Piracy Fails To Prevent Another Box Office Record (torrentfreak.com) 221
An anonymous reader writes: The movie industry has reported global box office records reached $38.4 billion in 2015, up 5% on 2014's total, according to the MPAA's Theatrical Market Statistics report. The U.S. and Canada turned in $11.1 billion with international box office revenues hitting $27.2 billion. "I'm proud to say that the state of our industry has never been stronger," the former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is. According to Dodd, the box office would be more healthy to the tune of $1.5 billion if piracy could be brought under control. Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer. Napster co-found Sean Parker has a Screening Room project which hopes to bring first-run movies into the home via a set-top box. Though it has a trick up its sleeve: Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home would get two tickets to watch the movie in the cinema, which could either boost or at least maintain box office attendance. The Art House Convergence (AHC) said it "strongly opposes" the plan, warning it would only fuel torrent sites and piracy. National Assosciation of Theatre Owners chief John Fithian said, "More sophisticated window modeling may be needed for the growing success of a modern movie industry."
landlubbers abound (Score:5, Funny)
"Some possible theories to achieve such a goal would be based off making content more readily available to the consumer."
Great idea!
"Customers prepared to pay the required $50 to watch at home....."
uh oh, I see more black sails on the horizon...
Re:landlubbers abound (Score:5, Insightful)
I can certainly see multi-millionaires paying $50 so they can watch a newly released film in their private 40 seat theater in their beach house in hawaii.
I on the other hand balk at the fact that a 10 year old tv show is still $25/season (for SD).
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I can see myself waiting a few months and paying $1.50 to rent the dvd from redbox. I still haven't seen the force awakens but it's at redbox so probably this weekend.
As for 10 year old tv shows netflix or hulu because $25/season is more than I'm willing to pay.
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There are very few movies I am willing to sit in a crowded theater for. My biggest complaint is the formulaic nature of most films these days.
I was watching a movie (at home) and said to my daughter "hey, I haven't seen the cat in a while", and the very next scene? The cat. We both laughed. However it emphasizes my point that the movie was so predictable that it was laughable.
Save your money, and watch Episode IV instead. Basically the same movie, with new players (and some old ones) and a few minor tweaks.
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There are very few movies I am willing to sit in a crowded theater for.
If you went to the right crowded cinema, you'd get Finn (well Boyega) running up and down the aisle high fiving people at the right places. I think that would add something to it. I went to see it at that cinema (can't argue with tickets for a fiver), but not, sadly one of the screenings that he turned up for.
Being in a crowded cinema can add a lot of atmosphere to a film.
My biggest complaint is the formulaic nature of most films these d
Re: landlubbers abound (Score:2)
Movie theater pros:
Big screen
Movie theater cons:
Poor contrast ratios.
Sub part seats
Fixed schedule.
No ability to pause for urination.
Terrible food
Expensive food.
Impolite movie patrons.
Sub part equipment or poorly trained operators ruining the experience.
Can't go to the movie theater in my underwear.
I stopped going when I got my first 50 inch tv.
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Any yet I and many others still like going to the cinema even though large screens and good sound systems are cheap now. I guess you must have missed a few things.
For example:
* Large audience annd atmosphere to the film
* You get to see the films sooner
* Draught ale on tap [depends on the cinema. My closest one has, the cheap one doesn't]
* No urination breaks + inability to go in your underwear + fixed schedule makes it much harder to drift off and start doing/thinking about other things in the film, so watc
Re:landlubbers abound (Score:5, Informative)
I on the other hand balk at the fact that a 10 year old tv show is still $25/season (for SD).
In their defense, 10 years ago many shows were shot on video tape in SD (or maybe a little better) because it was going to air in SD and people would be watching it in SD and why spend the extra money to do film?
As an old example, the original Star Trek was shot on film. They did this originally because there wasn't an easy way to do special effects with video tape. But everything was optimized for an SD screen. 50 years later, they still had the high resolution film, so they could start with that and redo the special effects, fix some of the background issues (e.g. walls painted with chalk that is blatantly obvious in HD), and come up with something pretty good.
But, at least as I understand it, Star Trek: The Next Generation was shot on video tape because, by 1987, they could do visual effects on a computer. So there is no "high resolution master" for TNG episodes. I believe that's also true with Deep Space 9 and Voyager. I think the second season of Enterprise was the first to actually film with High-Def cameras.
Personally, I agree with you. I balk at paying $25 for an old TV Show--even a favorite. But in regards to SD/HD, they may not really have a choice...
Re:landlubbers abound (Score:5, Insightful)
*this*
The MPAA are business idiots.
