over renting such as building equity in the house and various tax incentives.

Not so fast...

[StandardsSchmandards]

Furthermore the pirate bay case according to almost every legal analysis is non-existent. They didn't even have any copyrighted material on their server - just torrent links - which is not against Swedish law.

True. However, aiding someone in copyright infringement is also a crime and this is probably easier to prove in the Piratebay case.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[spun]

No, most people are poor for structural reasons. Our system demands and creates a certain amount of poor people, regardless of good or bad choices. The system is designed to take advantage of the poor. Those that escape had betetr opportunities, they didn't make better choices. To say otherwise is just self-aggrandizement. Selfish people who actually had advantages others didn't need excuses about why they shouldn't have to care about others.

I'm not abusing my body, the frozen meals I eat are relatively healthy. The only way to make a sandwich as cheap as what I eat would be to use ingredients that are themselves cheap and not very nutritious. We're not talking deli rye, high quality meats and vegetables. We're talking bolony and cheese with miracle whip. So why bother? I like something I can throw in a microwave. On weekends I cook, and often times there are leftovers that last until Tuesday or Wednesday, but after that, I'm going to take frozen dinners and maybe take a few extra vitamins.

Have fun up on your high horse. Whatever you've got to tell yourself in order to feel good is no skin off my nose. Personally, I'm more about the compassion and understanding, but to each their own.

Poor people have bad nutrition because ...

[pbhj]

I'm poor, according to the UK news we live below the poverty line (we're poor, they're wrong!).

We eat rice and pasta and sometimes potatoes. A sack of pasta is quite cheap.

For protein it's alternating bouts of mince beef and turkey - we buy large packs and eat it over 2-3 days.

We splash out on fruit (melon is good value at the moment, apples have gone up now winters here, citrus are quite cheap but very tart).

We could save money (eg on fruit) by shopping in town and at the market but at a considerable cost of time which we don't have as we're looking after our son or working (or both) or occassionally sleeping(!) - oh, and posting on slashdot.

Our nutrition would be better if we had more money to spend on fresh fruit and veg. But I suspect (at least in the UK and probably in the US) that "poor" people spend their money on junk food (which we simply can't afford - a McDo meal costs our food bill for the day for all of us) and microwave convenience foods (more expensive than making your own). Tesco Value is our saviour to a certain extent: Tinned tomatoes go with turkey and mince and cost 19p/400g. Brown and white bread cost the same, often you can get multigrain or granary bread for the same price on offer. Uni taught me something - how to make a two course meal for 5 male students for £5.

We do get to binge sometimes thanks to visiting relatives and credit cards and we grow some of our own food (garlic, rhubarb, potatoes, onions).

ps

[MrMarket]

ps - VF has some particularly geeky fare this month. Check out the 8 page feature on SAIC.

No

[C4st13v4n14]

"Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?" Never thought I'd read Vanity Fair.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what has society given us, since by and large owning a house has never been a 'luxury' before modern times?

No

[C4st13v4n14]

"Did you ever think you'd be reading about TPB in Vanity Fair?"

Never thought I'd read Vanity Fair.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try finding the time to regularily prepare proper meals while working three jobs, taking care of children, and tending to other responsabilities.

That's what it comes down to: Time. Its scarce when you're out working three jobs. And the money, well, do you really think that if the pay was sufficient, there'd because to work three jobs? Minimum wage is unnacceptably low, consider that in these parts, you get more while on welfare, than by working a single job at minumum wage.

Throw in other factors, like the housing crisis in Montreal, smallest metropolitain city in the world, there isn't enough housing availible on-island forthe whole population, and not enough room to build new housing. Landlords have thetennants by the balls; a bare bones 3 1/2 cost $3-350/month 6-7 years aho, now sits at $5-600/month. Sure, people can go off-island at lower cost, but consider that all the jobs on on-island, 3 million people work on Island, only about 950,000 live on it. Going off island removes the benefit of public transportation, which means you're stuck with a another hole in your pocket, given the price of gaoline, plus asinine commute times.

