MPAA Points To Its Roster Of Crappy Online Services And Asks What We're Complaining About
from the nice-try dept
In response to Jimmy Wales reiterating the fact that Hollywood’s own failings online are a major cause of infringement, the MPAA has hit back by saying: that’s crazy! After all, the studios do Hulu and Netflix, so how can anyone complain?
Wales had used everyone’s favorite example these days: the difficulty in finding a legitimate way to pay for Game of Thrones online…
Wales also argued that the entertainment industry needs to continue adjusting its business model so it offers people the content they want. Citing a personal example, Wales noted how he can’t watch HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series at home in London even though he’s willing to pay for it.
“I think that he media industry needs to say, ‘Look, why don’t we sell people what they want to buy,’ and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,” he said.
A smart and consumer-focused MPAA might note that they’re trying their best but they realize there are still gaps and they hope to continue to improve. But, you know, that’s not how the MPAA rolls. Instead, they send out spokesperson Kate Bedingfield — who just recently joined the MPAA from the White House — to insist that Wales was crazy for suggesting they need to make more efforts to please customers. You see, in the mind of the MPAA, as long as they’ve done something, they’ve clearly done enough.
“Our studios are constantly partnering and innovating new ways for audiences to watch the movies and TV shows they love: Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Crackle, UltraViolet, Epix, MUBI – and that just barely scratches the surface,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman at the MPAA. “There are more legitimate avenues available today to watch movies and TV shows online than ever before, and our studios are continuing to innovate every day to bring audiences even more options.”
“At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,” Bedingfield added.
In other words, don’t actually address what Wales said. Don’t respond to his specific complaint. Insist that because you’re doing something, even if it doesn’t solve the problem he noted, you’re clearly doing enough… and then revert back to talking point numero uno: oh, poor us, we’re harmed! So harmed. Harmed into our best years ever at the box office… (oh wait, they leave that last part out).
Seriously, the MPAA needs to hire communications people who actually deal with consumers, rather than politically-focused ones. They seem to have absolutely zero sense of how to respond to the public on anything without making themselves look worse. The last two decades of RIAA/MPAA communications have been a long-term case study in exactly how to do everything wrong.
Filed Under: game of thrones, hollywood, jimmy wales, piracy, ultraviolet
Companies: hbo, hulu, mpaa
Comments on “MPAA Points To Its Roster Of Crappy Online Services And Asks What We're Complaining About”
The Problem
‘Look, why don?t we sell people what they want to buy,? and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,?
That would solve the problem, but the problem isn’t piracy, the problem is a lack of legitimate options.
Re: The Problem
Nope. The problem is simple: The piratical sacks of shit that decide to pirate other people’s property. Blaming the victim is just bad form. Of course, Pirate Mike thinks the pirates are A-OK. It’s the victims who were asking for it! It’s their business models that are the problem! The pieces of shit who live in their parents’ basement and use the internet to violate other people’s rights, well, they’re not the problem. It’s the property owners! They asked for it! They don’t distribute their property in the ways that everyone wants, so therefore, it’s OK to violate their rights! Yeah for Techdirt! Yeah for Pirate Mike! Pirate Mike is our Internet Savior! He’s our Internet Moses!
Re: Re: The Problem
umadbro?
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
hemadbrah
Re: Re: The Problem
Disclaimer, I don’t pirate anything. Not software, not music, not movies, nothing. But the more I think about it, the more of both sides of the issue I read about, the more I wonder if pirating really is a problem. How can you steal other people’s property when you leave them the original fully intact? How is it moral for someone to tell you what you can do with something you paid for? For example, I buy an MP3 or digital movie but now I can’t sell it? When you look at “moral issues” the industry has done far more immoral acts than any pirate has done.
I am not ready to hoist the Jolly Roger yet, but I will say, the industry is making it more and more likely that I will.
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
How can you “steal” what is never made available to you? That’s the funny thing about creative works. The industry ignores entire continents on purpose and then act surprised when people find an alternate supply chain.
