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Digital Watchdogs Widen Anti-Piracy War
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times is covering a new focus by companies like Warner Bros. on consumer attitudes towards media consumption. The last few years have seen media companies concentrating on pirated materials sold in marketplaces and downloaded online. Increasingly, the expectation of content for free is what is worrying these same companies. 'Missteps made today could have grave consequences for the future, particularly when it comes to consumers' willingness to pay for movies and television shows online ... Warner and other entertainment companies are moving cautiously ahead, but their interests are divided. All want to share their content online with consumers but are, at the same time, imposing constraints that risk alienating a younger, Web-oriented audience.'"
Customers would like the media they purchase to be free of encumbrances.
.... the only thing they want to supply free seems to be rootkits.
Content providers
If that's the attitude the content providers take... I say, let us have stage plays again, and ban all recording devices during performances... let's see what market size we're talking about for such 'content'.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The key problem the industry has is that DRM devaluates the product.
When I buy a piece of hardware (computer related or not), I have an advantage over stealing it. I have warranty, I have access to discounts, I get free or cheap spare parts, I may even get additional goodies, coupons or trade-in options, if there is a flaw I can return the product and so on. All that and more is no option if I buy it off the van in a shady alley or steal it outright.
With content, it is exactly the other way 'round: Stealing it increases its value. There is no region code, no mandatory previews to watch, no annoying FBI warning, no copy restriction, in the case of software, no need to keep the CD at hand and insert it when you want to play or a dongle to plug in (and render that port unusable 'cause whatever else you might want to plug in won't work), no unwanted spyware installed with your content, no restriction drivers that interfere with other software or even harm your hardware, nothing of the ever increasing pests that clog the movies and software of today.
It's not (just) that stealing content is cheaper. The main problem is that the stolen content is actually more valuable than the bought one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe movies wouldn't cost so much to make if they didn't have to pay "famous" actors tens of thousands of dollars for showing thier overexpoed faces on camera for 90 seconds.
Call the new situation an attempt at a "Market correction." The movies are no longer worth to the customer what they once were, so maybe those overpaid crybabies will be replaced by someone who doesn't expect to make the GDP of a small country for 6 months of work.
The problem is not that people wouldn't want to pay for their movies. I sure as hell would. But I am not going to buy a DVD that forces me to jump through hoops before letting me watch what I paid for. IF I may watch what I shelled out my dough for 'cause the region code doesn't fit or the DVD has some copy protection scheme that my DVD player doesn't like.
And since studios don't make DVDs the way I want them, I don't buy them. Simple as that. If a product does not match my requirements, I don't buy it. It's my money and I put it where I want it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They are freaking hell from the fact that they will have to sell "content" for lower prices than the hellishly inflated ones they used to :
Digital distribution cuts costs to phenomenonally ridiculously low rates per "piece" of content.
One would think they would adjust their distribution system and prices accordingly, and adapt to the new amenities.
But they dont want to do this. They want to sell stuff from the prices of the previous decades, where the final price was justly high due to the costs involved in production of the medium carrying the content and distribution of it.
Hence, they will pocked the 200-400% rate profits per piece sold - old prices, minus the new pathetic cost of distribution.
This is what they are concerned about. Its not about "piracy" or "content distribution" (heh), "protecting rights" or "intellectual property"
Its totally about being allowed to screw the public en grande, or not.
One would think that they would have understood that piracy is going to go on as long as they try to screw people over. But apparently they did not.
Then piracy will continue.
Read radical news here
I wouldn't shell out for a movie or software, but I would make donations to people who write OSS.
Somehow the people who don't want to grab all the money seem more deserving.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Some of the greatest achievements of film, like most of the work of Ingmar Bergman and other auteurs, was done on small budgets with state subsidies or private patronage. Profit by the masses going to the film was not a necessary result for the film to be seen as a success.
Well, if you think that "a good movie" means a film with poor acting and more attention paid to flashy special effects and Hollywood tropes than meaning or atmosphere, I guess the future may suck for you, but I'm sure films that stand the test of time will continue to be paid.