Slashdot Mirror
Fighting For Downloaders' Hearts and Minds
iateyourcookies writes "As opposed to enforcement which usually makes the headlines, The BBC is running an article called Inside A Downloader's Head which looks at the film and music industries' attempts to prevent copyright infringement. It details some of the campaigns, their rationale, controversy surrounding them and notes that 'there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.' However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
Information wants to be free. Don't be Jewish with the knowledge.
So they admit they want to control our minds!
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
'fear campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'
"Blue Rubicon attests that 'if you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
That will certainly make a material impact on Blue Rubicon's net profits. But change people's behavior? That's pretty unlikely. History is not on their side.
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?
I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.
Signatures are the new names.
I didn't like the article. While it purports to examine the "other side" of the debate, it does not really seem to consider the possibility that that side might be correct.
...because downloading IS NOT wrong!
Circumcision is child abuse.
...but it seems to escape them that home taping did not kill the music industry! I guess they just think it means their campaign worked.
And of course I could also mention VHS (aka "The Boston Strangler").
I can't justify everything I've downloaded from the pirate bay, however, there are certain instances where I don't feel the least bit sorry:
* I purchased Spore and then downloaded the cracked version, which I installed on my computer, and then edited the system registry to give myself a the key. Sorry, if I purchased a piece of software, I deserve to get at least as good an experience as the pirates do, which means no rootkits.
* Several years ago, I purchased RPG Maker XP. I've gone through several computers since the purchase, and it no longer allows me to activate the software. I'd like to continue using the software that I legitimately paid for, and my only option is to download a cracked, pirated version.
* On many occasions, I've downloaded no-CD cracks for games I've purchased legitimately.
Did I violate the DMCA in these cases? Probably. Do I feel justified in doing so? Absolutely. I shouldn't be locked out of software that I purchase, and when I buy software legitimately, I shouldn't be punished for it with shitty DRM.
Some honest two-way dialog is what's needed, not preaching the old way.
unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect
As a first step I suggest they finish up with DRM, regional coding, overcharging and exploitation of artists. That will certainly leave the downloaders without arguments, and much enhance the effect of any campaign they are planning. I for one would pay more attention to any message if there was cheap, non-DRM'd, varied and easily available music and videos, and a big percentage of the money would go to the authors. Until then, the rationalization for downloading is so easy, it can be confounded with reasoning.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Ok this is coming from someone who actually does download a good half the movies he watches.
It *is* theft. The movie was produced to make money.. and it is quite fair for them to expect that people won't just take it and not pay.
No matter how you water it down, you took something that you didn't pay for. If you can live with that choice, then fine.
But don't go around making up reasons why you're doing the world a favour by saying 'fuck you' to 'the man'.. You're only lying to yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
"Resistance" also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" - that is, a resistance - "to stop the machine."
---
Now, the current length for copyright seems to be 50 years or more after the death of an author. Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell is that limited in any way? The person has been dead for 49 years and his/her work still isn't public domain? What is that crap?
The copyright should be date of publication + 20 years and I don't care if the author is a person or a corporation, nor do I care if the art in question is a song, a tune, a movie, a videogame, a tv show, a book, whatever.
If it was published or released before 1989 then it should be public domain, no exceptions.
In fact, the governments should have web servers so that its citizens can go download the now-public-domain things for free, in open or non-proprietary formats.
there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.
"Principled opposition to copyright itself" is, of course, left out of their range of acceptable dissent.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.
You're absolutely right. All the politics and euphemisms aside, the difference between physical and digital goods is fundamental - one is rival, the other is not. It's really hard to hide that fact, since so much of computers and the Internet are designed to exploit it. So these campaigns to "change hearts and minds" end up trying to convince people that the sky is green.
Now you can argue all day long about how to deal with the differences in rivalry, and underproduction of public goods, tragedy of the commons, etc., and those are important debates to have; but in the end, you still have to face the fact that no matter how much you'd like, digital goods are fundamentally different than physical ones. Those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads don't face that fact, because as we all know, if you could download a car, you would.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Fellow pirates,
I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty. I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong, but if Slashdot posts enough articles bashing the RIAA/MPAA/copyright law/whatever, it's easier for me to accept what I'm doing emotionally by visualizing someone else as the bad guy. Once on the forefront of relevant IT news, Slashdot is now a lame repository of mainstream pseudoscience links and pro-piracy articles to appease a dwindling readership. I am overjoyed.
Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.
I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work. I'm just so used to pirating things now that I take it for granted. If anyone mentions John Carmack to make me feel guilty, I'll look for Slashdot articles that bolster my viewpoint, such as this one, amusingly posted in the Your Rights Online section even though none of my rights are being violated.
According to that study, it's okay to not pay people for their work because there's some vague hope that they'll make up the difference in income through "concerts and speaking tours." Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do. John Carmack must stop programming in order to make money from programming. It's genius. The study does exactly what I need it to--make me feel less guilty when I pirate. We've managed to stretch the truth so far that we're actually telling ourselves that we're helping artists by not paying them for their work. Excellent job.
I look forward to Slashdot telling me everyday who the bad guys are. Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement, and they've pretended to care about plagiarism, we're supposed to go along with Slashdot's anti-copyright agenda. I'm okay with that hypocrisy because it serves me. It makes me feel less guilty when I pirate something. Remember, I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA/MPAA/whatever is. That makes it okay for me to not pay people for their work.
EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL. I don't care, because I'm too busy concerning myself with what I want for free, not about the consequences. I want to get rid of copyrights because I've been told that copyrights are the bad guy, and they are an obstacle to my rampant piracy.
Fellow pirates, let us continue our selfish leeching. Let us paint others as the bad guys to absolve us of our emotional guilt. Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.
Yours truly,
A fellow Slashbot
The core of what is wrong is the abuse, exploitation and extension of copyright law. Region coding is not justifiable as a means to do anything but control multiple prices in multiple markets. Content protection systems (aka DVD-CSS) are not justifiable as it does not prevent copying and only serves to control how and what players are used to access the media that, once purchased, the media companies no longer have any right or entitlement to. And the very idea of DRM is not only a problem in the sense that it grants no rights to the user and that they literally have to "ask permission to access" each and every time the user wants to access it, but it also runs the risk of becoming theft on the part of the DRM controller as when they shut down, they deny all access to the content that was legally paid for by the consumer. (They selleth, and then they taketh away!) And the extension of copyright terms to durations that can only be useful to immortal corporate "persons"? That is more unreasonable than words can express.
And before anyone can say "but that does not give you the right to steal" I have to say "so fucking what?!" Look. Fighting against "wrongness" in any way available is how the USA gained its independence. Some colonials wanted to stay connected to the crown of England and didn't want any part of it. Sounds like the "no right to steal" crowd.
And forgetting all this morality stuff, let's be plain about it. The amount of copyright infringement is negligible and most infringers are also people who buy things when they can and when it is good enough. These media jerks should let it quietly go on because they are still raking in tons of money and are still getting their laws passed. They don't need the enemies they are breeding and they don't need the growing fight they are getting. The more fight they give, the more doom they bring upon themselves. Wait and see... they will be wishing for "the good ole days" when they have everything nearly the way they wanted.
you are a gigantic great faggot
you're the man now dog!
netcraft confirms it, you are a faggot
in Soviet Russia faggots are you
I for one do not welcome you as our gigantic faggot overlords!
faGGOT@CRABAPPLE.COM
It seems the BBC has forgotten about the last time it forgot that sharing is not a crime! : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm
'First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We're very, very sorry.'
Not sorry enough to remember...
Until they start living up to their end of the copyright agreement, I don't give a fucking rat's ass what they have to say. That means putting copyrighted works into the public domain while they're still relevant, valuable, AND profitable. For most entertainment items, that would mean about 5 years or less.
They're also not helping themselves with the bullshit clips on DVDs claiming that downloading is stealing.
Word to the media distributors: when you play fair, I'll play fair. Until then, go sodomize yourselves with a retractable baton. And make sure to use a good quality one so it doesn't break during use.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
For a more sophisticated response which has nothing to do with how control-freaky DRM is, or how much artists do or don't deserve:
http://www.piratpartiet.se/wiki/Why_We_Are_Right
As long as the basic premise fails to shift from the idea that information is property, we will keep running into an ideological wall.
I like the commercials which say "you wouldn't steal a car!"
Actually if i could make a FREE copy of a car, without damaging/effecting/stealing the original owner's car and the COPY worked just as good (if not better than the original) I'd totally do it. The same goes for ANY consumer product really: if I could just download a free copy of all my groceries from the internet without paying for them I'd be on board.
