Slashdot Mirror
Why Internet Pirates Always Win
An anonymous reader writes "Nick Bilton writes in the NY Times about how the fight against online piracy is 'like playing the world's largest game of Whac-A-Mole.' While this will come as no surprise to Slashdot readers, it's interesting to see how mainstream sources are starting to realize how pointless and ineffective the war on piracy actually is. Bilton writes, 'The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want. "There's a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it's an inverse relationship," said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. "The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online." The hit HBO show Game of Thrones is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.'"
wenches.
s/piracy/drugs
Idiots at Showtime won't take my money, so The Pirate Bay it is. Yo, ho, ho.
I am a Netflix subscriber in UK, yet I get less than half of the content that a US subscriber gets, even though I pay the same. Even when I want to watch the content that is available to me, it is not always easy. For example, I commute to work and that is the best time for me to maybe catch up on a TV series or a film. Yet, there is no easy way for me to access the content that I am already paying for as part my subscription. Streaming doesn't work particularly well on the intermittent 3G connection I get while commuting, so ability to play offline is an absolute must. Yet I find that there is no way for me to do so short of buying the same DVDs that I are already included in my subscription.
On the other hand, I could just pirate the content and it would work everywhere I need to play it without a hitch. So tell me again, how are you doing it right?
First, take a bath. Then read this:
1. Are you aware that the Disputed Territories never belonged to the “Palestinians” and only came into Israeli possession as a result of the 1967 six day war in which Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon all massed forces at Israel’s border in order to “push the Jews into the sea”. The Arabs lost and Israel took control of the land. Do you agree that if the Koranimals don’t want to lose territory to Israel, then they shouldn’t start wars? Do you agree that there is justice that Israel, who as far back as 1948 has always sought peace with her far larger neighbors, should live in prosperity - making the desert bloom - while the residents of 19 adjacent Arab countries who are blessed with far more land as well as oil wealth live in their own feces?
2. Did you know that the “Palestinians” could have had their own country as far back as 1948 had they accepted the UN sponsored partition plan which gave Israel AND the Palestinians a countries of their own on land which Jews had lived on for thousands of years before Mohammed ever had a wet dream about virgins? The Arabs rejected the UN offer and went to war with the infant Israeli nation. The Arabs lost and have been whining about it ever since. Do you agree this is like a murderer who kills his parents and asks for special treatment since he is now an orphan?
3. Can you tell us ANY Arab country which offers Jews the right to be citizens, vote, own property, businesses, be a part of the government or have ANY of the rights which Israeli Arabs enjoy? Any Arab country which gives those rights to Christians? How about to other Arabs? Wouldn’t you just LOVE to be a citizen of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, or Syria?
4. Since as many Jews (approximately 850,000) were kicked out of Arab countries as were Arabs who left present day Israel (despite being literally begged to stay), why should Arabs be permitted to return to Israel if Jews aren’t allowed to set foot in Arab countries? Can you explain why Arabs can worship freely in Israel but Jews would certainly be hung from street lamps after having their intestines devoured by an Arab mob if they so much as entered an Arab country?
5. Israel resettled and absorbed all of the Jews from Arab countries who wished to become Israelis. Why haven’t any Arab countries offered to resettle Arabs who were displaced from Israel, leaving them to rot for 60 years in squalid refugee camps? And why are those refugee camps still there? Could it be that the billions of dollars that the UNWRA has sent there goes to terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, El Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, or Hezbollah? How did Yassir Arafat achieve his $300 million in wealth? Why aren’t these funds distributed for humanitarian use?
6. Did you know that the Arabs in the disputed territories (conquered by Israel in the 1967 war which was started by Arabs) and who are not Israelis already have two countries right now? And that they are called Egypt and Jordan?
7. If your complaint is about the security fence which Israel is finally building in the Disputed Territories, are you aware that it is built solely to keep the “brave” Arab terrorists out so that they can no longer self detonate on busses, in dining halls or pizzerias and kill Jewish grandmothers and schoolchildren? Why are the Arabs so brave when they target unarmed civilians but even when they outnumber their opponents they get their sandy asses kicked all the way to Mecca when they are faced with Jewish soldiers? Why do Arab soldiers make the French look like super heroes?
8. Please explain why you are so concerned about Arabs, who possess 99% of the land in this region and are in control of the world’s greatest natural resource, which literally flows out of the ground? Can’t their brother muslims offer some of the surplus land and nature’s riches to the “Palestinians”? Or is it true that Arabs are willing to die right do
Good point! When you outlaw something you make everybody who uses that something an outlaw. I believe history has proven that making popular things illegal simply does not work in the long run. The US, being focused solely on quarterly profits and all, will probably never recognize this fact.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I thought it was because the scarcity of digital media as information, after it's created, is artificial and you can't stop Eve when Bob is Eve.
While high-profile people (politicians, the press) occasionally pontificate about how "bad" piracy is - frequently under pressure from the vested interests who pull their strings, none of the ordinary people actually believe, or care.
The biggest reason that the general public are not on the side of defending copyright is partly because of the adversarial attitude the BIG media adopt, partly because BIG media are not seen as being sympathetic to their artists - who don't get to see much, if any, benefit from additional copyright fee collections, but mostly because ordinary people can't see any benefit to themselves.