If the industry doesn’t allow you to be a paying customer, there is no way that you can do them harm. There are simply no sales to lose.
Re: Re: Re:2 The Problem
Jedidiah, considering your first question: What do you think about patent laws? Are they irrelevant? According to that set of rules you can most assuredly steal/copy somebody’s idea (comparable to artistic presentation) — which is considered their property under patent law — while leaving the original fully intact.
And about selling an MP3 or digital movie… I’ll agree that if you destroy the copy you had once you’ve transferred ownership, there should be no limitation. But who’s going to do that?
Re: Re: Re:3 The Problem
“Jedidiah, considering your first question: What do you think about patent laws? Are they irrelevant? According to that set of rules you can most assuredly steal/copy somebody’s idea (comparable to artistic presentation) — which is considered their property under patent law — while leaving the original fully intact.”
The consent of the property owner is the first consideration. Stealing/copying somebody’s idea is not done with the consent of the patent owner/holder – and people copy patented tools, formulas, etc. all the time btw, it’s a natural part of doing business unless both sides have big bucks. Copying a shared digital file is always done with the consent of the property owner.
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
“Disclaimer, I don’t pirate anything. Not software, not music, not movies, nothing. But the more I think about it, the more of both sides of the issue I read about, the more I wonder if pirating really is a problem. How can you steal other people’s property when you leave them the original fully intact? How is it moral for someone to tell you what you can do with something you paid for?”
100 percent of file-sharing involves consenting adults using their own property to send personal communications to each other, which we have a right to do even if we didn’t author that communication. Piracy is what lawyers call “the tragedy of the commons.” If everybody uses the common resource and nobody pays for it, inevitably there will be no more resource.
The truth of why content needs to be paid for is so obvious, such an easy, explainable sell, that there has to be an ulterior motive for incorrectly describing sharing as “stealing” or even “piracy.”
My tinfoil theory is the the big corps that bought into media distributors in the 1980s-1990s want to use “piracy” as a trojan horse to abolish private property rights and establish a legal, “moral” right to profit. I don’t think this issue really has anything to do with digital content distribution – I think the MPAA, RIAA etc. are essentially puppets for the investors that own their members.
Re: Re: The Problem
marked as Funny.
Your impersonation of a rabid and mindless shill is spot-on and you managed to hit all of the hysterical talking points.
Kudos for the claims that “rights” are being infringed instead of the truthful and boring terms like “Monopoly Privilege”, making it easier to get up in arms to protect Rights, Freedom and Apple Pie instead of Monopoly, Restriction and Record Profits.
Re: Re: The Problem
Either troll or does not understand the difference between private property and monopoly.
Re: Re: The Problem
Consumers: We would like to pay you for x
Distributors: We don’t want your stinking money.
——————-
Distributors: We aren’t making as much money as we think we should be making.
Politicians: How about we pass laws effectively tax people but give you the proceeds.
Distributors: That’s not enough.
Politicians: Well what do you want?
Distributors: We’re spending a fortune trying to enforce copyright against the vast bulk of the global population.
Politicians: Ah, so that’s why you’re making less money.
Distributors: Well strictly speaking no, but if you’re willing to believe that against all evidence, then why not.
Politicians: How about we take over the vast bulk of those costs that you are currently wasting on ineffective recourse to the law to fix a problem that isn’t actually affecting you?
Distributors: Well, that’s something but we still get the feeling that you’re not really trying.
————————————————
Consumers: WTF?
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
HAHAHAHA Awesome!!!
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
This sounds an awful like an actual conversation. Man, I hope you’re behind a lot of proxies because the NSA is coming after you to find out how you bugged a politician’s office!
Re: Re: The Problem
The core of this problem is not money, but power. If it was about money then these businesses would be trying to maximize their profits. Instead all they seem to be concerned about is how they can control how, when, and if people can get their product (yes product not art). They are also upset that they can now be bypassed and are not the arbiters of what becomes popular.
