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Why Make a Sequel of the Napster Wars?
6 writes "Cory Doctorow has an interesting article over at Information Week about Hollywood's strategy of suing sites such as YouTube. Says Doctorow: 'It's been eight years since Sean Fanning created Napster in his college dorm room. Eight years later, there isn't a single authorized music service that can compete with the original Napster. Record sales are down every year, and digital music sales aren't filling in the crater. The record industry has contracted to four companies, and it may soon be three if EMI can get regulatory permission to put itself on the block. The sue-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out plan was a flop in the box office, a flop in home video, and a flop overseas. So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?'"
only future that matters is that of the next quarterly report.
Also they're greedy motherfuckers.
Looking weak and submissive in the face of evil, dirty pirates isn't in the interests of these folks. Their extreme litigiousness is not (only) a misguided attempt at recouping monetary losses from copyright infringement, but an effort to slow the creation of distribution networks that leave them in the dust. They can't move quickly in this sector, so they need to buy time to create or feed money into services that give them a bigger piece of the pie.
Hotline the origin of media piracy? The original internet scene was founded on IRC, FTP and USENET.
Hotline was for point and clickers.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?
Unlike the Napster case, Youtube has revenue sources (and Google can invest the additional funds needed to keep it afloat).
The studios, quite rightfully see a source of revenue there. It's not just a bunch of cheap bastards sharing amongst themselves. It's a multibillion dollar company making money off of THEIR content.
Should copyright just be abolished because we want free access to tv shows and movie clips?
Def. It's hard to compete with a business model based on "giving shit away for free."
Very insightful, Cory.
Actually it began on BBS's.
Assume that the major movie studios produced high-quality full-length first run downloadable movies with no DRM whatsoever at a reasonable prices. (You define what is reasonable.) Any DRM-less format you prefer.
How many of you would "share" then with your friends? (By "share" I don't mean watch the movies with friends. I mean make copies of the movies for friends.) If so, how many friends?
Would you see anything wrong with posting your copy to an FTP site or the equivalent?
Would you see anything wrong sending copies to your closest 100 friends?
Just curious.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The original internet scene?
I'd actually began to mention BBSs and then erased it, because I figured if I start down that road, people are going to say, "Actually, it started with people copying each others punch cards."
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Because they STUPID OLD OLD WHITE MEN who cannot come up with anything new! The answer is always, okay smarty-pants meet my lawyer Mr. Cohen. Meanwhile, let's dust off another old movie and do a remake, or a sequel.
That's why he said "The original internet scene..."
I was "pirating" mix tapes with friends before home computers could play anything approaching recorded music.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You should teach an economics course or something!
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Now Napster was great for you, me, and all of other hepcats, but it kind of sucked for the artists and the recording companies. And yes, I know that the recording companies rip off the artists. But if Napster rips off the recording companies, then the artists are guaranteed to get nothing.
I personally like iTunes and the iTunes store. I don't mind the DRM and I re-rip the few songs I need to move. It's a pain, yes, but I think the price is fair. So I think iTunes is infinitely times better than napster because at least some money is headed in the right direction. Even if only 5% makes it through to the artists, thats an infinitely greater amount than Napster ever paid them.
Sheesh. I owe so much to the artists who've written songs that have gotten me through some tough times. 99 cents is nothing compared to the gifts they've given.
it's very much about a bunch of old guys who ask their secretaries and assistants to send an email. they simply don't get it, where "it" is any technological innovation after the year 1990
these old mogul type guys are from an era when you DID solve the problems of piracy by suing someone. because in the good ol' days, piracy was done by some mafia dude with a cd press or vinyl press or a bunch of cassette decks in a warehouse or closet room somewhere, and there were about 6 pirates out there who were making any economic impact on their bottom line: a small group of slow easy targets, and it was easy to get the fbi to help you
now of course, anyone who can download a program and drag a file in to a folder is a "pirate". which is basically every single young, music hungry, technologically savvy, and, most importantly, POOR student... in the entire world
but the old guys just don't get that
the solution?
wait. the old geezers will just die off. the guys who succeed them in the boardroom will know what's up and what's down about the realities of the internet
give it a decade or so. these RIAA and MPAA lawsuits are obviously incredibly retarded. but your complaints about the obvious realities of today fall on deaf old ears
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Policy about intellectual property is the responsibility of corporate lawyers, and they have a very primitive world view. They assume that all ownership is like physical ownership. If you own a theater, someone pays you to sit in the seat. If you sell songs, you sell the physical media. They don't understand that this model is no longer valid, and they don't have the flexibility to change.
This is why Apple has succeeded with iTunes. Apple understands the new online world, and they have figured out how to make money. It's not surprising that a tech company would be able to succeed, and old line traditional companies would fail.
Another side of the lawyer mentality is that you can only win by suing people. For some people in the law, not suing is like not breathing. (Insert shark joke here.) They see that their business model is going down the tubes. (Insert 'series of tubes' joke here.) Their first and only reaction is to sue. Why are you surprised by this? They are doing what they were trained to do, and what they are very well paid to do.
Because, as this summer has proven amply, the movie industry has temporarily run out of ideas and is only capable of producing sequels. Spider-man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, Die Hard 4, Napster 2...
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
i specifically remember trading brass gear assemblies that made pipe organs play the 1812 overture with others in the underground pirate charles babbage adding machine scene
you young whipper snappers and your pirate ragtime player piano paper scroll scene, you have it so easy today... YOU try hauling around 50 pounds of brass machinery under YOUR overcoat!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, because there was no such thing as online piracy until 1997... *rolls eyes*
Here's a tip. Just because you aren't aware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Some people, particular when they feel it suits them, feel that any time someone breaks the law, they're wrong and must be punished. Smart people recognize that "legal" and "ethical" are two different things, but apparently, people at record companies aren't smart.
Now, one thing that must be said in their defense is that if you do NOTHING to defend your intellectual property, what's likely to happen is that you'll lose your rights altogether. Under certain IP laws, you are require to defend your IP. But let's ask what would happen if the recording industry did NOTHING to defend their rights? That's easy. Everyone would assume they didn't care, piracy would run rampant, and the general idea of copyright would degrade. You'll notice that in certain Asian countries, IP rights are not important and infringement on copyrights, patents, and trademarks is completely unchecked.
One of the reasons that music piracy actually increased revenue for record companies is because people using Napster knew in the back of their minds that this was illegal or wrong in some way. Some people even managed to think it through far enough to realize that artists might be harmed by not being paid for their work.
So, we all agree that RIAA and MPAA are bastards and what they're doing is wrong. But we cannot let the whole idea of copyright be annihilated. Individual authors should be afforded the right to influence how the fruits of their labors are handled, and they should have the right to profit from their labor. Copyright and patent have been taken to an absurd extreme, with the fundamental concepts totally abused. But we should fix the system, not abolish it altogether.
Just remember this: Without copyright law, the GPL wouldn't have the power it has to keep greedy people from taking your code and closing it up in their application.
Awww, did someone hurt your feelings as a former retard who thought he was badass running Napster?
Without copyright and patent law there wouldn't be any need for the GPL.
Yes, the vast majority of people would give copies to a few friends... and enough people would give out copies to the world-at-large (and there are enough people who would download said copies) that these DRM-free files would spread far and wide.
