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The Hurt Locker Producers Sue First 5,000 File-Sharers
Voltage Pictures, the production company behind 2008's Oscar-winning Iraq war film The Hurt Locker, today sued 5,000 people who illegally downloaded the movie over BitTorrent. Quoting CNET:
"Attorneys for Voltage wrote in the complaint that unless the court stops the people who pirate The Hurt Locker then Voltage will suffer 'great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.' Voltage has asked the court to prevent those who downloaded the movie without paying for it from downloading its movies ever again, and order them to destroy all copies of The Hurt Locker from their computers and any other electronic devices they may have transferred the film to. As for monetary damages, the movie's producers want those found to have pilfered the movie to pay actual or statutory damages and cover the costs that went into filing the suits."
According to the complaint (PDF), the 5,000 infringers are known only by their IP addresses at this time.
I fell asleep watching - in a long time!
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
We've been playing this game for over a decade now..
Are there already good alternatives for bittorrents?
The onion-based darknets seem to be empty because it hasn't been as necessary yet there hasn't been anything other then torrents it seems..?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
...that hurts.
"order them to destroy all copies of The Hurt Locker from their computers and any other electronic devices they may have transferred the film to."
If downloaded via torrent, wouldn't that be and untold number of computers beyond the 5000 they name in the suit?
Apprantly this looks to be like the RIAA's "wet dream" of how to punish the oh so evil downloaders.... and while they may try to pull this crap in the USA, what about people all around the world who might have downloaded this? Seems to me like these guys have no clue about how the internet and torrents work, and how they actually would enforce people to literally delete all copies of this movie.. What, would they send RIAA thugs to every home and hold a gun to a persons head and watch while they delete "The Hurt locker"?
Sheesh
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Maybe the people who are in the real thing should sue him for not allowing fair access to the truth. they should be happy that it might shed some light on what actually happens in iraq and afgan for the families. if more people would watch it than they would understand what vets have seen and experienced/
the 5,000 infringers are known only by their IP addresses at this time.
So in other words, they do not actually know the name of one person who stole a movie. In my book. Try again. People who downloaded it, comon, pay 10 bucks u losers.
Yadda yadda, outrageous, MAFFIIIIIAAAA, etc. etc., but what's their alternative? The most common solution offered on slashdot for the people who make these movies is basically to just allow piracy.
I assume this means they're suing for an a full and immediate apology, right?
...that in the case of shared/allocated ISP addresses used by many possible subscribers, they'll just pick which ever poor sod happens to be using at the time. Rather than understanding or realising the severe flaws of ID via IP address
Why is this sort of legal tactic allowed? The "sue everyone and let the court sort out who is guilty" attitude is ridiculous. Is there some kind of legislation that prevents this sort of behavior? Why isn't this illegal? It's obviously an abuse of the legal system, as far as I can tell.
Basically, I feel that this is extortion. Their tactic is: pay me x dollars or else you'll have to pay to fight an expensive civil suit. That's not ok.
Of course, it's easier to blame pirates for the failure to properly monetize your film. Couldn't be Hollywood's fault, could it?
I've been wondering about this since I first heard about what these guys are doing. Basically they are capturing your IP when you are in the swarm downloading "the.hurt.locker.2009[dvdsrc]" or whatever. But what would happen if people started renaming the files like "the.hurt.locker.[parody]" or "this.is.not.the.hurt.locker.movie" or whatever. Basically, you wouldn't know it was the actual "hurt locker" movie until after you downloaded the entire thing. Couldn't you then just say, "Yeah, I noticed it was the real movie right after it downloaded and I immediately deleted it." Not sure if that would hold up in court, but you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty... right?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
These folks already suffered through this film is suing them really fair?
Prove that any of the people who downloaded this film illegally would have purchased it legally if downloading it wasn't an option. Prove that these people who said, "well, I wasn't interested enough to see it in the theater or rent it, but I hear it won some award so maybe I'll check it out" would have been thoroughly motivated to purchase or rent the movie. Your film bombed because it was crap. Deal with it.
#5,001...
They're asking the courts to prevent them from downloading their stuff again... How would you implement that? Ban the people from the Internets entirely? (Including at the local coffee shop?) Short of stuffing them in jail, I don't see how you could actually do that. So what do you think they have in mind here?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Yes, that's a rather mysterious claim by the plaintiff. Surely they have not been subjected to pain and suffering because of the popularity of the movie -- a popularity demonstrated by the number of downloads.
It sounds like their lawyer went a little hyperbolic with the language in the lawsuit. If I were their defendant (but I.A.N.A.L., and anyway what single opponent will appear for them in this suit?), I would urge that the court not support monetary compensation, since it would not be fulfilling to the plaintiffs. I like your "apology" idea instead.
I prefer my pirated War movies to be like Saving Private Ryan: all white, all the American soldiers are noble and good, all the Germans are monsters, and all the deaths are stunningly dramatic.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
but I'd be more than happy to agree to never watch, pay for, download, or otherwise take any notice of any of their films ever again.
Looks like this will save a lot of time and effort for both sides.
People violate copyright, copyright owner wants justice, sues...
breaking news ?
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
What do you say? Is it worth downloading the BluRay version?
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4748387/The.Hurt.Locker.2008.720p.BluRay.x264-CiRCLE
Or just go with the DVD version?
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5421482/The_Hurt_Locker_(2008)_DVDRip_XviD-MAX
...is probably about the sum total who pirated the sleep inducing drama that is Hurt Locker. Avatar however was pirated beyond belief, and still sold 6.7 million copies on Blu-Ray and DVD in the first 4 days of it's release. So how does pirating affect sales again? Weak sauce.
..is going to be as genuine as the heroism itself: i.e. nothing more than a way of making a few people rich using unreasonable force.
you are naive if you do not expect exactly this
Who wants to bet that the first 5000 downloads came from 192.168.1.0/24? The guys on that network would steal from their own mothers.
A spanking, and "you're grounded for the weekend".
Considering that a large percentage of the illegal downloaders are probably not based in the U.S. --- good luck with that.
It's not about that. maybe you should download and watch the movie.
They don't mention leeching. That is because you need to be distributing to violate copyright law.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it's called the library.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One of the few times an anonymous coward wouldn't want to be first...
My page.
They'll only be suing for the $20 a DVD would cost, right?
