Online Groups Behind Bulk of Bootleg Films (& Games) 365
xasper8 writes "First it was the RIAA, now Hollywood is cracking the
legal whip on online piracy." There's a better article about this in the recent issue of Wired that gets more in depth on this. Basically, good background on how file releases get made. <update> Yes, we did have Wired link yesterday as well. My bad.
Disturbed (Score:2, Insightful)
It actually disturbs me deeply that someone in the U.S. Justice Department is admitting casually that the war on drugs is useless and a waste of lives and money.
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
Re:Disturbed (Score:5, Insightful)
War on drugs is a huge waste of money and can never be won. You will not even get close. It would have been much better if they accepted the fact that not all drugs are the same and differentiated between soft and hard drugs. That would ofcourse empty the prisons of a lot of people and make room for the real criminals rather than a potsmoker. But then the statistics would not look good...
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Insightful)
The founders of the country felt that rights were inalienable and NOT created by society or other people. That is, you had natural rights.
I recognize rights on a philosophical level, myself-- basically, anything that does not put force on another person. Putting something in your own body does not, under just about every conceivable circumstance imaginable, force anything on anyone besides yourself. You are not
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
Right! It is and always will be cheaper and easyer to fork out a few billion dollars/euros in military aid to napalm strips of jungle or rocky hillside (aka, suspected coca/poppy/marihuana/hemp plantation) in country X than it is to deal with the root causes of drug use at home.
In a country... (Score:2)
Think about that for a while...
Re:Disturbed (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are some kind of Christian scientist, I presume you are only refering to recreational drug use. Regardless of whether or not you personally would choose to drink beer, smoke pot, eat magic mushrooms, etc. I don't see what gives you the authoritity to declare them 'inherently bad'. marijuana != heroin. Have you been listening to your politicians again?
Re:Disturbed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
COX-2 inhibitors are a great example of this.
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it is cyclic and naturally goes up and down, as do all trends among fickle teens. In the mid/ late nineties there were plenty of news articles about how drug use was skyrocketing in popularity again and how ecstasy was becoming an epidemic and was going to be the new crack, and so on. Now, there is tons of hype about the fact that it is slightly down. This is all stupid. Every few years, drug use will go slightly
Re:Disturbed (Score:5, Insightful)
That was quite a "logical" leap you made there. Are you superman? Because that was a hell of a chasm to cross to come to the bizarre conclusion you did.
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Insightful)
The "war" on drugs has been charactarized as something that was winnable. The cost and the damage to people and society is a reasonable one because someday it won't be needed. Try to remember back to Vietnam (or civics class for the youngins in the audience) and remember when we were stuck in a war where we had no clear conditions for success and no exit strategy or conditions to impliment it in case of failure.
This statement shows an official admitting
Re:Disturbed (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree completely. Now if people would realize the "war on terrorism" is not, and that it's a war on muslim-extremists with a vague title allowing the "changing of the enemy" whenever more tax dollars are needed, we'd be off to a good start.
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
That's exactly the phrase that caught my eye.
I wonder - when will the geniuses we have elected to run this country finally realize that their proposed solution to the problem will never work? Or will they continue to live in the state of dementia they curre
Re:Disturbed (Score:2, Insightful)
"There are a lot of similarities with the drug war,"
Or when will these geniuses realize that the same is true about the war on terror? Of course there are even more lives and money wasted on fighting it...
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait, duh. The RIAA and MPAA and their "politican contributions". Ca-ching!
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
If I crash into your mailbox I don't expect to be taken to criminal court, I expect it to be a civil matter.
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
I'd normally give you a pass for misunderstanding me, but since you called me an idiot without first attempting to understand what I was saying I won't forgive you, not like you care.
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
"And I especially don't think the federal government should have an agency benefitting one particular industry."
Each and every one of us is capable of creating, and benefitting from, creative work. The companies that put out a lot of copyrighted material, such as Random House, Microsoft, or Vivendi, have the most interest in the enforcement of copyright law, but copyright protection is one of many laws that can benefit us all.
Re:Disturbed (Score:3, Informative)
You know when they wrote "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness"? They really ment, "Life, Liberty, and Property"
No, that's not true. First, Tom Jefferson was perfectly capable of cribbing 'property' from Locke if he wanted to. He deliberately did not because he didn't believe there was a natural right to property.
And you know,
Thomas Jefferson (was Re:Disturbed) (Score:5, Interesting)
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.
