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Hollywood's Foundations Rest on Piracy 330

Posted by michael from the duh dept.
enrico_suave writes "Wired Magazine had an interesting perspective on how Hollywood has 'pirate' roots in its history, as well as radio, cable TV, and the music industry. Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"
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Hollywood's Foundations Rest on Piracy More

Hollywood's Foundations Rest on Piracy

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  • Every new distribution medium has had this (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where do you think the term copy-right came from anyway?

    • actually, copyrights came from censorship... (Score:5, Informative)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @06:17PM (#8537016)
      Prior to the wide spread deployment of the printing press, there was quite a bit of value in hardcopy itself (hard to make), so there wasn't much business in pirate copying (although, there was some form of copyright registration in early chinese history after the development of paper, it wasn't widely used).

      The widespread availiablity of the printing press in 15th century europe essentially made hardcopy "cheap" and widely available. It also threatened the government's earlier ability to censor and control information. At the same time, the printers started to form local guilds to protect themselves from competition (basically they would agree distribute the titles among the member printers so they wouldn't be in direct competition with other guild members).

      This turned out to be a fortuitious situation for the both parties. The government decided to take advantage of this situation to grant exclusive rights to print a title to a specific printing guild (so they didn't have to compete with other guilds) and if they didn't give a right to print, you couldn't print it (hence copy-right). This basically allowed the royalty to censor titles by giving the rights to a guild that agreed not to print it in exchange for the "juicy" exclusive rights to print another hot title (increasing the printer's profits since they didn't have to compete with other printers). It also gave the government a good single point to collect taxes. Sort of a quid-pro-quo arangement.

      Notice that the original author had no say in the original "copy-right" scheme. It was basically the government desire for censorship leading the government to grant specific businesses monopoly powers to achieve their goals. The authors were basically at the whim of the printing guilds and government for payment (usually a statutory fixed fee per book). Because of the copyright monopoly, the customers ended up paying a higher price, none of which went to the author.

      It was only later (around the time of the American Revolution), that this system really started to crumble. With increasing trade, the printing monopolies found that they couldn't keep out the "pirate" copies of books from other countries (sometimes copies even authorized by other governments as favors to local printing monopolies) and with increasing communication, governments realized censorship by copyright was a losing cause. About this time the idea that the author was the natural owner of the copyright (instead of the government) started to take hold and the modern form of copyright came about...

      One wonders what system would have evolved had governments not used the then fledgling printing guilds to try to enforce monopolies. Printing monopolies may never have evolved. Authors may have even gotten less than their statutory "fees" or even work for free. Who knows it might have evolved to be like the opensource stuff? ;^)

  • Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lofoforabr ( 751004 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:07PM (#8533706)
    To some extent, piracy helps business. Do you think, for example, that MS would be where it is now was it not for piracy? Piracy is what brought Windows to +90% of all PCs.

    • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:14PM (#8533775)
      Piracy helped in that instance. Do you really think that piracy of movies is going to help the MPAA? A good majority of movies aren't seen more than once. You don't watch the same movie for 12+ hours a day every day...

      So if they are pirated and the possibility of revenue is lost the MPAA can't get that back from that particular movie at a later date by enforcing piracy controls...

      It's not the same.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by the_duke_of_hazzard ( 603473 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:21PM (#8533858)
        Absolutely. It's not the same. The article is a little tendentious too. I suspect from the vague wording that California had different laws (the article suggests that law enforcers could not get out there, which is simply ludicrous) to the rest of the US. In which case, they were within the law, which P2P in the US users are plainly not.

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Manax ( 41161 ) * <[gro.xanam] [ta] [todhsals-letreot]> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:25PM (#8533902) Homepage
          It was called the "Wild West" for a reason. There were periods of time where it was difficult and/or dangerous and time-consuming to get from the East coast to the West coast. This isn't talking about 10 years ago...

          • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Insightful)

            by pilgrim23 ( 716938 )
            Indeed! People forget that many of the Silent Movies Western Stars such as Tom Mix came to Hollywood straight off the prairie. This was a time when Pat Garrett (of Billy the Kid Fame), Bat Masterson, and many other Wild West "names" were still alive and were being featured in the "penny dreadfuls" as the pulp novels of that day were called. Hollywood was a pure rip-off of the Edison studios in New York. The California politicans, knowing a good thing when it shows up in their pocket (See how times change

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Draknor ( 745036 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:30PM (#8533946) Homepage
          How could California have different laws? We're talking about federal law here - Edison had patents on his invention and had a trust company to enforce it on the east coast. So the pirates moved to California (still under federal jurisdiction, but thousands of miles away from Edison) to operate, and by the time the "law" got there, the 17 year life on the patent had expired. Given that technology has come so far since them, it seems crazy to think such a thing would have worked, but communications was a little slower back then.

