HBO, Netflix, Other Hollywood Companies Join Forces To Fight Piracy (theverge.com)

New submitter stikves writes: It looks like media and technology companies are forming a group to "fight piracy." The Verge reports: "A group of 30 entertainment companies, including power players like Netflix, HBO, and NBCUniversal, have joined forces today in an effort to fight online piracy. The new group is called the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), and the partnership, while somewhat thin on specifics, will allow the content creators involved to pool resources to conduct research and work closely with law enforcement to find and stop pirates from stealing movies and TV shows. The first-of-its-kind alliance is composed of digital media players, networks, and Hollywood outfits, and all recognize how the internet has paved the way to an explosion in quality online content. However, piracy has boomed as a result: ACE says that last year saw 5.4 billion downloads of pirated films and TV shows." I'm not sure how these statistics hold against real revenue loss (or the imaginary one), however this might be a development to watch for.

Comments

Time to cancel netflix

[zedaroca]

I canceled cable for this reason. It's morally wrong to finance the fight against freedom on the Internet. And destroying freedom on the Internet is the only way to enforce the their laws.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[thundercattt]

I cancelled the day they started the battle vs VPN's and their geoblocking. Kodi has filled the void nicely, I tried to pay for things but some company kept telling me what I could or couldn't do.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I canceled cable because most (not all) of what was offered is pure shit.

Sports, home decorating, sports, celebrity crap, hunting bigfoot, cooking, cooking, sports, cooking, game shows, shopping channel, honey boo boo, ice truckers, reality TV shows, more shopping, more celebrity crap, fishing, golfing, more bigfoot, more game shows....and on and on. It's drivel, replicated over and over and over.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

People who download entertainment they have not paid for are examples of massive entitlement.
You have no claim on content you haven't paid for. To think otherwise is the opposite of virtue.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Only people with money deserve access to culture. Fuck the poor! Long live financial tyranny!

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[zedaroca]

This is insightful sarcasm. Mods, please correct it.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

That's about the time I quit using Netflix too. I wasn't even trying to get around geoblocking, I just wanted a tunnel to get around my ISP's lack of native IPv6.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

"And work closely with law enforcement". I am sure the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (Russian FBI) will be delighted to drop everything they're doing and start kicking in doors from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok for filesharing.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

well the fbi and rcmp dont need ot go after rapists or murderers , they dont harm copyright holders after all....

have to keep the cop maffia busy i say

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy provides the means to take the value of your purchase back from the shills who have lied to your about your purchase. I don't bother to Pirate until its personal: .And *(if) I do, it will certainly be to debase the money able to be made by the thing I was denied in exponential terms against the rights-holders (to make it NEVER PROFITABLE to deceive me)

I wont steal anything but my own money back; but when I do I will prevent any money from every coming your way again.

Pirate for life. Stated as a content PRODUCER.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[byrtolet]

I canceled cable because most (not all) of what was offered is pure shit.

Sports, home decorating, sports, celebrity crap, hunting bigfoot, cooking, cooking, sports, cooking, game shows, shopping channel, honey boo boo, ice truckers, reality TV shows, more shopping, more celebrity crap, fishing, golfing, more bigfoot, more game shows....and on and on. It's drivel, replicated over and over and over.

You forgot to mention the ads. I haven't seen that much content for years. Its only ads, ads ads...

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

I cancelled cable long time ago because for the same money I can buy ganja and booze while enjoying my free torrented shows.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[turbidostato]

"And work closely with law enforcement"

All this is certainly great news.

Finally a joint endeavour between public and private entities to put an end to this modern day scourge. Once again the waters off Somalia and other hot spots will be peaceful without pirates.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend recommended Netflix and offered to share his account with me for a while to test it.

I couldn't get it to work with Kodi due to the DRM crap, so the other option left for me is to use it with the slow and inconvenient interface of the web browser on my laptop, and I can't even use it with my favorite browser either due to DRM.

Even though I can connect the laptop to the TV, it is a pain not to be able to use the computer at the same time, the CPU usage being high and not being able to use the remote control and nice integration I have with Kodi.

Besides this, the contents in Japan sucks. The posters are shown in Japanese, even if I switch the language to English. Japanese movies doesn't have English subtitles, even the ones that do have them when seen in other countries.

So DRM ruined a nice concept. Back to the alternative.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[jopsen]

Note that you canceling netflix makes exactly no difference... Other forms of action is necessary.

Note: I'm not pro piracy, but it doesn't seem to be that much of an issues since streaming services showed up and became easy to use... And I'm not exactly enthusiastic about the measures corporations takes to limit piracy, then tend to hurt the internet.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

That fight is already over and we lost. I can understand your feelings but nothing you can do is going to have any effect now.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[AK Marc]

They also know that the most effective thing to prevent piracy is to make content available in a timely and convenient manner. If you can buy it for market prices, people don't pirate. It is that simple. They are still playing games with distribution channels and such, and losing the war to win specific battles.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[eneville]

I canceled cable because most (not all) of what was offered is pure shit.

Sports, home decorating, sports, celebrity crap, hunting bigfoot, cooking, cooking, sports, cooking, game shows, shopping channel, honey boo boo, ice truckers, reality TV shows, more shopping, more celebrity crap, fishing, golfing, more bigfoot, more game shows....and on and on. It's drivel, replicated over and over and over.

This is just pure profit. The business model is shifting now as it appears they are shifting the burden of share holder satisfaction, when the programmes are terrible, hit the pirates with fines rather than new subscribers rewarding with revenue. There's also a hint that they're expecting others in the pool to plug the gaps, thus some hint that the internal department can shrink as there's other outside resource now.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Salgak1]

. . .or perhaps they would prefer a different method of delivery. One that delivers only the content they choose, when they want it, and no bundling of other "services" to get it.

Imagine being able to binge-watch an entire season of your favorite series, without interruption or commercials of any type, when the season begins. After all, the content is already ready to go, the networks just want to dole it out one episode per week.

Or viewing a current movie without dealing with screaming babies, people on their phones, or overpriced snacks. And the ability to pause and replay a scene.

  I'd pay good money for either of those, but nobody offers it.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

All that dross exists to feed you adverts. That's the singular problem. Remove the ads, and you'll find there's no need to make endless shit. The advertising industry and all those working in it add nothing to society other than increasing product prices.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Unfortunately, the market cost for digital content with near zero marginal cost for reproduction is also near zero, once the initial sunk cost has been paid and the content has already been produced. This is not a sustainable business model for producing new content, though.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[AK Marc]

$1 per song, $10 per album is non-zero and a market value. Note, I didn't say market "cost" but market "price". They are different.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[iampiti]

Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content. It's just entertainment created by for profit companies. It isn't gonna cure diseases, it isn't gonna help hunger or global warning. It's just enterntainment and nobody is entitled to it.
Freedom is about net neutrality, freedom of speech, democracy and so on, not about this.
I do pirate content from time to time but I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm entitled to it. I totally defend the rights of companies to create content with their own money and to profit from it.
Culture? There's lots of it available for free in public libraries around the world. Also, lots of creative commons content out there.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

. . I'd pay good money for either of those, but nobody offers it.

Of course they do, its called dvds/blurays.

I buy them second hand, yard sales, library sales, bull moose.. then I rip them down to my NAS and I have access to them when I want.

You said you would pay good money.. all you have to do is wait a season for the previous one to become available.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Fair enough. If, as with music, you can still be commercially viable with a large market and close to but greater than zero pricing, that might be a good business model that works for all concerned. Unfortunately, music is one of relatively few areas where this can work economically. Popular fiction books is another. However, the same idea usually doesn't work for areas like movies or computer software, where the production costs are often much higher, or for work like composing or arranging orchestral scores, where the production costs are lower but the market is also more specialised and much smaller.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[ctilsie242]

Yep, same reason I cancelled cable. I'm paying a company to sling me ads? Hell with that.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[pnutjam]

Netflix absolutely offers this.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Fuzi719]

Of course they do, its called dvds/blurays.

I buy them second hand, yard sales, library sales, bull moose.. then I rip them down to my NAS and I have access to them when I want.

You said you would pay good money.. all you have to do is wait a season for the previous one to become available.

You do realise that ripping DVDs and BluRays is just as illegal as downloading torrents, right? The powers-that-be would just as readily prosecute you as any downloader if they could.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[JaredOfEuropa]

Actually, we do. Copying content used to be the norm; the notion that copying cultural works is not allowed is an artificial construct, and a very recent one at that. And the reason that artists (these days: studios) were granted a monopoly on their works wasn't for their direct benefit; allowing them to profit from copies was to encourage more creation and the spread of those works to the public In other words, copyright exists to benefit the public, not the artists. It aims to create abundance, not to foster artificial scarcity.

I know very few people who pirate stuff to save a buck, most of them can easily afford to pay for what they take. They do so because of convenience, or because the "legal" content is so encumbered with DRM that it becomes unusable, or because some content simply isn't made available to them. Another ./ poster once claimed that "pirates are simply unserved customers", and I think that's spot on in many cases. If studios misuse copyright to create an artificial scarcity, then it's them breaking the social contract, not us pirates.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[JesseMcDonald]

Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content.