----------------
Sorry folks, this is my canned response on this topic. Because yes, some of us really do not "get it." Thomas Jefferson is the man you are quoting, and you clearly do not understand the kinds of radical limits he placed upon IP rights. And right, the intent of the person quoted is of no consequence...
Re:Disturbed (Score:2)
Why not eliminate the "problem" by making non-profit copying legal? Maybe the activity shouldn't be illegal when the half of the population is doing it and doesn't even consider it wrong. Too bad the term intellectual "property" makes this kind of consideratio
Re:Disturbed (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the fact that half the population is doing it indicates that something is off-balance and needs to be addressed. However, Americans as a whole don't think things through very well and take the logical consequences into consideration. (Witness the current epidemics of pathological obesity and crushing credit-card debt used to purchase non-essential, well, junk.) I don't think the p
Re:You Are An Idiot (Score:2)
And how, exactly, do you propose to keep any sort of reasonable industry afloat if said industry is required to make its products free?
I didn't write anything like that. I was only writing about a revision needed to the current copying monopoly law.
Get the hell over yourselves you content-stealing jackasses. The majority of people would scream bloody murder if the professional content industries crumbled, a
Re:You Are An Idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
If the originals goals of copyright no longer require the creation of media empires, then such empires should crumble from the face of the earth.
The "industry" is ultimately irrelevant.
Not like the war on drugs! (Score:2)
But the drugs business is number 3 in the world after oil and arms, and the "war" on drugs is mainly about protecting what has become a very lucrative taxation system.
Whereas drugs destroy entire cultures, the worst that movie piracy will do is close down the video stores. Cinemas will continue to flourish.
Still, the guys in the USJD love a fight and a new budget.
Free movies, then and now (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from what this says about the drug war, which is another post entirely, this pretty much sums it up. People are always going to find ways to get access to movies without paying for them.
In the bad old days it was one person goes into the theater and props open the emergency exit door so all their friends could sneak in. (And this probably still happens.)
These days one person goes into the theater and copies the movie and distributes it in DVD or VCD format so all their friends can watch it from the comfort of their own couches. Which are much nicer than those cramped movie theater seats, don't you think?
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:4, Insightful)
These days one person goes into the theater and copies the movie and distributes it in DVD or VCD format so all their friends can watch it from the comfort of their own couches. Which are much nicer than those cramped movie theater seats, don't you think?
The difference is that these 'friends' are tens of millions of people online. There only needs to be one guy capturing the movie, and the entire world has access within a matter of hours. That's the difference.
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Interesting)
If movies were simultaneously released on DVD and in theaters, would anyone even go anymore ? I sure wouldn't. Between the cell phones, commercials, children climbing the back of my chair, and the dude smoking in front of me, I think it's a safe bet I'd rather stay home.
And if the movie would be on tv at the same time as on dvd, would you still buy the dvd ?
My point is, there is a reason that movies first appear in theater, and that a dvd is released before it airs on tv.
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't go to movies any more, because we've gone from a point where it takes years for the movie to be released on VHS/DVD (how long was it between the theatrical releas
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Informative)
Ever since movies started costing $9-$10 (so $20 for two tickets)
I hear that same argument on /. all the time. Am I the only one that has a cheap theater nearby? Our local "Cinema Saver" (that is the actual name they operate under) gets all the new releases about two or three weeks after they hit the mainstream theaters. Tickets are $2 a person for daytime/$3 at night. You can buy a large tub of popcorn (with refills) for $2.50. There's also the small town theater in a town about 15 miles from me th
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:2)
What's the nearest / biggest city to you and about how far is it?
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:2)
Sounds like MY home.
Screen Quality (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:2)
The idea that people record the movie using a camcorder in the USA for friends is just naive. Piracy is rampant in asia, where movies are pirated using camcorders and then sold on streetcorners in VCD format.
These VCD's end up on Internet, but internet p
Re:Free movies, then and now (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, many movies are released much later in many Asian countries. However, delaying releases doesn't solve the problem much. Only CAMs will be delayed, and not many people actually download CAMs anyhow.
Screeners and Telecines are a lot more popular.
It doesn't seem to be much of a mystery. (Score:2)
I always liked the ANSI art associated with warez group BBSes back in the 1980s and early 90s.
MMMMmm Renegade BBS all hex edited up and looking perty.
