Why Internet Pirates Always Win 360
An anonymous reader writes "Nick Bilton writes in the NY Times about how the fight against online piracy is 'like playing the world's largest game of Whac-A-Mole.' While this will come as no surprise to Slashdot readers, it's interesting to see how mainstream sources are starting to realize how pointless and ineffective the war on piracy actually is. Bilton writes, 'The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want. "There's a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it's an inverse relationship," said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. "The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online." The hit HBO show Game of Thrones is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.'"
Because, (Score:5, Funny)
wenches.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong and I'll explain why. (Score:5, Insightful)
HBO is owned by Time Warner cable. HBO costs $15 a month. Time Warner won't let HBO do a standalone subscription online because they would lose the sweet money from cable subscriptions and partner agreements.
If HBO were allowed to charge a subscription fee for access to HBO GO without subscribing to cable, I would pay it as would many others.
The reason they won't do this is because HBO GO relies on the delivery infrastructure of cable and satellite providers exclusively.
I have never seen a company so unwilling to sell their service to a market of people willing to buy.
This is why we need communications regulations and a stronger FCC.
but the market is always right! (Score:3, Funny)
government is the source of all problems in the market!
without government around, the large players will treat small players and consumers nicely!
free market fundamentalist WHARGARBBBLLL...
(the last remark should indicate that i am being facetious to those who are humor impaired)
no, totally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
the solution is NOT "to take the regulating power away from the government"
the solution is to have genuine effective regulating power. i didn't say it was easy. the opiate of corporate cash makes it hard
but take away regulating power, and then nothing remains between the monopoly/ oligopoly and complete subjugation of the consumer and domination of the market by abuse of smaller upstart competitors by the big players
i never understood this insane idea that so many people have:
"the government is sick so let's kill the government and reward all power to the disease that sickens it"
seriously?!
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Regulation seems to work decently well in many European countries. Maybe we should outsource all our regulation to them. I think it's fairly obvious that we Americans are just too corrupt to handle regulation ourselves; it's like asking Latin American governments to not be blatantly corrupt. Our culture simply doesn't value non-corruption. So maybe we need to yield to others who do have such a culture.
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the solution is to have genuine effective regulating power.
I'm all ears to hear your plan for implementing that. "Regulate smarter" is a great slogan but doesn't really mean much in the absence of actual goals. Politically, this is a sort of Mexican standoff; unless you can show me a real example of muscular government taming out-of-control corporations without becoming a nightmarish nanny state, operating in at least one of the fifty states, and with a real and functional plan to generalize that to the rest of the country, I'm very unlikely to go along with your
real example: (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Deal [wikipedia.org]
so much of the argument about regulation and monopolies in the USA is just so many Americans unfamiliar with their own history in the Gilded Ages.
Just read your history folks. The USA is currently repeating history because we seemed to have forgotten our lessons the last time we had little regulations and large corporations were allowed the trample our rights and our livelihoods. there was a backlash, as people were poisoned, abused, and impoverished. it seems we now have to do go through that backlash all over again, because so many fools distrust the government so strongly, and don't even think about the real threat: corporations
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Re:but the market is always right! (Score:5, Insightful)
the argument of the real retards:
"the government is sick so let's kill the government and reward all power to the disease that sickens it"
my counter argument:
genuine effective regulating power replacing regulatory capture. i didn't say it was easy. the opiate of corporate cash makes it hard
but take away regulating power, and then nothing remains between the monopoly/ oligopoly and complete subjugation of the consumer and domination of the market by abuse of smaller upstart competitors by the big players
anything else i can help you with today, anonymous asshole?
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example: fcc
regulatory capture: verizon, et al dictating to the fcc regulations that only reward large entrenched players
genuine effective regulating power: net neutrality
problem: corporations manipulating politicians with financial donations
moron's solution, planted in their minds by corporate propaganda channels like Faux News: get rid of government regulation, thereby ensuring verizon et al abuses consumers and smaller players completely unhindered. "because regulations ruin capitalism." no: MONOPOLIES a
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no, arguing with A.L.I.C.E. would make more sense
furthermore, computers may some day persuasively mimic an intelligent person, but i propose a corollary to the turing test:
no computer could ever sound as stupid as a genuine human moron. genuine human-style stupidity is far more difficult to fake than human intelligence
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SHHHHH!!!!
that particular supertroll has failed to notice this thread so far
do not awaken the mindless creature
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The thing about actors' salaries is true for blockbuster movies with A-list actors, but I don't think this applies to Game of Thrones; I've never seen any of those actors before, except Peter Dinklage (who's played minor parts in some minor movies, such as the crazy children's book author in one scene of "Elf") who probably does not command A-list salaries.
