Warner Brothers Hiring Undercover Anti-Pirates 443
An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak reports that Warner Brothers UK is hiring college students with an IT background to participate in an internship that will pit them against pirates on the Web in an effort to crack down on illegal digital distribution. The intern will literally be on the front-lines of the epic battle against pirated content, ensnaring users in incriminating transactions, issuing takedown requests, and causing general frustration amongst the file-sharing population on the Internet."
A fools errand (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than exploit the free publicity and growth of revenue, they fight against the rising tides with their swords. If the movie and music industries collapse, it will not be due to piracy, but anti-piracy.
They keep spending money on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting tactic, won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it might work in the short term. All content protection, whether through DRM, laws, takedown notices, or any other mechanism is fundamentally founded on the principal that "we're smarter than you are", which in the long term is always an untenable position merely because of the scale involved. For every one person they employ to defend their copyright, there are a thousand people looking for ways to break whatever measures they put in place.
For example, it is possible to design a P2P system that does not rely on trackers (e.g. the DHT scheme that TPB uses). With such a system, content is not hosted anywhere that can get a takedown notice. Combined with onion routing (crypto), you can also make it highly infeasible to determine who is actually seeding the content, nearly guaranteeing that anyone you attack is an innocent victim, thus making the courts take progressively more negative attitudes towards your attacks. Put simply, the harder they try to clamp down on P2P, the greater the security measures that will be put in place to thwart it.
You cannot compete with P2P by attacking it. You can only compete with it by providing a better experience (or at least a comparable experience) through legal channels for a price that the market is willing to bear. Start by reducing the price of Blu-Ray movies to the same price as their DVD counterparts. That alone will take a huge chunk out of P2P.
Shit job, Shit Pay. (Score:4, Insightful)
This to me reads as "Warner Brothers is ripping off intelligent college students"
Keep your shitty check. If you want to pay people to do your dirty work, you better pay them a damn good wage.
I dont know of any US or UK mercenaries who work for minimum wage.
Make that unauthorized file-sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
> causing general frustration amongst the file-sharing population on the
> Internet.
Make that unauthorized file-sharing. There are people who have no interest WB's crap: they are unaffected.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
When we argue, we don't argue about what the law is. That's for the courts to decide. We argue about what the law should be. And, as the discussion here shows, it is not at all clear that Warner Bros is morally right in legally enforcing their copyrights against individual file sharers.
They are fighting nature (Score:4, Insightful)
When fighting nature, either nature always wins or everyone loses. In this case, they are fighting artistic and entertainment nature. Art and entertainment need to be free and need to be shared. It is an important part of what it means to be a human being. What big media is doing is wrong in the sense that they think they can control and limit and even "bottle up" art and entertainment to maximize their profits.
What people are doing with their collecting and sharing is natural human behavior. It doesn't feel like a "crime" to most people to share because it's quite natural and it's everywhere.
And please, I have heard the arguments before "but people wouldn't create if there were no money in it!" Pure nonsense. Fan films and other amateur work if littering the internet like never before. People love creating and building and showing off. They don't do it for money. They do it for attention or as an outlet or just to make people smile. Yes, there are many who are attracted to the media market because there is a lot of money to be made, but that's not why the TALENTED people do it... just the greedy ones.
Won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
When you pirate a movie, you don't have to contend with ads, previews or screens you can't force your way past. When you legitimately buy a movie, you are forced to watch previews, get stuck waiting for the FBI warning and often times contend with other annoyances.
Perhaps shafting your legitimate clients isn't the best way to do business?
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to argue ethics, lets debate about movie producers and actors with net worths in the 100's of millions sueing single mothers and college kids for downloading a few movies they otherwise wouldn't pay to see anyway.
Re:My only question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
They were going too is no excuse, they still have not.
They still violated the copyrights of the XBMC developers and then expect to make money from copyrights. They are hypocrites who believe in copyright when it is good for them and not when it does not suit them. These are not the sort of folks people should give money to.
Re:Won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a better DVD player. VLC is great at skipping that crap, dealing with scratched discs and upscaling.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My only question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope just the same. Mind you most folks don't know about that either, and the people who moved the studios are long dead.
Re:They will not collapse! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
When you legitimately buy a movie
There is no such thing as buying a movie... unless maybe if you are the producer.
Since you only get a license for limited use.