I think the government/industry will never be able to get this problem solved as long as they treat it as theft, because unlike theft the original item and the original item owner are left OK. Its not a victmless crime, its a corporate victim crime.
they're gOne Mac non nigger patrons
But I can't imagine any sort of logic, propaganda or ethical scheme which can successfully argue with Lendrick here.
And I don't believe anybody has ever tried to counter his simple points.
You know what burns me most about the DRM stuff? That it gives the **AA the right to wast millions of person hours every day. I'm not going to steal their film; why should I be forced to sit through the legal warnings? The people who are going to steal it won't pay attention when they're ripping it.
The way I see it, if an average lifetime is 75 years, then that's 39.4 million minutes. Assuming that any DVDs that are sold are watched at least twice, then any movie that sells 20 million copies has wasted an entire human life with these stupid warnings.
Maybe it wouldn't annoy me so much if the warnings actually did anything, but it's so clear they do not. It's just a huge freaking waste.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Linux is not ready for downloaders' hearts and minds...
Oh... wait!
Sorry! I was just getting used to it
Stop the presses! A PR Firm promotes the value of running a PR campaign!
My personal thoughts are the best way to counter piracy is to make people like you. I can only really give examples from my experience, as I don't really know other people's piracy habits.
I am an avid gamer of all systems, although I rarely game on my PC anymore, as it's typically too much of a hassle with configurations and DRM. The DRM decreases my chance of buying a PC game, (especially if there's a good console version) and makes me more likely to pirate. As an example, I bought a copy of Spore. My bought copy of Spore thought I was pirating it. After screwing around for a bit, I decided to say screw it, and downloaded a pirated copy from the Pirate Bay. As a result, were I actually interested in the Sims 3, I feel I'd be much more likely to pirate it, now that EA's ticked me off.
I have around 200+ console + handheld games, none of them pirated. Several of my systems (DS + PSP in particular) have very active "homebrew" communities, that make it very easy to acquire "backups". Despite the ease of which I know I could get handheld games for free, I choose to buy them, because I derive a great deal of value in having the original box + manual + disc/card to display, and because I actually like the companies.
Pirating a game from, say, Nintendo to me would feel like kicking Mario in the groin. Nintendo (and others) have brought me such good times, that they seem almost like a friend. The few times I've even considered pirating DS games, I've felt very uneasy, the thought of it feels just wrong, to me. The RIAA, on the other hand, does not invoke such warm, fuzzy feelings to just about anyone. Perhaps if they stopped suing so many people, and installing rootkits on people's computers, they might have some more goodwill left.
Those are just my thoughts. I know plenty of people don't derive the same satisfaction from having a big collection of legit games/music/whatever, but I really think that if the RIAA stopped suing people and instead built up a strong relationship with its customers like many gaming companies, and Apple, they might see similar loyalty and less piracy.
Also, suing little kids is stupid on a logical level. I pirated plenty of software when I was around 12 or so because I had no money. Ten years later, I have plenty of disposable income, and provide the entertainment industries with many thousands of dollars in revenue a year.
I recently purchased a Season on disc. Got it home and found that I couldn't run it on my computer. I was pissed.
Prior to this I leaned toward being against downloading. Now I just don't care what downloaders get.
Where is my return in damages?
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that it is OK to steal. You know this. Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product. You are stuck in Piaget's Concrete stage, unable to understand events unless they are intrinsically associated with material objects. Since piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good, you are unable to understand that something was indeed stolen.
This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.
The article itself is pretty unbiased one way or the other.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's all political.
I was going to post a large list of things that piss me off about the industry but hell we all know what they are. Every policy is driven by greed. I won't pay anyone for that. So yeah if they gave me a reason to want to buy from them then I would gladly do so.
I will say that when I'm visiting Asia I buy music ALL THE TIME (admittedly from select labels) because the price is reasonable, the quality of mainstream music is better, you can get the music very easily and in many ways. I also buy movies there because of the same reason. I like that I can pick up a legit english version of a movie on VCD at the same time that the movie comes out.