Now, some would argue that this shows that people are mean or short-sighted, or somesuch. Perhaps. Another explanation is that the status-quo assumptions about ownership, distribution, and monetization of creative works are entirely out-of-sync with reality (where "reality" includes concepts like "computers", "the internet", and "sharing").
So then what's the solution? Well to me it seems obvious that domains of creativity that want to make money should just do what every other sector of the economy does: charge a price for whatever you distribute such that you actually make the profit you desire. (Rather than hoping for laws (e.g. DMCA) or technological measures (e.g. DRM) to come to the rescue.)
So, in practice this would mean that after you make a movie, you sell it, to whoever wants to buy it, at its actual cost (several million dollars or whatever). The person who buys it can do what they want with it: make copies and give them to everyone, or sell multiple copies to multiple people, or do nothing with it. Anyone who receives a copy can sell it if they want, or give it away. They bought the copy. The original creative-workers have already been compensated.
So how would this play out in an actual free market? You'd probably have commissioned works. You'd have companies setting up "donation-based content release" (e.g. "Did you like Spiderman 2? Well once we receive $X in donations, we'll release Spiderman 3 for the world to enjoy! Donate today!"). You'd have networks buying copies early on at high price, to put on TV along with ads... which is still a profitable business even if full ad-free copies end up on the Pirate Bay the following day. Then you'd have others buying copies later at lower prices. You'd have all kinds of websites set up (supported by ads or monthly fees) where you could download all the music and shows you wanted, nicely categorized. People are willing to pay for convenience and timeliness.
The point is that companies would do what they do best: figure out innovative ways to make money by giving customers what they want at prices they are willing to bear. Yes, it's really that simple. You don't need special laws for this kind of thing to take place. Copyright did a fine job encouraging the arts for many years... but that doesn't mean it's the optimal model in the modern world. It's entirely possible that special laws are no longer needed to encourage the arts. Conventional capitalism may be enough.
Now, I know I totally side-stepped the actual questions you asked... but I think I've responded to the subtext of your post. The fundamental question that people have in the anti-DRM debate is: "But without DRM, or something, then won't people just spread the copies far and wide?" The only reasonable answer is: "Yes, they will. Let them."
"I am the law"
Eight years later, there isn't a single authorized music service that can compete with the original Napster.
I call bullshit. I played "stump the DJ" with a friend who has rhapsody, and it was no less impressive than Napster, at least for all the obscure titles I know that I was amazed to find on Napster.
why I should feel bad for people who are dumb enough to get busted for dowloading copyrighted music. It's like feeling sorry for that guy who camped out with grizzly bears until he finally got eaten by one. Forget those fools, it's their own fault what happened to them.
Lawyers sue.
This is yet another example of peoples inability to understand even simple things.
Hence the expression "shooting oneself in the foot". The nice ting about it is that
one can pursue the same strategy against them again and again since they wont and cannot adapt.
It is quite typical for groups of people in power to be there because they share some irrational
belief, not because they are smarter, more rational, or better at making money. It is a power thing.
It is a game of exclusion, not of cooperation. Examples: Music companies, freemasons, Bush & Co,
religions, politics, investors, etc.
But then again, most people follow this pattern, even many who believe themselves to be rational.
I have found that one strong indicator of this irrationality is the inability of people to understand
that "Absence of evidence is evidence of absence." Carl Sagan understood that this is true, while
Bush & Co with their absent evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Irak, does not understand it.
More surpricing is that the "American Statistical Association" does not understand it either, and
they should, since they are statisticians.
And now, to prevent some of the bickering that always appears when this is brought out, here is my proof:
http://kim.oyhus.no/AbsenceOfEvidence.html
Kim Øyhus
The problem, at the heart, is the state of copyright law in America and abroad.
If media companies would let works pass into public domain after a number of years then people would be more inclined to pay for and respect the protection of works still under copyright. As it stands, no work of media will pass into the public domain, unless explicitly placed there by the copyright holder, for the rest of our natural lives. This perversion takes a law designed to protect the livelihood of the artist and turns intellectual property into life support for immortal corporations.
It is unfortunate, then, that as a result the lines have been blurred to the point that there is equal disrespect for copyright of new and antique media. Which not only starves faceless media conglomerates, but also fledgling media producers. I question a copyright holder's business sense to completely forgo copyright and hope to subsist on live performances and charity alone. But I also shame artists and companies that use age old works as a form of pension.
...but it is going to have to be altered because of cheap replicator technology, which means we will have to rollback the changes they made so far, then alter those somewhat. Fast forward, we now have the beginnings of tangible objects replicators, the fast prototyper machines. Digital replication is now common tech,so what happened when that was invented and people really started making copies at home? They got "the man" to adjust laws in their favor, in effect, enforced technological luddism to preserve past business models. So...as we enter more of a real star trek like world, will we deny replicator tech for other things, based on lifetime + plus copyright monopolies? How far are we going to take it so that actual tech advvances are limited and start to slide away from encouraging the common good and the advancement of arts and sciences? Copyright concepts are entirely artificial and man made, which means we can reconsider them and alter them as situations change. So far, we have altered them so that two cents worth of digital bits is sold for 20 bucks and they still complain about it, when the solution is obvious, drop prices drastically to correspond to advances in the tech. How is that useful for society as a whole when they have the resources to bribe the system in their favor and not actually have to deal with true market forces with the addition of the common good. We need both after all, or just say heck with it and abolish all governments and laws. One or the other. If we still want some government and laws, how about we actually LOOK at the situation and see who is really scamming who here, and why.
If we get cheap tangible replicators, and you can order up a sandwich and tea-earl grey-hot, for a penny worth of electricity and a penny worth of raw materials, will it "serve" us to charge 5 dollars, or can we feed more people for 5 cents and the originators still make a hefty doubling plus on their investment and work?
I don't know what part of thousands of per cent profit these people need to make for their "hard work", other than whatever that number is they apparently want it is still way too high, and free/taking is unethical, so I think a compromise is in order, but the ball is in their court-recognize that the tech we have now makes your copies extraordinarily cheap, and price it accordingly, not priced like it was years ago when it was a lot more expensive to produce and distribute. If it takes changing the laws and actually placing a firm percentage of increase over cost, hard codified, then so be it, but price gouging and then gaming the "law" system is *not* productive for society long term. It just isn't.
In the US we have had fatcats from the oil industry up in front of congress to try and prove they aren't price gouging, but on the other hand, we don't see the digital bits boys up in front of congress explaining why they need to make these thousands of percent profits. So which is it, does government protect all the people, just some of them, or what? Why do we even have consumer laws when some industries can profit immensely from changes in the law, while others are held under a microscope and told they can't charge what the market will berar? Why do we have public service commissions? Why not let all the electric companies charge as much as they want, after all it is their "product"? Oh ya, we decided that holding people up and price gouging was a bad idea. We should do the same with the technology deniers in the digital bits business because if we let them continue it is going to infect the even better tech coming down the road. Better to stomp that idea flat now that they can hold up progress because of the way things used to be. So, in essence, copyright, sure, good idea, their idea which is copy-wrong? I don't think so. If we have to go to actual hard numbers, a megabyte of data is worth two pennies transmitted over the net and no more, fine (whatever it is using industry pricing for bulk data transfer), then re visit it every five years for an update on actual cost. I say let them charge exactly double that cost, and that's it, no more, else THEY are abusing their limited monopoly status they are granted with a "copyright".
