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What the MPAA Still Isn't Telling Us
Scott Jaschik writes "An essay at the Inside Higher Ed site looks at the fallout from the MPAA's admission that its statistics on college student downloading were seriously wrong. Among the questions: What is the MPAA still holding back? Why isn't the MPAA changing its position on legislation? 'Perhaps the MPAA's press release acknowledging its "300 percent error" will set the stage for new, less rancorous private and public discussions about P2P piracy. Colleges and universities respect copyright; colleges and universities are engaged in serious efforts to inform and educate students about the importance of copyright. And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues, in part by ending the public posturing that portrays colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy.'"
If there's one thing I'd like to know about the P2P controversy, it's this: why would people bother to waste bandwidth and disk space downloading bootleg copies of most of the garbage that the MPAA (not to mention RIAA member labels) attempts to foist upon the public? If anything, the MPAA should be paying people to watch garbage like Meet the Spartans and Untraceable.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
"Can't we all get along and play nice and respect each other?"
Yeah. Good luck with that.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues, in part by ending the public posturing that portrays colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy.
The MPAA and RIAA aren't interested in anything except changing the publics' perception of their "plight". By recognizing their flawed research and statistics it would mean that their campaign to flood the eyes and ears of the uninformed via the media outlets, who are hungry for trash, would possibly end.
They are currently winning the war over parents and the majority of educational administrators who are worried that those they have jurisdiction over are doing things that someone told them was theft. They don't want to have others look poorly on them and they are going to spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring that they are doing everything they can to stop this horrible threat to our youth! Unfortunately, that comes at a serious cost in an arena that is notoriously short on funding and which should honestly have a lot more important shit to worry about.
What is the most tiring is that the media outlet continue to eat what the MPAA/RIAA are feeding them and the parents don't sit down to think about anything other than how to "talk to their kids about drugs" errr, I mean "stealing"! I guess because many of us who are either just becoming parents or aren't planning for kids for at least a few more years have sat through the majority of the Nancy-period and the bullshit anti-drug messages, we are more immune to being bombarded with this crap. Unfortunately, the rest of them are all caving to the media pressure. "Don't let this happen to you!"
I wish that more higher education institutions had the ability to pull off what Harvard did but the financial funding just isn't there to fight it in the short term but instead, wasting resources and funds over the long term is. The MPAA/RIAA knows exactly what they are doing and how to exploit those they are attacking and it sucks, bad.
If anything, the MPAA's constant announcements that rabid P2P use among high school and college students was a major concern only fueled the fire for more kids to pirate movies.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Detective: This is the home of Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica. [they approach a bush] Look. There's Lars now, sitting by his pool. [he's seen sitting on the edge of a chaise longue, his face in his hands, softly sobbing]
Kyle: What's the matter with him?
Detective: This month he was hoping to have a gold-plated shark tank bar installed right next to the pool, but thanks to people downloading his music for free, he must now wait a few months before he can afford it. [a close-up of Lars sobbing] Come. There's more. [leads them away. Next seen is a small airport at night] Here's Britney Spears' private jet. Notice anything? [a shot of Britney boarding a plane, then stopping to look at it before entering] Britney used to have a Gulfstream IV. Now she's had to sell it and get a Gulfstream III because people like you chose to download her music for free. [Britney gives a heavy sigh and goes inside.] The Gulfstream III doesn't even have a remote control for its surround-sound DVD system. Still think downloading music for free is no big deal?
Kyle: We... didn't realize what we were doing, eh...
Detective: That is the folly of man. Now look in this window. [they are at another mansion, and they look inside a picture window] Here you see the loving family of Master P. [He's shown tossing a basketball to his wife while his kid tries to catch it] Next week is his son's birthday and, all he's ever wanted was an island in French Polynesia. [his mom lowers the ball and gives it to the boy, who smiles, picks it up and drops it. It rolls away and he goes after it]
Kyle: So, he's gonna get it, right?
Detective: I see an island without an owner. If things keep going the way they are, the child will not get his tropical paradise.
Stan: [apologetically] We're sorry! We'll, we'll never download music for free again!
Detective: [somberly, dramatically] Man must learn to think of these horrible outcomes before he acts selfishly or else... I fear... recording artists will be forever doomed to a life of only semi-luxury.
