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Why I Steal Movies (Even Ones I'm In)
Jamie found a link saying "Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I'm also an actor, writer, and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies, and books.This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars."
Because with ripped movies you don't have to deal with those annoying previews that on some dvds, you can't skip.
Oh, and its cheaper.
Very interesting read.
I want to check out his show now.
Stealing movies is not very different from stealing medicines, food or anything else. The marginal cost of these items are very low - esp. for example medicines, compared to the prices.
Just cos he is a director, actor etc. etc. doesnt make it right - just means, he (like the whole of humanity) likes freebies.
Time we find a better way to catch such pirates - maybe even put a bounty!!
This constant effort in changing our language is frustrating.
When you steal something you deprive the previous owner of their copy.
Making a copy is an offense but since it doesnt deprive the real owner of their copy its a very minor offense, especially when done without economic interest and for profit.
HTTP/1.1 400
..."I live in London and many of my favo(u)rite TV shows are American. So if I want to see the latest episode of South Park or Friday Night Lights..." I threw a flag right then. If you spend your time downloading and watching Texas' version of Days of Our Lives I have no more time for you. Personal Foul. Good bye now.
... the place where copyright infringement equals theft and sometimes theft should be protected by shield laws because it is journalism.
Never heard of him.
So I'm afraid I simply DL'ed a pixel-clear pirate copy which arrived in seconds. My moral justification for this? I once bought the VHS.
My greatest problem with copyright abuse by the RIAA/MPAA is simply how they nickel and dime you. Every decade or so a new format comes out and they roll around in new income without even doing anything (well, remastering is very little). That bothers me. It seems like the opposite of a capitalistic system where you're supposed to be rewarded for producing something--in this case entertainment content.
... or perhaps that's why your employer, your publisher and your industry are fighting the final format solution. You wrote this piece as a consumer of your own product and were given a brief flash of insight yet you seem to avoid trying to reconcile this view with the view from your end, from the insider's end. And that's probably because it's irreconcilable and, as you said, you "don't understand business." More importantly, you don't understand money and the desire for more money is all that runs your industry. You've got some sort of humanity and empathy for the consumer left in you. You'd need to cast that off in order to understand the businessman who is making tons of bank on you. You'd need that to understand EMI's decision to continually restrict Hot Chip's viewership.
So let's say I roll down to a garage sale and find the band Poison's worst songs of the 1980s on vinyl for two pence (that's two pence more than it's worth). By your logic, is it okay for me to now get online and download that?
I assume that with digital downloads, all of those archaic shenanigans will end
Good luck in your quest to utilize things like P2P for promoting, sharing and distributing as a tool to success. Your industry by and large will not assist you in the least and may even take legal action against you.
My work here is dung.
The author of the article makes a few good points...particularly about the creators of South Park (a show I loathe) not particularly minding torrents of their stuff on the 'net...especially since there's not really anything they can do about it.
Also in that he made a video promoting a UK band, then EMI went out of their way to limit the audience of the promotional video to only UK viewers...why limit who can see a band's promotional video? Shouldn't EMI want a much larger audience?
Everyone would a lot happier if they just stopped fighting it and tried to find a way to work with it. A good example is that back "in the day" (and I'm giving away my generation here, so get off my lawn) the television stations had even tried to make off the air taping of their shows illegal (it was for a while)...then they realized how ridiculous it was to fight it when everyone did it for convenience (plus the supreme court of the US made it legal to do so). Next thing you know, the stations were finding ways to *want* you to record their shows, knowing that they were getting more viewers if they did so. That led to TIVO-type set boxes (that they've now tried to limit electronically).
If "they" would just realize that if they tried to work *with* new tech instead of against it, they could find a much much larger paying audience.
For the record, though, I'm against piracy in all its forms. People being so blatant about pirating music and games is what's led to corporations fighting it. If I have an MP3 in my collection, then I have either purchased it electronically or have a physical media of it that I've purchased.
Just my $0.02
-JJS
Because with ripped movies you don't have to deal with those annoying previews that on some dvds, you can't skip.
If only that was all you had to deal with. You should actually read the article, here we have an actor taking the role of the consumer and being forced to deal with: DRM, paying for a license multiple times, regioning on DVDs and distribution restrictions by country. In both his own work and others'. It was a great read, the whole time I was thinking, "Finally, now you know what it's like." I mean, come on. As a software developer if I coded something that was as shitty as all that and I sat down to use it ... I don't know what else I could think of myself as except a failure. The fact that publishers in the USA love to restrict free streaming online to only the USA boggles my mind. Do they know that there are far more people outside than within? "Oh no, you'd be violating some archaic distribution deal from 1977 if a Ukrainian heard The Killers." And since we signed that away for each country a separate contract for all eternity, we're kind of out of luck. Laughably ridiculous.
My work here is dung.
It's an interesting read but nothing terribly informative - it doesn't really provoke thought on the subject. For anyone who's interested in the topic, it's stuff that they've already encountered (and thus already thought about) and, for anyone who hasn't encountered these ideas, then it's almost certainly not a topic of interest. I think we're at a point where people who are interested in this subject have already heard all the arguments for/against their stance on the subject and nothing terribly new is being brought to the discussion (by either side). And others just don't care so any talk is largely wasted. Which is unfortunate because I care about this subject a great deal and would like a lot more involved and interesting debate regarding it but I just have not seen it happen in a while...
I am not in the business of making DVD's of the episodes I download and then selling them. I just download it to watch it commercial free. I already pay for my internet connection and I pay for cable TV.
The same goes for Movies. I mostly download old movies, if I really want to see a new movie I will go to the theatre and see it on a big screen. Otherwise I am downloading old movies. What is the difference of me downloading a movie from 3 years ago, or watching it on TV? Sure the cable company paid for the rights to show that movie, but I also pay the cable company for my internet connection. In the end the cable company is still getting my money. Which in turn the cable company pays for the rights of the movie.
I recently downloaded a film I had seen as a child. I remembered it because of a link I saw on another subject, so I was curious to watch it again.
Only problem, at Amazonthe price was way more than I would be willing to spend just to watch it and I couldn't find it at my local rental store. Therefore I downloaded it.
