Sure, I'd give Library of Congress having DRM-free masters. Taxpayers wouldn't want to pay for the costs of storing masters of everyone's movies though! Those files are huge. I have ~50TB of drives in my apartment alone. And that's just me.
You also feel that the people who worked on Inception were not fairly compensated? How do you know that? I have no idea personally. Also, they didn't risk losing money if it bombed. BTW, $160mil doesn't cover marketing costs, distribution costs, the take of the theaters, the opportunity cost (eg if Warner Bros just invested the money in something else over the same time period). Filmmakers are generally free to choose the best deal for their careers. Usually the difficulty is finding multiple parties whom you trust and who are ready to get into a bidding war for the chance to risk >$160mil on your film!
RE: "the laws are rather tilted towards copyright holders" - if you buy my movie, then share it online, am I not allowed to sue you? That seems reasonable to me. I do agree that damage amounts seem weird but lots of damage amounts seem weird to me when people sue each other. Anyway, if you don't want to get sued, don't put my film online without asking me first!
You seem to feel that people will generally do the legal thing. I think people will generally do the cheapest, easiest thing that they can morally stomach. Sorry I am a pessimist about human nature. Anyway, thanks for the discussion! It's fascinating to know what folks feel.
It sounds like you voted with your wallet for buying a DRM'ed product from a questionable publisher in that case.
How about you lean towards buying something DRM-free next time? Or at the very least, support a content creator that uses DRM but doesn't do that nonsense?
That's how voting works - if they suck, you can't undo your vote. Just don't vote for them next time!
Yes, people don't only create stuff to get paid. But if you're a filmmaker, the bills rack up pretty quickly - and without money, they scope of what you can do is limited in some ways. For example: Inception would probably not have looked as good as it did if Chris Nolan and Warner Bros just planned to give it away DRM-free and ask for donations. Some things cost a lot of money to make! Personally, I like ambitious movies being around in the world. I want them to be profitable. If the studios feel they need DRM in order to get the money to do those films, it's their choice.
If the consumers hate DRM so much, they should vote with their wallets, not pay for any content with DRM, and start funding ambitious independent projects. They haven't done that so far in the scale necessary. Hopefully it will change - we are getting closer to this goal. Kickstarter etc is very promising but the money people are putting in needs to grow by 10. Fingers crossed.
As for the idea of giving a movie away and selling toys or product placement... that kinda limits the art, doesn't it? There are a lot of good art films whose primary value is just the 2 hours you're watching them. You're not going to buy an action figure of the main character of your art-house drama. If DRM was banned worldwide tomorrow, there would likely be less of those films around because if art houses had to switch to donation only, the money would decrease.
Also: when I do film post-production, I pay for the software I use. I don't get all indignant that Autodesk, Adobe, Avid, etc charged me money and put DRM in their software. It's their right. If I don't like it, I can protest by using Blender. If I used an illegal copy of Maya and framed it as a righteous anti-DRM protest, that'd be really shady. I've probably put $40,000 into software over the years. I'm happy to have contributed to some coders' paychecks. But if they watch my film, why can't they contribute back to mine?
So, yeah: People who don't like DRM can similarly protest by watching only content that's DRM free and giving money to those artists who make DRM-free content. If more people did that, there would be more creatives making good DRM-free stuff. That's the only moral way to do it. The rest is just a slippery slope.
End rant! Yay! What do folks think?
Yeah, movie quotes are too easy. It's much better to use first letters of memorably-outrageous things you want to do to people you know! It's pretty easy to fit some numbers in there too...
Thanks for the advice on the phoning thing! Next time, I have a similar problem to you, I'll try it. It wouldn't have helped much with me though because I kept having to physically replicate the problem in front of the Apple "Geniuses". They kept telling me the motherboard was "fixed" when all they'd done was zap the PRAM or do something stupid like swap in a new CPU to the broken motherboard. I had to do the "lug the G5 across the mall to the Apple store" shuffle about 6 times. I did phone of course but they said I had to bring it in myself
Of course, this was actually my girlfriend's computer. After over a month of runaround she started to write letters and phone to complain about the service we were receiving. Apple realized they screwed up and started making peace offerings. First they offered to upgrade the RAM. She said that that was not good enough and they then offered to replace the single 1.8 to a dual 2.0. They also shipped it to us, which is what they should have done in the first place.