If the copyright holders were to take a more sensible, open approach and show a direct link between the copyright fees they collect and real artists (not multi-millionaire celebs) making a living from those royalties - with maybe a small "fee" taken by the media businesses themselves, then I reckon the public would view copyright fees like restaurant tips - directly benefitting the people who merit them, rather than just buying a few more snorts of coke for some anonymous fat-cats.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"... "There's a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it's an inverse relationship," said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. "The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online." ..."
Duh! When you're marketing, you try to CREATE apparent scarcity - that's what puts the price of your product up. That's why we have 'regionalism' for DVDs.
The problem for 'information marketers' (software, film, music and the like) is that the laws of economics state that the price of an object will drift towards the actual cost of reproducing it, and, once a film has been made, the reproduction cost over the net is zero. They are trying to fight basic economics. As Scotty might have said if he had done business studies instead of engineering:
Ye canna' break the laws of ....
Let the Internet be what it is: a library.
Making money is fine, but computer networks, and the Internet, were made for sharing plain and simple. I'd rather make a living working in the real world than lose that.
Trying to prevent piracy has, in the long run, never worked.
Let's take computer game piracy of the late 80s computer game software as an example.
Yes, companies did their best to try and prevent illegal copies by employing all kinds of copy protection on the media
What ended up happening was groups of crackers showed up, cracked the protection, and then spread it through online bulletin boards across the world, and even by sending disks through the postal mail.
End result was that piracy was rife, but the average computer owner still had a number of original, legal copies of programs, that for one reason or another, they bought. Or perhaps some were gifted.
In the end, despite all the piracy, software companies still made money! ...and thanks to the pirates removal of copy protection - some of these old programs can actually be archived now, as opposed to suffering from digital bit-rot as the media would have otherwise perished given its age.
This brings me to only one conclusion: People pirate things which they NEVER would have paid for anyway (or couldn't!)
Does this affect sales? Well, I don't know how you'd measure that given that the pirates would not have paid for it anyway....
It's not a like game, because the *AA can change the rules when they want (or at least try to)!
The majority of Pirates pirate because they can afford to buy the products. Sure they might get their mom to pay 4EUR to let them watch one video on iTunes, but The wanna watch them all! (no pun intended) Where can they gett that kind of money? Where can I get that kind of money for that matter? I can't afford to fill an iPod with music. (I only listen to Grateful Dead so its not really a problem)
They have to stop counting pirated digital media as lost profits, they are NOT. Here is a newsflash for RIAA and MPAA; an average12-year old single parent kid does NOT have 6000USD a year to spend on music and movies!
What does an "Internet pirate" do? Capture IP packets and hold the bits for ransom?
The pirate bay is accessible from any geographical zone. No legal provider is. Piracy is my only way to get the US-centric references on Slashdot and Reddit.
Currently, only "piracy" (it used to be called sharing) venues understand what internet is : a transnational network designed to transmit information without geographical discrimination. There seems to be no legal venue who understood that feature. I want to be able to download a drm-less version of any French, English, Japanese version of any movie that is available. I'll pay for that, but I won't pay for something that is of lower quality than what piracy can provide. In particular, I'll refuse to pay for ads. I feel this is an unacceptable "fuck you" to have unskippable ads on a support you bought.
There are lot of laws to change, but not the ones copyright lobbyists focus on. They have to make it easier to make deals for international distribution. Seriously, geographical distribution deals have no sense nowadays. If you want a meaningful frontier, separate rights of different linguistic version, but don't prevent me from getting stuff in original version at the same time that most slashdotters have them available.
Thanks.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The problems is that those media companies are extremely greedy.
When people tend to say that the prices are high, you get the classic remark that a cost of zero is still more interesting then any price you would put onto a product. But I'm not that convinced. I'm sure there is a certain spot which you can convert people who download to paying customers.
I have about > 90 blu ray movies and a lot of box sets, but I do have my share of "free" stuff. The difference is that the things that I have bought come from sales (5 a 10€) or are imported from the UK and are the prices that I'm willing to pay.
The problem is that the "legal" way is just darn to expensive sometimes. For example I was searching for a particularly blu ray and they asked about 30 euro's for it (40 dollars) which I find way to high for 2 hours of entertainment. Then sorry I just rather take my sailboat and fish it out of the sea.
Unfortunately something that I witnessed is that the entertainment industry also seen the light and while in the beginning they dropped all the languages and subtitles on the blu ray - you know the sales argument everything could fit onto the disc - it seems they know are putting less languages and subtitles on to the disc mainly to discourage import.
Here is a cipher which can be used just with paper, pencil and a mobile radio:
https://alkindicipher.wordpress.com/
What problem?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Before we had a handful of channels, and you could select which shows you wanted to watch from them. Then cable came out, and the variety increased, but so did the cost to the consumer, and so an increasing demand for a-la-carte channel selection came about. In some jurisdictions, recent changes have made true a-la-carte programming imminent.
But today, many people have very busy lives, and are often too busy to watch more than perhaps a handful of TV shows each week. It's far from unheard of for people to simply "cut the cord" and do without television entirely, simply because there are not enough programs on the available networks to justify the expense.
