Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Find Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues
An anonymous reader writes "We've heard this one before, over and over again: pirates are the biggest spenders. It therefore shouldn't surprise too many people to learn that shutting down Megaupload earlier this year had a negative effect on box office revenues. The latest finding comes from a paper titled: 'Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload.'"
What movies did they use in their control group? I'm sorry but a 3 page paper with little details on the research is not enough to convince me that they can
make any kind of valid conclusion.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that a lot of things could have happened that caused smaller films to have lower box office revenues this year other than megaupload shutting down.
The actual conclusion of the researchers was:
We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues.
(emphasis mine)
So basically there was basically no effect either way on overall box office revenues. Blockbusters gained from the shutdown of megaupload (probably due to more people forced to go see it in the theatres as they couldn't download it any more), many smaller and less well known movies lost (probably due to less people being able to preview the movie, resulting in less word-of-mouth promotion of a movie).
Interesting results anyway.
Apparently the smaller films were negatively affected by the shutdown of the site (made less money). The larger films (500 or more screens) were positively affected by the shut down (made more money).
Box office revenues of movies shown on the average number of screens and below were affected negatively, but the total effect is not statistically significant. For blockbusters (shown on more than 500 screens) the sign is positive (and significant, depending on the specification).
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Just because there is alleged correlation between the two events doesn't mean the lower box office revenues were caused by the shutdown. Perhaps it is due to lackluster movies this year, perhaps it was due to the ever dwindling economy so those who would have normally gone to a movie couldn't justify spending an ever increasing amount on tickets (and concessions if the choose to get those), or perhaps it was just more people going to see "matinee" showings which are often a lot less expensive which drives down revenues but perhaps increases ticket sales. Heck one local theater to me has matinee showings that are $3 and most other showings are less than $5 before 6PM.
Perhaps instead of counting revenues they should count actual ticket sales. Like when they say a movie has broken a box office revenue record, is it because more people are actually seeing the movie or is it because ticket prices are at record highs?
So did they host mainly pirated movies etc or did it not?
Who cares? The only thing that matters is how to protect the internet from those who interfere. It far to easy to knock people offline, and that's what needs to be stopped.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Was this report written by the same people who scream that "correlation does not equal causation" when we point out that US per-capita music sales revenue has dropped by 70% in the last 10 years (to the lowest point anytime in the last 50 years) - during the exact period when piracy was on the rise?
The control group is based on matching movie characteristics to the treatment group.
If I wanted to be able to repeat their experiment to see if I got the same results, would I be able to do it based on this description? No I would not. The research might be good, but the presentation is extremely poor.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There's only a small, finite number of movies in theaters at any one time - the article mentioned 1344. If each one were hosted once, that'd be 1344 files. Meanwhile, MegaUpload was hosting files numbering many orders of magnitude beyond that. Therefore, it's possible that both are correct - most files were not piracy related, but there were some that did, and they may have had an effect on the market.
I don't think that anybody is denying that they were hosting pirated content. However, this does in no way prove or indicate that the majority of the content was pirated content, it just proves there was some.
If Megaupload did hurt box office sales, then they obviously hosted lots of pirated material. This is against how the pirates are saying that Megaupload was mostly used for non-piracy related files. So did they host mainly pirated movies etc or did it not?
I've never used megaupload and I don't know how much of what it hosted (my impression is that most users wouldn't know what other users were using it for but maybe I'm wrong there) buy clearly it is perfectly possible both for it to be mostly used for non-piracy related files and for it to host lots of posted material. There is no contradiction between the two.
I suspect that the internet as a whole is mostly used for non-piracy purposes but clearly shutting it down would reduce piracy significantly...
NO ONE is denying that OP content lives on these and other servers. NO ONE.
Claims asserted include that Megaupload is used for MORE than just that and that innocent users and businesses were harmed by the overzealous acts of the US government... not just overzealous, but illegal acts.
By the reasoning you are implying, public parks should all be shut down because drug deals are known to occur in them.