My girlfriend seemed happy with the upgrade in the end.
I think you nailed it. It seems that people ARE willing to pay a $75 premium "peace of mind / finder's fee" to Geek Squad to take their computer and give it to a reputable someone who can fix their computer. Geek Squad are a nationwide, branded, non-fly-by-night operation, hence the buying public places value in Geek Squad's promise to take responsibility for fixing their computers. Of course Joe Public will be more worried about taking his PC into a greasy-looking tech-pit of a store. He would much rather take it to someone whose ads he has seen on TV and he is prepared to pay extra for this honor. He probably finds the fact that they charge more a little bit reassuring. At least they'll still be there the next morning. I'm sure Geek Squad will be there the next morning - after all, they're making a killing off of people like him.
Being a good Slashdotter, I of course HATE Geek Squad, but, compared to Apple, at least they make house calls. They also won't make you wait in a line to hand in your PowerMac with a defective motherboard while they teach the guy in front of you how to use Garageband. Also, unlike Apple, you can park your car within striking distance of the Geek Squad desk. This is compared to, say, The Apple store at the Grove in LA, where you need to take your Mac down an elevator, half-way across a mall and up the glassy Apple Store steps before waiting 45 minutes for the privilege of handing it in to them. Makes you hate those hard metal G5 handles.
That said, I have never used Geek Squad. They might suck even more than Apple for all I know. Sorry for the Mac bashing, but this is the only branded tech support system I have used in the past 5-6 years.
Classic marketing speak - remember that Video CDs were supposed to be "beyond the quality of VHS" (but weren't). And a 192kbps-compressed MP3 was "CD-quality" (but wasn't).
If you want to make something that is actually giving you all of the colors the eye can see, you have to promote it as giving you more than that - so "beyond the human eye" fits the bill.
Also, bear in mind that:
1) these TVs will have some kind of stupid CineUltraVividNightVisionEnhancement chip in them to "enhance" the colors. These will actually totally screw up the colors, so in order to get something halfway decent, you need to feed the TV with a signal several orders of magnitude better than what the human eye can see.
2) TVs are currently really limited in terms of contrast ratio. Look at bright white on a TV or a computer monitor, then look at a light bulb (or *gasp* outside). Brighter, right? Wouldn't it be great if we could describe those colors and TVs could reproduce them?
Ah well, I just want a nicer canvas to work with. I am just a simple music video director.
There are "H-1Bs for lawyers". H-1Bs are for any "speciality occupation" - the US Government site (the first response you get if you Google "h-1b") has the official government definition:
A specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.
So, if you kill the H-1B, you are basically preventing educated foreigners in all of these fields from entering the country to work. Of course, American lawyers, doctors, architects, etc are somewhat protected by the idiosyncrasies of American law, medical practice and building codes. Programming languages and software design methodologies are a worldwide standard. Bear in mind that it goes both ways, though - American programmers can work in europe tomorrow if they wanted to, but American lawyers would have to learn the legal system first.
At home, compared to an H-1B worker, you have immense advantages - the ability to freelance without an agency (H-1Bs cannot take on freelance gigs at will, they have to do it through a contracting company or else pay a visa transfer fee for each company they want to work at), plus the ability to start your own company. What are you waiting for? Outcompete!
In reference to your parent post, if the immigrant IT workers had to "jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do", then they wouldn't come to America. They would either stay in their own countries and start companies, or move to another competing country with a less Draconian immigration policy. If America shuts its doors to talented, hard-working immigrants, the top immigrants will just go to European countries instead. I know a very bright, hard-working programmer who can't take his US job until October (due to H-1B quota being reached), so he took a job in England until then. His American company still wants him so much that they are prepared to wait until October for him. So, what happens in the meanwhile? Uncle Sam loses out on a couple months' taxes on his $80,000+ income and my friend helps the English company expand, outperform American companies and create more jobs in England.
Of course, I hold an H-1B, so I am biased. I do know, though, that I have helped my company expand and hire more American workers. I don't think we are directly competing though - I am a music video director.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I'd give Library of Congress having DRM-free masters. Taxpayers wouldn't want to pay for the costs of storing masters of everyone's movies though! Those files are huge. I have ~50TB of drives in my apartment alone. And that's just me.