But even if you could freely use it, there still is no such thing as ownership of information. Because ownership is defined as having certain abilities, like control over it. Which for information, is only possible, if it has never left your mind. But then you can also not prove its existence.
As soon as you let it out, you just split control with whoever received it.
Which means that it’s absurd to speak of “ownership”, when talking about information.
Information is free. Period. And just like with gravity, there is nothing, anyone can do about it.
Re:Could be worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone is far less likely to sue a 'poor student' than a rich company for improper takedowns.
I've got two words for you: Vicarious Liability [wikipedia.org]
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
yeah you pay their cheques... and yeah, we can get cheques elsewhere
tell me why your new employer should trust you after you betrayed your old employer.
tell me why he keeps you around after he's pumped you dry of anything useful you could tell him.
tell me how you stop the word spreading around that you are high maintaince, high risk.
Re:Keep going (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I'm not worried about this.
The only people who are going to take a job like this are untalented drones of marginal technical ability who can't get a job elsewhere, especially at the . Furthermore, peer pressure is going to be enough to discourage most people (talented or not) from getting paid to turn narc / sell out to the man.
The smart, creative people are going to be on the other side of the fight.
Anyone with half a brain can tell that the copyright cartels are fighting a losing battle, desperately clinging to a business model that has been rendered obsolete by modern technology. P2P would largely disappear overnight if there was a legal alternative that offered a perceived benefit (guaranteed quality, good search, high speed download, brand loyalty, etc) over a pirate source. The studios are unwilling to do that because then they would have to charge prices that are dictated by the market, rather than by monopolistic fiat.
There will always be some people who will take free over speed or convenience, but there are plenty who won't -- just witness Starbuck's ability to sell a quarter's worth of coffee at a 1000+% markup.
Re:Won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that these are people used to legislating their way to a business model. They have laws to create artifical scarcity, perpetual copyright, and once ACTA passes their own private police and lawyer force on tax dollars. If they viewed it as "competition" they might have a chance.
Instead, a whole generation of children are being raised with absolutely no respect for the copywrite bullshit. I don't think this is entirely due to the MAFIAA, but they are a contributing factor. Kids look at their BS ads about how "piracy is no different from stealing a tangible good" and realize the facts just don't add up...just like my generation looked at the "smoke marihuana once and become a crack whore" ads from DARE, GREAT, etc. All those lulzy comics about the kid who downloaded a song being dragged into criminal court (technically possible under DMCA but never happened yet -- good luck proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.), it just adds to the cynicism and disillusionment. The vast majority of people just don't give a fuck, and those who do don't tend to swallow this bs.
I'm not really sure precisely where this is going, but I do have to say that the fundamental disconnect in perception here is going to make for quite the firefight. After all, the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Re:My only question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like all the disadvantages of pandora and none of the advantages.
A good example of combating piracy is cheap non-drmed MP3s.
Re:Traitors beware! (Score:3, Insightful)
The moral of the story is... don't keep living in a town when you've spent the last three years helping kill their friends and family.
I really don't think there's much comparison between lynch mobs and the Third Reich.
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pandora is an internet radio. Spotify is like your mp3 player, but instead of your local files you have access to their full huge library.
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
yeah you pay their cheques... and yeah, we can get cheques elsewhere
tell me why your new employer should trust you after you betrayed your old employer.
Because they have no idea. wikileaks and the like are anonymous, and if that's not enough protection for you, you won't post it there.
tell me why he keeps you around after he's pumped you dry of anything useful you could tell him.
If you got hired based on your insider knowledge of a few secrets, as opposed to insider knowledge of techniques and development practices, you're absolutely right.
tell me how you stop the word spreading around that you are high maintaince, high risk.
By never starting it, obviously.
Re:Traitors beware! (Score:2, Insightful)
In what world should collaborators not be made to pay? The big difference between those villagers and the occupiers is the fact they lived there. You expect to be oppressed by occupiers but when your neighbor licks their boots and helps out the oppressor that makes the collaborator more reprehensible than the occupier. If such a one had turned some of your loved ones over to the SS or maybe just took something he wanted backed by an invader's gun then perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to toss off such quick moral judgments.
Re:Interesting tactic, won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
And why stop there? Here's a few other things that need to go:
Sigh. You're very bad people.
Re:They will not collapse! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't compete on price with P2P. How do you undercut "free"? But that doesn't mean you can't beat P2P. You only have to offer more, not (as it is now) less. And the first step towards that is to know your audience.