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          which P2P in the US users are plainly not ... when they use P2P to download copyrighted materials. There's nothing intrinsically illegal about using P2P.

          • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Insightful)

            by holizz ( 737615 )
            There's nothing intrinsically illegal about copying copyrighted works. It's only 99.9% of the time when you don't have a license to do so (GPL, BSD, you know). What? You think half of Slashdot's audience runs on public domain software?

            More on-topic: In my case piracy is often best way to find out whether I want to buy somebody's music. For example I illegally downloaded one song a while ago and yesterday I bought the album. I would have never heard the song if I didn't see it on P2P and think `Echobelly, I

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:05PM (#8535250) Journal
          the article suggests that law enforcers could not get out there, which is simply ludicrous
          No it isn't. This was the 1910s and 1920s. Much of the West was still sparsely developed, and sending out a phalanx of federal marshals to enforce copyright and patent law was not the government's highest priority, nor as trivially easy as it is today -- there was no cheap commercial air travel nor cheap transcontinental communication.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:51PM (#8534176)
        Forget the whole piracy angle for a second: nobody except the most viruent free loading scum is doing this because of the money, given that a DVD rents for about three or four bucks, and, as you point out, a good majority of movies aren't seen more than once. People with the wherewithal (fast computer, broadband, etc) to download 700+ megabytes have got four bucks to spend on their saturday night entertainment.

        It's about convenience: selecting a movie from the comfort of your own home and not having to worry about returning it afterwards. Give people a legal way to do this that fits into their price-sensitivity zone and they will eat out of your hand (DVD rental via mail is a good step, but you need to plan in advance, so points off). The irony is that once the framework to do this is in place, all this talk of piracy will just disappear, brushed under the carpet and replaced with adds for whatever solution gains approval.

        The MPAA will do just fine in the digital future. Blockbuster, on the other hand...

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Informative)

          by Ironica ( 124657 )
          (DVD rental via mail is a good step, but you need to plan in advance, so points off).

          That's what I thought too, but then my husband subscribed to Netflix, and it turns out we don't have to plan anything. He spent a bit of time setting up our queue, and now movies we want to see just automatically arrive, and sit next to our DVD player until we feel like watching them. We didn't *plan* to watch "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" last night, but since it was there, we did. It would have been a lot more
      • Piracy can help in some situations, hinder in others. If somebody catches a movie on DVD that he/she loves, there's a change that he/she will impulse-buy the DVD... especially if it comes out on sale somewhere.

        Personally though, I think that the MPAA could make a killing but setting up P2P networks with partial movies... for the ones that don't suck, you're going to have to either rent, buy, or hit the theatre to see the rest (assuming that there aren't other full P2P versions out).

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Funny)

        by StrongAxe ( 713301 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @03:15PM (#8534468)
        You don't watch the same movie for 12+ hours a day every day...

        You obviously don't have young children.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by WorkEmail ( 707052 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @03:22PM (#8534562)
        I like the commercials that show all of the guys who build the sets and the props, and paint and saw, and then Ben Afleck and Steven Speilberg come on the screen telling me how bad it is to pirate movies, and how it hurts those working people...and I think...how likely is it that this scenario will happen. (studio executive talking to construction worker on set) "Hey Bob, we busted some kid in North Dakota making copies of the Hulk DVD, so there's a little something extra in your check this week." lmao.

    • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gid13 ( 620803 )
      True. However, when it comes to past new forms of media (VCRs, photocopiers, etc), there's always been the advantage to the copyright owner that the copies degrade the quality. I think it could be a potentially critical difference with digital copying that it doesn't degrade, especially when more of the population gets broadband net access.