How about paying for heat, electricity and hot water? The phone bill? Sending children to school? Clothing? Basic supplies?

Not everyone has the priveledge of having time or energy to burn, not when they're working three jobs to make ends meet. You'll eat better when you can, but more often than not, you'll settle for just getting by, that way, at least you have SOMETHING to eat until the next paycheque. Its called learning to make due with what you have.

Its called the real world. I suggrest you visit in one day, you'll be in for a rude awakeing.

Ack - the historical inaccuracies alone...

[Garwulf]

Okay - my brain imploded reading this. Between the historical inaccuracies and the complete lack of understanding of what copyright is...this needs a correction.

"But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful."

Um, no, it doesn't. Piracy is the movement of power to the pirates. Creative power has changed hands to a large degree, but not in the way that you've described, but more on that below.

"For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers."

Um...no, that isn't really true. The distribution depends a great deal on the level of literacy, and there have been some very literate societies in the past. I'm working on a textbook right now about ancient Greek and Roman humour, and if one thing is certain, it is that these people had access to literature, could read, and could write. The copying of manuscripts itself was the source of a scribal industry, but it certainly doesn't seem to be centralized at all, and the more literate the society, the larger the industry. Actually getting the manuscripts to people is another matter entirely, and we know for a fact that there were libraries - the Great Library of Alexandria being a perfect (and very famous) example.

There is some centralization after the fall of the Roman Empire, where the copying of manuscripts moves into the monasteries.

"Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations."

Frankly, that's really not true at all. The various Jewish communities, even through the "Dark Ages," required that everybody be able to read Torah, and a lot of commentaries were written as these communities moved around. The Islamic world remained very literate. Monasteries had their own private libraries. In many villages, however, where life had gone to a subsistence level, they didn't even have a Bible - at least not one they could generally read. While there was an Old English translation (which apparently has the war in Heaven written into Genesis), it was the exception, and the Bibles were written in Latin.

"The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about."

Well, not really. The printing press made it possible to have a literate society, as it was now possible to reproduce books quickly and with (relatively) minimal effort. But, Gutenberg was trying to make money by solving a problem of reproduction, and it seems the first book off his press was an edition of the Bible. And, one of his biggest moneymakers was printing indulgences for the Church. I very much doubt Gutenberg had such lofty ideals. But, the inexpensive reproduction of texts came at a time when Europe was ready, and made the expression of ideas to a larger, literate public, possible.

"People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge."

Um...that's a half truth. When it came to sheer knowledge, you have to look at the first universities, based on the Cathedral Schools, where the textbook was reproduced by the professor dictating it to his students, who copyied it down verbatum. There were people like Talhoffer (one of the great swordfighting masters) who would write a book containing some of his knowledge to drum up business. Prior to the eighteenth century, most people seem to have been writing poetry, fiction, or academic treatises. Writers didn't get paid for their work at this point - they were paid a stipend by a wealthy patron who they would dedicate their work to (it's a subtle distinction, but a very important one - they were being paid to make their patron look good in their writing, not making money off the success of their work).

"Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but

Re:Ack - the historical inaccuracies alone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone want to explain why the above isn't sitting at +5:insightful. The guy is knowledgable, articulate, and unlike most of the BS in this discussion that gets modded +5 (cough*roo*cough) actually knows what he's talking about*

*I'll bet he can even provide sources.

BTW good job on puting dada in his place...again. You'd think this forum would learn by now.

You can't stop commoditizing of a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Huh?? they always have been that way. Before 1920 musicians were roving poor with the incredibly rare composer that was rich only because he was fancied by the rich that threw money at him.

Musicians being rich spoiled brats is a strange happening in history and they are simply getting reverted back to what they were less than 100 Years ago."

Sounds like the history of programmers and the dawn and dusk of the dot.com, and the present outsourcing. Whew! Good thing we implimented that "no programmer left behind" before it was too late. Now everyone line up behind the "challenged" guy, and try not to excel.