If the MPAA ran a supermarket, they would say :
Hey, 2% of stuff is STOLEN.... let's put everything in locked glass shelves, then suddenly find out that the 50% reduction in sales (because it is now too inconvenient) dwarfs the now 1% that is being stolen.
Most people don't want to steal, but they do want convenience and a reasonable price.
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The industry would be more scared if people didn't bother downloading them even for free.
The Anti-movie industry Resistance manifesto! (Score:2, Informative)
Just remember, the movie industry wants you to die too, metaphorically speaking; and they have law, punishment, and money on their side. They can break you financially; they can have you sent away; they can see to it that you become highly undesirable to employers. And the kicker is, they really, really want to do those things to you and all those like you.
I applaud your willingness to fight for what you want. I will also applaud when they catch you and, in
Huh (Score:3)
I don't illegally download movies.
I have a gigantic DVD collection. I found out the pawn shop near me sells used dvds for a buck each. and BluRay are 3 for ten.
Don't care what model they go for. Somebody already paid for my movie. :)
Deadpool (Score:5, Informative)
Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated. Hell, Deadpool and Star Wars are still playing on screens near where I live.
Yes, there have been flops, but I doubt anyone can link those flops to pirating.
Re:Deadpool (Score:5, Insightful)
Not when you factor "Hollywood accounting" into it. This is an industry that goes to great, creative lengths to screw people out of money they're contractually entitled to, and they want us to feel sorry for them. When the MPAA execs start being honest with the people that actually make the movies that line their pockets, I'll start taking them a little more seriously. Until then, I have the world's smallest violin playing just for them.
you underwear perverts GET OFF MY LAWN!!! (Score:2)
"To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said.
Truly. Our local multiplex has switched over to a "All super heroes, all the time" format. And the local 13-year-olds couldn't be happier.
And the roster of 13 superhero TV shows are making this "The Golden Age of Television".
Box office sales versus home movie sales (Score:2)
People like to watch new movies in the theatre. Piracy doesn't affect that. It might affect home video sales but if they've already made a profit, home video sales are just gravy. Kindof like musicians make a majority of their money from live shows. The movie industry already knows this. That's why they give out free copies of previous movies on various streaming sites right before the sequel comes out. Let's just make home videos free and be done with it.
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How long has being able to own a personal copy of a movie been around. I know home VCRs have been around since the 1970s, but the cost of buying a videotape even in the 1980s was pretty darned high. I don't think it became common to have large personal movie libraries until the 1990s. So really, the whole personal copy angle has been around maybe 20 or 25 years, a small portion of the amount of time the film industry has been around. I get that DVD sales may be dropping, and you're right, it has been just g
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Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated.
While I agree that the industry claims are overstated, it's important to note that the movies that make many times their budget are rather rare. The cost of making -- and often more importantly, marketing -- a movie these days are often quite significant. They don't have to be, and many "independent" films manage to be made on a shoestring budget with rather high quality nowadays.
But lots of mainstream Hollywood films have budgets in excess of $100 million, and they might spend that much or more on mark
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So how about another question, is it a waste of planetary resources in it's current format and should be eliminated. Perhaps to much of the planets resources are being consumed by it and it produces nothing but empty entertainment. Should it be limited, should copyright be cut back or even eliminated where the content produced does not further the sciences or human society, should it be purposefully reduced and minimised because it quite simply wastes to much of our shared resources. Perhaps the content to
Actually it doesn't "beg the question" . . . (Score:2, Offtopic)
Yeah, yeah, I know, the meaning of words and phrases change over time, grammar nazi, blah blah blah. But the simple fact is that there are LOTS of other phrases that mean what you're trying to say when you misuse "begs the question" and that are thus available to you; but there's no other succinct phrase in English that means what "begs the question" actually means. Re-purposing that phrase weakens the language: it takes away the only useful expressi
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Says you. How about "presuming the conclusion". Which is actually a wording that is self-explanatory and makes sense.
As opposed to "begs the question", which intuitively means exactly what people use it for, "demands the question". What a crazy interpretation, right? It's almost like "beg" and "demand" are similar in meaning or something.
The original meaning of "begs the question" is de facto useless, because nob
I'm sorry, but you need to re-read the summary. (Score:2)
1.5 / 27 (Score:3)
If they are only claiming a little over 5% loss to piracy, they likely aren't accounting for the greater than 5% increase from the engagement that piracy creates.
People who "never watch movies" are simply out of the picture, but when these same people watch 20 movies through piracy and then pay to watch 2 or 3 through legitimate channels, that's a net win for the industry.
