Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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/
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
I didn't think it was that good of a movie. The critics (from what I've heard) raved about it, but I found the combat scenes to be unrealistic, the dialogue to be rather boring, and the plot uninteresting. One ridiculous scene involved a gun jammed because there was blood on the bullet. Seriously? Using one of the best sniper rifles in the world and blood on the bullet jammed the gun? Of course removing the bullet and cleaning it with spit did the trick. Interestingly enough, all of this was done right next to where someone had just been shot. What a ridiculous scene. Maybe they didn't make that much money because it wasn't that good of a movie... Also, Avatar was in the theaters at the same time and everyone was talking about that. Either way, I bet they're just suing some Bit Torrent noobs and they won't accomplish anything. I hope that everyone fights the suits so we can see what happens when they take 5,000 people to court....
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
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
Ummm... Actually... I'll disagree. If they're suing for "actual" costs, and the costs of filing the lawsuit, then I think they're going totally against what the *IAAs have been doing. In fact, I think it's a totally reasonable and justifiable damage to seek among the downloaders. They're not looking to charge these folks $80K for the download, they're looking to get the illegal copies deleted, or have them pay for the movie and pay the court costs. That's exactly what I think it should be.
Now - If they decide that the "actual" cost is upwards of $80K + court costs, then I'm certainly going to go along with the wet dream theory.
Watching The Hurt Locker caused great and irreparable waste of time that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.
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.
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.
They're also suing for something at this point incomprehensible... a block that prevents the infringer from ever downloading their movies again. Good luck with that at the tech level.
I was not really impressed with the film. Sure it was a quality film with a solid message. I didn't feel it was worth an academy award. I'm sure I am not alone.
I guess some people can make the right decisions about making a good movie, but make all the wrong decisions about how to appeal to the audience for the next movie.
Irreparable harm is being done to their next movie. It'll be known as the movie made by those guys that sue their customers.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
It also mentions statutory damages, and this is supposed to be the same law firm behind the Far Cry lawsuit, which is asking for $1,500 to settle now, $2,500 to settle at the end of summer, or they'll go for up to the $150,000 cap at trial.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
A spanking, and "you're grounded for the weekend".
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
Agreed,
This *sounds*, currently, to be a fair lawsuit. RIAA/MPAA typical ask for massive amounts of money for possessing a song (not necessarily distribution), such as $2,000/song you download or $25,000/album
Seems like this lawsuit is aiming for "Stop, we know who you are now, delete your copies, don't do it again... + court costs" if found guilty...
Sounds fair in my boat... if not being a little easy on the copyright violation for possession... I personally think they should tack on a little extra for the lost revenue -- say $40-100, a fair value for what they might get if the person watched it in the theaters (with a friend or two) and/or bought the dvd/blueray
One of the few times an anonymous coward wouldn't want to be first...
My page.
That's like excusing a shoplifter because they wouldn't have otherwise bought or couldn't afford to buy the stolen item.
Only if you assume that more than 5,000 people downloaded the film. Maybe they're suing because they heard that piracy gives extra publicity that leads to increased sales, but this time none of the pirates had anything good to say about the film?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
No, a shoplifter has taken an actual thing away. These folks only made copies. Besides shoplifting this film will only get you a fine in the hundreds of dollars and maybe some community service.
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
Stealing a movie online should be punishable like other forms of theft. Then there wouldn't be lawsuits like this one.
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.
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.
A boycott by someone who doesn't pay to see movies anyway? I'm sure they're shaking in fear.
Well if enough of us boycott any future release for this BS that they are pulling-- it could lead them down a path to bankruptcy.
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.
Not really. In every group, you're going to have people who are only going to be interested in something because it's free. So there's no way in Hades that this equates to 5,000 lost sales. Then you have people who have people who will wait until it's cheap to buy/rent. That reduces the potentially lost sales more.