      In the interests of full disclosure, however, I am still rabidly anti-IP law, pro p2p, and generally believe that owning an idea is a bad concept.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 )
        Not really. Any rip of a movie is going to be lower quality than the original. Especially if it's a cam of a new movie, that is utter shit quality.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Informative)

        by bfree ( 113420 )

        I'll admit I've never quite figured out just how films are now finally put toghether. Is the original analog film actual used to create the final cut (either physically or be analog copying) or is the entire process digitised (forgetting the people who to me are idiots that decide to "film" in digital)? Assuming that only the digitally generated content is actually going to be digitised then no digital format can ever have the quality of the analog film! Project a dvd onto your wall and look at it, th

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by IncohereD ( 513627 ) <<gro.eeei> <ta> <doelcamm>> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:25PM (#8536390) Homepage
          I believe the editing is usually done with digital scans now, and then the actual analog film is put together when they know what bits they want to use.

          It's worth nothing that when the story about the digital vs. analog Episode II screenings came up last year on slashdot, there was a very different story. I wish I had the link.

          Basically they showed the two pictures side by side. The one picture shook a little at the beginning, and everyone was like "ahh, that's analog". And most of them said it looked better.

          Turns out someone just bumped the digital projector. And that the digital projection looked better, not least of which because it didn't darken towards the edges, like analog projection.

          Also digital cameras (in the 20 megapixel range) are now officially surpassing analog 35 mm quality. Ask a photo geek. They'll tell you the same thing.

          Analog has resolution problems too. It's not like it's vector based or something. It's a chemical processed with resolution limits. Take a look at your average newspaper photo...it's analog, but low-res.

        • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MrResistor ( 120588 )
          No matter what resolution you rise to, you will always be short of analog.

          Wrong! Digital has already surpassed film.

          One of the products I support is a Telecine, which converts film to video. When our high end telecine went to "2k" (2k horizontal lines of resolution, or 3096x2048) telecine operators were complaining that the video output looked grainy. That's because the resolution was high enough that they were actually seeing the grain of the film. Our current high end does 2k in realtime (30fps) and 4k

    • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@gmail.TWAINcom minus author> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:16PM (#8533806) Journal
      It seems that everyone changes sides on the "piracy" debate depending on what's better for them personally. When the US was founded, all "IP" was rigidly controlled by Europeans, so the US had fairly loose patent and copyright laws, and it was common for US publishers to "pirate" European authors. And the companies that are now the media giants all got their starts retelling existing stories (e.g. Disney's retellings of every fable ever). Now that the US has lots of "IP" we believe in strong IP laws, completely contrary to those laid out when the country was founded, and the media companies advocate laws that would have made it impossible for them to have gotten their start.

      So when people say that they believe in "strong IP protection" I take it with a huge grain of salt, and append the phrase "because that makes me money." Not that making money is bad, but perhaps too cynically, I believe that if the same person who is attacking piracy in the US was in business in China instead, they'd be advocating piracy just as strongly.

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Informative)

        by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:34PM (#8533983) Homepage
        It seems that everyone changes sides on the "piracy" debate depending on what's better for them personally. When the US was founded, all "IP" was rigidly controlled by Europeans, so the US had fairly loose patent and copyright laws, and it was common for US publishers to "pirate" European authors.
        To view some of the reasoning behind this attitude, you can look at Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson [virginia.edu] in 1813:
        "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 the relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is give 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 mine. 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 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."
    • Why? Couldn't other OS's of the time be pirated? UNIX was copy protected?

      • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jim_Maryland ( 718224 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:38PM (#8534009)

        The hardware required to support UNIX wasn't cheaply available until competition from MS drove prices down. Sure, you could copy a Solaris, AIX, etc... CD (or 8mm tape) but what would you do with it? UNIX vendors controlled the hardware and wrote their OS's to that hardware. MS on the other hand wrote to a larger hardware base (that was much cheaper).

    • Re:Piracy helps. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jamshid42 ( 218149 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:54PM (#8534206) Homepage
      I think that a lot of this "piracy" business that the MPAA and RIAA is a load of crap. For example, one of the loudest voices against Napster (before the became "legit") was Metallica. In one of the tape inserts for one of their albums (I forget which one), they claim outright that they used to trade tapes back and forth and copy them all the time before they made it big. So, it is OK when they commited piracy, but it isn't now when they are a target of it?

      I'm glad their last album sucked....

  • Everything is stolen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:08PM (#8533719)
    Why, the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached.
  • at the beginning humans would fight for food. anything was game. i guess the same was with the movie industry at that time... ah... what the heck...