This is a red herring. Regardless of your stance on copyright, the issue is not whether one can obtain copyrighted content for free, but rather the collateral damage to the Internet and society as a whole resulting from Hollywood's quixotic quest to eliminate copyright infringement at all costs. Most of the negative effects of this quest are born not by "pirates" but by paying customers—after all, the "pirates" get the version without any DRM while those who follow Hollywood's rules are stuck with obnoxious restrictions on where and how they can view the content they payed for. That's not even considering the pervasive effort to avoid giving the owners of devices administrative control over their own hardware, mostly for the sake of enforcing said DRM (e.g. Netflix recently blocking their app from being installed on rooted smartphones), or the push to conscript ISPs to act as copyright enforcement agents, trolling every scrap of private online conversation for the slightest suggestion of impropriety and banning subscribers from the Internet on the basis of unproven complaints.

Even if you think copyright is a good thing—and I don't—the measures taken to enforce it have clearly long since grown out of proportion to the supposed offense. Hollywood—the entire content industry—is not worth the collateral damage they are inflicting. So far as I am concerned, if they cannot survive in a post-copyright world, so be it. Let them fail.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You forgot to mention the ads. I haven't seen that much content for years. Its only ads, ads ads...

Ah yes, ads. I remember them fondly. Well, actually it's *not* seeing them anymore is what I remember fondly.

I was at a friend's place the other day...he had the TV machine on, and I was astounded by how frequently the program was interrupted by commercials to sell me cat food, tampons, insurance, soft drinks, a weight loss program, automobiles, home loans, mayonnaise, other TV shows, cereal, sneakers, pizza, various kinds of medication, and a slew of other shit I can't recall. It was mind boggling.

It was difficult to follow the program due to all the interruptions (not that I was really trying, TBH).

Do people really watch this commercial-laden shit?

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

People who download entertainment they have not paid for are examples of massive entitlement.
You have no claim on content you haven't paid for. To think otherwise is the opposite of virtue.

Ignorant cock-sucker says what?

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye Felicia

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

No he's right you insufferable turd-swallowing piddock

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[jdschulteis]

You do realise that ripping DVDs and BluRays is just as illegal as downloading torrents, right? The powers-that-be would just as readily prosecute you as any downloader if they could.

As long as you delete your ripped copy when you sell the disks, your fair use defense would likely succeed.

Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses: Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content. It's just entertainment created by for profit companies. It isn't gonna cure diseases, it isn't gonna help hunger or global warning

Sounds like you're saying it's fairly unimportant. Therefore, our courts will not be used for anything as frivilous as fining copyright infringers or outlawing the manufacture, trafficking and sales in DVD players.

Stick to this principle and we'll be fine. But if anyone pulls a gun (i.e. brings in government force), then hell yes, freedom is definitely agenda item number one. And that means we all have to pull our guns and people need to think about at whom they're going to aim.

Leave your gun holstered.

I totally defend the rights of companies to create content with their own money and to profit from it.

Many of us still do, but did to a much greater degree prior to DRM. If a work is DRMed, then they might have the right to create content and try to make money off it, but they sure as fuck don't deserve copyright or any other government backing. Only DRM-free works should be copyrightable. Society has an interest in protecting the economic incentive to create DRM-free works, and society has an interest in removing any and all economic incentives used by those who defect from the copyright contract and use DRM instead.

Don't pull a gun, because we all know that we have to pull ours too, and point them at you. Don't defect from civility. Don't opt out of society by using DRM. Don't attack the innocent. Don't shit on your paying customers. Don't be an antisocial fuckwit. Let's get along and go back to doing business. It was working, dammit!!

I do pirate content from time to time but I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm entitled to it.

If it was only available DRMed, then you need to learn that you are entitled to pirate it, and in fact, that's the best thing you can do and you're doing your society a disservice if you pay for it instead. Don't give money to the guy who goes around mugging people. We need to teach fuckwits to keep their guns holstered. Get with the program and stop paying the abusers.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[tepples]

Netflix doesn't offer "a current movie", and "your favorite series" is exclusive to a different streaming provider that trickles out episodes.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

*paid* for. Payed is something you did with rope when you pulled it out of the coil that it was stored in.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[AK Marc]

Movies work fine at $10 per viewing. Then, after time, $10 to "own". On that model, the industry can get $1B for a single work. That recoups the cost of large productions. Lower cost pricing works fine for most (almost all) mass-media industries.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[barc0001]

I do love how you blame Netflix for that, when in reality it was the content holders they were licensing that brought massive pressure against them to stop geo blocking evasion with VPNs. Netflix played the fool for ages against the licensors saying there wasn't any way to stop VPNs until they were finally backed to a cliff edge.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[bobmajdakjr]

"i only download it when its not on netflix" -- like, a million billion people.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Grishnakh]

However, the same idea usually doesn't work for areas like movies or computer software, where the production costs are often much higher,

All the latest figures show that Hollywood is making more money than ever. A lot of this is due to foreign sales (esp. China's market), but still, they're raking in money hand over fist now.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[networkBoy]

So with Netflix part of this alliance maybe the content creators will actually listen?

I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime instead of cable. If what I want is there great, no need to bother with the hassle and risk of downloading it elsewhere. If it *was* there and is now gone I find that highly irksome and might actually be bothered to look elsewhere.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Is that really still true for an average, worth watching but not smash hit, kind of movie? Cinemas in my area have been struggling for a long time to get that first $10 (or its UK equivalent in my case) and the trend seems to be shifting away from buying permanent copies on disc (for significantly more than our equivalent of $10) to online services with rental library models such as Netflix (where you're paying way less than $10/movie unless you're a very light user). Meanwhile, I think Avengers 17: CGI vs. The Infinitely Rehashed Plot is due out in a month or two, to be followed by the critics predictably saying that no-one makes original movies any more and it's all just endless series and reboots now.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Doesn't that rather negate the argument that they need to provide their content in convenient formats and through convenient channels to be more successful, then? It seems like their current policies, customer-hostile as they often seem to be, are working. :-(

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[AK Marc]

iTunes is still thriving, against Spotify and the like. Wonder Woman made $100M in a single weekend, and is over $400M world-wide so far, and not dropping off too fast. Though, that's an exception.

Disks are doing fine, when priced in the bargain bin. Or when they do something you can't get on the subscriptions - special editions, commentary, 3D, 4k, or other features not on the subscription service.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[thundercattt]

I love people who act all smug who point out "it's the content owners that do licensing to certain areas". If that were true, Canadian kids shows would be available on CDN Netflix NOT Amurica only.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Sloppy]

Space-shifting is legal, but the DRM on DVDs and Blu-Rays circumvents the Fair Use defense. It's not about copyright infringement, it's about DMCA violations. If you don't have permission to play or read the disc, then you broke the law and there is no Fair Use defense.

EFF's example involves media without DRM.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Sloppy]

Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content. It's just entertainment created by for profit companies. It isn't gonna cure diseases, it isn't gonna help hunger or global warning. It's just enterntainment and nobody is entitled to it.

If you're right, then nobody needs to frivolously use government force by having courts and cops get involved in something so unimportant.

And they certainly wouldn't ever get involved in messing with people who make tools which might be used for that, by passing fucked up laws to prevent media and players from becoming independent markets.

I'm pretty amazed that someone would pick a topic where LAW is so often talked about, to say freedom isn't a significant aspect. Freedom, and which ones to trade for which economic advantages, is almost the entirety of the issue.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

When kim jong-un got his panties in a bunch over the movie: The Interview, he successfully had it removed from American theaters, effectively censoring it.

Thanks to piracy I don't need his or anyone else's permission to see it.

ANY movie is available to me, no matter how "offensive" it is or to who. It's "hate speech"? Tough tittie. It's "blasphemous"? Tough tittie. Speaking of blasphemy, I wouldn't have been able to see the South Park episodes mocking Islam without piracy.

You said it's just entertainment, but it's not. It's information. Governments have no business restricting it, ever. If that means traditional business models involving copyright are made obsolete by the internet, cry me a river.

There's a science fiction short short that touches on these issues by Stallman himself. It's called the Right to Read.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Grishnakh]

That's true: box office revenues are doing just fine. Now of course, that's across the industry worldwide; certain theaters probably aren't doing that great. Also, theaters get their money mainly from concessions, while most of the ticket price goes to the movie studio, so lots of people watching movies worldwide doesn't necessarily translate into a healthy movie theater business, but it does seem to be doing fine overall really, even if there has been a contraction in the American market over the last several decades, esp. if you look at it on a per-capita basis (the US population has grown significantly over the last 50 years). Far greater worldwide ticket sales (esp. in Asia) more than make up for the drop-off in American attendance.

But still, if they want to be *more* successful than they already are, you can still make the argument that they need to provide their content in more convenient formats and channels. As I noted, American attendance has dropped off, particularly on a per-capita basis. Also, the movies that seem to do best are mindless CGI-packed action movies since foreign audiences don't have to understand subtle nuances of American culture and speech to enjoy them, so they're missing out on other genres of movies to some extent.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I don't doubt your claims about theatre revenues -- I don't have any data to hand, so I'll take your word for it. This seems to be a slightly different case to the earlier discussion about market pricing, though, because with a movie theatre there's a physical presence aspect to consider as well as the work being viewed. You can't "pirate" a trip to the theatre as an alternative to whatever price they're asking for admission.