Now for a psycho-medical opinion of you: You suffer from omission and denial of the obvious along with selective evidence and conclusions based on belief. The result of this is your apparent manufacture of statements made by this imaginary "singular entity" that are 'pirates' which are not even pirates by correct definitions.
I can only say for certain about my own experience, but having had the ability to download a few things to check them out has lead to me purchasing them. For example I while back I saw an episode of Dexter whilst flicking through the channels. Not something I had seen before, but it caught my interest. I downloaded a couple of random episodes from different seasons to have a look at, decided that it was something I would want to watch and so ordered the complete box sets for the first 6 seasons. Without having first been able to sample it like that, there is no way I would of purchased them.
Did you read something else to the summary I read so you could start from a completely opposite place? The title even says the *shutdown* of MU hurt box office takings.
Or did you just deliberately ignore the most important word in the whole thing so you could have good mouth froth?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
" file-sharing acts as a mechanism to spread information about a good from consumers with zero or low willingness to pay to users with high willingness to pay."
This!
+1
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If anyone thinks a bad camcorder copy of a screener will keep someone from going to see a film, then they are a complete and total idiot. 90% of the "pirated" movies on the internet are really low quality screeners or early edits that have crap audio and video quality. And these same videos are the ones the MPAA are claiming HURT their income. Where in fact it helps their income. When you are looking at dropping $40-$80 to go see a movie in the theater, Yes $40 is a realistic number, I recently paid that to take my wife to see SkyFall, you will have people that will not see a film unless they are sure it is not crap.
But the executives out there are so under educated they cant see marketing that is working for them. Now we have metrics that show that "pirated" films do in fact increase sales....
After my experience of taking my wife to a movie opening, I'm not going back again. The movie was OK, but smelling the disgusting feet of a unbathed idiot in the row behind, me or the rude idiots that must text on their phones through the movie as well as the sticky seating and floor means I'll watch them at home when they ome out on BluRay. My theater at home has better sound anyways....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
US law clearly states that they are not responsible for their customers actions any more than slashdot is responsible for the content of your posts here.
If the DOJ ever did take this illegal seizure to a trial they would lose badly not only on that fact but also on the many procedural errors that were made.
...it doesn't mean anything in the bigger picture of whether piracy affects sales. Closing Megaupload didn't shut down piracy, everyone just moved onto another hosting services, not to mention all the plethora of peer-to-peer downloading options still available.
I would be far more interested if research would focus on the effect of transformative use of copyrighted material. If there's one change to copyright law that I would back without hesitation, it is a strengthening of protections for, and an expansion of fair use, parodies, and incidental usage. All of those would largely achieve the same positive word-of-mouth effects that the researchers tout, without the negative aspects of piracy.
The paper itself calls it an insignificant effect, so even taking it at face value, it basically amounts to almost nothing.
If Megaupload did hurt box office sales, then they obviously hosted lots of pirated material.
You get an F in Logic 101 today. It is quite possible for a site to host no pirated content and yet hurt box office sales. For example, movie critic web sites could give low ratings. A site could have only trailers (presumably that would be legal), which could backfire, convincing people to skip the movie. Perhaps the most damaging blow is an entertainment related discussion site ignoring the existence of a particular movie.
You demand a yes or no answer to an unfair question we all know can already be answered with a yes. This is the springboard to an obvious and contrived implication, which is "Megaupload broke the law/is evil".
Have you ever told a lie? Ever? If you've told just one lie in your entire life, then you are a liar! The number of adults who aren't liars under that standard might well be zero. The world is a sink of depravity.
And your black and white view is, as others said, beside the point. The real enabler is technology in the form of the Internet and extremely capacious and fast storage media. Bashing Megaupload is just shooting the messenger.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
You're joking, right? Anything that says that piracy is good is going to posted here since it confirms the groupthink. No matter that the study itself says that the shutdown had an insignificant effect.
No, you have the study people even admitting that the effect was insignificant.
We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues.
So basically the article and the submission are overblowing what the study itself said.