As for your vitriolic against Mike, might I suggest it is a classic case of shooting the messenger because you don’t like the message?
Finally since this about power may I suggest that entertainment industry switch from being control freaks to little blue pills for their hard ons?
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
It has nothing to do with control. The record labels have been cheating the artist they represent, though levels of collection societies, contracts, and creative accounting. If they were to sell online they would immediately lose the ability to hide behind their creative accounting.
In simple terms when an online music store say that 1M single have been sold in the EU, and the US labels only paid the artist $50,000 USD. The artist in question will wonder where the other $450,000 USD they are owed went.
Basically, the labels can not go online with out destroying themselves.
Re: Re: Re:2 The Problem
I’m not saying money isn’t an issue, just that is not the primary one. They could still rip off artists without DRM and release windows for example.
Re: Re: Re:3 The Problem
The thing I was trying to point out was that with computerized systems there is an immediate accounting. This doesn’t allow for poor accounting or theft. If you look at the Canada pending list lawsuit. They got away with several billion USD and paid 45 million dollars.
If all sales were online they would not be able to do this.
Re: Re: Re:4 The Problem
they might even stop charging their contracted musicians for “breakage”
Re: Re: Re:4 The Problem
I have faith that given time the creative accounting department would find a way around this “problem”.
Given that, however; I think what is going on here is we are debating whether to call “VI” six or half a dozen.
Re: Re: The Problem
The victims are the consumers. The victims are always the consumers.
Re: Re: The Problem
Just remember how well it worked for Slytherin coming up with “Weasley is our King!”
Or Cutler Beckett getting ‘Hoist the Colours’ sung… 🙂
Re: Re: The Problem
meth. its a helluva drug.
Re: Re: The Problem
Property owners? What property?
Re: The Problem
“‘Look, why don?t we sell people what they want to buy,? and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,?
That would solve the problem, but the problem isn’t piracy, the problem is a lack of legitimate options.”
If you honestly think that is the problem, then you are entirely out of touch. It might be what some people say as their excuse for piracy, but the reality is that they just wanted:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in
… and so on. Basically, there is no respect for content providers at all.
It’s not a question of being easier, it’s a question of having an alternative that doesn’t have to follow any business models, doesn’t have to show a profit, doesn’t have to pay for itself.
It’s nutty.
Re: Re: The Problem
If someone wants the product in a country it isn’t sold in, that person doesn’t have any legitimate options. “Respecting the content providers” would mean not getting it at all.
If someone wants the product sooner than the content provider has decided to allow them to buy it, that person doesn’t have any legitimate options. Respecting the content providers would mean waiting until whoever makes release decisions decides that they want to make money off of DVD sales. If someone gets something before its producer decides to sell it, it’s the producer’s fault that they didn’t buy it.
If someone just wants a product cheaper, okay. There’s a lot of things I don’t buy because they’re too expensive. It’s a perfectly reasonable decision by the producer, but they have no right to complain when the people who aren’t willing to spend that much money on their product don’t. If they want the people who want it cheaper to buy it, they can lower the price, and if they think they’re okay without those people buying it, they can keep the price the same. The situation and solution are the same regardless of whether piracy is involved or not.
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
I’ll sum it up for you.
Supply and Demand
What these companies fail to understand is the supply bit…
Re: Re: The Problem
It’s not a question of being easier, it’s a question of having an alternative that doesn’t have to follow any business models, doesn’t have to show a profit, doesn’t have to pay for itself.
It’s nutty.
But it’s the way things are – take it or leave it.
Re: Re: The Problem
Actually, there is plenty of respect for content providers. There just is no understanding for their reasoning in delaying the dissemination of products around the globe in a quick and efficient, as well as reasonably priced, manner.