The closest analogy to doing so would probably mean if there were spare seats so you weren't displacing a paying customer, you could just sneak in and watch the movie without buying a ticket. After all, they were going to be showing that movie anyway, so they haven't really lost anything! But of course this ignores the costs incurred by the theatre to run their building and pay their staff and get the rights to show the movie in the first place and so on, all of which now have to be covered by whatever is charged to the honest customers. It's actually a pretty good analogy for copyright as a whole, except that in a theatre it's easier to catch someone who's breaking the rules.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Grishnakh]

Here's one site showing domestic box office totals. It shows attendance is actually decreasing slowly since 2001, but revenues are basically holding steady (thanks to higher ticket prices).

And Here's an article about 2015 numbers showing that global box office revenues hit a record $38B+ that year.

Over here, a sound-bite box mentions that (presumably domestic) revenues from at-home movie-viewing surpassed the box office in 2015 (11B to 10B).

So, AFAICT, the movie industry is whining about something that isn't a true problem: their box-office revenues are higher than ever, and they're even making more money on home viewing (the legal kind that people have to pay for) than they're making in theaters. Another sound-bite box at that last link mentions cinema advertising, so they (not sure which 'they') are making even more money that way, since you can't ad-block ads in a cinema; who knows how much they're pulling in from that. So for them to complain about piracy smacks of pure greed. "We're making more money than ever, but it's not enough! People are stealing our content and it must stop!"

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[pnutjam]

All Netflix produced series are released all at once for your binge watching pleasure. Other series are as well, albeit after they have aired on a traditional channel.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[tepples]

All Netflix produced series are released all at once for your binge watching pleasure. Other series are as well, albeit after they have aired on a traditional channel.

I'm aware of that. I'm suggesting that what Salgak1 refers to as "your favorite series" happens to be one that has not yet completely "aired on a traditional channel."

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That may well all be true, though to balance things out we should probably also consider things like how much was being invested in the first place, how much of any changes in the bottom line were down to external factors like inflation and exchange rates, and so on.

But I'm still not quite sure what point you're trying to make here (or what point of mine you're intending to refute). My original contention was that if we're talking about digital distribution, you can only have a commercially viable business model selling at a very low price point if your production costs are relatively low and your market is relatively large, but in such cases that model can work. We still seem to be talking about movie studios making money in theatres here, which I think is a different situation because of the physical presence aspect.

As an aside, I don't really have a problem with movie studios making a lot of money if it's from legitimate customers willing to pay the asking price. That just means the studios are generating something that a lot of people find valuable and being rewarded for it, and isn't that how it's supposed to work? What I don't think is healthy is the idea that fewer and fewer people are actually paying for new works but they're each paying more and more real money. I don't see anything wrong with the studios aiming for this as a business model if it's what the market will bear, but there's something very dubious about more and more people enjoying things without contributing (and breaking the law in the process) while the honest customers who follow the law are paying more and more for the same things and supporting the freeloaders as well. That doesn't seem like a healthy, sustainable, fair trend to me.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[strikethree]

Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content. It's just entertainment created by for profit companies. It isn't gonna cure diseases, it isn't gonna help hunger or global warning. It's just enterntainment(sic) and nobody is entitled to it.
Freedom is about net neutrality, freedom of speech, democracy and so on, not about this.

The irony is palpable here. Nobody here is claiming they have a right to download copyrighted material. What they are claiming is that the way these companies will try to enforce copyright is by reducing what you call Freedom: "Freedom is about net neutrality, freedom of speech, democracy and so on, not about this."

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Shirley Marquez]

The lack of English subtitles is a rights issue. Often those subtitles are created by the international distributor, not the movie company. If the movie company doesn't license them for distribution in Japan they're not entitled to use them, and they don't want to spend the money to create their own English subtitles that only a few viewers in Japan will use. Perhaps Netflix could independently negotiate rights to the English subtitles; it's worth asking them whether they can do that.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

it does get maddening trying to find who is streaming what on what service, if you have it or not and a lot of times it ends up being more convenient or the final solution to just pirate it.
What ought to happen is for all of these services to have a single point where you can pay a monthly fee and access all of their libraries otherwise piracy will continue to happen out of necessity rather than malice of intent.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

People who download entertainment they have not paid for are examples of massive entitlement.
You have no claim on content you haven't paid for. To think otherwise is the opposite of virtue.

The users of copyright law are the ones with entitlement issues. They misinterpret their government-granted privilege for a moral entitlement and consequently view copyright infringers as thieves.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Grishnakh]

I guess the point I'm trying to make (or at least started out trying to make) was that the movie studios don't need to try pursuing a low-profit-margin model, and that what they're doing now seems to be working just fine. Their ticket sales in the US have declined, but their prices have gone up, and their revenues are steady, and on top of that they have huge international audiences making up even more of their revenue, plus online/DVD/BR distribution on top of all that.

So I dispute your claim about "fewer and fewer people are actually paying for new works": the audience has expanded greatly with international sales. Even if you limit your scope to domestic sales, the decrease isn't that much; there's no proof that people are actually pirating that much, rather than people simply not watching as many movies, or watching them more on (paid) video (which explains why they take in more revenue now from at-home sales than theater tickets). Just look at cable companies: more and more people are "cutting the cord"; that doesn't mean they're "stealing" TV from somewhere. Instead, many people simply aren't watching TV at all, and are doing other things (which can include watching movies online, which really isn't the same). You seem to have an assumption that people are pirating more and more, and there's no proof of this at all. If anything, it's probably a very small part of the population that does this, as it's not *that* easy to do. The average person on the street doesn't know how to use BitTorrent. And just like in the days when software piracy was "rampant", the reality was that most instances of copying were by a small number of people who were copying *a lot*, and frequently not even using most of the stuff they copied. I knew a bunch of people like that in high school. It was like a game to see how much stuff you could amass.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

By that point, what's the difference between pirating it and buying second hand? Feeling good about yourself? You're about as useful as pirates to the content producers, since they don't get anything out of the purchase...

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not illegal content but short sighted and monopolistic practices by the movie industry.

The moment a companies business model is based on sueing people the writing is on the wall as far as I'm concerned.

Just to illustrate the Movie industry are looking at KODI and other delivery platforms as a fly in their ointment. If they looked at it as an opportunity they would have actually increased their profits. An example is that I need a Hulu, Netflix and Showmax account to look at most of my content. Not a problem but a hasstle.

So I pay each one of these providers their dues and then simply watch it on KODI. Because the interface and the platform is easier. With Excodus being cancelled I'm now seriously considering just simply cancelling my subscription to the providers. They are not work the $9 hastle anymore. If they provided a plugin for Kodi on the other hand I would have simply use the plugin and kept on paying.
 

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It seems we're actually in agreement about the studios doing OK with their current models.

Just for the record, I wasn't necessarily assuming that people were pirating more, merely suggesting it as one possible situation that is consistent with the data we have, and observing that if that is in fact what's happening (with fewer other people then picking up the extra bill that is keeping the movie studios in the money) then I don't think it's a healthy trend.

It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I pirate stuff I'm wishy washy about. If I really want something, I'll buy it. Usually I end up buying stuff I pirated.

But whatever, no more pirating means a lot less buying. Saves me money!

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[thundercattt]

That's how I am too. We remember growing up in the 80s/90s movies were fantastic. You watched them and watched them again. Now, I see a new on theater movie and it's 50/50 if it's going to suck (closer to 75/25). So, I watch it for free, if it is memorable then I purchase.

Re:It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the MPAA and RIAA are fine with the idea of you not giving them any sales b/c you're ignoring their products. They have the law of averages on their side.

They have a big problem with people who don't give them any sales, or a pathetic trickle of sales, when they're illegally downloading product left and right.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they are fine if it's only a small percentage doing that, but the greater goal in media and entertainment is not money. It's propaganda, and it's uptake is measured and box office sales are just another metric how well that greater goal is being accomplished.

And there have been setbacks, just think back to the late and infamous feminist "Ghostbusters" remake from last year ID the year before. A non-starter because it is dripping with feminist man-hatred topped with red commie sauce. Hollywood would love to see this crap-movie at least heavily pirated, except it is very hard to find mostly because nobody cares.

Boycotting Hollywood and mass refusal of uptake does worry not just the people with the purse-strings in Beverly Hills, but the social architects behind the industry. If that gets even more out of hand, lean back and watch as their so-called "premium" content becomes free to watch. You will just pay for it through your tax dollars when the studio's start receiving subsidies. If that doesn't improve uptake, they will find other ways to force it down your throat, believe me.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Kjella]

That's how I am too. We remember growing up in the 80s/90s movies were fantastic. You watched them and watched them again. Now, I see a new on theater movie and it's 50/50 if it's going to suck (closer to 75/25). So, I watch it for free, if it is memorable then I purchase.

Hint: Everybody remembers what they grew up with as fantastic. It's got a lot more to do with being 15 and not 35 rather than the actual content. Try looking at them again as if you were looking at it the first time and had no relationship to it, if this was a new release today would you feel the same? Take for example Ferris Bueller's day off. I loved that movie back then, but when you take a step way back is it any less cheesy than similar "rebel" movies from the 60s, 70s, 90s, 00s or 10s? No, but they all suck ;) same reason most people get stuck in a musical decade and think Elvis or Beatles or Rolling Stones or Nirvana or Metallica was the greatest music ever.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: Everybody remembers what they grew up with as fantastic. It's got a lot more to do with being 15 and not 35 rather than the actual content.