However, GoT does have lots of actors due to its story, so even if none of them are as handsomely paid as Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, it still adds up. Th
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TIme Warner Inc. (TWX), which owns HBO and many other premium properties, and Time Warner Cable (TWC), which owns the Time Warner cable network that cable users pay for monthly, are two separate companies, and have been so since 2009.
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HBO is owned by Time Warner cable.
Stop right there. Your fundamental premise is false. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Because, (Score:5, Funny)
I was a pirate once, till I took a bullet to the knee.
Make it east for people who want to play fair (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a Netflix subscriber in UK, yet I get less than half of the content that a US subscriber gets, even though I pay the same. Even when I want to watch the content that is available to me, it is not always easy. For example, I commute to work and that is the best time for me to maybe catch up on a TV series or a film. Yet, there is no easy way for me to access the content that I am already paying for as part my subscription. Streaming doesn't work particularly well on the intermittent 3G connection I get while commuting, so ability to play offline is an absolute must. Yet I find that there is no way for me to do so short of buying the same DVDs that I are already included in my subscription.
On the other hand, I could just pirate the content and it would work everywhere I need to play it without a hitch. So tell me again, how are you doing it right?
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If I could download them for a fee, then I might, but I want the same level of flexibility otherwise the service is useless to me.
The only downloadable media option I've seen was the "triple play" offer on certain blu-rays. This seemed to be completely worthless. I'm
Re:Make it east for people who want to play fair (Score:5, Interesting)
American companies ignore you guys. In both directions. We don't get to see stuff from the old continent unless it's either rebranded, or old and made by a government grant to nigh amateurs. Before netflix, it was only the first option, even...
Surely, in a continent of 700 million people, you have media companies of comparable technical capability.
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I want to buy music in Canada. My only reliable source seems to be iTunes. I do not want to use iTunes. PureTracks doesn't always have what I want, and I have yet to find another store with the same breadth of content as iTunes.
On the flip side, a little hop onto BitTorrent gives me high quality MP3s or FLACs of all the music I want, quickly.
Why should I go through the hassle of dealing with shitty websites or horrible applications again?
Re:Make it east for people who want to play fair (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a Netflix subscriber in UK, yet I get less than half of the content that a US subscriber gets...
You are lucky to get half of US Content. Here in Mexico, Netlix started out almost a year ago and for a monthly fee of $100pesos (about $7.40 dollars) we only get old movies and tv series, all of them dubbed (nothing earlier than 2 years old).
But oh boy, we have the entire Televisa catalog for free! Thousands of telenovelas from the eighties and nineties! (Yuck)
No moral high ground (Score:5, Insightful)
While high-profile people (politicians, the press) occasionally pontificate about how "bad" piracy is - frequently under pressure from the vested interests who pull their strings, none of the ordinary people actually believe, or care.
The biggest reason that the general public are not on the side of defending copyright is partly because of the adversarial attitude the BIG media adopt, partly because BIG media are not seen as being sympathetic to their artists - who don't get to see much, if any, benefit from additional copyright fee collections, but mostly because ordinary people can't see any benefit to themselves.
If the copyright holders were to take a more sensible, open approach and show a direct link between the copyright fees they collect and real artists (not multi-millionaire celebs) making a living from those royalties - with maybe a small "fee" taken by the media businesses themselves, then I reckon the public would view copyright fees like restaurant tips - directly benefitting the people who merit them, rather than just buying a few more snorts of coke for some anonymous fat-cats.
Re:No moral high ground (Score:5, Informative)
If the copyright holders were to take a more sensible, open approach and show a direct link between the copyright fees they collect and real artists (not multi-millionaire celebs) making a living from those royalties - with maybe a small "fee" taken by the media businesses themselves, then I reckon the public would view copyright fees like restaurant tips - directly benefitting the people who merit them, rather than just buying a few more snorts of coke for some anonymous fat-cats.
Agreed !
A good example of this is Louis C K [slashdot.org]. The best part, a Paramount Exec Al Perry [slashdot.org] claimed that Louis C K could have earned more with DRM !
Another example is Russel Peters, who gives a lot of credit to pirated videos (on YouTube) of his early career performances.
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Not a game (Score:2)
It's not a like game, because the *AA can change the rules when they want (or at least try to)!