I think, therefore, the time is ripe that we need to move even beyond a-la-carte channel selection, and instead directly to a concept of subscribing to individual television programs - where you can choose exactly which programs you want streamed to your PVR, to be watched at your convenience anytime after they are broadcast (or during, of course). Why should a person pay the full price of having HBO available to them 24 hours a day, for example, if they are only ever interested in watching a single program on that station? Obviously, for anything more than a handful of shows on a given network, it would likely become more economical to simply subscribe to the entire station, but in an age where it's not very uncommon to find people who've cut off their cable entirely, simply because they found they were only watching TV a couple of hours each week, I think that this kind of model is going to make a lot of sense.
This would also have the upshot of giving tv show producers a clearer picture of just how many people are actually watching a given television show, basedon subscription figures. Instead of only monitoring which tv stations particular homes that are part of the Nielson group are tuned to at various times throughout the day, and deducing which TV programs that they are watching or recording, and then extrapolating that to deduce what the greater population is watching, they could instead know directly which programs that a potentially much larger demographic watch.
This wouldn't completely eliminate the need for things like the Nielson group, though... which would be capable of monitoring what time of day people are actually watching their televisions... information that would doubtless be of great value to both content creators and advertisers.
Just my 2c. Er... nickel. I understand Canada is getting rid of its penny within the year.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They can't really be THAT stupid after all this can they? Sure, the bottom feeders with their trolling and settlements are feeding furiously and all. But if the cable companies realize they need to give it away for free to stay in business, then the MPAA also must know what they need to do to remain relevant and in business... or that they can't.
Call me conspiracy theory nut, but I see this as a pretext to criminalizing and penalizing free speech on the internet. "Of course we never hear from AnonymousX or AnonymousY any more... they downloaded music and video and got busted..." Yeah... that's what happened I'm sure.
We *ALL* do it and if a few of us doesn't it's because they are idiots. When it becomes criminal to do what everyone does, then everyone becomes a criminal. See where this is going? "Felony filesharing!! You can't vote!! You can't work!! You can't live a decent life like the rest of us superior beings... go back and work for your slave wages under our justification."
Yes, it's true that making content legally avaliable online would reduce piracy, but profits for content producers would be lower anyways. There're still no traditional TV broadcasters or movie producers that make more money online than with their traditional business, and there's no lack of experiments.
The crude truth is that the entertainment industry - especially movie, music and TV-show producers - simply need to realize that their profits, margins and salaries will never be what they used to be in the past. People, or "the market" if you prefer, don't want to spend the same amount of money they used to spend in the past for intangible entertainment products. It has been an overvalued industry for 70 years, with overpaid people and overgenerous investments. Now things are being rebalanced, sorry.
I find it shameful that PhDs in medicine who studied at top colleges for 10 years and save human lives make 100K a year, while drunk and drugs-addicted hollywood actors can make 10 millions per movie. It's unethical, ridiculous, unfair and now also unsustainable from a business perspective. The only sad thing is that the capitalistic system has postponed for decades what is happening now, and this proves how malfunctioning it is.
and then they start to push there content online.
They've finally alienated the entire political spectrum. I don't know a single conservative writer, thinker or activist that supports strong IP rights anymore. They've over-played their hand to the point that mainstream opinion on the political right is that they're the quintessential corporate Fascists over things like SOPA (conservative and libertarian publications were even more strident than the left over SOPA). If anything, the fact that so many people in Hollywood support big government policies and politicians while demanding the destruction of property rights and the Internet's infrastructure in the name of IP protection has made many of them think that our country needs to bankrupt all of them.
It's ironic how often I have to clear my nytimes cookies so that I can read their stupid newspaper. I guess a true Pirate would script that.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
On one hand we have a profitable entertainment industry (that people love and feed) who want to retain their profits
On the other hand we have a large group of people with a deluded sense of "entitlement":
- i shouldn't have to wait because I'm international
- i shouldn't have to watch advertising
- i shouldn't have to buy a whole cable package
- i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
So lets be honest, we (and myself included) pirate because "we want", we know there is almost no chance of being caught and view it as victimless.
The NY Times article is interesting but is not going to change any of those fundamentals ...
The one thing that will change piracy is either technological block (which is unlikely) or the music model of cheaper prices. Music piracy decreased dramatically since the Napster days because of single track pricing and better infrastructure.
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So... HBO stands to make more from airing the show on the networks, than they ever could garner from selling the show directly to a much larger audience. Interesting, I had no idea.... and I wonder why.
Is it because of the ads? Is it the g^@-damn ads again? Pardon my French, but the only thing that is starting to annoy me more than the ads themselves is the way whole economic models begin to depend on them. The same thing that gives a silly free social network site a 100 billion dollar price tag... perhaps that is the answer to HBO's revenue as well. Apparently, ads are worth a lot of money. Sure, in many cases, ads pay our way (or part of it). But I am afraid that the tremendous value of these ads will continue the drive we've been seeing for the past decades: more and more of them. See the second installment of Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" to see what ads and a "mediated" society can become.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I played Millipede until I ran my entire family dry of quarters. And the better I got at it, the more mushrooms appeared.
HBO is playing the same game. I wonder how long their quarters will last.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Game of thrones is a excellent example. Its something people very much want to watch. But the problem is cable providers charge ungodly amounts of money when most people only really want a few channels. They try to force you into bundling your phone and interet through them as well for a "discount". They have poorly priced tier packages for cable tv since most companies just having cable isnt enough, you have to buy an addition package each month to get HBO on top of just getting cable access and the majority of the content sucks. So yeah people will pirate the hell out of game of thrones because the cable companies price millions and millions of viewers out being able to justify paying for cable and paying for HBO on top of that, so they turn to piracy.