  • Piracy? I can take care of it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:10PM (#8533742)
    I'll need three ships and fifty stout men. We'll sail around the Horn
    and return with spices and silks, the likes of which, ye have never seen!

  • Also interesting how Hollywood loves old stories (Score:5, Interesting)

    by unassimilatible ( 225662 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:12PM (#8533760) Journal
    whose copyright has run out, like Aladdin.

    Don't have to pay for the stories if no longer copyrighted.

    • Re:Also interesting how Hollywood loves old storie (Score:4, Informative)

      by geoffspear ( 692508 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:50PM (#8534164) Homepage
      The copyright for the Arabian Nights did not "run out", as the stories were written long before copyright existed.
      • The copyright for the Arabian Nights did not "run out", as the stories were written long before copyright existed.

        Ok, but how about... The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Too old?
        Cinderella? Too old?
        Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Too old?
        The Little Mermaid? Too old?
        Beauty and the Beast? Too old?
        Pocahontas? Too old?

        I could go on, but I think you get my point. I just relish the irony that Disney can't fathom the thought of someone else using their IP to possibly make a buck...

    • Disney in particular. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @03:32PM (#8534710) Homepage
      Much of Disney's works were based on existing stories that never had, or no longer fell under copyright laws.

      Here's a few that I can think of off the top of my head --
      • Cinderella
      • Sleeping Beauty
      • Beauty and the Beast
      • Alladin
      • Snow White
      • Tarzan
      • Alice in Wonderland
      • 20000 Leagues under the Sea
      That doesn't include derivitive works, such as Anastasia, Swiss Family Robinson or The Jungle Book, or 'historical' work, such as Pocahantus or Davy Crockett.

      However, it's my understand that they're the ones who keep lobbying for the extension of copyright length, and it seems to get extended right when Mickey's almost in the public domain.

      That's not to say that there are other companies out there who don't base their movies off of other people's content whom they haven't compensated for doing so, but that Disney in particular seems interested in preserving the status quo, and making sure that other people can't make a profit off of the work they've done, even though that's how they made it in the first place. (Alice came before Mickey)

  • Quandry... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DarkBlackFox ( 643814 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:13PM (#8533770)
    From the article:

    But because patents granted their holders a truly "limited" monopoly of just 17 years (at that time), the patents had expired by the time enough federal marshals appeared. A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property.

    In the words of the article, is there a distinction between Copyright and Patent? I was under the impression patents were for ideas of inventions, and copyrights a wann-be patent for creative works. In any case, it's interesting in a sad way how the movie industry took off initially by infringing on Edison's patent, then grew more when the patent expired after a reasonable period of 17 years. Yet in the past couple of decades, the same people who made their fortune because a patent expired are trying to extend copyrights for generations!

    • Re:Quandry... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wings ( 27310 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:43PM (#8534085) Homepage
      ...the same people who made their fortune because a patent expired are trying to extend copyrights for generations!

      Of course! They're closing the 'loophole' to prevent anyone else from entering the market and competing!.
      Using monopoly power to maintain the monopoly.

  • This isn't new. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by andy666 ( 666062 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:14PM (#8533779)
    There was a tradition in the radio business of the 1930's of taking shows of other stations far away and broadcasting them as your own.
    • I live in FL, around Orlando to be exact. Been listening to one drive time radio program for 12 years.

      In 2000, I spent 8 weeks or so working for Sprint in KC. Picked up a radio program that had one of the contests that was a direct rip off of the one I listened to for 12 years. How do I know it was a rip off? One morning the DJ in KC area said, "We got the idea for this when we heard it on a radio staion during our trip to Disney World" (i.e. the station I listen to).

  • Very intersting viewpoint (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:15PM (#8533790)

    So, P2P networks, according to this, will cause another round of copyright law to be written and P2P networks will have to pay some set fee as dictated by congress for those "publishing" works. That seems to be the pattern over time for content broadcasting.

    No wonder the RIAA wants to prosecute under existing laws, the pattern of new copyright law for disruptive technologies appears to favor the new technologies over the existing system. This would mean the end for the RIAA

    So, someone, somewhere (gee, didn't this already occur in Russia) should set up a "for pay" P2P network with some nominal fee, and start paying to the RIAA. Send them checks. Similar to the broadcast license now charged for any restaurant etc to replay music publicly. The RIAA will surely come down on them, but if the population is large enough, new copyright laws will be written, and viola - effectively no more RIAA.