Distributors should find the right price, I would gladly pay $1 or so to watch an old film, but $16 is outrageous.
I used to have a Cox DVR (using it was like shitting a watermelon) and I would set it to record movies of the Encore channels. The DVR was $16 a month. So we gave the DVR back to Cox and got a netflix account. We order movies, I rip them and send them back.
According to the law/MPAA the former is OK (well, the MPAA doesn't like it very much), but the latter is stealing, but in reality the only difference is one came down the wire digitally, and one came off a piece of plastic digitally. In all other ways it is identical. As long as I don't upload the file to Bit Torrent I figure the MPAA can kiss my pucker.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
You are absolutely right. The pharmaceutical industry is as guilty as the media industry of practicing an absolutely immoral pricing scheme.
That's why there are countries that ignore medicine patents.
Best DVD Easter Egg ever, and this really works on nearly all discs and all players. When you pop in the disc and the auto-preview garbage starts up, hit STOP, STOP, and then PLAY. In most players, this automatically starts the main feature on the disc. I found this info in a youtube vid some weeks ago. I'd credit it, but don't have the URL.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Steam showed that halving the game's price results is more than twice the sales. Which in the end means more profit.
Not necessarily. Sometimes the publisher of a video game based on a licensed underlying work is required to pay a fixed royalty per copy to this underlying work's copyright owner. This means that whether the game costs $20 per copy or $10 per copy, the underlying work's copyright owner still gets its $2 or more per copy.
I still think a more effective way of getting our point across is to show these companies how unimportant their product is. I've said it before and I'll say it again, pirating just tells them that the demand is strong. In their minds all they need to do is find DRM that is unbreakable. That's likely an unattainable goal, but then really all they have to do is keep making things increasingly difficult to the point that a growing number of people give up and stop pirating.
But stop consuming the crap they produce and then they've got to change their ways to bring people back. Stop buying, stop pirating, organize and start lobbying hard to change things. Do you really need to catch every last episode of South Park? Come on. But then it just goes to show that people value entertainment and personal satisfaction more than they do principles.
By far the most reasoned treatise I've seen about this issue. Now if only we could get the MPAA, etc. to read and understand it. Or better yet, if only I could figure out how to provide 'better than free' content without billions of dollars, and thus put the archaic companies in the position to either compete or die. I-tunes has started this, but it needs to happen faster.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Price aside, the pirated versions of almost everything rock. I have hundreds of purchased DVD's and I've downloaded ripped 700mb divx compatible versions of damn near every one of them. It's so much more convenient that it's silly to break open the dvd case and get a dvd out. I simply stream the movie from the hard drive to the TV. I guess I could rip the DVD's but why? It's a pain and then I have to convert and compress them. So much easier just to visit piratebay and let it download while I'm sleeping. I still buy DVD's but it's more like I'm trying to encourage the studio to make more of that particular type of movie. I don't watch the damn DVD. Now though I only buy DVD's of movies I like and want to see again. No more shit.
I was curious to watch it again. [...] I couldn't find it at my local rental store.
I think you're supposed to make a list of 20 such movies and then sign up for Netflix DVDs by mail or your country's counterpart. This fails only for movies that haven't been made available on DVD, such as Song of the South.
When the law is being paid for by people who claim to represent him, his opinion matters.
Sure, the players involved all think it's real, but the whole game is nothing more than a means of squeezing an extra bit of stress reaction from the population.
TV and general media opiate is such a fantastically successful means of keeping people asleep that it will not go away until it is rendered redundant by guns, barbed wire and processing plants. The copyright thing is a means of turning everybody into a criminal, and thus gives a valid excuse to introduce those guns, barbed wire and processing plants. -Because milking the human race for anxiety is all fine and nice for the aliens, but greed and stupidity dictate the necessity for a huge whollop of energy which can only be extracted through physical trauma on a planetary scale. A couple of senseless wars here and there just don't cut it.
Have a nice day.
-FL
http://lifehacker.com/5518076/hit-stop-+-stop-+-play-and-other-tricks-to-skip-dvd-trailers-and-warnings
Very useful tip, also nice using something like XBMC which doesn't seem to honor a DVD's no-skip wishes and just let's you get to the main menu (almost) any time.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It seems to me that what PS is saying is that the only people who think that they're benefitting from the bizarre and Byzantine system of IP we have set up (a) are the people who set up the system, rather than either of the two communities they purport to serve, and (b) probably aren't actually benefitting. Can't disagree with the assertions made.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
copying isn't even actionable here.
Nor is receiving a copy.
Only when distributing a copy are you infringing.
I like the other useful tip I found for skipping those trailers and warnings: Rip the damn disc, or torrent a copy of a movie I already own because it's less hassle than ripping and encoding it.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
To steal is to deprive someone of something.
Making a copy != stealing as the person still has the physical DVD. Stop this propaganda for the MPAA, use the right words : "Made a copy of" instead of : "stealing"
... you would have noticed that it was obvious that he used a Mac.
You can not steal a movie. That’s as absurd a thing to say, as “I shovel wrinklyness”. It’s a physically impossible thing to do.
Stealing means taking away something that someone owns. Making copies is not taking away. And in fact you can’t even take it away from who has it. You also can’t own information in the first place. Since ownership is defined as something you control. And with information, you can only either not prove that it exists at all, or you pass it on, and thereby lose control over it. It’s not avoidable.
Those are the laws of information. Everything else is deliberate FUD.
