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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.'"
Just like modding me down won't kill goatse, you'll never stop piracy. You may sink their ships but we will just equip better cannons on our new ones.
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
The world has changed but they hasn't and they ain't gonna change because they are still raking in shitloads of $$$ doing what they had been doing for the past century
I'd wager that it'd be like a repeat of what is happening to Kodak - by the time Hollywood decides to change, it'd be way too late
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And nothing happens. While I commend the writer for articulating what is wrong with the current movie industry model, the reality is that Hollywood is hell bent on preserving their business model. For good reason too, most of Hollywood are distributors. The distributors are the ones that pay for the movie, the marketing, and shoving it down the throats of consumers. They're middle men protecting their business. Change the distribution model and you'll hear the sucking sound of Hollywood companies drying up. Studios aren't strapped with tons of cash to pay for hit movies on their own, so you'll have fewer movies being made. No one in Hollywood has any incentive to change the current model, and unlike the music industry that got dragged into the 21st century, or the game industry that has adapted to every new platform to survive, the movie industry consumers lack any desire to force a business model change or adaption. Tthe closest thing to adaption is Netflix and recent price hikes are an indicator that the distributors will kill it before giving the consumers what they want.
...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.
>His solution seems to be "Give everything away for free, then it won't get stolen".
Do you know how I know you didn't read the article all the way through?
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BMO
We have been saying this from within the industry for 5 years. Why are we paying truck drivers to haul blu-rays to store shelves when we could be using the internet to deliver the movies for 1/100th the cost? Not only is putting a blu-ray on a store shelf inherently risky (essentially a master copy of the movie) but it costs MONEY to produce, deliver, and manage, Make the movies cheap, remove DRM, use the technology to help figure out where the movies are going so that you can optimally sell merchandise... seems like a winner to me and to many others but apparently not to the people in charge.
The op ed is missing one quite critical point. The movie industries aren't sitting here fighting piracy because they don't know the way forward. They don't sit there because they are dinosaurs and luddites who have no idea how technology works.
They sit in their 1990s era thinking because despite everything which is changed, and everything which is conspiring against them from the modern age piracy front they are making money. No actually I take that back. They are making a SHITLOAD of money. When you have a magic machine that spits out $100 bills why tinker with it at all? Until the bills stop coming out why mess with it? Someone opposes the machine, don't adapt your machine to them, attempt to crush them.
It's all good an fine to sit here and claim they are dinosaurs for not getting with the times, but lets face it, the vast majority of us would do anything to maintain our status quo, if that status quo involved having a butter polish your shoes using the face of Benjamin Franklin.
The fact the war can't be won has never stopped them before: See the "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", "War on Poverty", etc.
They became DMCA-compliant and didn't see this coming? The sites practically killed themselves.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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 !
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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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.
I missed out on one other important factor ...
It's the government
From
* Copyright laws (change from bad to worse)
to
* Tax rebates (for producers, distributors, et al)
to
* Revolving door (former politicians becoming lobbyists)
to
* Politicians lining their pockets (with PAC contribution from Hollywood)
Why should Hollywood allow any other people to make money from alternative mean of movie production / distribution ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
He also rationalizes that downloading is okay because it's not like you actually stole a physical object - so it's not really stealing, right?
One of these things is not like the other:
Which is why we charge people with theft, rather than copyright infringement. Calling it "theft" is meant to shut down an argument against the copyright system, by equating a copyright with a form of property ownership. Copyright has never been a type of property, it exists only to benefit the public, and at this point it is not clear that copyright is the best way to ensure the public's access to art and science.
People are not going to stop using their computers to copy things; we need to accept that and move on. If we really want to save copyright as a system, then we need to punish violations the same way we punish parking violations: a small but annoying fine for each violation. Gone are the days when only people with specialized industrial equipment could possibly commit copyright infringement; the law was not designed to deal with mass numbers of people having copying equipment in their homes. If we are not talking about updating the law, then we are having the wrong conversation.
Personally, I think the whole copyright system should be scrapped, and the industries that were built on copyrights should either adapt to the new world and its new technology or die like other out of date industries. We should be using the Internet to ensure that creative work is never lost, that it never goes out of print, that it is never buried as part of an effort to maintain a corporate image, etc. A lot of people have proposed alternative systems for compensating artists; why are we not giving any of them any consideration?
Palm trees and 8
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.
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I think it is important to remember in all this that, much as they have gone about it the wrong way, the IP holders really do have a legitimate beef. Piracy is a crime and *can* damage their business models. They have a right to protect that. They don't have a right to violate our rights in the process, which is where I protest horrendous crap like SOPA and PIPA. You will never get rid of murderers, either. Or thieves or rapists. That doesn't mean we shouldn't prosecute them, but we have to respect their rights in the process. Same standard should go to fighting piracy.