Re:You can't stop commoditizing of a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in the beginning programming was 100% open source. I had the machine code listing of the BIOS of my first computer printed in the back of the manual. Fellow programmers freely shared code and software. Only perversion by the like of Bill Gates took us from the panacea of open and collaborative working to the closed mess it is today. MY first C compiler was sourcecode and self compiled (you got a binary with the source to compile it for your platform). you couldn't buy a C compiler.

So yes you are 100% correct.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[Tsagadai]

The worst sort of bias I have ever found in people is the self made man type. It causes retrospective thought on when(if ever) they saw a poorer person to be cast in a very negative light. I have never seen any reason to detest the working-poor or the lumpen-proletariate so much. You should head down from your gated estate and white picket fence and take a look at the world. It's bad but not as bad as you see it. The people at the bottom of your castle are just like you.

Shopping with Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

"Poor people have bad nutrition because the cheap food is bad for you. It is expensive to eat good veggies, meats,grains. A loaf of crap-white bread is $0.89US a loaf of good multigrain is $3.25.. do I buy the good for you food and we starve for the week, or do I buy 2 loafs of the cheap crap and 1 jar of cheap peanutbutter (more sugar than protien) and at least have enough to make it to the next paycheck."

I can't believe I'm giving shopping tips here. I can get good multigrain bread by waiting for the managers special. That's when he goes around and marks down anything near it's expiration date. It's still good. $.89 a loaf. $1.00 for a half gallon of milk (all kinds). I got chicken quarters for $69 a pound. A head of cabbage for a dollar. Squash even. Turkey. Ice cream (the good kind). Also shop around at different stores. Big lots sells not only discounted items, but food as well (non-perishables). Wal-mart, Sams, Costco. Get your sales fliers. Note your stores sales patterns. I know how often meat goes on sale and what kinds. Same with everything else. And as one AC said, there are coupons that can help greatly. And get a freezer. Stocking up while things are cheap is the best thing you can do.

how to register on nova?

[dwater]

I'm a uk ex-pat, and would like to try out UKNova, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to register - and all the support requires you register and log in.

When I go to the 'sign-up' page (http://www.uknova.com/signup.php) it only shows me a page with the UKNova banner, 'Search Torrents', the menu common to all the pages (AFAICT), then 'UKNova' and a table with a single empty row.

I am accessing it from China. Is it different anywhere else?

Max.

Re:how to register on nova?

[welshwaterloo]

from their faq page:

Why can't my friend join?

There is a limit of 30,000 users. When the limit is reached we stop accepting new members. Also, the limit is revised from time to time and may go down as well as up. Accounts which are inactive for 42 days are automatically deleted to make way for new users. There can be up to 300 new accounts available per day so if your friend keeps trying at regular intervals they have a good chance of becoming a member!

The signup page is blank when there are no accounts available. This is done to prevent abuse and is not a fault!

Wish it was better news, sorry..

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[dk.r*nger]

Or do you really believe the definition of capitalism intends for people to degrade themselves below the acceptable standards of living when someone wants to buy a book?

The definition of capitalism doesn't intend anything. It's a description of some mechanisms.

Wealth is relative and will always be. These poor people (whom may or may not be stupid and may or may not be victims of the system) have it better than poor people in e.g. russia who have it better than poor people somewhere else, but they are still poor.

Raise the minimum wage a few dollars, and these poor people will have a little more money - and now the $2 TV dinners and $45 worth of gasoline (for a slightly bigger car or a slightly longer commute) is going to take their money, and they'll still be poor. And someone will complain if capitalism meant for these people to degrade themselves to buy a DVD.

I've making serveral times the poverty limit, and there are plenty of things that I want to do and buy that I can't (or don't) - it's all about defining what an acceptable standard of living is. Someone made up the poverty limit, someone else made up the minimum wage. They will always be low (hence "poverty" and "minimum"), but there is a fine line between making sure people are alive, and living their lives on behalf of them (I live in a "high-welfare, high-tax society". Unemployment is ridiculous, but not in official numbers, since they are not counting welfare-receipients.)