Man, how much brainwashing did it take you, to actually believe that information is a physical object? I see this again, and again, from people who are supposed to fight the bullshit. It’s a sad sight. It feels as if they had won already. :)
(Obviously they haven’t. And also, I know for a fact, that they themselves think that they already lost.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
So YOU'RE the one hogging all the bandwidth!!
that someone who will get a song or movie for free represents someone that would have otherwise bought one
if given no other choice than to buy a lady gaga mp3/ cd, or rent/ buy avatar on dvd, most wouldn't consume that media at all
plenty of people are just tasting media. free media represents window shopping
how many? 10% 90%?
i don't know, but my assertion is this: free media, like radio or broadcast tv gives away media for free, represents a form of advertising for the artist, exposure. that if all songs and movies were free, all you would do is put more warm butts in seats in cinema houses and concert venues. THAT's how you make money, from here on out
of course, i've made no mention of distributors. which is the only people who are hurt in this model. avatar made HOW MUCH FUCKING MONEY?! and all of it IN THE CINEMA HOUSE. don't believe the distributor's lies! think about this: in a world where media is free on the internet, musicians and artists and movie makers will STILL make a buttload of cash, from concerts and cinema houses ONLY
that's the model we're moving to, no matter what the fucking dying distributors say, or what the fuck bullshit laws they pay legislators to pass. simply because you are dealing with tens of millions of POOR technically astute teenagers. you don't legislate around that: the teenagers route around your dumb ass laws, you morons!
welcome to reality distributor morons: get busy dying, and shut the fuck up. you're done for, you're dead. the internet killed you. culture and media are not dying, artists are not getting put in the poorhouse (but you did a good job of that when you ran the show, btw), only YOU are dying
to believe otherwise is FUD and being trolled
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I pirate because its easier. The setup is harder but once you have the automated processes in place, its actually even easier than downloading something from iTunes.
Setup the proper RSS feeds from Vuze with filters for the shows you want. Autodownload them when they show up. When complete, move them to the watch folder of my conversion program. Conversion program converts, moves the completed file to the watch folder on my server that then moves it to the correct directory on my storage system. This all happens in a completely automated manner now.
The beauty of this is, with my dvd player (Momitsu V880n) and swisscenter running on the server, I can just page through all the content as it appears on my server.
Now I haven't found a legal solution that lets me do all this. Lastly... when I download an avi from these rss feeds, the show starts immediately. No waiting through retarded previews.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Lets now see the ten thousand slashdot articles written by actors who are not pro-piracy right?
Or could it be this is the usual pro-theft slashbullshit one sided claptrap we expect from this immature pathetic site?
...I do so just to preview them. You know, trailers only show random screens that don't make complete sense of what is going on.
I usually watch 10-15 minutes, then stop the movie. Based on that 10-15 minutes, if the movie interested me at all, I would go out and buy the dvd to see the rest.
If it didn't, I'd just delete it from my computer. I'd prefer to spend my $10-20 on a movie that is good, rather something that is complete suck.
He goes through some pretty good justifications for his "illegal" downloading.
His best justification is one he doesn't realize though. He stated that he lives in London but yet has created an iTunes account to access US TV shows because 'it's legal' when it actually isn't. The iTunes conditions of purchase say that you must be in the country of the store when downloading because the US store does not have the rights to sell a US TV show to someone in the UK. The reason being that Hollywood has likely sold the rights to the show to a British broadcaster who will be very annoyed if they lose audience (and revenue) because someone else is illegally selling the show to their viewers.
Personally I think that it is only a matter of time before Apple start using GeoIP to restrict store access....like the BBC does for iPlayer. What we really need is some sensible, international way to access content. As a Brit living in Canada I would love to be able to watch BBC 1+2 on iPlayer - and would happily pay an equivalent to the UK licence fee to be able to do so (and no, BBC Canada is NOT the same).
An unjust law is law is no law at all.
So when someone steals your time, you can always get that time back??? Really? Doc? Is that you Doc? Doc Brown, nice to meet you!
The theft of service deprives you of your time spent labouring.
When someone else does the work, how is that stealing YOUR time?
What countries laws are you talking about? In the US, it is illegal to BOTH copy and distribute copyrighted material without authorization (ignoring fair use cases). It is a common misconception that only distribution is illegal.
Kilgore, I think you've been hitting the Preparation H a little hard today.
- Eliot R.
Don't watch DVD's on your Xbox, or on any system made by Microsoft or Sony.
Plenty of non-name-brand DVD players don't implement the 'user can't skip' feature. Mine doesn't implement that. I can skip all that crap, and always do.
Everyone can have tons of reasons they break the law. It doesn't make it okay though.
It's the other way round. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it not ok.
Infuriate left and right
So does that mean his point of view is balanced out by Lars Ulrich? I'm all for individuals voicing their opinions, and even seeing how this interacts with his day job is interesting, but I dare say that doesn't make and one man's opinion worth more than another's.
If you don't like a product, for whatever reason, you're free not to buy it. You are not free to steal it. Watch something else, for fuck sakes.
Well, let's face it, they know all about handling stolen property...
Steam showed that halving the game's price results is more than twice the sales. Which in the end means more profit.
Whether that results in more profit depends on the cost structure. It's quite easy to show a case where more doubling sales by cutting price results in less profit despite greater revenue. For most companies profit is maximized when marginal cost equals marginal revenue. At some level of sales the cost to sell an extra unit outweighs the additional revenue realized. The exception to this is if marginal revenue exceeds marginal cost at all levels of production (plausible for Steam though not certain) in which case maximizing revenue will maximize profits. You might be right but I'd caution you to not assume so much about the cost structure of any given company.
Someone rich would pay to have THE ORIGINAL. After all, you can have a copy of a Van Gogh, but people still will pay millions for an original.
For the first time in history the underground market is offering a more reliable, convenient, transferable, and overall BETTER product. It is no wonder that people are gravitating to it. The only solution is for the industry to evolve to what it's customers want. No amount of DRM or legislation is going to save them.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Piracy smiracy... This whole piracy thing is just a joke. By the rationale of the MPAA/RIAA, anyone who sees or hears movies/music without paying for it is potentially guilty. So this means that if I loan a DVD or CD to my friend, that he is automatically guilty of piracy. Secondly, they only provoke it more by trying to supress it with 'you wouldn't steal a [car, truck, boat, chicken, dvd, insert merchandise of choice here]' ads and previews of crap that no one wants to see. In fact, I would pirate a movie that's in a DVD preview just out of spite for them throwing it in my face unwarranted. I have enough spam in my life, emai, snail mail, radio, tv, movies, etc.... The worst cases are DVD's that you pay money for that spam you with adverts of other DVD's.
If I had a replicator that took raw materials and energy and was able to recreate anything I desired you can bet your ass I would be using it, especially to replicate "luxury" items like expensive cars or high-tech gadgets.
Or Natalie Portman.