There seem to be a lot of people bitching about IP and copyrights, and "well of course the Napster kicked their butts -- it was free!"
But what Doctorow is saying is that both Napster then and YouTube now *want* to do deals with the copyright holders, but they only see a revenue stream coming from lawsuits (especially given Google's deep pockets). He points out that both the recording industry and cable television started out by poaching someone else's IP (sheet music and already-broadcast material, respectively), then doing a deal with the copyright holders after they were able to make money doing it.
Please, read the fine ar... oh, right.
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
Unfortunately, http://www.riaa.org/ is stale and busted (imagine that) so their "piracy statistics" links just go nowhere. Wow, I wish I could rampage through the courts, extorting money from old ladies and children without any proof! I wanna be a media lawyer when I grow up!
After suing file sharers for many years, the music business is starting to come around to the internet, In case you missed it the big news was that Warner Brothers signed a deal with media sharing site imeem.com, a couple of months after suiing them for being 'the youtube of music'. 5 years ago I'd never have imagined this happening, but now things are changing.
wait
For what? For it to suddenly not cost anything to produce professional entertainment? For Pixar to spend several years and untold hundreds of thousands of animation and rendering hours/servers to produce a movie using only volunteers? For a 50-seat orchestra to not mind doing a film soundtrack for free? For it to cost nothing when an artist brings in talent from other continents to collaborate on a project? For Neal Stephenson to not worry about how he's paying his mortgage while he writes novels for hipster nerds who like to rent coffee for $4 but complain about $0.99 tunes?
You want to wait, it seems, for all of your entertainment to be produced in basements by people who've just gotten off of their day job. Your absurd mental portrait of a bunch of old guys in pinstripe suits smoking cigars and plotting to harm young people who don't want to pay $18 for an album is... well, absurd. Do you not know anyone who creates things for a living, and that needs to spend 80 hours a week working on their craft so that what they produce is something more than the boundless oceans of amateur dreck out there?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
OK. We have 2 scenarios here, one perfectly legal, one illegal, yet same concept.
It is perfectly legal to:
1. Record a show on VHS
2. Invite people to then watch this VHS (given no $$$ is involved)
3. There are storage/cables/wires (in this case RG6 coax, whatever speaker cables you have, home theater systems, etc) involved in getting the media on the VHS to the TV for people to watch
Now all of a sudden, it's illegal to:
1. Record a show on HD (hard drive)
2. Invite people to then watch (download) from this HD (given no $$$ is involved)
3. There are storage/cables/wires (in this case CAT5, fiber, routers, etc) involved in getting the media on the HD to the computer monitor for people to watch
EXACT same concept, and it was ruled in courts a LONG ass time ago (before Internet was popular) that scenario #1 is perfectly legal. So why the hell isn't scenario #2 legal? You can not have a double standard, and that's exactly what we have.
And do not say scenario #1 is "analog" and scenario #2 is "digital" as being the reason for them to be legal and illegal, cause that's a crock too. VCRs have S-Video output (I do believe that's "digital"?). If you record from satellite (digital) or digital cable, well, that's digital, and that's legal.
The big problem is this. There's suddenly a shift in entertainment now, where people are simply not willing to pay relatively large amounts of money to relatively few people. Entertainment is everywhere, and there are tons of different kinds, and forms. So right now, nobody wants to pay $20 for a relative "hit" CD, so they're just taking the entertainment.
In the 20th century, when culture in the US, at least, was much more homogenic, stars like Elvis'es, Marilyn Monroe's, Beatles were more universally loved and demanded (paid for). Now, nobody is interested to that extent because there's so much more to see/hear/watch/read. Sure, a few hundred thousand kids may want to pay $5 for the new April Levigne CD, they're not interested enough to want to pay $20 for a CD.
Entertainers are simply not able to earn the money they used to make. Neither are the distribution company. We're seeing an overdue shift down in the amount of money that we are willing to pay for entertainment. Supply of entertainment shot through the stratosphere at the end of the 20th century, and demand merely shot through the roof increased with the population increase and populations joining the modern world (as far as entertainment is concerned).
All of this stuff that this article was about are simply the transitional pains. I predict that in 20 years, very few entertainers of any kind will be able to earn much more than say, a big city local television news personality. The days of Michael Jackson buying amusement parks and Elvis collection gold Cadillacs is over. The days of $20 music albums are over, too. The problem is that the large entertainment industry, as a whole, are going to go kicking and screaming, whether they're actors, musicians, or distribution companies (which are even less relevant now than the entertainers themselves).
The distribution companies do, of course, represent the entertainers demands for more money, of course. The problem for them is compounded by not only are peoples tastes diverging into more and more entertainment options, but people are especially not willing to pay for distribution. They're going the way of buggy whip makers.
What does this mean? It means that in 20 years, celebrities will be everywhere, but few will be massive, massive stars. It also means that they'll be more like actual, working people, and might have to work on their own distribution, if they want to make a good living from it.
Perez Hilton is a great early example of what most of tomorrow's celebrities will look like: organic, diverse, earning money by giving their "art" away for cheap or free, and making money from ads and sponsorships, while handling their own distribution straight to the people.
That's all people are willing to pay for. Why? Well, even if the distribution companies lock it down perfectly, it won't work. The demand isn't there. If you don't want to pay $20 to watch a shitty movie that you'll forget 10 minutes after you watch it, you can hop over to YouTube, and watch some rapidly improving, amateur stuff for free or cheap.
I don't respond to AC's.
Want to know what you can get for nothing? Head down to Blockbuster and find the crappiest video horror film you can find. Even those do cost some money but they are cheap enough for people to produce for ego reasons and not have to worry about keeping investors happy. Want big budget films like Transformers and Bourne? Those cost 1,000X to 2,000X, or more, as much to make. They need equipment and skilled people to make. Everyone working cheap still won't make them free it'll just drive out the last of the talented people. There is no economic model that can make high budget, or even low budget films, for no money. The only possible option would be massive amounts of advertizing which would result in people wanting to find ways to view them without seeing the advertizing. In that case advertizers would loose interest and the money would still dry up. If you want to see it pay for it, if you don't want to see it that bad pass on it. Supply and demand. If the revenue dries up so will the films.
The sue-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out plan was a flop in the box office, a flop in home video, and a flop overseas. So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?'
Desparation. A bunch of overpaid lawyers are constantly told, "do something!". So, they have to make something happen or lose their job. A worthless something is better than no something to those paying them.
Table-ized A.I.
Home taping was the first worry of the media companies, I remember reading an article in 1970-71 Hi-Fi mag aout the ethics of taping records (tape recorders had been available since the 1950's). Similarly, one of the reasons why Ampex never got serious about a home video tape recorder was that they knew they were going to be sued by the media companies (Betamax decision...) - they figured that the Japanese with their assets offshore would make a much harder target for the media companies.To them, being a director means rehearsing your Oscar acceptance speech in the dormroom mirror, then your Oscar party moves afterwards.
