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Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content
iONiUM writes: Today the Bell Media president claimed that Canadians are "stealing" U.S. Netflix, saying the practice is "stealing just like stealing anything else." She went on to say that it is socially unacceptable behavior, and "It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix. Like throwing garbage out of your car window, you just don't do it. We have to get engaged and tell people they're stealing." Of course, I'm sure the fact that Bell Media profits from Canadian content has nothing to do with these remarks.
No, it's socially acceptable behavior. The industry may have disdain for it, but it is absolutely not frowned upon by society.
Tiniest violin in the world playing for this woman.
- You are paying for the content. The same amount a customer in the US would pay.
- You are watching the content.
Why is this suddenly "stealing" if you are in Canada? It's the same content, and the content makers are getting the same money.
to pay for that which is free.
Educate yourself how internet works you ignorant (if not evil) Bell president. Perhaps Canada should just make a local Canadian internet and disconnect yourself from the rest of the world.
Or just admin you are greedy and evil.
She is going to need a downright brilliant propaganda team to convince anyone that paying for netflix is 'stealing'; just because she doesn't like it.
There's really not much difference between using a VPN to gain access to US electronic markets and using a car to gain access to US malls. Is it 'stealing' when a Canadian drives across the border and buys something in the US? Even by the standards of self-interested bullshit from incumbent monopolist assholes, this is unimpressive work.
Aren't the canadian paying for netflix ? So it would be more like canadian coming through the frontier and buying stuff then bringing them back to the US, thus making the US economy getting more money ? Or does she sees American coming in canada to buy prescription drug as "stealing" from canada ? What the heck is she smoking ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's not Canadians' fault that Netflix Canada has such a limited selection that, to get anything good, one has to hop to Netflix USA.
Fix that and the supposed "theft" will go away. Right now, it's more of a "service upgrade" to Netflix USA.
captcha: project (like the big project that it is to fix anything copyright-related)
driving across the border and buying a nice dinner in an Canadian restaurant is stealing, just don't do it!
I suggest an amnesty period in which any Canadian can return stolen content without penalty.
Now, if you buy something in a foreign country, and then bring it back to your home country its stealing, even if you legally bought it.
This is like how police charge people with "assaulting an officer" for bleeding on them after they beat the crap out of them at a traffic stop for doing 5 mph over the speed limit.
When you steal something you deprive someone else of using it. End of story.
Sorry, citizen, it was not lawful for you to view that content. Nurse, scalpel please.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I wonder who you have to be to request to have the word "steal" changed so that it rolls in a behavior that you don't like. I hope the answer isn't "The President of Bell Media".
I suggest we all buy a dictionary, plop a bookmark at the word "steal" and mail it to him. Half a million dictionaries should be a poignant message.
How tough are slander laws in Canada? She just called legitimate Netflix subscribers thieves. I think she should be prepared to have some evidence of theft being committed, or face the consequences in court.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's MORE socially unacceptable for a company to discriminate against a class of people (Canadians) and provide an inferior service simply due to their location for a service that has equal costs to deliver regardless of location.
Just another case of the "middleman" companies who never actually did anything in the past complaining after the work that they never did has been replaced by automated computer processes. Now they are crying and actually fell they are being robbed?!?!?!?!?! How about the last 50 years when companies like this were ROBBING consumers by charging for something but doing NOTHING!!!!
UGH THE STUPIDITY OF THESE PEOPLE!
For a company that engages in large scale scum campaigns against global human achievements like the internet it's amusing to see them bitching about netflix and other petty nonsense. It would be refreshing if they start acting like responsible citizens instead of jerks.
It might be a copyright violation however, since the intent of the distributor is to offer the content only in the USA.
Bell, talking about "socially acceptable behaviour" and "theft".
Has anyone had a look at Bell Canada's pricing and services lately? They epitomize theft.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Leave to a paid mouthpiece to pull some bullshit argument from her arse and spray it through a microphone
FUD engine at warp speed.
"up 2.8%... hmmm perhaps we will have to check how much people are stealing"
Dear Bell Media,
I travel to China. I cannot connect to my server in Canada, as ze Great Firewall of China says no. I VPN back to my house in Canada. I access my porn collection. I am stealing porn. Good day madam.
Oh never mind, I did steal the porn. Just over torrent, and not via the act of using a VPN back to my server. Good day madam.
Sounds to me like region locking content has become socially unacceptable in this globally connected age. These people are not only paying for the content, they're paying extra on top of it just to get around your arbitrary restrictions.