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Why? Because I can't return a crapfest I'm not satisfied with, like I can return just about any other product, and I work hard for my money, just like the studios. And just like all the people making the other products I can return if not satisfied. When I can retur
Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost every single rationalization or justification that I've ever heard for why a person might pirate, other than supporting the abolition of copyright entirely, can be found on the list of ethical fallacies [ethicsscoreboard.com], and it gives a person some measure of pause to at least carefully consider the premise that just because one *can* do something, does not necessarily mean that they *should*.
I'm probably going to modded into slashdot hell for saying this, but that these alleged studies that somehow show that piracy
Re:Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright should be a good thing. It's called copy right, as in "the right to make a copy". But in a few decades, Hollywood, the MPPA, the RIAA and Disney butchered copyright laws to a point where the spirit of it isn't even there anymore. They've twisted it into "it's only to protect us, screw everyone else and screw the public domain".
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I don't believe that terrorism is such a threat to US citizens that it's worth the cost of our government spying on us or eroding our personal liberties. I'm also highly skeptical of those in government who keep beating the drumbeat of the terrorism threat in an effort to acquire more power for unilateral action. Such a position doesn't mean that I'm endorsing terrorism.
Likewise, do you understand that one might not hold a great deal of sympathy for the MPAA or their claims of how much piracy is hurting t
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I'm an independent videogame developer. Unfortunately, I'm still at least a year from finishing up my title, but thanks for the sentiment. To be honest, I was inspired by Brad Wardell, president and CEO of StarDock, who espoused a similar view years ago:
http://www.ign.com/articles/20... [ign.com]
I'm hoping someday I can also prove the naysayers wrong by offering fun, affordable, DRM-free titles and making a good living doing it. The way I figure it, the industry isn't going to change itself.
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Re:Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
if one believes that copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it, even if they do not agree with the means by which it is being implemented
Absolutely not.
Nobody has an ethical obligation to support every aspect of a law just because they support one part of it. The fact that the constitution included a process for adding amendments should make it clear that unquestioning obedience to the law was never the intent of our legal system.
We're quite capable of acknowledging that copyright has benefited society while still recognizing that parts of copyright law have been expanded far beyond the original intent in ways that now cause harm.
Re:Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:4, Funny)
False dilemma.
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if one believes that copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it, even if they do not agree with the means by which it is being implemented. If you pirate, you either advocate the complete abolition of copyright or are a hypocrite. Period.
That's a false statement.
I can have exactly zero respect for our current implementation of copyright law, while believing copyright as originally intended is indeed a good thing, while also at the same time not pirating anything.
Because that is exactly what I do.
Re: Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:2)
What if you only copy things after the 14 + 14 year duration that US copyright law originally had?
If you support copyright as originally laid down, and obey it, but think that the copyright contract between public and producers has been unilaterally and unfairly altered to the detriment of the public?
Are you still a hypocrite then?
Re:Old excuses are lame excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. False Dichotomy [wikipedia.org] much?
. /Oblg. DVD vs Piracy [imgur.com]
People pirate for a variety of reasons. Such as:
1. One can't legally buy a copy. Piracy is the *only* option to watch it. /sarcasm Those pesky Mathematicians! They are the cause of the downfall of society!
2. Artificial Scarcity. If a DVD/BluRay is not available in my region, piracy is simply more convenient
3. They can't afford it.
4. If a borrow a movie from a library, watch it, and then return it this has the exact same effect as if I had borrowed a movie from the library, made a copy, returned the original, and watch my copy later, except the former is legal, yet the latter is "magically" illegal
5. Piracy is the delusion that "copying numbers is illegal". How stupid is Civilization when it has declared Illegal Numbers [wikipedia.org] !?!?
To everyone who plays the bullshit piracy-is-illegal card here are some questions for you:
Q. If your friend buys a DVD and loans it to you, is it piracy if you watch it? You never paid for the content.
Q. How many friends can I loan my DVD / BluRay to before it becomes piracy?
Q. Why is it OK if I personally loan it to friends, but I can't share my copy with strangers?
Q. How "long" do I have to know a person before I can legally share my copy?
Q. Are libraries engaging in piracy?
Do I personally pirate? No, as I like having my own personal library so I don't mind buying BluRays / DVDs. If I can't buy it, I'll just wait until it is available. But my reasons for why I _don't_ pirate may not work for someone who _does_.
> copyright is a good thing at all, then one has a ethical obligation to respect it,
1. When Copyright was only ~20 years, sure, I have no problem following that but when the law has become corrupt that something that _would_ become "public domain" will NEVER reach that status, then there is higher obligation:
Civil Disobedience is the only way to change to corrupt laws.
2. Rosa Parks [wikipedia.org] would like to have some of what you are smoking. Laws are NOT absolutes. That is why they _change over time_.
Personally, abolish copyright, because it is no longer server its original purpose:
So no, we're not ethically bound to follow bullshit artificial laws.