Meh it's the same ole western greed system that's in place in about every industry. In Asia I can buy a killer mobile phone, pick whatever carrier I want, use prepaid or some sort of plan, not be forced into a multi-year contract just to get a decent phone or rate, have far better access to internet and other features, and get far, far, far more functionality out of the phone. Because the opposite is true here in the states, I don't even bother having a mobile.
My $0.02. Cheap!
PM
1) Stop forcing people to watch through "piracy is a crime and teh FBI will jail you for 10 years if you bring your camera phone into a movie theater" for 5 minutes before every movie. Doing that just makes the TPB version a superior product to your version. It's basic capitalism - don't cripple your own product. It's that simple.
I'm tempted to say "finally someone expresses it in a way even the average slashdot reader can understand." I know, I know. They won't.
I wonder when John Carmack's next concert tour is...
"You wouldn't steal a purse. You wouldn't steal a TV."
That's right. Those things are for sale. If I ever want one, I can buy it.
"You wouldn't steal a movie." Is that a Blu-ray? You're right; I wouldn't steal one or even take one for free, because there isn't a way to play it.
Would I pirate a HD movie? Well, they're not for sale yet. If downloads are the only thing on the market (i.e. sales are not currently offered) then why not? It';s not like its impacting anyone's market.
You want to win hearts and minds? Start selling a product. It's not a movie (i.e. a thing I can watch) until it's DRM-free.
Sell movies, and I'll buy them. And hope you enter the market in time, before my media server's disks are full. The clock is ticking: do you accept money, or do you turn customers away?
even copyrighted tv-shows don't (same video was taken down on youtube lol).
why i pirate:
*it makes me a pirate and pirates are cool (i wouldn't be half as happy about smoking weed if it was legal)
*I don't feel sorry for the "victims" (record label execs, big rockstars loosing a few cents)
*It's easier, enter credit card details vs click link
*i don't have the money for an 20gb music collection (if it wasn't 20gb then most of the artists wouldn't of had me go see them)
*too many good artists are ruined by money when they make it big (i still pay for small bands stuff, but im probably doing a favour as you can't right lyrics about having a hard life if your fucking loaded!)
*copyright law is broken (0 is closer to what it should be 14-25 than life+50)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Interesting that this gets modded down to zero, and the many, many specious rationalizations of theft get modded up to 4 or 5 "Interesting" or "Insightful."
Slashdot is jumping the shark.
haha, I was thinking of the same thing...
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome
It seems crazy, but what happens when something like this is powerful enough to create anything from a small piece of electronics to even a car. I'm not sure what the ratio of car cost is between manufacture/raw materials and design.
I could see the same problem occur in anything where the main (or, in the case of music, only) cost of production is in the design and marketing.
Sell an item for $20, pay the original creator 5 cents. despite all the while reproduction and distribution costs are a few dimes. send the artist to world tours to earn the money, overstress them and they will start using drugs to relax.
then preach how beautiful a system this is.
is there any difference between this, and some feudal lord preaching what a beautiful system feudal system was, back in middle ages ?
Read radical news here
First, downloading isn't illegal. Uploading is.
Second, you wouldn't steal a purse or a DVD, but if you had the power to duplicate that purse or DVD at will without impacting the original, you'd do it.
Third, it's not stealing. Is the movie industry all of a sudden, selling movie downloads in blu-ray quality? They aren't? Then what product am I stealing?
It's a license? I already own the film on DVD and in some cases, VHS. So I already have a license.
It's both? nope, sorry not gonna work. The FTC is seeing the glimmer of truth underneath all that industry bullshit. Does the industry really need laws to protect it when it's seeing record profits? Downloaders must not be making all that much of an impact on their revenues. It is of course, a red herring to claim that every download is lost revenue. It's not. nine times out of ten, the downloader wouldn't ever purchase something he downloaded. Lest we forget the whole reason that piracy exists is because a lot of people don't find your products to be worth the price your asking. Maybe a little market research would help. Maybe acknowledging there's a market would help.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Its all gooey in there and knee deep in bong water.
When girls will cut holes in the back pocket of a pair of perfectly good jeans to make them look like they have been stolen, and the alarm removed, this will be a hard sell...
Basically, the entertainment industry have made the criminal the hero, or rather the anti-hero. And now they expect the kids to follow the law, after being feed rebellion and might makes right for as long as they can remember the content of something?
