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Film Piracy, Organized Crime and Terrorism
flip-flop writes "The RAND Corporation has just released a lengthy report titled "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism" which attempts to link all three. The authors suggest that organized crime might be financing itself in part through movie piracy (PDF) — and in three out of 14 of their international case studies, they claim that profits from piracy end up with suspected terrorist organizations. But now for the interesting part! Quote from the preface: 'The study was made possible by a grant from the Motion Picture Association (MPA).' Ah, what a surprise..."
The RAND Corporation has made a video summary of the report as well. TorrentFreak has an article disputing some of the report's claims, focusing criticism on RAND's interchangeable use of the terms "piracy" and "counterfeiting" — the report deals with the physical distribution of DVDs, making only brief mention of digital downloads. The MPAA and others have barked up this tree before.
Those replicated disks sold on street corners and at flea markets are a lot closer to what the official studios and producers should be pricing their legit disks at. If they would have gotten a little less price gougy way back when it became so cheap to stamp out disks, they would have nipped so called piracy in the bud. They weould have made it back on much larger volume sales then. Instead they just fixated at a ridiculously bloated "per unit" price and margin level they pulled out of their collective millionaire pointed haired media bosses asses, and now wonder why sales drop off.
Same with digital downloads, the old allofmp3 prices are a lot closer to what online download prices should be. Everyone on the planet knows what it costs to dupe media on disk or download, real legit prices should be just a little more than that and no more. You make entertainment media be closer to impulse buy pricing levels that actually reflect modern tech replication advances, you'll sell a LOT more, and still make profit, but they waited too long to even think about that. All those decisions on prices are made by multi millionaires living a muilti millionaire lifestyle, they have no idea what 10 or 20 bucks is to regular working class folks, they are clueless, zero frame of reference.
Heck, go ahead and absolutely double street pirate prices, that would still be far cheaper than what the **AA members offer now. 10-20 bucks for a download or a stamped disk is ridiculous price gouging.
Semi car analogy, gas prices. If all the biz news said-example- that a barrel of crude was 50 bucks but the prices at the pump were 20 bucks a gallon, people would know they were being price gouged, and no matter how much the oil producers and refiners tried to spin it with "well, it costs us so much to do this and.." people would know that was complete bullshit.
Same with these stupid media prices. I started buying and paying full retail for music in the *50s* and was a pretty loyal albeit smaller scale consumer all the way to the 90s (when disks took over the format) and it become beyond apparent they were systematically and in a huge fashion price gouging. I stopped, no more new entertainment media at those inflated prices. I voted with my wallet, they get zero from me when they used to get a few hundred a year (like I said, not much, but that doesn't count concerts and going to the movie theater either, and that used to be a little closer to serious money than it is today for that matter).
When I start seeing music CDs at two bucks a disk and brand new movies at three bucks a DVD, I'll start buying brand new again, and not until then. Right now, only marked down severely in the bargain bin to those levels or used at pawn shops and yard sales, etc, that's it. And downloads? Even 99 cents for a few megs of music is a huge rip. It needs to be like around a dime. I don't pirate their stuff, but neither will I pay bloated millionaires fantasy prices either. The personal computer and advanced software and disk duplicators has made production costs, especially for music, a *lot* cheaper than it ever was, but official per unit pricing hasn't kept up with that cost savings.
Here's a link for your review.
Please read it before trying to be clever or insightful.See this piracy definition. Piracy IS copyright infringement.
Sorry for completely destroying you with facts and logic, but it had to be done.
Afghan opium would be a severe problem for the so-called "War on Drugs" in the US, a war that the government wages against its own citizens.
We wage so-called wars on organized crime, gangs, and prostitution rings. We have always worked hard to break up criminal operations. Drug users are not some special group that deserve exception.
Just because you have a grip on your addiction doesn't mean a crackhead who is stealing spark plugs and DVD players has the same willpower you do.
If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is people with a pro-drug agenda who think all people have had positive drug experiences just like themselves. We have drug recovery programs for a reason. People have lost their savings, their family, everything they have owned because of an addiction to drugs.
It may not have destroyed your life, but making drugs legal/free/cheap/easier to get will be hell for so many others. In my town we just lost four teenagers in an car accident; they had been smoking salvia (which is legal) beforehand. If we are already struggling with the effects of "legal highs", how much worse will it get when we throw in currently illegal drugs into the mix?
I really wish we could have a "scared straight" program for you pro-drug people, where you could what drug addiction really does to people less fortunate than yourself. You may end up being less fond of letting the masses have drugs legally and cheaply. We struggle enough with alcoholism already, if you haven't noticed.
Really, the masses need some thinning, and maybe drugs are the way to do it. Make them legal, then crack down on people who can't handle it. It's not the drugs that are the problem, it's what people do to get them, and people who are capable of controlling themselves don't have a problem there. There are a lot of things that we protect people from nowadays, and it's leading to the destruction of the human race. Once upon a time if you were an idiot you were likely to take yourself out of the gene pool, now idiots are protected. And like any endangered species, those protections can cause overpopulation if allowed to continue for too long.