You are entitled to your opinion, but your above statement is easily refuted.

Go watch Lawrence of Arabia and tell me there's no difference in content. Just because you don't acknowledge there were truly great movies made in the past doesn't mean it didn't happen. What's next, are you going to claim the 19th century produced no great music ? Just because you have the taste of a Philistine doesn't mean the rest of us do, sonny boy.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the way, the Beatles did make some of the greatest music ever.

Has anyone ever told you that you are a clueless tasteless idiot ?

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[known_coward_69]

The Beatles were the pop teenie girl sensations of their day. People grew up and remember it as some kind of high art. Just like when jazz first started and it was only in the clubs with illegal drinking and graduated to big bands once the fan base aged. Same thing is happening with rock and metal

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[cornjones]

I am not the OP but i do agree, largely. I would split it into two phenomenon:
1. At 15, it is much easier to be impressed. you have less experience of what the world has to offer. In my day (80s kid) there was a lot less choice so you watched and re-watched the same things until you loved them. You had a lot more free time to watch. And, importantly, you are selecting which groups you will be part of. Your media consumption both influences and is influenced by that but I feel teens latch onto cultural icons and make them really important to their emerging identity. While I still liked Ferris Bueller, as I started showing movies I remember loving to my kids, many of them were really pretty bad.

2. The other reason you remember the movies as being great is that pain has a short memory. You don't remember all the crap that was released and you either saw or managed to avoid. Same w/ the 19th century, not everybody was writing war and peace but the best things stand the test of time. Our consumption is only the best of the best of what was released in the past.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is something of a "survivor" bias going on here. We remember Lawrence of Arabia because it was an absolutely fantastic movie. Not all movies of that era were of that caliber, though. 50 years from now there will no doubt be somebody waxing nostalgic about the good ole days of the early 2000s, remembering our movies that have stood the test of time, and completely forgetting about Kung Fu Panda 5.

I think this is true in many fields. THere is a "they don't make 'em like they used to" attitude toward a lot of things. Houses, furniture, etc. The thing is, the antique houses and furniture that are still around were well-built. The crap furniture and shoddy housing of the 19th century? There was plenty of it I am sure, but it is long gone. We look around at what's left and say "Man, they knew how to build *widget*", but it's kind of naive.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, this is just plain bullshit, because the simple fact that disproves your argument is that the industries have changed. Go back to the 80s and 90s and look at how many remakes there were: very few (and what few there were were radically different from whatever ancient B&W 50s movie they remade, such as John Carpenter's "The Thing" in 1982). Look how many superhero movies there were back then: almost none. Now, all the movies are superhero franchise installments, remakes, sequels, prequels, etc. In short, Hollywood has become extremely risk-averse, and only invests in high-cost high-FX action movies because they're virtually guaranteed to be profitable, even if the profit multiplier isn't that high. They won't attempt any risky movies now like they did in decades past, so you don't see much in the way of truly new material, and instead they play it safe by making continued installments in franchises which have proven profitable. Look at the new Alien movie, a new installment of a 40-year-old franchise! That simply did not exist in the 80s.

The music industry, similarly, is fundamentally different these days too. New music isn't being made and marketed the way it was in the 60s-90s.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Grishnakh]

50 years from now there will no doubt be somebody waxing nostalgic about the good ole days of the early 2000s, remembering our movies that have stood the test of time

What movies from the 2010s will stand the test of time? Can you name even one? I can't.

I can think of a few good ones from the 2000s, esp. the early 2000s (LotR comes to mind first), but not much, and certainly nothing really fantastic and memorable after about 2005.

I'm really tired of this trope about "we only remember the good stuff and forget the crap". There hasn't been any good stuff for about 10 years now. It all coincides with the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2008 and the economic disaster that caused.

The thing is, the antique houses and furniture that are still around were well-built. The crap furniture and shoddy housing of the 19th century? There was plenty of it I am sure, but it is long gone. We look around at what's left and say "Man, they knew how to build *widget*", but it's kind of naive.

This is bullshit too. Things have changed, and we can see it in mass-produced items. Go look at laser printers from 20-30 years ago; they were much longer-lasting than modern ones. What's different is that a lot of things back then were over-engineered. They weren't nearly as good at predicting component lifespans as they are now, so they had larger safety factors, and certain things generally lasted much longer. There was a price to this though: those things were expensive. An HP Laserjet III was not a cheap printer at all, but it was built like a tank. Modern lasers cost a fraction of much (after adjusting for inflation), but they're a lot more delicate and wear out faster. This doesn't apply to everything though: cars last a lot longer than they used to. You used to get rid of cars after 50k miles, now it's easy to get 200k+ out of them.

Re:It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

There has really been nothing in the way of TV or movies in the last 15-20 years worth watching, much less bothering to pirate! Cable TV got cancelled here because it went to shit! Most of the shows and movies I likes went away, and all the channels had far too much advertising! I will not pay to be advertised to. Period. If Netflix starts having commercials, they are history! As for Hollyweed, they are destroying themselves...and good riddance!

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[david_thornley]

The Beatles made some darn good music, although I don't consider it the best music ever.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[david_thornley]

What movies from the 2010s will stand the test of time? Can you name even one? I can't.

Sorry, my crystal ball is in the shop, so I can't answer that. I don't know what life will be like in the 2060s, and what people will like. In the 1920s, did people think Metropolis would eventually be one of the most-liked movies of the period? People of the time appear not to have thought so. It wasn't until recently that people have managed to scrape together most of the footage.

And I will assure you that there has been crappy music and crappy movies all my life. Survivor bias is real and active.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Grishnakh]

You don't need a crystal ball to point to movies that are highly-regarded right now. No one needed a crystal ball to know that Star Wars was an instant classic; the enormous popularity it had at the time indicated that in spades. This doesn't guarantee the movie will "stand the test of time", but it's a pretty decent indicator. I'll bet Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia were well-regarded when they were new too. There's always some movies that aren't well-liked at the time, and then become "cult classics" later like your Metropolis example, but those aren't the norm and that's not required for "standing the test of time". Most movies regarded as classics were popular when new; Ghostbusters (the 80s one, not the shitty remake) is another good example here, plus Back to the Future and Aliens and a bunch of other 80s icons. There haven't been any movies like that in the 2010s that I know of, though by asking the question in my previous post I did open the discussion up to see if anyone had any examples that in their opinion would qualify since I don't claim to be the preeminent expert on all movies for all time.

Re: It's fine, I just won't watch anymore

[Rakarra]

What movies from the 2010s will stand the test of time? Can you name even one? I can't.

I would say Up (cheating, that was 2009), Inception (I think Blade Runner is a little better, but they're both extremely good), the Artist, Lincoln, maybe (maybe!) Skyfall (I think it's at least as good as any of the Bond classics), 12 Years a Slave, Hacksaw Ridge, Logan, those all have the capability of being seen decades from now. Though really, who knows what tastes will be like decades from now? Star Wars Episode 7 will certainly be watched and rewatched decades from now, whether it really deserves that honor or not, since it's Star Wars, and Star Wars will be forever, like James Bond. That's all just the list of Oscar nominees since 2010 that I could think of off the top of my head.

But what are we really thinking of when it comes to movies that stand the test of time? Do you think most people today think Laurence of Arabia is a great movie? Not that they've been told it's a great movie, not because some film critic told them it's one of the best movies ever made, but that they saw Laurence of Arabia and thought "wow, that's one of the best movies ever made." That group of people is vanishingly small. I don't know that Laurence will eventually survive the test of time, other than there's something of an unstoppable juggernaut of film buffs who will keep it alive.

Arrrr mateys

[Anonymous Coward]

walk my DAMN plank

That's remarkably LOW downloading

[gurps_npc]

Less than 1 download per person. If this was a food try before you buy) , that means not everyone took one.

Sounds to me like people are most likely trying to get reasonable service that is not available for sale, rather than pirating.

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare it to the population with internet access, and especially broadband. That isn't about the 300 million Chinese rice farmers without electricity, etc.

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[gurps_npc]

No, it's about racists that think China doesn't have internet access. More than 1/2 of China has internet access, although most of them use mobile platforms. (https://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/01/16/chinas-internet-population-numbered-618m-end-2013-81-connecting-via-mobile/) To get numbers like that it means that even rice farmers get the internet.

India has similar numbers.

Basically, the population of most countries is currently in large cities and people living in large cities get the internet. It is cheap compared to it's benefit.

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance on your part, you seem to be using information 20+ years out of date. current numbers put it at almost 4 Billion people with internet access. countries like China actually have very good connectivity and is around average for connection speed.

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

1/2 of a 1.3 is 650 million, which means 650 million ( > 300 million) without. Learn some math you fucking idiot!

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

*1.3 billion

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's about racists that think China doesn't have internet access.

You come across as an unjustifiably arrogant SJW prick. If no one has kicked your ass yet, it's not because you don't need or deserve it,
it's just that you have been lucky.

Re: That's remarkably LOW downloading

[AK Marc]

Shang-Hai and Beijing are exceptions, not the rule.

And Guangzhou, Hongkong, and others are the exceptions as well. There are many many exceptions. So many so, that there are more exceptions than non-exceptions. About 60% live in conditions better than you'd find in Michigan.