I would assume it would be a clause to the effect of:
"If we see you do it again you will pay $______," which I do believe is enforceable by a judge & court as a result of a court case... (of course, needing another review/trial/something to prove)
but IANAL
that they ripped of such a crappy movie AND are getting sued for doing it!
Apology accepted, just don't let it happen again.
The plaintiff claims every downloader is also necessarily an uploader of the infringing copyrighted material. However, the fact that a downloader has the potential to be an uploader doesn't necessarily mean they actually uploaded any part of the Hurt Locker or any other "infringing copyrighted material". It's quite possible for a downloader to have a vast collection of files available for upload and that the vast majority of them available are not infringing and that no portion of the Hurt Locker was ever uploaded.
I missed the movie, and thus don't really get all this fuss. It must be good if people are still talking about it. I guess it's off to TPB for me.
the 5,000 infringers are known only by their IP addresses at this time.
If we had stuck with IPv1, they could only have sued 256 infringers.
For the most of the world.
Or have you actually intended to be more specific, but you got distracted by the light emanating from that shiny circle floating above your head?
Something like:
"How difficult is it for a major credit card-holding adult citizen of United States, currently living in the 50 United States or the District of Columbia with an address and IP to prove it, who also happens to be a Windows/OSX user or an owner of one of proprietary set-top boxes or game consoles to get a Netflix / Blockbuster account and rent the damn thing?".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
We've always lived in a time where people will circumvent immediate means of acquisition of a product through piracy.
whether thats through the act of downloading, or physically stealing the product. its no difference.
Ultimately people need to accept the idea that they will be compensated on the overall appreciation of the product, Aka: if its worth it they'll pay for it.
So wake the hell up and stop using the crutch of the legal system to obligate 5000 people who wouldn't have bothered to watch it pay for it.
Look at music, they're releasing their own cds on their websites now. then making hardcopies available in store for purchase.
if they want money for people downloading it, then legally the very distributors who propagate the download in the first place should get a cut that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.
...don't pirate the movies. Blaming pirates for poor sales is a scapegoat, but no one has to pirate anything. As an independent game developer myself, piracy very much affects my income and life. I used to be a pirate myself, but I grew up and realized, the pirates are the enemies, not the people making, selling and protecting the IP. They may go about it the wrong way and use poor excuses, but no one is making you use their product, and no one has to pirate it. If you don't like it/can't afford it, go without. If you can't afford a $10 ticket or $50 game, go buy a used book instead. Your brain will thank you.
I did not want to see it as I hate combat movies. Now, I am going to boycott any movies that come out of this studio.
I downloaded this movie within an hour after the release hit the predb.
Sadly they'll never know who I am so they can suck my cock.
No, they'd make the courts ban the people from downloading movies again. If they did, then it would be illegal. Wait...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A court injunction against downloading means the next time they're caught they (may) get the more drastic penalties. Contempt of Court can get you thrown in jail...
is it illegal to torrent a copy if you purchased a copy and have no optical drives in which to play it?
just a though.
download a copy myself.
For anybody found guilty of *downloading*, the maximum damages awarded should be the retail cost of one *copy* of the copyrighted material. In this case, that would be the cost of a DVD of the "Hurt Locker'. This is in contrast to *uploading*, where the guilty party is actually *distributing* the work. Even then, the argument is that the downloaded copy represents an opportunity cost sale, which is flimsy at best since there's no proof the guilty downloader *would have* purchased the DVD is downloading via p2p wasn't an option.
And, no, this is not like stealing a DVD from a store. Copyright infringement is not a criminal matter, it's a civil matter.
Greedy bastards!
This space left intentionally blank.
I downloaded this after there were already over 5000 seeds.
So I guess I'm glad I didn't download this one. Really this is getting moronic. Want to know how the movie companies can stop losing money. First, all the money they are spending on investigators and lawyers. Stop doing it. Second. Pay actors what they deserve not millions. Ok, the best actors maybe 250K just like the best in other professions. But come on. Take terminator 3. They payed ol arnie 32 million dollars for that film. The man is a brutish lug who couldn't act his way out of a shoebox. Still he did draw the crowds, to me 250k for him at that point seems reasonable. Finally. The 48 million they have spent this year alone already on lobbying. Stop that. Suddenly those companies would find they are back in the green.
People are going to pirate, and they will never catch the smart ones, just those without the knowledge to protect themselves. Piracy has been around for ages, at least since they invented reel to reel tape decks. Its going to happen, You can't stop it. Best to be thankful for those customers who choose to pay for and in the knowledge that average computer user doesn't know where or is afraid of the software used to pirate.
Honestly I'm vision impaired. Going to the theater is pointless for me. I'd rather get the movie from Netflix and watch it at home. They lost the theater money from. But before I was vision impaired I stopped going to the movies when they got to be over 8 bucks a ticket. I can see 5, but for 7 I can get a 1 case membership over at Netflix and see them as fast(or rather as slow) as the postal system can handle things.
You can't stop piracy. All that happens when you make a big deal out of it is that people investigate. Not in an attempt to stop it, but more to learn how its done and most of the time, they become pirates to.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
There seems to be a bit of post hoc rationalisation going on here regarding the quality of this movie
Now this is just my observation and as such anecdotal evidence, but, I noticed that ever since Hurt Locker was released it was praised by everybody I spoke to. I hang out a lot on both movie forums and filesharing forums, and that opinion was nearly universally shared well after it won a bunch of Oscars and the hype naturally faded. There's an argument to be made that the sucess of the movie, and word of mouth was greatly helped by filesharing, but I'm not making that argument here. Its almost certain that a huge amount of people who liked the movie and spread the word, pirated it. However, almost every opinion I read was that it was an excellent film, until news came out that people were getting sued.
So I look at the file sharing forums, and torrent news blogs, etc and as expected, near universal derision for the producers, but, strangely, suddenly an awful lot of people seem to think "Well it wasn't that good anyway".
What's interesting to me is not just that there are suddenly a lot more negative comments about it than I've seen before, but they're automatically linked to this news story, like its justification. Obviously, the quality of the movie has nothing to do with the rights holders to sue for copyright infringement, so its strange that
Does it feel like a rationalisation to anyone else or just me? Could it be a form of cognitive dissonance, specifically Postdecision dissonance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Postdecision_dissonance
1. "This is a good movie." 2. "Uh oh, this filmmaker has done something abhorrent to my beliefs." 3. This guy is an asshole. 4. Well maybe it wasn't that good a movie
The movie is done, and hasn't changed since released, but if I was to look at the various forums around the internet right now, the universal feeling seems to be it wasn't that great a movie after. The idea that the quality of
Isn't this the movie that's been accused of plagiarizing a US Soldier's life story? Oh, Hollywood, why are you so ironic??
or switched it off 40min into the darn thing?
how the heck did this thing beat avatar for oscars?