It's all about the money and image, which is why the movies suck so fucking much now! Your friends are just part-and-parcel of the whole problem.
Ever play pickup basketball with old guys? I'm a run and gun type player myself - and the old timers neutralize all that with the ground and pound. They back up the whole way down the court at two meters an hour, talking shit the whole way while swatting at you when you try to steal the ball. You get overzealous, he threads a backdoor pass from the three point line to the basket for an easy layup. It you tap the ball away he cries foul and complains that the young guys are beating up on the warhorses. Or he'll pump fake you like 14 times until you give up and he banks in the shot. old guys ALWAYS use the glass.
the lawsuits are that old guy - taking a speedy process and slowing it down to their pace in order to give them time to catch up. they call fouls all the time and make the whole process generally unpleasant at times. But they are doing what they need to do to WIN.
pointing out that the lawsuit strategy failed is assuming that it was to attempt to deter change - it's not. Big companies are about slowing down the process and milking every dime they can out of it. Innovating is an interesting thing. For every innovator who succeeds, countless others fail for reasons other than technical viability. The smart thing to for large moneyed firms to do is to wait - let the innovators do their thing; when the market reacts in kind - bully into the market with dollars and positioning. It's the lion chasing off the hyenas after they've made the kill. The king of the jungle feeds off carrion something like 30% of the time.
I'm certain I'll get modded down for this, but the future of this business is not in selling music. What the internet has taught us is that content is devalued by an inability to secure exclusivity of access. The future of media is not ITUNES - that's another example of slowing down change. It is not change itself. It is still selling music. the paradigm shift is that they are not going to sell MUSIC at all.
un burrito me trampeó.
Fear.
google.slashdot
Assume that the major movie studios produced high-quality full-length first run downloadable movies with no DRM whatsoever at a reasonable prices. (You define what is reasonable.) Any DRM-less format you prefer.
Yes, let's assume that. How many of you would bother to download the "free" version on a slower network where peers crap out, you might get all but the last 10 minutes of the file, you might get a goatse'ed file because some jackass thought it would be a great prank, or the file might be infected with the virus du jour?
Given your stated assumption, it wouldn't matter if the file were available for "free". The question you should be asking is: Who would even want the free download anymore? Guaranteed quality at fast download speeds would be worth a reasonable price to most downloaders.
I don't see that "Hollywood attack". The article author failure to provide massive attack examples.
... and eventually make it available with ads". So copyright is their enemy.
No one will see that kind of attack because there isn't a single point of failure. They can't totally destroy that kind of distribution but only sue some players for refund.
I can even say Holywood heads probably have no idea about many ways to defeat P2P or are doing a poor job because I often see significant points of failure in that scheme.
Holywood don't wan't to end the movie theater experience, that's the main reason you don't see a DVD/Netflix the same time it's released on the theaters as P2P folks do.
Watching a movie on a bad enviroment (computer screen, small tv, bad sound, not focusing on it) lowers the movie experience which can return in bad publicity.
Of course nowadays Hollywood can afford twice selling the movie and after that selling the DVD. But if the movie isn't really good no one will buy both.
People complain about quality, I don't like that crap so I don't watch/listen it. But people keep downloading while saying it's crap that don't worth their money. Either they like it enough to keep watching, just wan't the power to tell their friends they saw the movie before/for free or insanely download files they'll never use. If crap movie is the point, critic the audience (including you and P2P friends).
Google/YouTube don't care about other people copyright. Google mantra is "index the world
To those who can't believe let me tell their control of copyright abuse works by faxing or sending a letter to their office where a human will take that paper from the pile and type the offense on the computer. They're a top notch technology company but have zero technology to proactive prevent copyright violations.
You see they working proactively only when some is suing them. Because of that they are promising a fingerprinting tool. No, wait, that's to ensure everyone only see the version of the show which have their ads on it.
Google point is to reduce the value of copyright to the point they can use the content for free or make the copyright owners welcome their terms ("I'm not bad, just want 10% of everything you sell").
They don't say that out loud to don't shadow the "not evil" slogan, they prefer to work silently behind you.
cost $100M to make.
If there was a way to make 'em cheaper, we'd be doing it.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
What happens when you remove all the copyrighted content on popular web sites like YouTube? You wind up with hundreds of kareoke and cover songs that are really bad and ultimately make the band look bad in the eyes of people that have no clue what the artist really sounds like... This is already happening on youtube... Look for some popular songs where most of the real artists work has been removed and you'll find a bunch of results where the name of artist and song title remain but the video is an amateur representation of the work... Its flattering on one side and its really pathetic and sad on another and does nothing but make the band look bad.
When you own the politicians and courts?
It's common knowledge that Cory Doctorow has never written an interesting article.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
i think that high culture existed long before the studio system. listening to you, it's as if they invented music and shakespeare in a studio chief's office
and guess what: technology is getting to the point that a teenager in his basement is as powerful as an entire studio in 1930. and let's say even if he never WAS able to do what pixar does in a decade or so... i'd rather be entertained by him than have a corporation suing people for downloading files
if the big studios have to sue regular people that to shore up their bottom line, then they have no right to shore up their bottom line. it really is as simple as that. you can do a lot of things to protect your intellectual "property", but if you are suing regular folk for what they do on their computer in their basement, guess fucking what: GAME OVER. if it's come to that then studios have a right to die off as a casualty of technological progress
ok, so some asshole spent 1 million making a nice movie. because of that, i have to submit to the notion that he now OWNS a series of 1s and 0s on my pc? no, i got a better idea: howabout the asshole who spent 1 million to make a nice movie come to the fucking realization that in today's technological reality, he may not recoup that 1 million. unfair it seems? tough! technology changes! it changed! deal with it! he can go ahead and still spend that 1 million if he likes, but he has no right to expect me to spend money on it. not anymore. doesn't sound fair to you? oh, it's written in the fucking bible that a fucking studio has a right to recoup it's losses, even when technological innovation destroys their dvd aftermarket? no, i'm not going to change my behavior so some company can recoup its investment. the fucking company is going to change its behavior about expecting what it can recoup. understand?
listening to you, it's as if birtney spears is the only thing we can call music, and brett ratner is the only person who can direct a movie. i think perhaps that if the internet means that that pop crap died off, then music and movies can only IMPROVE. $100 million does not a good movie make. you have a pretty weird definition of what art and the creative process really is
technology has changed the landscape of corporate entertainment. permanently. inexorably. get fucking used to it. no amount of lawyers is going to preserve a way of life that technological progress has rendered extinct. sorry if that doesn't seem fair to you
go ask the aztec and incan nobility if they think modern doodads like guns and horses and metal armor was fair to suddenly be thrust into their world. it wasn't for them, and the internet hasn't been fair to music and movie studios. OH WELL! THERE YOU GO! HISTORY HAPPENED! the incan and aztec nobility is out of the job. and so are all the studio and music execs. OH WELL! THERE YOU GO! HISTORY HAPPENED!
deal with it: change. the printing press wasn't fair to all of those monk scribes. the automobile wasn't fair to all of those horseshoe blacksmiths. the refridgerator wasn't fair to all of those ice makers. WHO FUCKING CARES, THEY WERE MADE EXTINCT. SO IS THE MUSIC/ MOVIE STUDIO AS IT'S BEEN FOR THE LAST 80 YEARS
DONE DEAL
FCUKING DEAL WITH IT AND STOP TRYING TO PRESERVE THE PAST
or go ahead and star in your own version of sunset boulevard
"i'm ready for my closeup mr. demille": the insanity behind those words is the same psychological instinct that drives studios to sue teenagers for copying files in their mom's basement: brittle nostalgia, an inability to change, future shock
time to die, relic of the past
you're history, dinosaur
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is the post that is the closest to offering hope in my view.