    • Re:Very intersting viewpoint (Score:5, Interesting)

      by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:22PM (#8533873) Homepage
      "So, P2P networks, according to this, will cause another round of copyright law to be written and P2P networks will have to pay some set fee as dictated by congress for those "publishing" works. That seems to be the pattern over time for content broadcasting."

      That's essentially what EFF et. al. are pushing for, but nobody ever pays enough attention to the details of how it would be implemented.

      The main questions are where does the money come from, how do you decide to split it up, and who's in power.

      For all the RIAA hatered, the details of these hypothetical laws can get downright scary if you think about them from a netural space.

      It's weird that EFF wants to create some quasi-governmental organization to track what people listen to. Remember Carnivore?

    • Music IS free now. the RIAA get payed off from the taxes from CDRs and 'Internet Tax' thats now in i think 20 US states. Its the whole reason its there... to "compensate" the "artists". Download away! you already payed for it when you bought the CDR 50-pack

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:15PM (#8533793)
    Only one example in the article is truly piracy, and that is the movie industry violating existing patents on recording technology.

    The other two involve ambiguities in the law.

    Oh but wait, that would require reading the article.

  • Piracy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by night_flyer ( 453866 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:17PM (#8533814) Homepage
    as the term for copyright theft was coined a long time ago...
    1930s Newspaper advertisement [loc.gov]

  • The Cable Industry? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kevx45 ( 654613 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:19PM (#8533843) Homepage Journal
    "Cable TV, too: When entrepreneurs first started installing cable in 1948, most refused to pay the networks for the content that they hijacked and delivered to their customers - even though they were basically selling access to otherwise free television broadcasts. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters' content, but more egregiously than anything Napster ever did - Napster never charged for the content it enabled others to give away."

    I know this a bit offtopic, but does anyone know a good site that could sort of present the whole history of the cable industry. I thought it didn't start up until the 1970's, but maybe I'm wrong. Have been before, will be again.

    Thanks In Advance...
    Kev

  • Hollywood's Criminal Past (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:20PM (#8533855) Homepage Journal
    There's this pair of Brit film historians, David Gill and Kenneth Brownlow, who have done a lot of first-rate documentaries. One of which is a history of the early days of Hollywood [amazon.com]. Intriguing fact: the U.S. film industry started out in New Jersey, before moving to Southern California (better natural lighting, lots of cheap locations). Competition between production companies was fierce, even to the point of physical violence. Producers soon hooked up with the local Mafia, who were happy to provide thugs for both defensive and offensive purposes. These guys also made ideal extras for, yes, crime movies.

    Free association time: my favorite crime movie is The Long Good Friday [amazon.com]. Which also employed real gangsters as extras. One of whom saw Bob Hoskins (playing the crime lord) yelling at a subordinate. He took Hoskins aside, and told him, "You don't need to yell. He knows who you are."

  • Disney Pirates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MojoRilla ( 591502 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:21PM (#8533856)
    Disney is also a major pirate (besides Pirates of the Carribean). It is ironic that Disney lobbied to have the copyright lengths lengthened. Disney themselves made a mint by plundering the public domain (Snow White, Pinnochio, etc).

    • What's wrong with that? Nothing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:44PM (#8534097)
      Disney themselves made a mint by plundering the public domain (Snow White, Pinnochio, etc).

      What's wrong with that? Nothing. It's public domain, and it is ripe for the plundering. Since these things are public domain, there is nothing to stop anyone from cashing in either (see the knock-off "Pocahontas" videos that others made came out in the wake of that Disney movie). I just see nothing wrong with this.

      What is more worrisome is when Disney plunders other's non-public properties, like when "The Lion King" ripped off the "Kimba the White Lion" show.

      • Re:What's wrong with that? Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:56PM (#8534230) Homepage
        > What's wrong with that?

        What's "wrong" with it is that they are willing to use the public domain to further their interests, but are not willing to release their productions into the public domain, and in fact lobby heavily for legislation that will allow them to keep it from happening.

        It's a double standard. They should be willing to play by the same rules that made them the success they are today.

        • It's a double standard. They should be willing to play by the same rules that made them the success they are today.

          They should also be willing to pay taxes since they are getting the US government to implement and enforce laws for them.