If the (quite successful) "metal box" releases should give a hint, it is that movie enthusiasts are willing to pay for their product if the product is to their liking. In other words, stop selling the movie. Sell the "experience". Sell the "exclusivity". Sell your customers the feeling that they got something great, something they wouldn't get if they just copied the movie.
The movie is not just a disc to insert into the player. The movie is also a box that will rest on the customer's shelf while he's not watching it. He will actually see that box a lot more than the movie, because it will always be there in his room, on his shelf, on display. Sure, they could make their own "presentable" cover. So you have to also instill the feeling that not having the "real" thing is phony, that they would sink in their friends' esteem if they did that. Teenagers are notoriously short on cash, yet they buy TCGs and Warhammer figurines, despite both being easily replaced by cut-out cardboard DIY cards and play tokens. Why don't they do it, why do they buy the overpriced cardboard and plastic? Because it would not be accepted by their peers if they did that. You have to do the same for movie enthusiasts! It just isn't cool to have a DIY cover on your DVD box!
To achive that, you have to make that cover something your customer will want to show off. That needn't be more expensive than the cheap looking nondescript plastic covers you use today. Get creative! You employ an army of PR goons, have them work for their money!
I'd do it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Two reasons:
1) I agree that the majority of file sharing is illegal.
2) I agree that the media companies are pretty evil. I should learn all I can about them and they should learn all they can about me. They need help figuring out the best ways to curb piracy, and make their own offerings more palatable to the general public. They should be allowed to make money for their work, but their should be harsher limits on their control of media. If they want me fighting for them, they'll need to agree to reform.
Re:Interesting tactic, won't work. (Score:1, Insightful)
Deleting a frame is as simple as can be and done in seconds.
By what means (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they going to pack viruses in torrents? That already happens, maybe not by them, but see above.
Are they going to upload fake articles (because this is where the leechers [seeders] get their material).
Are they going to troll irc and try to trade with people....Does this seriously happen still? It's not 1995.
I thought we'd already cleared up that the legal avenues that the **AAs pursue are scurrilous already, and anything of this nature would start to be illegal.
The intern could also learn a very valuable lesson that the studios would have no interest in hearing. The underground exists because you aren't doing anything to monetize on it. You put out an inferior product that is crippled, and what these people offer is what everyone wants. An easy to obtain, high quality media product, without all the garbage that you force people to accept (unskippable menus, DRM, non-digital stores). You'd still see people not willing to pay, but you'd see profits skyrocket if you'd just accept that this is what people want instead of fighting it, and pretending it's still 1991.
I've seen this BS before... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Traitors beware! (Score:2, Insightful)
So beware, if you dare to collaborate with the enemy.
I know you're being humorous, but it does feel that way which is kind of sad. I think most of us would be happy to pay a reasonable price for a non-DRMed copy of a movie we wanted to see. That is to say, I think most of us are willing to be customers. In fact, I bought a DVD the other day. It had two movies on it for ten bucks. And because I watch DVDs using an open source OS, I don't get the complaints about being forced to watch previews and FBI warnings. Do DVD players or whatever you watch on really enforce that?
Motion Picture Patents Company (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company [wikipedia.org]
The MPPC was preceded by the Edison licensing system, in effect in 1907–1908, on which the MPPC was modeled. Since the 1890s, Thomas Edison owned most of the major American patents relating to motion picture cameras. The Edison Manufacturing Company's patent lawsuits against each of its domestic competitors crippled the American film industry, reducing American production mainly to two companies: Edison and Biograph, which used a different camera design. This left Edison's other rivals with little recourse but to import foreign-made films, mainly French and British.
Since 1902, Edison had also been notifying distributors and exhibitors that if they did not use Edison machines and films exclusively, they would be subject to litigation for supporting filmmaking that infringed Edison's patents. Exhausted by the lawsuits, Edison's competitors — Essanay, Kalem, Pathé Frères, Selig, and Vitagraph — approached him in 1907 to negotiate a licensing agreement, which Lubin was also invited to join. The one notable filmmaker excluded from the licensing agreement was Biograph, which Edison hoped to squeeze out of the market. No further applicants could become licensees. The purpose of the licensing agreement, according to an Edison lawyer, was to "preserve the business of present manufacturers and not to throw the field open to all competitors."
