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MPAA Plans To Launch Movie Links Site
eldavojohn writes "To combat piracy, the MPAA's latest idea involves a site that would allow users to search for a movie and then provide links to legit legal downloads or ticket purchases for it. Why are they doing this? Because their research showed 'many users have a hard time differentiating between legal and illegal content online.' And all this time I thought people pirated movies because it was cheaper to do! Turns out they were just confused."
Normally, I would pirate a movie because it's free, has no DRM, and is available at any time (even while the movie is still playing in theaters). Then when it came out on DVD or Blu-ray later, I would buy it and give the filmmaker their fair cut (I'm not not looking to rip them off, I just want a copy of the movie to play at home).
But now that the MPAA has given me a chance to pay money to download from a piss-poor selection of movies that are all crippled by DRM, all I can say is "Thank God!" I mean, what I really want is a poor quality copy of a movie that requires me to connect to the internet and get the studio okay every time I watch it, won't let me make copies or share it with friends, and costs just as much as if I went and bought it on DVD (with the added bonus of none of the DVD extra content).
Yep, the MPAA finally gets it!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Turns out they were just confused.
Wait a minute... legal's the one you get for free, right?
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
Yes, because whenever I'm downloading movies, I'm always confused where I should insert the quarters...
As it turns out, the floppy drive isn't such a good idea.
One reason many people commit copyright infringement of movies is because the p2p programs provide a simpler, faster way to find what you're looking for, all from a central location. If this really indexes everything available, and is quick and simple to use, I think it might actually see significant use.
Obviously it won't stop all infringement, but it's a much saner response than suing your customers.
Watch out for the fine print for one, and two this is a press release equivalent.
This is an "ohhh, sure, we're going to do this" followed by a "well, not enough people followed it, so we're dropping it". That or it will be DRM laden enough that it's a flaming piece of turd. This is a complete unsubstantiated claim by the MPAA right now.
I wouldn't be surprised if they simply restore that one download site they created before that was dropped...maybe someone else remembers the name. The day MPAA offers "legit online downloads" means the day they accept piracy.
Confusion - that is how I will plead.
I was recently trying to find a music track. Happy to go legal, but I wanted it in MP3 format, but there were lots of crap sites that got spidered, but when I clicked took me to sites which only had it in Windows Media.
In the end, I bought a second hand CD and ripped it.
But a site that allows you to search for a movie/music track, where you specify the target/format seems like a good idea.
If you don't buy anything they'll record your IP and launch a lawsuit.
"Batman thepiratebay torrent" did not yield any results.
Is it just me being paranoid or have I learned my lesson from the whole MediaSentry debacle?
The ability for MPAA to log your IP and your search query gives them a precise target to look for in whatever data they collect from various filesharing networks (with the help of either MediaSentry or someone else).
I know I am sounding paranoid, but at this point I would not be surprised.
How about they link us to fairly priced movies?
Fuck paying DVD prices for a crappy quality movie you can't burn to your own DVD. You get no packaging, no extra materials, no DVD, nothing except for the movie file itself. All for the same price. Wal-Mart is a few minutes down the road and if I catch them on a sale, the WM version can be cheaper than the online version!
If the download version were quite a bit cheaper than the real version, hell, I'd do that before I bought the movie most likely.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
...is for someone to steal the template of their shitty site and make a duplicate site that only serves up illegal links (ala the late great TV-Links and the numerous alternatives that appeared when it shut down).
That way, we get what we want AND completely undermine their "consumers are just confused" charade.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
"...their research showed many users have a hard time differentiating between legal and illegal content online."
Were these users interrogated under a heat lamp in a dark room with the usual good cop bad cop routine?
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.