The only group that would be equivalent to your example are the ones who go "well, I was GONNA buy it, but damn, I can get it for FREE?!" Because you see, a shoplifter actually removes a physical product from the sales environment, thus costing a sales opportunity whether the thief would have purchased it or not. After all, if a store only has 20 copies of a movie, it can only make 20 sales, so a theft of one of those copies directly translates to a lost sale. If you're downloading, you're not preventing anyone else from purchasing a copy.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
download a copy myself.
The main problem is that even court costs can be enough to destroy somebody's life. The odds are if you're downloading you're probably not among the wealthy elite in the world. They're probably more like me, in their 20's and only a few missed paychecks from being homeless. I simply don't think that a few hundred megabytes is worth the real human misery that you would cause. Legally they are in the right, but that doesn't make it right.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Except this is not stealing, this is unauthorized copying. If you want to change the law to make the punishment the same that sounds fine, but this act is never stealing.
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.
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.
It'll be known as the movie made by those guys that sue their customers.
Well, not really. If you downloaded the movie and didn't pay for it, you aren't a customer.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
If you are an independent game developer charging $50 for a game, I think I see your problem.
I do not pirate games or movies, I tend to choose FREE software and CC or PD films when possible, but I still buy closed games and normal films that I really feel I must see. I also have a netflix account, but $50 for an indie game is nuts.
Speak for yourself. As a games developer myself, yes, I'd prefer it if people bought the games rather than downloading them. But a pirated game cost at most one lost sale and most likely works out to an average of about a tenth of a sale.
The mere act of suing them will cause considerable stress to them, that is completely disproportionate to any harm they might have done. If you think that piracy is unjustifiable, then I appreciate that's a valid opinion. However, suing someone for thousands of times the amount they cost you is also unjustifiable.
That's *exactly* what I was thinking. Nobody bothered watching it in theaters. The discs aren't selling well. They just want some buzz.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
If they're going to make people pay for their download then they should get to keep it, right? Cause then who's stealing whose money?
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??
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.
Who says? How many of the sued saw it in the theater and just wanted a copy on their HD? How many were, will be, or would have been paying customers of other movies of the same creators or studio?
I, for one, spend a lot of money on CDs. And yes, sometimes I'll also illegally (depending on jurisdiction) download stuff, because there is an upper limit to what I can afford to spend, and there is much more fantastic music around. Nobody gets hurt by this, because I would not have spent any more money anyway, The only effect of not downloading would be that I wouldn't have listened to this music. And I've often bought CDs after a download if I liked the stuff. So yes, it would be wise to consider me a customer or potential customer even if I haven't paid for a particular mp3. Suing me would be a damn stupid business move.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Get umm Johnny! Damn that chewbacca!
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.)
That sounds very much like long-term business thinking. That has no place in modern American business.
By the way, here's your papers... you've been served.
Sincerely,
The ##AA
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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.
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...
I'm curious about this too.
I never heard of the movie before this.
That said, I don't watch TV and hardly ever go outside, and I block web ads. I'm not exactly an easy customer to reach...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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."
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".
Indie games are sometimes worth 50 dollars. Label games are alot of the time NOT worth 50 dollars. Modern Warfare 2 was a joke. Im sorry I bought that POS game.
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!
I was not really impressed with the film. Sure it was a quality film with a solid message. I didn't feel it was worth an academy award. I'm sure I am not alone
My comment about the film was, "Is there an Academy Award for 'Least Believable Main Character,' because I think Hurt Locker just won that one too."
It had potential to be good. The reviews were good. The film just isn't. When the two big directors up for Best Picture are the directors of Point Break and Rambo, the field is pretty weak.
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.
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.
It doesn't. I guess some people never grow up.
If you like it, cool. Buy it, rent it, watch it with a friend, or even borrow someone elses every now and then. The point in all this should be ethically simple. Don't be that habitual freeloader unless the creators intended it to be free.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
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 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.
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.
The point in all this should be ethically simple.
I hope you made the same point in yesterday's article about Warner pirating anti-pirating software.
If you like it, cool. Buy it, rent it, watch it with a friend...