I'm lazy, impatient, have a sense of entitlement AND a cheap-ass.
Plus I sometimes want to watch a movie or listen to music. It's a freakin' movie or tune, OK? How much god-damn effort do I need to put into it? I don't want to record music or make a movie. Does Fiskars have a case against me cause I'm too lazy to mow the lawn with scissors? If you want to make a movie but feel that only the worthy should see it, I suppose you can. Just don't expect to profit from the endeavor. You make things too hard, too expensive, too time consuming or require some sort of morality test for your customers to overcome, then they're gonna find another way to get it or just find something else altogether.
So, to summarize, all that "lazy, impatient, have a sense of entitlement AND a cheap-ass" really means is that I'm a discerning consumer trying to find something for the lowest cost possible. I suppose to be consistent, you'd have to also accuse someone producing a product that insists that I come somewhere to buy it at his convenience, when he's available and for whatever price he sets as "lazy, unmotivated, having a sense of entitlement and a greedy bastard". Except that we're talking a company here, so they're exempt of such accusations, right?
I am not a crackpot.
If this works on my player, I may have to hunt you down and kiss you. Or just shake your hand and say thank you. :)
I think recent history has proved beyond reasonable doubt that independent designers can create products without being in the payroll of the big corporations.
People would want to design cars, just to show off. The fact is they are doing it right now, even without the benefit of a universal duplicator.
1) I don't like to pay for anything, cept sex since I cant get it anyway
2) I especially dont like to pay for music, movies, software and books because my marxist leftist professors have taught me I am entitled and that a "new biz model" ya know the free one, means more creativity and availability, fairness, openeness, better security and a cure for my erectile dysfunction and acne too but what it really means is puppies and unicorns dancing on rainbows for all will become reality as soon as the whole world is a vast free zone
3) I don't expect my stealing the fruits of others labor will ever affect me, I mean my income stream is not dependent on intellectual property products actually being paid for
But I would steal a beating human heart. Bender and I are on the same page with that one.
Basically, theft of labor comes one notch closer to the spirit of copyright infringement, yet still involves the word "theft".
A very small notch indeed. Let's say less than 1/N where N is the number of copies sold?
When I go to the movie theater to watch a disaster like "Kick-Ass", I think I should start pirating these kind of crap rather than pay the full price of a seat (10euros).
There are more words in the script of an episode of Grey Anatomy.
And I feel the same with 95% of Hollywood production.
RIP Slashdot. I used to love you. dead account - but slashdot wont let me delete it.
I would've commented on this article a few days ago when I read it, but Gizmodo has a whole "audition" process you have to go through in order to comment on their site.
First of all, let's be clear here. His arguments are not much of a justification for piracy, and sometimes he's even contradictory. I take this as a sign that he hasn't quite worked out the issue in his head yet.
Let's be clear here that there are different types of piracy. If someone would've bought or rented a movie, but they pirate it because it costs them less money, that's a loss for the creator. I think that basically rises to the level of theft. Someone did work that you should pay them for, and you didn't pay them. But, this guy's reasons for piracy are:
(1) He can't buy or watch the stuff in his country. While I still can't condone it, I see it as significantly better than "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay". People should not get confused and think this guy's argument acts as a justification for what other pirates do. In the next few years, I think this will largely disappear as companies roll-out their service in other countries.
(2) He pirated material he already owns because it's more convenient than ripping it, or sitting through Ads on the DVD. He's already paid for this material, so this is also not really a big deal. Again, this is nowhere near "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay".
(3) He pirated Solar because he couldn't buy the digital version from Amazon. Well, unless he was incapable of buying the print version, I don't see this as that good of an argument. He's not entitled to a digital version of the book, but I would recommend that, if he pirates the book, he should buy a copy of the physical book to "pay" for his pirated copy.
(4) "the video had to be hosted on EMI's official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions" This should probably just be lumped in with Item #1 - bad region restrictions. I think this will get sorted out in the next few years, but it still offers no consolation to "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay" pirates.
"I don't understand business, but I can see that the old model needs to change. Perhaps it'll involve direct micro-payments. Perhaps you'll pay Apple or whoever a monthly flat fee to license all their content." Quite frankly, this statement comes out of the blue. While alternative pay models might make sense, nothing in his article actually supports that idea. Most of his article was about crappy region restrictions, which is an entirely different issue.
"Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park have always tolerated torrent sites hosting pirate versions of their show, as I imagine they see it as constant promotion." No, SouthPark sends out cease and deist letters. Ignoring the crappy region-restriction problems for a moment, the justification for pirating SouthPark are pretty slim now that SouthPark has a website where you can watch their stuff. Yeah, they have Ads, but they have to pay for bandwidth and get paid somehow. Pirating their stuff at this point is just being a jerk because you don't want to watch ads - which is the lowest-possible method of making money for a creator. If that's not good enough, then you're really being unreasonable.
"The promotion argument makes sense. South Park for example makes money from from syndication, advertising, merchandising and DVD sales (although the latter market is dwindling) so perhaps the extra visibility helps." Piracy undermines the syndication and advertising part of that equation. It's surprising that he could try to argue that "promotion" is so important for someone as big as SouthPark. Maybe he could make the argument that small shows need more promotion (although, small shows also need money very badly - which is what piracy takes from them), but saying that someone as big as SouthPark needs promo
I used to be the type of person who would get a full cable TV package and rent movies on VHS frequently, now I just download. I typically watch video downloads then delete some time later to free up space. Clearly someone is missing out on my business and I am not at all averse to paying for some content. When Netflix starts offering more streaming content in HD then I am there.