I have the MPAA's real solution to piracy

[Ritontor]

It's simple. Make it so [i]girls[/i] think it is tacky and cheap. All that they need to do is throw a few ads around the place of girls looking mightily unimpressed that all you have to show them is a crappy downloaded cam rip stored on a spindle of blank CDs. I guarantee you real DVD sales would go through the fucking ROOF. Associate "real DVDs" with "something girls would watch with you", and you win the battle. Jesus, do I have to think of everything for these useless pricks?

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[jimmyharris]

A mortgage should always be cheaper than renting: why would you possibly think your landlord's mortgage was higher than your rent?

Are you serious??? A mortgage is always higher than the rent on an equivalent property, otherwise people would keep buying and pushing up prices until this wasn't the case. Why would anybody rent if they could buy the place and pay off a mortgage at a lower cost than renting it?

VF vs. The Atlantic Monthly (off-topic, sorry)

[adelord]

how would you say that vanity fair compares to the atlantic monthly for deeper narrative articles regarding international relations?

The owner of the content

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

But musicians don't own the content. The average record label's contract gives the copyright of all the recordings to the label. Musicians might own some copyrights to the compositions they record, if they write their own work, but they don't own the rights to the recordings.
I believe that the money the RIAA labels pays artists is better than nothing. But it's not much better than nothing, aside from the perks. The perks are excellent, but they come out of the artist's share of record sales, even when they aren't the artist's idea.

Re:The owner of the content

[FlyingGuy]

Once again. This is that artists right to sign away what ever rights in return for a thing. That thing is any or all of the above things that I have mentioned, such as Production Cost, Reproduction Costs, Distribution Costs, etc.

No one is twisting an artists arm to sign the contract. No one is stopping the artist from negotiating the contract so that it gives them a larger share. If the record company wont agree to your terms, go elsewhere. If you cant find a record company willing to bet their cash on your popularity, then go borrow $20K from friends, relatives or wherever you can find it. Get 10K CD's stamped, advertise them, promote them, mail copies to every radio station you can find and get your stuff played. Make all the follow up phone calls, in other words, get on a tour as an opening act, get yourself out there. In other words, do EVERYTHING that any record company does, bet your hard found borrowed money and see how far you get. Just remember you have to pay that money back, more then likely, with interest.

Once again your very very weak argument still sends the message that just because a big record company owns the copyright to a an artistic work, its ok to rip them off. Well you know what, even if that record company only pays the artist 1 dollar for every CD sold, everytime you decide its OK to just burn a copy and give it to your pal, then you are stealing that 1 dollar from the artist. Your just a theif, its that simple.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[mrsbrisby]

Why would anybody rent if they could buy the place and pay off a mortgage at a lower cost than renting it?

Since landlords with mortgages are making money by renting their properties, you must be wrong.

Meditate on that for now, and then see if you can figure out why.

Re:Who works 3 jobs and eats TV Dinners?

[mrsbrisby]

I've making serveral times the poverty limit,

And I bet you don't work three jobs either.

and there are plenty of things that I want to do and buy that I can't (or don't) - it's all about defining what an acceptable standard of living is.

That's a load of crap. You don't get to define what an acceptable standard of living is when you're living above what you consider it to be.

The man who works three jobs knows the ``acceptable standard of living'' is above where he presently lives. If he could physically work four, he would.

Someone made up the poverty limit, someone else made up the minimum wage. They will always be low (hence "poverty" and "minimum"), but there is a fine line between making sure people are alive, and living their lives on behalf of them (I live in a "high-welfare, high-tax society". Unemployment is ridiculous, but not in official numbers, since they are not counting welfare-receipients.)

Is the job of an economy to make sure their working class is alive? Who cares if you get three hours of sleep, walk 17 miles a day between jobs, and vommit blood. At least you're alive.

The rich are rich because there are poor, not despite them.