In Las Vegas, Circle Park was shut down because some people were feeding the homeless.
(The park had become a place for homeless people to congregate, and there were other problems caused by some of the homeless in the neighborhoods surrounding the park.)
The courts said it was illegal to prevent feeding the homeless so they shut the park down completely.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
The proof is far more solid than any proofs given of the damage caused by piracy.
Yet you've never once whined about that, have you.
Shoddy research is shoddy research. No matter if you agree with the premise or not.
The actual conclusion of the researchers was:
We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues.
You have misquoted the article, leaving out an important qualifier. The true quote actually reads:
"we find that the shutdown had a negative, yet in some cases insignificant effect on box office revenues.”
I need hardly add that this is not a trivial distinction. Assuming you used copy and paste for the quote, you must have then deliberately removed the text reading "in some cases" before you posted. Why exactly would anyone do this, except to change the meaning of the quote, however slightly?
We're all now in favor of more shutdowns?
Box office != to Movies sold.
Simple fact of invalid comparison.
Although I think pirates are most likely going to be movie fans that enjoy watching more movies then they can actually afford.
So even though the article is flawed I don't necessary disagree with it... just about how they formulate their conclusion.
I think the content industries have a perfect streak going: they always oppose technologies that turn out to be, not only not harmful, but actively good for their bottom line.
Radio was going to ruin record sales. A few decades after they lost that one, they were shelling out payola to get on the air.
The cassette tape recorder was going to destroy records. After losing that one, they made a mint selling everybody the same record twice, the new version being portable.
VCRs were going to be to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women; after the Betamax decision, they made money selling cassettes.
The lesson is, that when content industries oppose a new technology, they have to be beaten ... for their OWN good....
There's only a small, finite number of movies in theaters at any one time - the article mentioned 1344. If each one were hosted once, that'd be 1344 files.
You're close. To those not aware movies and other large files frequently encountered from the scene are stored in archives (usually archives within archives) which range in size from 2,5,10,25,50,75,100+ megs for parity and convenience. If you'd like some sources for this peruse a tracker website sometime, do so with adblock at the very least. That being said, a single movie may have anywhere from 7 for the CDR sized DIVX encodes to close to 100 pieces for the 1080p variety, with the larger pieced out files typically encountered on the Megauploads of the world. On top of that there are different release groups, let's estimate that at about 5 for commonly accessible popular releases. There are many more than that especially if you include one off releases by non affiliated individuals like "MrMovieMagic Brave 720p", and then multiple releases of the same movie for different regions (English, Deutsch, Finnish, Russian, Spanish) etc. Remember this is loosely about 'cred'. Shifting the focus from encoded movies to DVD ISOs, music, software (think multigigabyte Autodesk or Adobe products, games etc.), ebooks, and you can imagine there is a lot of duplication involved. I'm not sure if you've done any work with version control, but I imagine the duplication of content on Megaupload in essence to be very similar to that of revision iterations. Oh look, another release due to encoding errors, random mislabeled files (you think that's %Language% you're getting, muhahaha), password protected junk (visit my site yo!), and down the rabbit hole it goes.
Therefore, it's possible that both are correct - most files were not piracy related, but there were some that did, and they may have had an effect on the market.
Or the crazy idea that free advertising works. Not that I think that is exactly what this is (many of these people have no intention of buying, ever.)
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Movies still in the theater aren't sold for a long time. Logically, if someone DLs a movie and likes it enought to see it in the theater, he's going to buy it when it comes out on blu-ray.
The "article" was an abstract from the study, I saw no flaws. "We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues." What was flawed?
Free Martian Whores!
Correlation does not imply causation. One can even make the same argument that because Megaupload closed, tiger attacks in Chicago have gone down, too.
Oh, and the obligatory xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/552/
The proof is far more solid than any proofs given of the damage caused by piracy.