Re:That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

reasonable service that is not available for sale

This. Very much this.
Most piracy I have ever known about on any discussion forum is ALWAYS because the services in question either:
geo-block them
region-lock them
have horribly awful catch-up / online services
change their services / apps and make them horribly bad / the player suddenly becomes unsupported on browsers not even that old. Thanks DRM.
Remove a shitload of content for not much reason at all.

I've had an app update and suddenly become impossible to use on my tablet. I stopped using that service.
Also had the browser issue of a service stop supporting a browser. No netbook watching for me.
Region-locked content is a common issue as well.

Hey Media Industry, stop doing ^^^ and maybe you'll get more paying customers.
Geo-block and Region-locks are the biggest reasons for piracy around.
You do this to your fucking selves.

Re: That's remarkably LOW downloading

[Jzanu]

Can you figure out what (100% - 60%=) 40% of 1.3 Billion is? Hint: > 500 Million. That means you are stating even more of a difference exists than the figure which caused the original shallow outrage in this thread. This is basic numeracy.

Re: That's remarkably LOW downloading

[AK Marc]

I don't care about the initial number. I had no hand in that. I'm replying to the lie that Shanghai and Beijing are the exceptions, not the rule.

How?

[Anonymous Coward]

How will they fight piracy? Did they find a new technology that would keep people from sharing files over the internet? When will the industry learn they can't do anything about this?

Re:How?

[AHuxley]

Track p2p. Track streaming.
Try and offer more series and movies on time for sale or rent in different parts of the world.
Thats the real thats holding back digital renting.
People would like to buy or rent but have to wait while local cinemas and then traditional broadcasters hold shows back for their own use.
A movie or series might not be released. It might be weeks or months late. It might be for digital sale and not for SD and HD rent.

They've already been fighting piracy for years...

[cunina]

... with an utterly brilliant and highly effective system: make shows and films so god damned awful that no one will bother to pirate them

Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

and thats because the social contract has been nullified. The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and in return they add to the public domain. Sonny Bono & Mickey Mouse suspended public domain indefinitely, and thus have reneged on their side of the social contract. Why should we continue to uphold our end of the bargain?

This is why no one has any respect for copyright, nobody feels the slightest twinge of guilt bypassing your paywalls & getting your content for free. Perhaps someday you'll be able to get society at large back to the table to discuss a new contract, but i doubt it.

Until then I guess you'll just have to keep suing your customers, thats a sure way to win back their loyalty.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[AthanasiusKircher]

To be fair, it's not just the U.S. It's the Berne Convention that established long international copyright terms (minimum of 50 years after author's death). In some ways, the U.S. arguably just brought its copyright terms up to the "international standard" in recent decades. I agree with you that such lengthy terms are preposterous and almost completely negate the original concept of "public domain."

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do you think pushed for the convention to have such long copyright terms? It just lets the media companies save face by saying "No, we don't want this long copyright, but international law requires it so pity us" and the novice person takes that at face value rather than looking into who wrote those sections of international law. Simple misdirection and sadly it works. We increased international standards as a workaround to directly increasing them here as doing so would have been too politically unpopular. Now it's 'sorry, out of our hands'.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress wanted to extend copyright to infinity - 1 years. The US are the major IP "owners", and they're forcing their greed across the world. 75 years is more than long enough to milk it to death, and then let it become public. The trouble is that includes stuff "owned" by large US corporations, even if they have nothing to do with the creation or the creators.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and in return they add to the public domain. Sonny Bono & Mickey Mouse suspended public domain indefinitely, and thus have reneged on their side of the social contract. Why should we continue to uphold our end of the bargain?

This is a common argument, but a lame one. The vast majority of content that is illegally shared online is very recent, often less than a year or two old. It would have been covered by copyright even in the original form with just a few years of protection for the rightsholder.

The erosion of the public domain and repeated extensions to the length of copyright protection are real problems and should be fixed, but they are a very issue.

This is why no one has any respect for copyright, nobody feels the slightest twinge of guilt bypassing your paywalls & getting your content for free.

A lot of people don't even understand copyright. They just assume that if they can get something for free online, that's OK. They'll even rip off more positive content providers who don't want to use DRM, and tell them that if they don't want people to just copy all their stuff they shouldn't deliver it as standard video/audio files. (Seriously, I've been involved with some of these businesses and seen the mails. People really do this.)

Until then I guess you'll just have to keep suing your customers, thats a sure way to win back their loyalty.

And yet someone who pirates all your stuff isn't your customer, and statistically the friends they will badmouth you to if you do take legal action against them are also unlikely to be your customers. Customers pay you money in return for your stuff, you see.

The penalties for copyright infringement are grossly disproportionate in some cases, IMHO, but they certainly can provide a degree of compensation to rightsholders whose material is widely distributed in violation of those rights.

All the anti-copyright arguments about how "I was just sampling but would have bought it anyway if it was good", or "I'd have bought it if you just provided it through a more convenient channel", or "If you sue me then you'll just be attacking your own customers and then they won't buy from you in the future"... don't mean a thing when a judge rules that your savings now belong to the lawyers from Big Media.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thank you for sending those, and while the screenshot works fine for the speedtest, for the speccy, I'll actually need the .speccy file it produces when you click "File" then "Save snapshot". If you could send that as well, that would be a big help."

That is immaterial. The content thats being made now will -NEVER- enter the public domain. Ever. The bargain was -temporary monopoly- in exchange for -someday it enters public domain-. They have done away with the -someday it enters public domain- part of the deal, so there is no reason at all for us to honor the -temporary monopoly- part. Doesnt matter what the time length would have been under a proper system, we dont have such a system and so the time length is now ZERO.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Miser]

You can probably trace it back to the one thing that most corrupt actions by corporations and government want the most: Money.

It's ALWAYS about the money.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

50 years seems to be what most of the world agrees is how long Copyright should last. So you are telling me that you only "pirate" stuff that is 50+ years old?

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[drinkypoo]

The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and in return they add to the public domain. Sonny Bono & Mickey Mouse suspended public domain indefinitely, and thus have reneged on their side of the social contract. Why should we continue to uphold our end of the bargain?

This is a common argument, but a lame one.

Standing up for your rights is lame? Why don't you just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, then?

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No, arguing that one bad act that has a small effect on a few people morally justifies another bad act done by many people with much greater effect is lame. Not as lame as resorting to swearing at someone because you haven't got a real argument, perhaps, but still lame.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sitting trying to work out which side you think is the small effect ? Surely having copyright basically unexpiring can't be viewed as a small effect ?

I do agree about the ad hominems though!

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[GuB-42]

and thats because the social contract has been nullified. The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and in return they add to the public domain.

No, that's the idea behind patents, not copyright.
For the author, copyright is not temporary, and has never been. It is always life + X years. The original point of the post mortem period was to preserve the original work.
The copyright economy we have now is a new thing. That "social contract" never really was.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say, rather, that the argument is that one bad act *that has a huge effect on everyone* morally justifies another bad act done by many people with a tiny effect.

n.b. Two wrongs don't actually make a right, but I do think you're mistaken in how you assign magnitudes to the two sides.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[nmr_andrew]

For the author, copyright is not temporary, and has never been. It is always life + X years.

IIRC, the original period of copyright in the US was 14 years, which was later allowed to be renewed once. It stayed that way for some time. Then the increasing lengths started. There were a few increases beyond that, I think up to about 50 years total which is probably too long but still semi-sane. Once the copyright on Steamboat Willie was about to expire, the Sonny Bono copyright act came along and extended that signifcantly, and it's been extended a couple more times since.

The Constitutional purpose of copyright is to "promote progress in the useful arts and sciences" by protecting things for a "limited time". Sadly, the courts have ruled more than once that life of the author plus 70 years counts as limited, and I wouldn't be surprised if they applied the same standard to "forever minus a day".

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[GuB-42]

You are right.
I live in France, and I assumed that the copyright system is similar to "droit d'auteur". It is nowadays but it used to be completely different.
"droit d'auteur" is focused on more on moral rights and copyright is more about economics. For example, there is no concept of "work for hire" in the French system.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Copyright not expiring at all does have a relatively small effect, simply because most things that people actually want to copy are naturally the newer and as-yet less widely experienced works. Obviously the principle of endless extensions is a violation of everything copyright was meant to be and should be fixed; I'm not in any way suggesting otherwise. However, as a practical matter it doesn't actually make much difference whether it's 50 years of 500 years of protection if 99% of what everyone wants to share is less than 5 years old anyway. Once you've taken the idea too far, how much too far is less important.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

"For the author, copyright is not temporary, and has never been. It is always life + X years."

Untrue. Lean some history please.

http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/copyright-ip/2486-copyright-timeline#.WUHUlDeQzCI

1790: Copyright Act of 1790

The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain."

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[AthanasiusKircher]

Given that the term of 50 years after the death of the author was adopted in *1908* by the Berne Convention, I'm not sure how much "media companies" had to do with it. Certainly not Disney.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[AthanasiusKircher]

Thanks for sticking with this argument. I agree with you. The previous versions of copyright (before Disney and Bono) allowed terms of 56 years (assuming a renewal). How much stuff is the OP here wanting to pirate that came out before 1962? It's a bizarre justification that because stuff between 1923 and 1962 is off limits (a fact that is annoying to me, because I actually like doing historical research and all those sources on Google Books would be helpful), suddenly all the internet pirates feel justified in downloading the movie released last week??

