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You Will Never Kill Piracy
scottbomb writes "This is perhaps the best op-ed I've read about the whole SOPA/PIPA controversy. The author challenges Hollywood to re-think their entire business model. It will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears, for now. But sooner or later, they will have no choice but to adapt. From the article: 'Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it's worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won. It can't, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling.'"
http://takedownpiracy.com/2012/01/another-one-bites-the-dust/
The guy has made it his job to DOS sites with DMCA takedown notices till they shut down
If more people like this start infiltrating private torrent sites, it could cause a major issue
...it is that tremendous progress has been made in the field of anonymous file sharing technology. If the folks from the music/movie industry hadn't pushed so hard to prevent piracy, we would still be on Napster. But instead we now have very advanced things like the BitTorrent protocol, equipped with encryption, magnet links, DHT and PEX. And it's not just the geeks who are using these advanced file sharing technologies either, it's ordinary people. All in all quite an achievement.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Sure, they will never make it so that it is completely impossible for a few people to do.
But they have more then enough lobbying power to make the consequences of being caught so severe and the internet so monitored that piracy is so underground that 99% cannot find it and would not take the risk if they did.
It might not help their profit margin to do this as much as they think, but they are mega corporations and they at least have a chance at doing whatever they want.
While they might not be able to do so in any reasonably free and fair society or under current US law, but that will not necessarily stop them.
Hell, I would not bet against them if they launched a coup to physically take over the government and impose a tyranny in the US and put the current administrations heads on spikes outside of the whitehouse.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Studios live on a strong distribution model where they control the vast majority of the content and the distribution channels. Any tool that is viable for "piracy" is also viable by independent distributors as well. While I don't condone copyright infringement I think studios are more interested in their long term viability than to protect their content from "piracy". I expect similar behavior from the major publishing houses in the next couple of years as ebooks break their hold on the distribution channels.
If it's possible to make a movie and sell it cheaply online, with no DRM, and still make a profit as the article suggests why hasn't anyone done that successfully?
If it's possible to make a movie and sell it cheaply online, with no DRM, and still make a profit as the article suggests why hasn't anyone done that successfully?
It's the distribution channel, my friend
Tell me, currently what are the distribution channel for movies, and how do they distribute them?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You Will Never Kill Piracy
These copyright laws are not about protecting artists from piracy, they are about expanding the for-profit prison industry.
Let's not full ourselves, the "piracy" issue is just as stupid as believing that the War on Drugs stops people from smoking marijuana.
These copyright agendas use the same principals as Microsoft's "embrace, extend and extinguish" corporate mantra. It's all about one class of people dominating another class of people.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_America
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=867
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/Prison.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Most piracy is based on poorly implemented encryption due to slow processors. Next Gen hardware will be able to run encryption algorithms that don't have a gazillion assembly optimization in them. The XBox, PS3, current gen TVs & Blu Ray players couldn't. Once that happens, pop. No more piracy.
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They ain't gonna change because none of the pirates posting on Slashdot have ever elaborated a credible alternative for them. Kodak was killed by superior technology - digital was clearly a better way of taking photos and Kodak just failed to make the leap. But what, exactly, is the superior alternative for Hollywood? Give everything away for free? The financial physics of that don't work. Maybe they should pay for movies entirely out of popcorn sales.
Please. This kind of 24/7 "piracy is freedom fighting" crap tires me. The linked article is worthless and adds nothing to what precious little debate there is. He claims the problem is "massively overpriced" works. He then ignores the fact that the easy and cheap rental services he asks for already exist (eg, iTunes, Netflix, Apple TV), and oddly enough, if both are as easy as he claims the free alternative will still always win. The guy practically admits he breaks the law constantly and doesn't care, which isn't surprising because he has demonstrated the kind of reasoning skills I'd expect of a small child.
How about the police check his computer then throw him in jail for a bit? That won't stop piracy but it might stop stupid articles about it from clogging up the internet.
And no one rational says it is. But even though you can't stop rape and murder you only punish the culprits, not the taxi driver that gave them a ride. Not the guy that rents them an apartment. Not the store that sold them a butcher knife. You don't make everyone wear a RFID tag and track them 24/7. You don't put cameras in every room of every house. No, what you do is you catch the culprits and punish them. The problem with the anti-piracy people is that they seem to think it's okay to take away everyone's freedom on the internet instead of doing actual investigation and punishment of those who actually commit piracy.