I think there needs to be a different model for current TV programs though. It's hard to sit through ads when one can simply download a tvrip with them all removed. Paying $2 per episode is not reasonable to me because, even in season packs, the costs can very quickly balloon to well over the cost of cable + a custom built DVR. There needs to be some flate rate service or some service with really cheap transactions for a single episode. I would stick ads in as a way cheapen the cost. Looking at superbowl ads as an extreme case, it costs advertisers 3 million bucks to reach a potential 100 million viewers, or 3cents per viewer, per ad. For a typical 1 hour TV program we get 18 minutes of ads, or 36 commercials. At superbowl prices this costs all the advertisers about1 dollar combined, for regular TV I am sure it is far less than that but it's a nice number to look at and gives a rough idea how broadcasters are actually making money. They are making a very small sum for each ad they are making you watch. Why not turn that around and keep the costs in the same ballpark? (Greed obviously, but let's pretend someone can see the benefit to not being so greedy)
There are many ways one could play around with this as all I am talking about is a video on demand service, but let's say it works like this. Subscriber pays some small monthly fee to sign up for streaming service, netflix or Hulu or what have you. This service allows you to purchase new premium content, ie new episodes of Lost, for a small, reasonable fee. Refund this cost if user agrees to watch ads. These ads can be targeted based on users demographics and there will be considerably less than 18 minutes per hour. Show monthly balance on some navigation bar that is always present except when watching content to influence viewer's decision. Display some sort of logo, or preview screen of all ads to be shown during program while viewer is deciding to watch for free or to pay for the ad free version. Charge advertisers for ads that are viewed, this can be done at a premium because they can be targeted and will have less competition. Charge them less for the logo in the preview screen, but do charge them. Pocket the money from those who pay for the ad free version. Yes it would take a long time to make something like this work, but with the right pricing I think it can work and it is a way that content providers can benefit from the internet rather than lose out.
Best DVD Easter Egg ever, and this really works on nearly all discs and all players. When you pop in the disc and the auto-preview garbage starts up, hit STOP, STOP, and then PLAY. In most players, this automatically starts the main feature on the disc. I found this info in a youtube vid some weeks ago. I'd credit it, but don't have the URL.
This doesn't always work. I've run into disks that won't allow you to hit the stop button. Several Funimation disks do this during the previews. Can't skip forward, can't fast-forward, can't use the menu and manually enter track number, and can't hit stop.
The Stop button should NEVER be prohibited. That's just f-ing silly.
I just re-watched Firefly, and there are no previews, forced or unforced, on any of the DVDs.
Not that there aren't on other sets. I'm sure there are. But please, when you use a demonstrably false example, you undermine your own argument.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
This is a strawman. Most people do not believe in a "right to consume". This is not about consuming but about the futility of turning art into a scarce resource that have to be bought and consumed.
There is nothing inherent about art that makes it a scarce resource. There is nothing inherent that makes it a "product". We, as a society decided few centuries ago to convert art into a product as a way to encourage people to create. It my have been a good idea at the time, but now that art no longer have to be distributed in a tangible form, it outlived its purpose and have to be replaced with a better mechanism.
So no, there is definitely no "right to consume", and I don't think there should be any, but then again, art shouldn't be consumed at all. It should be experienced and shared in order to enrich our culture. We should definitely encourage people to create art and ideas and should reward people for doing so, but a mechanism of artificial scarcity is not the right way to do it.
a) As an opponent of restrictive copyright (but not an opponent of copyright) it would be hypocritical.
b) Through their dog-in-the-manger behavior (DRM, opposition to fair use, "FBI warnings") the publishers have made the idea of paying them money repellent and convinced me that they don't really want my business.
c) They have nothing I want.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You still *need* a deal in place.
But if a copyright owner offers a percentage deal to one derivative author, then other derivative authors will demand a similar percentage deal. Eventually, some production will demand and get a percentage deal and then, once the ink is dry on the deal, reveal that the price will be zero. I seem to remember that this happened to Spyglass Mosaic when it became Microsoft Internet Explorer: Microsoft negotiated a deal with Spyglass, based in part on a percentage, and proceeded to set the price at zero. Price-per-copy royalty structures are copyright owners' way of keeping this from happening to their own works.
I buy my music, but when something is not available in my country or region I do download. (Or if I am not sure I will like it, which leads me to buy it about half the time) I do not pay for downloads as I do not see the point in paying for a lossy, (lousy) version. When the main studios start selling in a lossless format I will switch to buying all music through that service.
Speaking as someone who used to work in the retail industry, and the overall music industry, but now work in the tech industry, I think you're missing the importance of what you're interpreting his point-form items to mean.
> I'm lazy and impatient.
Aren't these precisely the reasons for two of the most crucial ingredients which all of the large scale entertainment industries are utterly failing to add to their product?
Convenience and ease of use.
People can order coffee at drive-throughs now. Why? It's convenient, and enough people were lazy and impatient enough that they didn't want to have to park, get out of their car, enter the actual coffee shop, line up, wait, choose from a menu either during or after that wait, order, wait some more for the coffee or other items to be made and delivered to them, pay, get a receipt, return to their car, and get back on the road. A drive through is far more convenient.
If the coffee shop / drive through example had never existed, an entire traffic infrastructure would arguable not exist today. Drive throughs are considered an innovation that was a direct response to customers who were impatient and busy, and who one could argue right now are lazy for using them. But they're considered an innovation.
The *IAA members who currently produce the CD's, DVD's and Blu-Ray discs in their current state lack this kind of innovative thinking. They fail to understand that convenience - especially in an era where a ton of information is very easily available - is a crucial ingredient in their product.
FBI warnings, several delays involving intro animations, menus or warnings, plus copyright notices, then trailers and previews are a nuisance. Then add in:
* DRM
* Regional coding
* Territorial restrictions for a given release
* Territorial delays in release or a complete lack of release in one or more territories
* The whole "back to the vault" scenario.
These are all considered annoyances, and hindrances to consuming the product people actually wanted to buy, and these are precisely the things that are causing people to avoid purchasing their products, but they refuse to remove them. I think it would be a huge wake-up call for even one studio to try releasing a product with at least one of these hindrances removed (but preferably all of them.) I also personally believe that restricting a work from being released in a different territory due to it not yet having a specific licensing agreement is a ridiculous concept in a world that has something called the Internet. iTunes doesn't let me buy some of my favorite artists because they aren't licensed to be released in my country. Of course I'm going to download them any way I can. (I do order physical CD's for exorbitant prices as well, but I'm probably a really rare consumer in this case.)