... it was a transitional step.
Movie Theaters ARE added value. And tastes ARE jaded. Yes, "some indie films have succeeded", because they are carefully written not to require cinema pyrotechnics. However, many low-budget imitations of big-budget movies that cheat on the special effects get *slammed* horribly as "cheese-planet".
I certainly don't have any clear answers, but I'd like to see some kind of system that deliberately plays on the poor-student eventually feeling cramped with the poor-student experience, and wanting a complete package of extra value for the premium fee. (Visit the big theater, get a *handout* like the CD booklet everyone likes, maybe semi-3d effects, etc.) And lower the concession stand prices to make them almost approach a value, and return the favor with something more solid.
Of all places, Star Trek first described the surprises of the Duplication Economy! (Their end result was horribly skewed, but they at least raised the issue.) Music and Movies are the first results of the Replicator. iTunes certainly won't keep 99 cent music *forever*
Let's agree that Transformers cost a colossal amount of money, and *deserved it*. (Animators received something like 25 complimentary car/truck copies from the auto company so they could *completely disassemble* them and study them for *months* trying to understand where the parts go in a transformation.) However stupid parts of the script became, virtually no one could knock the effects.
So for the crowd that insists on being able to download their copy, where do they suggest the $100Mil comes from? $1 from 100 million people?? Net 1.0 was full of companies who tried Micropayments and croaked.
Or like the concorde, is the age of the 100M movie over?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If I'm the studios, this is my strategy: I use the courts to force the big players like Google to pass some of the revenues on to me. There's no point destroying a distributor a la Napster, because a competitor will pop up. I then ally with Google to gang up on competitors who aren't willing to pass on revenues to me.
movie theaters depend on concessions for their overhead. Every last penny of the box office generally goes to the distributor (this is on account of the actors and director having first-dollar gross deals). This is why the markup is a little ridiculous.
Transformers was expensive, but still cheaper than Spidey 3 and Superman Returns, two flops. I would not defend Hollywood's profligacy per se (i think it was a big pissing contest to see who could have the biggest budget). But entertaining the average American, otoh, is really expensive.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Control.
bring back the middle class. They are the ones that are gonna be the content buyers. Super rich people didnt get rich wasting their time watching movies and dling mp3s. And poor people cant afford to buy the crap. Middle class is the only ones that can afford to be entertained by those industries and it is a group of people that are diminishing every day due to many factors. So when people are making less money you think they are gonna keep buying all that entertainment crap at the same old price?! Entertainment industries are dumb. In business you cant think that things should go a certain way due to entitlement! You gotta earn it! and change with the times if you want to exist as the times change! Typing posts on /. unfortunately wont change the world because everyone here knows this already and entertainment big wigs are not young enuff to understand the intertubes. They are picking up email just when that boat left! jeez!
Balderdash!
Make the high-end surround sound, the high-end projectors, and the high-end screens a portable deal, just like the Stones can set up in a football stadium, a "movie" can set up in a performance hall where you might usually see orchestras and ballets. Movies taking advantage of venues.
Assigned seating, perhaps slightly more expensive tickets, no ads, professional employees working the aisles and the door, and perhaps not only just the newest releases.
Elevate movies to an artform (which many of them actually are). Create alternative venues. No popcorn. No sticky floors. No talking. No ads.
There is no reason for movies to be pushed down to an amusement park level. They are a current form of media expression. Music albums aren't dead, either. The problem is obviously the "suits", so the way around that is for people to get together and for the offerrers to offer a high-quality, advertisement-free movie experience, and for the recievers to be willing to shell out what is essentially chump change for a high-quality, advertisement-free, assigned-seating, professional-level venue in which to view a movie on the latest high-end surround sound, projector, and screen technology. Tomorrow, there may be a ballet there. Or perhaps even a football game. So what? Who says movies have to be seen only at places dedicated for movies.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Put a chlorine filter on that jazz and buy some organic baby shampoo.
Napster does offer the service you are describing. They've been offering it for a couple years now. I have a subscription myself. It's $10/month and I love it. I've shared it with friends who also love it. I can't use it on my work PC (Linux), but I still keep it because A) I have three other computers that can use it, and B) if I MUST listen to it while working, I can download tracks from any of those computers to up to 5 portable devices that support playsForSure. Almost all the music I have looked for is on there and most of it is included with the monthly subscription.
Once in a while you run into a stubborn label that wants you to pay for their music. It's probably only 5% of albums, so unless it's an album I'm dying to listen to, I just find something else. If I -am- dying to listen to it, I'll just buy the CD.
Napster -- in its current form -- is the only reason I haven't got a Zune (or an iPod, for that matter). And a lot of labels are on board. More than you may think. Not to sound like a salesman, but I am pretty sure they have a free trial, if you have a windows box.
Mods: Do you disagree with me? Go ahead and mod me down. Meta-mods will sort it out. Good luck!
The Internet allows artists to get their work out without signing away their copyrights to the big media companies for a song and a prayer. That's what scares them. If they're not necessary for artists to make it big, then they're not going to be able to goad those artists into contracts that leave artists with a double-platinum album deep in debt to the record company.
It's about control, not justice.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Jimi Hendrix covered Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band the day after it was released. They didn't sue. It's about performance. I can play music in my head - should I be charged? e
It's coming for the exact same reason that PC vendors kept thinking they'd "Be the next IBM" when they'd merely change the heads on case screws [Compaq!] and the now-legendary way a manufacturer will make their computer offering with a 'poison pill' that keeps us addicted to a particular vendor. [Microsoft- ActiveDirectory]. It's assumed that without this pill, no one would ever go back to that vendor....maybe because their offerings suck so much as a general rule.
It's just bone headed.
The scrap piles are full of "L" shaped motherboards, funky risers and non-standard parts, and each and every one is forgotten as soon as the unit is declared obsolete...but the industry can't stop itself. When in truth, the IBM PC didn't do many things different from other techs of the time, it just did a useful amount of things all in one place. The first motherboards had a provision for a _cassette_tape_ interface, as was so popular back then, but dropped it because hard/floppy drives are just so much better. The natural demand for such a powerful product caused it's numbers to grow and expand, not a peculiar handling in the tech support lab. Even IBM wasn't trying to be 'the next IBM' when it started. They were just selling well-made (though ill-conceived) hardware like their other offerings.
There's a similar mania that's taken hold of the media vendors; the idea that, despite it's been tested and failed dozens of times, that *this*time* they'll create a mechanism for locking the music up will work. Or blanking out the videos if a coin hasn't been paid....but they never work for long.