Maybe it's time for people like her to join us in the 21st century.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
We don't like Canadians VPNing Netflix content it but it's really not that bad. So, let's call it stealing and make it sound worse than it is. Like calling abortion murder. Demonize the things you don't like.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
And this is the problem with industry thinking. It is NOT stealing. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are separate types of law. They are NOT property law. If they were, we would not need a separate part of the Constitution (Art. 1, Sec 8) to define what they mean.
Violating copyright is NOT stealing because the copyright is NOT property. The term "intellectual property" is an intentional obfuscation designed to blur the difference between universal ideas of property ownership and the proposition that ideas can be owned. Ideas can NOT be owned. Copyrights are just temporary monopolies for the purpose of encouraging the arts and sciences. They do NOT exist because "Hey, that's mine". They do not exist for the benefit of the copyright holder. They exist for the benefit of society as a whole. Don't believe me? Read Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
What the article neglects to mention is that Bell recently started a competing streaming service called CraveTV. They have licensed some shows that are available on the US Netflix, so the only way for Canadians to watch them is to subscribe to CraveTV or use a VPN to access the American version of Netflix.
Where things get really stupid is that Bell's $4 CraveTV service requires potential customers to subscribe to a Bell (or partner) cable or satellite TV plan in an effort to protect their traditional business. Have an OTA antenna on your roof instead? Tough. You don't qualify for their service.
Really, any more a content company complaining is on them. At any time they could copy Valve's successful media distribution model and make huge amounts of money. My hope is that Valve pulls an Amazon and enters other media types or teams up with Netflix.
They are illegally importing.
I am sick and tired of shmucks that rip people off trying to 'upgrade' the crime of not being ripped off into 'theft'.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... after all, they could be enforcing regionality using the customer's credit card (as certain other content library vendors do), rather than the IP.
Now pipe down you silly bunt. You got your stupid company name out and we viewed it, and now we go back to our lives of overeating and purchasing ever-more-powerful Rascel Scooters to move our pendulous boobs from one fast-food joint to the next!
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
This Bell-End Media is no surprise, their flapping heads all filled with lies!
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
Actually all our actors come from there anyway!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Someone is finally thinking of the childr^H^H^H^H^H^H cable executives!
Word game?
Apparently she does not understand how netflix works. If I travel to the US, I can only watch US content while visiting there without using a VPN to pretend to be in Canada even though I have a Canadian Netflix account. If I travel to the UK, I can only watch UK netflix and so on.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
How about we have a look at your and your corporation tax statements before talking about what is and is not socially acceptable?
.. is just FINE right ;)
I feel the same way about public indexes. The responsible thing to do is get a seedbox, EARN a private tracker invite, and seed seed seed.
Think of it as a video version of an H1B visa (yes, I realize it's Canada, not the US). People are using the VPN to access content not available otherwise, just like an H1B visa is to obtain labor not available otherwise.
See the prices Bell Media charges for internet, telephone and satellite.
>> "It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix"
No, it has to become socially unacceptable for companies to be racist, and/or monopolist, and/or to try to socially engineer our view of moarality, and/or to attempt to propagandise and demonize peoples attempts to fight for equal treatment, and/or to create artificial marketplaces just to be able to unfairly overcharge people based on where they live.
1) I paid. /shrug
2) I connected to the internet.
3) I watched Netflix.
4) Netflix whines about the packet route, as if the user cares about how packets arrive on the internet.
5)
6) Profit!
If NSA can use this technique to break the law on citizen surveillance, and then lie to Congress about it, I am damn certain that some Canadian college student will be just fine using the same techniques to watch Netflix.
Surely the Netflix people understood the NSA was undermining their business model. Get used to it. It's not a free country, despite rumors to the contrary.
What the hell is this lady talking about? This is just grey-market stuff, as long as they're paying for it. I suppose it's a TOS violation. Having said that, This is the very thing I despise about the auto industry, but that's a story for a different time.
None of my friends care that I torrent TV shows, let alone use a VPN to access something I've paid for. She's got a long fight ahead of her to get anyone to consider that stealing.