I haven't seen this film so I don't know if I like it. While I have no intention whatsoever to download this movie, due to the asshole conduct of the film's producers, I now have no interest in buying it, renting it, watching it with a friend or any other activity which will put their product in front of my eyes. I think I'll even skip this one when it makes it to cable, along with anything else they create.
The public response to lawsuits killed the music industry. Now film producers want to start playing the game. I guess some people never learn. So I guess now is a good time to start boycotting the entire movie industry as well. Just one less waste of money in hard times.
I think that's ethically much simpler than trying to figure out what the creators wanted. You don't even have to think about them at all or any of the phony moral posturing that now seems necessary to watch a damn movie.
That's NOT entertainment. It's a pain in the ass.
Agreed. Had I paid to see it, I would have asked for my money back. (Does that mean they owe me $150,000 or whatever it is they claim a single copy is worth?)
As a somewhat ironic twist, however, the movie's protagonist regularly buys pirated DVDs. Smells like hypocrisy to me.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I spend more money on movies (cinema and DVD/BD purchases) than I ever did before. I see a simple explanation: Hurt Locker made no money and investors need to blame someone. Hell, let's blame piracy. Surely the only possible reason since they received rave reviews. Marketing has absolutely nothing to do with it. I for one haven't seen any of the Oscar winning movies. Yet my initial statement stands true. Maybe people aren't into war movies where aliens are absent.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
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.
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.
You're actually being self righteous. Here, those who share actually spend more on music than those who don't:
http://news.cnet.com/Study-File-sharing-boosts-music-sales/2100-1023_3-898813.html
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
Ok, so it doesn't help. I'm not going to concede that to you, but I'm not going to argue it, either; I simply don't feel like digging up the resources to back it up (and... someone else already did, if you look up a bit above this post).
I'd like you to point out exactly how, given that I'm unable or unwilling to pay, my download is HURTING them.
Are they paying for bandwidth for my download?
Are they paying to duplicate the bits for my download?
Has a copy disappeared from their warehouse for my download?
Have they lost possession of the song, show, movie, application, book, or other piece of media for my download?
Have they lost a sale? You'll probably argue this point, but you've already stated that there was no potential sale, because I am unable or unwilling to purchase.
Did you have a point?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Agreed. Had I paid to see it, I would have asked for my money back.
So if you like a movie, does that mean you pay afterwards? You are a thief. You take the product of someone's labors against their will and offer nothing in return. That has nothing to do with whether what you steal meets your personal standards.
Yes. And every time you fastforward through a TV commercial or get up to go the bathroom during them, you too are a thief.
Or do you watch all the commercials to satisfy your morality? Do you listen to all the commercials on the radio in between songs? Do you read all the banner ads on every webpage you load?
Welcome to 2010. You can't lock media down as easily anymore and you can't charge exorbitant prices for shit and expect everyone to happily pay it. And using your political influence to sway the FBI and the judicial system in your favor is not going to change the popular opinion.
If the movie industry doesn't like it, they can always stop making movies...
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
Funny.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Those who think pirating helps companies make money are just trying to justify their own illegal activity. You want it, you pay for it. Not willing or able to pay for it? Do without. It's a movie (music, game, whatever). You don't need it.
But I can get it.
Why should I feel any more guilty about downloading a movie than I do listening to a song at a party ?
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 :)
same here. i watched the thing at a friend's place because everyone said it was great. but i found it cliched, dumb, and plain boring. i'm happy the fraudsters who tried to hype up this piece of shit did not get any money from me.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
No, this would justify not watching it at all. But the fact that the money paid for the film would mostly end up to people already filthy rich justifies downloading according to my sick and twisted socialist morals.
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.
Marginal costs of copy. Idiot.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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?
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"
Where was downloading mentioned by GP?
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
That's the point - it was ridiculously off topic to the point of almost trolling.
