Slashdot Mirror
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.
And that, my fellow Slashdotters, is the whole point :-)
Living With a Nerd
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
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.
FTFA:
I actually disagree there (The "I'll take the download, please"). If I buy content, I want to use it when I want, where I want. I don't want artificial constraints about which devices I can use it on, or when I can use it. There has to be a happy medium between them. And frankly, the ten minutes of promos and trailers never bothered me. I simply go to the bathroom or do something else during them...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
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.
I actually disagree there (The "I'll take the download, please"). If I buy content, I want to use it when I want, where I want. I don't want artificial constraints about which devices I can use it on, or when I can use it. There has to be a happy medium between them. And frankly, the ten minutes of promos and trailers never bothered me. I simply go to the bathroom or do something else during them...
I think that's what he meant. He said getting it from iTunes is still problematic, and I think he meant "download" as in "illegally download, not from iTunes". That's how I read it, although I can definitely see how using "download" in that last sentence might make the reader think "download from iTunes."
I'm not sure how funny Look Around You would be to people who didn't grow up with the educational shows that were created in the UK in the '80s, but if you did then you will probably find it hilarious. He was also in Black Books and Spaced a couple of times, both of which are worth watching.
I didn't realise that he was the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode 1, but I guess he was young and needed the money...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Read this.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
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
When the law is being paid for by people who claim to represent him, his opinion matters.
And frankly, the ten minutes of promos and trailers never bothered me. I simply go to the bathroom or do something else during them...
I do that before i sit down to watch a DVD. I then use VLC to watch it, which allows me to skip all of that rubbish (I literally shout at the TV when I'm forced to watch a DVD on a regular player). I also turn up to the cinema 15 minutes after the displayed time to start showing, as I know there will be some b-list celebrity telling me to shop the guy making a shaky-cam screener of the film, and several trailers for movies loosely related to the one I want to watch (It has a woman in it? Show a trailer for a Rom-Com). I went to see Iron Man 2 recently, and do you know what there was an advert for? Sex and The City 2. I guess the link is that they are both sequels.
So yeah, I get why people are pissy about these things, and I agree totally. Give me a DVD with the movie I want to watch and nothing else and I'll be a happy person. Skip the trailers at the cinema, and I'll be a happy person. Bombard me with region-specific releases, format shifting prohibiting DRM, and unskippable trailers and I you will lose my business.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.
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.
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.
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]