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Actually the likeness is accurate. The *AA can't change the game, but they can "cheat" by using a different mallet... However they seem to be misunderstanding how they could profit from this - they spend all their time changing the 'rules' so they get a bigger and bigger mallets, making them slower and slower and hitting less and less moles... in other words they care more about absolutely smashing the mole they target to bits than directly hitting the others. Their idea is that this will be a deterrent.
The
Internet what? (Score:3, Funny)
What does an "Internet pirate" do? Capture IP packets and hold the bits for ransom?
Re:Internet what? (Score:4, Insightful)
An overlooked point by the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, only "piracy" (it used to be called sharing) venues understand what internet is : a transnational network designed to transmit information without geographical discrimination. There seems to be no legal venue who understood that feature. I want to be able to download a drm-less version of any French, English, Japanese version of any movie that is available. I'll pay for that, but I won't pay for something that is of lower quality than what piracy can provide. In particular, I'll refuse to pay for ads. I feel this is an unacceptable "fuck you" to have unskippable ads on a support you bought.
There are lot of laws to change, but not the ones copyright lobbyists focus on. They have to make it easier to make deals for international distribution. Seriously, geographical distribution deals have no sense nowadays. If you want a meaningful frontier, separate rights of different linguistic version, but don't prevent me from getting stuff in original version at the same time that most slashdotters have them available.
Thanks.
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Think of it this way - the content providers have to compete with piracy. Try as they might, they've been wholly unable to stop it. So it stands to reason that the only legitimate way they could have any hope to compete is to basically give people what they want - DRM-free content that is accessible anywhere in the world.
Greed (Score:4, Interesting)
When people tend to say that the prices are high, you get the classic remark that a cost of zero is still more interesting then any price you would put onto a product. But I'm not that convinced. I'm sure there is a certain spot which you can convert people who download to paying customers.
I have about > 90 blu ray movies and a lot of box sets, but I do have my share of "free" stuff. The difference is that the things that I have bought come from sales (5 a 10€) or are imported from the UK and are the prices that I'm willing to pay.
The problem is that the "legal" way is just darn to expensive sometimes. For example I was searching for a particularly blu ray and they asked about 30 euro's for it (40 dollars) which I find way to high for 2 hours of entertainment. Then sorry I just rather take my sailboat and fish it out of the sea.
Unfortunately something that I witnessed is that the entertainment industry also seen the light and while in the beginning they dropped all the languages and subtitles on the blu ray - you know the sales argument everything could fit onto the disc - it seems they know are putting less languages and subtitles on to the disc mainly to discourage import.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what's an overseas fan (or just one who may well have an HBO subscription, but is frequently travelling outside the US) supposed to do? Avoid anything connected with GoT online between the US airdate and their regional airdate, which may in some cases be after the next series starts airing in the US, starting the cycle anew? Nope. They are going to try and download it from the 'Net (duh!), and HBO has been held up as the poster child [theoatmeal.com] as to why that isn't likely to be legally viable, so the obvious final stop is the torrents. But what's a studio supposed to do? RTFComic! It should be obvious:
HBO can pretty much do all of that, today, with the infrastructure they have for HBO Go, today, albeit with a considerable amount of additional bandwidth provision being required if it doesn't work. So, why not? It's all additional revenue that they weren't going to be getting before, so does the math really work out such that the offsets in losses from people who decide HBO Go is all they need and dump their cable subscriptions will cost HBO more than all of the GLOBAL audience that they reach for no significant extra outlay? Or can't they make it work with overseas distributors? What's wrong with telling them "We'll be making GoT Season #4 available globally to air and online to HBO Go subscribers in English from the end of March 2013, so you might want to arrange any dubbing/subtitling you want and arrange your local scheduling accordingly." Seriously, I can't figure out why they are not already doing this, unless it really is that they are short sighted idiots who still haven't realised that the world changed for them about a decade ago and they'd better get with the times. Can someone fill me in, please?
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Indeed they are missing out on a huge amount of hype by delaying global releases. TV and movie references all over the internet ( social sites). I haven't pirated any shows recently, but when the legal release comes in my country, I'll be like "meh". At least, there will be no sense of urgency -- if it's good TV I may want to watch it, but I can get a used DVD or soemthing.