It's a good thing this movie was released 2 years late in Australia. I know I won't be on the 5,000 IP list.. But the entire reason I downloaded it was due to that fact. I did go and see it at the movies when it came out though.. Film was out of focus, cinema airconditioning was schizophrenic and some fat guy was sitting in front. So i downloaded the BluRay rip afterwards, and watched it on my screen.
Get umm Johnny! Damn that chewbacca!
I downloaded and watched it. I didnt pay anything. I'm glad i did because it wasnt
worth paying for. While slightly above average at times it wasnt that great overall.
I dont mind paying to support good movies and series, but i want to know what
i get before i spend anything.
It's time the industries learn to make things that we want. Build a relationship
of trust with fans and the money will flow.
If you own the disc, DRM has an (negative) impact on you.
If you don't own the disc, DRM does not prevent you from using BitTorrent, since there is no DRM on thepiratebay.org..
See... the thing is, eventually, they won't HAVE an alternative to putting up with people making copies of their works without getting paid for every single one!
The harder they push to *force* payment from everyone involved, the more interest will form in using technologies that render it impossible to determine WHO downloaded which file. Right now, those technologies are slower, more complicated to use, and seen as "more trouble than they're worth" ... but these lawsuits will act as motivation for that to change.
THEN where will they be? Right back at square 1 again, and forced to do what they NEEDED to do all along; come up with alternate business models.
The fact is, these guys are over-valuing their products and trying to maximize their profits with coercion (force of copyright law), vs. offering entertainment at a lower "optimal price" for the best value to the consumer. Why do I say this? Let me explain:
1. New movie is produced and heads to the theaters. Assuming it's not a total flop (their fault for doing a poor job with it), it will earn X number of million dollars in the first month or so it's in the box office.
2. Only after that window of time is closed, they THEN release the movie on DVD to rake in ADDITIONAL profits. At this point, it's effectively on store shelves for an indefinite length of time.
3. Movie comes to pay-per-view satellite and cable TV somewhere shortly after the DVD release, where still MORE profits are made.
4. Finally, movie is considered "old" and gets shown on regular movie channels or local stations (where a little more money changes hands for the broadcast rights).
All of this generally allows for all the actors, actresses, film production crew, light and sound guys, editing techs, screen-writers, director and producer to earn a very good living and for the movie studio to make a big profit after all those folks are paid. Unlike the work most of us do, royalties KEEP getting paid out to people LONG after they're done doing ANY of the work that was required to make the film. It's literally "money for nothing" at that point. (Imagine if your boss paid you for the rest of your life in royalty installments, long after you quit working for them, because you were "entitled to a piece of the future profits made with the aid of projects you once worked on"?)
Now, factoring all of this in, they're STILL complaining about "piracy" doing irreparable damage, etc. etc.? Sorry if my heart isn't bleeding for them..... If they feel their profits aren't what they "could/should be", they could start with revamping the whole movie theater system we've got today. An awful lot of people I know are passing on going to see movies simply because it's too much of a financial commitment. (By the time you buy some popcorn and a couple drinks, plus a couple tickets, you're into things for $40 or so easily.)
Can I just pay $1.92million instead? What a broken, undemocratic legal system.
We've had a short break since the last marketing ploy of this type has come up.
Same old story, get the world riled up about "filesharing" with your movie name attached (especially if it didn't do too well at the box office), and then the reap the mediocre profit from the free publicity.
Jail time for the rest of their life and/or being forbidden to use a computer again.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sounds okay in theory but there is one flaw. While I agree that some of the damages discussed lately have been cruel & unusual, if the maximum penalty for getting caught copy infringing is what you would have paid for it legitimately, why would anyone concern themselves with avoiding infringement? It would be a "try anyway and if you get caught, oh well" sort of situation, and the average cost of the material for these infringers would actually end up being less than what they'd pay retail, since you won't catch them every time.
What you need to do is make the average cost of infringing more than the average cost of purchasing the material. One way to do that is to make prices more reasonable; for example, once a game gets down to $10 or so for purchase on Steam, going to the effort and risk of pirating the game is no longer attractive. The other way is to increase the average cost of infringing. I say, make the maximum damages three times the cost of the product. That's not so much that it would financially ruin the infringer, but seems high enough to be a deterrent.
You are arguing that it is OK to steal software and break licenses but to download a movie is a crime?
Or do you actually use one of those mythical licensed DVD players for Linux?
You also shouldn't be able to watch the streaming version on your Linux PC.
Are you doing some more "law and license breaking" to achieve that?
Also similar services exist in other nations.
1 - we were talking about Netflix/Blockbuster.
2 - such services, WHERE THEY EXIST, usually have the movies artificially delayed by the movie industry. Also... IP-based crippling works for those too.
3 - ALL of those have the requirement of the user being a credit-card holding adult. While most people do get to be adults eventually, billions of people are not eligible for a credit-card.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"... Voltage will suffer 'great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money."
Like the bad PR this kind of legal action will cause them?
NEWS: Movie totally sucks, but makes millions from file sharing law suits. Investors are pleased.
Privacy is terrorism.
It's time to start shooting these extortionist lawyers. I just don't see any other way to stop their abuse of the legal system.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It doesn't mater if they don't make the movie available in a form that's friendly to /. readers.
The Penny Arcade had a PATV episode where they talked about the Humble Indie Bundle - pay what you want - a dollar, a penny - and people were *still* pirating the games.
I download tv shows and movies all the time, and I hope the private tracker I use will protect me, but I doubt it will. And I don't have much justification for what I do other than convenience - I have very few chances to go see a movie (or deal with the hassle of renting one), and I don't want to pay for cable for the 3 shows I watch.
I do pay for my music and I get my books legitimately, however.
If things get too hot, and I have to choose between no content and the hassle of legal content, I'll probably pick no content, for the most part. Unless movies and tv-shows get easy and cheap.