You can't "steal" what is public domain.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is the usual content-industry twaddle, trying to muddle the distinction between taking tangible property ("stealing") and violating legal rights in intangible goods ("infringment"). They yell and scream that infringement is totally, absolutely and completely the same thing as stealing, yet screaming doesn't make it so. Stealing has been intuitively understood as wrong from time immemorial. Infringement is a modern invention, with none of that moral underpinning. The content industry seeks to confuse the issue by baldly asserting that two different things are actually the same. The common person, in his internal moral calculus, will realize this and continue to reject the intellectual-property maximalists such as a Bell Media.
Anyone who has passed an economics 101 class (micro or macro) should be grasp how this consumer discrimination stuff works: if the producer is able to discriminate against certain customers and offer different prices (and/or different products) then they are able to keep more surplus for themselves. It's blatantly anti-capitalistic in method and intent. If they are able to prevent arbitrage, if they can select and choose who has to pay how much and how (with no option of second sale), the free market breaks down entirely and what you end up with is simply one group fleecing another.
It's unfortunate that the left doesn't have a good pejorative (as with "socialist" or "communist") to describe the right's anti-capitalist bullshit. Phrases like "corporate greed" are way too vague for this kind of thing.
Yeah, but what if a Canadian had a friend buy an Egg McMuffin in the US and then sent it to them to be consumed in Canada. Before you answer, I should remind you that the standard Egg McMuffin includes *Canadian* bacon on it, so be careful how you word your response. ;-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... Canadians are 'stealing' US Netflix ...
Damn straight! And we ain't giving those shows back neither, suckas!
If you want your Game of Thrones, you're going to have to come and get it! Ha!
As numerous others have posted, "stealing" is the wrong word. Those Canadian customers are paying for what they're watching.
What would be a far more approriate term, given licensing region limitations, international borders, and hiding the stuff beneath a VPN, is smuggling. A time-honored tradition for any product where artificial barriers (tarriffs, duties, geographic licensing restrictions, etc) make a product more expensive to buy locally than to buy it elsewhere and pay the additional transportation.
So, Canadians are smuggling US Netflix content? BFD. As anyone who has lived near the border especially in pre-NAFTA times, smuggling (to a degree, and depending on the contraband) is socially acceptable.
...and why should we care if they don't like our (my) neighbors to the north vpning into the U.S. to watch 20-30 year old TV shows and a few decent movies? Sounds like their (Bell Media's) problem to me.
I pay different amounts when I buy things from CostCo instead of the convenience store. Yes, this may be partly due to CostCo having a different deal with distributes than the convenience store, but I don't concern myself with that. When I shop, I usually do it by price. That's .. stealing?
Similarly, if I buy food on Earth and take it to the asteroid belt and sell it and buy ore, and take that to Earth and sell it and buy food, that's trading, not stealing. You are a very confused (and probably stupid) person if you don't even know how shopping and trading are so utterly different than stealing.
I think I know who stole here. Bell paid lots of money to whom? It sounds like someone sold video to Bell, fraudulently misrepresenting it as exclusive, when the seller knew they had already released the content to the market through Netflix. If you sell person A a title document to a car and then sell the same title document to person B, and then persons A and B start yelling at each other, person A isn't the thief in that scenario. Guess who the thief is.
What the hell is wrong with the Canadians, paying for that content and a VPN when they could be getting it all for free on TPB! Um, that's what she meant, right?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The problem: I work at K-Mart and some of the people who I thought would become my customers, are shopping smart. They're going to my competitor, S-Mart, who sells similar things for less money.
My solution: yell at the would-be customers, call them thieves. "It's not socially acceptable to drive over there."
There are two ways the public might react. One is "Cajun Hell is right, and so I am going to shop at K-Mart instead of stealing by buying from S-Mart." Unfortunately, the other one is "Cajun Hell is an entitled loon."
Which way do you think the public is going to take my announcement? Will it work, or should I try something slightly less fuckwitted?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
How can anyone explicitly state their plan is to manipulate social norms on a grand scale and expect anyone to take them seriously?
Would be about damn time they realize there are no borders on the internet. And that if Bell Media and others weren't such twats, Canadian Netflix might actually be worth a damn, but as it is, it isn't.
Its funny cause all the common kids shows on TV, are ONLY available on U.S Netflix.
I live on a street that divides Belgium and the Netherlands. It was originally the same village before the two countries split, and for some reason the middle of the street was chosen to be the border in that area.
So now comes the question. My neighbor across the street watches television programs we are not allowed to see in Belgium (region block by media companies, nothing to do with governments), but since my neighbor doesn't have curtains, I can just sit in my front garden and watch the Dutch football games without leaving my country, while I do not own any rights to watch those games. I'm I now stealing Dutch football games?
