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Piracy Fails To Prevent Another Box Office Record (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The movie industry has reported global box office records reached $38.4 billion in 2015, up 5% on 2014's total, according to the MPAA's Theatrical Market Statistics report. The U.S. and Canada turned in $11.1 billion with international box office revenues hitting $27.2 billion. "I'm proud to say that the state of our industry has never been stronger," the former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is. According to Dodd, the box office would be more healthy to the tune of $1.5 billion if piracy could be brought under control. Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer. Napster co-found Sean Parker has a Screening Room project which hopes to bring first-run movies into the home via a set-top box. Though it has a trick up its sleeve: Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home would get two tickets to watch the movie in the cinema, which could either boost or at least maintain box office attendance. The Art House Convergence (AHC) said it "strongly opposes" the plan, warning it would only fuel torrent sites and piracy. National Assosciation of Theatre Owners chief John Fithian said, "More sophisticated window modeling may be needed for the growing success of a modern movie industry."
"Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer."
Great idea!
"Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home....."
uh oh, I see more black sails on the horizon...
I don't illegally download movies.
I have a gigantic DVD collection. I found out the pawn shop near me sells used dvds for a buck each. and BluRay are 3 for ten.
Don't care what model they go for. Somebody already paid for my movie. :)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated. Hell, Deadpool and Star Wars are still playing on screens near where I live.
Yes, there have been flops, but I doubt anyone can link those flops to pirating.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Where's the theft? If I steal your car, you no longer have the car. If I copy your album, don't you still have the album? I hate how people paint copyright infringement as theft. I'm not making a moral judgement here, but call an apple an apple.
That's not the argument at all. The argument is that the claims that any film industry financial problems are due to pirating is rubbish. That's not a defense of pirating, that's a statement that the MPAA's frequently floated claim is garbage.
Now, the music industry, on the other hand, is another matter. I guess it comes down to the point that people think music is worth less than movies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
http://begthequestion.info/
To paraphrase a famous film quote, I guess people have decided to post the legend.
Yeah, yeah, I know, the meaning of words and phrases change over time, grammar nazi, blah blah blah. But the simple fact is that there are LOTS of other phrases that mean what you're trying to say when you misuse "begs the question" and that are thus available to you; but there's no other succinct phrase in English that means what "begs the question" actually means. Re-purposing that phrase weakens the language: it takes away the only useful expression for one concept, and allocates it to something that already has a number of different simple ways to be expressed.
The records would have been even LARGER without piracy! Every single block of a torrent transfer should be counted as an individual lost purchase to the movie, since it should be impossible to see that fraction of a second of the movie without buying a ticket. The market has lost TRILLIONS to piracy for its latest release!
If they are only claiming a little over 5% loss to piracy, they likely aren't accounting for the greater than 5% increase from the engagement that piracy creates.
People who "never watch movies" are simply out of the picture, but when these same people watch 20 movies through piracy and then pay to watch 2 or 3 through legitimate channels, that's a net win for the industry.
Looking at http://www.natoonline.org/data... ticket price increases don't seem to be that much.
But I don't think that is including all the extras... 3D, IMAX, etc.. Looking to by 3D/IMAX Batman Vs Superman tickets are over $17 for an adult ticket which is a little bit more than $8.43 national average for last year....
I think this does help them get the record breaking numbers even with though viewer turnout increasing as much.
It's less a matter that piracy is Ok, and more a matter that stopping piracy will cost too much in terms of liberty in trying to block possible misuse of anything that could possibly be illegal
We could completely prevent speeding and stop just about all traffic accidents if we required that someone walk ahead of every vehicle carrying a red flag (a law that was actually on the books still in some places not that long ago), but the cost to society that such rules would impose would be FAR worse than the benefits.
In terms of Piracy, if all hardware was locked down and no general purpose computers were ever allowed to view video or play audio, that would eliminate piracy (except for books), but the cost to everyone, INCLUDING the industry would be many orders of magnatude higher than the cost of piracy.
They say that the Box office would be 1.5B more if there was no Piracy. How much would it drop if there was no digital version of the works available at all? I'll bet that home access to the works in question result in FAR more than 1.5B to the industry.
Never mind all the other things that they would accidentally prevent from existing in their efforts to block piracy.
Almost every single rationalization or justification that I've ever heard for why a person might pirate, other than supporting the abolition of copyright entirely, can be found on the list of ethical fallacies, and it gives a person some measure of pause to at least carefully consider the premise that just because one *can* do something, does not necessarily mean that they *should*.
I'm probably going to modded into slashdot hell for saying this, but that these alleged studies that somehow show that piracy doesn't harm the sales of works are entirely irrelevant.... if one believes that copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it, even if they do not agree with the means by which it is being implemented. If you pirate, you either advocate the complete abolition of copyright or are a hypocrite. Period.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But studios have always had a mix of huge successes, moderate successes, moderate failures and colossal flops. Is there any evidence that that trend is worse now than it was, say, in 1963, when Cleopatra became one of the biggest and most expensive flops in movie history?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is this guy insane? I only pay $9 for Netflix and I can watch a lot of movies for that low price. Sure, I have to wait months or even years, but in the end I've watched the same movies as everybody else. My money is better spent elsewhere, like rent and food.
Let me put this in different terms. The GPL relies on copyright to be enforcable. It's a digital product, not unlike a movie. You're saying that because copyright infringement doesn't deprive the studios of their copy of the movie and the movies are still profitable, no harm has been done. Why shouldn't I apply that same logic to software released under the GPL? If I take the source of GPL software and incorporate it into a closed source product that I sell, I'm not depriving the developers of the GPL software of anything at all. They still have the source code to their product, the same development team, and are still able to continue developing their software. I haven't taken anything from them. Why, then, should I respect the GPL? If copyright infringement of movies is okay, shouldn't copyright infringement of GPL software also be okay?