I downloaded the movie...I also watched it in theaters and bought the DVD. There are no reasonable circumstances under which I should be fined - but since when is the law reasonable?
Thankfully my ISP laughs at these letters and then bins them. They don't even keep enough information to comply with this even if they wanted to. Are they expecting logs from 2 years ago to still be around?
They shall not steal, or at least not by using peer to peer;) But serously, if u pirate content be sure u are aware of the risk. Better to sue some of the people responseble for warez than to drm everybody to death or censor the web. Just my bag full of gold...
Technically speaking, downloading a copy of a movie you already own may be illegal, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone will sue you for it. If they could even track you down in the first place.
But the issue here is that BitTorrent isn't a download tool: it's a peer-to-peer protocol. By default, while you're downloading any given file, you're also uploading it to others. And even if you have a legal copy of the work in question, you don't have the legal right to make it available to those who don't.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
I had forgotten about this movie and had never seen it, is it bad that as soon as I saw this story I went and downloaded the movie?
How did they even get these IP addresses? I presume by sampling the seeders/leechers?
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
If it were theft, every pirated copy of the movie would have to come at the expense of a copy that could otherwise have been legitimately purchased. If I break into a store and steal a DVD, that's theft. If I break into a store and meticulously copy the DVD, it's not. File sharing is closer to the latter case than the former (although without the whole trespassing/breaking and entering aspect).
That's not to excuse piracy, mind you: copyright infringement is still illegal and (depending on your ethics) possibly immoral as well. But there's been a long-standing and deliberate effort among content producers to confuse copyright infringement with theft and it's not really hard to see why. Even if you feel that both crimes are inexcusable, theft is clearly the worse of the two. Plus, there are plenty of people out there who aren't familiar with the particulars of intellectual property laws who know about theft.
In short, it's a PR move. And while I certainly don't begrudge producers the right to protect their property to the fullest extent of the law, I personally prefer to call a spade a spade.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Sadly they'll never know who I am so they can suck my cock.
What exactly are you sad about? That you are NOT being sued, or that you will be receiving oral sex? Sounds like reasons to be happy to me!
:q!
Reminds me of when I was gonna go legit and buy my first legal copy of Norton Internet Security. I went to their site, saw the price, $49. A few screens later they added a download fee of $10 (same price add-on as for the CD version). That really pissed me off and I just forgot about the whole thing. Some time later I found it on Amazon for half the price!!!
Even worse with Norton Ghost, the EXACT SAME product: amazon.com $30, amazon.co.uk $56, at their own site in my country (Finland) $85. Why would any person, no matter how rich, pay three times more for the same product? That's just insanity, and out of pure principle, I won't be buying that product.
Watching The Hurt Locker caused me to suffer great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money
There are other ways then bittorent. I'll make sure to hand out copies to friends too. Lets see them trace that.
Thats still a poor flawed analogy.
You have to proove you uploaded 100% of the movie to others, simply sharing 15% or 20% to some people is not fair. Its like burning a DVD movie with half the file copied, and enough scratches to make 30% unreadable.
Since no one ever uploads 100% of the bytes to any one user, you never really properly SHARE that movie with anyone period.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
the best way for consumers to react against jerk companies is to ignore them and their products. war sucks, movies promoting war swallows.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
a bitTorrent download is many times more damaging than a stolen copy.
baloney. a dvd stolen from a store represents an item that can no longer be purchased at the register. a file shared online is downloaded by people who never had any intention of buying a copy. filesharers aren't thieves, they're just cheapskates or broke muthas. ask anyone who's using torrents why they don't buy movies and they'll tell you they never had any intention to.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
A historical precedent for ad hominem argument.
Online distribution threatens movie studios and recording companies. They work through their distributors to mass produce the physical DVDS/Whatever and market the movie so RETAILERS purchase the movie.
Online distribution cuts out all the middle men, and the profits are driven by customers rather than retailers. Online distribution also gives every movie produced by anybody access to a world market, all you need is the capital to make the movie and perhaps hire a marketing firm for promotion.
The companies that have traditionally run the show for movies and music suddenly become redundant.
The same can be said for interactive media (games), and we can see how steam has been changing the PC Game market.
I am of the opinion that the way to fight this insane "sue your customers" attitude is to simply avoid their movies. A list of these is available at https://thefilmcatalogue.com/catalog/CompanyDetail.php?id=279 - I perused the list and, honestly, saw no movies I've wanted to see on it, or seen. Won't be too hard for me.
Why don't the producers say this to the 5,000: "OK, give us our fucking $24.99 or we will sue your fucking little asses off one by one". Full stop. I bet that they would get a lot of people paying them off instantly, with no court costs incurred.
It really was a great movie. Didn't get a chance to see it in the movies but "found" a copy online - hold on - somebody's at the doo
The idea that these are 'fair lawsuits' that you and the previous poster put forth is nonsense. The article says they are looking for statutory damages. The absolute minimum is $750. Statutory damages are decided by the jury, not by the lawyers; and I know of no jury that has awarded less than $10,000. The same group has put for letters for Far Cry, extorting (via threat of law suit) $1500. Which means we are already at 200x actual damages.
Then we come to the enormous trail of evidence that has to be looked at:
A computer G in the hands of someone with lots of money to be made says address X is downloading file y.
Address X is transmitted to corporation C.
Corporation C says that address belongs to subscriber S.
Subscriber S could be the only person at the keyboard.
That entire trail has to be absolutely perfect. Every program that handled the 'evidence' can be proven never ever to make a mistake, Corporation C must know perfectly that their records are pristine and that no unauthorized persons have access, and that there is absolutely no possibility of any sort of error. There can't be any possibility that anyone could have used S's computer without her knowledge. But most importantly, the person that stands to gain many $10,000s can be trusted never to just add a few extra addresses in there. Hey, if you're going to sue 5,000 people, you might as well just toss in a few hundred more random addresses just for the fun of it and push your profit a little more. It's not like anyone is really caring how the big law firms and movie studios and distribution houses are abusing people here.
From my view point, lawyers and big content have decided that copyright infringement is a new profit center. There is no down side, all you do is grab a few random IP address, send a few thousand demand letters. The ISPs do all the leg work for you for free, and you pick one unlucky loser to actually sue so that the rest of the people that get your extortion letters are scared to tell you 'no'.
The only way to fix this mess is to remove the statutory damages; to limit damages to 10x actual damages or 50x profits made from distribution.
