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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.
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
..."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.
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.
He was the voice of Darth Maul. He also created the fantastically funny "science" show Look Around You, and has been involved in various comedies including Shaun of the Dead.
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
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
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.
He was the asshole who stole Simon Pegg's girl on Spaced. He's done a ton of other stuff too (mostly in Britain). He's one of those guys who pops up on a ton of BBC shows, mostly comedies. I had certainly heard of him, but then I've seen a lot of BBC comedies.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Steeling movies is very different
I agree. When you steel a movie, you are encasing it in an alloy with iron as the base. :p
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
You wouldn't steal a bag
You wouldn't steal a car
You wouldn't steal a baby.
You wouldn't shoot a policeman.
And then steal his helmet.
You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet.
And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow.
And then steal it again!
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.
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.
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.
While he's probably not very well known outside of the UK, it's a bit harsh to call him an "actor"; he's been in quite a lot of successful stuff including Star Wars: Episode One, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, Black Books, The IT Crowd, Look Around You, etc.
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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