Many independent filmmakers, who controlled from one-quarter to one-third of the domestic marketplace, responded to the creation of the MPPC by moving their operations to Hollywood, whose distance from Edison's home base of New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and covers the area, was averse to enforcing patent claims.[citation needed] Southern California was also chosen because of its beautiful year-round weather and varied countryside, which could stand in for deserts, jungles and great mountains.
Re:Traitors beware! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the moral is that the idea of an internship is to help you get hired for a job in the IT industry.
Making yourself IT-lynch-mob-fodder is not necessarily the best way of going about doing that.
Had I had such a background (and for the protocol, you'd need to point a loaded gun at me to get me to do this), I most certainly would not advertise this on my resume.
Re:A fools errand (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's all stop for a moment to remember that we are talking about the entertainment industry. Let that sink in. Entertainment: something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, esp. a performance of some kind. (ref [reference.com])
All of these people--RIAA, MPAA, and their equivalents across the world--are fighting tooth and nail because some people do not consider entertainment to be worth the sometimes exorbitant fees required to access it, and because some people get their entertainment and chafe at being told they have to jump through hoops to enjoy it.
There are still people starving in this world. There are people fighting for their lives and their beliefs. There are human rights violations. And there is so much else.
And these people are fighting for the right to overcharge and micromanage your entertainment.
Re:Shit job, Shit Pay. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they were intelligent, they wouldn't be getting ripped off, now would they?
Re:A fools errand (Score:1, Insightful)
God, how many fucking times is this going to have to be explained before some people understand that making an unauthorized copy (did you catch the subtlety of that?) of an intangible good is not the same thing as stealing a physical object?
Re:Traitors beware! (Score:3, Insightful)
They were called “Gielemännchen“ (yellow mankins), and often wore yellow rain coats. Everyone hated them.
Wanna know what happened to them when the Nazis were gone? They were brutally killed by the villagers.
Remember me to never use a yellow raincoat in Luxemburg.
Re:Keep going (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm actually not that interested in availability of things online. It is ridiculous to claim that the entertainment industry doesn't lose anything due to P2P sharing. On the other hand, seeing the industry target people who have nothing to do with the original seeding of copyrighted material and sue them for everything they have and will have for several years makes me want to violate their copyright, just to piss them off. I've actually downloaded things just to seed them, and not actually to watch or play.
I could be happy with the lack of availability of copyrighted material on BitTorrent if we could get there without giving into every demand of the copyright lobbyists. Really, I wouldn't mind going to Blockbuster to rent things if DRM provisions in copyright law were struck down. In my mind, this is the way things have always been: I can go to a Public Library and borrow copyrighted material. I can copy some or all of this material, and keep it for myself. In the early 90's, me and my fellow students would borrow CDs from the library and copy them to a cassette tape. No one ever complained about this; no one threatened to sue us for doing so. A levy was introduced on blank cassette tapes and life went on.
But then MP3s got popular and it was easier to simply download them. Sure, we were told it was wrong, but the alternative was just a pain in the ass. Why rip the CDs when somebody has already done it? And, what happened? iTunes was born. The music industry was finally forced to give us music in the format we wanted, not because we were patient and waited for them to provide the MP3s without DRM, but because the music industry recognized that the free product, unlawfully obtained, was superior in convenience. Given that the profits of ITMS in the last while have been well into the billions per year, clearly this distribution model works, and the music industry avoided obsolescence by adapting.
Now we're seeing the same thing in the movie industry. While it's taken an extra decade for the average user to have the relative bandwidth:content ratio that makes online music distribution convenient, we're there. The movie industry would do well to learn a lesson from their counterparts in the music industry and pull themselves back onto the cliff they're heading over. Refusal to provide movies in a convenient, DRM-free format will only force people to go elsewhere for the same thing.
The DarkNets are not that important. There will always be closed rings who distribute over secure connections. The number of people who are actually members of these rings are very few. So yes, take away the public distribution, but provide a reasonable alternative. And stop suing people already.
Re:They will not collapse! (Score:4, Insightful)
No movie makes a profit in Hollywood. If you don't believe go look at the many, many, lawsuits. Titanic cleared over a billion and they STILL tried to claim it as a loss.
Re:They will not collapse! (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes hours for me to torrent a movie-sized file (i.e. a distro CD). I would rather pay a few dollars for a better download rate, better quality movie, etc.
But it's hard to justify $30 / movie for legal downloads, which is what the big distributors would like.
Re:Just buy the effing movie! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me guess, you're one of the people the article is talking about.