Re:It doesn't seem to be much of a mystery. (Score:2)
OMG! Online groups responsible... (Score:3, Funny)
I still don't get (Score:2)
what is the motivation for the alluded to 'top' level, something about buying a 15k camera for prestige of having an illegal copy first sounds like utter bullshit.
everything in this article about what motivates people to this depth seems wrong, except for MAYBE the high school kid, who does it for access to better sites..
Re:I still don't get (Score:2, Insightful)
All these years the Wired guys were downloading... (Score:4, Funny)
ACs out there whining about moralising (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ACs out there whining about moralising (Score:2)
Re:ACs out there whining about moralising (Score:2)
With the tactics they have been using, i only wish that "piracy" was puting them out of business..
Its not however.. thats just a lie to get support.
I used to care.
Re:ACs out there whining about moralising (Score:2)
Slashdot Warezing own stories (Score:5, Funny)
I had a roommate... (Score:5, Interesting)
(His "crowning" achievement at the time was cracking a particular game in which the code was stored encrypted, then once loaded from disk, decrypted before running - basic self-modifying code. He dug around the assembly code and figured out how to copy the decrypted code back to disk, and disabled the decryption routines, so the disk only contained the real runtime code. This proves if it can be protected, it can be cracked...)
Also, I had a relative (now deceased, but not from anything the RIAA did... *grin*) who was into downloading these cracked films. When we were going thru the estate and cleaning his house, we found around a hundred CDs burned with copies of all kinds of current films. I looked at a couple and was shocked at how bad they were. I don't think he ever watched more than a few - he was a compulsive collector (like his hundreds of Elvis CDs) and just had to have them, not watch them. He never would have spent money on them.
So it seems to me that the danger from these guys is incidental to Hollywood. I can't see that they're really losing that much money from these pirates. It's about bragging rights, not enjoying the movies.
Now, this doesn't condone the practice. I still consider it to be theft (no, this isn't flamebait), since someone ends up losing money at some level whenever someone else doesn't pay appropriately to view a movie or listen to a CD legally. Depriving someone of legally due money is theft, no matter whether it's property that is removed or information that is copied.
But in the end, I suspect that the monetary damages due to this copying are less than the net costs to Hollywood from aggravated and disenfranchised consumers.
Re:I had a roommate... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I had a roommate... (Score:2)
Nothing was 'lost'..
Just curious.
But dont worry, i wont get into the details of how theft is defined and that no one was deprived of ownership.. etc etc..
Re:I had a roommate... (Score:2)
"stole.. ".. Try reading the damned dictionary sometime. Depending on the situation it *might* be copyright infringement, but its not *theft*. There is a difference, regardless of what the Industries are trying to portray..
Re:I had a roommate... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it is not theft. Theft is when one stoles something from an other, thus depriving him from his property. It was explained on
The phrase 'legally due money' can only be applied to contracts. If you do your work based on a contract then you are entitled to your 'legally due money'. However, if you are not paid that is also not theft. That is a breach of contract and you can sue the other party.
personal use (Score:2)
if an individual watches more than one "copied for personal use" movie; listens to more than one "copied for personal use" CD; etc, then the impact to any one particular artist/studio/prouducer, etc... is reduced even further. If an individual downloads something but never listens to it or watches it, as is a fairly common practice, or deletes without ever watc
What a load of bullshit in the article! (Score:5, Informative)
Not bullshit. Errors. (Score:4, Insightful)
Example: Frankly I don't believe the "broken down as gibberish" stuff... if it meant breaking it down as BASE64 posts on usenet
I've done a few reencoding of *unlicensed* (read as: legal) anime episodes (fansubs), just to test the capabilities of Divx and xvid (we saw a
So yes, they're organized. Yes, they meet in private chat sessions. Yes, they do rip dvd's.
Another fact: Pirated DVD's are *obviously* cheaper than original DVD's (otherwise people wouldn't buy them). So I don't think one of these rippers would buy an original - unless it's a title they *love*, and want to immortalize themselves by ripping it and distributing it.
So is the article a "load of bullshit"? I don't think so. Irrelevant? Probably, we all (or at least those of us old enough to have used irc at a time) know such warez invite-only channels do exist.
And yes, I know Wired isn't "news for know-it-all uber-geeks who already know how things are done". It's a good article for common people. Let's not forget that.
why are subject lines needed on existing threads (Score:4, Interesting)
explanations (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
Private Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, which is a precursor to the modern instant messaging software, or Usenet news groups that function like bulletin boards.