But what I really wanted was a reliable and LEGAL way to download content. Sure, I'll pay $3 to rent a movie with a 72-hour DRM on it. Heck, I used to pay $3-5 to rent movies off of Charter's on demand system. If a movie is worth watching twice, I'll go buy it, if not, I'll rent it for a night, enjoy the show, and not clutter up my house with yet another DVD that I'm not going to watch. I'm fine with that, so long as it plays with out difficulty, and allows ample time to see the movie. But, at the time, there was no functional way to achieve this.
If this new service offers that opportunity, even if it is just a standardized public listing, I'm all for it. Open up an API and let us integrate it into other systems.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I actually have no clue where any of these websites are that allow you to download movies or what their terms are. So in the end, I guess this website they're planning can't be that bad as long as they list reasonable alternatives to the whole "piracy" thingy.
I don't think this will change my habits. I like to download a movie before I buy it or even go to see it in a theater. Remember, part of the theater experience is the comfortable seats with a large screen and surround sound. And, you know, the opportunity to do a chick in the back seats and get arrested for indecent exposure.
Seriously, those comments up to know just prove the MPAA to be perfectly correct.
In fact, i think it is a great idea, as it might show them that decent offers will get sales.
Because right now, _I_ wouldnt know where to to buy movie ***** if i felt like it.
Music? Yeah, amazon or itunes. But movies still feels like an unexplored country.
And i am sure that DRM-free movies wont take as long as DRM-free music did. Because music is a medium thats shared/swapped/used repeatably in a much larger degree.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
People don't download copies of movies because they're free, but because they're free.
When you get a download from a P2P network, you get no DRM, no country restriction, no copy restriction, no media restriction, no troubles, no fuss, just a movie.
When you buy a movie, there's a chance that your player won't read it (because it's a DVD-Rom drive instead of a standalone player, which I don't have and don't see any reason to get), a near certainty that you can't put the movie on your server (which makes it much more convenient to play than to search for the DVD every time you want to play it), a good chance that a "foreign" movie gives you some headaches and no chance to put it on your mobile device (and for some odd reason, I don't see the reason to pay twice for content).
Here's your reason for copying. It's convenience, that's all. Care to tell me how I should explain people to pay for something AND have more hassle using it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is one of those debates I find fun because pretty much everyone is wrong. If you're getting something for free that you normally have to pay for, how is that not illegal?
It's like the pennies in the tray at the cash register...
It's a trap!
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
ME: Your Honor, honestly. I couldn't tell that the file I downloaded wasn't legal.
JUDGE: The photos of nude people advertising porn sites on the download pages should have set off a flag.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"The /. crowd is pretty savvy, but surveys have shown that over 50% of Internet users, especially overseas, believe P2P content is LEGAL. I knew the Napster people, and most Napster users also believed that Napster was 100% legal."
Keep in mind that in some foreign countries they ARE legal.
"People sincerely believe all sorts of obviously wrong things all the time. 30% of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. 60-70% of Americans believe in Creationism. etc."
Belief is a funny thing, especially when there is a kernel of truth in there. I believe Obama _was_ a Muslim the same way my Dad _was_ Lutheran - he was born into the religion by nature of having at least 1 parent as a member. He converted to Catholicism about 20 years after marrying my Mom, and Dad never really practiced his religion either (still doesn't, really), but he's not going to deny it and say "No, I was never a Lutheran". The rhetorical contortions the Obama camp are going through to avoid the "M" word just feed the perception that he has something to hide.
But the Creationists are just idiots.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Huh, I thought there were only two, well I guess three is enough...
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Are you saying Christians don't believe in the existence of copyright law or Barack Obama? That's a pretty wide-sweeping generalization. I know it may be hard to explain things to christians when their only reponse is "Because it's in the bible", but surely some of them must have some sense of reason.
I remember using scour.net back in the day (1997) to download my mp3s. I thought it was cool because people could share their music, just like copying a casette tape or recording a song off the radio. Back then you were lucky to find an mp3 ripped at 128kbps (most often they were 64 or 92). I knew copying games was wrong (though I did it anyway), but music just seemed like an innoecent thing to copy when I was 15. I know now that copyright infringement is wrong, and that I am violating the law even by watching or listening to legitamately purchased CDs and DVDs.