          Perhaps the IRS should get all rights to films like "Forest Gump" which made a loss for tax purposes, but sold a lot of tickets, and didn't cost anywhere near as much as that to make. The writer made the mistake of contracting for a share of the profits, and the profit came

      • Re:What's wrong with that? Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by curunir ( 98273 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:59PM (#8534274) Homepage Journal
        What's wrong with that?

        Except that it's hypocritical for them to lobby for retro-active copyright extensions so that they content doesn't become public domain when so much of their content wouldn't have been possible under they laws they lobby for.

        If, for example, they were offering to send a fat check to Rudyard Kipling's descendants as an acknowledgement that the copyright laws at the time weren't sufficient and they feel that, as the copyright owner for "The Jungle Book", he should have been compensated in some fashion for his work, things would be different. But given their past history of making extensive use of the public domain, their stubborness when it comes to contributing to the public domain becomes all the more odious.

      • What's wrong with that? Nothing. It's public domain, and it is ripe for the plundering.

        I don't think that the problem is that Disney is doing it; the problem is that they want to reap the benefits of a public domain while not ever having to contribute to it. The best example is Disney's The Jungle Book, based on a book whose copyright had expired a mere eleven years earlier. If Kipling (and his heirs) had enjoyed the copyright that Disney is demanding now, Disney would have had to wait 39 more years to

    • Not really - the stories are loosely adapted, but nothing alike - both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are great examples. I don't know about Pinnochio because I never read the book.

      Synopsis of Snow White (Grimm version)
      Snow White's mom (not a witch) is jealous that she's not the most beautiful and hires a huntsman to knife her to death and bring Snow-White's lungs and liver to her so that she can eat them. After that, she repeatedly tries to kill Snow-White and sorta succeeds with a poisoned apple. Some

  • Monopoly Mouse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:21PM (#8533862) Homepage Journal
    Disney, the core of "Hollywood", is the greatest IP monopolist [findlaw.com] running amok in our marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, they have built their empire on appropriating public domain "improperty" [lessig.org]. Somebody build a better mousetrap!
  • No, seriously... 4 years back! [linuxtoday.com]

    Dang... wish I'd saved the whole thing though; the original osopinion.com website had long since morphed into something else. Maybe I oughta chuff up a resume' and call Wired? Nah.

  • To defeat them we must focus on basic rights (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:23PM (#8533879) Homepage
    For a while I have been arguing that the debate should not be framed in the "innovator versus freeloader" view but in a "constitutional rights and individual property rights versus expansive intellectual property" view.

    Most Americans do not accept the idea that you have a right to give away a copy of a song to anyone who wants it. While we hear constantly about those numbers that "40% of internet users said they saw nothing wrong with pirating music" we cannot go by that. Americans are just like any other people; when we think we can get away with something that doesn't seem to directly hurt someone we do it. Downloading bootlegs doesn't seem to hurt anyone, but it can.

    If I had bootlegged the entire new Android Lust album instead of buying it on iTunes I would have not sent the chick behind AL any money. iTunes allowed me to send her maybe $2 for the album which I paid $10, probably a good $5 less than what I would have paid for a CD copy.

    We need to stress to the government that iTunes, not more legislation, is the key to getting the system working. We need to show them that bands like Metallica refuse to do their part because they want an all or nothing. Buy 20-30 songs on iTunes and you give Apple more ammo to counter the claims that piracy has no solution. They can just shrug in front of Congress and say "it's not our side, the legal downloading side, that has dropped the ball. They refuse to let people buy their tracks one by one because they want them to buy them all or nothing."

    There will always be politicians who will rail against piracy and ignore iTunes and other legal services, but many politicians will just look at these industries and say "the mechanisms are in place, why aren't you being a team player, why are you coming to us for help when there are companies dying to make the market work for you?" Politicans tend to be lazy, just look at how many Senate votes that John Kerry has missed in the past 12 years. Something like 1000 or more a year according to Fox News.

    We can appeal to the public by pointing out the supremacy of the 1st amendment over Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. The first amendment was ratified later so it supercedes everything in the original constitution, just as all parts of the constitution must be read in the context of the Bill of Rights.

    We should also point out how anti-backup provisions and attitudes like Jack Valenti's "if you want a backup, buy another copy" are against common sense, American tradition and capitalist principles. I have yet to read of a prominent capitalist theorist who would support the DMCA. Rand, Ricardo, Hayek and Smith are probably spinning in their graves over the DMCA and similar "seller protection legislation."