Meanwhile, here in the US, I'm sitting back, smoking a joint and watching re-runs of "Little Mosque on the Prairie" and "Corner Gas."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Actually, its socially UNACCEPTABLE to do the following
Use copyright law to hold a piece of music (happy birthday) or a cartoon character (mickey mouse) as yours in perpetuaty
Set up the identical service in different countries, with vastly different content, and then PREVENT users outside that country any way to pay for or access that service
Release movies on different dates, and expect people in other countries to wait weeks or months to pay to see that movie in their local theatre
The digital economy is here to stay, don't fight it, embrace it. If you fight it, your users will just find a way to get around your stupid protections. And there is simply NO way to write proper protections, since everything boils down to a yes/no question, and I can trivially NOP out the method used to determine the answer, and just always pass back a YES.
It seems like every time one of their senior execs opens their mouths in public, they blather on and on to show us just how clueless and tone deaf they are. It's like their recruitment process has a required check box:
[X] Yes, I am a twat!
Yeah, judges are sloppy sometimes. Copyright "holder" would be a better term.
I don't know about Canada's copyright statute, but the U.S. copyright statute consistently uses the phrase "owner of copyright".
I only have the likes of Comcast, TWC, and AT&T to compare Bell to.
Fitting, seeing as the company now called AT&T used to be called Southwestern Bell.
Mary Ann Turcke has a base salary of $500,000 or roughly 10x what the average employee of bell makes ( this doesnts include her fancy retirement, stock options, etc).
Source: http://www.bce.ca/assets/Events/2013-AGM/BCE_2013_Compensation_Discussion_Analysis_EN_pp4861_FINAL_CT.pdf
With her 1/2 million base pay she can afford to do what she wants while her employees might need to cut corners to save a few bucks.
Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are separate types of law.
Correct. However:
They are NOT property law.
That's what I used to think until I discovered section 230 of the (U.S.) telecommunications code. From 47 USC 230(e)(2): "Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property." The section as a whole is intended to rule out legal theories claiming that an ISP is a "publisher" of information that flows through it. But if copyrights, patents, and trademarks are not property, then to which "law pertaining to intellectual property" did the U.S. Congress intend this to apply? And what's the closest Canadian counterpart to this statute?
You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
It's also why they put limitations on the length of copyright, where it would expire after a set time
LOL
as opposed to physical property which can be held and passed down through generations forever.
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft makes periodic extension of subsisting copyrights just as legal as periodic readoption of the House and Senate rules at the beginning of each session of Congress.
For all intents and purposes, Netflix is selling content that they don't have the rights to. They financially benefit in the form of subscriptions, and yet they're not paying for the right to distribute to customers who are consuming the content.
Now, the VPN muddies the legality issue a bit, but it's pretty clear that Netflix's policies are (1) for the present hurting rights purchasers who thought they were buying exclusive rights and (2) in the future will hurt content producers when their foreign rights sell for vastly less than they used to.
It's the sellers to Netflix who should be pressuring Netflix to change their policies or withdrawing their content from Netflix on the basis of devaluing their property.
One other point, the idea that Bell has a financial stake should devalue their opinion seems odd. Bell's obviously taking a financial hit on this, but they paid for rights that have been undermined by Netflix's fairly dubious attitude. However, I'd also expect that the person who's regularly being robbed to be the one shouting most about neighbourhood crime, *because* he has a financial interest in it.
It seems common sense.
Someone should tell the CEO that she's stealing because the customers didn't agree to pay her hefty salary.
That argument is just about as logical.
How does Bell know what people are doing with their VPN? While I realize that encryption isn't, technically, a requirement of VPN, I cannot recall the last time I saw an unencrypted VPN. I vaguely recall that a PPTP server I was using some 9 years ago may have been unencrypted by default but I'm really not certain because that was 9 years ago.
Bell and Rogers have the CRTC in their back pockets they are collectively working against the Canadian public by trying to stop services like Netflix so they can roll out their own crappy services instead. People are tired of this shit and want the freedom to choose!