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Woody's Excuse.
2. Artificial Scarcity. If a DVD/BluRay is not available in my region, piracy is simply more convenient
Tit for Tat.
And that somehow makes it right? Variation of the Saint's License.
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If Hollywood ran out of money and shut down tomorrow. The world would probably be a better place anyway. After all there are always lol cats on youtube
$50 to watch ONE movie? (Score:3)
Is this guy insane? I only pay $9 for Netflix and I can watch a lot of movies for that low price. Sure, I have to wait months or even years, but in the end I've watched the same movies as everybody else. My money is better spent elsewhere, like rent and food.
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Is this guy insane?
Completely... unless he's targeting a different demographic than you're assuming. How many people have dumped thousands into relatively-decent* home theater setups and would love to watch first-run movies in the comfort of their own homes, and we're not even talking about much of a premium, cost-wise; think about how much tickets, popcorn and flavored-corn-syrup-diluted-with-carbonated-pool-water for four people typically costs.
*It doesn't take much to assemble a system that'll put the typical "nice" theat
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Still, at $50 it's a lot more than even double what you'd pay at the theater.
Get lost. (Score:3, Insightful)
And householders would be 1.5bn better off if they didn't have to fit locks, and alarms, and other security.
And airports would be 1.5bn better off if there wasn't terrorism.
And countries would be BILLIONS better off if people just got off their arses and got a job, and paid taxes honestly.
But none of that is going to happen. You have legislation in place to combat all those. For copyright, It's already disproportionally harsh, and enforced where necessary (i.e. mass duplicators, and those people who are brought to court reasonably for deliberately downloading movies they haven't paid for).
Stop whining, get off your arses and focus on making movies.
Hint: Not been to a cinema in years. Don't buy DVD's any more, unless it's second-hand and thereby not profitable for you at all. Will pay a reasonable price for legal download rights for stuff I consider worthwhile in a half-playable format.
The reason you're not making all that you could? That shit you put into the cinema and flood everything else out with. That crap you enforce on your media and streams. The bollocks that you make me sit through on legally owned media.
I do not pirate. I pay for things. I paid for my shareware in the 90's (yes, I own mIRC, WinZIP, Doom and lots of other things that nobody ever paid for). I paid for proper licensing for commercial software of those things I used "for personal use" that were more than worth the money (VMWare was worth its hefty price and that's the MOST I've ever paid for software). I donate to software projects that I have no need to. I buy copies of good games for friends and give them out at Christmas, birthdays, special occasions and even run competitions on my game servers that I run FOR FREE for various communities. I have no qualms about handing over money for the legal right to play content that I *could* acquire elsewhere and supporting things I enjoyed myself.
But all that shit you do? It makes me choose between supporting that side of the shit, or pirating, if I want to watch it. So I choose not to watch it instead.
Honestly, best thing of buying a handful of movies with "free" credit from Amazon / Google Play? No unskippable trailers. Play from a multitude of devices, when I want, where I want, how I want. I don't even care that the downloads are DRM'd, to be honest, I have 1000 Steam games and that doesn't bother me either.
But it's the shit that GETS IN THE WAY that really bugs me. Software updates to BluRay players in order to watch a movie? Fuck that. I press play, I want to watch it. Wait MONTHS for a movie I do want to see to come out somewhere other than the cinema? I'd rather just forget about it and pick it up when it comes out as a "freebie" movie on some download service if you're going to deliberately stymie my initial enthusiasm for it. DVD's that don't play in laptops? Fuck off. And TEN MINUTES of fucking trailers that I can't skip when I just want to put on a Disney movie to occupy a child? That's just fucking evil. So I stopped buying them.
Stop whining about how unfair the world is, because copyright infringement is part-and-parcel of your industry the same way that "No the parcel never arrived" is part-and-parcel of running a mail order business. Sometimes it could be honest, sometimes it could be fraudulent. But you can't piss away your profits chasing it except in obvious - or large - cases and most people just can't be bothered to go to the effort of pirating things anyway. That's why Netflix et al are so popular. And why iTunes makes a killing even though ANY song you want is available on the first page of Google if you put in "mp3" into it. But navigating the mire of illegal downloads is beyond most people. They'd rather just have one place to go, pay, and download their content in a format they'd like.
iTunes lost the MP3 battle. How long until you lose the "H264" battle where you just end up providing DRM-free copies of anything people have bought a license to?
Honestly,
Ways to reduce piracy (Score:2)
Here are some suggestions for the MPAA as ways they can reduce the piracy of their films:
1.Stop making tickets so expensive. Every time ticket prices go up, there will be people who now say "I am not paying that much to see xyz movie, I will pirate it instead". Reducing ticket prices will (all other things being equal) lead to more bums in seats and more revenue for the studios.