I still think of instant messaging software as a dumbed down version of IRC and of webbased bulletin boards as poorly implemented frontends for usenet.
I must be getting old ...
Re:explanations (Score:2, Funny)
You're not getting THAT old, sonny.
Re:explanations (Score:3, Informative)
I like to think I was there for the tail-end of the IRC glory days, and as cool as IRC was, today's IM software has a lot going for it. I haven't seen opwars on them. No problems with netsplits and nick collisions. No arms race while every server sets their clock back further and further in order to 'win' the above. No crapfloods. None of that "Hur. Hur. Our last OP just lost link -- everyone get out of the room so we can get OPs b
Look at the numbers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the numbers:
http://us.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegro
Keep in mind these number are just for domestic lease - only in the United States and do not reflect global sales or rentals.
#1 is Titanic - $600,799,824 in domestic sales. Breath taking - now lets say 1000 people download the movie and 'stole' $8 ea. From the studio... the studio 'lost' $8000... that's
Now lets say the article is wrong and these groups are rampant and it's easy to get ahold of these pirated movies and 100,000 people download them (I'm being very generous here)... so now the studio looses $800,000... that's still
Granted Titanic was the #1 movie - look at #100 on the list - you can do the math at home... the number are still unreal...
To further my point in 1999 Michael Eisner was paid $589 MILLION dollars for his annual salary. If the poor set designer is worried about loosing his/her job to internet privacy, maybe they should stop looking online and start looking at the real pirate.
This is nothing more than greed - who is stealing from who here?
Don't even get me started on the RIAA...
Re:Look at the numbers... (Score:2)
You aren't being generous by presenting 100,000 people downloading a movie. You're being naive.
Re:Look at the numbers... (Score:2)
Would you mind if I stole $300 from you? That's probably about the same percent of your salary.
Comments from a mexican (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole bulk of piracy done in here is not DVD bootlegs, or even ripped online stuff. It's cheap VCD's recoded versions of the movies, available for $5. Some are even recorded at the theaters (you can see the shadows of people walking).
Frankly, how many people download ripped & divx-encoded versions of a movie, if they can just purchase the thing (either legally or illegally) and put it on their DVD or VCD player? (cheap chinese VCD players are sold at local markets, too - and I DONT mean supermarkets, but common cheap markets with low-profile merchants).
Taking into account that nerds who spent hours in front of the monitor, are a minority of the global population, the MPAA shouldn't worry about online distribution of the movies. The "complete DVD ISO" downloads usually take _HOURS_ to download. Who will download 4.5 or even 8 gigs of a ripped DVD? come on! IMHO it's much more convenient to go to the store and purchase the thing. I can purchase Shrek 2 at my local walmart for $21.95, and a VCD rip for $5.00 with the merchants near the subway.
(A very different thing is legally purchasing anime episodes with prohibitive prices, specially if you don't live in the US).
Maybe what the MPAA fears is that the next generation of DVD players will be DivX enabled. But I bet it won't be until 5 years when these babies get mass marketed, and only THEN common people will start downloading divx rips of their favorite movies.
So, if purchasing the actual DVD from a local retailer (or a copy from a black market merchant) is much easier than movie piracy, what the heck are the MPAA complaining about? Are online groups REALLY the ones they should be going after?
Now *THAT* (blaming income loss on online piracy) is what I call a "load of bullshit".
cam rip vs. buy a DVD (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look at the numbers... (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is nothing more than greed - who is stealing from who here?"
I find it interesting when advocates of getting movies or otherwise unauthorized material via P2P state that somebody else's greed is the root cause.
You have some interesting observations but I'm not sure what your overall point is. Is it that people and companies who make more than a certain amount of money shouldn't be worried so much about losses?
Re:Look at the numbers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Our point is that we are under no responsibility to support movie companies. They are not our kids, they are not our parents, they are not war veterans. They are corporations and deserve neither our love, nor our pity.
The movies are still going to be made, because the mo
Re:Look at the numbers... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the RIAA really justified by suing some student for $20k b/c he has a few 'illegal' MP3's? The MPAA and the RIAA are making examples out of people and the punishment hardly fits the crime.
Why can I record a song off the radio but not download one? I know, I know - it's against the law... but show me any record executive or musician who NEVER taped a song as a kid...