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for correcting me.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not sure how much "media companies" had to do with it.

The original media companies were book publishers, copyright was invented to deal with the mass book piracy things like the printing press enabled. The copyright act was put into place in 1790. That's almost 200 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[AthanasiusKircher]

The "original" copyrights were first granted in Italy in the late 1400s to deal with piracy. Yes. Short terms (generally 5-10 years).

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[david_thornley]

It's reasonable to figure that, if nothing after 1923 will ever again enter the public domain, that copyright is eternal and it doesn't matter when you pirate it. You can pirate it now, or you can pirate it after any reasonably Constitutional copyright law would have put it in public domain, and it'll still be piracy. Timelessness can be odd if you think about it in some ways.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[david_thornley]

At least in the US, that's the idea behind patents and copyrights. They're both based on the part of the Constitution that allows temporary monopolies for the purpose of advancing science and the useful arts. When I was young, that's exactly how it worked. Copyright lengths were long enough that nobody would do anything creative because of what they'd earn after, say, 28 years, and they were reasonably temporary in that things would fall into public domain.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, it's not just the U.S. It's the Berne Convention that established long international copyright terms (minimum of 50 years after author's death). In some ways, the U.S. arguably just brought its copyright terms up to the "international standard" in recent decades. I agree with you that such lengthy terms are preposterous and almost completely negate the original concept of "public domain."

Yes, but in the US the Bill of Rights is supposed to be the highest law in the land - and failing to recognize that and act accordingly is supposed to be an illegal violation of rights arising under the 9th and 10th Amendments, such as right to ethical government, and right to ethical practice of law.

Current US copyright law violates a number of fundamental rights - this has been discussed at length here so I won't belabour the point - but the conclusion necessarily follows that the US government is acting illegally with respect to copyright. Unlike other countries (which lack an open ended Bill of Rights as the highest law in the land), the US has a legal responsibility to not be doing many of the things it is doing.

Not a good thing when one of the most powerful nations in the world routinely violates it's own laws (aided and abetted by a largely unethical legal profession) - and in a global economy the consequences are not just local ones. Unfortunately, huge amounts of propaganda are routinely generated by various special interest groups to keep the public from realizing how badly they are being screwed. Entrenched corruption sucks.

Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they mean copyright infringement? Copying without someone's permission and against their wishes... Can we really call that stealing?

Re:Stealing?

[x0ra]

it's the same good old argument the RIAA has been making all these years... all these "billions" lost is sales that would never have been made to begin with.

Re: Stealing?

[thundercattt]

I completely agree. I'll pirate a new movie to watch it. If I had to pay to see the movie, I wouldn't. Actually there was a release this week I was excited about. I paid to go see it, put out non dribble and I'll pay. The 1st theater movie I've paid to see in 3 years.

Re:Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we really call that stealing?

So it's not stealing. Let's also watch a movie in an almost empty theater without paying for the ticket. The seat was going to be empty anyway, and the theater owner wouldn't had made money on it if you didn't freeload. So what's the harm in watching for free?

Re:Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're right, there's no harm done.

Re:Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the theater will make money by selling me an eight dollar extra large cup of Diet Coke that he allows me to refill no more than once by drawing a big "R" on the side of the cup in permanent marker when I refill it...

Re:Stealing?

[0111 1110]

The seat was going to be empty anyway, and the theater owner wouldn't had made money on it if you didn't freeload. So what's the harm in watching for free?

Yeah I don't see the harm in that scenario. But of course the cinema does have the right to kick you out if they catch you.

Re:Stealing?

[gweihir]

You can call it "stealing", but it will be an obvious lie. That is probably one of the reasons nobody really cares about their complaints: They start the discussion off in bad faith with a big fat lie. Disrespect your potential customers and they will disrespect you.

Re:Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't download a car...

Just make yourself invisible

[Gabest]

Do they realize, their service is not affordable for the majority of the world? Their shows are staying unknown outside the US.

Re:Just make yourself invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Netflix is the main source of all pirated content. It is so easy to get content off of Netflix that I have given up on my subscription and just download it directly from Netflix without a subscription.

You don't need a subscription for browse their content. To view a preview of content does not require a subscription. In that page that has the preview, it hands you a .JS file of preview content location. If you previously had a subscription you can pretty easily figure out how to change locations of the preview .JS file to the location of the full content .JS file of the video you want to view. In that .JS file is a new location to the parts of the full content video and also the location of the key you will need to decrypt the parts of the file.

Download the parts of the file, use the key(s) to decrypt the parts and assemble the parts in order. Play it on any media player.

It is so simple that I'm sure script kiddies could do it. I wrote my in C# but could be done in almost any language.

time space circumstance clot thickening

[Anonymous Coward]

we're going backwards uphill at the speed of blight? cease fire stand down,, spiritual bankruptcy procedures proceeding, no heart no spirit no life.. truth & mercy = justice, creation prevails. everything made by man fails over time? the moms (brimming with compassion & selflessness) are our closest reference creators,, which many prefer over some fictional deity song & dance whereas 'success' could mean being fed to wild animals.. & where do the hymenless monkeys & crown royal psycho inbreedings fit in to our culture of prideful imaginary heritage? more like a history of hysteria? #'s lie all the time,, love cannot break our hearts.. see you there,, thanks again, & again.. konoronhkwa

Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily (long time gone) been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner or login and improve your posting. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down (&/or demonize them....) based on speculation of ill intent... peace out /. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m39DWVFK-Bw

ACE like in ACE Stream

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

ACE like in ACE Stream

[Anonymous Coward]

http://acestream.org/ :)

Imaginay ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how these statistics hold against real revenue loss (or the imaginary one), however this might be a development to watch for.

Article posted on a site who gets it's bills paid through ads because no one in their right mind would pay for their content.

Re: They've already been fighting piracy for years

[thundercattt]

O wait......that is already happening

Re:They've already been fighting piracy for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the books some of those films are based on are not much better. Hollywood can't handle edgy or human main characters without pushing them trough bullshit tube into a tasteless, gray but eerily pleasant sausage.

Netflix need to uncancel Sense8

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. That's all.

Alliance blah,blah,blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Like just about every other "alliance" of large corporations, they give themselves some bullshit name to window dress the fact that they are looking to screw people over one way or another.

Re:Alliance blah,blah,blah

[BlueStrat]

Like just about every other "alliance" of large corporations, they give themselves some bullshit name to window dress the fact that they are looking to screw people over one way or another.

In another day and age, back before crony-capitalism passed the tipping-point and jumped the shark, they had another name for a group of leading corporations in an industry working together to control a market, set prices, and lobby for laws.

A "cartel".

But, that was before the money and resources the corporations offered those in power made them realize that "cartels" are really "alliances" in many cases and are now a good thing.

Strat

Re:Alliance blah,blah,blah

[blahplusplus]

" back before crony-capitalism passed the tipping-point and jumped the shark"

Ahh yes "That's not really real free market capitalism" argument. Sorry to tell you there crony capitalism doesn't exist because that's the way capitalism has always worked, the historical evidence is overwhelming. That rule of law can not exist within capitalism. Everytime copyright came up for review to protect the publics right it was expanded over 200 years long before you were even born.

Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. See the manufacturing consent videos when you get the time.

Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Education as ignorance

Energy subsidies

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Re:Alliance blah,blah,blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Addendum to pevious post

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

they have problems period

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot the gran ma that went to a theatre with her own food

they had her arrested.....
that's the kind a jackoffs these fu.cks are...until the day comes when they can just take money off your check whethar you watch there crap or not they wont be happy
and even then they will have you arrested for something anything they can dream up

only in copyright does anyone get to be fucking lazy for 150 years
create once sit on your arse for 3 generations

everyone else get to fucking work ya bitch slaves and pay now or else

Every time they do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time they pull this bullshit, I watch TV a little less. And what little less I watch, I pay even less for. Frankly, I'm about tired with being forced to watch stupid fucking ads, for crap I'm not interested in, that insult my intelligence and try to subvert my will trying to use psychology and other bullshit to foist more of their owners' shit on me, and it just makes me want to read books more.

I'm down to one television, and I don't have cable... the TV in question is hooked to my computer, and if I didn't have that, I wouldn't even have a TV.

Fuck your bullshit antipiracy bullshit campaign. You should just be happy that those who opt to (and can afford to) pay for your bullshit are doing so.

The tighter you clench your fist, Netflix, HBO, Hollywood assholes, the more former customers will SLIP THROUGH YOUR FINGERS.

Snowpiercer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowpiercer.
I might have watched one after that.

And I'd forgotten about it, but I'd wanted to see 'Moon' in theaters. It had the guy who played 'Guy' in Galaxy Quest in it. It was one of those retro-styled Science Fiction movies, in this case about a guy who waked up from cryosleep to discover... another him working his job?