The argument is that piracy increases the income. If I cut your grass without your permission, that's a crime. Trespassing, or other things. If that action increases the value of your property, what's the complaint? That I did it without your permission, or that it gave you income?
The movie studios are the ones with the flawed logic. "Hey, you are increasing my income without my permission."
Learn to love Alaska
"To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said.
Truly. Our local multiplex has switched over to a "All super heroes, all the time" format. And the local 13-year-olds couldn't be happier.
And the roster of 13 superhero TV shows are making this "The Golden Age of Television".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I would go as far to say that the DRM they have added to everything already costs more than piracy.
Just in terms of time wasted things not working and general bull$hit.
Broadcast flag, HDCP, securom, oh and lets not forget the sony rootkits and so on.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Let's say I have an eidetic memory for all I see and hear. Is the MPAA justified in seeking a court order legally preventing me from ever going to a movie, because my brain retains a perfect copy of it, that I can replay in my mind any time I want, as many times as I want? Haha, I can even give my friends a complete recitation of every line in every movie I ever go to, and describe for them in exquisite detail every scene. Do they have me blinded and made deaf, so I don't 'steal' their IP? Or do they just have me killed outright, because I infringe on their copyright just by existing?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The argument here seems to be that piracy is okay because the movie studios are making plenty of money anyway. It's like saying that if I steal a couple million dollars from a billionaire, they're making plenty of money anyway so it's not really theft. Theft is theft is theft. And it's wrong.
Agreed. Here are the bigger questions involved with the current setup:
1.) Copyright infringement is wrong, and should be punished. However, the present system is such that a conviction of copyright infringement can be a life-ruining event. As TFA shows, the MPAA is not making a compelling case that ruining the life of an infringer is reasonable. If the MPAA wants to make the case that downloading a movie from The Pirate Bay is akin to stealing the Blu-Ray from Best Buy, then make the punishment for downloading the same as stealing the Blu-Ray. Instead, the fines and criminal charges are seen as akin the professional counterfeiting and piracy rings in court.
2.) There has always been the concept of the public domain - where art goes after a certain amount of time, and can be used by anyone. Copyright first started with a reasonable length of time for authors to make money off their work as an incentive to continue creating. However, it's been extended to the point of absurdity - no video game released, or pop song I grew up with, will enter the public domain until my grandchildren are dead. Now, there are different ideas as to how long copyright *should* last (my personal belief is ten years, with the option to renew at the cost of 10% of the owner's gross income annually), but "two lifetimes" is generally agreed upon to be patently unreasonable.
3.) There's very little 'reasonable ground' to be had. Stealing $100 from a billionaire is wrong, but 'finding a $100 bill on the ground that is later determined to have belonged to a billionaire' is a different matter entirely. In the US, making backup copies of one's own DVDs and Blu-Rays for noncommercial use that are never otherwise shared is, legally speaking, subject to the same penalties as operating a for-profit piracy ring. The whole "digital copy" situation with movies is such that whether the digital copy applies to the customer or not is dependent upon which services are being used. It's impossible to legally view a movie on an Android device if it comes in a DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes combo pack, and nobody wants to standardize.
The MPAA's issue here is how royally fixed the game is in their favor, and a seeming unwillingness to come up with reasonable terms for things.
It's that simple. Just because "critics" like something, it doesn't mean that it will appeal to the general public. Critics are essentially hipsters, they like stuff that nobody really like and hate whatever is popular.
People like to watch new movies in the theatre. Piracy doesn't affect that. It might affect home video sales but if they've already made a profit, home video sales are just gravy. Kindof like musicians make a majority of their money from live shows. The movie industry already knows this. That's why they give out free copies of previous movies on various streaming sites right before the sequel comes out. Let's just make home videos free and be done with it.
Your arguments are complete BS. The film industry has always had films that lose money; long before the age of piracy. This is nothing new. What is new is that they can no longer produce a bad film and make their money back before the public gets wise to the fact that it is a bad film (the Ewe Boll business model). If your film is garbage, you're going to lose money on it, period. And your DVD argument is complete apples and oranges. Your example is theft, removing property from someone's possession without compensation. Copyright infringement is not theft by any legal system in the world because the original is still in the original owner's possession, no matter what the media industry tries to tell us. Even with that in mind, your DVD argument is still bogus because that is what every retailer who sells DVDs does. As long as they make money overall, they continue to sell DVDs and call it a success. Do they try to minimize the theft? Sure. But, they don't say DVDs sales are a bust because they had a small percentage of their copies stolen.
What the media industry is doing is looking at all the piracy numbers and saying to themselves "if we can turn all these numbers into sales, look at all the money we can make!" This is complete fallacy and their own internal studies have proved it. The most prolific pirates are also their highest-paying customers. What does this mean? That means they purchase a legitimate copy as well and they use piracy either as previews or for convenience. What they industry wants is for everyone to purchase multiple copies of the same content. No one in the world is going to go for this, regardless of what laws or actions taken by the industry or the governments that support them. Do all pirates own legitimate copies as well? No. But, the ones that don't are almost impossible to turn into legitimate sales, again, according to the industry's own studies. They either don't have the money or have some ideological issue with paying (even if it's selfish miserliness).
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Theft is illegal. Theft is usually wrong. But not always.
Stealing weapons from an enemy base is theft, but it isn't wrong. If you are putting your life at risk to save lives by stealing weapons from the enemy, that is morally lofty.
Also, theft is not copyright infringement. And copyright infringement is illegal, but has much moral ambiguity around it (some claim that the imposition of artificial scarcity is morally wrong, which would morally justify copyright infringement).
So, in sum:
1) Theft =/= copyright infringement
2) illegal =/= morally wrong
3) real life is complicated.
And householders would be 1.5bn better off if they didn't have to fit locks, and alarms, and other security.