Solid proofs like titles not being released or an industry built around combating it? Game example: Gears of War PC sequels. The engine is the middleware and already cross platform (Unreal 3). Companies dedicated to the creation of antipiracy technology is another measuring stick for the prevalence of the issue.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
I don't have cable, and I don't really watch TV. That said I typically hear about shows from friends, co workers etc and end up going on line to check them out. If I like them I tend to watch the entire series online.
Typically these shows are on pirate/rogue tv sites and I have to fish through dead links to find working ones. Why? Because I can't watch current or even last seasons episodes online from legit sources 95% of the time.
Now after I watch a show I'll get hooked and watch all of it and then stop and later if the series is done I'll typically buy a box set, when I get in the mood to watch it again. Why simple because finding working links to non legit sites is a hassle and I don't bother to do it.
This year though with the shutdown of megavideo I find myself watching far less tv shows, infact I'm pretty much clueless on the new tv shows that were released this seasons, I've not watched any nor am I following any. Because of this it is pretty unlikely that I'll end up buying any full season dvds/bluerays
Where to begin, even.
First, who are "the pirates"?
Second, where are they, as a class, saying that Megaupload was mostly used for non-piracy related files?
Third and most importantly, you're spouting nonsense from a logical perspective. YouTube hosts LOTS of cat videos, maybe enough even to influence the number of cat purchases by animal lovers. That doesn't mean that YouTube mainly hosts cat videos. Who knows? Maybe it's 75% meow-infested, or maybe cat videos are less than 1% what's being hosted. THERE'S NO WAY TO TELL, just going on the fact (for argument's sake) that the number of YouTube hosted cat videos is enough to influence the pet industry. Similarly, there's no way to tell, just based upon Megaupload's influence on the box office, if movies were a major component of Megaupload's offerings.
Fourth, hosted and downloaded are two different things. It's entirely possible that by number of files hosted, pirated music and movies are a small component, but going by the number of downloads, they are the lion's share. After all, you might only need to share a particular powerpoint presentation a few times, but a bootleg media file could get downloaded tens of thousands of times. Or it could be that most uploads are not unauthorized, most downloads are not unauthorized, but the ones that are make up the vast majority of Megaupload's bandwidth. So, in that case, is Megaupload mostly used for piracy or not? Depends on your point of view.
Bottom line, the assertions you are claiming are contradictory really aren't.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
If Megaupload did hurt box office sales, then they obviously hosted lots of pirated material.
You seem to have trouble with reading comprehension, as do the moderators (your sock puppets? I can't believe you're not -1 overrated since you obviously don't read well).
The study said exactly the OPPOSITE. Megaupload didn't hurt box office receipts, it helped them. Shutting the site down hurt receipts.
Maybe you and the mods need a remedial reading class? Well, maybe the mods thought your lack of reading comprehension was interesting... but you have no excuse.
Free Martian Whores!
don't give them ideas!
Saying that, it'd work about as well as gun bans. <voice style="Gene_Wilder">Tell me again, how criminals obey the law?< />
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It's not shooting the messenger, it's stealing his bicycle and shoes and cutting off his legs with a spoon, then standing back and laughing as he bleeds out.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Wait, if pirates are the biggest spenders, why would shutting down Megaupload make them into not-spenders? Because it made them into not-pirates? How does a correlation between pirates the demographic and spending habits correlate intuitively with piracy the activity and spending habits? This actually is pretty surprising.
Entirely unlike the shoddy work you have remained silent on
Have I remained silent? Maybe you should look at my comment history before making assumptions/looking like an trolling asshat?
"We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenue" This is in the abstract! nothing to see here, just fodder for pirates who want some legitimacy. Advice to pirates: don't read the abstract and you'll feel better about it.
Because they find it harder to do product research, and as a result find less material that they can justify spending money on.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
It doesn't matter if they hosted the content, the file belonged to the up loaders. Maybe a protest where on a certain date or time, everyone used all forms of communication to sing happy birthday to each other. Then sue all of the carriers for copyright infringement and racketeering.
"Folks like me, on the other hand, are contributing to their demise. I suspect my group is far larger than that of the 'can't wait' group and this will start to show in the years to come." It is showing already. Of the people I know who used to fund independent films, none are doing so now, because they don't feel like paying out huge bucks to entertain people like you for free anymore while losing money themselves. (All the while listening to the refrain of idiots crowing "Piracy helps sell more movies!') Thanks for your contribution to a less interesting culture, jerk.
you give the product away for free, and you thereby create interest
duh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So did they host mainly pirated movies etc or did it not?
Who cares? The only thing that matters is how to protect the internet from those who interfere. It far to easy to knock people offline, and that's what needs to be stopped.
I agree. Spammers and bot-herders should be free to host their command-and-control centers without the inconvenience of setting up redundant infrastructure.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
Or, you know, somebody could develop a secure operating system that's not so easily compromised, but where's the money in that, eh? You can't secure a network with takedowns, which serve no purpose outside of censorship.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"they obviously hosted lots of pirated material" and "Megaupload was mostly used for non-piracy related files" do not contradict each other.
Neither statement claimed they did.
The article states an observational fact: less mega upload results in less purchases of second tier films. But the implication is that "piracy is good and not a crime". It is a crime whether you think it's good or not. Moreover even if it helped some sellers it may not have helped others (blockbuster owners). So one cannot point to a net increase in sales as being beninficial to all. FOr all we know the per sale profit is also lower of selling cheaper titles. The bottom line however it ultimately it's the copyright holder's decision not yours on whether to sell a movie or not. They are free to act contrary to their own interests. That's the point of giving then the control in the first place.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Box office != to Movies sold.
I assume you're referring to DVD/BluRay sales. It's worth noting that the industry also claimed, at one point, that VCRs should be illegal because they enabled piracy. A couple of years down the line, legitimate VHS sales were a major part of their revenue.
It's ad hominem, I know, but the industry doesn't have a great track record of accurately forecasting the effects of new technology on their business. They follow the same MO each time...try to block all progress to maintain the status quo and then, once there's no other option, adapt. Studies like this are needed to help bring that adaptation sooner rather than later.
I'm curious if the city-wide crime statistics dropped when the park was closed. If so, I'm happy that the nanny state stepped in and protected citizens who would not protect themselves. If not, then the city deprived people of their park so that criminals would have to walk three blocks to commit their crimes.
"Lots of" and "mainly" are two very different things. Were there "lots of" pirated files? I'm sure there were, they had PETABYTES of storage and tens of thousands of users - there was no possible way they could stop everything. It's no different than the question of whether or not google links to "lots of" pirated material. Was it "mainly" (as in > and arbitrary percent like 80%) pirated files? Doubtful, but we don't know for sure, because the government decided to lock everything down. According to megaupload they were MAINLY legitimate files, and when there was piracy they took stuff down. According to the government they were 99% pirated material. Reality is somewhere in the middle.
At the end of the day, the entire reason they were raided is because Kim Dotcom was planning on starting his own music label, and actually had big artists signed on. The RIAA/MAFIAA didn't like that, because it would've cut them out of being the middle man, and so they went for the jugular.
YouTube hosts LOTS of cat videos, maybe enough even to influence the number of cat purchases by animal lovers.
Remember, this is the same site that shows ADS before the TRAILER -- I wouldn't exactly say they have their priorities in order for box office revenue (or for any of their advertisers for that matter).
No operating system can be secure enough to stop a person from installing something. That's how it spreads.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
It's alright, he's 14. Mom cut his weekly allowance, so he's reallocating resources. After all, he has to afford his WoW account somehow, right?
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I imagine the people that pirate movies from theaters are releasing pretty crappy quality versions of the movies. If you were to see a movie with alot of detail in it and then forced to watch it in a low quality format where the detail (video and audio) take away from the movie in any significant amount, I imagine many people would then want to go pay for an actual copy or viewing of the movie. In that regard I can see how pirating could help movie sales of GOOD movies, and at the same time possibly hurt sales of bad movies (why pay to see a good quality version of a movie you know sucks). With that in mind we know that most movies do in fact suck, so most of the time I can see how pirating would hurt sales.
http://interserver.net/
That seems specious. Are you telling me not only that pirates constitute at least a plurality of theatergoers, but that they do so based on whether or not they could pirate leaked copies? Megaupload was never a big source of pre-release content, and even after that it was all bootlegs until a DVD rip was made
See, that also confuses me. Because piracy has always been something that affects MEDIA sales: not theater tickets. If anti-piracy organizations a have successfully finagled the dialogue so that the media acts like it is, that's a problem. The weakness the huge anti-piracy apparatus had was that their ad campaigns featuring teary eyed boom mike operators were clearly full of shit because pretty much everyone gets paid off out of the box office returns. Once the budget is covered, the rest of the money: dvd sales, merchandise, etc. gets paid to the studios, with perhaps some small amount paid on residuals (which don't pay any movie crew member's rent) and perhaps other perks (partial merchandising rights etc.) for high profile perfomers/directors. And so anti piracy advocacy has always been about the studios.
However, if there really is someone going around and claiming that box office returns are hurting because of piracy, that needs to be nipped in the bud. Piracy is a war on DVD sales, not on ticket sales. If there is a relationship, it needs to be sussed out thoroughly, before we get legislators to swallow the lie that ALL revenue streams are under threat because the hackers are breaking into our mainframes and stealing all our internets and posting the finished cut of the movie plus all DVD extras BEFORE THE SCRIPT IS EVEN WRITTEN.
Of course it can be. You install the OS on read only media that limits what any program can do to the system. We have junk because it's cheaper to make and sell junk. Everything is made to just barely work when it's new. This is what we get when we use cheap commodity systems made in dangerous, flammable, ramshackle factories to feed the Wall Street monster. Robust, secure systems are not impossible, just difficult and not as profitable, and not in the best interests of the authorities who demand to be able to hack into your machine. We have a de facto prohibition against real security for the public.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When I was younger I was taught that if you couldn't afford things, you went without. Your version seems to be "If I can't afford something, I'm justified in stealing it." Your ethics suck. Maybe you should have tried mowing a few lawns to pay for those movies you wanted so much. Or is you getting up off your lazy ass and doing a little work to pay for things you want just too much for me to expect? The next time you wonder why there isn't a sequel to a movie you liked, or why indie director X doesn't make more great films like the one you loved so much that you were willing to steal it, take a look in the mirror and you'll see the answer. (And to be clear, your "I have purchased plenty of indie films" doesn't exonerate you. I sincerely doubt you've purchased, or even rented, every one you've ever seen, judging from the proud declarations in your first post. And the producers of big films deserve your money just as much as indies; I don't see you saying you supported them. But there's no doubt the indies get hit harder by the actions of the unethical, since their potential market is so much smaller to begin with.)
Eh, your argument relies on the notion that we both have a strong ethical grounding, but I never claimed such. I don't care about whether or not some producers go out of business, just the ones that put out products I like. I'll openly admit I have no issue with pirating, but I can still see rhyme and reason to supporting basic capitalist philosophies to keep the products I like in business. I would never WANT to purchase every indie film I've ever seen, just the ones I like enough to want to see again or more of or sequels of etc. This applies to indie and mainstream films alike.
In short, I don't seek justification for my actions, because I don't need it. I pirated because I wanted to. I stopped because it was unnecessary, and I decided that some things I'd rather support than not. I don't establish needless ethics that serve no purpose to me. That's like making up rules for a game I have not intention of playing.
I sincerely doubt you've purchased, or even rented, every one you've ever seen, judging from the proud declarations in your first post. And the producers of big films deserve your money just as much as indies;
The only people that deserve my money are people that put out quality products I enjoy. Deserve is arbitrary. I say this, you say that. In the end it has no weight.
Basically, what I'm saying is, "so what?" So far all your really putting forward is a guilt trip argument to a completely shameless individual. So, where can we really go from here?
Shoddy research is shoddy research. No matter if you agree with the premise or not.
Well then, it's above the quality of the work of the MPAA or the RIAA. We should accept this work as the gold standard.
Om, nomnomnom...
You mean, it might work exceptionally well? So well, that british policemen are mostly unarmed, because even the criminals in the UK are not very often armed?
Have you ever used gentoo? It's pretty good at stopping you from installing anything. Anything at all.
No operating system can be secure enough to stop a person from installing something. That's how it spreads.
That's where you're wrong. Take my wristwatch for example... It is a wearable computer, and I can't install jack shit on it, and I have ROOT PRIVILEGES!!! I can set system time and date, yet I can't run arbitrary code.
What do you think of that?
Product research. Exactly.
I downloaded a comedy Christmas DVD last night. It's a family favourite comedian touting "unseen TV footage".
After 45 minutes of "unseen TV footage", which I'm sure I've already seen, the DVD started showing "best bits from previous episodes", which I have seen before on TV.
So, it's an "unseen" DVD where I've already seen most of the content.
Would it make a good Christmas present? Would it bollocks and I feel offended by its misleading "unseen" title.
Deleted.
The only thing burned is my faith in their products.
Family member is now getting socks.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
British policemen were mostly unarmed before the ban too.
Criminals in the UK were armed less often before the ban too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm
See the graph on page 12 of this report too:
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus713/ccjs_gun_crime_report.pdf
Criminal use of actual firearms is still above the levels prior to the ban.
Not sure how this relates to the movie industry, but your suggestion that the ban worked "exceptionally well" is entirely, completely, irrefutably and dangerously wrong.
You know what, I'm ranting, I'm off topic, and I apologize. My personal ethics (and lack thereof) are irrelevant to the topic. This isn't about our differences of opinion on whether piracy is right.
Posts such as this give me just a tiny bit of hope that Humanity isn't headed for the dumpster.
Wow someone got defensive quick.
Alas, Hollywood is reporting the best Thanksgiving Day weekend ever. Did the demise of Megaupload make a difference? I doubt it, but I'm sure that TorrentFreak is only interested in datapoints that support its lifestyle choice. http://www.deadline.com/2012/11/thanksgiving-holiday-box-office-starts-so-so-rise-of-the-guardians-underperforms-life-of-pi-overperforms-red-dawn-as-expected-breaking-dawn-2-still-1-bond-skyfall-2/
You can create studies that prove whichever point you're advocating. So while downloaders like this article, I'm pretty sure the movie industry will be pointing at things like this: best ever Thanksgiving weekend.
OS are made to customer specs. Customer is wrong end of story. Unfortunately you don't sell shit to customers if they don't get to do what they want. Why do you think Apple is losing the mobile war at this time? Because they lock users in and they cost more... Freedom and cost of purchase are the only two things most users care about.
"We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues." What was flawed?
An insignificant effect is too small to attribute to anything but random chance. That's the technical definition of insignificant. If you flip four coins and three of them come up heads, the bias towards heads is insignificant to show that the coins are unfair.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I agree with the other AC.
Just because you are not able to alter it don't assume it cannot be altered.
I recently had to fix/update a Galaxy S2 from Korea (to allow it to work in Canada). There are plenty of ROM's for english-speaking countries, but finding one that matched the Korean model (and not being able to read Korean well myself) was damn hard.
The annoying part is that when I finally did run across some older posts with ROM's (which are perfectly legal, mind you) for the damn thing, clicking through the link brought me MegaUpload and the "this domain has been seized" warning.
So there's a legitimate use that was killed in the "war on piracy." I'm sure there are plenty of others, as MU was a great+convenient way for sharing patching and other large files
Guns were very, very popular in the US because the whole country fought for its independence early on. Britain's military had guns, but civilly they fought with fists; they sent their military here, and our frontiersmen civilian population acted as independent militia. They all needed guns to hunt food here in the wild, uncharted lands; Britain's well-established civilization allowed for more farming and food distribution by donkey-cart. Our guns got us our freedom, and our guns became part of our freedom; in Britain, guns are just guns, nothing a person really needed before.
There's not a huge demand for guns in Britain in any case.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
that the nanny state is successfully protecting people doesn't make it right and good. People are still deprived of their park. What if we implemented a curfew and arrested anyone on the streets between 11pm and 5am?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
And your black and white view is, as others said, beside the point. The real enabler is technology in the form of the Internet and extremely capacious and fast storage media. Bashing Megaupload is just shooting the messenger.
You're one of those gun control folks that think the real problem is guns, not murderers, aren't you?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Fallacy of total body. His YouTube argument focused on the distribution of content and of the proportions of stored content, and on its behavioral impacts in a market related to that content. Revenue generation impacts are irrelevant; his argument was logically consistent and appropriate.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
There's always a good portion of music that's crap. Nowadays with online libraries, you get to see more music in general so it's somewhat of a percentage game.
The biggest change though is what's essentially the death of the single. Not many people are going to plop down $10+ for a single song, or $10-20 for an album which only has one or two decent songs.
iTunes etc allow you to by single songs at a reasonable price without the need for "singles" albums or crappy filler.
My music purchases are probably up with the advent of digital online music, but purchases of physical media is down. If possible, I buy from the artist as directly as possible, or otherwise from iTunes/amazon/etc.
With the advent of things like the piratebay actively doing promos, and the move away from Big Labels' control of the distribution or even promotional channels channels in general, there's a fundamental shift in music.
Hopefully in the future this means that - while an artist might not be able to sell $10million worth of an album - they will be able to sell a slightly lower volume for a slightly higher cut (or at least a less draconian contract).
Time to break out The Half-Life of Facts. I love the implied syllogism behind this kind of statement.
contingent_fact => radical_change
Of course, radical_change has no impact on contingent_fact. Just not going to happen.
There was an article years ago about how if people downloaded a few singles off Napster that they liked they would go by the CD. Same thing happened to film industry.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
I wouldn't call that solid - reactions to piracy can prove they're scared, but in of itself doesn't show hard facts about damages - and titles not being released is also dubious because other factors can and often do play a role [and you can't just ignore them].
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Have you ever heard of/used Multics?
So THAT is why they went after dotcom? It never was about the copyrights?
In other news, Atom bombs also kill pathogens, so that makes it a little less bad in general, amiright?
If Megaupload did hurt box office sales, then they obviously hosted lots of pirated material. This is against how the pirates are saying that Megaupload was mostly used for non-piracy related files. So did they host mainly pirated movies etc or did it not?
Not obvious. What if the time saving and efficiency for sales and collaborative work generated free time as well as income so box office numbers could improve.
I was gobsmacked by the number of micro processor projects that used it to share code images and tools. ARM, ATmega, AVR, Beagleboard, Android, and many more.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
No I haven't. Is that a good thing?
If you are a computer science/computer geek type then it is probably a bad thing. If you are not involved in computer technology then it doesn't matter.
Actually, yes there is. Speaking as an Englishman who requires a firearm for hunting (it's easier to carry then a longbow) and for home defence (it always helps to be better armed than your assailant), and someone of sound and sensible mind (it's always ALWAYS better to have and not need, than to need and not have).
Please remember, guns don't kill people, people kill people.
There's a photo floating around on Facebook which compares a radicalised anti-gun lobbyist (you probably know her, she's a senator who goes by the name Diane Feinstein) who is pictured with a LOADED AND COCKED AK-47 WITH HER FINGER INSIDE THE TRIGGER GUARD, WAVING IT AT A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE DURING A PRESS CONFERENCE. She could take out the entire room with that C-mag she's got in there! The other side of the photograph is of a young lady with an M-16; she's holding it across her chest with the magazine out and the bolt back, breech open, and her trigger finger is parallel to the barrel. THAT GUN IS ABOUT AS DANGEROUS AS A STRIP OF WET CABBAGE.
WHO IS THE DANGEROUS ONE?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
But these are opening weekend grosses....whatever