The penguin made me do it.
The other advantage of this model suggested in the article is that it opens up the demographic again.
Currently, there's generally pretty much only two types of movies being made: 1. big studio movies that get general release and are deliberately targeted at the average under 25's (big, loud, dumb, and 3d where possible) -- this being the only significant viable cinema-going audience, and 2. niche art house movies that are only designed to appeal to movie students, critics, film buffs, and the clinically depressed.
These are the only two viable production models under the current distribution system. If you are over 25 and don't really want to watch some angst-ridden, slow, dreary, politically-correct, mirror on society, nobody is making movies you want to see right now.
Say, for example, a movie like the Sand Pebbles. That movie would be impossible to make in the current market. Unless you either, slashed the budget so it took place in a few rooms, or if you cast Shia LeDouche, Mila Kunis and had lots of car chases in 3d in it. There's no way a movie will make any money at all unless it's either mass appeal, or funded by some European government socialist film fund. We will never see another Sand Pebbles, nor 2001 A Space Oddysey, nor anything by Robert Altman, nor any similar movie, under the current system.
However, if you broadened the distribution system away from cinemas and DVDs, it is possible to target adults again, and release an whole range of genres. It would be like the late 60's and 70's where big-name directors and big stars could experiment, and produce art that was also extremely entertaining (rather than dreary and narcissistic, like the current art house crap).
You can't stop people from taking illegal drugs by making laws against it.
You can't stop people from prostitution by making laws against it.
You can't stop people from drinking alcohol by making laws against it.
You can't stop people from making copies of music, movies, etc... by making laws against it.
For some reason, the alcohol one is the only one we figured out, so far.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
One of these things is not like the other: I steal your car. Now you do not have a car. I copy your music. Now we both have music.
Suppose you decide to sell tickets to a concert. But I tell perspective ticket buyers that I can open the basement door and let them in for free. In the end you only sell 1/4 the number of tickets you would have if I hadn't let most of the fans in for free. I didn't harm you? You lost your shirt because you weren't paid for the work and costs you incurred, but the concert still went on, right?
If only Hollywood would learn to move with the times and adapt instead of stubbornly trying to cling to the past. Back in the day, the MPAA fought tooth and nail against consumer video decks considering them the death knell of the industry. When they finally accepted that video decks were here to stay, they adapted and home video became a major source of profit for them.
Now the industry is fighting once again against the internet. Another pointless battle. They need to learn to adapt and incorporate the internet into their business model rather than continuing this losing battle.
Given the choice, most consumers will go the easiest, most convenient route to the content in the format they would like. Netflix streaming has taken off like gangbusters because it's relatively inexpensive and very convenient. Make it easy and inexpensive and most people will not pirate your content! It's far, far easier for the regular consumer to just go to a Netflix type site than to find and download a torrent client, navigate through Pirate Bay, wait for the torrent to download, and hope they don't get plagued with viruses.
People like the convenience of watching movies via the internet. That ain't gonna change. Hollywood needs to embrace the internet and make their libraries available via Netflix like services. Until then, people will continue to follow the easiest path to get the movies they want to watch in the format they want to watch them.
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Neither, actually. The truth is that for all the noise, piracy hasn't hurt the movie industry in any demonstrable way (best three box office years in history? 2009, 2010, and 2011, despite record piracy and a bad economy.) However, they can use it as a pretense to maintain/raise prices in the face of falling costs, and as a scare tactic to push through advantageous legislation. There is no reason for them to actually want to win this war - they are making far more money "fighting" it than they would gain if it stopped.
They are not stupid; they are businessmen.
It doesn't take a lot of money to make a good film, unless you're trying to do tons of special effects.
There are a lot of stories that can't be told without "tons of special effects".
All you need are people willing to work together.
Which requires a way of paying these people. Good luck demonstrating a way to fund a feature film outside the copyright system. You might point to the Blender shorts, but they haven't made anything feature-length yet. I enjoyed Big Buck Bunny; now where's something longer like Ice Age? I've seen Sintel; now where's the next How to Train Your Dragon?
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.
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?
Pirate's gonna pirate, and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop it.
Instead of buying it you could pay to rent it at a much lower cost
In a growing number of cases, the making-of documentary, back-story information, deleted scenes, anamorphic transfer, and the like are available only in the purchased DVD, not the cut-down DVD marked "RENTAL" that Netflix and Redbox get.