And airports would be 1.5bn better off if there wasn't terrorism.
And countries would be BILLIONS better off if people just got off their arses and got a job, and paid taxes honestly.
But none of that is going to happen. You have legislation in place to combat all those. For copyright, It's already disproportionally harsh, and enforced where necessary (i.e. mass duplicators, and those people who are brought to court reasonably for deliberately downloading movies they haven't paid for).
Stop whining, get off your arses and focus on making movies.
Hint: Not been to a cinema in years. Don't buy DVD's any more, unless it's second-hand and thereby not profitable for you at all. Will pay a reasonable price for legal download rights for stuff I consider worthwhile in a half-playable format.
The reason you're not making all that you could? That shit you put into the cinema and flood everything else out with. That crap you enforce on your media and streams. The bollocks that you make me sit through on legally owned media.
I do not pirate. I pay for things. I paid for my shareware in the 90's (yes, I own mIRC, WinZIP, Doom and lots of other things that nobody ever paid for). I paid for proper licensing for commercial software of those things I used "for personal use" that were more than worth the money (VMWare was worth its hefty price and that's the MOST I've ever paid for software). I donate to software projects that I have no need to. I buy copies of good games for friends and give them out at Christmas, birthdays, special occasions and even run competitions on my game servers that I run FOR FREE for various communities. I have no qualms about handing over money for the legal right to play content that I *could* acquire elsewhere and supporting things I enjoyed myself.
But all that shit you do? It makes me choose between supporting that side of the shit, or pirating, if I want to watch it. So I choose not to watch it instead.
Honestly, best thing of buying a handful of movies with "free" credit from Amazon / Google Play? No unskippable trailers. Play from a multitude of devices, when I want, where I want, how I want. I don't even care that the downloads are DRM'd, to be honest, I have 1000 Steam games and that doesn't bother me either.
But it's the shit that GETS IN THE WAY that really bugs me. Software updates to BluRay players in order to watch a movie? Fuck that. I press play, I want to watch it. Wait MONTHS for a movie I do want to see to come out somewhere other than the cinema? I'd rather just forget about it and pick it up when it comes out as a "freebie" movie on some download service if you're going to deliberately stymie my initial enthusiasm for it. DVD's that don't play in laptops? Fuck off. And TEN MINUTES of fucking trailers that I can't skip when I just want to put on a Disney movie to occupy a child? That's just fucking evil. So I stopped buying them.
Stop whining about how unfair the world is, because copyright infringement is part-and-parcel of your industry the same way that "No the parcel never arrived" is part-and-parcel of running a mail order business. Sometimes it could be honest, sometimes it could be fraudulent. But you can't piss away your profits chasing it except in obvious - or large - cases and most people just can't be bothered to go to the effort of pirating things anyway. That's why Netflix et al are so popular. And why iTunes makes a killing even though ANY song you want is available on the first page of Google if you put in "mp3" into it. But navigating the mire of illegal downloads is beyond most people. They'd rather just have one place to go, pay, and download their content in a format they'd like.
iTunes lost the MP3 battle. How long until you lose the "H264" battle where you just end up providing DRM-free copies of anything people have bought a license to?
Honestly,
True, that's how my wife and I roll.
Here are some suggestions for the MPAA as ways they can reduce the piracy of their films:
1.Stop making tickets so expensive. Every time ticket prices go up, there will be people who now say "I am not paying that much to see xyz movie, I will pirate it instead". Reducing ticket prices will (all other things being equal) lead to more bums in seats and more revenue for the studios.
2.Eliminate the delays between the worldwide release of a film and the local release of a film in various countries (last years movie "Pixels" came out on the 23rd/24th of July in most of the world but didn't come out in Australia until the 10th of September just to give one example).
3.Make older content more widely available on home video format. There are movies I want to add to my extensive DVD collection but are unable to acquire for any amount of money as they are simply unavailable at all, leaving piracy as the only option to watch these films. Some other films are available in the USA but not in Australia (meaning I have to purchase a copy from overseas and deal with DVD region coding and stuff which makes piracy look more attractive). Oh and not charging a fortune for DVD copies of films might help as well...
Just remember, the movie industry wants you to die too, metaphorically speaking; and they have law, punishment, and money on their side. They can break you financially; they can have you sent away; they can see to it that you become highly undesirable to employers. And the kicker is, they really, really want to do those things to you and all those like you.
I applaud your willingness to fight for what you want. I will also applaud when they catch you and, in their willingness to fight, ruin your life. Where's my popcorn? I'm going to need some salt and a glass of Mountain Dew, too. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This seems like the most obvious thing in the world. But the lawyers and executives of the entertainment world don't want to accept the reality that when someone pirates their stuff it doesn't equal a lost sale. Not even close. The majority of the pirates would not suddenly go drop money on the product if they could not pirate. They would just do without because they don't care that much.
If you care and you can afford it you buy the product.
If you care and you can't afford it you don't buy the product.
If you don't care and can afford it you don't buy the product.
If you don't care and you can't afford it you don't buy the product.
Whether or not it is "ok" bears no relevance to whether or not it is "stealing" or "theft". There are a great many things which are neither stealing nor theft, which are also not ok. But then, you knew that, just like you knew your logical fallacy was bullshit before you typed it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's a very gray area you're treading. There is no proof that piracy affects the studios' income one way or the other. Clearly, it does, but it is impossible to prove whether it is a net positive or a net negative. Consider the following anecdote, then take a nice grain of salt:
Intuitively, it reduces that income, because people who are pirating are not buying. Counter-intuitively, many people who otherwise would not buy because they can not return media they are not satisfied with pirate to sample, then buy. As far as music is concerned, I fell into the latter group for a decade and a half, then I started using Rhapsody and no longer need to do that. When it comes to movies? Nothing like Rhapsody exists for movies.