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Not at all. Unlike murder, rape, terrorism, and stealing, sharing should not be a crime. Sharing of information is a huge public good. No one gets hurt, no one loses anything, except for imaginary harms done to undeserving, controlling, self appointed gatekeepers who we neither need nor want. Drugs can hurt people, so we should have some regulation of them. The question is, how much? Right now it seems we have too much drug regulation, and it's too punitive and harsh.
Don't be so quick to brand some
I think a new tv model is needed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Before we had a handful of channels, and you could select which shows you wanted to watch from them. Then cable came out, and the variety increased, but so did the cost to the consumer, and so an increasing demand for a-la-carte channel selection came about. In some jurisdictions, recent changes have made true a-la-carte programming imminent.
But today, many people have very busy lives, and are often too busy to watch more than perhaps a handful of TV shows each week. It's far from unheard of for people to simply "cut the cord" and do without television entirely, simply because there are not enough programs on the available networks to justify the expense.
I think, therefore, the time is ripe that we need to move even beyond a-la-carte channel selection, and instead directly to a concept of subscribing to individual television programs - where you can choose exactly which programs you want streamed to your PVR, to be watched at your convenience anytime after they are broadcast (or during, of course). Why should a person pay the full price of having HBO available to them 24 hours a day, for example, if they are only ever interested in watching a single program on that station? Obviously, for anything more than a handful of shows on a given network, it would likely become more economical to simply subscribe to the entire station, but in an age where it's not very uncommon to find people who've cut off their cable entirely, simply because they found they were only watching TV a couple of hours each week, I think that this kind of model is going to make a lot of sense.
This would also have the upshot of giving tv show producers a clearer picture of just how many people are actually watching a given television show, basedon subscription figures. Instead of only monitoring which tv stations particular homes that are part of the Nielson group are tuned to at various times throughout the day, and deducing which TV programs that they are watching or recording, and then extrapolating that to deduce what the greater population is watching, they could instead know directly which programs that a potentially much larger demographic watch.
This wouldn't completely eliminate the need for things like the Nielson group, though... which would be capable of monitoring what time of day people are actually watching their televisions... information that would doubtless be of great value to both content creators and advertisers.
Just my 2c. Er... nickel. I understand Canada is getting rid of its penny within the year.
I don't think **AA believes laws will work (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't really be THAT stupid after all this can they? Sure, the bottom feeders with their trolling and settlements are feeding furiously and all. But if the cable companies realize they need to give it away for free to stay in business, then the MPAA also must know what they need to do to remain relevant and in business... or that they can't.
Call me conspiracy theory nut, but I see this as a pretext to criminalizing and penalizing free speech on the internet. "Of course we never hear from AnonymousX or AnonymousY any more... they downloaded music and video and got busted..." Yeah... that's what happened I'm sure.
We *ALL* do it and if a few of us doesn't it's because they are idiots. When it becomes criminal to do what everyone does, then everyone becomes a criminal. See where this is going? "Felony filesharing!! You can't vote!! You can't work!! You can't live a decent life like the rest of us superior beings... go back and work for your slave wages under our justification."
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They are comic book villains with all the drawbacks of same -- including particularly blindness to when "not being an asshole" works to their advantage; villainy is
That's not the point IMO (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, it's true that making content legally avaliable online would reduce piracy, but profits for content producers would be lower anyways. There're still no traditional TV broadcasters or movie producers that make more money online than with their traditional business, and there's no lack of experiments.
The crude truth is that the entertainment industry - especially movie, music and TV-show producers - simply need to realize that their profits, margins and salaries will never be what they used to be in the
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Technically, hewing to originalist principles of limited duration of copyright in the US is a very conservative position. One might even say reactionary.
Ignoring their principles and pandering to well heeled lobbyists is a conservative or liberal thing only in partisan fantasy-lands.
Both sides need to grow a pair when dealing with Disney, et al.
Whack-A-Mole (Score:5, Funny)
It's ironic how often I have to clear my nytimes cookies so that I can read their stupid newspaper. I guess a true Pirate would script that.
Here we go again ... (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand we have a profitable entertainment industry (that people love and feed) who want to retain their profits
On the other hand we have a large group of people with a deluded sense of "entitlement":
- i shouldn't have to wait because I'm international
- i shouldn't have to watch advertising
- i shouldn't have to buy a whole cable package
- i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
So lets be honest, we (and myself included) pirate because "we want", we know there is almost no chance of being caught and view it as victimless.
The NY Times article is interesting but is not going to change any of those fundamentals ...
The one thing that will change piracy is either technological block (which is unlikely) or the music model of cheaper prices. Music piracy decreased dramatically since the Napster days because of single track pricing and better infrastructure.