Hurray for mixed messages...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
The problem with any approaches that try to indoctrinate into people that copying is bad is that Intellectual Property is not a natural law. Think for a moment about the fact that if you tell somebody as joke which you heard on TV you are breaking somebody's copyright - how natural is it to not tell or even write down something your read or heard from others?
The truth is that we are by nature highly social animals. The sharing of and building upon the ideas of others is ingrained in our genes: it's what makes a community our of a bunch of individuals. A society's identity pretty much boils down to shared beliefs, behaviors and ideas - all things which we get from some and pass on to others.
Now bring into this picture things Copyright and Patents: these mean that you cannot freely shared ideas and build upon the ideas of others to make new ideas - in the extreme you're supposed to track who owns each and every idea you've ever heard of and read about and pay them every time your tell that idea to others.
Now consider that trying to justify things like Copyright quickly slides into vague and ill defined concepts like "encouraging" others to create.
Reducing the IP argument to the most basic concepts and it boils down to: we must track and pay for ideas in order to encourage people to have and share ideas.
This is as anti-intuitive as it gets.
At the end of the day, it's much more easy to make arguments which are anti-IP than pro-IP, especially since nowadays the most visible face of IP are rich artists (as soon as I read the article I came up with a counter advert in which people would be told that they must not whistle songs without paying the artists since they would be taking food away from the mouths of starving artists all the while showing images of wealthy artists enjoying their expensive cars, huge mansions and glamorous vacations in the Cote D'Azur)
Because in the UK there is no damages for civil tort and you must show harm. If you copy for what would be in the US "fair use" purposes (and we have a "turning copy" which is a copy for your significant other and completely legal), then there can be no proof that this is a lost sale.
Net proven loss £0.00p.
If you go to court asking for that, you'll be done for wasting the court's time.
Hence there was no need to make format shifting illegal in the UK because there was no loss and no harm.
Until Jan2001.
However, they didn't then bring in the fair use clauses.
An oversight on Cliff Richard's part, I'm sure...
RIAA/MPAA didn't care THIS much. Why? Generational loss. Make a tape, pass it to a friend. OK. One friend. He makes a copy of that tape, and passes it to friend. That copy of the copy is 3dB worse (noise) than the first. See where I'm going? After a few copies, the tape is nothing but noise. Not so with a digital copy. The first copy is exactly the same as the millionth copy which is exactly the same as the original.
Which leads to your joke "infringement". No way you can tell it as good, no way your friend will even tell it the same as you told him. It's not only not an exact copy, it's not even a good copy. No one is going to pay for your copy of a joke. But, that millionth-generation of Britney Spears CD... hm. For some reason, people would, but not if they can download (steal it and not get caught) it for free.
The problem with all of these campaigns is that they take the stance that "not licit" implies "immoral" - which, unfortunately for them, is a non-sequitur. Plenty of law is simply there to keep society, or markets, or whatever, ticking along within reasonable bounds. Sometimes law becomes outdated or irrelevant. Sometimes it's simply just bad. In the case of copyright it's undoubtedly a technical mechanism, and as used by Big Media it is being applied in ways for which it was never conceived. That wouldn't be a problem if society as a whole were prepared and able to enter into a meaningful debate about the topic; in such a case I'd be prepared not only to argue my corner but also, even, to find myself in the minority and abide by the consensus. Sadly here simply is no meaningful such debate taking place - just corporate interests desperately trying to screw every last penny out of increasingly broken business models, and far too many uncritical politicians either unable or unwilling to stand back and actually think constructively and independently. As a result all I get is "messages" being shoved down my throat to the effect that copyright infringement is "theft" (umm - no, I'm quite clear on what constitutes theft, thanks, and no amount of Orwellian double-speak is going to alter that) and "wrong" (no, not remotely - copyright is a technical mechanism conceived for a technical purpose, and it's far from clear that it's currently serving that purpose), And not only am I not therefore prepared to have my "heart and mind" won over to their cause, but also I see it as my duty to make sure that I do my best to ensure that my kids learn to think critically for themselves and recognise weasel words and downright propaganda for what it is (a duty of any responsible parent). If we could only could get a few politicians doing the same thing I'd be a seriously happy man.
(Oh - I'm SO glad that "they" have decided that the "You wouldn't steal a..." campaign has had its day. Sadly, that won't stop me having it shoved down my throat every time I load one of several of the DVDs that I already own. Unimpressed? That's hardly the word.