And there in a nutshell is a perfect example of the root cause of the "financial crisis". The mindset nowadays is that we should all have everything we want just because we want it. The mere fact that we cannot afford it does not enter into the equation. We borrow money we can never pay back (often we have no intention of paying it back -- see student loan mess), or we download stuff we can't afford to buy, simply because we feel entitled. Clearly this attitude is not sustainable (the current buzzword of the left) and we are now seeing the consequences play out. Sadly, it will be those who shunned this entitlement mentality, worked hard, saved, lived within their means, and played by the rules, who will be hurt the most as they are forced to pay the bills for everyone else.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Couldn't you just print out some more money? I mean, you wouldn't actually be taking anything from anyone.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
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.
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?
Yeah, the kids becoming drug mules due to lack of economic opportunity and going away for decades really feel your pain. Let's talk about unfairness once we've figured out how not to incarcerate most of the poor in our country. Then we can start worrying about spoiled rich kids getting in trouble for downloading movies they don't need.
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".
+5 Insightful is not enougth to this one...
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Out of interest, how do you decide which CDs to buy and which to download?
I agree that there is an amazing amount of good music out there, and it is certainly possible to consume more than one can afford at commercial pricing. One option is to 'top-up' the paid CDs you can afford with music that is free or cheap. There is quite a lot out there, and then not only is nobody getting hurt, but nobody is getting upset either! If the majors are going to whine about your support you may as well take it to somebody that appreciates it.
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..
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.
It doesn't stop there. If you look at the advertisement, but don't buy the product advertised, you're stealing from the company that payed good money for that ad.
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...
... 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?
No it wasn't: The producers want economic compensation, the person paying money to see it and disliking it want economic compensation. Not off topic.
Some of the music I buy automatically, e.g., new releases by artists I've been following some time. Often I read an interview with/story about an artist (usually in the one music mag I read and which I find myself often in agreement with, Spex from Berlin), or an album review, which I find interesting - I often buy these "blind" because I know that it will usually take repeated listening until I can form an opinion about it, and a quick scan won't help. And it also often happens that I go see a concert of a band I know and like the support band, which will usually net them a CD and t-shirt sale at the merch stand. Sometimes I listen to an album I already own and my love for it is somehow rekindled, or I "get" it for the first time, which can quickly lead to simply buying the complete works of the artist in one go. And finally sometimes I decide I want to know a bit about a type of music I had ignored previously, which also often makes a whole CD stack appear at once.
I think the above cases lead to most of my CD purchases.
I should admit that I lied about my downloading habits for the sake of argument (and maybe a bit of trolling). Actually I don't really P2P download any significant amount of music anymore, and I never did much.
I'm old-fashioned and somehow need tangible CDs or vinyl; stuff I only have on mp3s rarely gets listened to. I also have no need to carry a huge library with me at all times, because I tend to listen to a few albums on heavy rotation for a while, then switch to the next batch. And with the Amazon mp3 store, Myspace, and band sites, I usually have enough options to get an overview of what's going on in the areas I'm currently interested in. I do share CDs with friends though, but we do that in the way tape-trading (which according to the industry at the time should have killed the music biz in the 70ies) worked: CDs are offered based on personal recommendation ("you really need to listen to this") or requested because one isn't quite sure about them but wants to know anyway. I also don't offer on P2P but going into the whys would be a whole new discussion.