Also, the ones out of touch, more often than not, end up being the content producers and people like you. People are literally trying to give you their money and you’re basically saying, “Fuck off. I don’t want it.” Or, “I’ll take your money when I’m good and ready to want to take your money, so deal with it!”
In this day and age, you can literally share anything at any given moment within a matter of seconds. This negates “the product sooner” bit. There is literally no logical reason for delays. Once the product is out there, it’s out there. If you refuse to sell it and are keeping to the “windowed releases” thing, you’re screwing yourself and your customers over. There is no reason for windowing releases anymore. None whatsoever.
“The product cheaper.” On this point, I don’t know. It makes sense. If it cost pennies to distribute the content digitally once it’s created, there’s no reason to demand people give you $30 for a digital copy. Especially given the fact that nowadays most people want content digitally. A blu-ray cost $30 (with a digital copy or a dvd included). People aren’t going to pay outrageous fees for digital content. Why you have a problem with this I completely understand, but from an economical standpoint it makes sense. Of course people want to pay as little as is necessary for stuff. Are you fucking stupid or something?
“The product in a country it isn’t sold in.” This one is the stupidest of your points. YOU REFUSE TO SELL A PRODUCT TO A PARTICULAR COUNTRY. For whatever moronic reason (which I’m sure you have plenty of). Then you have the gall to be pissed that people in this country who know about your product still want it and will find an alternative way acquire it. WTF?! You aren’t selling it. Period. No room for debate on that point. So why the fuck do you care how they acquire it? You obviously don’t want them to have it. So you can’t bitch that they got it anyway. I mean you can, but it makes no sense, especially when you’re the one saying “I don’t want your money, fuck off”.
Also, if there’s no respect for content providers at all as you postulate, why is that? Could it be the vast overreaching and broad laws they’ve advocated and tried to push through various governments? Could it be the mass lawsuits targeting their clients? Could it be the yearly attempts to expand copyright lengths to further keep things out of the public domain, while at the same time stealing from said public domain?
I mean if you act like a dick, you can’t be shocked when people no longer treat you with respect. Or, well, you can, but it shouldn’t come as a shock. You want respect, earn it. Keep overreaching, keep criminalizing and treating everyone as potential criminals, and you’ll see how they’ll reply in turn. (Hint: They won’t want to be your best pal and give you their money. Nor will they want to show you the utmost respect.)
The only thing nutty is your comments so far. As in, how the fuck can this nutter write any of this without realizing he sounds like an entitled jerk and is making claims with no reasonable logic to back them up?
Re: Re: The Problem
It might be what some people say as their excuse for piracy, but the reality is that they just wanted:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in
Providing stuff I want in a matter that is afforable, and easily available sounds like a great way to get my money. Why doesn’t someone try doing that instead of whinging?
Re: Re: The Problem
“It might be what some people say as their excuse for piracy, but the reality is that they just wanted:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in”
Yes. That is a partial list. Point out which one isn’t a business model problem.
1) We want to hold back the product until we want to release it –Business model problem. Why are they adding artificial delays and guaranteeing that the only option is piracy?
2) No brainer. Price it at what the market will support. Of course, in almost all cases you can’t even buy it all. Where can I buy a digital copy of “Batman Begins” to use in my XBMC? Business model problem.
3) Regional releases are completely under their control. They are clinging to the model where they could control where media is released. Business model problem.
Like I said, you only made a partial list. I would add the option to buy movies and tv shows that I could use in any device I want to. They are the ones deciding *not* to provide what people want, and then whining and complaining about how people are using other sources. They deserve to fail.
Re: Re: The Problem
“It might be what some people say as their excuse for piracy, but the reality is that they just wanted:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in
“
I’m reasonably sure that you’re being sarcastic, if so Kudos to you.
Otherwise, most business people would jump at a market where people wanted a product so bad they want it “sooner”, where an approaching zero marginal cost per product will make it really easy to meet the consumer desire for the product to be cheaper and don’t even get me started on the business potential of a completely untapped market, especially when the cost of delivery would be identical and again, near zero, to that of the current crowded markets.