I saw it on cable a couple weeks back for free. I want my money back.
I heard that the Hurt Locker film was on the torrent sites a while ago-- like more than a year before the academy awards-- did they ever figure out who released the copy online? it seems to me that the person that the producers should be going after should be the person on their own staff who decided to release the film-- the crew isn't that big and they should be able to identify who had access to the edit that was released. Why didn't this producer make all this noise when it happened? why did he/they wait until a year after the fact to make all this noise about this? it seems strange that there is no comment about it being leaked online when it was helping build a following, but when the film doesn't make a 1/4 a billion dollars he gets upset and decides to sue everyone. I have to wonder if the producer leaked the film to grow a following-- I would assume that it wouldn't have won the academy award without it.
I read the PDF of this, and it seems to only apply to the USA. You can verify yourself, but thank God I live in Canada, for numerous reasons.
Which means we are already at 200x actual damages.
How much are "actual damages"? You, and others, want to say "I can download a song for 99 cents! Therefore, 99 cents is the actual damages!"
How much does Apple pay for a license to distribute Britney Spears' latest crap to the masses? $20k? $30k? $50k plus 1% of gross sales? It's tough to say, since we're not party to those negotiations. But we do know that Michael Jackson bought 200 songs from the Beatles catalog for $47 million. That means the "actual damages" for distributing those songs without a license would be...
$Two-hundred, thirty-five thousand
That's a far cry from 99 cents. A $1500 lawsuit is actually at less than 1% of actual damages, since the "actual damages" we're talking about aren't the cost of one person downloading the song, but the cost of one person purchasing a license to freely upload the song. The license to copy may be cheap, but the license to distribute is very, very, very expensive.
"So how does pirating affect sales again?"
What, are you stupid or something?
I'm pretty sure most people saying the movie sucked are simply action movie buffs who felt the movie was slow and boring, and just forgot about it. You've also got people who've avoided criticizing the film for social reasons, like patriotism or the awards, but who'll now honestly say they disliked the film. In fact, I'm suspicious the films support largely comes from cognitive dissonance around patriotism and the awards in the first place.
I watched the beginning of the film, but I got bored fairly early and quit. And yes I've never told anyone that before, well I felt the movie was lame before. I mostly just never cared enough, but yeah I was reluctant to contradict the academy when I'd not even seen the film. I've only rarely admitted that I've never finished Foucault's Pendulum either.
That said, these producers are trying to ruin people's lives for watching their movie. So yes erasing the film from our cultural consciousness sounds like an appropriate response. In fact, one easy move would be helping thin down the wikipedia article.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
From what I read, I get the impression that the users they are targeting are residents of Washington DC. Can anyone confirm this.
Now THAT'S squeezing blood from a stone! That's like making soldiers pay for their own body armor!
The "Hurt Locker" was a piece of PROPAGANDA, and they're trying to terrorize viewers who failed to pay before consuming the state's message?
The Gall! The Cheek! The Nerve! The Douglas Adams-ness of the whole thing!
I'm at a loss for (more) words.
-FL
And so are 1100 people on the torrent. I'm in Canada, so I'm safe at the moment. Hollywood makes more money each year than the year before. These producers need to think of better ways to make money other than gouging us at the theater. If I like the movie, I buy merchandise.
Restricting "piracy" just like region codes is a way to restrict the flow of information. Companies don't loose money if someone downloads something. What if the person who downloads doesn't have money, she wouldn't have bought the movie in the first place. What if the person went to theater, then he already owns a copy in his brain.
The more we accept these absurdities the worse it will get. Actions against "piracy" are actions against freedom of speech.
The movie is done, and hasn't changed since released, but if I was to look at the various forums around the internet right now, the universal feeling seems to be it wasn't that great a movie after.
Sounds plausible. You might be right and all that, but for me it is:
I heard good things about this movie. It tickled my curiosity. Now, I'll avoid seeing it. Not in the theatre, not as DVD, not pirated. Heck -- even if it comes on TV I'll switch channels.
Sometimes I take decisions on grounds other than price/quality.
To all the morons...
Nicolas Chartier, is that you?
From TFA:
Nicolas Chartier, who founded Voltage... recently called those who disagree with his lawsuits "morons."
Don't bother, Voltage! I'll save you the trouble of suing me (not that I downloaded--or have actually seen--the movie) and voluntarily stop downloading--and buying, and renting, and viewing at theaters--your films!
Your friend,
SheeEttin
Doesn't it seem possible that people downloading this movie helped get the word out about it, propelling it into the spotlight? I only head about the film by word of mouth and I _know_ that all those people didn't see it in theaters. Having Netflix, I later rented the DVD and enjoyed it, but there's certainly something to be said about instant distribution at low-cost (or no cost in this case). FYI, I'm one of those people that refuses to buy a dvd or cd before having experienced it at least once, and yes that means cutting corners in places, but a 500+ cd/dvd collection speaks for itself in dollars.
They're asking the courts to prevent them from downloading their stuff again... How would you implement that? Ban the people from the Internets entirely? (Including at the local coffee shop?) Short of stuffing them in jail, I don't see how you could actually do that. So what do you think they have in mind here?
the same way the court prevents people from doing all sorts of things, by issuing an injunction. if the party breached the injunction then the court would punish the party accordingly.
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Ohhh those 5,000 people.
.
Or by the time it had of come out on DVD, would have forgotten all about it....
.
Ohhh those 5,000 people.
.
And the producers who were too stupid to release it simultaneously in the cinema, on DVD and online for like $1 a showing - all at the same time?
.
What do you mean $1 a showing, the computer monitor is only 1 / 10,000th the size of the cinema screen - it should be 20c per viewing.
.
Ohhhhhh those 5,000 people.
.
And not forgetting the merchandising, the Mc Crappy meals and their child psychologist manipulation to come back every day for 2 weeks to get the whole toy set....
.
Ohhhhhh those 5,000 people.
.
So now who are the dick head producers are going to sue...
.
Ohhhhhh those 5,000 people.
.
Yeah count me in as a instant fan of the movie..
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As if.