Shouldn't it be the 200% error? The number they gave was 300% of the new one, but they were wrong by 200% in the same way that 110 is 110% of 100 but only 10% wrong.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Dan Glickman: Researchers? We're an organization of lawyers, not scienticians! We make the numbers, not find them. But it can't be too high or it will be unrealistic and people will ask questions but the higher it is, the more blame we can put on it.
MPAA Secretary: 50 percent?
Dan Glickman: Too high, go lower.
MPAA Secretary: 30 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 40 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 45 percent?
Dan Glickman: Lower.
MPAA Secretary: 41 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 42 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 43 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 44 percent?
Dan Glickman: Ding ding ding!
MPAA Secretary: But sir, that's a lot of money, what if they ask questions?
Dan Glickman: Oh, grow up, it's in PowerPoint! PowerPoint is never wrong. Rocket scientists don't even question what's in PowerPoint! What is your problem?
In all seriousness though, I've drawn up solutions on green engineering paper in the middle of meetings with pencil and everytime my boss hated it. But if I went back to my desk and made a box with a computer pointing to another box full of fecal matter in PowerPoint, management gobbles that right up without asking any questions.
My work here is dung.
If you look down the weekly box office totals, you see numbers like 40 million for #1, on down to 1 million for #10. Even if the take was only 100 million for a week, that's still not a shortage of cash to any business I know about. How many industries gross 100 million per week?
I'd think that if downloading were really having a huge impact, that number would be more like 10 million a week total for the box office top 10 movies.
stuff |
It always seems those that try to practice game theory in real life always seem to neglect that being nice to each other has advantages in the game as well; and that being mean can offset any of the apparent gains had from following a skewed model that would ignore human emotion.
:(
The *IAAs just need a bit of lovin'
I loved this! Says it all!
Well it's a bit like invading Iraq, they have those WMDs that can be fired in 45 minutes and hit credible targets, lets go to war and make millions for some and let you and I pay for years for the folly. well the MPAA has or is getting their laws, so what the hey. Money Money Money, Lies Lies Lies
Don't look at the grosses alone. 40 million for Evil Dead II is a huge profit. 40 million for The Golden Compass would be a humiliating loss for the studio, prompting firings and fervent prayers to the dark lord Shabranigdo that the film makes more money on DVD/merchandise sales and foreign releases.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
...if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Ooops, sorry, insta-Godwin.
But we see the same tactics from the RIAA all the time - persistently referring to copyright infringement as stealing (maybe I should redefine "RIAA executive" as "sex offender"? I'd love to be able to change the meanings of legally applicable terms to suit my preference), persistently telling us that "piracy" loses a magical $X billion from the economy every year, that it supports terrorism/drug dealers/the mafia/anyone else seen as "bad". Lies. More lies. TFA (a good, polite rant) is just a catalogue of their lies and, occasionally spin-tastic back-pedalling. And yet such an organisation is not only allowed to exist, but to get in bed with the government too? And now they want to get their greasy paws on every privately owned internet connection in the US?
Sorry, no. I think my insta-Godwin was half-warranted in the case of these capricious fucks.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
You're not downloading anything; you're just ripping the contents of the discs you bought and paid for. I have no argument with what you're doing, since I myself rip CDs that I've bought in order to put the music on my iPod, and also rip the DVDs I buy. Sure, it violates the law. I refuse to give a shit. I bought it, it's mine, and the MPAA can discuss their objections with the Devil down in Hell.
