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Rights Holders See Little Point Creating Legal Content Sources
aesoteric writes "Six weeks after Hollywood lost a landmark internet piracy case in Australia, it appears the film studios have gone cold on the idea of helping develop legal avenues to access copyrighted content as a way to combat piracy. Instead, they've produced research to show people will continue pirating even if there are legitimate content sources available. The results appear to support the studios' policy position that legislation is a preferable way of dealing with the issue." The industry-controlled kill switch is a popular idea all over the world.
I don't even bother turning on the TV, using Piratebay to steal the shows is easier (on the West Coast, so TV shows are available at about the same time). Of course the same is even more true for DVDs or movies. There's no possible business model better than piratebay, the only alternative is encouraging people to feel guilty for piracy, or criminally prosecuting pirates.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
When no legal methods exist for consumers to obtain content in a way they demand, of course the only option left for them then is to illegally obtain that which they desire.
Over the years, the social contract between publishers and the society that has created the copyright monopoly has been abused to such extent, and has created such disproportionate amount of wealth for the few lawyers that run the business, that it is hard to see how they are going to accept a scheme that potentially cuts deep not only in their revenues, but in the justification of the existence of copyrights in their present form.
It's not about piracy. It's about control. Control of the networks is more valuable than any of the content they produce.
How about we get some new rights holders? In particular, how about some rights holders that won't keep trying to sandbag back the ocean?
I just can't care about 'fair' when there's enough money being milked to make multimillionaires out of actors. Maybe the end product wouldn't cost as much if, say, an actor in a top end show made $80k/year. Maybe content producers could then produce MORE good content to get their profit.
I dunno, I guess I'm just crazy.
Black markets form when there exists a market that is not being serviced through legal channels. By not competing with the pirates by addressing the desires of the populous, the content companies are actually encouraging piracy. Listen up content providers. We want use our content when, where, and how we want it all at a reasonable price. Yes, there are those that pirate because they don't want to pay but most of us are willing to pay but can't without going through major headaches. Make it simple. Netflix and Hulu are prime, albeit not perfect, examples. I think most people would be willing to pay more if the selection was bigger and we could save movies offline for later when we do not have a network connection. In other words, a TV/movie version of Spotify and Rdio.
Apparently "the public" controlled kill switch is more popular. The more these idiots screw the public, the less it supports them. I'm not necessary in favor of piracy, but the measures the likes of the *IAA keep developing only seem to punish me as an honest consumer. It keeps getting harder and harder to justify spending money on a movie when I have to deal with a bunch of crap people who pirated it don't. Nearly 10 minutes of un-skippable shit to watch a movie that I supposedly own is fucking ridiculous.
High quality DRM-free movie downloads at a resonable price. As in, $5 or so.
I guarantee you most people will switch to downloading legally.
No more "rentals" and other stupid crap like that. Most people only see a movie once, so the revenue lost by just giving them a copy is minimal.
Most people I know stopped pirating music once legal, DRM-free downloads came about. The movie industry should do the same thing, but they're too afraid.
As much as I hate these sponsored researches, it's correct saying that piracy will not stop. However, it's also correct to say that murder will not stop as well if you take away all firearms and all sharp implements. There are just some things that they have to live with, not that they live in poverty over piracy.
Now, question is - how much copyright infringers will you be able to convert? I bet it's enough to cover costs.
But look, I just used the magic word at the root of it all - costs!
It costs more to serve the major segment of copyright infringes and will erode other monetization channels. What they want is to shift the costs of defending their "right to profit" to general public. Because it's cheaper to buy off a politician, than creating and maintaining something like Netflix. Remember - a movie contains a crapload of copyrightable material that requires a separate license/agreement to reproduce a derivative over the new medium - the internet. That is why they have geographical limitations - these copyrighted materials might have been bought only for creating derivative works and distribution of the derivative works in US, because it's cheaper to buy nationwide license vs worldwide.
...for people to legally get content, and you'll become ludicrously rich. In the 90s, everyone was using Napster and Limewire and whatever else to download all of their music, because the other option was going out and buying CDs, which was not easy or convenient, and often not particularly affordable.
Now everyone downloads their music from the Internet legally, primarily via iTunes or Amazon. Why would I want to deal with the hassle of a file-sharing site, where I might download mislabeled files, files containing viruses, or even just files that were ripped with crappy settings so that the sound quality is poor, when instead I can pay a reasonable fee and instantly download a high-quality music file to the device of my choice? Easy, affordable, convenient. All of this nonsense about stopping piracy and using "kill switches" are just the dying cries of industry executives who don't realize the world has changed whether they like it or not.
...it appears the film studios have gone cold on the idea of helping develop legal avenues to access copyrighted content as a way to combat piracy. Instead, they've produced research to show people will continue pirating even if there are legitimate content sources available.
A lot of people don't really pirate right now, or don't pirate very much. Obviously if attaining legal content were utterly convenient and totally free, no one would bother pirating. So clearly there's some terms between the current availability/pricing and "utterly convenient and totally free" at which most of the current pirates wouldn't bother anymore. Let's say, for example, you had a Netflix-like service for $20/month that had every TV show and movie ever? I suspect most people would stop pirating then.
What these industries should be studying is the trade-offs between convenience, price, and piracy that optimize both profits and customer satisfaction. They seem to be complaining that they don't think that even the optimal rate won't be profitable enough, in which case: tough beans; your product isn't worth as much as you'd like it to be.