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I mostly agree with you except one point in particular. Why can't I watch on whatever device I want? I tried to watch a tv episode that was freely available on the company's website and my device was obviously capable as I was shown an ad before the show. However, after the ad I was told my device was not supported. That makes no sense. They got the ad revenue they normally would have gotten but still refused to give me the show. Another point, what's the difference between a computer and an Xbox or iPad th
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Nope ... that is FAR from clear
AFAIK there is not a single country that has repealed copyrights laws at the bequest of its 'governed' population - there is a very VOCAL minority for sure and many/most people here would be part of that but it is still just a minority
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You really don't want to go down this line, because at the other end waits Madame La Guillotine.
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> - i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
There is nothing "entitled" about this idea. It's a simple extension of Anti-Trust. It's the same kind of idea that got movie studios divested of their theatres.
YOU nicely encapsulate the jackass mentality that erodes sympathy for Big Content among the population at large.
YOU have no right to artistic megalomania. In fact you have no rights at all. You have a temporary statutory right that exists only to suit the public at large.
We're not "entitled".
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On the other hand we have a large group of people with a deluded sense of "entitlement":
- i shouldn't have to wait because I'm international
- i shouldn't have to watch advertising
- i shouldn't have to buy a whole cable package
- i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
Care to explain why any of those 'wants' are delusional? Pick one, say, international viewers. Why should they have to wait? I've never heard a good explanation. (there might be some business reasons, but I've yet to hear them described).
It seems to me that there aren't any technological reasons or business reasons why those 'wants' couldn't be met, while *content producers* could still make money. People like Louis CK proved that point.
Why we don't have those 'wants' met is because the media industrie
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...eventually accumulating into a mass of old stuff that starves out anything new. Think 'classic rock'.
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We need an established law that states that a content owner must prove that they are making available the content they own for purchase in ALL available markets, shops, and storefronts.
While most of your comment makes sense, this is clearly not practical ... These all seem to be available in DVD format (as the source of the pirated copies) so your argument appears to be that this is not suitable format for you - not sure if you'd dont own a DVD player or region coding is the issue.
So if I understand, you are saying piracy is okay because you dont "want" to buy DVDs because you prefer digital formats?
Or, are you are suggesting 30 year old TV shows need to be available to cater to EVERYONE'
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You go off the rails the moment you acknowledge the fact that this material is available on DVD. The fact that it is on DVD means that it is already in a format suitable for streaming.
If not for other laws that try to strip us of our personal property rights, the technology to "build our own iTunes" would be commonplace. We would not need Amazon or iTunes because we could all do for ourselves with minimal fuss or effort.
It's like Music CDs: it's already digital.
If that list of yours seems rediculous then I
Interesting point on HBO's potential revenue. (Score:2)
Is it because of the ads? Is it the g^@-damn ads again? Pardon my French, but the only thing that is starting to annoy me more than the ads themselves is the way whole economic models begin to depend on them. The same thing that gives a silly free social network site a 100 billion dollar price tag...
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And as with piracy, aren't the methods for eliminating ads going to increase? I tape delay the Olympics when I watch because I HAVE to have the ability to skip the commercials. I honestly can't stand them and won't watch. YouTube has become polluted with them too and I go there less and less. Have we reached the tipping point when a half hour network show is less than 20 minutes long?
Reminds me of Millipede (Score:2)
I played Millipede until I ran my entire family dry of quarters. And the better I got at it, the more mushrooms appeared.
HBO is playing the same game. I wonder how long their quarters will last.
They're losing (Score:2)
The techn
You pay for content eventually... (Score:3)
What never comes up is that most pirated content gets paid for, eventually. I say 'most' because content that is out-of-print will of course not get paid for.
But BigBlockBuster movie comes out in theatres on the big screens; if you download it, you can see it now on your smaller screen and not pay for it. I can see you do this for a movie that is mainly people talking to each other, but not for a movie like the Hobbit, Star Trek "2", etc. It's up to the creator to make it interesting to go out and see it on the big screen, not because that's the only option you have, but because it's so AWESOME. That requires quite a bit of "umdenken" on Hollywood's part.
If you have what's here the Movie Network package (mine includes HBO Canada), once that movie is premiered on TMN, you paid the creators through your subscription dollars. At that moment in time, the 'damage' is undone: you watched the movie on your small screen, and you paid for it. After that, it will appear on a premium cable channel you might subscribe to (pay or pay again). Then it will appear on the regular OTA channels (carrying fee and/or advertising dollars generated through products you buy). After that it will appear every now and then on various channels, again advertising dollars.