I was asking about the w4r3z kiddies who insist on wasting disc and bandwidth downloading bootleg media that they didn't pay for. If you're not willing to pay cash for it, then why waste disc space and bandwidth downloading it via P2P, considering that both cost money?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
people will trade movies online. for free. without any limitations. they just will, get used to it. no matter what laws anyone passes. end of story, there really is no alternative to that future
movies will still be made for $100 million. the studios will just make their money only in the theatres. there just will be no more online/ dvd/ vhs aftermarket
oh yeah, remember the vhs? that the studios fought tooth and nail in the 1980s because it was going to kill their movie business? which they now count as a huge cash cow? and which they now vigorously defend? pffft. yeah, like those guys understand a damn thing about what they are talking about
people announced the death of the moviehouse in the 1950s. why? television. this was two decades before "Jaws" and the birth of the summer blockbuster. some genius prognostication there, huh? same with those predicting the internet, and the hdtv, and all of that will kill the theatre. uh, no. history repeating itself. the theatre business is secure, really
studios will still make lots of money, people will still jam movie houses, no matter what a bunch of asocial slashdotters in their parent's basement say. watching anime on a 17 inch monitor by yourself in your basement is NOT a threat to people going to the movies on dates, in families, in groups, to see the blockbuster first, etc. no matter what technological advance is made. seriously
hollywood: you're just going to have to wean yourself of the dvd aftermarket. there will be nothing online to match that cash cow, and the internet is going to kill that cash cow. go ahead and pass a bunch of laws, pay off some congressman, step up in enforcement. doesn't matter in the least. that cash cow is going bye bye, nothing is going to replace it. deal with that, nothing is changing that fact
just put yourself in your 1980s "the aftermarket is going to kill the movie business!" point of view, you'll get used to the change
morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Quick thought.... do most people have a dedicated T1 line for downloading movies at high speeds an en masse?
... we don't? They failed to compensate for the gamers...!! THE GAAMMERRSS!!!
I have DSL, most people have what... Comcast? I just don't think the technology is there and commonly available at a price we can afford to make the average college student some huge pirate. Most of us play CS/WoW/TF2... and uhhh.. we don't like our latency slowed down by downloading movies...so
Slashdot is too nerdy for me.
According to this Ars Technica article ( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060505-6761.html ), the $6.1 billion that the MPAA claims is lost to piracy is a highly inflated number. Ok, I'll pause while everyone says "Well, DUH!".... ... done? ... ok, good. Let's proceed.
Apparently, "bootlegging" costs them $2.4 million. This is typically "hard piracy" or a guy on a street corner selling a copied DVD for $5. Let's give the MPAA this figure.
The next portion is $1.4 billion "lost" to illegal copying. Now this isn't someone putting Star Wars up on a P2P network. This is someone taking their Star Wars DVD and making a backup copy of it. Apparently, the MPAA feels that you should pay for backup copies and not doing so is costing them money. This is likely just a load of horse manure, but let's leave it be for now because the next one is what really interests me.
Finally, they claim $2.3 billion in losses to "internet piracy". Since they claim that most of the losses are overseas (say, 40%) and 15% of the US Internet piracy happens on campuses, that's $138 million ($2.3 Billion * 0.4 * 0.15). Now, they also are claiming that each P2P copy downloaded is a lost sale. I disagree with that and think that the real "lost sales" figures are far lower. I'm willing to grant them a compromise, though, and assume that a one in three downloaded copies is a lost sale. This takes the losses figure down to $46 million. Finally, some of those "lost sales" would have been used copies, rentals, or other legal "reduced cost" methods. So let's assume that this takes reduces their revenue by 20% (again, being generous)*. This takes their Internet Piracy loss down to just under $37 million.
So for $37 million lost annually, the MPAA wants severe Federal laws that would deny students a college education if someone else on the campus pirates a movie?
* Ok, I pulled a lot of the numbers out of my behind, but so did the MPAA. At least my numbers are likely to be closer to reality.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I was reminded of that particular South Park episode (Faith+1) after reading the summary (no of course I didn't RTFA, this IS slashdot afterall ;) about how they want to educate college students about the dangers of piracy.
The reason I posted that transcript is because I think it is rather bizarre that educational institutions must educate their (presumably piss poor) students about piracy, inorder to save some already ultra rich assholes obsolete business model.
I agree that corporate parasites are the ones making the most money of album sales, so im not buying into anything, but thanks for pointing it out :).
Sure, and Benito Mussolini got the trains to run on time. One doesn't earn forgiveness for a mountain of fuckups by doing a few things right.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I have been looking, and I've seen many of the films you've mentioned. However, the exceptions you cite do not invalidate Sturgeon's Law: 90% of the MPAA member studios' output is crap.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It reminds me of Team America World Police, "We will write you an open letter asking you to explain your motives!"
./'ers continue to consume the cartel's product, or steal it. Both of which are wrong and just start another round of circle jerk.
And yet, nearly all of the righteous
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Wait for it....
What the **AA still are not telling us is how and where they found what proof (if any) that P2P file sharing is hurting their business, nor have the quantified how the quality of their product taints that estimate. Remember that old adage about comparing apples and oranges?