But anyway, I wouldn't see anything wrong with it if I downloaded instead of scanning on Amazon. The enraged replies I received didn't convince me that I did something bad when last week I downloaded a bunch of mp3s because I was not sure whether to go to a concert - my 4th in the week - and ended up buying a ticket as well as a t-shirt and a CD at the merch.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
When I was younger, I loved movies. I pirated them quite frequently and rarely paid for them. I occasionally went to movies, but normally I didn't pay. As I am growing older, the money I am spending on media is increasing. I go to the movies a lot more, rent more, and pay for Rhapsody and other services. Should I have simply not watched movies when I was younger? Perhaps it was immoral to pirate them. Even so, I did not have the money; now that I do I pay.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Wait, I thought these downloaders paid for those electrons! :)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Often times rather than using the worthless samples available online to determine what I should buy, I use them to determine what I should download. I have a certain threshold of quality that I have to hear from samples before its even worth my time to download and listen. Then the stuff that is really good and I listen to over and over I buy to support the artists. Even more so I buy their future albums after I develop an attachment to groups. If companies were to somehow prevent me from downloading, I would hope that they make available better forms of sampling online because the current model doesn't work. 30 second samples on amazon in super low bitrate that would be unacceptable on a file sharing site is not sufficient to give me a good idea what something sounds like. A good example of the importance of sampling through downloading is a recent purchase. I listened to samples of the soundtrack to Leap Year (composed by Randy Edelman) on Varese Sarabande's web site and thought to myself "ok this is pretty boring" because they sampled the non-traditional celtic pieces rather than the orchestral ones. Then later my friend tells me as you say "you have to listen to this, its really good" and I download it and love it. I then purchased a copy because I thought it was a fantastic album. If I hadn't downloaded it I would have forever ignored it because they can't pick representative samples.
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?
That's a good point (even if it doesn't affect me so much for a number of reasons). While in my case and and apparently in yours the availability of more music leads to increased interest and therefore increased spending on music, I doubt that better samples will happen for a while because the labels are so afraid, not only the majors and not only for bad reasons. The indies (or what's left of them) *have* been hit pretty badly and some of it may be due to illegal downloads, or at least is attributed to it. We're in a transitional period and its difficult for many reasons.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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.
Sigh. Read the parent. Then the GP. Then the GPP. Unless you live in some kind of bizzaro world, the logic involved in such compensation does not exist, ergo, borderline troll.
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
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.
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!")
There are a number of points I'll inject here:
o There is now an extra copy out there that wasn't paid for. As one-offs, this is trivial, but with enough violations, it's substantial and would devalue the movie.
o While you may not BUY the movie, you may rent (via netflix or PPV) which would create a greater demand for the movie -- again, as a one-off, this is trivial...
o Why would you watch it on over-the-air if you've already downloaded it? That decreases the value to advertisers and reduces viewership when a movie finally airs on ABC, CBS or whatever. Again, as a one-off, this is trivial.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect (and welcome evidence to the contrary) if copyrights were respected and honored, you (the royal "you", meaning as a group) would do without (along with everyeone else) and eventually see the movie in the theater, buy the movie, rent the movie, or watch it on over-the-air more often than you would not.
Any one of those would increase the value to the copyright holder -- which translates as $$$.
Also, it's not JUST about DVD sales. Or movie ticket sales. Or anything else. On a much lower level, you are depriving them of the control of their property granted them by the Law of this (and many other) land(s). If you can't at least see *THIS* as harming the copyright holder, I can't help you. If they want to sit on a movie they made and not sell it to ANYONE, they have the right.
Just curious, is it OK to selectively choose which of YOUR rights I can honor?
Again, I'd like to point out that it is the one distributing the works who is infringing on these rights; that's why the law is written to target distributors, rather than consumers.
With the number of artists releasing their works for free distribution, it's somewhat absurd to expect a consumer to know whether their source is legit or not. However, a distributor knows damn well whether or not their product is legit.
You "copying is theft" types always seem to gloss over that detail.
I've seen many artists, including those signed by major labels, release some (or all) of their work for free download and sharing; it's not too far of a stretch for the average schmoe the believe that their free download source is legit. Again, only the distributor knows for sure; that's why the law targets them and not the average schmoe.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If you don't mind my asking, how many of the movies you pirated in your youth have you now gone back and purchased?
If your answer is nonzero, the copying-is-theft crowd should take notice.
Now, of those, how many were purchased without a second thought, because you had already seen them and knew you liked them?
Again, a nonzero answer should show the copying-is-theft crowd something.
One last question, if you don't mind; of those purchases, how many would NOT have been made had you not previously downloaded and watched them?
Once more, a nonzero answer will to a long way in opening the eyes of the copying-is-theft crowd.
