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."
You are absolutely correct, if you go into a store and steal a DVD it is exactly the same as any other theft. On the other hand downloading copyright material is not theft. It is copyright infringement. You have not deprived anyone of the original. It seems that you have succumbed to the propaganda of that trailer, which if you watch carefully avoids saying that illegal copying or downloading is theft because they know it is wrong. It is the old association trick:
You wouldn't steal a bag
You wouldn't steal a car
Downloading videos is piracy
Piracy is against the law
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
You had better believe that I would steal a car in a second if it meant that I'd get an exact copy of said car, without depriving the original owner of their property at all.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
So I generally don't really "pirate", and it's for a couple of reasons. First, I often do want to support the people who bring these products to market. Second, I don't really want to go hunting around the Internet for a good copy of something; I'd rather go to a site, pay a couple bucks, and be done with it.
But here's the thing: I watch "Dexter" (a show on Showtime, if you don't know), and they recently finished their 4th season. I don't have cable, so if I wanted to watch the fourth season of "Dexter", I would need to order cable and Showtime just for that show (something in the neighborhood of $50/month for as long as the season takes).
Now I already pay for Netflix, I watch things on Hulu and make no effort to skip the ads, and I sometimes even buy stuff on iTunes. I'd probably buy more stuff on iTunes if it were slightly cheaper, didn't have DRM, and everything were available in HD, but I think the price iTunes charges for video generally isn't worth the product you get. Dexter wasn't available for any of these. I was going to wait a year for it to show up on iTunes as I have done in the past, but then I started hearing spoilers about what happened during the season, pretty much ruining the whole thing.
So I went looking to see if Showtime was putting Dexter online in any form, and I put, "watch dexter season 4 online" into Google. Within the top could of hits, there was a site that had the entire season available to watch in a Flash player. The quality wasn't good, but I didn't need to download anything and it was as easy as watching Hulu. It's not even clear to me that I was doing anything wrong-- I didn't distribute anything or copy anything. I went searching for a legitimate way to watch a show online, and I found a site offering the show. Is it really my responsibility to ensure that the site had distribution rights?
So anyway, I watched the season. If Showtime had bothered to offer their own distribution channel, I would have been willing to watch ads or to pay them. I bought a previous season of "Dexter" on iTunes. The *only* reason why Showtime didn't get any money from me in this case is that they weren't willing to take my money. They'd rather play marketing games with pricing and availability.
Similarly, there have been one or two times in the past few years that I've downloaded music through unauthorized channels. And when I say "one or two times", I mean something like maybe as much as 1 album per year. But again, here's the thing: Every one of those albums were unavailable for online purchase. I went to iTunes and Amazon, and it wasn't available. Again it's, "Here, record company, take my money," and they say, "no thanks." Ok, fine, if you insist I'll just download it somewhere.
I'm convinced that all of these media companies would make more money if they simply made everything available for sale online in a high-quality DRM-free version. Not only could they sell more product, but they wouldn't have the pay the salaries of whatever marketing geniuses are spending their days deciding not to offer "Dexter" for sale online.
As long as there is someone who needs a better vehicle *for themselves*, there is someone who has an incentive to pay for development. Development would continue, just under a different financial model.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
if the people who design cars had a replicator of their own, they wouldn't need to keep designing cars to make money, because they'd be able to replicate whatever they needed to survive.
Beyond that, if they truly enjoyed designing cars they could continue doing so out of the sheer enjoyment.
It's important to note that ultimately, plots of land will be the only thing you'll never be able to completely replicate.... It'd be an interesting world should that technology ever become a reality. On the one hand it could go horribly wrong with people replicating implementations of destruction until we bomb ourselves out of existence, on the other hand it could cure problems of world hunger and material greed and allow us to concentrate on more social and environmental issues as well as advancing education and technological pursuits.
Collector's Edition