2.Eliminate the delays between the worldwide release of a film and the local release of a film in various countries (last years mov
why measure in dollars? (Score:2)
Maybe instead of focusing on dollar amounts, they should focus on the ratio of tickets available (seats in theatre * showings/day * days) to the number of tickets sold. After all, with ticket prices the way they are now there is no comparing a movie from the 70s - lets say Star Wars on opening weekend at a whopping 1.5 million, essentially petty cash in todays numbers - to anything released today. Oh, but the first SW movie was unknown - but Empire Strikes Back grossed a big $4.9 million on its opening we
Prices & Claims (Score:3)
That's not begging the question (Score:2)
No joke! (Score:2)
Claiming piracy is hurting the movie business is like claiming street drugs are hurting the pharmaceutical business. In both cases, people partaking in the illicit activity are unlikely to be participating in the licit one.
Don't beg a question (Score:3)
FTA: former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is.
He actually spoke the truth – unintentionally.
To "beg the question" means to "use circular logic". As in, when you are accusing someone of making BS arguments that rely on their initial (wrong) assumption.
Who would have thought that the MPAA CEO would actually speak the truth about 'piracy'?
This logic works for me too (Score:2)
According to Dodd, the box office would be more healthy to the tune of $1.5 billion if piracy could be brought under control.
And if Hollywood hired ME to make movies instead of this DiCaprio fellow, I'd be richer by quite a few million too.
Hey (Score:2)
Does this press release pretend there are movies worth watching still made?
I haven't noticed more than 1-2 per year lately. It's a miracle they're still making money.
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Re:I'll tell you where the theft is (Score:5, Informative)
The law says piracy is not theft. All logic and semantics be damned; the law is clear.
Copyright Infringement is illegal, but it is not theft. They are covered under different sections of law, have different enforcement regulations and different penalties.
Discussion over.
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The law said slavery was right and good. The law said that women being forbidden to vote was right and good. The law said that dark skinned people were to ride on the back of the bus, and use separate bathrooms, and drink from separate fountains. The law says that "interstate commerce" means "intrastate commerce." The law was, and remains, completely clear on these and similarly wrongheaded matters. And in so doing, it is completely, utterly, wrong. As is
Re:I'll tell you where the theft is (Score:4, Interesting)
I knew this to be the case when I had a fairly computer illiterate 70 something explain to me how she had discovered how to pirate music and now had a large collection. She is an accountant with an accountant's typical mindset and otherwise follows the rules blindly. She explained to me with the zeal of a proselytiser. In a different case, I had to laugh my ass off when I found out that another man I know, who is a software development manager and makes crazy big money, pirates video games. He rails against pirating movies and music and has forbidden it at his house, but I guess software is okay.
Human nature does not see a moral equivalence between taking someone's property (theft) and copying their ideas without compensation. Copying does not "cost" the victim anything in real terms, in the same way that a lost sale does not actually "cost" the seller anything. It is the moral equivalent of duplicating a restaurant's recipes at home. However, restaurants cannot litigate since recipes have no copyright protection. Since no one expects copyright privilege in the restaurant industry, no one rises up in arms screaming about the "theft" of Red Lobster dishes.
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The law said slavery was right and good. The law said that women being forbidden to vote was right and good. The law said that dark skinned people were to ride on the back of the bus, and use separate bathrooms, and drink from separate fountains. The law says that "interstate commerce" means "intrastate commerce." The law was, and remains, completely clear on these and similarly wrongheaded matters. And in so doing, it is completely, utterly, wrong. As is precisely the case here.
Irrelevant. The law tells you what you can and cannot do, doesn't matter if it's subjectively right or wrong that's for future people to decide and change the law accordingly but until then, then law doesn't give a shit. Manslaughter isn't murder and copyright infringement isn't theft.
Re:I'll tell you where the theft is (Score:4)
All logic and semantics be damned; the law is clear.
The logic is pretty clear, too: It's not theft. Theft is when you take something away from another person. If I have a painting, and you take it away from me, that's theft. If I have a painting, and you look at it and derive pleasure from looking at it, that's not theft. It doesn't matter if I intended to sell you tickets, or use the painting in some commercial setting, looking at it still isn't theft. Taking a picture so you can look at it later is not theft. Even if I sell copies of that picture, I still haven't stolen the painting. If I paint a copy of the painting and sell that fake painting as the real thing, that's still technically not theft. Forgery, yes. Fraud? Sure. Theft? No.