As a result, I pirated the hell out of Deadpool. I also went and saw it with a friend on opening night, with my wife 2 days later, and with another friend a week after that, and intend to buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out. Why? Why would I pay for it if I've already gotten it for free? Because I rather enjoyed it and would like to encourage more of the same.
So, then, why not just buy all the movies I want to see? Simple. I want to support the ones I enjoy, and encourage more of the same; but I also want to not support the ones I do not enjoy, and discourage more of the same. How can I do that if I can't get a refund on the ones I don't like?
I mean, I can go buy basically any product not produced by a media company, try it, and return it within a reasonable time if I do not like it. That's why I, and many others, don't follow similar patterns with other products. We don't steal cars, then come back a week later to pay for them, because we can test-drive that car before we pay for it, and we get a warranty with that car so anything that goes wrong with it during the initial ownership period gets fixed; we can also turn around and sell that car to someone else. Buying a house, you walk through it, possibly hire an inspector to make sure everything is on the up-and-up, and if anything is misrepresented during the buying process, you have legal recourse and can get your money back (and then some). If I buy a gallon of milk, get home, open it, and it is spoiled, I can get my money back.
If I buy a DVD of a movie and the movie turns out to be crap, I can't return it, I can't get my money back, I'm stuck with the crap movie and I'm out my $20. At best, I can exchange it... for another copy of the same crapfest.
And, so, I pirate before I buy. For the past several years, that has resulted in much more piracy than purchasing; more recently, the tables are turning and I'm seeing the fruits of my labor, more and more movies are coming out that I actually enjoy and end up buying. Hell, I haven't touched a Disney movie in a decade and a half but I can tell you, having seen The Jungle Book illicitly, that's gonna be my first IMAX movie in over a decade and my 3rd Blu-Ray purchase this year (assuming both it and Deadpool come out in the next 8.5mo).
In my case, piracy certainly is increasing their profits, as I wouldn't be buying anything from them otherwise.
Now for the grain of salt: I am but one person. While I know there are many out there doing what I do, for the reasons I do it, whose actions do effectively increase profits for the studios, I also know there are many out there who do not. Of that latter group, there are many who would buy if they could not pirate, those are lost sales; and there are many who would not buy, no matter what, and those are not lost sales. We can ignore that 3rd group, who would not buy under any circumstance, as they represent a neutral position.
The question is, are there more people practicing pre-purchase piracy, like me? Or are there more pirating instead of buying?
And if the answer is the latter, are there enough more people in the second group than the first that the millions of dollars spent on anti-piracy measures (and lost sales from people who don't want to deal with that crap) represent a smaller number than what is lost (and I mean truly lost, as in not made up in post-piracy sales by people like me, and not pirated by people who wouldn't have bought anyway) to piracy.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I love how to try to conflate copyright infringement with the actual theft of a DVD.
My company has DVDs replicated for 20 cents each. I am sure a big Hollywood studio pays even less. So if the DVD sells for $20, then 99% of the value is in the content, not the physical media. So "stealing" a movie online really isn't so different than stealing a DVD. The monetary difference is negligible.
Disclaimer: I watch pirated movies occasionally, because I am cheap and I know I can get away with it. But I don't try to rationalize it.
Maybe instead of focusing on dollar amounts, they should focus on the ratio of tickets available (seats in theatre * showings/day * days) to the number of tickets sold. After all, with ticket prices the way they are now there is no comparing a movie from the 70s - lets say Star Wars on opening weekend at a whopping 1.5 million, essentially petty cash in todays numbers - to anything released today. Oh, but the first SW movie was unknown - but Empire Strikes Back grossed a big $4.9 million on its opening weekend... still pocket change compared to The Force Awakens with $247.9 million on its opening weekend.... numbers pulled from http://www.the-numbers.com/mov...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The law says piracy is not theft. All logic and semantics be damned; the law is clear.
Copyright Infringement is illegal, but it is not theft. They are covered under different sections of law, have different enforcement regulations and different penalties.
Discussion over.
First, take your meds and calm down. Second . . .reread the summary. The summary author wrote: "It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business." That phrasing clearly demonstrates that the term is used in the incorrect form (as the equivalent of "raises the question").
HTH.
For goodness' sake. Not taking inflation (even modest 1.5-2% matters) and / or higher ticket prices into account makes - as all higher-functioning life forms know (which apparently includes very few people who work in the higher levels of the Hollywood) - any claims of "ALL TIME HIGHEST" just a meaningless bunch of pablum, like many of the industry's products themselves.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Here I have taken money that you can show what you would have gotten, if it was not for the lie.
If someone watches the concert through the window, you have lost money only if that person would have gone to the concert otherwise. They may have, they may not have, they may go to your next concert because they liked what they saw.
Just because someone pirates a movie, and if this is stealing, and the law as consistent, for a criminal case you should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they would have paid for it anyway. I don't think you could even prove it beyond balance of probabilities.
You have to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt, is "stealing" intellectual property so much worse that we have to lower the standard of proof.
The answer is you are not stealing but you are committing copyright infringement which is different.
love, Mom
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Ah, but piracy isn't taking anything, it's copying. I can't return a copy to you, because the copy was never yours to begin with; nor did I take your copy in order to make mine. As for you taking money electronically from my bank account, that would be akin to me moving the data from your hard drive to mine; you can no longer access your data because I store it, just as I can no longer access my money because you stole it; that is not so with copying and, if it were possible, I'd have absolutely no problem with you copying the money in my bank account.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Claiming piracy is hurting the movie business is like claiming street drugs are hurting the pharmaceutical business. In both cases, people partaking in the illicit activity are unlikely to be participating in the licit one.
FTA: former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is.
He actually spoke the truth – unintentionally.
To "beg the question" means to "use circular logic". As in, when you are accusing someone of making BS arguments that rely on their initial (wrong) assumption.