The results appear to support the studios' policy position that legislation is a preferable way of dealing with the issue.
Preferable for them, maybe, but that doesn't mean it's good. If I'm selling paper towels for $50 a roll and not making money because not enough people are buying them, I don't get to go whining to the government to prop up my business with legislation.
I have no love for the copyright terms being as long as they are, but ending copyright altogether, even slowly as you suggest, would not be a good solution... it would strongly favor the publishers who have more money, and who have a larger distribution channel.
At least with copyright, the small guy can actually stop a bigger corporation from potentially profiting from his work without compensation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
According to J.Michael Straczynski (jms), just because the viewers demand content in a certain format or certain time (immediately rather than wait 1 week for the USA-to-BBC feed), does not mean they are entitled too it. He thinks we should stop infringing on his copyrights, as that means he (and others) don't get paid.
If, for example, Disney isn't selling DVDs of a given movie and has no plans to within the next decade, then Disney makes no more money off me if I don't pirate than if I do. What's the sound public policy behind keeping such a work out of the public's hands if it isn't being distributed or even prepared for distribution?
I'll agree once you tell me who's willing to front the money to have multimillion-dollar films produced to replace Hollywood's multimillion-dollar films.
Most people only see a movie once
Of course, there are exceptions, such as single-digit-year-old children who habitually rewatch a favorite animated family film. For me, back in the day, it was The Care Bears Movie.
I've stopped pirating MP3's when I got Spotify where I have a paid premium account. I stopped pirating US TV-series since I got VPN access to Hulu, which would be a Hulu Plus account if they would accept my foreign credit card. I've stopped pirating movies since I discovered Netflix can be tricked into accepting foreign credit cards. Also recently discovered Crackle for free older movies.
A lot of folks I know would stop pirating if the above services were made available in their country, without artificial delays from when content is released in the US.
Really the only thing we need to stop pirating completely is to have a service where you can watch the latest cinema released. An online cinema if you will.
Most real pirates don't download content for free. They spend money on their internet provider, often being forced to chose more expensive options for no cap. Many subscribe to so called storage lockers like rapidshare and others which have subscription based services usually starting around $10 a month. The reason? Legal options are terrible. This was driven home to me several nights ago. My wife wanted to see the last episode of a show that she had missed last week. I said that would be easy, fired up the network website, found the episode and started streaming it. The quality was terrible but watchable. However for some reason the commercial breaks were not synced right and about a minute after the commercials the show would freeze and then fast forward two minutes. Out of a twenty minute episode we maybe were able to watch fifteen minutes of it. And then were forced to watch another five minutes of adds. Frustrated, I looked for a pirated copy of the show online, downloaded a much better quality version and streamed it to my television. No commercials, no errors in the playback, higher quality, more convenient, and it took less then five minutes to download. It seems like every time I try the legal options the experience is terrible.
Mr. Rightsholder, look. I'm an upper middle class guy in my 30s, I've got disposable income to pay for entertainment. I don't want or need to pirate stuff. But I'll be damned if I'm going to drive my ass out to Best Buy every time I want to watch a movie. So here are your choices:
1) You can pay billions of dollars to buy senators and push through legislation to make it illegal for me to steal your content, which I'm not doing. Then you can spend billions more watching my internet connection to make sure I don't steal your content, which I won't be doing: I'll be playing video games, borrowing content from friends, or watching your competitors' video-on-demand.
2) You can give me a legal way to pay you for your content, and I'll give you a boatload of cash.
Option #1 means you pay. Option #2 means you get paid. How is this a difficult choice?
The funniest thing is that the reason movies are made in Hollywood was to violate Thomas Edison's patents on movies. Edison was pretty restrictive on what types of movies that could be made. So all of the big studios you know today were started by the creative types that went West to go where enforcement of Edison's property rights were poor. There they could make the types of movies they wanted.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Actually, that's a bit mangled. What was actually popular was "A kill switch for the industry."
Cry me a river MPAA/RIAA shill.
The content industry is the number one reason artists have been fucked for over a century.
For a single one of them that gets to the top, 99% are fucked front and back by the content industry.
Pirates are just a lame excuse to fixing the real problem, the real robber barons of this case.
Now try to get , say, big bang theory latest season in germany. Good luck with that. Try again , in say, 2 or 3 years. Some serie are even NEVER available there, not even as direct to DVD sale.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Over the years, the social contract between publishers and the society that has created the copyright monopoly has been abused to such extent, and has created such disproportionate amount of wealth for the few lawyers that run the business, that it is hard to see how they are going to accept a scheme that potentially cuts deep not only in their revenues, but in the justification of the existence of copyrights in their present form.
club dresses
why did shareware die ?
It didn't. There are "free" and "ad-free" editions of many mobile games and other applications: if you like the game, you buy the "ad-free" version. As others pointed out, there are Steam and Humble Bundles.
Or it did. If development tools cost money above and beyond what it costs to own a computer in the first place, hobbyist developers are going to try to recoup these costs. But by 2000 or so, GCC became a viable alternative to Microsoft Visual C++ for hobbyists even on Windows.
Disney isn't selling DVDs of a given movie and has no plans to within the next decade
Disney "puts movies back into the Disney vault" to create demand for them while the "vault" is open.
I am aware of this practice. For the movies you're thinking of, the vault opens roughly every decade. For the movies I'm thinking of, Disney has made no plans for a rerelease.
And it's not just Disney. When will the English version of the animated series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, which was shown on Nickelodeon in the 1980s, see a DVD release?