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
They want ISPs to track down 50,000 IP addresses? I tend to agree with the ISPs who claim that they do not have the resources to track down that many and even if they did the ISPs should be able to charge Voltage Pictures fees for this service. It is totally bullcrap that copyright holders can impose these sorts of costs on ISPs whenever they feel like going fishing for infringers. As I recall, the courts ruled against the RIAA and forced them to use the standard subpoenas; a process which proved too expensive, even for the RIAA, to pursue tens of thousands of individuals for what amounted to small claims settlements (i.e. without the abusing the DMCA takedown process, the financial calculus reversed and the RIAA had to give up on new cases). How many file sharers will actually be unmasked if Time Warner, AT&T or Verizon can charge a few thousand dollars plus several hundred dollars per hour of admin time in fees for each subpoena request? Is Voltage Pictures really prepared to spend 150 million dollars just to get 50,000 names (each one requiring an individual subpoena request)? This sounds like an empty threat by Voltage Pictures, but IANAL so perhaps someone who is can answer these questions. For the record, I have not even seen the movie in question and now I am pretty sure that I don't want to.
...as long as 20+ years the battle on piracy (the home-grown stuff, not the pro-stuff) has been raging in the world. It really heated up with the digital age: CD, DVD, BluRay. The owners of the content fight for their current income, but fail to see the lost cause.In 50 years time (hopefully less), we can sincerely look back on these "piracy wars" and see them for what they really are: a battle for the fair use of someones work. Currently, the balance is - even though it *seems* the other way around - tilted far towards the distributors. The makers of the work get a very small percentage. Piracy is - as is often discussed - just the excuse of distributors to keep this balance tilted in that direction. It will change, but that will take time and money - mostly money from those who take the fall for the system as it now is (the 'bittorent users', 'downloaders' etc.).
;=)
Until law makers see this problem, and fairly solve it, it will continue. Probably the most fair way is:
* ban all DRM
* provide a good, flat-rate, service globally to download media to own and use ; the distribution channel doesn't even have to come from the distributors (this is their fear...) : let anyone download from ie. bittorrent and pay that flat-rate fee. See it as a TV license fee : you watch it, you pay it.
* as far as distribution channels are concerned: allow them to only ask a transparent price for distribution, split the costs for "the work" and "the medium" (distribution) clearly, and make it into law
* make sure the profits of "the work" end up with the makers of the content.
* make sure the profits of "the medium" end up with the distributors of the content - as per the division above.
* stop all lawsuits
* if you get caught "illegally downloading", you pay a fine. The fine you pay is equal to the fee you would have paid normally, for the period you (likely) owned said content, and is increased with a percentage to discourage you from doing it again (20%-50% sounds fine).
* no internet disconnections
Now that's solved, what's next ? Energy crisis ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
A movie that cost $15M to make and has grossed $48M worldwide has been irreparably damaged exactly how? (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hurtlocker.htm)
How much return on investment were the creators expecting? Apparently more than 200%... In what way is this irreparable damage? Sounds more like greed to me.
I think this sort of statement is part of the script. First lawyer makes a ludicrous claim, defence lawyer then says that it's stupid. Of course it can be measured in money and anyway, my clients didn't violate the law in the first place.
I know that USENET itself is older, but you forgot FTP :)
GGP wasn't calling it stealing because it's illegal, he was calling stealing because it was getting something they weren't paying for. And that has NOTHING to do with illegal. And that is EXACTLY what the GP pointed out the copyright cartels were doing too.
The onion routing networks are empty because they are infuriatingly slow. The real downside to them is that they collectively increase bandwidth requirements and latency massively. Trying to get movie like Hurt Locker from such network would take days at best case instead of the minutes we are experiencing right now.
I wonder how well ISPs log who has leased addresses being most use DHCP. Wonder if Grandma will end up with an IP used to download a movie and get framed for it and sued for her life savings to make a point.
This whole thing make me want to download this movie, burn it to DVD then burn the DVD!
Of course there's no point wasting time downloading the movie, a bonfire of 5000 DVD coasters would make the point.
And P2P peering means you shared 1 copy plus the one you got for yourself. That costs $40 (and one filesharer now no longer has to pay: his fine has been paid) times three for reasonable punitive damages (goes to court): $120. And 2500 of those 5000 P2Pers are free of harm: they've been paid for by the other half.
Of all recent films, this is probably one of those that benefited most from filesharing. The thing was completely unknown and one could make a strong case for part of the hype that got generated being thanks to filesharers who saw the film and passed the word around. I think that there will always be a status quo in the filesharing 'war' unless something dramatic happens which seems unlikely.
Just so I understand, if you buy a dvd, the dvd prohibits you from copying, sharing, etc. so, if you do upload the dvd, you're violating a contract you accepted. when you download an array of bits, where is the contract you violate?
someone should sue the director of this tedious, contrived film.
There is only one way to be sure. It involves nuke and orbit.
I think anybody that downloaded and watched that shitty movie will never download their stuff again.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Then lets see, huge loss ...
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hurtlocker.htm
ok Budget: 15 million. :48 Million.
Revenue Worldwide
Poor Souls, only 33 Million Profits . Pirating movies really does destroy the Movie industry.
It's all about copyright? NO, follow the money, it's not. It's also a lost cause, we knew that, but not for the reasons I'm about to explain.
.avi of a DVD rip would take a while to download in 2003 and you'd fit a few dozen on a inexpensive 80gb hard drive. Now it comes down in minutes for a popular torrent, and you can fit thousands on the two terabyte drive you can buy for the price I paid for my roomy 80gb in 2003!
I have long wondered if this is all really about the filmmakers and their copyright. An author I know explained this is actually all about the food chain that needs to get paid. When you consider how little the original artist receives on a sale of any work these days it makes a lot of sense. If you follow the money through studios to post production, distributors and cinema chains you start to see a lot of people who don't get paid when a movie is distributed by digital means even if the movie was not illegally copied.
BIttorrent and it's popularity for sharing content proves that delivering over the internet is entirely viable, and the studios should have got started doing it 10 years ago. The Internet currently supports gazillions of downloads of music and movies in a distributed fashion, for all practical purposes you could say distribution cost is close to zero.
The net is not much of a threat to an artist, but it's a huge threat to the enormous food chain involved in getting content from artist to consumer, be it in print, CD, DVD or cinema movie.
I used to work for a print company, and there wasn't a day that passed without someone talking about the company was going to compete with the internet. Others I know in various industries share similar experiences over the last decade or two. So I can't help feeling a lot of people don't like the internet and there will be much more lawsuit flinging to come - especially as piracy is only just getting started.