The problem with people today isn't that they think something is okay to do, they just don't care. There's a wierd sense of entitlement that people have these days (mp3/divx pirating, OpenSource, etc...). Until people realize that things have value (even if not to them personally), and that taking anything of value is wrong, they will continue to loot and steal and pirate.
I know, I know, self-responsibility went the way of the dinosaurs. There are some things the music and movie industry CAN do to help the issue out. First, reduce the price. Why does a CD cost me $15-$20 in the store? Unlike a movie, there's really no upfront cost right? There are no sets to build, locations to fly to, etc.... All you need is the artist (who should get paid based on the success of their music) and a well-trained sound-editor. After that, it's an arbitrary amount of money to print and distribute the physical media. As for movies, you should have made back your investment in the initial theater release (7.50 is pretty cheap for a matinee these days). The DVD's are pure profit (I've seen some real shitty DVD menus so I know there's no money going into DVD development). Why do I need to pay $20-$30 for a "brand-new release" when I saw the movie in the theater 3-months earlier.
These industries should be realizing that the large profit margins they've enjoyed up to this point simply won't hold. People are revolting [against the studios], but rather than adjust to meet the demands, the studios are simply alienating everyone from their product. Charging more to protect your profits certainly isn't going to convince more people to pay for your product, and will just drive away those who could barely afford to pay what your were already asking. I know I personally have bought only 4 CDs in the last 5 years, have never paid to download a DRM-crippled song or album, and wait till a moive hits the $5 bin at Wal-Mart, but I also have the good sense to just live-without rather than illegally download something I can't get for the price I want.
On the plus side, there are lots of MP3 stores out now (Rhapsidy, etc...) so maybe I'll finally get to listen to some recent music.
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
.. in the file sharing software! Okay, I'm not suggesting most people who download music or movies don't know it's illegal, but working in a PC store, I've seen some genuinely confused people. People who paid money for Limewire or some other software and then thought they were legally allowed to download as much music as they liked.
Because their research showed 'many users have a hard time differentiating between legal and illegal content online.
I have this problem everytime. It's hard for me to discriminate between a DVD rent at 4$ and a DRMed download at 9.99$ and still come out believing it's not a plain robbery. Good MPAA that's the way to go...
youtube docet ;) plenty of movies to watch.
Well, you were good through the first sentence anyways. I have a non-practicing-effectively-atheist Jewish father and a doesn't-practice-anymore Christian (maybe?) mother. I've always been an atheist. Yes, I was born into a half-Jewish-half-Christian family and while I managed to snag presents for both religions never believed in or practiced either. If your father practiced Lutheranism (?) and no longer does that's one thing, but I get the impression that he's never been religious and has just inherited a false title.
Thirded on the creationists being idiots, though.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I was always confused if my pr0n was legit or not. In fact, not only was I confused, but it upset me morally that I had no reasonable method of determining whether or not such and such gang bang XXX was a pirated copy or not. I tried watching the entire flick multiple times, immersed myself in the genre, but never found a solution. I can die in peace now.
Failure formatting five FAQs of financial facts.
You think they have links for downloading Steal This Film?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
...that everytime RIAA, MPAA, Porn, Iphone, etc. are brought up in a subject line, /. users come to life and fill the thread with lines and lines of text.
To say those terms are "thought provoking" is an understatement.
In any case, to make my version short: MPAA/RIAA should change their business model, admit they won't profit as much as they did before, and move on. Baby steps...
Ok. Name a *less* intrusive DRM system
You don't seem to get it, any drm system period is an utter insult to me, and to most people here.
They require proprietary formats, which lock out superior OSS playback tools (as well as many OTHER proprietary ones), and subsist because of a law which has utterly destroyed competition and innovation in playback and recording technology.