The truth is that, while people need compensated for their works, electronic media as it stands isn't the pay-for-play media they desire. And the music industry (a bit more than the movie industry) seems to have the mania in a much larger way. The TV industry for example, understands that a copy of a series getting on the net will bring viewers and start 'the buzz' but the record industry still thinks funding groups 'that we're less likely to change the channel' is better than producing music we'll actually care about.
It's a broken system. It can be fixed, but the industries need time and the desire to change. I don't think they'll have this desire, until they're nearly penniless and closing their doors. Remember the age of these people at the top. Remember how old Jack Valenti was? They just don't know any other way, and aren't about to change [what clearly doesn't work].
As an aside, "Trickle Down Theory" is still called that...when it's been tried six times now, sucessfully, with the third time being called "Reganomics", and one of the times was with JFK. Why do people regard it as an uncertain thing after so many sucessful tries?
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Due to the leak of the upcoming new Metallica album on illegal peer to peer file sharing networks, millions of music lovers are currently suing Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich over wasted bandwidth costs. According to reports, the new album is so bad, people have been downloading and deleting the album at a speedy pace.
"I just thought it would be like their older stuff, given that they copped so much crap over 'St Anger'" said one internet user. "Turns out they suck even harder than before. Maybe they should all go back to rehab for good".
Lars Ulrich has responded in an internet blog written for him by his marketing team. "Lars, the two guitarists and that bass player dude would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused by downloading the new album illegally. We are trying to trace you IP addresses so we can sue you, so please download it a few more times each".
Torrent sites have since removed the links to the new album from complaints they have gotten from the internet masses.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Whenever such a discussion comes up, somebody needs to mention Magnatune.
Magnatune is a netlabel which doesn't rip off its artists, where NO DRM is applied and you get to download the music in the format YOU WANT (and if you want, non-lossy wav).
I just bought 2 albums of one artist and payed more than they suggest paying because the music was more than worth it.
www.magnatune.com (non-clickable link for obvious slashdotting reasons).
that should have been long extinct of course. Relics of a different past, lived their youth in the early 60s, these people at the helm of those companies are not able to perceive or adapt to present.
Read radical news here
Which doesn't reach cars, buses, or trains. Is it easy for a recording artist on a local label to promote his music on FM or XM?
Nor does it reach people who don't have a computer. Some musical genres, such as pop standards, tend to have a fan base correlated with not having a PC + high speed Internet connection.
Every pirated piece of digital content is a vote for stricter DRM For the purpose of this argument, would The Grey Album by Danger Mouse or other albums containing unlicensable samples be considered "pirated"?
GE owns NBC, not CBS.
Because law suits are a part of the company budget?
One of the main points of the GPL is to ensure freedom of the end users to acquire source code. Without copyright law, there would be no way to compel someone who had closed up the source code to open it back up again.
There's marketing. Say everything went Internet. No CDs anymore. You'd have sites that might tell you what the newest Pop song was, and you'd always have radio. But who's fronting the money for music videos, stadium concerts -- who is putting a face to the music so people can get ultra-famous and ultra-rich? "Making it" will mean you're on the radio collecting royalties or venues are seeking you out due to local fan opinion. But there will likely be no more megastars because there's no marketing team putting your image everywhere. And that's where the real money is spent.
I'm not saying there's not a way around that...people with enough royalties could purchase advertising, etc. But you know how much advertising costs. And if you start making deals with advertisers to give them a percentage of your income...well, then you're right back to the RIAA, but in this case it's the MMAA (Music Marketing Association of America).
Funny, there is no single female artis on the front page, I have realised. Is it a coincidence?
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
May be it is the crowd you need to make the movie that justifies the role of the studio? The music one can do alone, well in a tight group of 3 to 5 people...
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Spider-Man 3 has grossed almost $900M world-wide. How exactly are we defining flop here?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
"Where, in that basement, does the teenager have room to stash the writing teams, the costumers, the lighting crews, the people that feed the team that's taking care of the talent, the insurance team that makes sure that teenager won't be sued into oblivion if a lighting boom falls on an actor's head, and all the rest?"
there's no possibility communicating with you. because in your mind, it is a fixed notion that these things are required to create art, to create entertainment
you. don't. fucking. get. it. where it=change
the golden age of hollywood is over friend. the way they made movies in the 20th century is not the way they will always make movies. it is not written in the bible or the constitution that these things are prerequisites for making a movie. in your mind, it's like the rising of the sun every morning or that water is wet: an immutable law that you need a prop department manned with teamsters to make a movie. one small problem: it's NOT an immutable law. maybe in the SAG contract it is. because only in your perception of things, only in your little insular world, this is law, this is the way it is. what a nice coccoon, what a nice ivory tower you live in
knock knock
time to die
the incan and aztec nobility thought your way too. then spanish guys came on horses with boomsticks. barbarians at the gate
those priveledged nobility and their hanger ons hemmed and hollared just as much as you about fairness and right and wrong, the way things are SUPPOSED to work. was it fair what the spanish did? not at all. but what was done, was done. what was "right" is not what happened, now is it?
barbarians at the gate friend: thousands of poor teenagers with a fat bandwidth. they don't need you, you need them. do you understand that part?: THEY DON'T NEED YOU ANYMORE
time to die friend
DEAL WITH IT. or don't. and if you don't what is there for me to say to you, dinosaur? all i have to do is wait for you to to die. you're extinct already, you just don't know it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It was bad; I know, I worked on it :P
Yes it made money, I know, so did Superman Returns, but imagine how much money they would have made on it if it were good! They'd've doubled their money ten times over in DVDs for the next 20 years! That's where the real money for the studios is, since they get so little of the backend from the theatrical boxoffice (that goes to Tobey and Kirsten).
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
"So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?"
Most management in most corporations are morons. They get where they are because they are alpha males (and in some cases, alpha females), not because they have any brains. Which of course implies that those who work for them have even less brains. Which is usually true.
Humans need to realize one basic fact: the world's problems are caused by THEM, not "stuff" outside them.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
murder is wrong
so is jaywalking
but they are slightly different degrees of criminality, agreed?
the punishment should fit the crime. if you have a society where the punishment is worse than the crime, you don't have a just society
this is the test of civilization: the punishment has to be less severe than the crime
otherwise, it's just revenge
that's why sharia law, for example, is wrong: chopping someone's hand off for stealing, or chopping someone's head off for prostitution, this is not civilization
in a society where the punishments are worse than the crimes, injustice is perpetrated by the government, not the criminals
and in turn, the society breeds greater and greater atrocities
justice must always exist, and people must always be punished for crime, and the punishment must not be a simple slap on the wrist, the punishment must be severe for severe crimes. don't get me wrong on that point
but the punishment must ALWAYS be less severe than the crime itself, or instability rather than stability is bred in that society. because you are not teaching people to respect a valid concept (justice), you are teaching them (unsuccessfully) to respect an invalid concept (violence, revenge). it doesn't create deterence. it creates resentment. you haven't moved minds, you've just pointed a sharp stick at them. there's no reason to respect you. there's a reason to fear oyu, but respect is the whole point for right and wrong, no?