My girlfriend and I have the same situation with true blood. We love the show but we can not justify paying a 130 dollar or more cable bill a month to get our internet, basic cable and the package required to include HBO. We dont have much money as it is. So I get true blood episodes from torrents, put them on a flash drive and then we watch them on the tv in living room.
Cable companies could solve a pretty big chunk of piracy problem all by themselves and turn thieves into paying customers.
Instead of tiering packages that have just a few good channels and a bunch of shitty ones you give all your customers all the shitty channels then only charge a small amount to ala carte channels like HBO or showtime. That way basic cable owners get a huge selection and be able to see tbs, tnt and see the more popular shows like ncis which will make them happy. Then you let them do ala carte for all premium channels at a tiny cost increase. Sure at the end of the day your going to lose money by giving more away and make less on the premium channels but youll make up for it in volume. Instead of having a monthly subscription rate of 125 dollars to say 50,000 people youll have a month rate of 60 dollars to 110,000 people.
People are willing to pay but you have to price it where they can afford it and cable has out priced millions of customers. Thats why so many people are dropping cable. Sure netflix doesnt have all the new tv shows right away but why would someone pay 80 bucks a month for cable when they can pay 7 for netflix and have movies and shows to watch?
HBO is owned by Time Warner cable. HBO costs $15 a month. Time Warner won't let HBO do a standalone subscription online because they would lose the sweet money from cable subscriptions and partner agreements.
If HBO were allowed to charge a subscription fee for access to HBO GO without subscribing to cable, I would pay it as would many others.
The reason they won't do this is because HBO GO relies on the delivery infrastructure of cable and satellite providers exclusively.
I have never seen a company so unwilling to sell their service to a market of people willing to buy.
This is why we need communications regulations and a stronger FCC.
They're using their grammar skills there.
HBO's online offerings are only available to subscribers in the United States who are also customers of a specific list of cable/satellite TV companies.
That doesn't really help the subscriber in Australia or Europe. Why are those customers unable to stream/download content that their American counterparts can? Why are the same shows delayed by days or weeks in non-US countries?
The article did however carefully observe the first rule of usenet.
The media industry has time... in fact, they've had a LOT of time... to get a handle on this situation. People want what they want... and people are lazy. People will pay money for something that's easier. People will even break the law if that makes their lives easier. So, as the media industry enacts more and more laws to try prevent piracy, they are completely missing the point... their real mistake is that they are making it harder and harder to get their content, so more people turn to piracy.
The technology surrounding piracy is in its infancy. It's crude, difficult for the average person to use, difficult to find the content you want. This situation will not last. What the media industry needs to do is make the legal method easier than the illegal method. People will flock to it, and piracy will fade. But that's not what they are doing. They see the "Drive to walmart, buy the movie, drive home, watch it... wait 6 months, the extended cut version is released, another trip to walmart... etc..." as more profitable. And it is, if people were willing to put up with it. But they're not. They need to partner with Netflix and be done with it. They need to push ISPs to also partner with Netflix. If they focused their legal fight on net neutrality so ISPs would be forced to properly maintain their networks, and created partnerships with netflix that allowed them to have a more profitable relationship with them, they could ensure their survival.
Subscribers can already copy the cable feed, the online access just gives them more options. On the hand, online streaming could give non-subscribers who don't want to pay for a bunch of other channels just to get HBO or who can't subscribe a possibility to watch.
What never comes up is that most pirated content gets paid for, eventually. I say 'most' because content that is out-of-print will of course not get paid for.
But BigBlockBuster movie comes out in theatres on the big screens; if you download it, you can see it now on your smaller screen and not pay for it. I can see you do this for a movie that is mainly people talking to each other, but not for a movie like the Hobbit, Star Trek "2", etc. It's up to the creator to make it interesting to go out and see it on the big screen, not because that's the only option you have, but because it's so AWESOME. That requires quite a bit of "umdenken" on Hollywood's part.
If you have what's here the Movie Network package (mine includes HBO Canada), once that movie is premiered on TMN, you paid the creators through your subscription dollars. At that moment in time, the 'damage' is undone: you watched the movie on your small screen, and you paid for it. After that, it will appear on a premium cable channel you might subscribe to (pay or pay again). Then it will appear on the regular OTA channels (carrying fee and/or advertising dollars generated through products you buy). After that it will appear every now and then on various channels, again advertising dollars.
Unless you're really off the consumer radar, eventually some of your money will end up with the creators of content, like it or not (i.e. Uwe Boll movies on Netflix).
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
We need an established law that states that a content owner must prove that they are making available the content they own for purchase in ALL available markets, shops, and storefronts.
While most of your comment makes sense, this is clearly not practical ... These all seem to be available in DVD format (as the source of the pirated copies) so your argument appears to be that this is not suitable format for you - not sure if you'd dont own a DVD player or region coding is the issue.
So if I understand, you are saying piracy is okay because you dont "want" to buy DVDs because you prefer digital formats?
Or, are you are suggesting 30 year old TV shows need to be available to cater to EVERYONE'S needs:
- Betamax NTSC, various PAL, SECAM
- VHS multiple standard
- Laserdisc
- DVD
- Bluray
- Digital including all standard formats (MP4, WMV, MOV, AVI, etc) and proprietary formats
- in all languages combinations
- in all digital outlets (Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc, etc)
- and god knows what else
Actually the more I type the more ridiculous it seems
Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.