You also feel that the people who worked on Inception were not fairly compensated? How do you know that? I have no idea personally. Also, they didn't risk losing money if it bombed. BTW, $160mil doesn't cover marketing costs, distribution costs, the take of the theaters, the opportunity cost (eg if Warner Bros just invested the money in something else over the same time period). Filmmakers are generally free to choose the best deal for their careers. Usually the difficulty is finding multiple parties whom you trust and who are ready to get into a bidding war for the chance to risk >$160mil on your film!
RE: "the laws are rather tilted towards copyright holders" - if you buy my movie, then share it online, am I not allowed to sue you? That seems reasonable to me. I do agree that damage amounts seem weird but lots of damage amounts seem weird to me when people sue each other. Anyway, if you don't want to get sued, don't put my film online without asking me first!
You seem to feel that people will generally do the legal thing. I think people will generally do the cheapest, easiest thing that they can morally stomach. Sorry I am a pessimist about human nature. Anyway, thanks for the discussion! It's fascinating to know what folks feel.
It sounds like you voted with your wallet for buying a DRM'ed product from a questionable publisher in that case.
How about you lean towards buying something DRM-free next time? Or at the very least, support a content creator that uses DRM but doesn't do that nonsense?
That's how voting works - if they suck, you can't undo your vote. Just don't vote for them next time!
Yes, people don't only create stuff to get paid. But if you're a filmmaker, the bills rack up pretty quickly - and without money, they scope of what you can do is limited in some ways. For example: Inception would probably not have looked as good as it did if Chris Nolan and Warner Bros just planned to give it away DRM-free and ask for donations. Some things cost a lot of money to make! Personally, I like ambitious movies being around in the world. I want them to be profitable. If the studios feel they need DRM in order to get the money to do those films, it's their choice.
If the consumers hate DRM so much, they should vote with their wallets, not pay for any content with DRM, and start funding ambitious independent projects. They haven't done that so far in the scale necessary. Hopefully it will change - we are getting closer to this goal. Kickstarter etc is very promising but the money people are putting in needs to grow by 10. Fingers crossed.
As for the idea of giving a movie away and selling toys or product placement... that kinda limits the art, doesn't it? There are a lot of good art films whose primary value is just the 2 hours you're watching them. You're not going to buy an action figure of the main character of your art-house drama. If DRM was banned worldwide tomorrow, there would likely be less of those films around because if art houses had to switch to donation only, the money would decrease.
Also: when I do film post-production, I pay for the software I use. I don't get all indignant that Autodesk, Adobe, Avid, etc charged me money and put DRM in their software. It's their right. If I don't like it, I can protest by using Blender. If I used an illegal copy of Maya and framed it as a righteous anti-DRM protest, that'd be really shady. I've probably put $40,000 into software over the years. I'm happy to have contributed to some coders' paychecks. But if they watch my film, why can't they contribute back to mine?
So, yeah: People who don't like DRM can similarly protest by watching only content that's DRM free and giving money to those artists who make DRM-free content. If more people did that, there would be more creatives making good DRM-free stuff. That's the only moral way to do it. The rest is just a slippery slope. End rant! Yay! What do folks think?
Yeah, movie quotes are too easy. It's much better to use first letters of memorably-outrageous things you want to do to people you know! It's pretty easy to fit some numbers in there too...
Thanks for the advice on the phoning thing! Next time, I have a similar problem to you, I'll try it. It wouldn't have helped much with me though because I kept having to physically replicate the problem in front of the Apple "Geniuses". They kept telling me the motherboard was "fixed" when all they'd done was zap the PRAM or do something stupid like swap in a new CPU to the broken motherboard. I had to do the "lug the G5 across the mall to the Apple store" shuffle about 6 times. I did phone of course but they said I had to bring it in myself
Of course, this was actually my girlfriend's computer. After over a month of runaround she started to write letters and phone to complain about the service we were receiving. Apple realized they screwed up and started making peace offerings. First they offered to upgrade the RAM. She said that that was not good enough and they then offered to replace the single 1.8 to a dual 2.0. They also shipped it to us, which is what they should have done in the first place.