Re: Re: The Problem
There will always be a market for a product that is in demand. Always. It doesn’t matter if the market is legal, it only matters if the market exists.
Re: Re: The Problem
So if people want:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in
Why not offer:
1) The product sooner
2) The product cheaper
3) The product in a country it isn’t sold in
That’s so crazy it just might work!
Re: Re: Re: The Problem
Maximize user base, and increase profit
Smoke and mirrors
Netflix’s streaming movie selection blows. The only thing they have are B movies and old movies. The studios will not let them have recent movies at all. Is that innovative?
They also stop Redbox and Netflix from getting new DVD releases for 28 days, is that innovative?
Also, Viacom just yesterday pulled their online shows in a dispute with a DirectTV Is that innovative?
Re: Smoke and mirrors
Older movies are the best when you look at the steady stream of shite coming out of the major studios these days.
Re: Re: Smoke and mirrors
Funny thing is, studios still have control over what is put on Netflix. I notice that we have a few choices in Netflix.
The movie or TV season is from two seasons ago. Movies (with the few exceptions like Thor) are at least 2 years or older. You can mostly find the cruddy sequels to classics like Home Alone and Home Alone 2 (yes Home Alone 3 sucks, but it is the only one available). Then to top it all off, there is a limit as to how many shows are actually on Netflix streaming service. It’s a good service as a content provider, but the content “owners” have a chokehold on it.
Ultraviolet is a pain in the ass to set up and you only keep the digital backup version you already own for 48 hours of streaming only. The setup to get it going makes it look like a god-damn phishing scam.
I love Netflix especially since my 4th Gen IPod Touch’s 326dpi screen makes it look crisp. I enjoy the content on it, but the studios could do a whole hell of a lot better to improve things.
Re: Smoke and mirrors
Funny thing – I keep hearing these complaints about Netflix but I’d definitely be willing to pay the subscription and watch them. Sadly, I’m not allowed to let them take my money…
Re: Smoke and mirrors
I recently watched both Legend and Omega Man. Omega Man was a far superior movie. So no complaints from me about the kind of movies available on Netflix.
The problem is not lack of options. The problem is that the entertainment industry refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Internet is global. I live in the UK but I like to watch US TV shows which I have to wait for months (and years in some cases) for a legitimate way of watching them, and that assumes it arrives on our shores at all. It would be nice if the US entertainment industries would wake up and realise that they have to relinquish some control if they are to maintain anything like the profits they are used to.
Re: Re:
There are plenty of options for viewing content the way you want and the movie industry refuses to provide any of them except the ones they want. That’s the problem
Hulu and Netflix? Those services that I’m not allowed to access? What of them?
It’s rather amusing that the industry’s response to a comment stating that Jimmy Wales can’t watch Game Of Thrones in London consists of a list of services which mostly can’t be used in the UK (only MUBI, Crackle and Netflix are available there from that list, and none of them feature GoT). I won’t count Ultraviolet because that’s a bullshit DRM system, not an innovative platform.
Why, it’s almost as though these morons won’t listen to what customers are actually saying…
Re: This comic sums up the situation nicely
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
Maybe this is at a level she can understand.
Re: Re: This comic sums up the situation nicely
hah, nice. good point.
What the MPAA and similar groups need to get them to adapt to reality is new laws that ban the very things that are hurting them yet they insist upon.
-Laws banning region locked content (why can’t I watch my favorite shows in Europe from the US?)
-Laws banning refusing to sell the same content to people in parts of the world (if you can get on the Internet to order it then you can play a DVD it they send, or watch it online)
Music/Hollywood groups aren’t the only short sighted groups that lobby against their own best interests of course. Look at the Natural Gas industry, and how they continue to be secretive about the chemicals they pump into the ground when Fracking while still claiming it’s 100% safe, because they don’t want extra regulations making it more expensive to drill, and they claim the chemicals they use are a trade secret. The result of their secrecy and lobbying against safety studies/regulations on Fracking? Their entire business is beginning to get effectively outlawed in more and more places out of fear of fracking polluting the water supply & harming the environment, great long term planning huh? Big short term profits in exchange for what innovative new technology made your business so profitable being outlawed.
FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
Took the words out of my mouth.
We really need a campaign to push those facts. It amazes me that there is a huge amount of people that don’t know them.
Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
Indeed. It’s hard to take them seriously when the 3rd highest grossing movie *of all time* is still at some cinemas, and we have at least 3 more contenders for massive box office takings on the horizon (Dark Knight Returns, The Hobbit, the last part of the Twilight series) among manym, many movies whose grosses will almost certainly exceed their budgets.
The recording industry at least has dropping sales they can point to in the midst of their whining (even though much of the drop likely has nothing to do with piracy). Hollywood are just whining that they might only make $11 billion instead of $12 billion at this year’s box office and sell as many plastic discs, which hardly inspires sympathy.
Re: Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
The movie industry has kept the bottom line by raising ticket prices significantly. It’s a dead end process, you only have to go look at ACTUAL tickets sold (admissions to theaters) to understand what is really going on.
Not that you would want to actually understand.
Re: Re: Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
“Not that you would want to actually understand.”
Oh I understand, not least that your argument always comes from having made your mind up and rejecting any counter-argument outright. try discussing these things occasionally, you’d be surprised at what you learn.
Admissions are up this year over the last couple of years, by all accounts. I fully expect this to be a very good year for ticket sales, and so far the average ticket cost is actually slightly *down* from last year (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/). We’re only in mid-July, with several of the expected biggest hits yet to come, and the number of tickets sold is nearly 60% of last year’s total – this is not the form of an industry in trouble.
Feel free to come back if I’m wrong about this – I have no problem admitting if I’m wrong, and if the figures on that page on Jan 1st 2013 show a downturn in attendance, we can discuss why. Also, if you have a similar breakdown of figures for the international market – much more lucrative now than in the past – I’d be interested to see them. Ditto real figures for DVD & other secondary market sales. Otherwise, you’re only considering one small part of the overall market, which is pretty poor.
Either way, what you seem to be trying to say is that because Hollywood have managed to make more money than ever before by raising prices, this is a bad thing because less customers are paying the higher amount. I don’t see why this is a problem when looking at grosses, especially as many of the people no longer paying for cinema tickets will still be paying for the movies via secondary markets. If less people are buying tickets, but you’re making more money, why is this a problem, especially when digital projection & other cost saving measures are reducing the overheads required?
Feel free to continue an honest debate if you’re capable of that.
Re: Re: Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
“The movie industry has kept the bottom line by raising ticket prices significantly.”
I used to go to *a lot* of movies. Now they are much too expensive. Hollywood decided they want *huge* opening weekends, and so they killed the long term hit with their pricing scheme. Business model problem.
Re: Re: Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
“The movie industry has kept the bottom line by raising ticket prices significantly”
The movie industry has reduced the absolute number of ticket sales by increasing prices significantly.
The genius of that policy is that even though they are still in profit they can somehow convince the slow of thinking that reduced overall ticket sales due to increased ticket prices is somehow something to do with copyright infringement in any other sense than driving it.
Re: Re: Re: FACT #001.....MPAA are full of shit
Why do you hate boxes?
Re: Re: We cool now paul ?
Yeah. What they say and the facts, just don’t correlate.
Cinema trips have became more valuable.
Worthless copies are falling towards their real value.
My sympathy is dissipated to causes that deserve it.
http://i.imgur.com/sz4II.gif
It is interesting that the MPAA is touting these services when there is not one they did not try and sue out of existence upon their inception and even now keep them on an extremely tight leash and never allow them to reach their potential and constantly demand more licencing fees that render these services barely profitable.