Re:I'll tell you where the theft is (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand it takes a lot of money to make a movie, and yes they deserve fair compensation for that. A few years of exclusive rights, definitely but no creative endeavor is made in a vacuum, people copy and use other peoples ideas, to make new creations all the time (I can't think of one that isn't). Once are fair time has passed they should be returned to the public domain so other creations can be made from them. I believe that the laws as they stand are result of a corrupt political system that allows lobbing, not what is in the best interest of society.
I do however think a lot of the cost of making a movie feeds into itself, buying rights to stories, paying actors, directors, producers millions. These costs are because movies can make a lot of money, and everybody wants their cut, so if the story, actor, director, ... is famous enough it almost guarantees success.
I think these costs, are actually killing the movie industry, they not conducive to creating new and initiative stories but rather run by accountants, that produce the same stories over and over again because they know they will sell. If you are investing $100 million you do not want small chance of success. The only way to reduce the cost of movies is to force them to be competitive.
Apart from all that just because it is wrong doesn't make it stealing, just like it doesn't make it rape.
Re:I'll tell you where the theft is (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the bit where the people who pirate are mostly movie lovers and very often go to see it in the cinema as well, hell sometimes before pirating. Watch it on the big screen once with friends/a date - and download a copy to rewatch multiple times.
That is something they never factor in - the reality is that piracy has, if anything, most likely INCREASED movie profits.
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You do understand that when they make a movie, it takes a lot of effort and money, right? And, if everyone goes "hey, it's not theft", then they won't get that money, right? And then they won't have either the money or inclination to make you the next movie. Got that? No more great movies for you to copy without paying.
Maybe they should start making some decent, original, compelling films instead of rehashing 80s/90s stuff and making endless superhero films. Most of the shit they put out these days isn't even worth downloading. Sure, the odd good one slips through and they should be fully supported to encourage more, but yeah, 90% of Hollywood's output is pure garbage.
Re:Flawed logic (Score:5, Informative)
Here I have taken money that you can show what you would have gotten, if it was not for the lie.
If someone watches the concert through the window, you have lost money only if that person would have gone to the concert otherwise. They may have, they may not have, they may go to your next concert because they liked what they saw.
Just because someone pirates a movie, and if this is stealing, and the law as consistent, for a criminal case you should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they would have paid for it anyway. I don't think you could even prove it beyond balance of probabilities.
You have to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt, is "stealing" intellectual property so much worse that we have to lower the standard of proof.
The answer is you are not stealing but you are committing copyright infringement which is different.
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If you screw my wife then you've attempted rape. Although more likely you've suffered grave injury and will bleed out before the cops catch up with you.
Movies aren't real property. They are copies. You can't have sole possesion of them like with real property.
Now if you can clone my wife and manage not to get yourself killed then you are welcome to try.
Re:Flawed logic (Score:5, Funny)
If you screw my wife then you've attempted rape.
LOL - nope! It's only rape if she wasn't consenting...
Given that you appear to think of your wife as property, I would not at all be surprised if she consents... often and frequently.
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Yeh but you haven't stolen my wife have you? You as long as it was consensual haven't even done anything illegal (in a lot of countries).
A better analogy would be, if I was pimping my wife out, and you had consensual sex with her on her on time, and didn't pay me. Did you steal from me?
I may be annoyed that you had sex with her, but I only lost money if you where willing pay if she didn't have sex with you in the first place. She maybe she was so good that you are now willing to pay (free sample).
Disclaimer
Re:Flawed logic (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the argument at all. The argument is that the claims that any film industry financial problems are due to pirating is rubbish. That's not a defense of pirating, that's a statement that the MPAA's frequently floated claim is garbage.
Now, the music industry, on the other hand, is another matter. I guess it comes down to the point that people think music is worth less than movies.
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The above really gets to the point. It's not that record profits make copyright infringement or piracy somewhat "okay." And even though copyright infringement and theft aren't the same thing, neither one is legal, and the fact that the movie industry has made a lot of money doesn't change that.
It does put the lie to their statement that piracy is killing them. And this matters, again not because piracy is right, but because the MPAA and others are using their bogus argument to justify all sorts of oppressiv
Re: Flawed logic (Score:4, Interesting)
But studios have always had a mix of huge successes, moderate successes, moderate failures and colossal flops. Is there any evidence that that trend is worse now than it was, say, in 1963, when Cleopatra became one of the biggest and most expensive flops in movie history?
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These aren't local studios either, these are the big Hollywood guys, those ones making the record profits, because if we don't pay them to come here, someone else will.