Even when studios do include a "bonus digital copy", it's restricted, and only available for a preset amount of time. If you try to use that copy past that time, you're out of luck. That's a stupid, stupid idea. I won't always want a new movie to remain on my iPod, and I will more than likely wish to use that feature far further in the future than they will allow. I don't know anyone who uses that feature, and I doubt I would ever choose it over ripping my own copy of the DVD I own so that I can play it the way I want.
As a programmer, "lazy" leads to better code over time because a program or script eventually does more things either I or my clients wanted it to do. As a former retail worker, "lazy" means we had to work harder to make sure people could get what they wanted more immediately, or find things out faster, especially when a store was very busy.
"lazy" and "impatient" are what labels and movie studios should be wanting to address in a way that produces a better product. Recorded music and films are the two biggest industries that resist this approach consistently, and then blame the consumer when they complain about it.
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
Lets be clear... I don't steal. I pay for everything I own.... whether it be through blockbuster used movies, or target... or somewhere else... I actually buy the physical media. However... at this point the media companies have blatantly prevented me from exercising my rights (DMCA)...
I rip every movie I get, every song... and I strip out ALL DRM. Even you Disney... though you've gotten more challenging as of late. I will never promote straight out stealing anything, but I will happily break unjust laws like the DMCA... to view my own content, when, where, and how I want.
You can't prevent this anymore. BitTorrent is FAR too powerful and with the next gen almost here even tracking will be difficult. If I was them... (media companies) I would be focusing on making it easier to access instead of wasting BILLIONS on technologies that are broken days after they are released. You CANNOT stop pirates... you CAN make it not worth the effort.
Not a problem for anyone with a flat, friend or virtual server located in the US. I recently set up a shell account for a friend so he can use iPlayer (and get UK deliveries via ebay) while he's away working in mainland Europe. SSH tunnelling is trivial and the bandwidth, even with encryption overhead, is no longer a deal breaker.
We had this before with region encoding on DVD's. Some of the most memorable conversations I've had about that have been with forces personel on overseas posts. Regional encoding and distribution rights make no sense to the thousands of UK servicemen and their families who rely on cracked Sky boxes during postings to mainland Europe.
Most people would prefer to pay and obtain service legitimately. Instead they find themselves increasingly criminalised by bought legislation from industries that have no understanding of modern technology and poor concept of reality.
Steeling movies could work, makes them that heavy they won't be stolen anymore!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Wait? .00001% of the market that had a forced preview on a DVD, but of course on /. the super small minority all of a sudden represents the majority as usual. How the hell do people make this up and swallow it.
You mean the like to exaggerate around here a little to make a point, sometimes I just have to shake my head at the stuff that gets modded up to make a point. It was probably
They purposely do it and lie to themselves to make themselves feel better at what they are doing, but lets face it the most any DVD will force you is probably :30 seconds.
Personally I can go on with my life and not be such a whiny materialistic bitch if Hollywood doesn't deliver my movie, just gotta find bigger priorities in life than worrying about other peoples problems and why they shouldn't earn so much money.
Check out "Look around you" on youtube, it's a brilliant parody of early 80's educational science shows.
[Citation needed]
There is case law upholding the right of the consumer to copy for personal use.
Reasons to pirate movies. Listed here as a series of things to address.
1. Movie is only available in other territories.
2. Spinning disks are loud.
3. Physical disks take up a ton of space, especially the more you get.
4. Because it isn't available on Netflix Streaming yet.
5. Unskippable previews.
6. Will just need to get the director's cut / blu-ray / director's cut blu-ray / 3D version later.
We have the technology and know-how to address all of these. We just need to get the content industry to smarten up and treat piracy as a competitor rather than an enemy.
The ______ Agenda
I never understood the fuss over being unable to skip the previews until I had to watch a DVD on a Windows computer. Turns out that for the first decade of the DVD's existence, I had been using Linux to watch DVDs, and had never seen the unskippable previews. I honestly didn't even know they were there!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I pay a cable company over $100/month for telephone, ISP and TV. Just like with a VCR, I'm allowed to record video however I like (and technically can). I've used a TiVo (lifetime since 2004) and ClearQAM tuner to record most of the shows and movies, then I remove any leader/trailer and remove any commercials for that content I wish to backup under "fair use" laws. I encode them into xvid or x264 to increase the number of minutes that fit on a single DVD. A 100-pak of DVDs is $20 - which is about (4) 2 hour recordings for SD content. HD content encodes to double that storage. I just captured Entrapment in 1080i ... the xvid encode is 2.55GB with AC3 audio. No FBI warning, no forced previews, no commercials (comskip rocks!).
Someone above was stealing Dexter .... if you have cable, there are "Free weekends" for the paid channels every few months and the "on-demand" stuff worked during them for me. I was able to record and backup all of Dexter season 4 during a free weekend. I used to have Showtime and got hooked on Dexter, before pricing changes forced me to switch to a different set of channels.
I don't always have the best recording (480x480) and the channel bugs (and worse) will drive some people crazy. OTOH, the picture is good enough. OTOH, sometimes I end up with 1080i recordings and perfect AC3 5.1 audio. Good enough for the price. I haven't bought/rented a DVD in years.
No - you can't have a copy of the movie(s), but if you ask nicely, I'll share my perl scripts to mpg --> comskip --> remove commercials --> re-encode based on source into xvid or x264.
So I take my neighbour's car without asking and take it for a spin to next town. So what? I give it him back when I'm finished and everything - it's not stealing!
Actually, it's more like your neighbor created the idea of a car, but will only license the patents to you if you agree to put in cupholders that are too small, an advertising billboard mounted in the dash and a limiter that prevents you from going over 50 MPH. So you decide to ignore him and build your own card, and he legally gets to sue you for a billion dollars and file an injunction preventing you from driving the car.
The lesson to take away here is not that people have the right to ignore the law if it's inconvenient. It's that the cost of a product should be commensurate with it's value. That cost is not merely measured in money paid by the customer, but in the legal and practical burdens it imposes, and by the taxes required by the state for their role in the enforcement of law. If the law allows people to impose costs that are greater than the value of a product, and makes us all pay to enforce the regime, how can we consider that law just?
"With bandwidth and storage increasing exponentially..." In the last ten years I've barely seen my bandwidth improve at all. Oh wait, he says he's in London. Maybe someday faster internets will come to America.