Their presence is an accusation of criminality, and a proclamation that i'm not allowed to own what I buy.
I don't want a corporation circumventing judicial review and due process to manage my digital rights!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Could the people in this research perhaps have also voted in a certain election in Florida?
Complaining about iTunes installing Quicktime is like complaining about the VLC Player installing the VLC Libraries.
Yeah, I can see that. So where do I sign up to complain about QuickTime installing iTunes? All I wanted to do was view a movie trailer, and I ended up having to fight my pc for half an hour to get that useless piece of software back out of my pc. Then, a week later, QuickTime updated itself and put iTunes back on when I wasn't looking. I never planned on buying anything from iTunes, but now I plan on never buying anything from Apple. It is now my firm belief that Apple is just as evil as any other BigCorp(tm). I don't want to own an iAnything, and their software can go fly a kite, too.
We need some sort of standardized, cross-platform system for DRM.
No.
Not just no, but Hell no.
What we actually need is no DRM. When you play the arms race game, someone has to lose. When the two players are the content providers and the people who purchase the content, having either side lose means that both do. Lose-lose was never a good outcome, in my book.
Besides, there's always the analog hole.
You want non-intrusive DRM? Do what I do; Rip every piece of media you own, and don't buy into the over-hyped digital bullshit. These store-bought disks are my music, they're my movies, and I'll watch and listen to them when I want, where I want, and how I want. Don't settle for anything less than full satisfaction.
I refuse to purchase anything that doesn't give me physical media and/or a complete lack of encumbrance. Besides, copying stuff is the American Way, we've been Xeroxing wrappers for our VHS tapes and audio cassettes for decades. What are the big corporations going to do when the RepRap (a 3D printer that uses polymer resin, google it for more info) becomes wildly popular? Make it illegal to do your own 3D modelling? It's time they wake up and smell the new paradigm they're living in. I'm tired of them stinking up the place.
--
MAFIA: Music And Film Industries of America - harassing customers for fun and profit!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
10 - Plays on everything (no DRM)
9 - No DRM
8 - No need for an internet connection (no DRM)
7 - My 4 yr old wont scratch it
6 - I don't have to rewind (or put it back in the case)
5 - No trailers (I bought the movie, why do I need to watch trailers?!?)
4 - No DVD menus (I don't want wait 2 minutes to watch a mandatory intro to the movie I'm about it watch)
3 - I can't even choose what commands work on my remote (looks like they blocked the Menu button here, or I can't fast forward this part, etc)
2 - I can find nearly any movie in DVD quality in under 30 seconds.
1 - No FBI warning
I open this up to everyone, how much would you pay for a movie that was not high quality, lets say downloaded in a reasonable amount of time to your computer, could only be used on one computer (extra for more?), and did not let you burn it? My personal say is $2.50. Not because that's how much the Lockness Monster wants, but because I only buy movies for around $10. When they have no bonus features, but come in a box, and I can view them on any machine capable of playing DVDs, and can let my friends borrow them for free (oh shit, is that illegal now?); I feel they are worth $10. I only pay $16 or $17 for new releases at Target or BestBuy etc, but they come with lots of cool stuff and the chance to buy other movies only slightly related to the one I purchased for $5. So $2.50 is how much I'd pay for my laptop to play DVDs, why use my iMac when I have a tv? The only reason I'd download these movies is to play them on my IBM laptop with zero battery life (I hate how an older laptop becomes a desktop, you know?)
... is very simple: I do not go on cinema to see one film on - at most - VCD quality (cinema quality on my city is a big issue), and I don't like to use a full-bloatware winDVD or Cyberlink to view a "original" DVD (use only Media Player Classic, but he can't open original CSS-protected DVDs)
obs: sorry the bad english, is difficult to translate brazilian to english into a way you can understood my idea
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
A couple weeks ago, a relative wanted me to download about 40 songs for free using one of the P2P services to be burned onto CDs. After explaining to them that obtaining songs this way would be a great way to get sued and showing them iTunes Music Store as an alternative, they got upset about the fact that it would cost them money to obtain same the music they could find for free elsewhere.