Re:I'd do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I appreciate your optimism, but I don't think the people being hired for this are really in any position to make demands about how the industry carries out their business. If you tried you'd probably be let go.
Hmmm... what's missing from the job description? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nowhere does it say anything about verifying that the employer has any legal rights to the alleged "pirate" material.
Re:Won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
That's funny, all the times I've bought a DVD I've never recieved such a license. Can you tell me what law necessitates that I have a licence to watch a DVD?
Catch-22 (Score:2, Insightful)
clash with college culture? (Score:2, Insightful)
One word ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Entrapment.
ensnaring users in incriminating transactions
The police aren't allowed to do this, why are movie studios ?
Maybe the authors of torrent clients should implement an IP checklist, so that any known movie studio IPs that are found to be seeding get snapshotted and can be included in court submissions as illegal entrapment tactics.
Re:Interesting tactic, won't work. (Score:1, Insightful)
I was born in Vietnam. Raised in the US. Living and working in Australia for over 5 years now. I move around for long stints at a time. Region locking is the main reason I won't buy DVDs anywhere. I don't really consider any country my permanent home. Earth, however is a bit harder to get away from.
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Short lifed career (Score:3, Insightful)
It would make more sense to hire computer science graduates and have the work on the problem from a technical aspect as opposed to the social aspect.
Re:So? (Score:1, Insightful)
If they wouldn't otherwise pay to see those movies, why should they want to be entitled to watch those movies?
Ethics is the manifestation of the moral code of society - but when you violate a law (And this is not in question here - The nature of downloading movies *illegally* is unethical; if it was ethical, it wouldn't be illegal), you've cast the first stone.
You do realise that your argument calls for an evaluation of which ethical breach is greater (how do you quantify this???) and insinuates that this social group of underprivileged people should be given carte blanche to do as they wish online - and it only works because human law tends to be more flexible than natural law. An analogy in nature: if you throw a stone and hit a sleeping bear and as a result the bear is inclined to maul you, I don't think claiming that the bear should not do so as you are more physically vulnerable than the bear is tenable.
Lets rephrase this and see how it looks : (Score:3, Insightful)
"Duke of Cornwall hires Swiss mercenaries to crack down on illegal trading of grain to protect his hereditary rights"
history repeats itself. if you let groups and people become feudal lords, they crack down on the people,f or their 'rights'. whats absurd that, after a point, they start to define what is a 'right' themselves, totally free of the people's will.
see, copyright was intended for 20 or so years at the start. now its 90 years. trademark was invented to protect well known brand names, now it has become something that you can lay claim to words, anywhere, any use. patents were supposedly to spur innovation, now they are tools with which you can lay claim to genes, and soon laws of nature. (well because you found them first, right ).
its stupid. we need to abolish these before we end up with a new, this time intellectual feudal aristocracy.
Re:A fools errand (Score:4, Insightful)
Rewind even further. Books were copied by monks, taking much time and labour (if not money). Copying was extremely slow and extremely difficult. Copying was such a painful process, and distribution channels were so slow, that the idea of protecting a work against copying was laughably superfluous.
Copyright was introduced when copying became easier and distribution became cheaper, in the prediction that eventually it would become even more-so. The problem for artists wasn't that the technology was slow and expensive (compared to today), the problem was that it was quick and cheap compared to earlier times, and that technology was only making the process quicker and cheaper.
It is indeed the simplicity of the distribution system today which is the threat to artists. Anybody can create as many copies as they like. Now, it's not just a handful of printers eating into your royalties, it's any person who feels like it, with little investment of time or money. The natural protections of the inherent infeasibility of copying have been removed, and now the artist is completely at the mercy of the public and regardless of popularity guaranteed only a single sale (from which others may or may not copy).
Essentially, you have it backwards. It was the simplicity, not the complexity, of copying that caused the need for copyright. And today, we have it in spades.
Don't kid yourself. It's more than Big Media fighting for copyright. There are many indie artists similarly disposed towards piracy, as well as ordinary people.
Edison = huge asshole (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, the more I read about Thomas Edison, the more I realize he was a giant flaming asshole. His positive contributions to society were quite nearly overshadowed by his negative ones IMO.
In 50-100 years people will probably look back at Bill Gates the same way - and it would be worse if not for his philanthropic pursuits.
Re:Shouldn't that be ... (Score:2, Insightful)
>>>by Killjoy_NL... (Score:2, Flamebait)
What idiot marked this "flamebait"??? What lousy moderation.