Unless you're really off the consumer radar, eventually some of your money will end up with the creators of content, like it or not (i.e. Uwe Boll movies on Netflix).
And I don't feel bad (Score:2)
Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.
And this is why I don't really feel sorry for content providers.
Of course they don't want to solve the piracy problem. They aren't bound by "free market forces" because they have an exclusive government-enforced monopoly on their product. That means that they can manipulate the market and set prices, and they don't really face competition of another vendor offering the same product for less. As a result, in short, they can charge much more than most of us would really be willing to pay, and to some exte
Big Media Doesn't Want (Score:4, Insightful)
Because enforcement costs them nothing.
The cost of achieving an equilibrium between legal and pirated content online depends on the marginal cost of the enforcement needed to secure that one additional copy. But since that costs them (essentially*) zero, their response is to have the gov't pursue everyone.
*Lobbying for SOPA and PIPA is relatively cheap, considering what a Congressman goes for in the used market these days.
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Extortion is profitable and easy. (Score:2)
Why would the various entertainment industries want to stop piracy? They're making a killing off the legal extortion racket. One "settled" case is worth what, 500 months worth of paid services? They know they're not going to stop people from pirating, so they just created a way to monetize it.
drugs also (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point! When you outlaw something you make everybody who uses that something an outlaw. I believe history has proven that making popular things illegal simply does not work in the long run. The US, being focused solely on quarterly profits and all, will probably never recognize this fact.
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I'll drink to that ;)
Re:drugs also (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:drugs also (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a finite (albeit large) supply of drugs at any given time and the transport and distribution is expensive and the penalties are severe. By contrast, since data is copyable, there is an unlimited supply, and while there are some perils in distribution in the form of law firms attempting to find the most egregious pirates, the average software pirate is unlikely to face peril even if known.
Re:drugs also (Score:4, Insightful)
The present copyright regime allows for strip mining of public demand and turning it into bonds and equities, it does not pay creators for the most part, except to the extent they are advertising delivery vehicles.
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It already is. A top 5 album in the UK will typically net you £5k-£10k, less than minimum wage if you only produce one a year. If you're lucky to have two hit albums in a year then it's better than working as a waiter, but not by a lot.
Re:drugs also (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about this. For the bigger artists, yes, that seems to have been the deal; the record companies basically take all the money from album sales because of their usurious interest-rate "advances", so artists really don't make much money on those, and make real money doing tours.
However, for independent artists, the math is probably very different. Remember, if you're a big band like The Rolling Stones, everyone knows who you are because of decades of promotion and album sales, so when you play a concert, thousands of people line up to buy tickets. If you're some little local band, no one's going to pay a dime to see your concert; at best, some local restaurant will pay you $250 to play a gig there one evening. Divided 4 or 5 ways among the band members, that's not exactly a lot of money. However, many times, local performers will sell their own CDs after the performance for $10 or $15. It's cheap these days to have your own CD professionally made in quantities of 1000 or so, and it's not that hard to do the recording yourself with a PC and get decent results; you don't need some ridiculously expensive recording studio like you did decades ago, and even if you do want to go that route for better quality, it's possible to rent time at studios. So these small-time artists probably make most of their money selling their own independently-produced CDs.
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And if you look at the numbers, prohibition pushes those profits up very nicely. POV means a lot here. If prohibition didn't work, we wouldn't be living under it.
Re:drugs also (Score:4, Insightful)
In this context the verb "works" requires an object.
You can't talk meaningfully about whether or not prohibition works unless you specify for whom.
As you pointed out it's working for somebody.