a justice system which overreacts perpetuates a cycle of crime, rather than abates it. that's the purpose of justice: maintain the peace. not burn people at the stake for being witches, or caning them in public for chewing gum. this does not maintain peace, this foments social instability. it doesn't mean people respect the law, they just resent it for overreacting. when societies does overreacting stuff like this, the society itself is experiencing a time of change: a shock, a misunderstanding, a grappling to understand the principles of teh relationship between crime and punishment
over time, the society understands that, while withcraft might be devilish, maybe it's not right to burn people for hearsay. and maybe chewing gum is bad, but public caning is just a sign of vulgarity itself that reflects on the whole society, rather than the gum just reflecting a vulgarity of an uncouth individual. in other words, these kinds of societies never really last long, because everyone comes to understand you can't right a wrong by making a bigger wrong
therefore, you do not chop people's feet off for jaywalking. jaywalking is still wrong, it is looked down on. but how do you punish it? or more importantly, how do you begrudgingly accept that someone, somewhere, will still do it... and you must somehow come to understand that going apeshit won't ever change them doing that?
now, is it right to sue people for thousands of dollars for copying files on their computer and sharing it with friends? let's say i agree with you, and doing that is wrong... but what is the appropriate punishment for that?
the spanish inquisition would have an answer for that. so would the taliban, or the government of singapore. do you agree with their overreactions? no, i think you would tell them that chopping off heads for prostitution, caning for gum chewing, and witch burning is not justice at work, that perhaps, while wrong, the punishment should be a lot more mild, and perhaps he crime should even be tolerated in some respects
now, when you ruminate on this understanding of crime and punishment, look back on suing people for thousands of dollars for copying files in their basement
and you tell me about right and wrong again
and you tell me about simply ACCEPTING minor wrongs in this world
or you can continue to go all spanish inquisition on the asses of illegal file downloaders. your choice. but you tell me how that kind of reaction fits into the span of world history and how societies sometimes go therm
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'll tell you what, if my career ever follows robert rodriguez's career arc (highly unlikely) then i reserve the right to become a total fucking douchebag hypocrite, and to whore myself out to the highest bidder of hollywood studios
;-P
seeing as that is about as likely as me winning the lottery, then i will continue to rally around movie piracy and against the mpaa in my obscurity and poverty
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First of all, "intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Second, copyright doesn't work like that. You don't lose copyright for "failure to brutally enforce it every chance you get." You can lose trademarks for failure to challenge generic use, but trademarks are an entirely different thing.
if someone steals a million dollars, the million dollars is not taken back from them. because it was never there's in the first place
;-P )
;-P
duh! retard
meanwhile, there is the cost of not having the money for the victim, of repairing the damage of the crime, the cost of catching the criminal, prosecuting him, etc.
so if a criminal steals a million dollars, gives it all back, and goes to jail for a few years, you are still talking about a justice system that is less transgressive than the crime itself
meanwhile, here are some new rules:
the studios reap all the money they can from the cinema houses. which is obviously a lot of money and is still growing. (meanwhile, musicians only get revenue from concerts)
the dvd aftermarket goes away *poof* gone (how old is that? 10 years, oh right! they've only been making movies for 10 years! how are they ever going to make movies without that market!? boohoo all of those teamsters in the prop department to feed waaaahhh
in fact the studios hand out their movies for free, high quality, for demo purposes, on the internet
i can already sense your response: i'm stealing paying customers from the cinema houses
yes, because sitting alone in your basement in front of 17 inch monitor is an awesome movie going experience
(smacks forehead)
the problem with you is you don't understand that free product might foster more cinema house patrons. the fucking music industry has realized that with radio for decades, so there's hope yet for you ossified movie studio types (a similar slimy suit wearing species of middle man distributor to the music studio types). so go for it dude! i believe in you! JUST FUCKING GET IT
where IT = new rules
furthermore, my new rules don't require legions of lawyers, my new rules aren't RULES at all. they are simply an acceptance that cyberspace, unlike meatspace, is limitless. a car is a car. if i steal your car, you don't have a car. however, with bits and bytes, nothing is "stolen" at all, just copied, effortlessly and limitlessly. you understand that concept right? anything that can be expressed in bits and bytes is not product anyone can make money off of anymore. new economic rules. well, actually, old economic rules: supply and demand except that on the internet, supply is limitless, so everything is free. get fucking used to it. books, music, movies: it's just bits and bytes, it's just media. media is not groceries. it does not work by the same economic rules as the guys making cars. so when i have a copy of "the terminator" on my hard drive i have not deprived the governator of some theoretical cinema house visit or dvd purchase that would result in residuals for him. you understand that, right? a copy of "the terminator" on my hard drive is not the same as the $15 dvd. you DO understand economics, right?
or continue to try to enforce laws and think in a mode about movie and music distribution that doesn't exist anymore. you do realize that that world is gone friend, forever, right? or do you think with enough lawyers people will keep acting like they did when the only way to get a movie was on a piece of shiny aluminum and plastic?
the future, is set in stone, whether you like it or not
but please, be my guest, fight it. rage, rage against the dying of the light. you go on with your bad self. see if it makes a fucking dent. hire 100,000 lawyers. hire a billion. see if it changes ONE FUCKING THING. while you're at it, fight the rising and setting of the sun, or the rise and fall of the tides. go for it man! with enough lawyers, you can reverse time itself! (snicker)
you're just ignorant about what you can and cannot change about the world you live in
brittle
old
nostalgic
fool
you're not really that scary in the end. just sad and pathetic. ignore the little man behind the curtain, i am the all and powerful oz. go for it man! sue teenagers for having movies on their hard drives! GO FOR IT DUDE!
pathetic
you're just a sad old man with a limited grasp on how the world is changing around him
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
based on shakespeare work? it's been a few years since the late 90s crop of shakespeare remakes reared their head: hamlet, titus, othello, lear, romoe&juliet, etc
...well then there's the issue that even if you agreed with me, it's not my right to make that decision. ha! arrogance! like YOU have a right to tell someone what they can do on the privacy of their basement! your control over that situation, or your imagined rationale for thinking you should have control over that situation, is artificial, and unfounded. but you keep going on thinking you can, or should, or have the right to control that. go ahead. it's not my revenue stream that is hurt, but
everyone knew the story, everyone had ben saturated with the stories since not only their childhood, but the childhood of their great-grandparents
and yet investors were willing to put up $1, $10, $50 million to make those movies. and those movies made good money (most of them anyway, i'm sure the ones that didn't blamed piracy, like any loser with a bad movie would). so how's that work?
it works. because it reveals a difference between the actual reality of what motivates people to pony up $10 for a movie house ticket, and what you think motivates them
or how about the harry potter movies? gangbuster box office returns, and the stories are all universally known. or lord of the rings. hey what of movie remakes? of course, i could go on and on, but you get my point:
crative arts are interesting product. they are not like products like cars, or soap, or jeans. they are media. media has an interesting relationship with commerce. newspapers scream their most important news on the front page. you can go into any library and read a book for free, or turn to the last page in the book store. as i've said before, you can listen to music off the radio for free. by the time some people buy albums (or bought albums, circa 1980) they had already heard the songs 100 times already on the radio for free. so how does that all work then?