We are making the mistake that many losers in many conflicts have made: We think our enemy is stupid and not seing the obvious.
What if they are?
Imagine that Hollywood is as smart as us and knows everything we know. And still they are doing what they are doing. Why would it make sense?
One, it gives them time. They may know they need to change business models, but like all humans, they are risk-averse and they need time to adapt, to test out various strategies, to find the most profitable approach. At the same time, they want their revenue to continue coming in. Delaying the inevitable is sometimes a smart move, if you can use the time inbetween.
Two, making everything else illegal guarantees that they can take down the competition before it emerges. Many of the illegal online services like Napster or Megaupload were toying with the idea of going legit, because they realized that you can only get so big and so much exposure before the guys with the guns come knocking. A legal service that competes with the studios (instead of working with them, like iTunes) could emerge out of those. Can't have that, better to shut it down while it's still clearly on the illegal side.
There are probably more good reasons. Don't assume they are stupid without proof.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Here's an article for you
No sig today...
A Steam like service for movies and TV shows for a start, which works on an international level (including the sales,etc of the Steam business model) should be a start
" Slashdot have ever elaborated a credible alternative for them"
you must be blind then.
Every single time the pirates state.. "make it playable on what I want to play it on and a reasonable price."
that means 30 minute TV shows are $0.25 1 hour are $0.50 and Movies are $1.99
But the rampant obscene greed from the MPAA refuses to even think of that. Sorry, that TV show you broadcast free over public airwaves is NOT worth it to me to pay $1.99 to watch it on my apple TV or other device.
I'll even give you $5.99 for first run just out of theater for the first 4 weeks. But a 1985 movie that made it's money 10 times over? it had better be very very cheap for me to watch.
That is a very viable and REASONABLE alternative. it's just that the people with very low IQ's or are blinded by pure greed refuse to see it as a reasonable response.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He doesn't ignore the existence of Netfix or iTunes at all, he champions them. And he's not arguing that anyone give everything away for free, he's arguing that a reasonable business model is the best way to counter the threat of piracy.
Maybe try actually reading the article.
Facebook is the new AOL
Let's stop protecting all our crops from pests and thieves and see how that turns out.
Protecting good, going overboard on protection bad. Makers of recombinant herbicide-resistant crop seeds have gone overboard; Roundup Ready soy just leads to Roundup Ready weeds. Everyone outside the entertainment industry realizes that copyright has gone overboard, and some people posting here claim that the concept of copyright itself is overboard.
Let's just accept that people are going to die in road accidents and ignore all traffic laws.
Taking away road signs has been shown to improve safety in some (I admit anecdotal) cases. See for example unsafe is safe.
Never heard of merchandising? Hollywood makes as much through merchandising as they do from the movie itself. Wanna know why that Mickey Mouse tshirt costs 30 bucks and a parody tshirt costs 10 bucks? The licensing fee per shirt the manufacture has to pay to Disney. It costs what, 25 cents to make that Transformer lunch box. Why's it cost 29.99 in the store? Licensing costs to the studio. This business model has been around for a long time. Back in the 60's when I was a kid, the big thing was The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the show was a bigassed hit, and the stores were filled with the lunch boxes, the toy guns, the posters, everything. The studio made a killing on that shit, and you can get big bucks for a lunchbox on eBay.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The Walt Disney Company is entitled to be recompensed for Tangled, I'll grant for a moment. But why should it be entitled to be recompensed for decades-old short films like Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie, the original Mickey Mouse trilogy? And why should it be entitled to be recompensed for movies that it chooses not to make available at all, such as Song of the South? And why shouldn't the Shakespeare estate (or the estate of some earl according to some looney) be entitled to be recompensed for performances of Romeo and Juliet?
According to the opinion of the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the opportunity for fair use is one of the few things keeping copyright from violating the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Legal protections for any watermarking scheme that outright prevents fair use copying might result in a successful challenge on constitutional grounds.