yes: it's working for you (Score:5, Insightful)
marijuana, alcohol, lsd, mushrooms, etc., should be legal because they do not easily addict (although you shouldn't use drugs that produce strong hallucinations without a babysitter, and the irresponsible assholes that do will mean these drugs will stay illegal)
but strongly addicting and inebriating substances (this excludes nicotine, because it is not strongly inebriating), such as heroin, cocaine, meth, etc., when made easily and freely available, become the "solution" to many more people for the average problems of life, to the point they can no longer maintain a job and a relationship, and the "solution" becomes a much larger life destroying problem
of course, you can still get these drugs, but there are financial and distribution barriers to acquiring them, which means these drugs destroy far less lives than if they were legal and freely available. the war on drugs will never be perfect. that's not the point. marijuana should be made legal and the highly addicting and inebriating substances should be focused on more effectively. to simply keep the addict population as low as is possible. that's the point
also of course, for those who are addicted, HEATH CARE, not incarceration, is the key to rebuilding destroyed lives
but i will never understand, and never respect, the blind idealistic opinions of people who only consider the evil effects of prohibition on society, and do not consider the far greater evil effects of highly addicting + inebriating drugs themselves on destroyed lives. and for those of you who say it is your right to destroy your life if you want, you don't ever do that in a vacuum, you drag your family, friends, community, and random innocents who you hit with your car while inebriated or you wind up stealing from to support your habit (right, like government should hand out free drugs, like i want my tax dollars to bankroll your empty life: no i want to bankroll your recovery)
no one has infinite willpower, everyone has moments of weakness, and most people don't act with responsibility (especially in regards to drugs, since that is the whole point: escape from responsibility and the stress). and when something like cocaine or heroin or meth becomes more easily available during those times of weakness we all have because some magically thinking society made them legal, you have introduced a permanently hobbling deficit on many more people's lives. if you don't understand this phenomenon, stop talking about drug policy, as you know absolutely nothing about drugs, or are being dishonest in the service of your own blindness on the subject, perhaps even your own addiction or addictive personality
more than war, slavery, government brutality: drugs have destroyed more human lives in the history of homo sapiens. understand that, or understand nothing about the subject
Re:yes: it's working for you (Score:4, Informative)
bullshit on cocaine's addictiveness (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg [wikipedia.org]
Re:bullshit on cocaine's addictiveness (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, in a study in The Lancet [wikipedia.org], cocaine is listed as slightly more psychologically addictive as alcohol (2.37 vs 1.93), but physically less addictive (1.3 vs 1.6). In Health also published an article [druglibrary.org] that lists cocaine as less addictive than alcohol. Most studies I've seen list them as relatively equal.
It's hard to get any serious and impartial studies done on the topic because there's such a strong political backlash, should the results be even moderately different than the official government stance.
I'm still not sure that legalization is the right way to handle the drugs issue, but I wish that the topic could be discussed with some objectivity. I'm not a drug user myself, but a large amount of my taxes go to paying for jail time for drug users, which I'm not convinced in the right approach. I just wish people stopped lying about it so that we, as a society, could handle the problem rationally instead of hysterical shrills.
Re:yes: it's working for you (Score:4, Insightful)
You made some good points, but with this BS, you sound just like any other anti drug zealots. For wars and political conflicts, various estimates for the 20th century are around 200 million or more.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm [erols.com].
And for every war dead there several who were seriously injured, lost limbs, lost an organ, or crippled, etc. And there are many times as many refugees as dead, people whose home were destroyed, etc. Your probably looking at a billion people or more whose lives were destroyed by war. And you think drug use is worse? You need to put down the crack pipe, or maybe do a few drugs to get over your anti drug paranoia.
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No, pot is illegal so the tools for the war on drugs can be sold.
(Puts tinfoil hat on)
Re:drugs also (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing the article didn't mention is the collateral damage done by these "wars".
The fight against Internet Piracy brings along a whole lot of government corruption, privacy loss, wasted government time and money, etc.
First rule... (Score:2)
The article did however carefully observe the first rule of usenet.
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You got this the wrong way around. The thirst of control from the corporations and governments is the cause, corruption is the collateral damage.
Piracy is just the cover up.
Re:Same story with 'Dexter' (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Same story with 'Dexter' (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow no sense of humor. To make things worse, you are using DEA's death in the line of duty as an attempt to score some political points within a geek forum. I'd think it would have been more appropriate to talk about how the current administration seems to be kowtowing to the MPAA/RIAA.
Anyway since you did bring it up and you act like Obama authorized the killing of the agent and all investigations of organized crime weapon smuggling are completely safe. I'd like to point out that DEA agents have a dangerous job and we should be thankful that we have people who are willing to endanger themselves to keep the rest of us safe. Sometime miscalculations will be made and people get killed. We need to learn to differentiate the difference between authorizing the program at large, and making decisions out in the field. Time magazine did a very interesting article on the subject, you can google it.
The problem I have with your assertion is that I haven't seen any evidence that another president would have done anything differently. Fast & Furious was started under the Bush administration. This fact doesn't absolve Obama since he reauthorized it but it does show that both party administrations would have continued the program. Obama has the misfortune of (1) a major fuck up happening during his watch and (2) an opposing political party looking to manufacture any scandal possible to discredit his presidency.