*DISCLAIMER: I'll feel like a real ass if any or all of your answers are 0.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Is that really what you think? I think you are wrong (at least in the US). I also think if you actually look up copyright infringement, you'll see you are wrong.
Where did I say theft? I argued the the copyright holder is harmed. You wanted to know how. I cited several examples. You've rebutted none of them.
If you are suggesting that it's absurd to expect someone downloading "Hurt Locker" (or virtually any other recent movie) to be aware that the source is *NOT* legit I would suggest it is you who are being absurd.
Wonderful. And as the copyright holder, they are exercising their rights. And if the copyright holder wants you to pay $19.99 before you can watch his movie, he is also exercising *HIS* rights.
Are you honestly expecting this argument to be taken seriously?
That aside, I'd like to point out how you moved the goal post. You originally requested how the copyright holder is harmed by your unpaid download. I responded. You failed to even suggest I'm wrong. You just tried to switch the argument to something else. I would strongly suggest you try to step away from this topic for a while and let your emotions settle a bit. I'm getting the impression you aren't interested in an HONEST discussion, but some type of subjective justification for stepping all over someone elses rights.
Again I ask you, may I selectively decide which of your rights I can honor? You failed to answer that direct question in my last post.
Just like to point out that the article is from 2002 -- discussing a study done in 2001. I would be interested to see if the trend continued as the internet became more main-stream. And does such trending translate to movie-ticket sales, dvd sales and TV Advertising dollars? I don't think so.
That said, does it really MATTER if they are spending more money on music or not? If the copyright holder doesn't want you to have something before you pay for it then it is well within their rights. And if you want to selectively ignore that right, can I selectively choose which rights of yours I'll honor?
And I can run traffic lights. And I can shoot people in public. And I can rob a bank. And I can write bad checks. And I can run people down with my car. And I can walk in to a 7-11 and rob it.
What do all these things (including yours) have in common? They are illegal.
Assuming you are listening to a purchased copy of this song at the party, the difference is that when you download it you can keep it and listen to it whenever you want (there is now an extra copy out there), and it was in violation of the copyright holders' rights. How can you not see this?
And since you seem to be OK with selectively choosing which rights of others you'll honor, would you mind if I selectively pick which of *YOUR* right that *I'LL* honor?
My apologies, I wasn't paying attention and thought this reply was part of a different thread.
I'll now answer to all of your points, in the order in which you made them.
The artist loses nothing when I make a copy. I'd also like to point out that you, yourself, moved the goal post with this one; my comments were broad, you restricted the discussion to movies.
Renting increases demand in the same way as copying; a way from which the artist sees no revenue. Financially, for the studios, they're the same. Again, you've moved the goal post by limiting the discussion to movies. Tell me, where I can rent a copy of Crysis?
Would I watch it OTA to begin with? If I would, then yes, I probably would watch it OTA when it aired, given that it saves me the trouble of finding and opening the file or locating and inserting the DVD I made of it. Again, you've moved the goal post by limiting the discussion to movies. When is CBS going to air Splinter Cell so I can play it?
You missed the boat. If copyrights were respected, we'd do without, period. This includes the (rather substantial) group who insists on trying before buying; you remove their ability to try, you remove their willingness to buy and the artists can simply do without their sales. Wanting to be sure you like something that, for all intents and purposes, can't be returned for a refund, before you plunk down your hard-earned finite resource (cash) is very reasonable.
Further, every one of your points is trivial, by your own account.
You're right, though, it's not JUST about DVD sales. Or movie ticket sales. However, you're the one who made that implication in the first place.
You need to go back and take a look at US copyright law again. Nowhere does it say that a consumer who obtains a copyright protected work is liable for their source; all of the liability is placed on the source. Period.
If I'm wrong (and I may be, but I'll leave it to you to prove it) and you're right (likewise), explain why studios are only suing uploaders. Not one person who ONLY downloaded has been targeted to date, and it's much easier to prove that someone downloaded than it is to prove that they uploaded.