Greetings Mary Ann Turcke:
I'd like to discuss your assertion of Canadians "stealing" Netflix. Since the common language of us peasant folk isn't something you can decipher, I'd like to explain these events in a language you can understand. Please do bear with me as CEO speak isn't my native language;
What we actually have here is just an instance of your consumer associates controlling costs by outsourcing entertainment laden data packets to "friendlier" regions. I'm sure this is a business practice you are familiar with as your parent company, BCE, utilizes this same strategy to control non-profit generating business expenditures. By outsourcing these entertainment laden IP packets, your consumer associates have significantly improved their cost efficiency, freeing up additional resources that can be used to improve other areas of their business. To maintain your status as a premier content provider, it would be wise to observe and adapt to recent market trends in the "over-the-top" entertainment industry.
I hope that my rudimentary command of CEO speak has helped you gain a better understanding of the situation at hand.
Respectfully,
Joe what-goes-around-comes-around Consumer
When content providers realize we live in a global economy, they are going to have to learn that their old behavior of regional control and distribution rights are no longer acceptable.
It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are a media executive that produces no content of your own but takes the majority of profit from creative artists.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...It's not possible to "steal" Netflix. All users are paying for it.
IICoBM - Idiots In Charge of Bell Media
For someone to "steal" something, they have to take something from you that you then no longer have.
In the digital age, there is no such thing as "stealing", nor is bypassing what is globally considered to be arbitrary borders in a network that has no borders an act of theft, hacking or whatnot.
You put up idiotic barriers, people will go around them. You make your product to expensive, people will find cheaper alternatives. You make people wait to watch something just because they live somewhere else, and guess what, they'll watch it at the same time as the first recipients of said content.
To state otherwise is to be blathering out your ass, bypassing your head which is shoved so far up it to make goatse seem mild.
It is Bell Media that is stealing from us by lobbying for anti-competitive regulations that keep American competitors out and as a result has Canadians paying more for less telecom services than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
What a joke of a woman this Mary Ann Turcke is for thinking she can save her job with this inanity. And for anyone not aware, this is how Canada operates internally and why it is an utterly insignificant country.
You wouldn't purchase a handbag. You wouldn't purchase a car. You wouldn't purchase a television. You wouldn't pay royalties to see a movie. Watching content you've paid for is a crime.
I know, offtopic, but still, it needed to be said.
.... they also want their internet money too?? Internet Money
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
There is - the f-word, or 'fascist' - but it is, if possible, even more overused than 'communist'. These are pretty much meaningless synonyms for the word 'bad' at this point, with no real semantic value left.
Anyone who has passed an economics 101 class (micro or macro) should be grasp how this consumer discrimination stuff works: if the producer is able to discriminate against certain customers and offer different prices (and/or different products) then they are able to keep more surplus for themselves.
They have always tried stunts like that. Consumer products are always cheaper in low-cost countries and more expensive in high-cost countries - even if all said products come from the same factory. And this price difference is not explained by different tax levels in different countries - there is a price difference because they think they can get away with it. Plain and simple - more profits.
The consumer's defence against this is "re-import". That is, you buy products in the cheap countries and bring to the expensive countries. Just one product for yourself, or a batch for your shop. This pisses off corporations, and they make up terms like "gray market". But it is perfectly legal - and profitable for others than these corporations. And it is easier to pull off with "digital goods" because all you need is a VPN. Corporations don't get to dictate the internet topology - they don't even get to see the true shape of it.
Wow, just wow ... after scanning this thread all I can say is "wow" — the same part of the brain that parses "freedom" (as in not beer) has a second function, heretofore unsuspected.
"Violating copyright is NOT stealing"
Okay I'm being pedantic but stealing is quite a broad word and in some mostly archaic or figurative senses, unlicensed copying of copyrighted works can be considered a form of stealing (i.e. taking without permission). No, I don't think copying is stealing in the modern sense of shoplifting or carjacking but that's just the way the language is. Somewhat similar to some ancient poetic use of the word rape to mean kidnapping (e.g Rape of the Sabine Women).
The problem is when the person arguing for draconian copyright laws deliberately "confuses" the different senses of the word stealing. To "steal" a song online has an entirely different effect from shoplifting a CD in a store. The store loses its copy of the CD to the shoplifter. On the other hand, the number of copies is incremented++ whenever you "pirate" a song.
It's unfortunate that the left doesn't have a good pejorative (as with "socialist" or "communist") to describe the right's anti-capitalist bullshit. Phrases like "corporate greed" are way too vague for this kind of thing.
Personally I like to describe said anti-capitalist, anti-free market bullshit using the term "Theft".
Not technically (or otherwise) accurate? Doesn't seem to stop anyone else using it.