Re: Flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Your arguments are complete BS. The film industry has always had films that lose money; long before the age of piracy. This is nothing new. What is new is that they can no longer produce a bad film and make their money back before the public gets wise to the fact that it is a bad film (the Ewe Boll business model). If your film is garbage, you're going to lose money on it, period. And your DVD argument is complete apples and oranges. Your example is theft, removing property from someone's possession without compensation. Copyright infringement is not theft by any legal system in the world because the original is still in the original owner's possession, no matter what the media industry tries to tell us. Even with that in mind, your DVD argument is still bogus because that is what every retailer who sells DVDs does. As long as they make money overall, they continue to sell DVDs and call it a success. Do they try to minimize the theft? Sure. But, they don't say DVDs sales are a bust because they had a small percentage of their copies stolen.
What the media industry is doing is looking at all the piracy numbers and saying to themselves "if we can turn all these numbers into sales, look at all the money we can make!" This is complete fallacy and their own internal studies have proved it. The most prolific pirates are also their highest-paying customers. What does this mean? That means they purchase a legitimate copy as well and they use piracy either as previews or for convenience. What they industry wants is for everyone to purchase multiple copies of the same content. No one in the world is going to go for this, regardless of what laws or actions taken by the industry or the governments that support them. Do all pirates own legitimate copies as well? No. But, the ones that don't are almost impossible to turn into legitimate sales, again, according to the industry's own studies. They either don't have the money or have some ideological issue with paying (even if it's selfish miserliness).
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This wasn't about 'one successful film'. The 'entire industry', as a whole, had yet another record-breaking year in profits.
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I love how to try to conflate copyright infringement with the actual theft of a DVD.
My company has DVDs replicated for 20 cents each. I am sure a big Hollywood studio pays even less. So if the DVD sells for $20, then 99% of the value is in the content, not the physical media. So "stealing" a movie online really isn't so different than stealing a DVD. The monetary difference is negligible.
Disclaimer: I watch pirated movies occasionally, because I am cheap and I know I can get away with it. But I don't try to rationalize it.
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Software has no real value, only what someone is willing to pay for it. Now a bit of physical media has a cost associated with it. It's what the merchant paid for it. You will do real harm to a merchant if you steal any of their physical items.
You will do no damage to a copyright holder by copying their work.
Clearly you can't even devalue their work in the process. That's what record ticket sales demonstrate. What piracy actually happens does no harm.
Degenerate pirates and poor people are no real loss to th
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Only you have to go much further to commit copyright infringement against the GPL...
Most movie pirates simply make copies of the existing movies and watch them, the GPL specifically allows you to do the same with GPL code.
Even most commercial pirates just produce copies of the movies and sell them, again this behaviour is explicitly allowed with GPL software.
There are few (if any?) pirates who take commercial movies and use the content to create new works which they try to pass off as their own, indeed this
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WRONG, you clearly don't understand GPL.
ANYONE can sell GPL software as long as any modifications they have made to it are released as GPL as well.
There is absolutely no restrictions on selling GPL software as long as you abide by the license, which states clearly that you must release all your modifications under the GPL license.
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It's less a matter that piracy is Ok, and more a matter that stopping piracy will cost too much in terms of liberty in trying to block possible misuse of anything that could possibly be illegal
We could completely prevent speeding and stop just about all traffic accidents if we required that someone walk ahead of every vehicle carrying a red flag (a law that was actually on the books still in some places not that long ago), but the cost to society that such rules would impose would be FAR worse than the bene
Re:Flawed logic (Score:4, Informative)
I would go as far to say that the DRM they have added to everything already costs more than piracy.
Just in terms of time wasted things not working and general bull$hit.
Broadcast flag, HDCP, securom, oh and lets not forget the sony rootkits and so on.
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If I couldn't break their DRM, I would not have bought my rather sizeable collection of media. Content is really much more useful once it's liberated from physical media and DRM servers. It's more valuable to the customer.
Artistic megalomania blinds content companies to the truth of this.
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The movie studios are the ones with the flawed logic. "Hey, you are increasing my income without my permission."
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Intuitively, it reduces that income, because people who are pirating are not buying. Counter-intuitively, many people who otherwise would not buy because they can not return media they are not satisfied with pirate to sample, the
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That's a very gray area you're treading. There is no proof that piracy affects the studios' income one way or the other. Clearly, it does, but it is impossible to prove whether it is a net positive or a net negative.
The correlation is quite strong. The greater the piracy, the greater the income. As overall piracy has increased, so has income and profits for MPAA members. Also, as piracy for RIAA members dropped, so did their income and profits. Ringtones are effectively dead, and CD/physical media is in freefall. Online sales are increasing. Music piracy is falling as well while the total music industry falls.
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Re:Flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument here seems to be that piracy is okay because the movie studios are making plenty of money anyway. It's like saying that if I steal a couple million dollars from a billionaire, they're making plenty of money anyway so it's not really theft. Theft is theft is theft. And it's wrong.