And this is why I don't really feel sorry for content providers.
Of course they don't want to solve the piracy problem. They aren't bound by "free market forces" because they have an exclusive government-enforced monopoly on their product. That means that they can manipulate the market and set prices, and they don't really face competition of another vendor offering the same product for less. As a result, in short, they can charge much more than most of us would really be willing to pay, and to some extent they just have us all over a barrel.
But here's the thing: they know all this, and having the ability to manipulate the market, they choose to operate the market in a way that pushes massive people to illegitimate channels of distribution. It's their choice. They are capable of operating the market in such a way that much fewer people pirate, but they calculate they can make more money doing things that push people into piracy.
You may say, "Yes, and that's their decision. They have the right to do business as they like, and of course they're going to choose what makes more money." Well I guess that's so, but I don't have a lot of patience for people complaining about the consequences of their own actions. You make your bed, and then you sleep in it. If they don't like the consequences of their actions, perhaps they should behave differently.
Because enforcement costs them nothing.
The cost of achieving an equilibrium between legal and pirated content online depends on the marginal cost of the enforcement needed to secure that one additional copy. But since that costs them (essentially*) zero, their response is to have the gov't pursue everyone.
*Lobbying for SOPA and PIPA is relatively cheap, considering what a Congressman goes for in the used market these days.
Have gnu, will travel.
The networks and studios made a lot of poor business decisions in the past. They locked themselves up into exclusive distribution contracts because they didn't think the Internet was going to be important. Now they want the legislature to bail them out.
Why would the various entertainment industries want to stop piracy? They're making a killing off the legal extortion racket. One "settled" case is worth what, 500 months worth of paid services? They know they're not going to stop people from pirating, so they just created a way to monetize it.
...eventually accumulating into a mass of old stuff that starves out anything new. Think 'classic rock'.
Whoops. Game of thrones has been available online/streaming via HBO GO since the very first episode
I live in Europe. My cable provider carries the Game of Thrones - however they are 9+ months behind the US schedule. I feel no guilt about downloading GoT from the piratebay - knowing I will pay for it in the future through my cable subscription.
We live in an international world today. I can watch the olympics live, even on my bloody cell phone. I demand to be able to view my favourite TV shows with minimal delay as well. If the industry won't provide, I will find my own way.
I'll never understand why someone would pirate. There are things I want to see but don't want to pay what they want, but I wait until it's at RedBox or on NetFlix, or I just wind up never seeing it. Just like there are restaurants I'd want to eat at all the time, but I choose to eat at home as I don't think what they charge is worth it, except for a special occasion. That's not to say I won't pay though. I'm going to a matinee of the new Batman movie later today. I'm not going to see The Watch until it's $1 though.
HBO's online offerings are only available to subscribers in the United States who are also customers of a specific list of cable/satellite TV companies.
That doesn't really help the subscriber in Australia or Europe. Why are those customers unable to stream/download content that their American counterparts can? Why are the same shows delayed by days or weeks in non-US countries?
Good point. The region concept for content is complete garbage. I've got a friend who recently moved from the US to Greece. He's having a hell of a time getting content over there. I believe he finally resorted to using a VPN provider.
government is the source of all problems in the market!
without government around, the large players will treat small players and consumers nicely!
free market fundamentalist WHARGARBBBLLL...
(the last remark should indicate that i am being facetious to those who are humor impaired)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Diablo 3 shows that there is one area where piracy will lose substantially: games. All code will be run server side, and only art will be on the client. This doesn't kill piracy but it does prevent the majority of it as most people don't want to deal with pirate created servers.
Same for any other interactive content.
marijuana, alcohol, lsd, mushrooms, etc., should be legal because they do not easily addict (although you shouldn't use drugs that produce strong hallucinations without a babysitter, and the irresponsible assholes that do will mean these drugs will stay illegal)
but strongly addicting and inebriating substances (this excludes nicotine, because it is not strongly inebriating), such as heroin, cocaine, meth, etc., when made easily and freely available, become the "solution" to many more people for the average problems of life, to the point they can no longer maintain a job and a relationship, and the "solution" becomes a much larger life destroying problem
of course, you can still get these drugs, but there are financial and distribution barriers to acquiring them, which means these drugs destroy far less lives than if they were legal and freely available. the war on drugs will never be perfect. that's not the point. marijuana should be made legal and the highly addicting and inebriating substances should be focused on more effectively. to simply keep the addict population as low as is possible. that's the point
also of course, for those who are addicted, HEATH CARE, not incarceration, is the key to rebuilding destroyed lives
but i will never understand, and never respect, the blind idealistic opinions of people who only consider the evil effects of prohibition on society, and do not consider the far greater evil effects of highly addicting + inebriating drugs themselves on destroyed lives. and for those of you who say it is your right to destroy your life if you want, you don't ever do that in a vacuum, you drag your family, friends, community, and random innocents who you hit with your car while inebriated or you wind up stealing from to support your habit (right, like government should hand out free drugs, like i want my tax dollars to bankroll your empty life: no i want to bankroll your recovery)
no one has infinite willpower, everyone has moments of weakness, and most people don't act with responsibility (especially in regards to drugs, since that is the whole point: escape from responsibility and the stress). and when something like cocaine or heroin or meth becomes more easily available during those times of weakness we all have because some magically thinking society made them legal, you have introduced a permanently hobbling deficit on many more people's lives. if you don't understand this phenomenon, stop talking about drug policy, as you know absolutely nothing about drugs, or are being dishonest in the service of your own blindness on the subject, perhaps even your own addiction or addictive personality
more than war, slavery, government brutality: drugs have destroyed more human lives in the history of homo sapiens. understand that, or understand nothing about the subject
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Making more laws clearly stops illegal behavior, just look at the drug war.