Yeah, that did briefly occur to me but fascist is more frequently interpreted as a synonym for dictatorial or totalitarian states. Fascism as an economic policy was never well defined; it was just some nebulous form of state-corporate cooperation or melding. And it's also worth noting that it arose in a radically different legal context, when exclusivity agreements tended to be rarer and much harder to enforce in practice.
The right? You have the sitting president of the United States, a Democrat, with two houses of congress Democrats fully backing him by voting for FastTrack, trying to encumber more of the world with this shit with the current trade agreement negotiations, and it's just "the right's anti-capitalist bullshit"?
Conservatives aren't for this shit, the RINOs are. They're not right-wing, they're left wing. Just because it has an R on it doesn't make it right-wing.
That made me think of an outdoor cat. You may assert ownership over it, but that doesn't mean it or the neighbors it begs food off, recognize it. I'll have to call my cat "copyright".
Learn to love Alaska
You are 100% right. But there is more at play than just simple 'made something sell it'.
There are for some bits of stuff made hundreds of contracts.
This video by the maker of the movie Dredd explains it very well (and why a sequel will be very hard to make, yet we get 2 billion more adam sandler movies...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In many cases. They are contractually obligated to sell it differently or at particular prices in particular regions. They are doing it to try to recoup investment for their investors. Or basically the dudes who invested in china get all the china profit but do not see a thin dime of Canadian profit.
So yeah you can get into a situation where Netflix has a movie in the US but not in Canada or the other way around. Because the 'owner' in Canada is being greedy thinking they can squeeze more profit out of their segment. They pretty much want all the money and not a 'little bit'. If they do not get 'all the money' they pout and say we are stealing.
So yeah maybe 'stealing' is a bit over the top. These guys are basically cornered into saying this. They movie producers are well aware of how ridiculous it sounds. They should just be honest with us. Instead they are playing games where from the outside looks like arbitrage. They also play games like this and hide money from each other. Which is why we have 6 sequels to star wars even though the movie has 'never made any money'.
There's nothing funnier than when you take away a gatekeepers gate.
There you go.
Sort of: Price discrimination is generally good; it's fully capitalistic practice and that's a good thing.
For instance, when an amusement park or movie theater charges less admission for children, it's because far fewer families would go there if it weren't for the price discrimination.
There's lots of price discrimination that comes about only as a result of the government, though. Plane tickets used to be transferrable, now they're not. 0.0001% because you might be a terrorist, 99.9999% because airlines ended up liking the protectionism.
Likewise for copyright, even though the Internet has no borders, the copyright model is still suck in this fantasyland where you can't put things on the Internet because that might make it available in a "bad" country.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
If companies aren't bound by boarders why are citizens? If it's ok to move profits to tax haven it good to move viewing as well... if this double standard is an issues then we have many years of back taxes to collect with interest and fines...b!t$eh.
"It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix"
I am Canadian. I occasionally vpn into a US server to watch US netflix. Heck, I've even vpn'ed into European countries just to see what they get. I have never sat in the penalty box for 2 minutes to feel shame.
Generally, though, I stick to Canadian netflix because it's good enough and it's a wee bit of a hassle to vpn to a US server. It's only a wee hassle. Don't go telling me how easy it is. I get it. It's just clicking a couple of buttons.
"It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix" I am Canadian. I occasionally vpn into a US server to watch US netflix. Heck, I've even vpn'ed into European countries just to see what they get. I have never sat in the penalty box for 2 minutes to feel shame. Generally, though, I stick to Canadian netflix because it's good enough and it's a wee bit of a hassle to vpn to a US server. It's only a wee hassle. Don't go telling me how easy it is. I get it. It's just clicking a couple of buttons.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
I agree that on the whole child-specific pricing is probably helpful to the economy. (Though I'm much less sure about student and senior discounts.)
But you are wrong to characterize it as a "fully capitalistic practice." Anything that prevents resale or transfer is anti-capitalistic. That isn't to say that absolutely everything in life has to be pro-free market, but when you begin your analysis you must begin by acknowledging that preventing someone from reselling something is in no way in the spirit of the free market. (Yes, I'm aware I'm using those two terms interchangeably, but as they are popularly understood they pretty much are interchangeable.)
So we need to all hold the legislators accountable and not just at the ballot box but in civil and criminal court. And hold them in treason if the fight such actions.
I just can't seem to give a fuck about supposed crimes whose victims are self manufactured.
We might be arguing semantics here, but... I think so?
If I'm not allowed to modify a car or computer that I own, right.