Who would have thought that the MPAA CEO would actually speak the truth about 'piracy'?
If you screw my wife then you've attempted rape. Although more likely you've suffered grave injury and will bleed out before the cops catch up with you.
Movies aren't real property. They are copies. You can't have sole possesion of them like with real property.
Now if you can clone my wife and manage not to get yourself killed then you are welcome to try.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Software has no real value, only what someone is willing to pay for it. Now a bit of physical media has a cost associated with it. It's what the merchant paid for it. You will do real harm to a merchant if you steal any of their physical items.
You will do no damage to a copyright holder by copying their work.
Clearly you can't even devalue their work in the process. That's what record ticket sales demonstrate. What piracy actually happens does no harm.
Degenerate pirates and poor people are no real loss to the industry. If anything, they provide exposure and the potential for future sales.
If you want to prove real damages, you are going to need more than righteous indignation and wishful thinking.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
These aren't local studios either, these are the big Hollywood guys, those ones making the record profits, because if we don't pay them to come here, someone else will.
If you screw my wife then you've attempted rape.
LOL - nope! It's only rape if she wasn't consenting...
Given that you appear to think of your wife as property, I would not at all be surprised if she consents... often and frequently.
According to Dodd, the box office would be more healthy to the tune of $1.5 billion if piracy could be brought under control.
And if Hollywood hired ME to make movies instead of this DiCaprio fellow, I'd be richer by quite a few million too.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Pirating can (potentially - that's the whole point under discussion here) end up depriving the owner of the value of the thing they created, if it results in insufficient interest in paying for the item. That's the whole point of copyright law. I'm always bugged by these analogies to "regular" theft. Copyright violation is indeed different than stealing, but it is potentially similar with regard to depriving a creator or group of creators of earned recompense for their effort.
THIS.
I think copyright law is really screwed up, fines are at ridiculous levels, and stuff should go into the public domain after 14 years (perhaps 28 at most, according to the original copyright act of 1790).
But all of this quibbling over whether or not it's REALLY "theft" or not is just nonsense. Yes, it's not like taking a unique piece of physical property. On the other hand, in some circumstances it can deprive the copyright owner of significant profits from his/her work.
If you wrote an awesome software application, and right after you finished it, I sneaked over to your desk and made a copy of it -- and then proceeded to sell it to make a million dollars before you realized anything happened... and then you were unable to build a customer base when you tried to release it yourself, I think it's reasonable to say that I "took" something from you.
But according to GP's argument, I only "made a copy," so I didn't "steal" anything. The point is that theft is not only about the taking of an actual item, but potential loss of revenue from that item too. If you stole my business car and totalled it, I could bring a civil suit not only for the cost to replace the car, but potentially for any loss of income I had due to losing use of my car. That latter is cost is directly connected to the theft and trying to claim that it isn't "really" theft kinda misses the point of what copyright law was originally designed for. (Despite the fact that the current copyright system is totally broken, yadda, yadda, yadda...)
If I couldn't break their DRM, I would not have bought my rather sizeable collection of media. Content is really much more useful once it's liberated from physical media and DRM servers. It's more valuable to the customer.
Artistic megalomania blinds content companies to the truth of this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This isn't really a copyright thing so much as it is somebody using their influence to control distribution.
Think like how you have to buy a car through a dealership, or how in certain regions and industries you can't buy labor without paying the local mafia^H^H^H^H^H union.
The above really gets to the point. It's not that record profits make copyright infringement or piracy somewhat "okay." And even though copyright infringement and theft aren't the same thing, neither one is legal, and the fact that the movie industry has made a lot of money doesn't change that.
It does put the lie to their statement that piracy is killing them. And this matters, again not because piracy is right, but because the MPAA and others are using their bogus argument to justify all sorts of oppressive and draconian measures to "protect" them. It's clear that they hardly need "more protection" or more enforcement tools or harsher laws. They're doing fine.
Piracy isn't right. But neither is taking away the rights of legitimate buyers, restricting the legitimate freedoms of innocent people, and all the rest.
The law said slavery was right and good. The law said that women being forbidden to vote was right and good. The law said that dark skinned people were to ride on the back of the bus, and use separate bathrooms, and drink from separate fountains. The law says that "interstate commerce" means "intrastate commerce." The law was, and remains, completely clear on these and similarly wrongheaded matters. And in so doing, it is completely, utterly, wrong. As is precisely the case here.
The law is the world's least worthy foundation to base an argument upon as it is commonly formulated by incompetents, sycophants, and the morally and ethically bereft, not in any particular order and in various combinations. So based, unsurprisingly, your argument fails utterly. My position is based upon facts and reason and recognition of the worth of production. Unless you strive for the same, your arguments will remain at the playground level. Selfish, baseless, failures.
Damning logic and semantics, as you say, puts you in precisely the same place as the people who made those laws. Clear, yes; clearly wrong. Wielding a power you have no ethical foundation for, while intentionally blinding yourself to obvious human truths, in most unworthy self-service.
NOW the discussion is over. Cheers. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeh but you haven't stolen my wife have you? You as long as it was consensual haven't even done anything illegal (in a lot of countries).
A better analogy would be, if I was pimping my wife out, and you had consensual sex with her on her on time, and didn't pay me. Did you steal from me?
I may be annoyed that you had sex with her, but I only lost money if you where willing pay if she didn't have sex with you in the first place. She maybe she was so good that you are now willing to pay (free sample).
Disclaimer:
I am in no way suggesting pimping anyone out is ethical, my wife (and all people) are in no way anybodies property. I only used it because it was the example given.
I understand it takes a lot of money to make a movie, and yes they deserve fair compensation for that. A few years of exclusive rights, definitely but no creative endeavor is made in a vacuum, people copy and use other peoples ideas, to make new creations all the time (I can't think of one that isn't). Once are fair time has passed they should be returned to the public domain so other creations can be made from them. I believe that the laws as they stand are result of a corrupt political system that allows lobbing, not what is in the best interest of society.