Agreed. Here are the bigger questions involved with the current setup:
1.) Copyright infringement is wrong, and should be punished. However, the present system is such that a conviction of copyright infringement can be a life-ruining event. As TFA shows, the MPAA is not making a compelling case that ruining the life of an infringer is reasonable. If the MPAA wants to make the case that downloading a movie from The Pirate Bay is akin to stealing the Blu-Ray from Best Buy, then make the punishment for downloading the same as stealing the Blu-Ray. Instead, the fines and criminal charges are seen as akin the professional counterfeiting and piracy rings in court.
2.) There has always been the concept of the public domain - where art goes after a certain amount of time, and can be used by anyone. Copyright first started with a reasonable length of time for authors to make money off their work as an incentive to continue creating. However, it's been extended to the point of absurdity - no video game released, or pop song I grew up with, will enter the public domain until my grandchildren are dead. Now, there are different ideas as to how long copyright *should* last (my personal belief is ten years, with the option to renew at the cost of 10% of the owner's gross income annually), but "two lifetimes" is generally agreed upon to be patently unreasonable.
3.) There's very little 'reasonable ground' to be had. Stealing $100 from a billionaire is wrong, but 'finding a $100 bill on the ground that is later determined to have belonged to a billionaire' is a different matter entirely. In the US, making backup copies of one's own DVDs and Blu-Rays for noncommercial use that are never otherwise shared is, legally speaking, subject to the same penalties as operating a for-profit piracy ring. The whole "digital copy" situation with movies is such that whether the digital copy applies to the customer or not is dependent upon which services are being used. It's impossible to legally view a movie on an Android device if it comes in a DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes combo pack, and nobody wants to standardize.
The MPAA's issue here is how royally fixed the game is in their favor, and a seeming unwillingness to come up with reasonable terms for things.
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Theft is illegal. Theft is usually wrong. But not always.
Stealing weapons from an enemy base is theft, but it isn't wrong. If you are putting your life at risk to save lives by stealing weapons from the enemy, that is morally lofty.
Also, theft is not copyright infringement. And copyright infringement is illegal, but has much moral ambiguity around it (some claim that the imposition of artificial scarcity is morally wrong, which would morally justify copyright infringement).
So, in sum:
1) Theft =/= copyri
Re: Flawed logic (Score:4, Informative)
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Pirating can (potentially - that's the whole point under discussion here) end up depriving the owner of the value of the thing they created, if it results in insufficient interest in paying for the item. That's the whole point of copyright law. I'm always bugged by these analogies to "regular" theft. Copyright violation is indeed different than stealing, but it is potentially similar with regard to depriving a creator or group of creators of earned recompense for their effort.
THIS.
I think copyright law is really screwed up, fines are at ridiculous levels, and stuff should go into the public domain after 14 years (perhaps 28 at most, according to the original copyright act of 1790).
But all of this quibbling over whether or not it's REALLY "theft" or not is just nonsense. Yes, it's not like taking a unique piece of physical property. On the other hand, in some circumstances it can deprive the copyright owner of significant profits from his/her work.
If you wrote an awesome
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If anything copyright terms should be much shorter now than envisaged in 1790...
In 1790 it would have taken years to print a book and get it widely distributed, today works can be disseminated instantly worldwide over the internet. Movies make all their money in the first year anyway, and being able to constantly re-release old stuff doesnt encourage any new works to be produced.
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The point is that theft is not only about the taking of an actual item, but potential loss of revenue from that item too.
Nice try but it's not. Theft is taking a possession away from someone without permission. It has no bearing what the item was worth or if there is any intention to sell it. As much as you may want it to be a copyright infringement is not a theft. If it was they would have called it theft instead of coming up with a new term.
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*can* *potentially* *may* ...
Copying something may have other positive effects.
Pirating can potentially result in increased sales too.
The whole point of copyright law was to encourage works to be produced by giving authors a limited period of exclusive use, these laws have now become completely corrupted to the point of absolute farce.
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Actually, I believe there is absolutely no law against making copies of money for your own personal use.
Feel free to make a bazillion copies of a $20 bill - as long as you don't then try to use them as actual currency, you're all good! Use them to wipe your ass, draw mustaches on them, build a house with them, do whatever you want.
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So making a copy of money is ok then?
That's different, people don't go around trading downloaded movies and trying to pass them off for the real thing.
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The Fed does it all the time. And LOT, lately!
Re:"More sophisticated window modeling" (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't really a copyright thing so much as it is somebody using their influence to control distribution.
Think like how you have to buy a car through a dealership, or how in certain regions and industries you can't buy labor without paying the local mafia^H^H^H^H^H union.