If I can't sell a ticket with my name on it... well maybe I can technically sell it, but that wouldn't be of much use to the person buying it, unless they literally just want the piece of paper because it has my name on it. (And there's good reasons to put names on tickets... invitation-only or other events not open to the general public.)
But if someone actually slaps a lawsuit on me for selling the ticket, then... wat.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
As you point out, the ticket is not the thing of value; it is merely an indicator of the thing of value (being able to go somewhere or attend something.) If resale of the thing of value is being prevented, then that is no way a "fully capitalistic practice".
Again, it's not about "good reasons." There are sometimes good reasons to do things that run against the free market, but that doesn't mean those things are pro-free market. An exception to a rule is (for better or worse) an *exception* to a rule, not an embodiment of it.
I would go further and say that no "good reason" exists here (re: Netflix in Canada), although that conversation is a messier because it involves analyzing the monetary motivations of a lot of interconnected parties. But in a truly free market, the default assumption should be that there is no good reason. The burden of proof should fall on the person or entity demanding an exception.
There is nothing less socially acceptable than being the president of Bell Media.
Like many here, the socially unacceptable portion makes me laugh so hard. I live in China, I'd gladly pay for content I happily enjoy -- but if it's not available legally for me within reasonable methods, then fuck it, VPN first, piracy second. I found myself watching lots of Hulu content at one point and tried to upgrade to their premium service.......had no feasible way whatsoever, even via VPN, because I was trying to pay with a Canadian credit card and mailed them on the topic to see if I could legally pay for it, answer was "no, it's not possible.". If people can't pay for content and watch it legally what do these corporations expect?
I'd say it's more than socially acceptable, it's socially desirable. Many I've met who haven't got the technical means to access particular content wants to know how. That's just how it is. Companies like this and dumb bitches who complain about circumvention tactics in order to access content need to learn to deal with it by making content easily accessible for all..then, perhaps, they'll have at least one leg to stand on when soap boxing.
And are artificial barriers socially acceptable?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Is legal here.
Also people like us.
It's cold though, skiing makes up for it. Mmmmm bunnies.
Call it Sgt. Bilko Capitalism.
Just Canada? And the rest of the modern world...
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Has no meaning on the internet, there is only bandwidth and latency.
Short version:
Stop paying for content we don't want to sell you. Go back to getting it from The Pirate Bay, so we can sue you.
Paying for content is causing our legal department millions in lost profit, and is thus equivalent to stealing.
How is it stealing? Wait is this that geographic bullshit again where if you are in a different country you cant watch a show because of.. reasons?
That make absolutely no sense at all?
You think they would be happy that people are paying for it..
Look at this, piracy is bad, ok so we pay for it with netflix.
now thats bad too.. at any time is the consumer going to win..
oh i see what i did there.
The consumer is NEVER going to win.
Advertising.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
((Sorry about the AC posting, cannot log in from work))
I just find this particularly hilarious in light of the recent Disney H1-B post. Yes, I'm aware they're seperate companies in seperate countries, but the attitude in their leadership is still the same.
"An engineer from a country with different laws, taxes, cost-of-living and culture is willing do to your job for half your pay. I'm sorry but that's just the global free market at work. Why are you looking to the government for artificial protectionism?"
Followed by...
"You shouldn't be allowed to buy this product from another country and import it here. Because of different laws, taxes, licensing and cost-of-living, we have to sell our product at half the local cost there, and it isn't fair to us for you to buy it at the lower foreign price than the more costly local one. Government please protect our business!"
Is there an import tarrif he is avoiding by importing the content this way?
That's the only remotely possible stealing I can see.
Except for what the lady wishes were so but seems unlikely.
To be believable, she needs to be more specific as to what law was actually broken.
Is great when it benefits corporations but when Joe public takes advantage its stealing.
no, socialy unacceptable behaviour is discrimination based on geophysical location. Plus, the internet just doesnt work like that!
...then this Bell Media executive must be a child molester because every time he looks at a child, he is molesting children. LATEST NEWS: Bell Media management and executive-level personnel littered with Child Molesters! Won't somebody please think of the children?
What? it's not 'anti-capitalist' in the slightest. By that statement I'm pretty sure you don't know what capitalism IS. This activity is very, very, very capitalist. (It's not perfect competition, but that's not a necessary condition for capitalism).