Other than that thought, I occasionally watch junk off crackle or other 'official' online sites, but given the switch to bluray I have stopped buying videos since they went intangible. Same with videogames. If I don't own a physical copy of the media they can't revoke from me, then I have no interest in buying it. GOG is a nice 'modern' alternative to physical media distribution *BUT* most of their catalog is as expensive if not more expensive as when I bought the games 10-15 years ago on *PHYSICAL MEDIA* some of them even came in boxes with a manual! Furthermore in regards to respecting copyright/paying for goods: Half of the games and other media I could be buying wouldn't be SUPPORTING THE ORIGINAL CREATORS OF THE WORK!!!! The most notable of these being SirTech Canada's lineup (Wizardry and Jagged Alliance) and Space Empires, both of which got screwed by Strategy First and some predecessor publisher, who ended up continuing to sell/publish their works while stiffing them on royalty checks, before buying them up when they became insolvent from the lack of payments (how that is legal or works is beyond me!) Introversion went through the same thing with Uplink and possibly Darwinia, but managed to ride out the tides thanks to other publishing deals and independent sales. Another example is Atari's handling of Eden Games closure after Test Drive Unlimited 2. They refused to release sales numbers to Eden Games and never paid royalties due to development studio. The result was them being shut down and their dev staff spread to the 4 winds. There are dozens to hundreds of other examples in both the non-interactive and interactive media industries and more examples need to be made out of the companies performing such horrendous acts while also claiming the moral high ground in the copyright enforcement doublespeak (Which it often is given how many of them infringe others works as well... Just read up on the Bjorn Lynne(http://www.lynnemusic.com/) BS from UMG on YouTube.

That is my rant on this issue.

Re:Snowpiercer.

[Anonymous Coward]

In what country did you manage to get the latest PC games for $5-$10? I remember shelling out 20 for the Throne of Bhaal expansion for Baldur's Gate.

Easy way to stop piracy

[hawguy]

Want to stop piracy? Then make all content available everywhere. Don't make me sign up for Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO Now, Hulu, and a half dozen streaming providers just to watch the content I want to see.

If you make it easier to pirate content than to purchase it legally, you're going to lose the battle.

And don't nickel and dime me, don't make me pay $3.99/episode for a show that will cost $20 when all 20 episodes come out on DVD, stuff like that is what make people decide to click on the torrent instead of the "Purchase" link.

Re:Easy way to stop piracy

[Baron_Yam]

>Want to stop piracy? Then make all content available everywhere. Don't make me sign up for Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO Now, Hulu, and a half dozen streaming providers just to watch the content I want to see.

I have previously predicted that the current streaming providers will become the new studios, and regional services will offer single points of access and billing to customers, becoming the new cable companies.

I believe there will be a market for companies that set up shop doing nothing more than having a local cache of the most popular items and pass-through streaming of the less-requested ones, as well as providing centralized billing and technical support.

It will require Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Hulu, and a half dozen other streaming providers to give up on attempting to monopolize the world's eyeballs and instead accept that they will be competing with each other... but ultimately I think it'll happen.

Re:Easy way to stop piracy

[hawguy]

You'll keep coming up with excuses not to pay for it. Because you are ultimately a thief who steals shit.

Me? No, I don't steal anything. The last time I torrented a movie was when I bought a brand new blu-ray and couldn't play it because my blu-ray player's firmware was out of date and it was already on the latest firmware.

So who is stealing from who in this case? I bought the movie, it's a blu-ray, I have a blu-ray player, yet could not play the movie.

It took less time to find a torrent and start the download than it did to buy the movie in the first place, the torrent was done in 90 minutes (no need to wait on shipping) and now I have a digital file I can play on any of my devices. What a great customer experience.

Re:Easy way to stop piracy

[david_thornley]

Consider what happened with iTunes. It made it easier to buy music, and, for some inexplicable reason, people bought more music.

People who feel entitled to music and movies and stuff don't necessarily feel that they're entitled for them for free. Often they're willing to pay a reasonable amount for what they want. Make it impossible to buy and they'll torrent.

Go after /. for "TV Frog" Kodi box ads

[knorthern knight]

Contextual advertising... I live in Toronto, Ontario. At the bottom of this article is an ad that says "Ontario Cable Companies Want This Device Banned Immediately". It's labelled as an "Advertorial for TVFrog". I couldn't make this stuff up.

Re:Go after /. for "TV Frog" Kodi box ads

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go again, reinforcing the "Canadians are so lame" stereotype.

Uh-oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

The ratings must have tanked.

download

[Rekso]

does it mean download content considered as piracy and it will be more difficult for us to watch online in the future? I hope i can still watch tv shows without need to buy cable?

Copying is not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

No source material have been lost.
I have seen 'stealing' being used to describe movie piracy two times over the last days so I suppose someone somewhere has fed that faulty usage of the word in the top spot for the propaganda machine this month.

Re:Copying is not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

it's been longer than that, I seem to remember it being at least 15 years.

User experience and quality first

[daffy951]

I would say they should focus on providing the same quality as pirated material on all markets at the same time.
They can never provide better quality, since what they provide will be copied. But make sure all customers with good enough connections can stream/download as high quality as possible, for a fair price.
Don't geo block. The ones who get blocked will get it some other way.
No need for big investments in DRM. What can be seen & heard can and will be replicated. Accept that. You're just making it annoying for legitimate customers, while the pirates enjoy DRM free versions from torrent sites.

Re:User experience and quality first

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this downvoted? This is exactly happened shortly before the breakthrough for legitimate music downloading.

The pirate gets a high quality video file playable anywhere.
The legit customer gets a smaller catalogue with unskipable advertisements and only playable on a selection of devices. Then there is shenanigans like requiring a constant internet connection or tracking everything.

With these quality differences why does anyone think price is the only thing making people pirate things.

Re:User experience and quality first

[apoc.famine]

It's not even torrent sites anymore. There are tons of websites streaming....everything....for ad views. I can make a list of 4-5 movies I'm interested in, and generally find a couple of them being streamed at 1080p. Live sports too! A little computer running Ubuntu and Google are all I need to watch pretty much whatever I want when I want it. Is it 4k? No. But I don't have a 4k TV, so that doesn't bother me. Sometimes are there compression artifacts? Sure. But for the cost and convenience, it blows away the competition.

MPAA and RIAA logic has more money..

[gl4ss]

MPAA and RIAA logic has more money being lost than what is actually available.

If they somehow magically managed to stop copying, it wouldn't make them more money. instead people would flock more to youtube and indies that are literally giving their stuff for free.

nevermind that riaa is already giving their stuff for free on youtube themselves.

Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

So this means they're finally responding to the market's demand for inexpensive, platform-independent content without region restrictions? No? Huh.

Wow!

[nospam007]

Are they all building ships now?
Aaargh!

Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)

[doom sterr]

Is it only me thinking they should go for (ACME) Alliance for Creativity and Media Entertainment :P

They should join forces to end exclusivety

[frambris]

Again, they need to make it more convenient to get the content you are interested in in the way you like than getting it pirated. You shouldn't have to sign up for multiple services and pay wether you use them or not and be forced to use multiple apps to see the content. If we could conveniently watch all the content we want for a reasonable price then I think few would get the content by other means.

It is not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

It is copyright infringement. If they keep using these misleading terms they can not expect to be taken seriously. Using the term theft or stealing when talking about copyright shows that you are not interested in a constructive discussion, but just want to spout misleading propaganda.

Re:It is not stealing

[gweihir]

What is does is that nobody takes them seriously anymore, after all they are spreading blatant lies. Dealing honestly with potential customers looks differently.

I've never subscribed to them...

[Casandro]

... because they were a strong proponent of DRM... and unlike DRM on disks they can always update it to stop me from using my right to make a DRM free copy.

Ooh ooh, can I try ..

[Altrag]

guessing the one plan they won't come up with? Offer good content at an affordable price, in a timely and accessible manner.

Maybe make reasonable legal offers?

[gweihir]

Copyright is not intended to withhold content from people, yet that is what it often boils down to. For example, I cannot even get most of what I watch where I live (shows in original, non-dubbed form, I will not watch dubbed trash) from any sources approved by the content owners. Now I can either not watch their products at all or download them from the net somewhere (which happens to be legal here). But if there was a reasonable online offering by the content owners, I would of course use that, far simpler and easier. Yest, there is not. Do these people do not understand they have to make an offer in order to sell anything?

Note that "reasonable" includes: Original language, plays on any device and in particular on Linux (i.e. no Digital Restriction Management), good quality, can skip as I chose, no ads, can re-download any time I chose.

The root-cause for "piracy" is that the content owners are apparently unable or unwilling to make a reasonable offer. Hence nobody feels bad bypassing them. Or in other words: They are doing it to themselves.

Re:Maybe make reasonable legal offers?

[drinkypoo]

Copyright is not intended to withhold content from people, yet that is what it often boils down to

What? Yes. Yes it is. That is the only thing it is meant to do. The original form of copyright, where you had to let the scribes in Alexandria copy any book you brought through the harbor, was about getting content into people's hands. The current form is about keeping it out.

Re:Maybe make reasonable legal offers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is kind of hard to feel sorry for a "business" that is mainly known for turning away people who come to them, waving money in their faces, screaming, "Get that fucking money out of my face!!" They simply haven't opened for business yet.

2017, and you still have to get playable files from pirates, because they're otherwise unavailable at any price. 2017, WTF? I can't believe these people are serious about "fighting" piracy. If they were serious, then the story would have been that they've finally opened for business, with fully documented APIs and everything, so that it can at least match (and perhaps merge with, or assimilate) the hassle-free ease, quality, wife-friendliness, diversity and ad-free pleasure of the pirate experience.

