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."

Comments

Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why??

[V!NCENT]

I pirate because:
1) I run Linux and therefore it is illegal to have a FLOSS piece that can playback some DVD's and most Bluray discs. Ripping takes too much time so... Well then, you fscking retarted industry... If you don't like me to have legal playback so I can become a customer than I'll just FSCKING DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE?!?!
2) A series is not out on DVD yet in my country. So how about releasing games and vids simultaniously everwhere?!
3) DRM. You want me to not enjoy my games if I buy them, while you could easily for less money make me not have to activate it and you won't have to run expensive servers for it? Well then... I'll just download it! Too fscking bad...
4) Sometimes I just want to watch a video on demand and only once... And I do not want to get my ass all the way to the mall the next day so I can enjoy the video as early as the next day.
5) Sometimes games/vids are too expensive. Seriously... I buy PSP games all the time because they are 20 euro's or less. No problem. Steam showed that halving the game's price results is more than twice the sales. Which in the end means more profit. But instead it must be so goddamn expensive.

So industry... Do something about you stupidity because you are making it realy hard for me to be a customer. Removing copy protection might result in a single copy to a friend of mine, but will also result in more than twice the profit. Which means you'll satisfy you stakeholders a lot more, because they only care about money.

But no... That would be waaaaaay too easy...

Re:Why??

[mldi]

Its not the previews that bother me.

Its that 'you wouldnt steal a car' advert which cant be skipped.

I would if it meant i wouldn't have to see that stupid advert.

Yes, and unskippable previews. There's been a few DVDs where I've had to sit there a good 15-20mins before I could even start the movie I paid good money to OWN and watch as I please, not after endlessly getting previews of some shitty movies that have been out for awhile. Now, if there's a movie I actually like (very rare), after my RedBox $1 rental, I'll buy it on the cheap, then "pirate" it as this is the only way I can watch what I paid for in the fashion I want to.

Re:Why??

[Professor_UNIX]

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.

Re:Why??

[Em Emalb]

Ripping takes too much time so... I'm lazy.
A series is not out on DVD yet in my country. So how about releasing games and vids simultaniously everwhere?! I'm impatient.
DRM. You want me to not enjoy my games if I buy them, while you could easily for less money make me not have to activate it and you won't have to run expensive servers for it? Well then... I'll just download it! Too fscking bad... You don't buy the software, you buy the disc.
Sometimes I just want to watch a video on demand and only once... And I do not want to get my ass all the way to the mall the next day so I can enjoy the video as early as the next day. I'm lazy and impatient.
Sometimes games/vids are too expensive. Seriously... I buy PSP games all the time because they are 20 euro's or less. No problem. Steam showed that halving the game's price results is more than twice the sales. Which in the end means more profit. But instead it must be so goddamn expensive. I'm lazy, impatient, have a sense of entitlement AND a cheap-ass.

(This was an exercise in what a *IAA rep might think when reading your post, not my personal thoughts on pirating content. FTR, I share a lot of your frustrations. I see no reason why movies and games aren't released world-wide at the same time. We have extremely fast communication between most countries in this world, how hard is it to do this? Answer: Not that hard)

Re:Why??

[Interoperable]

An opinion that seems very prolific on Slashdot is that consumers have a right to consume anything that has been created. They don't. The right to consume is not recognized by law, nor should it be. If a company doesn't want to sell you something under reasonable terms, tough shit. It's their loss as much as it is yours but it doesn't change the legal or moral standing of the interaction.

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? Why should a right to consume trump a right to control the distribution of your ideas. Personally, I respect the right of creators to own their ideas more than I respect the right to consume because I respect creators more than consumers. It takes ingenuity to create but none to consume and I think that the "right to consume" culture is a by-product of having too few creators in our culture.

Re:Why??

[Zironic]

Well, almost all consumers are both lazy and impatient which is why there's entire industries built around that (Fast Food anyone?) so you'd hope the industry would consider that.

Re:Why??

[BoberFett]

You ask why the right to consume should exist. I ask why should the right to own ideas exist?

Re:Why??

[Barrinmw]

Laws are not necessarily moral.

Re:Why??

[MacWiz]

You'd think that after 10 years of using Netflix heavily...

Try buying a DVD. They save the most annoying features for the customers who pay full price.

Re:Why??

[RobDude]

And once everyone had a replicator - everyone would replicate the newest, coolest, best car.

And nobody would pay for it.

And the people who design cars wouldn't have money to keep designing cars. And all of the advancement and innovation that we've seen since the first car and now would grind to a halt.

Re:Why??

[mini me]

Since you can duplicate everything, including food and shelter, the whole idea of working to survive goes out the window. If such a device existed, you would be free to do whatever you please with your time. For many, this would be designing amazing cars. For others it would be building amazing cars. Everyone has a hobby, and a replicator would enable everyone to pursue their hobbies; hobbies that are often out of reach of the average person today.

Re:Why??

[cpt kangarooski]

And like, how can a person *own* the land, right? It's like, the land man....and it's old and you can't own it!

Same question, actually!

If you claim to own the Brooklyn Bridge, that's fine. But your ability to exercise control over the bridge -- by prohibiting any traffic of any kind to cross it, for example -- either has to be founded on your personal ability to defend the bridge from those who want to dislodge you from it, or other people's willingness to accept your claim of ownership.

If you can't defend it, and no one respects your claim, you're likely to just get arrested, because you're outnumbered.

That is how property works.

Copyright is the same, except that once information has been made known to someone else, it is impossible to defend it (unless you kill them before they can spread it). So it is much more dependent on the consent of others.

And why should others consent to claims of exclusivity? Only if it somehow is in their own best interests, surely.

If you having a copyright on your work, that keeps me from doing things that I might want to do with that work, nevertheless benefits me more than it harms me, I could agree to abide by it. Now you need only convince me -- and not just to the basic idea, but to the specific details as well, e.g. the number of years the copyright lasts, the specific things I'd be prohibited from doing, etc.

Re:Nice article

[Pojut]

And that, my fellow Slashdotters, is the whole point :-)

You dont steal, you copy.

[miffo.swe]

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.

The Number of Times You Must License

[eldavojohn]

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.

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 ... 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.

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.

Re:Nice article

[TheRaven64]

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...

Re:Just cos he does it - doesnt make it right

[L4t3r4lu5]

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.

Re:Unskippable previews? Not anymore...

[hansamurai]

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.

Counter example

[mangu]

And once everyone had a compiler - everyone would compile the newest, coolest, best software.

And nobody would pay for it.

And the people who design software wouldn't have money to keep designing software. And all of the advancement and innovation that we've seen since the first software and now would grind to a halt.

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.

Lazy and Impatient are not four-letter words

[AdamD1]

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.

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