For that matter when I get a song or a scene from a
Stuck in My Head and Remedies (Score:2)
*power drill whirring* I'm afraid it's going to have to come out. All of it.
drugs != files (Score:2, Insightful)
Except illegal drug distribution is linear, file sharing is exponential. Big difference.
Re:drugs != files (Score:2)
Except illegal drug distribution is linear, file sharing is exponential. Big difference.
The distribution of drugs for money is the problem whereas in file sharing it's the distribution of files for no money that is the problem.
Re:drugs != files (Score:2)
Not sure, but I think it goes something like:
copies = 2^(t*Mbps)
so if Mbps = 1
then after 1 second you have 2 copies, after 2 seconds 4 copies, 3 seconds 8 copies
If it takes 1 hour to distribute a 700M movies via P2P you could distribute something like 10 million copies in 24 hours. Even faster with BitTorrent.
Civil or criminal ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copying files may be legal sometimes; maybe the guy has permission ,maybe the file represents something more than 80 years old, maybe it's some other kind of 'fair use', maybe it's a file produced by the US Government, etc. Matter of opinion, for a judge to check every time. It is a civil problem; I don't want my tax dollars used to stop it, and I don't want my prisons filled up by someone on the wrong side of this law.
Copying files and then taking money off someone under the false pretence that there is permission is a crime, though, becuase of the 'money' side, and also if intimidation happens along the way. Also might become a tax crime later, if the 'money' is not declared.
Use my tax dollars to stop the money-changing-hands fraud, the intimidation-if-it-happens, and the tax-evasion-if-it-happens.
Gangs? IRC a precursor to USENET? ROFLMAO! (Score:2, Interesting)
Referring to file traders as "gangs" and thereby evoking the aversion to violence in one's own neighborhood, is unwarrantedly hysterical when applied to people using computers and watching movies.
The sad part is, Hollywood's surrogates such as this article's author will likely succeed in creating this kind of unwarranted hysteria.
Re:Gangs? IRC a precursor to USENET? ROFLMAO! (Score:2)
The BitTorrent effect (Score:5, Interesting)
"Without this duplication and distribution structure providing content, the P2P networks would run dry. (BitTorrent, a faster and more efficient type of P2P file-sharing, is an exception. But at present there are far fewer BitTorrent users.)"
Huh? When was this article written? In Jan 2005, when this article was posted, they don't consider BitTorrent a major P2P player?
Re:The BitTorrent effect (Score:2)
They must, since the magazine article just before the 'dark internet' one is all BT: The BitTorrent Effect [wired.com]
Warez Scene != Drug War (Score:4, Informative)
"There are a lot of similarities with the drug war," said David Israelite, chairman of the U.S. Justice Department's Intellectual Property Task Force. "You never really are going to eliminate the problem, but what you hope to do is stop its growth." I'm not sure wheather to laugh or cry. Remember kids, dont copy that floppy.
BEWARE (Score:2)
There's always been copying -- we did it too. (Score:4, Insightful)
People who could afford to buy new did so to avoid the hassle, and they do now too. Most grown ups with jobs and other responisbilities don't have the time or inclination to fuck around on Kazaa. It's easier and cheaper to just buy or rent a DVD. Also notice how the $20 CDs sit for months, while the ones in the $7 rack sell like crazy. The problem with first-run music is that it's too aggressively priced.
Copying is mostly done by people who were never going to be customers in the first place, because they don't have the money. But copying reinforces their interest as fans, which the media corps will profit from eventually. A pirated CD today leads to a future concert ticket sale, etc. Even the media corps' own marketing people know this.
Movie Copying (Score:3, Interesting)
Online piracy?
Peer to Peer file sharing networks?
:-)
None of these.
It was a first generation copy from a DVD master at an official movie distributor. Made by a permanent employee, with no payments, etc. I am told he/she was just "doing a favour". Lord knows how many copies were made! We just borrowed the disk, and gave it back.
If Hollywood cannot get their own houses in order, then I really do not see how they can reasonably point the finger at anyone else. Personally, I would not stop at Hollywood, but would include the RIAA also.
For what it is worth, I will now buy a copy (when it is officialy released), since the kids (and I) thought it was so good
Why not create a new topic? (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect that this term right is being used/misused very loosly, see Websters' definition:
" something to which one has a just claim: as a : the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled b (1) : the interest that one has in a piece of "
I don't see how walking into a movie theatre, paying the money to view the movie, recording the movie, and distributing it to all who want to participate in thievery to download it constitute any type of right. Right?