I'm open to being shown that I'm wrong. It's happened many times in the past; it just hasn't happened with regard to this topic in the last 13 years.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, I almost forgot... No, it's not OK for you to selectively choose which of my rights you can honor. Then again, where did I say that downloading was OK?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Quite a few. The first DVD collection I bought what the Godfather. I basically bought all the memorable ones. And yes, I purchased these without hesitating because I knew that I enjoyed them.
I probably wouldn't have bought any of them if I would have never pirated them. Aside from the really shitty movies that I felt were a waste of my time, I've bought or rented most of the movies I pirated and enjoyed enough to remember.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
And does such trending translate to movie-ticket sales, dvd sales and TV Advertising dollars? I don't think so.
Actually, I know a lot of people that buy DVD/BD with movies they already watched in the theatre or on TV.
That said, does it really MATTER if they are spending more money on music or not? If the copyright holder doesn't want you to have something before you pay for it then it is well within their rights.
It does matter, for THEM, because I will not pay to see the work of some studios (when ~75% of their creations are not worth seeing, other 20% are acceptable and about 5% are good) unless I know for sure I will not be disappointed.
I paid to watch Avatar twice in IMAX and I will get the BluRay, but I don't watch more than 10-15 movies/titles a year in cinema.
And if you want to selectively ignore that right, can I selectively choose which rights of yours I'll honor?
The respect of rights is not transitive. You can ignore my rights when I'll ignore yours.
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
Another one on the good list. Thanks for that.
I'm in the same boat; the only media purchases I've made in the last 5 years that WEREN'T the preceded by a download were my fiancee's brother's band's (Voice of Addiction) CDs; and I know I like their music because I've had the opportunity to hear it.
There's a shit-ton of media out there that I'm sure I'd buy if I had a way to preview it; songs that don't get radio play, movies the networks don't air, media nobody I know owns or knows about.
As a thought exercise for anyone who doesn't see my point: Propose as many methods as possible for previewing all of this media prior to purchase, with the following caveat: no piracy. Whoever sells the most media wins.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Of course it does. It's their right if they want to sit on it and prevent anyone from seeing or hearing something which they hold the copyright. It's their right if they want to charge $100000 to let just YOU see it, but no one else in the world. Or if they want to sell DVDs or CDs of the material and not "give" away anything for free. It's their right.
How can you not see that you are just trying to justify violating someone's rights? They hold the copyright and have set the rules. You have infringed on their rights. I don't see you having any moral high-ground when someone comes and violates YOUR rights.
Why not be honest? Say "Yup. I'm breaking the law. And I'm going to continue doing it until I'm caught and either arrested or sued -- otherwise, I don't give a rats-patootie about the copyright holder because me getting/watching a movie for free or getting/listening to music for free is more important to me than someone's rights!". But no... you cop out and give yourself the excuse "they aren't LOSING anything because I wouldn't have paid anyway". That's BS. If you didn't pay, you shouldn't have it. You HAVE it, so you should PAY.
You're being self righteous, too.
First, I do not try to justify violating someone's rights. Never did, never will.
Second, you do not know if I am braking the law. Actually, you do not know if the jurisdiction that applies to me has a law like the one you allge that I break. In fact, I could just sue you for libel, defamation etc. I won't, because you're not worth it.
Last, but not least, look at yourself and see if you managed not to break any law. Not a parking violation? Never ran a red light? Never drove at unsafe or illegal speed? Who are you to preach honesty to me? Who are you to talk to me about my respect of the law? What do you know about me to make this kind of statement?
Oh, and regarding the studios and the piracy: if there are countries where the piracy is so high, why do the studios sell to those markets? Huh? If in Bulgaria (random pick from Eastern Europe) the piracy is so high that one DVD will be copied 100.000 times (just a number, for the argument's sake), why do the studios sell DVDs there? Why don't they just take their precious movies and sell them to the rightgeous countries? Why? Is it because they are still making good profits? That's how capitalism works: as long as you can make a profit, you keep going; when the money stop comming, well, you leave that market.
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.