I do however think a lot of the cost of making a movie feeds into itself, buying rights to stories, paying actors, directors, producers millions. These costs are because movies can make a lot of money, and everybody wants their cut, so if the story, actor, director, ... is famous enough it almost guarantees success.
I think these costs, are actually killing the movie industry, they not conducive to creating new and initiative stories but rather run by accountants, that produce the same stories over and over again because they know they will sell. If you are investing $100 million you do not want small chance of success. The only way to reduce the cost of movies is to force them to be competitive.
Apart from all that just because it is wrong doesn't make it stealing, just like it doesn't make it rape.
WRONG, you clearly don't understand GPL.
ANYONE can sell GPL software as long as any modifications they have made to it are released as GPL as well.
There is absolutely no restrictions on selling GPL software as long as you abide by the license, which states clearly that you must release all your modifications under the GPL license.
That's a very gray area you're treading. There is no proof that piracy affects the studios' income one way or the other. Clearly, it does, but it is impossible to prove whether it is a net positive or a net negative.
The correlation is quite strong. The greater the piracy, the greater the income. As overall piracy has increased, so has income and profits for MPAA members. Also, as piracy for RIAA members dropped, so did their income and profits. Ringtones are effectively dead, and CD/physical media is in freefall. Online sales are increasing. Music piracy is falling as well while the total music industry falls.
Learn to love Alaska
Actually, I believe there is absolutely no law against making copies of money for your own personal use.
Feel free to make a bazillion copies of a $20 bill - as long as you don't then try to use them as actual currency, you're all good! Use them to wipe your ass, draw mustaches on them, build a house with them, do whatever you want.
Indeed, and I was not disagreeing with that position at all, just pointing out that it is merely one of two possibilities. I say we stop pirating altogether and watch the worms squirm. Just as soon as this year's summer flicks drop. ;p
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
While I fully understand and agree with most of your points, you aren't addressing my argument, here.
Sure, copyright infringement could lead to people producing less of that medium. Or it could lead to an adjustment of the pricing mechanism or content delivery, so that there's more effort required to infringe than to consume legally (Netflix is a great example of this).
But copyright infringement is not theft, you are not physically removing something from someone's possession. They still have it; now, you just have it too.
Copyright infringement is not theft, nor is it "theft of potential", it's simply copyright infringement.
Just as a side note, I pay for everything I consume. I can afford to, and there are enough convenient delivery mechanisms to make it worth the payment.
Where's the theft? If I steal your car, you no longer have the car. If I copy your album, don't you still have the album?
Also, if I screw your wife, you still have a wife.
...yes...? So what's your point, exactly?
Saying something designed to be inflammatory =/= providing a counter-argument.
Since eidetic memory doesn't exist, this isn't currently an issue. You might consider taking this up with the Cyborg Rights Council in a few decades, though.
Some things can never be proven. It's never been proven that smoking causes cancer. It's just the correlation is strong enough that most people believe.. It would be unethical to perform a scientifically valid study. The same types of confounds exist for piracy. Forcing someone to pirate or not to then measure spending habits wouldn't work. For smoking it's unethical to force someone to smoke. For piracy, it'd not be piracy to legally serve something to them to watch their buying habits after, so measuring it would break it.
So the best we can do is measure and track the correlations. It was good enough to "prove" that smoking causes cancer, so why isn't it good enough to prove that piracy causes profit?
Not arguing, just theorizing.
Learn to love Alaska
And this is why it will never be proven one way or the other, and why the industry will continue to cry about it, all the way ro the bank. They probably write off a loss for every confirmed download, to boot.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
They can't write off the loss because they "lost" nothing. You can write off the "loss" of a DVD because something is gone that was there before. One of the reason that piracy is so infuriating to them is that it doesn't exist. If I copy a movie on a portable drive, and give it to a friend, it's impossible for anyone to find out. So they can claim a loss, but not prove it or account for it. As such, they can't write it off, unless proven. So, they can write off a $10 movie, if they spend $10,000 suing someone over it, but they can't write off a $10 movie by counting the number of downloaders on Pirate Bay.
Learn to love Alaska
In 'a few decades' we either won't have movies at all anymore, or they'll find some way to erase people's memory of them, so they have to pay to see it again once the memory fades into nothingness. Given their druthers I'm sure they'd love something like that to improve their revenues.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Except for the bit where the people who pirate are mostly movie lovers and very often go to see it in the cinema as well, hell sometimes before pirating. Watch it on the big screen once with friends/a date - and download a copy to rewatch multiple times.
That is something they never factor in - the reality is that piracy has, if anything, most likely INCREASED movie profits.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The crux of the issue is that while copyright absolutists claim the high moral ground, they have very little popular support short of those who make their living off copyright or have fantasies of becoming fabulously wealthy because of it. People choose the path of least resistance nearly every time and observing copyright generally is that path. When it is not, they have no qualms about ignoring it.
I knew this to be the case when I had a fairly computer illiterate 70 something explain to me how she had discovered how to pirate music and now had a large collection. She is an accountant with an accountant's typical mindset and otherwise follows the rules blindly. She explained to me with the zeal of a proselytiser. In a different case, I had to laugh my ass off when I found out that another man I know, who is a software development manager and makes crazy big money, pirates video games. He rails against pirating movies and music and has forbidden it at his house, but I guess software is okay.
Human nature does not see a moral equivalence between taking someone's property (theft) and copying their ideas without compensation. Copying does not "cost" the victim anything in real terms, in the same way that a lost sale does not actually "cost" the seller anything. It is the moral equivalent of duplicating a restaurant's recipes at home. However, restaurants cannot litigate since recipes have no copyright protection. Since no one expects copyright privilege in the restaurant industry, no one rises up in arms screaming about the "theft" of Red Lobster dishes.