You go off the rails the moment you acknowledge the fact that this material is available on DVD. The fact that it is on DVD means that it is already in a format suitable for streaming.
If not for other laws that try to strip us of our personal property rights, the technology to "build our own iTunes" would be commonplace. We would not need Amazon or iTunes because we could all do for ourselves with minimal fuss or effort.
It's like Music CDs: it's already digital.
If that list of yours seems rediculous then I suggest it is only because you have no understanding of what's being discussed here.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Whoops. Game of thrones has been available online/streaming via HBO GO since the very first episode.
The only people that can take advantage of his can already watch the show through their CABLE SUBSCRIPTION.
That means that you have already paid the minimum buy in for cable plus an extra fee for HBO.
That means that you have already likely used your PVR to record this show.
At that point, what's the f*cking point of bothering with a streaming service? At that point, the only reason for using the streaming service is the fact that your recorded copy is locked down with DRM and can't be transfered to your iPhone or Android.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the solution is NOT "to take the regulating power away from the government"
the solution is to have genuine effective regulating power. i didn't say it was easy. the opiate of corporate cash makes it hard
but take away regulating power, and then nothing remains between the monopoly/ oligopoly and complete subjugation of the consumer and domination of the market by abuse of smaller upstart competitors by the big players
i never understood this insane idea that so many people have:
"the government is sick so let's kill the government and reward all power to the disease that sickens it"
seriously?!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...eventually accumulating into a mass of old stuff that starves out anything new.
So you think 'old stuff' should be 'purged'? Year zero?
I'll never understand why someone would pirate.
Then you're not trying hard enough. They want it, and it's there. It has nothing to do with entitlement. Entitlement would be demanding that authors give you copies of their work for free. This is just, "It's there, so I'll download it."
There are things I want to see but don't want to pay what they want, but I wait until it's at RedBox or on NetFlix
Great, but they're not you. They don't want to wait, and guess what? They don't.
Just like there are restaurants I'd want to eat at all the time
The reason analogies like this are bad is because they waste someone's time and resources.
hold your hand and explain it like to a toddler, since this is apparently what you want
this is net neutrality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
can you read and understand that? or do you need that concept broken down for you as well?
this is what verizon thinks:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/verizon-net-neutrality-violates-our-free-speech-rights/
do you understand their position? any hand holding required for you to understand that they will do anything in their power to gain marketshare and extract more money from consumers, no matter how flawed the lame premise? or do you actually agree with them on their premise(!? you may, i don't know the depths of your propagandized blindness here)
scenario #1, no regulation: verizon raises prices on you, and squashes competition. do you deny this?
scenario #2: the government yes, get's more power, in YOUR name, as a citizen of a DEMOCRATIC country, in SPECIFIC and WELL-DEFINED ways (see net neutrality, above). do you understand that?
and it uses that specific power, granted to it by YOU, to curtail the power of verizon to abuse you as it sees fit, beholden as it is to the bottom line at all costs
is there anything unclear to you? do you require any more simpleton level explanation as you have requested?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
when the Goyim asks if our books contain anything against them." from 10. Szaaloth-Utszabot, The Book of Jore Dia 17
The article cites a cat watching a "copyrighted" video in a parody.
The article's author should understand that the video is "fair use".
How is any different from the failed Drug wars ?
The main stream media panders to it's owners, misinforming your average morons
Have you ever seen this "Jore Dia" book of which you speak?
that simple fact alone makes it pretty addictive, psychopharmacologically. see: methamphetamine
i don't know why it is so important to you to belittle cocaine's power, but you are obviously wrong
perhaps you enjoy coca leaf tea, or munching on coca leaves with lime. in such aboriginal use scenarios, cocaine is ok, because it is weak, no worse than coffee. but modern technology has intervened. in most of the world, tea or leaf with lime is not the way it is consumed: it is concentrated and taken in crack or powder or paste form, sniffed or smoked, giving a strong rush and feelings of invincibility and alertness. the addictiveness profile is strong and large in this use scenario
these are pretty objective statements of mine, but go ahead and call me part of a blind political backlash if it suits you. but it seems you are the one with some sort of agenda or prejudice on cocaine, as your opinion on it's addictive strength is clearly and objectively wrong
the USA weathered a crack epidemic in the 80s and 90s which devastated communities. cocaine continues to devastate argentina, uruguay, and brazil as "paco":
http://www.argentinaindependent.com/feature/paco-drug-epidemic-sweeping-the-streets-of-argentina/
you should educate yourself about how powerful cocaine is. your current opinion wrongly dismisses the obvious power of a highly addictive substance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why don't they then allow for Gaza and West bank to trade and communicate freely ? Why do Jews dispossess Arabs in these areas ?
Because they are the followers of a nasty religion of hate. That's why.