Actually, they were partly right. I *wouldn't* steal a DVD. But download a film that I missed on TV the previous evening and failed to - quite legally - record? In a heartbeat. And burn it to DVD to watch again later? Sure. Would I also buy it, if I enjoyed it? Quite probably, in fact. So you see - in this as in many things, between black and white there are endless shades of grey. And no corporate interests are going to gain anything other than my scorn by trying to pretend otherwise - let alone by spurious, fallacious and insulting appeals to some non-existent moral high-ground.)
There's lots of independent artists offering their music online for a reasonable price. Same thing with video games, and source code. Some of these people quit their day job and put their own time and money into creating these works. Then I hear some "Stick it to the man: information wants to be free!" guy pirating this stuff. The reality is that most of these people aren't venerable, they just want stuff for free.
Show people the true horrors caused by illegal downloading. Like Britney Spears having to fly on a Gulfstream III, when she wanted a Gulfstream IV.
My company released a game called Squibs Arcade for the iPhone. It's very polished, received great reviews and the humour (how it takes the piss out of AAA games) is very /.
We put it out at the cheapest possible price on the app store.
3 days after release it was already hacked and available on pirate sites. 59p and its pirated...
I guess pirating can be good if it raises awareness so enough people do go out there and pay for it, but we haven't hit that mark by a long way!
Nope, I'm not having a whinge, I'm merely pointing out that for all the quite sensible comments above about DRM, price and quality which I agree with, even from a game developer / studio point of view, there's ALWAYS going to be someone who wants it for free rather than pay just 59p.
http://www.squibsarcade.com/
... uses the word 'pirate' in a sentence, replace it with 'amateur librarian'. You now know how pirates think, if only subconsciously.
We can spend the next few decades trying to recreate the scarcity of information. Seriously, we can. There is no magical reason why copyright laws have to get more liberal, or that the rent seeking industries of the world will start producing things that people are willing to pay for, or that the government will 'get' file sharing as the baby boomers are replaced by people that have been trading information since the mid 90's.
This won't put humpty dumpty back together. Everyone has their own printing press/itunes store/app store, and has had one since end of the last century. The incredible utility of having computers that can run whatever software a user wants will not be dulled. A business model based on scarcity that used to exist *will* fail. As in the flunky working for $big_media_conglomerate that says 'hai guise wii can prevent people from steeling are stuff bi suing people and passing laws to make p2p moar eleegal' is wasting everyone's time and money.
There is no scarcity of information. This is the point of the Internet. Build a business around the artificial creation of scarcity at your job's peril.
I'm obligated to post this video in response to the video FTA: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x570xy_the-it-crowds02e03-downloading-is-s_fun
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
All their "campaigning" will fall to the floor like the useless words they are. It will continue, ad infinitum, and there's nothing they can do about it, muwhahahaha!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Halfassed propaganda campaigns can only go so far
The RIAA "well" is "beyond poisoned".
How to "win hearts and minds" as an artist? Behave properly. It's that simple. I suppose the RIAA interferes with 'their' artists' behavior in this manner
I don't want to name names because I don't want to get involved in a 'shameless plug' situation, but:
Step 1. Cousin tells me about a certain music artist that she figured I'd like.
Step 2. I check out a couple of the guy's music videos on YouTube, this stuff seems good enough to bother pirating. So I BitTorrent one of his albums
Step 3. Listen to whole album a few times, like it.
Step 4. Buy his new album [FWIW, the album does 'pass' at RIAARadar]
Step 5. (He) Profit!(s)
This artist has demonstrated that he's cool with this mode of behavior - tone album (the one I downloaded) has a song discussing the "new music industry business model" [is funny], and he goes right out and puts MP3 versions of some of his back catalogue up on the website.
Note: Not referring to Weird Al here. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It's something to chew on, but come on! It's a PR FIRM pushing its agenda about how PR firms can help failing industries. They're just vultures looking to pick at the bones, and I don't feel this article is anything more than that.
-
OK, as long as we're being practical, I'll point out that the movie business does not have a piracy problem, at least not in the sense that the music industry does.
Ticket sales are strong. I read recently (please someone feel free to correct me if this is incorrect) that the only times movie ticket sales have been better is at times when the economy overall was doing better.
The reason why Hollywood is financially viable in a way that the music industry is not is that there's no way to pirate "seeing it on the big screen".