Also, great article.
Reality disagrees with you. Almost everybody now has a replicator--of bits and bytes. Yet somehow the companies that make brand new songs, software, movies and TV shows stay in business while continuing to make major profits. The biggest stars still make millions of dollars per year, and Big Content spends as much on blockbuster films as ever. The cable companies manage to get upwards of $600 per year from typical customers, and for all that money you still have to put up with 15 minutes of ads per hour and you still don't get to watch shows on-demand.
Somehow, people are still willing to pay for things they could copy for free. Partly this is because of Big Content's success in lobbying for powerful laws in their favor, and in using those laws to shut down networks and individuals that share files. Partly it may be that sheeple actually do believe ads that compare copying a song to stealing a car (it's frustrating how many people think this way!) For me, it is sense that those who make the best movies and music deserve to get paid, and I pay for those works that I like (provided that the price is reasonable and the DRM is not excessive).
Our society greatly benefits from the fact that people do not steal from a supermarket just because they can avoid getting caught. Recently I read about an incident where the staff of a grocery store were missing, but customers generally left money to pay for their purchases. That people are generally good means less resources must be wasted on security and prisons (which themselves produce nothing useful), people are less afraid of other people, and people less often have the unpleasant experience of being robbed.
Because people are generally good, they are willing to pay for copyrighted works even though copying them (unlike stealing physical objects) technically does not hurt anyone. Generally good people (GGP) know that these things must be paid for or they will not be produced in the first place. It's a principle we all understand, except perhaps Big Content, who assume their customers are criminals. And so, we the GGP have some willingness to do our part by paying for copyrighted works, just as we are willing to pay takes and do occasional volunteer work and give a bit to charity and not steal from the supermarket.
Big Content, however, does not want merely to have enough money to pay for a healthy music and film market--they always want to increase profits if possible, regardless of what they are now. Consider how much smaller the market for films was in 1960: the world population was only 3 billion and American films would probably have had a very small market beyond North America. Did the movie companies ever complain then that there were not enough humans available to buy copies? Today the potential market is nearly 7 billion and the actual market is probably several times larger than in 1960, yet film companies complain very loudly if, say, 1/6 of that market (China) is not paying them enough. Do they really need the money? Of course not: if money was tight they would simply scale back movie budgets, just as budgets were necessarily small in 1960. Certainly low-income pirates in no way prevent them from making movies, and the actual movie budgets of today prove that they are doing very well for themselves. Even if you took away the entire third world market, the would still have a good billion potential customers left.
But in copyright markets, the cost of "buying" a work has almost nothing to do with covering the cost of production: a movie DVD that costs $10 may be for something expected to take a heavy loss like Waterworld, or for something that has already made billions of dollars in profit like Star Wars, and certainly doesn't "need" more. Likewise, their rh
The function is called User Operation Prohibitions. Look around for hacks on disabling UOP in your dvd player (usually through a firmware update) to get around this problem.
A justification that I see fairly often is that if someone couldn't possibly buy a product then piracy of that product is ethically neutral because you can't be causing a loss of sales. I disagree with that because it is still a violation of the right that the copyright owner has to control the distribution of copies; however, I think that that argument is much less central to the issue of piracy than the perceived "right to consume" that does not exist.
I know that much of Slashdot thinks that such a right should exist and I ask of you: why should such a right exist?
The right to listen to music, read texts etc. already existed from the time music/writing was invented. Don't want anyone to hear you? Don't perform in public. The right to control distribution of expressions of ideas was artificially introduced, specifically so that originators can use it to profit from selling them for a while, with the explicit goal of increasing the amount of ideas and expressions available to society. Using copyright to prevent any distribution completely undermines that purpose, so it makes no sense at all to allow such an abuse.
While I'll be among the first to say that I hate people who go around with a sense of entitlement towards almost anything -- I think that's often a misused term when we're talking about "copyright infringement".
Do SOME people go around thinking the "industry" owes them free copies of anything they want? I'm sure they do. But MOST people I know simply feel that as soon as you start trying to sell intellectual property (especially for entertainment purposes), you've entered a little bit different business model than the type for physical property.
If you really corner most creators of works (whether it be a musician, a software developer, a movie producer or a book author), they'll usually admit (eventually) that they don't have any "absolutes" when it comes to the ethics of "piracy". EG. If they put out a music album and it doesn't do very well in stores UNTIL p2p sharing and/or illicit use of it as background music to YouTube videos helps it take off, they'll probably condone THAT piracy. By the same token, if the publishing industry starts throwing around statistics about huge losses incurred from all the copying going on, the artist/creator is likely to get more worked up about it and decry it as evil.
So effectively, that amounts to selective enforcement.... They're against duplicating their works without paying IF and WHEN they think it's cutting into their potential earnings, BUT they'll look the other way if it appears to be more of a help than a harm. They just want to maximize their profits.
I'd say that mentality is *identical* to the one most of us have about copying the works! We're generally ok with supporting the content creators who bring us quality works we enjoy, but we also have financial concerns and limitations of our own. So we *selectively* pay for the things we feel deserve our hard-earned money, and other things, we copy because we know it's not depriving another customer of the ability to buy one for him/herself.
Anyone trying too hard to put a stop to this and DEMANDING that each and every copy a person makes is paid for is "biting the hands that feed them", and it winds up being counterproductive.
(As is so often pointed out, but never sufficiently addressed - what about situations where a work was paid for initially, but formats changed and the user simply wants to preserve the work on the currently popular replacement format? I have a bunch of bought cassette tapes of music, but only one remaining tape player that's dying on me. Why would I pay full price to re-buy these albums on CD or as purchased MP3 tracks? I shouldn't have to pay a second time for the licensing to listen to them? All I should be paying is a menial cost for the distribution and related media it might be distributed on. Therefore, you're darn right I'm going to seek out free downloads of those tracks.)
This is a bit off topic, but not really. I was just pondering the ultimate threat, that if piracy continues as it currently does, that it will no longer be cost effective to produce entertainment media, which we all CLEARLY can't live without.