Now, factor in the damage done by Radiohead or NIN. How does that affect their bottom line, and tell me in dollars and cents because wild ass guesses are not good enough in a court of law where they are claiming dollar and cent damages.
Better still, if they are %200+ wrong on their calculations for damages, couldn't that be called criminal? I had always been told that lying in court is a criminal offence.
I believe that a court of law should question any claim of damage that does not account for losses due to other natural business related damage to revenue. Seriously, if they can not quantify their losses due to having crap products, their estimate of losses due to copyright theft is just noise, and stinks like it was made by escaping gases from their collective asses.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Actually, I was thinking of Eastern Europe. Poland, the Czech and Slovakian Republics, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, etc. I'd suggest East Germany as well, but the reunified Germany has also slid into statism. Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't brought down in a year. It takes time to build a tyranny, most of the groundwork is laid behind the scenes, and it takes time to tear one down as well. Hell, it took 70 years to bring down the Soviet Union.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I don't know what universe the author came from, but colleges DO NOT respect copyrights. Just checkout all the photocopied and bound books in the departmental libraries.
which allows the MPAA and RIAA to brand these people easily.
Its the old and stupid "Get back at the man" mentality. Its vindictive and childish. As such the people who act this way are the least likely to be able to do anything rationale meaning their "plight" if prolonged. Prolonged until they get supplanted by people who do things with maturity.
Right now its this face that the RIAA/MPAA presents as its opposition, a face that the public can easily ignore as something it wants no association with. Whereas the entertainment industry does get the favor of the public by enlisting the very people who could be its downfall. Seen the recent Cloverfield use of the net? How many got caught up in it (not people from here mind you, but I bet a good number from here did). The latest American idol feeds right into the RIAA... you and I all know people caught up in this.
As long as the xxAA can portray themselves in the Cloverfield and American Idol methods while casting those opposed as the pirate, losers, outcasts, they aren't going to be threatened by anything.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
For that to happen, colleges and universities will have to stop being dens of digital piracy. Everybody who's been to college in the last 10 or 15 years knows it's true. Slashdot it being ridiculous, ignoring well-known facts because they happen to disagree with their argument.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You're probably just remembering the good videogames, and have forgotten (or never played) the crappy ones. Remember Tengen?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Cultural literacy as a reason to download bootleg music/movies? That's new to me. I'm not sure I buy it. If I wanted to talk with a fan of Lost, I wouldn't bother watching the show on TV or downloading bootleg copies. I'd just find a plot summary on the net.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
No insta-Godwin for you...
tv didn't kill the theatre in the 1950s. the theatre kept growing
why?
they did studies. it's sort of a post-modern church. psychologiclly, people go there to feel like part of a community, the other gasps, laughs, etc. in a movie house heighten the experience. yes, dorothy, that effect is taking into account the crying babies, the asshole with the cell phone, etc.
seriously: the hdtv, internet movies, etc. will not alter the money made at theatres. because its a controlled venue, a must have experience. its psychology
you probably still have a lovely retort to my point
your point also applies to the television
why didn't tv kill the theatre in the 1950s?
case closed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
THE TRUTH!
A nation cannot "recover" from tyranny as if it were just another illness for the body politic to fight off. The natural course of all governments, no matter how carefully designed, is to obtain more power and become more meddlesome. The end result is always tyranny. It happened in Rome, it happened all over Europe and Asia, and it's happening in the United States. All we can do is either keep our heads down until the current tyranny destroys itself and try to pick up the pieces, or die with rifles in our hands and a regret in our hearts that we had but one life to give for our country. The USA is fucked. Better luck next time, folks.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
What is the most tiring is that the media outlet continue to eat what the MPAA/RIAA are feeding them
They are one and the same industry. When you turn on a radio or TV, you open a channel from their ass to your mind.
Neither are flat earthers or creationists. Because it's only a lie if the person saying it knows it's not true.
When head of the MPAA a couple of decades ago Jack Valenti said "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack The Ripper was to women".
In short, they're not liars. They're just stupid.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
When I was in college, every student paid a $10/semester fee in return for access to all city buses.
Just do the same thing for the music. $10/semester in exchange for free/unlimited internet access to music.