My girlfriend seemed happy with the upgrade in the end.
Bruce Allen
I think you nailed it. It seems that people ARE willing to pay a $75 premium "peace of mind / finder's fee" to Geek Squad to take their computer and give it to a reputable someone who can fix their computer. Geek Squad are a nationwide, branded, non-fly-by-night operation, hence the buying public places value in Geek Squad's promise to take responsibility for fixing their computers. Of course Joe Public will be more worried about taking his PC into a greasy-looking tech-pit of a store. He would much rather take it to someone whose ads he has seen on TV and he is prepared to pay extra for this honor. He probably finds the fact that they charge more a little bit reassuring. At least they'll still be there the next morning. I'm sure Geek Squad will be there the next morning - after all, they're making a killing off of people like him.
Being a good Slashdotter, I of course HATE Geek Squad, but, compared to Apple, at least they make house calls. They also won't make you wait in a line to hand in your PowerMac with a defective motherboard while they teach the guy in front of you how to use Garageband. Also, unlike Apple, you can park your car within striking distance of the Geek Squad desk. This is compared to, say, The Apple store at the Grove in LA, where you need to take your Mac down an elevator, half-way across a mall and up the glassy Apple Store steps before waiting 45 minutes for the privilege of handing it in to them. Makes you hate those hard metal G5 handles.
That said, I have never used Geek Squad. They might suck even more than Apple for all I know. Sorry for the Mac bashing, but this is the only branded tech support system I have used in the past 5-6 years.
Bruce Allen
Classic marketing speak - remember that Video CDs were supposed to be "beyond the quality of VHS" (but weren't). And a 192kbps-compressed MP3 was "CD-quality" (but wasn't).
If you want to make something that is actually giving you all of the colors the eye can see, you have to promote it as giving you more than that - so "beyond the human eye" fits the bill.
Also, bear in mind that: 1) these TVs will have some kind of stupid CineUltraVividNightVisionEnhancement chip in them to "enhance" the colors. These will actually totally screw up the colors, so in order to get something halfway decent, you need to feed the TV with a signal several orders of magnitude better than what the human eye can see.
2) TVs are currently really limited in terms of contrast ratio. Look at bright white on a TV or a computer monitor, then look at a light bulb (or *gasp* outside). Brighter, right? Wouldn't it be great if we could describe those colors and TVs could reproduce them?
Ah well, I just want a nicer canvas to work with. I am just a simple music video director.
Bruce Allen
Senior Frac
There are "H-1Bs for lawyers". H-1Bs are for any "speciality occupation" - the US Government site (the first response you get if you Google "h-1b") has the official government definition:
A specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.
So, if you kill the H-1B, you are basically preventing educated foreigners in all of these fields from entering the country to work. Of course, American lawyers, doctors, architects, etc are somewhat protected by the idiosyncrasies of American law, medical practice and building codes. Programming languages and software design methodologies are a worldwide standard. Bear in mind that it goes both ways, though - American programmers can work in europe tomorrow if they wanted to, but American lawyers would have to learn the legal system first.
At home, compared to an H-1B worker, you have immense advantages - the ability to freelance without an agency (H-1Bs cannot take on freelance gigs at will, they have to do it through a contracting company or else pay a visa transfer fee for each company they want to work at), plus the ability to start your own company. What are you waiting for? Outcompete!
In reference to your parent post, if the immigrant IT workers had to "jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do", then they wouldn't come to America. They would either stay in their own countries and start companies, or move to another competing country with a less Draconian immigration policy. If America shuts its doors to talented, hard-working immigrants, the top immigrants will just go to European countries instead. I know a very bright, hard-working programmer who can't take his US job until October (due to H-1B quota being reached), so he took a job in England until then. His American company still wants him so much that they are prepared to wait until October for him. So, what happens in the meanwhile? Uncle Sam loses out on a couple months' taxes on his $80,000+ income and my friend helps the English company expand, outperform American companies and create more jobs in England.
Of course, I hold an H-1B, so I am biased. I do know, though, that I have helped my company expand and hire more American workers. I don't think we are directly competing though - I am a music video director.
Bruce Allen
I agree, it's not real. Slashvert!
I do still kinda want one though.
Bruce Allen