Instead of focusing like a laser asking "what if" and pretending that another president would do something different, how about looking at both candidates and asking "who's the better choice overall". The republicans appear to be afraid of this comparison. Which is unfortunate, since I remember a time when a candidate won the election by a landslide with a platform of change and hope. Now we have both candidates campaigning on fear, uncertainty and doubt.
It's bad enough the presidential election is a contest between the lesser of two evils. Don't add false dichotomies to the election rhetoric.
Anyway I find it sad that Obama's opponents are focusing so much on an operation that resulted in a death of one DEA agent. I guess they want to distract us from a previous republican administration decision that killed and maimed thousands of US soldiers, and resulted in large amounts of currency and weapons to be unaccounted for in a hostile country. Sadly the current operations aren't the first time.
While we are on the subject of the supposed outrage from the right, here's some food for thought. The most revered republican president (Reagan) sold weapons to the enemy of the state (Iran) and then tried to cover it up. They were using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. In their attempt to cover up their shenanigans, they shredded countless documents and lied to congress. The central figure of the scandal (Oliver North) was herald as a hero for carrying out the plan and sacrificing his military career to cover it up. The whole scandal landed him a job at Fox news.
My final point being beware of taking one political party's bullshit as gospel.
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Yes there is. the CEO of Showtime cant buy yet another gold plated Audi.
My action or inaction in this matter has no bearing on that.
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There are no higher values than peace, justice and praise of God in Judaism.
Not that you know anything about it, other than that you hate Jews. Now do you.
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"That's why we have 'regionalism' for DVDs."
and why I made a LOT of money buying off brand china DVD players and region unlocking them. I made $150 off of a $99.00 DVD player on a regular basis LG was my favorite as it took me less than 20 minutes with a "upgrade" CD. I think half the DVD players in Dearborn,MI were ones I modified and sold.
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That threw me at first, too, but judging from the rest of that comment, I think the AC just made a typo. It's the only thing that makes sense. He probably meant "The majority of Pirates pirate because they can't afford to buy the products," intended to spell "cant" without an apostrophe and didn't hit the T hard enough.
AC should get an account, he'll never see your response.
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HBO's online offerings are only available to subscribers in the United States who are also customers of a specific list of cable/satellite TV companies.
That doesn't really help the subscriber in Australia or Europe. Why are those customers unable to stream/download content that their American counterparts can? Why are the same shows delayed by days or weeks in non-US countries?
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HBO's online offerings are only available to subscribers in the United States who are also customers of a specific list of cable/satellite TV companies.
That doesn't really help the subscriber in Australia or Europe. Why are those customers unable to stream/download content that their American counterparts can? Why are the same shows delayed by days or weeks in non-US countries?
Good point. The region concept for content is complete garbage. I've got a friend who recently moved from the US to Greece. He's having a hell of a time getting content over there. I believe he finally resorted to using a VPN provider.
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Your premise has nothing to do with your conclusion. You get zero points.
Re:Math. (Score:4, Interesting)
i started watching White Collar on netflix last year. netflix had seasons 1 & 2. after i was done, i realized that season 3 was already halfway done airing. there was no way to watch the first couple of episodes, and i have a subscription to comcast (95% of its offerings). "i'll wait it out", i said to myself. low and behold it's now 2012. i see a commercial for season 4 coming to tv in a few months. "great! that means season 3 should be available, so i can catch up in time". nope. i even had a subscription to hulu plus this time. so here i was forking over money to 3 different subscription services and not 1 will give me what i want. hulu's website eventually got season 3, in low bitrate, website only streaming. (side note: these idiot companies can't even realize that streaming == streaming. they have to have different licensing for computer and phones/consoles/other devices. that is fucking retarded.) anyway, i found they were also streaming from usanetwork.com in slightly better quality. i did cancel my hulu plus, because they weren't giving me what i wanted. after watching about half of the episodes on the website, i stumbled across them in the comcast hd on demand folder and finished them up in the quality i have been paying for. what did learn? i'm paying way too much for way too little. next time, i am going to just torrent the stuff. after all, i am already paying for them, so why the fuck not. i'm surely not going to pay dvd prices for itunes' drm shit that i can't lend/sell/etc when i am done. if they are going to remove what i can do with the stuff, they are going to have to be a lot cheaper that $1.99/episode. it's not even a matter of convenience anymore with the ubiquity of the internet these days.
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