Only you have to go much further to commit copyright infringement against the GPL...
Most movie pirates simply make copies of the existing movies and watch them, the GPL specifically allows you to do the same with GPL code.
Even most commercial pirates just produce copies of the movies and sell them, again this behaviour is explicitly allowed with GPL software.
There are few (if any?) pirates who take commercial movies and use the content to create new works which they try to pass off as their own, indeed this would be extremely difficult beyond minor mods or parodies.
Many people pirate because legitimate options are not available to them, or because the legitimate options are significantly inferior. Some people pay for the content, but then pirate it anyway because the pirate version is more flexible in some way (e.g. i pay for satellite tv which covers most of the shows i watch, but i generally prefer to torrent the shows because its more convenient for me)
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*can* *potentially* *may* ...
Copying something may have other positive effects.
Pirating can potentially result in increased sales too.
The whole point of copyright law was to encourage works to be produced by giving authors a limited period of exclusive use, these laws have now become completely corrupted to the point of absolute farce.
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Does this press release pretend there are movies worth watching still made?
I haven't noticed more than 1-2 per year lately. It's a miracle they're still making money.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
If anything copyright terms should be much shorter now than envisaged in 1790...
In 1790 it would have taken years to print a book and get it widely distributed, today works can be disseminated instantly worldwide over the internet. Movies make all their money in the first year anyway, and being able to constantly re-release old stuff doesnt encourage any new works to be produced.
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You do understand that when they make a movie, it takes a lot of effort and money, right? And, if everyone goes "hey, it's not theft", then they won't get that money, right? And then they won't have either the money or inclination to make you the next movie. Got that? No more great movies for you to copy without paying.
Maybe they should start making some decent, original, compelling films instead of rehashing 80s/90s stuff and making endless superhero films. Most of the shit they put out these days isn't even worth downloading. Sure, the odd good one slips through and they should be fully supported to encourage more, but yeah, 90% of Hollywood's output is pure garbage.
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The law said slavery was right and good. The law said that women being forbidden to vote was right and good. The law said that dark skinned people were to ride on the back of the bus, and use separate bathrooms, and drink from separate fountains. The law says that "interstate commerce" means "intrastate commerce." The law was, and remains, completely clear on these and similarly wrongheaded matters. And in so doing, it is completely, utterly, wrong. As is precisely the case here.
Irrelevant. The law tells you what you can and cannot do, doesn't matter if it's subjectively right or wrong that's for future people to decide and change the law accordingly but until then, then law doesn't give a shit. Manslaughter isn't murder and copyright infringement isn't theft.
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So making a copy of money is ok then?
That's different, people don't go around trading downloaded movies and trying to pass them off for the real thing.
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The point is that theft is not only about the taking of an actual item, but potential loss of revenue from that item too.
Nice try but it's not. Theft is taking a possession away from someone without permission. It has no bearing what the item was worth or if there is any intention to sell it. As much as you may want it to be a copyright infringement is not a theft. If it was they would have called it theft instead of coming up with a new term.
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This wasn't about 'one successful film'. The 'entire industry', as a whole, had yet another record-breaking year in profits.
The Fed does it all the time. And LOT, lately!
All logic and semantics be damned; the law is clear.
The logic is pretty clear, too: It's not theft. Theft is when you take something away from another person. If I have a painting, and you take it away from me, that's theft. If I have a painting, and you look at it and derive pleasure from looking at it, that's not theft. It doesn't matter if I intended to sell you tickets, or use the painting in some commercial setting, looking at it still isn't theft. Taking a picture so you can look at it later is not theft. Even if I sell copies of that picture, I still haven't stolen the painting. If I paint a copy of the painting and sell that fake painting as the real thing, that's still technically not theft. Forgery, yes. Fraud? Sure. Theft? No.
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I am cursed with knowing what "begs the question" actually means, forced to forever roams the Earth correcting other people's misuse of the phrase.
Poor little you, lots of people know what it's supposed to mean and then take it for how it's meant. It's a stupid phrase that should mean begs (for) the question (to be asked). You presume the conclusion that others don't share your 'curse' when they're happy enough to just get on with it.
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I stopped going to the cinema years ago, ppl make the whole experience intolerable these days, babies crying, ppl checking their 90" phones all the time, seats that have more chance to be uncomfortable than not
Why would i do that, when i have a 47" tv in my living room, air conditioner, a popcorn making kit, a fridge and i can pause and go to the bathroom at any time ?
I even save the driving time, the gas cost and the extra cost of the junk food i would probably consume if i went there
On demand services are the future of cinema, the Napster guy is telling you that, if you had heard him the last time apple might now have stolen your business from you, altho that whole talk about set up boxes is ridiculous, stop making it harder than it needs to be, look at Netflix, go online, put your paypal or credit card info and you are in
But sure, keep pointing at the dreaded pirates, Im sure those are the ones that will take you business away from you and not Netflix or their competitors. I used to sail the caribbean for my weekend entertainment a few years ago and you know what ? streaming has made it so much more convenient that im happy to pay for the service and forget the hassle of searching the net, handling flashdrives or looking for subtitltes, that is how you end piracy, with better service.
They can, they just have to hope they don't get audited... and they pay to avoid that.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It only deprives the copyright holder of potential income if you would have bought in the first place and you don't buy afterward. Take me, or example: I don't buy things I can't return unless I'm 100% certain I'll be satisfied with my purchase. I will 100% not pay for a movie I haven't already seen; if I can legally see it without paying for it, I'm not going to pay for it; if I can't, I'm going to pirate it and pay for it if I like it. I have a sizable movie collection to back this up.
