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.'"
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
The thing the article didn't mention is the collateral damage done by these "wars".
The fight against Internet Piracy brings along a whole lot of government corruption, privacy loss, wasted government time and money, etc.
No sig today...
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.
So, what's an overseas fan (or just one who may well have an HBO subscription, but is frequently travelling outside the US) supposed to do? Avoid anything connected with GoT online between the US airdate and their regional airdate, which may in some cases be after the next series starts airing in the US, starting the cycle anew? Nope. They are going to try and download it from the 'Net (duh!), and HBO has been held up as the poster child as to why that isn't likely to be legally viable, so the obvious final stop is the torrents. But what's a studio supposed to do? RTFComic! It should be obvious:
HBO can pretty much do all of that, today, with the infrastructure they have for HBO Go, today, albeit with a considerable amount of additional bandwidth provision being required if it doesn't work. So, why not? It's all additional revenue that they weren't going to be getting before, so does the math really work out such that the offsets in losses from people who decide HBO Go is all they need and dump their cable subscriptions will cost HBO more than all of the GLOBAL audience that they reach for no significant extra outlay? Or can't they make it work with overseas distributors? What's wrong with telling them "We'll be making GoT Season #4 available globally to air and online to HBO Go subscribers in English from the end of March 2013, so you might want to arrange any dubbing/subtitling you want and arrange your local scheduling accordingly." Seriously, I can't figure out why they are not already doing this, unless it really is that they are short sighted idiots who still haven't realised that the world changed for them about a decade ago and they'd better get with the times. Can someone fill me in, please?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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.
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
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