Here is a cipher made for Arab freedom: https://alkindicipher.wordpress.com/
Not paying at a restaurant means you're taking a physical, one-of-a-kind non-copyable good without paying for it. This hurts everybody along the supply chain, while paying for it keeps the economy in balance.
By contrast, making a piece of media and then selling endless, free-to-create reproductions of it is another form of rent-seeking, which breaks the economy by sucking wealth out of the system without putting anything back.
Rent-seeking, (AKA Usury), is a tried and proven recipe for killing any economy, and if you look around you, you'll see that it works rather well.
Piracy is, I think in some ways, the universe's means of balancing the account. It happens automatically unless you work like hell to suppress it with laws and police, but even then, it's inherently unstable.
As best I can figure out, that IHAD speech goes public domain in the UK at the end of 2013. It won't in the US for a few more decades, but come the end of 2013 I'm going to have that speech up on my website. Hosted in the UK, by a UK company, on behalf of a UK citizen.
He only read what he did here http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3026951&cid=40887097 and here http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3026951&cid=40887853 so you are making false accusations and ad hominem attacks tossing names his way. That's libel you know. According to those links jews own words from their talmud and that website waylanderskeep.com said it, not he.
He just cites what he did here http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3026951&cid=40887097 and here http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3026951&cid=40887853 According to those links jews own words from their talmud were quoted and that website waylanderskeep.com said it, not he. Those are the words and beliefs of jews quoted from that website, not his words. He merely cited them.
The "War on Drugs" is just as pointless and ineffective yet we're still fighting it almost half a century later.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
You can always change the station, you know.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Deal
so much of the argument about regulation and monopolies in the USA is just so many Americans unfamiliar with their own history in the Gilded Ages.
Just read your history folks. The USA is currently repeating history because we seemed to have forgotten our lessons the last time we had little regulations and large corporations were allowed the trample our rights and our livelihoods. there was a backlash, as people were poisoned, abused, and impoverished. it seems we now have to do go through that backlash all over again, because so many fools distrust the government so strongly, and don't even think about the real threat: corporations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
To one of the other six classic rock stations?
Trying, to stop "piracy" is so pointless. The people who typically "pirate" music and the likes don't have the money to purchase legal copies anyway, so record labels are not losing any money by these people getting free copies, because they would never have purchased the music anyway therefore it can't be a loss. People like me that have the money to buy music pay for it and the people that don't will get it for free. It is no different from when we were kids, waiting for a song we liked to come on the radio, and then we would press record on the cassette recorder. No, one came after us then for "pirating". We were just kids that had no money and wanted to listen to an artist that we liked. However having no money didn't stop us from saving all our allowances to buy tickets to the Cure concert when they came around, but how would be have known that we wanted to go if we didn't "pirate" the music so we could listen to it to start with. The probably make more money with all the "pirating" going on than they would if there was a way to control "pirating". It is all so stupid and pointless.
You've caught me out.
That's right, I was poking fun at you.
Why? Because you're complaining about entirely the wrong "problem".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It hardly has above a million readers, and often lower. Call me when your average, run of the mill website is reporting about this phenomena and not the sites that always report on it.
I'm not complaining about anything. I'm pointing out the danger of letting media pile up like that. It needs to go away at some point to make room for the new, otherwise there won't be any motivation to move forward.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
From 2004 comes this take with a more general take on "hackers http://zerologic.blogspot.hk/2005/05/hackers-will-always-win.html and how they're always going to come out on top. I find it hard to argue with.
I forgot just what they were, but I've never seen a credible rebuttal to Jerry Mander's conclusion that TV fucks up your brain. Actually, I'd watch more if I had the time, but four hours a week of Stewart/Colbert is all I can usually manage.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Europe actually extended the copyright period to match the US a few years ago as a result of intense lobbying by record labels, concerned that the great rock-and-roll bands of the fifties were getting dangerously close to public domain. But the extension didn't apply to broadcasts. At least in the UK, the copyright duration can be a complicated thing, as different types of work have different terms.
I don't know where you are that you're inundated with classic rock, but where I live I'm having trouble finding it anymore!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Does anyone else notices that within the first 1-5 postings someone will say something that is mildly tangential to the article, and then then comments run off into a completely different territory? For example, in these comments we get into pricing, regulations, etc. and I have to skip down 1/3 of the page to get back to anything remotely applicable to the article.
Back on track now- of course pirates are going to win. 6(?) billion to a few thousand. I belong to a rather large movie news/reviews/fan site, and of the dozens of people I know there, they would all rather have legitimate discs or legal downloads/streaming than pulling down torrents. Problem #1 is trying to find the stuff legally, and #2 is it costs so freaking much (normally). I'm talking about people that have DVD/B-R collections in the hundreds. Make it easy to get, don't charge us $50 for "Teddy Ruxpin Takes a Poop" so you can smoke Cuban cavier cigars rolled in seal skin wrappers, and don't treat us lot idiots. I'm kind of surprised Anonymous has gone full out ninja on the XXIAs yet.
Hmm, I fell better now. /rant
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
These are not the "jews own words" unless you can find them in a real book written by a real Jew.There is no part of the Talmud named "Szaaloth-Utszabot" or "Jore Dia" and so you cannot claim that that quote is from the Talmud. The entire Talmud is freely available online http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/talmud.htm - you are welcome to find any of your quotes there and enlighten us all.