Unless your going to watch everything five or more times this makes much more sense.
And guess how often single-digit-year-old children will watch a given animated movie published by Disney.
The music industry has an even worse problem. Historically, musicians were nobodies - servants and worse. Only during the period when the economics of one to many record manufacturing turned some musicians into "brands" was it a big-money business. Today anybody can make a recording, and the only edge the remaining record companies have is marketing and a back catalog. Billboard points out that the top-grossing band of 2011, Bon Jovi, made 90% of their money touring. Those are the economics of a top performer in the era of Edison wax cylinder recording.
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?
Actually I did read the entire article; "free" was a slight exaggeration
No, no it wasn't. It was trolling and a complete misstatement of the facts. In other words, it was a lie.
(next time change the batteries in your sarcasm detector)
No. Get stuffed.
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BMO
The media companies simply see it as a source of power and a new revenue stream, on top of everything else.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
http://www.popmatters.com/images/news_art/t/the-day-recorded-music-revenue-per-capita-feb-2011.jpg
I'd much more blame the "indestructible" CD then piracy. A LOT of the industry's revenue, especially the boom that came with CDs, was people re-buying music they already owned on yet-another-format.
Vinyl wasn't useful in cars (boom of 8 track), 8 track wasn't that useful walking around and self-destructed over time (boom of cassette tape and Sony's Walkman), all of them wore out over time and/or broke easily from being dropped.
Enter the CD... Never wares out, much more durable, as portable as most anyone would ever need, and for 99% of people sounds better then anything that came before. BOOM, there's a HUGE spike in CD sales as everyone is re-buying everything they ever wanted to keep on CD (along with new music sales, of course).
Enter digital...
It's everything the CD was and then some. But there's a problem... Unlike every other format change in the history of recorded music, no one is going to re-buy music they already have on CD as digital. They're just going to rip their own CDs. As a result the industry is left with only new music sales...
It isn't about piracy - It's about the Music Industry losing the ability to re-sell you the same music over, and over, and over. It's about the Music Industry's ever expanding back catalog no longer translating to automatic ever-expanding re-sales. The Music Industry spent a hell of a lot of money to make copyright effectively never-ending, explicitly to protect that re-selling revenue stream...and now the carpet has been yanked out from under them.
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That huge drop in sales? That's called market saturation. Most everyone that wanted a Beatles or Stones recording already owns it...on a format they will effectively never replace again.
It's about the Music Industry thinking, wrongly, that they were in the business of selling toothpaste. Then waking up one day to realize they really are selling cast iron frying pans. You'll always need to buy more toothpaste...but you'll never need to buy another cast iron frying pan.
My
A few months ago, I was mugged. The muggers got a smartphone, my messenger bag, my wallet, a book, and some other odds and ends. It cost me about $150 to replace the phone, $50 for the bag and the wallet, and perhaps $50 for everything else: about $250. The muggers could have sold my phone, get a few dollars from my wallet, and possibly could have sold the book. I would be surprised if they got as much as $50 out of it, and a fair amount of stuff stolen would have simply been thrown away.
In short, with what we generally understand to be theft, victims lose more than thieves gain. Theft means wealth is destroyed, to the detriment of society overall.
By contrast, if someone downloads a video, they gain full access to the video. The publisher loses some small fraction of a potential sale (since, as is often argued, not every pirated copy is a lost sale, but at least some are). The digital pirates gain more than the publishers lose. In fact, the more digital piracy there is, the more the overall wealth of society is increased -- until the publishers can no longer stay in business.
However, as the article points out, and as should be obvious, given the quality of production of the big media companies, it may not be much of a loss for them to fail. The challenge is to rework the system to support smaller media companies and independent artists.
when the activities regarded as piracy are recognized as normal in a technologically enabled world.
The ISPs advertise on TV about how blazingly fast their speed is- you can download movies in 8 minutes, CDs in 30 seconds, etc. AFAIK there is nowhere that you can legally download a movie in 8 minutes or even 3 hours. CD and DVD burners are in every computer- they aren't there for backing up your data. Blank CD and DVD media (and now Bluray) are sold in 100 packs. No one has that much data to back up, and again AFAIK, it's a violation of the DMCA to "back-up" your DVDs either to your HDD or to a burnable disc. Media server software like Playon and even Windows Media Server will stream video off your HDD to your TV. How did all that video get onto your HDD?
Technology keeps making it easier and cheaper to copy and transmit digital data of any sort which is completely at odds with the media companies' attempts to stuff the genie back into the bottle and prevent you from doing what the technology companies are making it easier for you to do. The media company executives are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.