OK, maybe we can't say that studios are seeing a "loss" in the area of DVD sales due to piracy, but I'm not inclined to care. The movie industry was profitable before the era of home video, if DVD sales were to drop to zero, then maybe they'll stop producing DVDs entirely (unlikely), but the movie industry is still just fine.
After all, if studios don't go broke after movies like "Waterworld", then I think we can say they're safe as a church, financially speaking.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The old system has too much overhead. It's just like a really old installation of Windows XP, over time the registry gets bloated, you have excess drivers, old files, corrupt files and they're all taking up system resources making the whole thing less usable. I think this is good analogy, the system they're trying to defend has too much overhead. The corrupt executives have way too much compensation for doing very little, there is way too much creative accounting going on, way too much bribery and of course then they need to spend a lot of money to keep that business going, in the end the legitimate artists suffer as well the consumer. They want a solution that will allow them to maintain their bloated business model and retain their highly excessive compensations, but that is not going to happen.
There are already plenty of alternatives to big music, recently I found this gem where you get to set your own price for what you believe the music is worth, and they give you the music in drm free formats such as mp3, flac, ogg as well as uncompressed wav... and this is at a fraction of the cost of big labels.
In any and every industry: when the small upstart who doesn't have access to mass distribution channels can afford to give you the same product for less, you got a major problem with your business model.
Idiot.
I'd like to see the RIAA promote a day without songs. For one 24-hour period, rescind every media outlet the right to broadcast their songs. Stations could either shut down for the day (maybe do some needed maintenance) or find something else to broadcast.
It would be a interesting litmus test on just how badly the public needs their product.
If they'd do it on the 3rd of November, they could call it Anthony Fremont Day.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but economics 101 is that something has "value" if it has utility and scarcity. Nobody pays money for air, (ok, oxygen bars, but not really...) because there's generally no scarcity.
So in a world of digital flawless reproductions, what are we to do about the fact that there isn't that level of scarcity previously assumed? I don't think that attempting to enshrine artificial legal restrictions in law and international treaty to pretend we still have scarcity of "goods that can be digitally reproduced" is the solution.
I mean, we're at least on paper, still supposed to be a quasi-democracy. Copyright law isn't a "human right", it's more like a matter of government policy, more like a government's policy on trade or taxation or international relations than it is like fundamental freedoms like speech or association. At least in theory, government policy should reflect the views of the citizenry. So at least theoretically, if a majority of the people think a given policy should be X instead of Y, then government should change that policy or regulation.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Because once you release your content that can be represented as a computer file, it is bound to show up somewhere on the Internet for free sooner or later. To avoid having to waste your effort, put a pricetag on your work, collect that amount collectively from people wanting it, then follow through and make it available for downloading.
The problem with this model is that people are afraid of getting 'ripped off' and not getting anything for what they paid for.
The solution for that would be an escrow-based version of PayPal that all parties could trust and use:
1) Content creator creates something, puts a pricetag on it and posts it with the escrow service and lets people know it is there.
2) People pay the escrow service for the item until it is 'paid in full'. The escrow service
pays the content producer the full price they set for their item minus a small reasonable handling fee for the escrow service for providing this service.
3) Escrow service releases the content to the masses who paid for it via a one-use-only download URL. Everybody is happy (including the 'freehounds' who got it from somebody who paid then re-uploaded their purchase somewhere else on the internet) -- everybody involved got what they wanted: money or the item being sold.
Unless you buy stuff 'on credit' or pay your utilities 'after the fact', you 'prepay' for all other goods and services you use (like prepay gasoline for your car). Why should 'Interlectual Property' be treated any differently? Time, effort, and money was expended to create it just like an ear of corn, or a washing machine.
The alternative is business as usual -- the same high-stakes cat and mouse game between the 'freehounds' and the content producers wanting to be paid for their content. This is a situation no one can win in the long run....
They do not want the downloaders hearts and minds, they simply want their money.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
1) There's no such thing as illegal downloading. It's the uploading a copy that's illegal.
2) The article is pretty well written, but they really don't explore neutraliztion well enough. They list a "neutralization" theory; but really don't explore it well; the point of view is pretty valid that some movie or record company gets the money from your sale, and not those who actually worked on the movie or song (see: Hollywood accounting.)