In other news... Bell Media CEO says remembering or discussing a Netflix movie you have seen is stealing. To cunteract a massive upsurge in movie thought theft, Bell Media has patented a new form of DRM/encoding of movies that causes the viewers entire memory of ever having watched it to dissappear after a preset time limit.
when the mickey mouse protection act suspended public domain, the social contract was broken. There is now no such thing as copyright.
Maybe someday you'll get a chance to negotiate a new contract with us. But i doubt it.
I was taking capitalism as a synonym for free market capitalism. If you mean crony capitalism then why yes, this is perfectly capitalistic behavior!
Understand that this goes way beyond the monopoly offered by copyright (which by itself is already pretty suspect.) If the law of one price breaks down and the producer is able to gobble up arbitrary amounts of the consumer's surplus, free market capitalism is not operating in any meaningful sense of the term except in the very, very broad sense that it isn't communist.
Would the last customer dropping Bell Media service please turn off the lights?
It is stuff like this that wants me to punch her in her stupid face.
First of all I have no doubt she is an intelligent person, she is a female CEO of one of the largest media companies in Canada, she probably has a pile of degrees, and lots of real world experience in business, licencing, content generation, copyright law, etc...
So when she spouts BS like that, I have to think she doesn't really believe that tripe, but rather is using the media as a propaganda machine to try and influence people to an opinion that has a positive effect on her company (who wants to sell competing CraveTV, as well as paying licencing fees both in Canada and the US, etc...). So that pretty much means that she is purposefully lying, on the understanding that she thinks of her clients, and the public in general are complete idiots and will gobble up whatever she has to say, talking inflammatory language as theft, etc... it is barely even copyright infringement, as these people are actually paying for the service in the first place, at worst is is jurisdictional content licencing abuse... nothing is enough for these people. Face Punch.
The president of Bell Media says remembering or talking about a movie that you have paid to watch once actually involves making an unauthorised mental copy and is therefore stealing.
Independent research recently published by the MPAA proves the massive upsurge in media thought piracy directly impacts American jobs at most Hollywood movie studios. Under the government's new Jobs For Patriots act, Bell Media received $10bn in first-round funding to develop its innovative new DRM technology that digitaly encodes movies with a signal that causes the viewer's entire memory of ever having watched that movie to dissappear after a preset number of hours.
Fair use.
Does Canada even have "fair use"? I thought Commonwealth countries such as Canada had "fair dealing", which is noticeably narrower than "fair use". US law allows fair use "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" (17 USC 107), and the word "such as" is considered "illustrative and not limitative". Fair dealing is similar to fair use except that the listed purposes are the only purposes for which a use is permitted.
nowhere in the Netflix user agreement does it say that in so many words.
From Netflix Terms of Use 6c: "You may view a movie or TV show through the Netflix service [...] only in geographic locations where we offer our service and have licensed such movie or TV show. The content that may be available to watch will vary by geographic location. Netflix will use technologies to verify your geographic location."
So your position is that whenever a consumer purchases a product they are legally required to assume the liability for complying with the conditions of any and all contracts between the producer and the retailer?
This is the position of the legislators who created laws against receiving stolen property.
On the other hand, the number of copies is incremented++ whenever you "pirate" a song.
When you copyright infringe a song, the fraction of all copies owned by the copyright owner decreases. I imagine that this fraction is what's being "stolen".
So what if all users are paying for it? Netflix didn't pay the licensing fee for Canadian viewership. If anyone is stealing, it's Netflix by not sufficiently blocking Canadian viewership even if the blocking of VPNs is difficult.
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
Greetings Mary Ann Turcke:
I'd like to briefly discuss your assertion of Canadians "stealing" Netflix. Since the common language of us peasant folk isn't something you can decipher, I'd like to explain these events in a language you can understand. Please do bear with me as corporate speak isn't my native language;
What we actually have here is just an instance of your at will consumer associates controlling costs by outsourcing entertainment laden data packets to "friendlier" regions. I'm sure this is a business practice you are familiar with as your parent company, BCE, utilizes this same strategy to control non-profit generating business expenditures. By outsourcing these entertainment laden IP packets, your consumer associates have significantly improved their cost efficiency, freeing up additional resources that can be used to improve other areas of their business. To maintain your status as a premier content provider, it would be wise to observe and adapt to recent market trends in the "over-the-top" entertainment industry.
I hope that my rudimentary command of corporate speak has helped you gain a better understanding of the situation at hand.
Respectfully,
Joe what-goes-around-comes-around Consumer