So, you see, my piracy does not deprive copyright holders of a damn thing. Even if I could not pirate, I would not buy their wares anyway; and that piracy often leads to actual sales. Recently, it lead to me going to see Deadpool with a friend on opening night, then with my wife 2 days later, and with another friend a week after that, as well as the purchase of several pieces of Deadpool merchandise, and it will lead to my purchase of the Deadpool collectors edition or director's cut on Blu-Ray when that is released. None of that would have happened without piracy; I'd have waited until a friend bought the Blu-Ray or DVD and just watched theirs.
And therein lies the fault in the argument that piracy creates loss. In your crashed car analogy, you can prove loss; you weren't able to get to work because you lost use of the car. There is no way to prove that a downloader would (or even could) have purchased the content absent the download, nor can you prove they did not purchase it afterward (nor can I prove I actually went to see it 3 times, as I don't keep ticket stubs; I can show credit card statements listing purchases are 3 theaters on 3 different nights, but that does not prove what I saw on those nights).
You can prove damages, while the studios can't.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I agree with this position, the question is, then, how long is fair? If we say movies make their money in 1 year, so we make it 1 year, will that still hold true? Or will people just wait a year for it to enter into the public domain, then see it for free? Even at 2 years, most people will likely wait, with only diehard fans of a series, author, director, or actor paying to see it. We might see significantly more sales at a 3 year copyright term, with more still at 4 years, but not as much as the jump from 2 to 3. I would go so far as to posit that a 3.5 year term, with one possible 3.5 year extension if it can be shown that the work is still profitable, would suffice today. Of course, I don't have data to back that up, but I don't believe anyone does, so the correct term would need to be derived experimentally, starting with cutting back to the original 14 year term, then reducing the term by 1 year each year until the studios can demonstrate a sizable decline in sales that cannot be caused by other factors. Once that point has been reached, increase the copyright term by 6 months and see if sales of new works pick back up; if the do not, increase by another 6 months (and you've now undone that previous 1 year reduction) and call it done. It's a process that may take anywhere from a few years to a little over a decade to complete, but it's the only way to honestly strike a fair balance between protecting the public domain and protecting content creators' ability to keep food on the table while creating content.
For an example of this sort of term adjustment working in the real world, look at how prices are set for pretty much any product or service.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Ah, but then I could just copy it back. Sure, every copy devalues the currency, but when you can just copy yourself more, well... Sure, it would lead to the collapse of the monetary system and we all generally agree that would be a bad thing, but would it really? Playing devil's advocate here, would it really be bad to level the playing field between the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich, making both participate equally in the barter system that would replace the collapsed monetary system? I guess it depends which side you're on; for the middle class, though, not much would change.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The music industry would have the courts believe so, but it is not. Nor is it stealing to download videos from Youtube, many of which are published directly by the artist or their label. In fact, that's the most popular way people "pirate" music today and it's not piracy at all, because it was the copyright holder who selected that distribution channel. Of course, there also exists a massive collection of illegitimate music videos on Youtube, but I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about what you can find on Youtube Music, which includes a massive catalog of popular music.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Deprivation.
Half of you in that hour-long squabble up there could've saved some effort by adding it to your vocabulary. It's hard to make a point when you spend an extra paragraph trying to explain a distinction that we already have a word for. If you want a point to get through, concise is the only way. "Verbose micdrop" is an oxymoron. I don't twitter (or any socnet) but I'm pretty sure it's an art over there.
Anyway, regardless of whether piracy is "right" or whatever, the article's point is to drop hard numbers about whether it's "important". Significant, whatever.
I hope you don't buy any content second-hand because once a retail copy has been sold, the creators get nothing more from that.
...
After that $20 movie is out for awhile, used copies can be had for $1, so the value of said content drops severely.
...
It's impossible to legally view a movie on an Android device if it comes in a DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes combo pack, and nobody wants to standardize..
Ultraviolet has been doing a decent job the past 5 or so years. Both Vudu and Flixster apps, which allow access to your Ultraviolert library, are available on Android.
...
The MPAA in their current form is not needed in the 21st century and they know it and they don't want to change either. That's why they'll always talk up piracy as killing the industry so they can remain in power without changing. They already know they can't stop legitimate online streaming services so piracy is the only thing left that they can talk about and since the numbers don't add up they'll keep yelling louder and louder about it to try and discredit the actual numbers in the court of public opinion.
Piracy has been around for as long as the industry has been around and gosh darn it, it has somehow managed to survive with more people buying a copy of a movie or using some legal method to watch it rather than getting a bootleg copy of it from the pirates. The MPAA is as always full of shit when they start barking about the evils of piracy. So what if a movie brings in a few less millions of dollars of pure profit? We're not talking about not being able to cover costs of paying people to create the movie.
Honestly, when was the last time piracy caused a movie to not be able to be produced or not make enough to cover the costs? I honestly can't find a single case of this where it was clearly piracy and not mismanagement or the movie just being so crappy that it didn't sell that caused a studio to not make enough to cover the cost of producing the movie.
The MPAA is a relic from the past that's almost a hundred years old.
They largely aren't needed anymore. Nowadays people can make a movie at home and use the Internet to distribute it to a world wide audience without needing the help of a studio with ties to the MPAA. Content creators can also now work with Netflix and others to get their content out to consumers if they don't want to distribute it themselves.
They do help out a little with the ratings system, but only a little because the movie ratings are extremely biased to benefit the major studios while hurting the smaller ones. In some ways it's better than not having a ratings system at all, but it's also in a position to be abused and do more harm than good (which it already is).
Yes...but now you need multiple accounts, and it's wholly dependent on which studio releases the film, and if the studio only releases on iTunes then you'll never get an ultraviolet copy, and you have to stream the movies rather than keeping local copies.
These are all problem that self-ripping solves, and doesn't cost anyone anything, but is illegal because DMCA, yet we do the same thing with music because CDs are perfectly legal to do that with.