That would smash piracy harder whatever their shysters are telling them to do. But I think I might know one thing in my above paragraph where a bunch of Hollywood people reading it would be nodding along sadly, wishing they could open for business, and then suddenly wince with the realization that they'll never be able to be a serious business: "ad-free pleasure."

Without ads, people don't know what to consume, and that especially includes movies. I just spent a weekend with a group of non-pirates and it was bewildering, all the movies they were talking about, about 2/3 of them apparently involving super-heros and boring shit like that. They all sound the same to me, but apparently if you watch enough ads, this stuff is exciting or something. I have to admit: ad-free video would have a real downside for Hollywood. They must be terrified of having to learn what sells and doesn't sell, when people aren't seeing ads anymore.

I bet you anything, that's what it's all about. They think they have to control the software that you use to play, because it's the only way to make sure you see lots of ads. And without ads, they have a lot fewer products on their menu.

This suggests they might need a little legislative prodding. We've tried the carrot for a few decades (you'd think they would have learned something from all the money they made on VHS tapes) and haven't gotten anywhere, so maybe it's time for a stick.

A bit of a history rewrite attempt here.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The first-of-its-kind alliance is composed of digital media players, networks, and Hollywood outfits, and all recognize how the internet has paved the way to an explosion in quality online content."

That sentence should end with "despite how hard they all tried to kill it off for decades."

Re:They've already been fighting piracy for years.

[AHuxley]

Re 'tasteless, gray but eerily pleasant sausage."
Most of that is due to the new funding mix.
As nations other than the USA fund movies made in the USA, political and faith issues start to reshape US scripts.
If the US upsets a faith, cult or Communist party, funding stops.
Once a script is corrected, funding flows again.

mission

[Anonymous Coward]

first goal: disable copying.
second goal: inject ads. alot of ads. and then some ...

Stealing shit

[JonnyCalcutta]

How do you steal shit? Do you take it directly from the bowl or get in from the treatment plant in bulk? Its just not a crime I've heard of before, although nothing surprises me anymore. What do they do with the shit once they've stolen it? Is there a good market? So many questions!

What?

[coofercat]

What is this "explosion in quality online content" of which you speak?

Do you mean re-makes of old stuff, endless sequels and prequals, and more films where Tom Cruise is a super-ninja-spy who takes down the entire world single handedly? If so, I think maybe you're mistaken.

There are some nice things around (House of Cards, Black Sails, and maybe Lord of the Rings), but I must be missing this 'explosion', even though we have Netflix, Amazon and Freesat.

Re:What?

[drinkypoo]

What is this "explosion in quality online content" of which you speak?

I stopped watching car shows because all the car shows on TV were shitty commercials for shitty cars. Now I watch them again because there are good ones on the internet. The same is true of cooking shows. Then there's whole genres which barely existed before, like shows about guns.

"Quality" doesn't necessarily mean "high production value". It can mean "chock-full of content in which I am interested".

Printing press ruined the music industry

[houghi]

Seriously. The printing press made it possible to easily copy music and sell it. People would go to a concert, listend to the new music and wrote it down. They then printed it out and where able to sell it, so others could play it as soon as the same day.

Oh wait, it goes back even further

for my entertainment, i avoid content providers

[Anonymous Coward]

except those considered local establishments.

Hopefully people annoyed with this shit will do the same and we can get back to a world where live theater and music are the prefered media types.

Oooh! Hollywood vs Internet Celebrity Death Match!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just GOTTA d.l. THAT one!

Oh. And one other thought... If the current multiverse theory of the universe is true, then all materials, including all copyrighted mats, are in fact copied every time any quantum decision is made.

about time

[Anonymous Coward]

half the fun of pirating stuff is knowing you are bothering someone

Dog in manger leaves money on table

[tepples]

You have no claim on content you haven't paid for

So let me pay for it. How do I go about paying for a lawful stream of the film Song of the South?

Re:Dog in manger leaves money on table

[networkBoy]

Or the first theatrical releases of Star wars before they were changed?

Crowdfunding instead

[tepples]

This is not a sustainable business model for producing new content, though.

Then crowdfund the creation of new works instead of restricting their distribution.

Re:Crowdfunding instead

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Crowdfunding is one of the more promising alternatives, I agree. However, on the evidence so far, it's typically between one and two orders of magnitude less effective in current implementations. It's also becoming increasingly clear that current crowdfunding models leave a great deal of risk with the funders rather than the content creators, which I'm not sure is a good thing. If and when we get better at it -- possibly with a general shift in our culture back towards respecting content creators and being willing to support works we actually do value -- it will be an interesting direction to explore. But we aren't there yet.

Don't they understand they are winning?

[GuB-42]

Netflix is the best think that happened in the fight against piracy, because it is convenient and affordable.

Among my group of friends, torrents/DDL were the way we got movies. We did it without even thinking. DVDs were too expensive and cumbersome, BluRays even more so. And with TV you don't really get to choose when and what you watch, also ads.
Some of us even paid for a seedbox or some premium account on a DDL or streaming site. So money wasn't the problem.
Then came Netflix. And now, most of my friends have a subscription and the torrent hunt ritual ended.

How to fight even better? Make things even more convenient. Make content available on all platforms, in all countries. Even if it means a small extra fee, people are ready to pay.

Now, we have a bunch of companies in the movie business going together, including Netflix, and instead of using that unique opportunity to make things better for consumers and turn them away from piracy, they pursue their repressive tactics that never worked.

Netflix has done more to fight piracy than anyone

[hackel]

Netflix has already done more to fight piracy than anyone else in the industry. They have shown that the way to fight piracy is by providing a competitive product that is priced reasonably and makes consuming content incredibly easy and convenient. It's sad to see them going down this path instead of continuing to push forward where they have made such a huge impact in the past. The biggest hurdle to Netflix are they very content creators it is now partnering with—disgusting media production companies that try to restrict the distribution of their content *regionally*. The world is global, and until this comes to an end, piracy will reign supreme. Let me pay a reasonable rate for the content I want, and make it available at exactly the same time as it is to everyone else in the world, and I won't need to pirate a thing! Why is this concept so difficult for these industry executives to comprehend?

Re:They've already been fighting piracy for years.

[Grishnakh]

make shows and films so god damned awful that no one will bother to pirate them

Exactly; Hollywood's been doing a great job of this for at least 10 years now. When I want to watch any movies, it's only stuff that's over 10 years old, and usually from the 70s and 80s, with some in the 90s, 60s, 40s, and a few things before that, and some stuff in the early 2000s. After about 2008, Hollywood movies went straight down the toilet.

Only 5.4B?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised the average person on this blue marble downloads less than one film per year.

Piracy is a loss-leader

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped pirating games, music and movies and TV shows about a decade ago as the clamp-down started getting more and more inconvenient... and this has resulted in my purchasing of any new ones dropping by over 90%.

It turns out, without easy access to new such things, I don't get the exposure to them I used to; TV is just full of re-runs, radio just plays shit I don't want to listen to when it isn't playing adverts, nobody makes games demos any more, and movies are too expensive to go watch in a cinema on a regular basis.

Result? I don't have any interest or incentive to buy into these things, and they no longer get a fair chance to make me want to.

This compares to previously, where I'd pirate a game, play it through, and if I liked it I'd buy it. Same with movies and TV serieses - Pirate it, watch it through, buy it if I liked it and probably buy into the sequel/next series. Music? Copy it off friends, get exposure to new bands, buy their albums.

Now I mostly only buy stuff to support people and teams I like and find worthy of that support, but the list of people in that group is declining faster than new ones are being added to it...

public doman stealing via copyright/patents &

[lpq]

"'The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and
in return they add to the public domain. Sonny Bono
& Mickey Mouse suspended public domain indefinitely, and
thus have reneged on their side of the social contract.
Why should we continue to uphold our end of the bargain?'

This is a common argument, but a lame one. The vast majority of
content that is illegally shared online is very recent, often less
than a year or two old. It would have been covered by copyright
even in the original form with just a few years of protection for
the rightsholder."

The argument is very appropriate. If the government levies a fine against someone for having embezzled money that was used to buy expensive clothing and electronics, the government doesn't limit it's fine collection to proceeds from selling the person's tech-toys and clothing -- they go after their bank account(s), retirement funds, their home and levy their paycheck -- none of which, one might argue, is associated with the embezzled funds.

Same for balancing social contracts -- you don't go after the 30-year old movies, where you only will get payback over a long time and if you have a large library, you go after the properties that will provide more immediate payback.

The large corps aren't going to "play fair", since they have millions of times the money to fight you, buy their congress critters, justices and laws. Who wrote the laws to break up net neutrality and allow providers to charge as they wish? Comcast(NBC Universal). How many citizens can write laws to give to their owned-congress critters and have them signed?

The whole legal system is constantly being recreated to create new types of ownership for corporations with new laws to backup the newly created properties. Think of the whole "Intellectual Property" w/respect to songs and other performances. Recording technology enabled creation of a whole new genre of "Property" -- but are the benefits spread throughout society, or are they concentrated in a small fraction of society at the expense of the rest?

You can't begin to even out the inequalities by thinking you must adhere to fairness. Fairness (along w/religion and morals) is what they teach the masses to make them easier to manipulate.

How helpful!

[Anonymous Coward]

How helpful of them to show their pride in this effort. It will present a fine list of companies to boycott.