    The hollywood position is built on pure, unprincipled greed. Defeating it only means that we need to be consistant and show the public where the law is going to start biting them in the ass if they don't care now.
  • The wired article is mixing these two cases up. Hollywood may have been founded on piracy of media, which may have been wrong during the patent windows. But it is the piracy of content which is more disturbing in the digital age, i.e. the violation of copyright by copying a particular expression of idea.

  • The Old Days... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by valence ( 164639 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:25PM (#8533893)
    One thing that this article doesn't touch on is that early Hollywood (and radio) was filled with people copying each other's works, and in a lot of cases the result of copying and reworking old material resulted in a richer cultural landscape than would have otherwise occurred.

    Look at how many classic songs of the 30s, 40s and 50s there are whose canonical popular version wasn't the original, or even created with the approval of the original artist. Similarly, what a loss to cinema it would have been if Stoker's estate had been able to crush Nosferatu with lawsuits... if nothing else, we would never have had Shadow of the Vampire. Most people don't listen to Fred Astaire's old singing, but everyone knows Taco. And the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin" was originally an Elvis track. That's not saying that Taco and the Pet Shop Boys didn't get the rights first (I have no idea), but that it's that kind of thing that has resulted in a richer world.

  • this story starts out bad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by happyfrogcow ( 708359 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:32PM (#8533965)
    OK, P2P is "piracy."

    That's the first line. This comming from Wired, who I use to think was some sort of tech magazine who had some knowledge. A technology can not "be" piracy. The technology could have "been" pirated, in the sense that it was secret, someone owned it, and then someone hijacked it. p2p was never someone's dark secret technology.

    California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers like Fox and Paramount could move there and, without fear of the law, pirate his inventions

    Yes, ok. Who did that with p2p?

    A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property

    Allright, a new industry may have been founded from the use of p2p network applications to spread copyrighted materials illegally. Was p2p itself founded on illegally distributed copyrighted materials? some technical specification on how to develop p2p apps? did someone patent p2p and now that Intellectual Property is running rampant in the wild causing p2p to "be piracy"?

    I must be missing something. "p2p" is not the same thing as "illegally copying copyrighted materials over a p2p network". Wired can suck it. This is written by Lessig? i just don't see the conclusions he's drawing
  • "Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"

    Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean a) that this was the only way something like Hollywood would have started, and b) that because their business began by defrauding Edision, you have the right to infringe on their rights.

  • Message to all the mediums... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shirov ( 137794 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:38PM (#8534008) Homepage
    Change with the times! Hollywood must find a way to use technology to make money. Otherwise, they will spend more than ever lost on piracy try to protect their outdated business models. Same for the music industry... Digital formats are here to stay, so find a way to alter the model and keep on making your money!

    I guess the problem with the above suggestion is that there are a few people at the top that may lose a fraction of their power... Too bad they are will to risk millions, and piss of the customer base over a pride issue...

    --Ryan

  • So now the P2P thieves admit it's piracy.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:43PM (#8534081) Homepage
    I always suspected it would come to this: For the longest time, P2P file thieves would try and tell people that it was "fair use" to distribute copyrighted music to thousands of people that have never owned the CD nor even intend on buying the CD. For the longest time these societal leaches would pump this lame argument about how passing around copyrighted works was just some form of "fair use" back-ups and that they had "paid" for it so they could do whatever they wanted with their property, and besides it's not piracy, blaw, blaw, blaw...

    But now the cat's out of the bag and, well, maybe it is piracy. But piracy is now good! After all, it helped build Hollywood!

    It's just amazing the twists and turns of logic that P2P file thieves will use to justify their theft. In truth, they are people who do not respect property ownership at all, yet would probably scream if someone stole some of their own property. These same people want to be paid for their work, but refuse to understand that other people like to be paid also. Just amazing.

    • Paid for what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rbird76 ( 688731 )
      Why do people infringe copyrights, particularly on music?

      One, they can't use their product in the ways that they would like (and in most cases are legally entitled to). Copy protection and "trusted computing" are designed to protect content by controlling the ways in which people can use it, even though that control is explicitly given to their customers. These "protections" don't stop major copiers (they are copying and selling bootlegs by the carton in Georgia, China, etc.) or people on Kazaa - they do,

  • The Future is P2P (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amigoro ( 761348 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:46PM (#8534115) Homepage Journal
    I believe the true potential of the Internet can only be maximized by using the P2P architecture instead of the currently used Client-Server architecture.