At my school alone, that would be over $600,000 per semester. Canada has the blank-media tax, seems to work there doesn't it?
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
When I entered college in 2001, my college was engaged in a serious effort to show all incoming freshman a film depicting the trouble of over-indulging in alcohol and the risks of taking advantage of women while they are intoxicated. To me, this is a real serious concern because of the way lives can be ruined during only a single thoughtless night of events.
I hardly think "copyright" should even be considered in the same ballpark as "rape". If the music industry really has a problem with college students, they should fund their own damned "info sessions" and see how effective it is.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
My "rather dire attitude" towards the US is not objective, and I don't think I ever claimed it was. The American people are going to get the government they deserve after decades of believing politicians who claim to be able to buy prosperity with taxes and deficit spending, and they're going to get it good and hard. Just watch and wait -- preferably from a safe distance.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
"Guess we'll have to get used to a future with less then. Kind of a shame that people are so self centered and greedy they can't be bothered to respect people who produce works."
quality and financial outlay is a funny thing. the golden age of high quality cinema is from an age when hollywood only made money from theatres. and i don't know about you, but i've seen plenty of $100 million dollar pieces of shit, and plenty of $100,000 gems. as for "respect" i don't think the royalty of the incans or aztecs got much respect from the spanish either. yet, they went the way of hisotry nonetheless. so it is with making money in the dvd aftermarket. sorry. why don't you go grumble about it with that chimney sweep and that blacksmith over there: technological progress isn't fair, there are losers in it in certain segments of society. but who benefits is SOCIETY AS A WHOLE. oh well. deal with it loser
"Somehow I doubt they'd risk spending $100 million on something that must make all its money back in the theater. But trading won't threaten movies like that, it'll threaten smaller budget works whose production budget is based on the idea of recouping the costs on DVD sales. Of course you (and the mass of warez fiends) simply will not have any part of this "paying others for their work.""
i already addressed the more $ spent=more quality joke. as for who i am with my "warez fiends": kindly look at my sig. who am i now again? blindly shoehorning your ideological opponent into a retarded stereotype does not allow you to win the argument. it merely walls you off from reality
"Filesharing brings nothing unique to the table. It just takes the works that would be in movie theaters and on TV and shoves them over the internet, with no respect shown to those who created them. Or if you're the pirate bay, with arrogance, a childish attitutde, and while generating revenue off it."
ah, there's that misplaced notion of what respect means again. in your mind apparently, respect consists of a frozen-in-time consideration of how things work in society, and that will never change. your blind. your mind is closed. that just because at one point in time, people got on boats to go around africa to go to india, that now they have a canal in egypt, they aren't showing "respect" to the supply depot in capetown. that just because once people rode sailboats, and now they ride steamboats, they aren't showing "respect" to sailmakers. what you call "respect" isn't the real concept of respect at all. it is "this is the way things work and that will enver change and if someone tries to change it they are being immoral". when what they are actually doing is doing things BETTER
things change einstein. learn that, or become antiquated and irrelevant. because that's currently the quality of your thoughts on this subject. you should go talk with the executives at de beers about diamonds. they share your notion of what "respect" is all about: artificially propping up a false market in the face of technological change
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Look at how much money they make! if they even put 10% of that into buying politicians every law could be rewritten!
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
OK, what's your take on this situation? I pay $60/month or whatever it is for satellite TV service (Star Choice in Canada). That includes a whole bunch of HD channels. However, none of the HD receivers I can buy (without spending $700 for a hacked one) let me output a high definition feed to my computer, which runs my PVR.
If you're paying for access, then I see no reason to apply the "I bought it, it's mine, fuck you!" principle.Taking this to the next step (which, as you will note, I have not as I still pay for satellite service), if I can't watch the HD programming that I'm PAYING FOR anyway in the way that I want to watch it, and it's easier and cheaper for me to downloading it from the internet, why am I paying for TV service anyway?
Don't ask me. I haven't watched TV since 1996. One night I was channel surfing, didn't find anything I wanted to see, and decided that I had had enough. Even the pay-per-view porn was tame. As far as I'm concerned, only a sucker would pay for the privilege of having 500 channels and nothing to watch.I write sci-fi for metalheads
I always thought BET was a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel. Hmm...learn something new everyday.