The mindset here, is that if it were illegal to obtain copyrighted materials for free from a P2P service, then why are these services allowed to host the files in the first place? They don't comprehend the dynamic nature of P2P networks that makes it nearly impossible to shut down such a service or impose any content enforcement on it. They just see P2P services as a single entity that exists at a fixed location in the real world.
What's more interesting, is that the older a given person is, the more likely they are to have similar hang-ups, simply because they aren't savvy enough to see it any other way.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Indeed, so if they made it easy and convenient to watch their content for free from, say, any 'net connected set top box - embedding trailers and ads in the file while they're at it to recover some costs and linking directly to the online store for plastic-disc editions and merchandise that might solve their problem. Say, a bit like this: http://yro.slashdot.org/~cyclomedia/journal/207197
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
just curious... how do you deal with this 'utter insult'. Do you pirate the music, or not listen to it at all?
And are you utterly insulted by security guards, cameras and security tags in clothes stores? Or are they ok?
How about the unique identifier that they screw to the front and back of every car to assist the authorities in prosecuting you if you break the law. are they ok? or does your car have no plates?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
...I never knew what to do with all those pesky plastic discs.
SKEET!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Only if the security guards and cameras are in my house. Also, I don't know about you, but the cashier usually removes the security tags on clothes I bought before I leave the store.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Piracy will always be prevalent as long as the MPAA follows the antiquated, anachronistic practice of releasing movies exclusively in theatres for their first several months.
You'd see piracy go down a lot if all new movies were released straight to DVD.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Examples include, but are not limited to registering multiple file types to open with your own program instead of other programs that the user may have installed, displaying the icons of your app for file types instead of the icons the users already displayed, moving your own codec to a higher priority than other codecs on the system, changing bindings and behaviors of other programs, and perhaps most of all, not provide a method to get back to what the system was like before, even if you uninstall it.
Anecdotal, I know, but my own experience bears this out. I honestly suspect that a high proportion of average folks do assume that if a web site offers something it must be legal ... heck, if it weren't, the site would have been shut down already, right?
(Actually this was usually in the context of TV shows rather than movies, but whatever.)
Keep in mind that in some foreign countries they ARE legal.
In Korea, in Japan, in China? Not legal, but many people there believe it is.
The rhetorical contortions the Obama camp are going through to avoid the "M" word just feed the perception that he has something to hide.
McCain is trying to portray Obama as a "secret Muslim", not as "Obama's father was a Muslim". The thinly-veiled racism inherent in the Republican party is on full display here. And with McCain personally for that matter. He hated MLK and campaigned against the civil rights movement. He was a huge supporter of apartheid. He STILL hates Nelson Mandela and the ANC. He opposed the bill to remove the ANC and Mandela from the terrorist watch list.
I'll only bother demolishing 1 of your "arguments" (for lack of a better term). You say that: "He hated MLK and campaigned against the civil rights movement."
From Wikipedia:
"McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958 and became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. Later that year while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He was held from 1967 to 1973,"
From 54-58, he was in the Naval Academy, where the midshipmen don't have time to jerk off, much less "campaign". 58-67, he was flying planes from aircraft carriers - not exactly a hotbed of political reactionaries. And then from 67-73, he was in a POW camp. When and how, exactly, did he "campaign" against MLK? Got any references? I assume the rest of your screed is similarly well researched.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
He was held from 1967 to 1973
He campaigned against MLK's birthday being made a national holiday, and it's hard not to interpret that as a campaign against MLK. From the same Wikipedia article:
In 1983, McCain was elected to lead the incoming group of Republican representatives.[57] Also that year, he opposed creation of a federal Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but admitted in 2008: "I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support [in 1990] for a state holiday in Arizona."[71][72]