    The internet is meant to be a vast distributed network of independent nodes, each interacting with each other. It is a bit like how the neurons in your brain are wired. This way, the internet really becomes a tool of the individual as opposed to a tool of an institution.

    [

    ]

    The MPIAA's attempt to end P2P is simply luddite. The Film Industry has greatly benefitted from the digital revolution. I have seen quite a few films where 90% of the scenes use CGI.

    [

    ]

    The MPIAA can't stop the internet's true potential from being realised. Internet is the largest juggernaut that exists right now in the world. The MPIAA is but an ant fighting against a glacier. There's no question as to who will win.

    [

    ]

  • Such Utter Bullshit - My Rant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Didion Sprague ( 615213 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @02:47PM (#8534131)
    This back and forth about piracy and morality and P2P is such bullshit.

    Everyone -- yes, every goddamn one -- knows that the Hollywood/MPAA (and the RIAA music fight) boils down to one thing: money in the pockets of executives. That's it. It's only about technology insofar how that technology impacts the bottom-line. It's not about art. It's about making sure a select group of executives make sure they can keep the mortgage payments on their Bel-Air mansions and can keep memberships in their country clubs. That's it. That's where my, yours, and everyone else's dollars are going: to buy some titanium fucking Big Bertha golf club for the peabrained asshole who's been crowned king of the other peabrained assholes working beneath him.

    Valenti wants to make sure the cash keeps flowing into his pocket and into the pocket of every other overpaid, dim-bulb, "I can green-light this" executive motherfucker working the valley.

    You want goddamn immorality? It's the entertainment industry and the people that run it that are at the very foundations of the "immorality" of piracy. Forget Janet Jackson's nipple. Forget Powell's sudden decision to attempt to regulate *cable* television today (!). Forget the fact (and I'll digress here) that the fundamentalist assholes that have gone to see Mel Gibson's "Passion" claim that it's a fantastic movie yet in the same breath decry Janet Jackson's nipple, the state of marriage, and the violence in contemporary culture -- overlooking perhaps that the Passion is more "violent" than any number of Grand Theft Auto games strung together and more "explicit" than any svelt little nipple hiding behind a sun-shaped nipple medallion.

    The hypocrisy of Valenti and his immoral executive motherfuckers is astounding. It boggles the mind.

    • svelt little nipple hiding behind a sun-shaped nipple medallion. Oh, is that what is was... how many times did you have to replay that scene on your Tivo before you could figure it out?
  • Basically, its similar to a drug dealer giving free samples. Its a tactic to get you "hooked" to make it easier to come back later and set prices. At that point, the dealer does not want anyone giving freebies, because that eats into his profits, and the amount is all the larger for the perceived loss.

    The MPAA and RIAA fit this model as well. The "need" for music and movies drove the technology forward for the VCR and the DVD player, as well as cassette, LP, CD, you name it. Once those became common items
  • The article talks about the primary difference between P2P and the other technologies as being that in general P2P networks share the content for free, and this is an incredibly important distinction.

    After all, if no money is changing hands then there is zero opportunity for artists/content providers to be compensated. You can't reward the creator while protecting the medium (as in the case of the cable industry) because there is nothing to protect it with..

    This is a case where free is only good for the e

  • Downloading is not stealing, please (Score:3, Insightful)

    by viware ( 680138 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @03:21PM (#8534549)
    It's really starting to bug me how everyone says 'Fine I admit it! I'm stealing from the internet!'

    What? How can you steal from the internet? Are you stealing electricity? Are you suggesting that downloading copyprotected information is stealing??
    Funny that, the law doesn't consider copyright infringment as stealing.

    How about we all stop using the media companies propaganda for a little while. Lets call downloading songs from the internet what it really is (or rather uploading, if downloading is actually legal where you are), copyright violations.

  • The local children are insignificant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tired_Blood ( 582679 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:09PM (#8536190)
    From the article: But when the station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy of the composer's work. The station is also performing a copy of the recording artist's work. It's one thing to air a recording of "Happy Birthday" by the local children's choir; it's quite another to air a recording of it by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett.

    This paragraph doesn't make sense. The local children's choir, the Rolling Stones and Lyle Lovett would all qualify as recording artists, in this case. How are the latter "quite another" thing?

    The implication seems to be that the children's choir is expected to be stepped on. That's depressing.

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