let's put it another way: say a newspaper website prevents deep linking to their stories, and requires everyone to register to read their stories. another newspaper gives away all of their stories for free, no road blocks. of course, all of the blogs link to the free newspaper, and the free, no restraints one gets all of the web traffic. making more money off of ads than the one where everything is tightly controlled
so it is with movies, or music, or ANY media. the relationship between media and making money is all about exposure, not about little niggling anal retentive frustrating artificial road blocks every inch of the way
there are lots of revenue streams for movies- product placement, for instance. dvds and vhs, fought by the mpaa tooth and bone in the early 1980s turned into a massively important revenue stream. and the kind of thinking that dominated then is the same kind that dominated in your mind: control. control, control, control! no, moron: EXPOSURE is the name of the game
you think that when it comes to the media, its all about controlling the audience to extract money from them. actually, much like the newspaper and free links, its about letting them do whatever they want. and then the money finds its way. how did blair with make so much money?: internet exposure
in fact, free product on the internet means more money for movie producers because of the golden rule of exposure in media, means there are more eyeballs intested in your future product and in venues where the financial control is not artificial: movie houses, for instance. meat space can be controlled. cyberspace can't. if assholes like you would stop wringing your hands over the internet, the more enlightened amongst the studio lizards will realize the bonanza of cash that more exposure leads to. movie advertising is a huge cost for the studios. what if that cost went down but actual advertising goes up? how's that work?
i'm sick of laying out the facts of media and commerce to you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Apple is not making money with iTunes. iTunes is not designed to make money. iTunes is the "gasoline" for the iPod "car".
For most iPod purchasors, if iTunes didn't exist they would have no convenient way to put music on their iPod. So something was needed.
The fact that it does not make money should be apparent to anyone with a merchant account. You can't sell stuff for $1, paid for with a credit card, and make much money. While they are probably not losing much money, if any, they certainly are doing iTunes to make any money at it.
of human behavior, that motivates interest in a creative product turning into money. and so the way you think of creative product is a mentality that does not maximize your return possible
for example, you talk about getting the pristine internet copy, seeing it at home on your 60" projector. ok. why in you mind does this represent a person who would have otherwise spent $10 in a theatre? you encounter these types of trolls all the time: i hate the crying babies, the cell phones, etc. this theoretical movie viewer would not go to the movies anyways, no matter what. so by preventing him from having his electornic copy, you are magically going to force this man to go to a theatre? why the fuck do you think this way about human behavior?
menwhile, they have shown that people go to movies with the same psychological force of connection they went to church in previous centuries: the munching popcorn, other people laughing or crying: this adds to the experience, it doesn't detract from it. there is no way you can ever replicate this at home. the movie going experience is untouchable. people go to movies to CONNECT with the crowd in the dark. it's sociological. you can't replicate it at home
and in fact, in the 1950s, this is what people thought television was going to do to movies: kill it. why go the theatre when you can watch tv at home? did tv kill the movies? you look at box office returns in the years since 1950s, you tell me
come on einstein: there are televisions in almost every house on the fucking planet. SO WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE DRIVE TO A DARK BOX TO WATCH CONTENT THEY CAN GET AT HOME FOR FUCKING FREE SINCE THE 1950S
come on einstein, educate me
and so also the thinking on vhs/ dvd: it's killing movies... except it aided their bottom lines!!!
now its internet downloads, killing movies... REALLY?
no, you just don't fucking get it. you babble on and on about this subject matter, and at the root of it, you communicate nothing but a colossal ignorance of the subject matter you are involved in
your mind is brittle and fragile, and you don't understand change
you're a fucking fossil
here, go read a book that matches your maladaptive mentality
do you HONESTLY fucking believe the past is going to magically be preserved, the business model made obsolete by technological progress is going to be preserved, by a platoon of lawyers? that your moral pontifications about right and wrong about "stealing", when it isn't STEALING at all, is somehow going to convince people, hell, convince children, who have a BETTER understanding of what is actually happening than you do?
you're a loser
CHANGE motherfucker CHANGE
do you speak it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if someone steals a million dollars, the million dollars is not taken back from them. because it was never there's in the first place!
duh!
retard: what was stolen is not figured in what must be paid back, because simply stealing something is not a valid way to change ownership of something
meanwhile, there is the cost of not having the money for the victim, of repairing the damage of the crime, the cost of catching the criminal, prosecuting him, etc.
so if a criminal steals a million dollars, gives it all back, and goes to jail for a few years, you are still talking about a justice system that is less transgressive than the crime itself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in such a way that it dawns on you that you are asking the wrong questions:
1) Do you have the right to use something I create without involving me, or the people I hire to handle that sort of thing (like a publisher, distributor, or exhibitor) in making it available to you?
no
2) Do you think that your own assessment of the practicalities and effectiveness of one marketing method or another change your ethics and the values on which they're based? (trick question, sort of: this presumes you have an indentifiable and fully formed value system from which to actually derive workable ethics).
no
3) Do you think that the ability to acquire something, whether or not it's offered to you, grants you the right to do so?
no
now let me ask you a few questions:
1) is it fair that you are going to die?
no
2) do you think that the taxes you pay are fair?
no
3) do you think that people are going to stop trading files on the internet if you shame them enough?
no
what is the commonality about these questions? that you have to get used to them: death, taxes, file trading. not going away. ever. that just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it is going to stop happening. you have to accept it
#1. it can be considered at worst a minor crime, like jaywalking
#2. it is unenforceable, you can't prevent it
#3. it helps you in the end, despite all of your high holy invectives against the practice, because it gives you more exposure so there are more eyeballs willing to engage in your work in VALID paying venues
so, if you want to play the game, where the game is, i don't have the right to copy your digital work without your explicit permission, then yes, you win
however, that game IS NOT THE GAME WE ARE TALKING ABOUT
you want to come at me and play a game, the game being, i own these bits and bytes, and you can only do with them what i say you can do with them
ok, that's a fun game. you go over there in that corner, and you play that fun game of yours
have fun, enjoy yourself
meanwhile, us adults, who fucking understand reality, we are going to play a different game, and make more money than you, because we understand what the internet has done to how this game is played
here's some words you should reflect on, it's called the serenity prayer:
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
your problem is, you think you can change file trading on the internet. you can't. you can't control it. you can't stop it. no one can. you consider it wrong? fine. i consider it wrong that my girlfriend is going to die someday. what the hell am i going to do about it? what the hell are you going to do about filetrading?
so, i think the best way to characterize our misunderstanding here is that it is VERY important to you to communicate to me that i don't have the right to copy bits and bytes on my computer that represent your creative works without your permission
ok, you've made that abundantly clear to me. i hear you loud and clear
now, i want you to
#1: make me feel like i've actually done something wrong
#2: come over here and enforce some punishment on me for my horrible crime
#3: not thank me for getting you exposure you wouldn't otherwise get
you live in an ivory tower. you have a hermetically sealed understanding of how things should work in your mind. you look down on a muddy plain, and you sneer at the ugliness and what you perceive to be transgressive crimes
do you know what the muddy plain is? it's called creative ferment. and it's also called reality. and you can hate it as much as you want, and consider it as sinful and wrong as you want, as unethical, amoral, and illegal as you fucking want. you can shout invectives in anger at it and throw lawyers at it forever
doesn't.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it