... people actually have varying tastes, which means they might like different movies and music to you. They never "foist", they offer. They give you the opportunity to pay money to see the movie, or listen to the music that they (as an organisation) created. If it's not to your tastes, that's absolutely fine. The problem is those who find those movies/songs to their tastes, but decide they'll skip their end of the deal.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues,
So that's why they (or at least some of them) are trying to force universities that do not have anti-piracy infrastructures (filters, monitoring, etc) in place to lose their federal funding? Wow, that does show a lot of respect.
I think that the MPAA and RIAA should not be allowed to interfere with anything regarding universities, except maybe as cases to analyze in the law schools. They're proposing probably millions of dollars of additions/changes to universities' infrastructures, no doubt causing higher tuitions, and if some university fails to meet the expectations of the [MPAA|RIAA], all of the innocent college students face the possibility of having a government subsidized student loan or whatever.
Where does it stop? An RIAA officer on guard outside every dorm to search and "digitally frisk" each student for downloaded music as they enter their dorm? (I think if that happened, I might want to invest in some rope ladder stock.)
And they said zombies weren't real!
I write sci-fi for metalheads
We need a MLAA (Music Lovers Association of America) to lobby for our rights! I mean seriously all this talk goes on about the **AA's plight to exploit and inability to adapt to reality but whats getting done about it? If anything, i sure haven't heard about it. Something needs to happen other than a thousands of "fix the music industry" plans on people's blogs and discussions in forums. Maybe not a MLAA but, i dunno, a boycott or something.
"colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy"
:(
That really got me thinking. The more I thought about it, the more I believe it is true. I started out with BBS boards and handles, where you had to be voted in. A 14.4 Modem was Godly. I only had a 2800 baud.
My whole life as a child, I was on those boards pirating the bejeezus out of ANYTHING. Going into college, it WAS a den of digital piracy. I almost had a wet dream awake the first time I saw a download at 30KB/s. There are some months, in which I actually had EVERY single piracy release. Not joking either. I got some closets full of 1000+ CD's/DVD's that have the original piracy releases on them.
That being said, the RIAA and MPAA may be fighting a battle that was pointless from the start.
My PARENTS bought me video games when I was child. They purchased books for me, as well as movie tickets. They also bought a large number of movies on VHS, and later on Laserdisc for me to watch with my friends when they spent the night over. My father bought all the software. I was privileged to learn on expensive Autocad and 3D studio licenses.
When I became an adult and started making money, I actually started to buy certain pieces of software and video games. I don't think I ever even realized I was doing it.
I now remember, that I purchased Total Annihilation, Diablo's, Command & Conquer, etc. I got Dungeon Siege, Baldur's Gate, and many others pirated.... yet when I look at my bookcase.... I can see the original boxes sitting there....
My PSX, PS2, and XBOX are all modchipped and running backup copies of the games. I have huge libraries of console games downloaded and yet..... in my bookcase is like 30 of my favorites in their original boxes.....
Hell, when I think about it now.... All of my friends, which are out of college, purchase movies, books, video games, music and software. HOLY SHIT..... My systems in the house are on LICENSED COPIES OF MICROSHAFT!!! All of the software on my system is properly LICENSED! WTF??!
Now, I of course don't have DRM'd content, and I routinely pirate and crack my software so it does not phone home, but is it "piracy" to run a pirated, NON-DRM'd copy of something after you paid?
Just maybe... Just Maybe... The RIAA and MPAA are spending hundreds of millions to fight for sales that would have never occured in the first place. I never had any money growing up, but now apparently I do buy things. Just Maybe those college students still end up being good consumers.
So just what are they fighting for again?
The VHS situation is different than the internet situation. VHS video recorders could copy a movie, but they could not be used to search for a movie, whereas nowadays every digital item is two clicks away.
The real problem with MPAA is not that piracy is not theft, but its motives. The real motive behind MPAA is not that "piracy is bad", but that "we are not as filthy rich as we could be if you did not copy our data". So, since the rich don't play fair, it's only justified to copy a movie for personal use (not for profit).
For the rest of the story, some may no doubt remember the 2003 paper "Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process" by Byers, Cranor, Kormann, McDaniel, and Cronin.
One of their very analytical conclusions is that "[o]f the 285 movie samples we examined, 77% appear to have been leaked originally by industry insiders."
aps.