So what's next? Piracy will be driven to darknets with encryption and onion routing right? Bittorrent was not designed for piracy, in fact it's rather liberal with spamming your ip address everywhere - anonymity improvements are not hard to see. Problem solved right? Piracy can continue? Scary but governments may go to the dark path and not allow encrypted links between unauthorized hosts, not allow peered traffic, and other draconian measures. I doubt that will happen.
As the performance of internet connections improves, so the overhead of trading content of a given size (VCD/DVID/Blu-ray rips) naturally falls. A 700mb
So you can see where that is going. There is also another darknet, one the groupthink around here doesn't seem to discuss. It is untraceable, and impossible to monitor. It's called the Swap Club. Large external hard drives and cheap USB thumbdrives are now so ubiquitous I've noticed a trend of people sharing entire collections of music and movies on portable hard drives. You leech what you want, copy on your shit if you think people will like it, delete the porn folder yet again, pass it along to the next person.
It's like a portable LAN party, and we all know what happens at those.
There isn't a respectable School/University/IT firm that doesn't have some sort of swap club going on, and it's going to get worse.
You can already get 32Gb microsd cards, as big as your pinky fingernail. What happens when, thanks to Moore's law, these things hit hundreds of gigabytes of storage? You could stitch dozens of these into the seams of your clothing and easily bootleg a lot of data through any ACTA border search.
So yeah my hypothetical 1000-movie collection is going to fit in a cheap SDcard in 2015 and I'll be able to fit several peoples collections in a $!0 USB stick by 2020. Is my black belt in Google Fu faded in the wash or is no one else making the logical predictions regarding piracy that come from extrapolating where Moore's law is taking price/capacity/bandwidth of digital data? Just you wait and see how piracy is going to change the digital landscape over the next decade.
It's going to be very bad, and somehow awesome too. You ain't seen nuttin yet
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
And that is EXACTLY what the GP pointed out the copyright cartels were doing too.
Thanks dude, I totally didn't know what I wrote.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They're asking the courts to prevent them from downloading their stuff again... How would you implement that? Ban the people from the Internets entirely? (Including at the local coffee shop?) Short of stuffing them in jail, I don't see how you could actually do that. So what do you think they have in mind here?
Because infringing copyright in this way is a civil offence, but ignoring a court order is a criminal offence, so if they do it again the sanctions available are much harsher.
If you don't like the terms, then don't watch the movie, simple as that.
You don't have some fundamental human right to the latest hollywood blockbuster.
If you don't like the price of a book, that doesn't mean you get to take it up to the store photocopier and make a copy. What is the difference here?
Just as you have no right to demand 1). they give it to you in a format desire or else 2). you copy it. They are completely allowed to discriminate in the market and only provide it in certain mediums of consumption. If Coke won't sell you a 9oz bottle of Coke, does that give you the right to duplicate their formula and then make it and give it away to others for free because of your spite for them?
Nobody ever pretended copying songs off the radio was the moral or right thing to do, lol, yet you youngsters insist that it's your right to watch their productions. Look at it this way-- nobody owes you anything. You'll be a lot happier if you recognize this.
I didn't go the the movies to see the film but when it came out on DVD I decided to rent it. So here I was at home with my girlfriend ready to watch it.
I live in Québec and speak french most of the time but there's no way in hell I will watch a french translated movie especially when the original language is English. ...I put the movie in the DVD player only to realize that the only language on the DVD is french. 99.999% of all movies on DVD here in Québec have at least french and English available but not this one.
The stupid company who distribute the movie in Canada (Maple Pictures) has put out two versions of the DVD in each language and all the video clubs I went to had only the french version available.
BTW; Maple Picture is the company who put DVD sets of 'The Dead Zone' with episodes in the wrong order and missing episodes. They refused to correct the problems and these sets are still available today at Wal-Mart with a notice that client see only after opening the shrink wrap..
Anyways, granted I should have read the DVD cover better, I decided to download the torrent since I felt cheated out of my English version... I don't really feel bad for what I did.
Maybe you are a model customer but the rest of us on slashdot just want the movies for free. We think we are somehow "owed" the movies and try to justify downloading it by saying it's not in the resolution we want or the medium we want, rather than admitting "I have no right to consume this, they have every right to deny it in the medium I want, because it makes more business sense for them".
a nationalistic right wing propaganda piece, which goes on to sue 5000 of its countrymen for watching it.
they should PAY their viewers for watching it. not ask for money.
Read radical news here
The narrative is weak, the actors very bad, don't worth watch it again, once is more than enough. For me the only one who should like of it, is the US Army, because that guy is the sort of soldier that they want... one no brain guy, that in the movie is the most luck guy in the world. But everybody know that doing that things he should be dead and with empty coffin..
If the file you download is encrypted - and you only connect with those sharing encrypted files - how do they know what you downloaded ( --beyond a reasonable doubt-- - excluding fake setup files ) Just because you download a torrent link doesn't mean you downloaded the file.
Oh and DID I FORGET TO SAY FUCK THEM... ASSHOLES!
Offer non-DRM, reasonable price structure, watch their over inflated piracy #'s drop even lower.
Oh did I forget to say FUCK THEM - greedy assholes - can't see the profit margins for their greed - DOWNLOAD - rip & burn - who was it that said that LOL!
Oh FUCK THEM! did I say that yet...
Where all gonna die anyway THANKS BP... LOL
When I saw the Oscar Winner I went and downloaded a copy because I'd already forgotten the name of that boring movie I saw a few months ago. When I figured out which one it was I was, like "oh, THAT ONE won the Oscar???!?? what kind of morons were on the committee this year?" and deleted the file without even watching it.
Apparently the MPAA could have sued me for that.
Welcome to the brave new world.
No sig today...
They're asking the courts to prevent them from downloading their stuff again... How would you implement that? Ban the people from the Internets entirely? (Including at the local coffee shop?) Short of stuffing them in jail, I don't see how you could actually do that. So what do you think they have in mind here?
In the UK they're going to cut off the geographical location associated by IP address with alleged tortuous infringement.
If I recall correctly the Hurt Locker only opened in select theaters. It won all those Oscars with barely anyone having seen the movie. Afterwhich the one copy that your local rental store might have had would have been impossible to obtain.
If there is one reason that I think is acceptable for piracy it's when you can't enjoy the material in any other way.