Hmm. Pro-piracy activists, worst case: Illegally access your computers and make you look like a fool on the Internet. Anti-piracy lobby: Put you in prison for 5 years, bankrupt you, and leave you unable to make a living once you get out (thanks to that felony conviction -- good luck getting the AIDS drugs for the case you picked up in prison). All legal. Still think the pro-piracy activists are worse?
Why do you think charging 1.99 will change anything? All piracy does it take money out of the hands of the crews that work on movies that work harder and longer hours then you I am guessing. It makes it harder to to get the content because they are not going to give up. If you dont' like what they provide then dont' watch it but now one can make the claim that they should get it all free cause they dont' like how they sell it. When did entertainment made others become a Human right? I want to know why its ok for yo to pay for Electricity and not pay for the movies, tv and Games. You can by pass the meter. You can use magnets to affect its operation. Hell those boxes are crazy easy to hack. Its not taking something away from anyone. Its a victim less crime. Im curious what you do for a living lumpy? Supporting you family? or just living in mom basement? I have a $125,000 education that I PAID FOR. No mommy payment plane. I then BUSTED MY ASS to get to the level I am at doing my job. To which I make just more then the median salary in LA. I work more hours then a chinese factory worker this stuff and you think its a victim less crime. Im sorry that you think everyone that works on this stuff makes millions of dollars. They don't. I love this robin hood bullshit. Rob from the middle class worker to give to the spoiled kids plan. NICE. Probably why I had to spend the past 2 years of my life living in hotels in foreign countries to do my job in VFX. One of those being China. So you go ahead keep thinking its ok to Pirate movies and put a lot of people out of work because it will all go to china and india accept for the talent who do make millions of dollars. It won't affect them at all. It just affects every one below the line on the budget sheet. There are a lot of things the MPAA does stupid but that doesn't justify killing the jobs of all the people behind the scenes when they just start making all the movies in China and India and flying the Talent to those place to make the movies. MORON.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Hi, I've been commenting elsewhere (bitchily) on the thread and I'm a commercial artist and work in Hollywood.
Many of my friends who direct and produce have absolutely been giving serious consideration to these other funding models:
- A friend of mine from school produced an entire very well-made scifi short many years ago, funding it with donations on his website, long before Kickstarter even existed. It's a great short and he got a lot of attention, and it won a lot of awards at several festivals. Aside from producing another friends feature, however, Jason's paying gig remains an editor-for-hire on E! cable shows of the "100 Craziest celebrity moments" variety. If he wasn't making money from those he would never have been able to complete his short; he was able to raise money to just make the thing with friends, and nowhere near enough to pay himself for the time it took to develop and produce the project, or pay anyone their actual market wages.
- Another friend of mine has been raising money for her project for several years now on IndieGoGo. Several years now. Luckily she has means and is able to supplement her income with writing gigs on Big Hollywood Movies.
Basically none of the proposed funding models work without either (1) Hollywood paying everybody the 10 months out of the year people aren't working on their crowdsourced project or (2) abandoning the concept of the professional artist. As I said in another post, your median open source developer doesn't live on donations, they make their money at day jobs working for Evil Corporations that Sue People for infringing IP. Open source is a "marginal time" activity, it doesn't satisfy material needs. Open content is only so far a complement to the copyright model, it can't replace it.
Crowd sourced funding promises a lot of things: the idea that people will reward good work with more money, or that new work that is "suppressed" by the old system will emerge. In practice, however, these things haven't materialized and I don't think they ever will, I just don't think entertainment works that way. People want a casual experience they can take or leave, they don't want their entertainment experience turned into an advocacy enterprise where they have to band together with people and raise money and attract friend networks and go through all this bullshit just to see 20 minutes of mumblecore.
Kill copyright and you threaten to kill everything that stands on top of it, like a lot of open source software developers, and any artist that isn't willing to whore himself out to rich patrons. That's what the world was like before copyright: there were artists and there was art, and it was whatever a rich guy said it was. With copyright everyone gets a say in who is rewarded, and they vote with their pocketbooks. Ending copyright, wether that is right or wrong, would unquestionably jeopardize this.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
UMM those residuals pay for their retirements plans with the unions. Or you are anti union also? Don't think they should have those plans in place? If you think that then you are right. The should except Netflix and BlockBuster don't charge you $2-$5 do they.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink