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Hollywood Studios Fuming Over Indie Studio Deal With BitTorrent
silentbrad sends this quote from TheWrap:
"'It's a deal with the devil,' one studio executive [said]. 'Cinedigm is being used as their pawn.' Cinedigm announced this weekend that it would offer the first seven minutes of the Emily Blunt-Colin Firth indie Arthur Newman exclusively to BitTorrent users, which number up to 170 million people.... Hollywood studios have spent years and many millions of dollars to protect their intellectual property and worry that by teaming up with BitTorrent, Cinedigm has embraced a company that imperils the financial underpinnings of the film business and should be kept at arm's length. 'It's great for BitTorrent and disingenuous of Cinedigm,' said the executive. 'The fact of the matter is BitTorrent is in it for themselves, they're not in it for the health of the industry.' Other executives including at Warner Brothers and Sony echoed those comments, fretting that Cinedigm had unwittingly opened a Pandora's box in a bid to get attention for its low-budget release. ... 'Blaming BitTorrent for piracy is like blaming a freeway for drunk drivers, ' Jill Calcaterra, Cinedigm's chief marketing officer said. 'How people use it can be positive for the industry or it can hurt the industry. We want it help us make this indie film successful.' ... 'We'll be working with all of [the studios] one day,' [Matt Mason, BitTorrent's vice president of marketing] said. 'It's really up to them how quickly they come to the table and realize we're not the villain, we're the heroes.'"
really?
* A world imprisoned screams with pain There are no leaders you can blame Your avarice destroyed your sphere And the
Honestly? A deal with the movie studios (or any of the recording studios) is a deal with the devil.
I applaud Cinedigm for giving an alternative a shot.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
It's not the technology, it's how you use it!
I probably won't like the movie but I respect them for trying to incorperate technologies that are uncommon in that industry.
http://interserver.net/
What we need is to stop the delegitimization of torrenting as a file transfer method. Equating torrents with piracy is ridiculous on it's face, it's nothing more than a means of transfering ANY data that's use legally all over the place. i haven't downloaded a linux distro the normal way in years, steam uses torrents, the list goes on.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's the first seven minutes. That is, it's an ad for the movie, not the movie.
They could have just used YouTube, which would probably get them a lot more eyeballs, and has social-networky features to try to encourage others to watch it. You _want_ people to watch your ads, for free; you'd pay them if you could. I can't imagine why they'd use BitTorrent, aside from the fact that BitTorrent gets you a few headlines.
This isn't any skin off Hollywood's nose. Well, maybe a little: by acknowledging that BitTorrent isn't universally evil, it cuts into their deranged "BitTorrent = piracy" campaign. But I can't see anything more to it than that.
If they were using it to distribute the film, the studio might have some kind of point, though that point would be "How the heck can you distribute a movie on which you spent a minimum of $10 million just on the two lead actors (and probably more) via a medium you can't charge for?"
But its cute to try and blame it on one particular ... protocol? I'm not sure what 'deal with bittorrent' means. I mean, I get the 'first 7 minutes to bittorrent users' but who is that exactly? People that use software from bittorrent inc? Anyone with a bittorrent client? Who are they actually talking about? Well thought out statement you have there.
Anyway, my point is that the big studios fear anything they don't completely control. They are afraid of people sharing things without them making a cut. They don't give damn about bittorrent, they care about sharing without them profiting.
You just sound stupid when you propagate the stereotype, anyone with a clue knows they are just as afraid of you downloading something from HTTP as they are with bit torrent. Its not like they let you get buy with it via HTTP but not BitTorrent.
From what I can tell from the actual article is that:
The studios repeated their default statements anytime anyone shares anything online when they aren't getting a cut of the profits. ... which isn't anything new, there are thousands of shitty indie movies on bittorrent already, thats like saying some indie movie is going to be uploaded to youtube. Contrary to what you may think: Indie does not imply that its worth watching.
Some indie movie is going to be put shared via bittorrent
No one has heard of or cares about this indie movie either.
Forget news for nerds, this isn't even news.
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"'It's a deal with the devil,' one studio executive" [said]. I agree with that, but I would say the devil is the MPAA and the studio executives not Bittorrent.
Bittorrent is the right technology to deliver reams of data to multiple client. It's really good at that. I think it's about time that the media companies accept the reality. If they weren't such dinosaurs, they would have made the move along time ago. But they are dino's, so they will probably still resist to the end.
As an indie filmmaker, I understand the dilemma. Granted, I'm at the low end, and don't get to work with name actors, but the problems stay the same until you have to start worrying about territories and distribution - and this is a dispute about controlling distribution.
If I invest, say, $20,000 of my own money in a project, I need to be reasonably confident about making at least some of that money back or I don't get to make another movie. I don't have a patron or rich lover to fund what I do, so... I have to not make consistent losses.
Facing this reality, the main way I make money is through private showings in indie theaters, selling disks direct, and then when the economic potential of the production seems tapped out, sticking it somewhere accessible so at least it is seen by *people*.
That doesn't really work. I don't know what else to do. I have a couple of really fun hard sci-fi ideas I'd love to develop, but the audience is hard to reach and still get paid enough to just cover my costs... Or I can participate in the conventional distribution system and be SURE of making no money.
Unless there's some rich benefactor or wealthy single lady out there *grins* my really very specialist movies have no chance of being made or seen by a wide audience.
Bittorrent breaks the distribution problem, but doesn't help the money problem.
In what other business could you act so profoundly antagonistic towards your own customers and expect your business to actually be around to see the next day?
Fun object lesson: what happens when a violent animal is backed into a corner?
I second that. We CG people sure don't get to see the kind of money the major production houses flaunt and only have our jobs shipped out of country as ultimate reward. Many would be better off if it wasn't for overly-greedy middlemen ; we might actually see more cultural diversity as well. CG work is gruesome, constant focus work with short deadlines and low salaries for the amount of skill required. If Cinedigm opens an alternate route that turns out to be viable, new life can be breathed into the suffocating US film and animation industries and add some extra fluidity to the economy as a consequence.
This should be an interesting fight.
Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
I ditched warner bro's cable because they assumed all my UDP traffic was P2P. The went from shaping UDP to flat out blocking it. I wouldn't doubt they have hope other ISPs would follow. Anything legitimizing P2P would mean they couldn't block UDP based on assumption. Well. Considering how clue free their networking engineers seem to be, that might not be true.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"The fact of the matter is BitTorrent is in it for themselves, they're not in it for the health of the industry."
The irony is so heavy it could shift Jupiter from its orbit.
> " 'Blaming BitTorrent for piracy is like blaming a freeway for drunk drivers, ' Jill Calcaterra, Cinedigm's chief marketing officer said"
I like Bittorrent, but this is a bit disingenuous. It's more like blaming a freeway with with drive-thru bars every 100 feet because zoning doesn't forbid it, for having drunk drivers.
Seriously? You HONESTLY believe what you wrote?
...
I don't often bite back on such OBVIOUS BULLSHIT but you, sir are a complete ASSHAT.
The PRIMARY reason there is blatant and comprehensive copyright violation is because THE INDUSTRY HEAVYWEIGHTS (RIAA/MPAA,and friends) have a ridiculous stranglehold on distribution. And by RIDICULOUS I mean literally impossible for some customers (eg outside the USofA) to legally purchase some content.
LITERALLY impossible to purchase. In some cases literally FOR EVER, in most cases "what the hell do you mean I have to wait YEARS before I can legally purchase this content". And NO, for the record, I'm NOT only talking about "purchasing online", some content you CANNOT purchase even on "original media" (DVD or whatever) outside the US; for NO REASON other than "I control the distribution and I could not be bothered distributing THAT".
The Music/Movie distribution industry constantly sends a big FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU ALL to literally millions of customers - but STILL insists they have a right to cry UNFAIR.
Seriously folks, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY.
Let me say this again, there is ABSOLUTELY NO VALID MORAL ARGUMENT IN DEFENSE OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE MUSIC AND MOVIE INDUSTRY.
They have literally gone out of their way, time and time again, to make it actually impossible to purchase content (either at all, or online, or they simply restrict it to some obscure almost unused format, or they excessively compress it so it's ONY worth watching on the postage-stamp that is a 10 yr old phone).
To be fair (and even handed) lets be clear, the MPAA/RIAA "claim" to be "the industry body" but IN PRACTICE they act in the interests of existing distribution channels (and NOT "the movie/music industry" as a whole).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
> The fact of the matter is BitTorrent is in it for themselves, they're
> not in it for the health of the industry.
The fact of the matter is the studios are in it for themselves, they're not in it for the health of anyone but themselves. And that's fine, but why should the rest of us give a shit about their health? So Cinedigm's innovative move might cause movies to become less expensive and owning a studio less profitable. So what? That's competition.
In fact, if the studios have some sort of agreement not to make any of their "properties" available via BitTorrent they should be sued for engaging in a restraint of trade.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A movie studio making a deal with the Devil? So it's business as usual, right?
Champions of "indie" cinema take note: Cinedigm is simply a production/distribution division of Technicolor, (yes that Technicolor), a multi-billion dollar Hollywood production service company that operates as a vendor to all the Hollywood studios. Several of the producers have ongoing relationships with Technicolor and Focus Features, a division of NBCUniversal, which is handling distribution of the film in several foreign territories. Cinedigm is the US film and animation industries.
This entire thing is just Technicolor putting up a tiny film, probably entirely produced with UK Lottery Fund money and North Carolina tax credits, as a stalking horse/advertising experiment. The film has no stars to speak of, it was probably going to die an unlamented death on pay-per-view before they upgraded their marketing campaign to full Viral mode.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
How long before a talented bunch of individuals are capable of making high quality movies without the industries backing.
What? You haven't seen Star Wreck? Hilarious and better than half the dreck from hollywood. And it's a free download! DUDE!!!!
Free Martian Whores!
BitTorrent are not in the movie industry. It's not an "us and them" game.
Cinedigm are embracing the internet and what it is evolving in to. Hollywood film studios are clinging to their outdated business models and throwing their toys out the cot when not everyone plays by their rules.
I think Bittorrent should file a RICO civil suit for conspiracy and copyright abuse against the RIAA and the MPAA and their associated companies for conspiracy in attempting to de-legitimize an essentially legal service by prohibiting member companies from making legitimate use of the service. The flack Cinedigm is getting is the first layer of proof needed that they colluded to do so. The discovery process alone should quite be fun to watch.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Okay, I was commenting on how proud they were (at least the way it was phrased); I'm not against the doing of a promo to stimulate sales.
I've no problem with any artist in any medium displaying their wares to prospective customers - just as happens at craft fairs, for instance.
Relating to a newer post - somebody asking if there are _any_ benefits to DRM, the simple answer is "No"; the more complicated answer includes "What have you been smoking?"
This is not meant to offend, but one problem I see is that some people apparently think that because they produce a work of art on their own hook that they are automagically entitled an income stream. To quote from the old song, "It ain't necessarily so."
No, look, I've friends over the years who've produced all manner of art, from songs, poems, sculpture, paintings, textiles, and fonts, among other stuff. Some is offered for sale, essentially to highest bidder (however informal the process), some is available if somebody makes an offer, a few things have been for-hire or other form of contract, basically a form of patronage. The rest is apportioned to gifts, decor, storage.
Few have made a living at it, regardless of how good I think it is. A larger number of them have made some money at it, anywhere from a coupla hundred to several thousands of dollars per year, averaged over, say, twenty years.
"If we eliminate pay for product... Does product cease? How do creators make money?"
First, I believe in 'pay for product'. Just as a laborer is worthy of his hire. The rub is that you've got to accept as true that the only people who pay for something are the people who want to pay for it.
(This goes back to the teaser - if folks see it, want to watch the whole thing, let 'em buy it. Understand there is no DRM in the world that will protect anything digital or that can be digitized from being copied, so don't even bother. An exception might be, DRM it, get some cash before it's copied, and then collect from whomever is gonna pay for it later on. Works for sculpture as well - somebody takes multiple-vantage point pics, models it, spits out a 3-D print of it.)
"Does product cease?" Yes and no. Big money financing big projects in the manner of the larger production houses for film and TV, I think will wane - at least if they continue with their current methods. Some alternatives are crowdfunding, pre-subscription, a bit of traditional funding (it's a gamble as always, just differing odds, just like now), fund-raising events, and whatever someone thinks up to do. The 'big' payout comes from sales before the digital copy spreads, just like now. People still go to theatres, buy DVDs. That's mainstream visual media.
We will still make our choices as we do now - download a copy or pay Amazon, Netflix, Hulu. Or both.
Realize also that, in a much deeper manner than audience members tapping their feet to a tune, some have the _need_ to create. They will do so as they've done throughout history. The luckier ones will find patronage, hire, other forms of commission. The rest will be some version of the craft-fair hopefuls. There is also still plenty of room for ad-sponsored things as well, but nowhere near as it is done today or yesteryear.
Creators will make money as they've always done, by making something that people will buy.
An aside: As someone who grew up in the Fifties, watching old and not-so-old black and white movies from the cornucopia that was early Hollywood, I'll be sad to see that whole form of the industry pretty much vanish. As someone living in the Ought-Teens, I've little choice but to take the bad with the good, hope the good folks make it; and hope the hangars-on and ten-percenters and the back-room boys finding ways to fill their pockets at the expense of those who really made the product, fade away.
Ah, crap, man, best I can come up with. I confess a bit of nostalgia. Gonna have to read a while. I thank you for the questions, made me think a bit - to what end, I can only offer my poor thoughts.