Not for nothing...I heard of this movie and all the hype. I saw it after it one at the Oscars. At best, this was an HBO/Showtime movie. I think it's Oscar winnings were for more pandering to the Military Industrial Complex than anything else. It was alright, nothing special. As a matter of fact, wasn't it them that leaked the screener online? And now they want to sue everyone? The main question is how did this movie get online in the first place--That's where the real problem is. The same thing happened with American Gangster a few years ago...I don't see Ridley Scott or Denzel suing everyone...
Okay, I'll bite.
Even though I have not downloaded (or even seen Hurt Locker)...
To whom should I send my check for two dollars and fifty cents?
Presuming any larger amount of "actual damages" would be criminal.
... will continue to cause the Plaintiff great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.
But they'll sure try and hit the defendants over the head with a ruler, won't they?
So their logic is what? That the people they sue and not sue are going to feel remorseful and buy the movie?
Wait, I thought these downloaders paid for those electrons! :)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I wonder how many of these people are subscribers of netflix and could validly wait and rent it as part of their monthly fee they pay but just download it because the dvd release is delayed pointlessly compared with the release of the academy award screeners. Haven't they realized by now that by making users wait a long time to see the movie that everyone is talking about, those same users are going to download the movie online rather than wait for it to be available on DVD or Blu-Ray? I know with these stupid agreements with movie companies to delay DVD availability on netflix in the hopes of getting me to buy it, I prefer to stick it to the stupid companies and download it earlier rather than waiting.
That's one movie I'm not going to see. It must be absolutely, mind-blowingly horrible, since it apparently has gotten so little money in - in theaters and DVD sales - that the company has to sue 5000 filesharers, just in order to pay the cast and other people involved in the movie. I mean... wow... that movie has to blow, big time. Can anyone confirm that this movie is that bad? Come on, some of you have to have downloaded it, right?
This is just free publicity for this movie, although I have to admit it works well. So I guess it is good publicity while reducing torrenting. It slid past me when it was in theaters so I will probably just wait for it to arrive from my queue from blockbuster. (just waiting for this to go against them and torrenting to skyrocket or a counter-suit)
Yes, because as we all know Steam ended game piracy, iTunes ended music piracy, and Hulu ended TV show piracy.
Don't get me wrong, I think all those companies are doing great things and are being as competitive as they possibly can be but let's not forget the core of the problem is a big group of people who think they deserve products instantly ('It's in the theatre, why should I have to wait?') and for free.
Yes, the false positive rate for IP collection must be very high given how they're allocated. Does anyone know the statistics?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
...and speculate that the Oscar awards were purely politically motivated given that this film only managed to pull in $16M at the box office.
AAMOF I'd never even heard of this film until I saw this article, and read the linked article...
So, I guess the new indie film guide to profitses is to make sh!t film, phail utterly at box office since said film is sh!t, sue a few thousand downloaders, maybe profit.
I wonder how many of those "john does" actually saw the film at a theater. It'd be hilarious if most of them had. In any event I'll have to remember to avoid movies produced by Voltage in the future, but I suspect that won't be difficult as that film must've been truly horrendous to do so poorly, and most films today are just utter crap anyways. I can find better ways to spend $10 or so that on crappy films. After all the Blair Witch Project another indie film managed to pull in something like $250M...
I thought the movie was great when i rented it. I WAS going to buy it... but not after this bullshit.
When someone makes a movie worth watching, I'll buy the DVD. Until then I will continue to download.
They're asking the courts to prevent them from downloading their stuff again... How would you implement that?
especially since it isn't a specific studio- it is a gun-for-hire henchmob. None of those movies that are listed are by the same studio, a bunch of greedy and uninformed producers hired the goons to sue people and in the long run are going to have a serious cryfest when they get the bill, you think that that $15 million is going to carry you that far from the hurt locker? I have been working in firms for the last 10 years doing electronic discovery and support to attorneys and I will tell you- labor doesn't come cheap- if out of those 5000 cases 10% of them go to trial (which is the average) they will need to spend on the order of 5-10 times what the film made just to bring those cases to court (especially if they are planning to sieze the defendent's computers), and if they win? they won't get any money anyways- the people that downloaded the films will just go bankrupt and have to pay a court ordered reasonable fee or experience some sort of garnishment that won't pay the bills. Either way the studio goes belly up if they continue the route.
I can't possibly imagine what kind of motivation is behind such a move... 'Piracy Will Earn Hurt Locker More Than the Box Office' http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-will-earn-hurt-locker-more-than-the-box-office-100530/
turdknocker
When I pay for a movie I want to be able to play it wherever I want, whenever I want and I don't want to pay for every artificial format shift that the industry comes up with.
As thinks are today when I buy a DVD or record a movie, the movie cartels don't want to give me any rights except watching the thing in the terms they impose.
Well, fine, no problem, but then I will do all what I can to suit their products to my needs, in the same way you would do with anything else you have actually paid for.
And before some of you go in your infantile tirade about evil file sharers, I have never used bittorrent to pirate movies or music (or any copyrighted material) but have ripped plenty of CDs, DVDs I have paid for with my hard earned cash and have transferred recordings from my legitimately recorded stuff to media players, including my laptop, to satisfy my needs.
Any other industry would be falling over themselves to fullfil the needs of their clients, the movie cartel, a cartel after all, keep prices fixed and had their been around during the times of Edison we would still be using was cylinders as the most advanced method to record music.
And that is the point.
The movie industry should work under that assumption: people will copy the movies to their hearts contents.
You simply can't make a business model based on the exclusive replication of bits, it is simply insane.
Some possibilities I have heard:
- Release a movie in all possible format simultaneously the same day (theatrical releas, DVD, online, movie channel, etc). This way you undercut the pirates if you price online releases properly.
- Forget about revenue from DVDs. Hard to swallow, but if reality is telling you that, why do you keep insisting on the oposite? As the owner of the rights you have access to lots of different things that pirates don't: the actors, the director, officiality in order to create all kind of derivative products.
Look, it is not my job to figure this out, but if the film and music industry were paying people to come up with viable solutions instead of bribing politicians to get draconian laws passed or suing their clients, they would have solved this "problem" long time ago.
State funding for the arts? (Queue the "BOOOOO!!! Socialism is evil! Taxation is theft and they'll just give it all away to some junkie who throws paint on a wall!")