"something to which one has a just claim"
Please explain how anyone other than the people directly involved in the production of a movie apply to the above? Is it because they paid the $8-$10 to see the movie?
I tell you what, if I spent $50M to make a movie and some schmuck with a $500 CamCorder and a broadband Internet connection was caught up in a frenzy of unauthorized movie distribution with a group of his cyber-buddies, I would exercise every power I could to take that group down. Let's face it, computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds, bandwidth is on the upswing as well, eventually, if this was left around and ignored, it could become a problem.
" the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled "
there are way too many people with the sick beleif of entitilement, again, if you paid the price to produce the film in some way, shape or form and you have an agreement with the production company, I would say that their may be some sort of entitlement, and if you are not getting your share, then I suggest you open up the yellow pages because their are piles of lawyers out there that will get the payment you are entitled to.
"the interest that one has in a piece of"
You more than likely did not contribute anything in the line of creativty or monies, you have no intrest therefore you are again, not entitled
"ok, ok, but this should be a matter if civil leagality, not for the government to step in..."
I would suspect then that we would not be talking about rights rather than some breach of contract, or negligence.
just pay the money, if you don't like the movie, then shrug it off, no one owes you anything
Please though, don't hand me the line that any of this is some type of right.
You are misunderstanding the point.. (Score:5, Informative)
A pair of observations. (Score:2)
Oh, by the way. You're planning to discredit a Wired Article by signing as "anonymous coward"? Yeah, right.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is some homework for you: Produce a popular new multi million dollar feature film. Allow free copying from day 1. Report back to Slashdot on how you are recovering your production cost.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
Isn't it like that today? None of my friends even care about the copyrights in movies, they leech, share and watch all the time. Despite of that movies still get people to the theaters and people buy DVDs.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
Capitalism doesn't work for me, good friend, so I don't work for capitalism.
Note: Socialism and Communism, also, do not work for me.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2002, I watched a movie nearly every week. They were good for a while, then I noticed that more and more movies really sucked.
In 2003, I tried to watch a movie nearly every week. I was disappointed nearly every week.
In 2004, I watched about three movies in the theater.
The quality of movies took a sudden nosedive in mid-2002 and has never recovered. IMHO, the reason that piracy of movies online hasn't taken off at the same level that it did for movies is that by the time the bandwidth became available to make it practical, there were so few movies worth pirating that it wasn't worth it.
And the lack of originality in movies is starting to become apparent. Hollywood has run out of good movie ideas at this point. The movie I saw last night on the airplane was... well, the same basic idea, the same primary plot twist as another movie I had seen the night before, except that the other movie was from 2002 or so and was actually a good movie. The newer movie was a blatant rip-off in a different setting. Instead of being funny, it was mostly dull. I laughed about four times the entire movie. Thankfully, the flight was three hours late, so they gave us the movie free. I would have been seriously pissed off if I had paid money to see that piece of junk. (Of course, I was seriously pissed off for other rather obvious reasons, but that's another story.)
In any case, to the MPAA, stop trying to blame the public for your ineptitude. It's only going to get worse. The only way to compete with "free" is "good", and if you don't figure that out, your industry is going to collapse. Inept corporations should die, though, so this is a good thing. They will eventually be replaced by corporations that actually understand the needs and desires of the consumer, and all will be well.
Here's hoping the airline industry is similarly permitted to go bankrupt and die. Cheers.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
How are they supposed to recover production costs? They can't. The world is changing.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
Then there will be no commercial production anywhere in the world. You cannot "share" what does not exist.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:2)
Art has always been made, regardless of production costs. It will continue to be made until the day the human race becomes extinct. It is not guaranteed a profit.
Oddly enough, you speak as if art cannot exist without monetary compensation for the artist. It seems most (if not all) artists do not work for money, but simply to make art. Money is a fringe benefit that does not figure into the equation.
and just who is being subsidized here? (Score:2)
sounds to me like those who pay for their tickets, buy the DVDs, are being bled by the leeches who get their movies free.
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:3, Insightful)
If a law isn't performing its intended function of providing for the general good of society, but a minority has managed to keep it on the books & enforced for their own personal enrichment, then what should be thrown out first - the rights of the society, or the stupid law?
I'm making my argument in the context of REAL capitalis
Re:Please, no moralising (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny. What kind of hell would