Would the industry completely die? And if it did, what would take its place? I can somewhat appreciate the position that the media companies are in. They can't charge more, as it will push more people toward piracy. They can't charge less, as it will significantly cut profits while at the same time, not significantly increasing the customer base. They could become a more efficient operation. No more shelling out $20 million to a single actor, but since apparently THAT is what draws in the crowds to begin with, it might be a worthwhile expense.
So seriously, what DO they do? And if the entire industry collapses in upon itself, what would happen? What new beast would spring up to take its place? People the world over seem perfectly content to entertain themselves with home-made youtube videos featuring hilarious cats, and perhaps there is a market for this as well, maybe even enough that it could replace part of what conventional commercial media has provided us for years. But what if we had no choice in the matter? What if the world found itself culturally surviving almost entirely on low budget movies and indie bands, because there was nothing else. And even more importantly, would that be a bad thing?
Something to think about while sitting through the 15 minutes of ads on the DVD you just bought.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
...it's copyright infringement.
I wonder if we can charge the movie industry with false advertising, and force them to issue a retraction on all upcoming DVD sales?
The whole point of the article is, any successful business knows you have to give the customer what they want. Piracy is going to happen whether you like it or not, and it can't and won't be stopped.
The only logical alternative is for the media companies to change their business models or die a bitter death. Plain and simple this is not the 70's 80's or 90's, its a new era and if they can't adapt they will die. No one wants to see them die but that is the stubborn old way of thinking that is going to make it happen. It is the way it is, and no amount of lawsuits, or DRM is going to change that, on the contrary it will hasten their demise. Offer a great deal on media, without restrictions, with great quality and people will gladly pay for it.
I'm into arcade game collecting and restoring as a hobby. Occasionally, I sell them. I have a hard time selling them, even at fair or below fair prices. Meanwhile, I know of another collector who does the same, and manages to sell machines fairly consistently, and at high prices to boot!
What's the difference between him and me? Our locations are both large cities. Our machines are the same ones. We advertise in the same places with similar ads. But the key difference is this: He offers free delivery and a warranty.
If customer buys from me: They have to come get this large bulky machine and haul it to their home. If it breaks down, they are SOL.
If customer buys from other guy (at premium price): They have it delivered to their door, set up in their home, and if it breaks down, he'll come fix it or buy it back.
Where's the analogy in this? Customers *will* pay for good value if it's no hassle to them, and they won't be left holding the bag if the product fails. DRM is the antithesis of this.
I was about to say, "If I had a replicator I would make a copy of Jessica Alba..."
but then there would just be TWO Jessica Albas that would have nothing to do with me...
I am not sure how much creative input he had in it, but the video for Hot Chip's "I Fell Better" is Fucking hilarious. I was rather disappointed with the album due to it's lacking the humor I expect in a Hot Chip album, but this video more than makes up for it.
I really want to pay to see legal movies online. But I will not watch it in the quality used 10 years ago.
I've spent last weekend researching legal ways of watching/downloading HD movies online. I mean I really spent 3 days searching Google and reading forums, from the morning to evening. There are tons of good choices for DVD-like resolution/quality, but pretty much none for HD. And I mean real full-HD, 1080p, encoded at 20+ Mbps. A counter-example is the Xbox live marketplace where they have 4 Mbps "1080p HD". Just. Disgusting.
If you go to the illegal channels you can find thousands of full Blu-ray images to download, available just hours after the release.
Where is the real choice? I really hope the movie companies wake the fuck up and start providing legal choices.
I recently moved hemispheres and all the dvd's I own wont work on my fresh home theater system. Only option was to buy them again or download them and burn them myself. I'm sure you can guess what I did.
:/
If you buy a movie it's yours to keep and watch... unless u move... then the mpaa says u can't watch it anymore
I understand the idea of what constitutes "piracy" of media... but to me, it still makes absolutely no sense. Follow me here for a minute... If I buy a CD at a brick and mortar store (let's say Wal-Mart for the sake of argument) and take it home to listen to on my CD player, all is well with the world. But now, say my friend that has not heard this CD wants to hear MY copy of it. I can either invite them over to listen to it, or more likely, email him a copy of all or part of it in MP3 format after I had copied MY LEGALLY PURCHASED COPY to my computer. Now, I have just pirated my own copy, or more precisely facilitated my friend to own a pirated copy of my CD. This all sounds far more like I am RENTING the "rights" (what a laugh) to this CD, not buying it. If I can't do with it what I want to, AS LONG AS I'M NOT MAKING MONEY ON IT (like it used to be back in the VHS days), it sure as hell sounds like renting. NOW, if I'm RENTING this CD, does this mean that when/if something happens to it (scratches, etc.) can I get a new CD from Wal-Mart? Or whoever the record company was? Or (lmao) the RIAA? I just think that the RIAA and MPAA Nazis need to just go the fuck away, not that they will, but it's a nice thought... If I loan/give a copy of a CD or movie to a friend, it IS my goddamn copy, right? Now if my friend starts burning copies and SELLING THEM (a whole different kettle of fish), sure... burn his ass. The whole thing just royally pisses me off due to the total lack of anything resembling common goddamn sense...
Stone
A clause saying "but minimally 2 dollars per copy" brings the discussion full circle to my first post in this thread: "This means that whether the game costs $20 per copy or $10 per copy, the underlying work's copyright owner still gets its $2 or more per copy."
Moron!
Please do not use personal attacks.
The game must at least cost 20 dollars... But if game cost 60 dollars, then 60 * 0,1 = 6$
I was talking about launching at $20 and cutting the price to $10, not launching at $60 and cutting the price to $20. As far as I can tell, you meant that contracts with a floor on the royalty per copy should be negotiated such that the floor has room for a price cut. If so, my response is that the licensor of the underlying work will likely not allow room for a price cut into the contract, instead requiring the floor to equal the agreed-upon royalty at launch.
Hey I wanna sell more games by halving the price, wanne make a deal and give me the copyright for 50% too? Will result in more copies
Response from marketing: "We decline." And after a protracted exchange of e-mails: "We don't necessarily want to sell more copies of this work because that would cheapen our brand and hinder our ability to charge a premium price for copies of other works that we control." Some record labels and music publishers are like that for songs that get included in rhythm games. I'm a moron and don't know why recorded music is a Veblen good, but it is.