Duh
No matter how much legislation is put in place I don't believe it will ever stop piracy. If I can copy music, films, games etc to a computer file I can share it with someone else. Many years ago when I was at school piracy of Spectrum and Commodore 64 games was rife, with kids sharing cassette tapes they had copied on a Hifi and later when PCs became more popular floppy disks of copied games were in circulation. So maybe if it's outlawed on the internet people will go back to sharing files on USB sticks or DVDs between friends and colleagues in pubs or on street corners. Or by setting up a local network amongst neighbours (very easy with WiFi or bluetooth) and sharing that way rather than go through ISPs which may be subject to filters and laws. All I need to copy files is a way of transferring the data from one computer to another. There are so many ways of doing that that focusing on just the Internet will simply drive it to other less visible means.
Sales101:
* Make a compelling product
* Sell it in multiple, a convenient ways
* Make the price compelling - a value to the client
Simple.
Cable Companies must have been to a different Sales101 class:
* Make your customers hate you
* Sell it only 1 way and make that inconvenient
* Charge 10x or more over the competition
We've all been there. The cable goes out. No explaination. You call, they say through a recorded message "your area is experiencing an outage and technicians are working it. Expected resolution is xx:20pm. (4 hours)."
They don't automatically refund the money for the outage and they won't if you call before it has been corrected. 5+ hours later, you try the service again and it works - do you call back and spend 15 minutes? No. I've repeatedly asked for my business-class cable modem to be replaced due to faults. It doesn't work with anything except the default password. Change the user password and I'm locked out. Spent 45 minutes with a tier3 guy who confirmed it. It is their equipment - they don't do business class without them owning the equipment.
CableTV for 100 channels should be $30, not $70. They've mispriced their product.
Put a DB4 antenna up in the attic last week. Before, about 7ft lower I was getting 29 channels, but now it receives 58 channels. About half those channels are unwanted - religious, shopping, audio-only. Only 1 channel that I get and like on limited basic TV is missing and about 5 channels that I don't get are OTA. I'm about 20 miles out in the burbs, with most transmitters in the same direction, but a few are 180 deg and 90 deg off all those other channels. I receive the 180deg off channels, but not the LP station 90deg off. No more telenoveles for me. sniff, sniff. After the Olympics, cable tv is fired. The antenna cost about $25 to make (used Romex copper wire), then mount in the attic and will save $29/month. Even during thunderstorms and heavy rain, the picture is fantastic.
I don't like to download illegal copyrighted material, so I don't. OTA TV is much different these days.
Let's purge Mozart from human memory to make way for Justin Beiber. That'll fix everything.
Cause, screw them, is why. I like the content, and I want to consume it, but I don't like the people who distribute the content or the way they're distributing it (which are different from the people actually creating it), so screw them. If I could give the creators some money directly, maybe I would.
Analogy: if I could walk into a local restaurant I like, buy a dish, scan it into a 3d scanner and then make a copy of the scan and eat the dish anytime I wanted for the cost of the components... I wouldn't do it. I like supporting them. But if I could walk into a restaurant that had good food but overpriced their food hilariously, maybe I would. Meanwhile, sometimes for some reason I just feel like eating crap like Del Taco or something. If I could scan and print Del Taco, I'd do it without hesitation (then again, if I had a magical machine like that, I'd probably not waste it on Del Taco.)
Bravo, music was so regulated online that I ve spent well over a decade more or less without knowing who s the guy singing all over the place in every radio in every chain store store... because I cannot go online and spend a free evening downloading til I find it! So overall they got no money off me... neither online nor purchasing albums. I already went through experimentation when teen and got some very bad albums I had time to listen to and forget. Long argument, but basically some albums end up in a lent cassette while others you ll want in physical form, cover art, articles, special editions, etc., and most musicians will not produce enough hype to make people buy an unknown so protection or no protection they get no money. Though freebie-wise they would at least be heard once... Etc. djb
Making content unavailable.
The model is based on making things difficult or impossible to legally acquire. It ALWAYS has been.
The model is based on DICTATING what you can and can not listen to, on manipulating the public, on controlling what you see, think, and feel, and when.
If the media giants had their way, there'd be no used sales of ANY media at all.
The answer to piracy is so simple that it sometimes boggles my mind why huge companies does not want to tap it. The solution is to make it free for everyone and switch to an ads revenue system. Let's look at the game of thrones. 4.2 legal viewers to 3.9 illegal downloads. By making it all free, at least 8 million people can view your ads besides repeat views and new viewers. People still want a paid subscription? Those that pay can watch an episode 2-3 days earlier than free paying ones. They can also view extras, the making videos, other videos related to that episode and in the case of games of thrones, uncensored ohh~la~la. That is so simple.
And the illegal ones are just torrents. Not included are those that watch online directly and download episodes somewhere else. Pirates are the silent majority.
While this solution might be harder to implement on audio, game, software, it is a perfect match to videos.
IINAL but the point of copyright was to allow a LIMITED period to profit EXCLUSIVELY from a specific work - after which you would need to create a NEW work from which to profit.
Super long copyright periods reduce the motivation to generate new and original works because the producers can continue to live off the revenue of their older works.
If the new works are any good they will compete with the older works on their own merit. When you listen to a classic rock station (and there are plenty of other station types to listen to) you are hearing those tracks which have stood the test of time and been considered worth listening to again. Hundreds of thousands of tracks have been ignored and forgotten and in some cases lost entirely.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World