In response to Jimmy Wales reiterating the fact that Hollywood’s own failings online are a major cause of infringement, the MPAA has hit back by saying: that’s crazy! After all, the studios do Hulu and Netflix, so how can anyone complain?
There goes Pirate Mike. Always, always, always blaming the companies who are doing nothing wrong for the decision of others to violate their rights. Why don’t you ever lay the blame squarely where it belongs? The blame, Pirate Mike, belongs with the pirates who willingly choose to violate other people’s rights. Where’s your outrage at these pirates? LOL! There’s no outrage. Mike Masnick LOVES piracy. Absolutely thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. Loves it so much that he blames the pirates’ victims for the pirates’ own wrongdoing.
Talk about idiotic, pirate apologies. Pirate Mike takes the cake.
Re: Re:
So, tell me, mr. BS…
Where can I find Gargoyles DVDs?
Or Gummi Bears?
Perhaps The Mighty Ducks TV series?
Baywatch? Sailor Moon? Flash live action? Louis and Clark, the New Adventures of Superman?
How about a legal online source for those shows so that I can buy, view and download them?
You wanna know what the saddest thing about distribution of entertainment is?
The only industry that does it right is the anime industry.
I mean, Funimation practically released subs of One Piece episodes within a week of their airing in Japan.
What makes it sad is that the Anime industry here in America (and in other countries) is a VERY tiny portion of the entertainment industry, and yet they do such a good job that you do NOT hear about anime piracy (Manga yes, but that’s a different story) very often. And I only pirate anime if 1: I’m not sure if it’s good and I wanna find out (Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, which I later bought both English seasons), 2: too expensive (I’m STILL not paying 50 bucks for a 13 episode season of Haruhi, damnit!) or 3: Can’t get it (Shin Mazinger, why won’t you come over?!)
Heck, Crunchyroll used to be a big piracy haven for Anime, now it’s legit.
Re: Re: Re:
Gummi bears, bouncing here and there and NOWHERE
Re: Re: Re:
Let’s not forget there wouldn’t be an international market for anime at all if it weren’t for piracy. The initial US fans got bootlegged VHS tapes, and eventually someone saw there was a market.
Re: Re: Re:
Er…Gummi Bears, Gargoyles, Lois and Clark, Baywatch, Sailor Moon, and the Flash DVDs are all being sold on Amazon.
What I’m really looking for is Early Edition Seasons 3 and 4. Or Martial Law (w/Sammo Hung). Those were good seasons/series.
Re: Re: Re:
Last I checked, the One Piece subs are streaming ONE HOUR after air in Japan.
However, you get points for mentioning both OP and Gargoyles, neither of which have enjoyed an easy road to “take my money, please!”
Re: Re:
I think you need to say pirate a few more times in your rant…
Re: Re: He thinks it's an insult....facepalm.jpg
As if, it’s a more shameful term than, “corporate anti-pirate” !
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk
Where is the anti-pirate-party website ?
People would be proud to join that
Re: Re:
I know you try to troll, but your trolling skill is terrible and consists almost entirely on ad-homenim attacks. Also you by default assume following the rules is good and that piracy is bad. I bet you’d of bitched out the guys that threw tea in Boston Harbor in protest of the stamp act.
Pirates are people that steal physical goods to resell for profit, and are a problem. But we’re not talking about pirates, we’re talking about copyright infringement.
That cake you always seem to be posting about… It’s a lie.
Re: Re:
Why would anyone be outraged by someone creating a transformative work which they then distribute freely?
“Pirates” transform, for example, broadcast shows into downloadable shows. They then take this newly-created material and allow it to be downloaded freely on the internet.
Now, if the people holding the government-granted monopolies created their own transformative works, and allowed people to purchase them, then I’d be all for condemning the pirates. They wouldn’t be adding anything to the system in that case.
At the moment, though, “pirates” are stepping up to the plate and providing a wanted service which the “rightsholders” are not. Until the rightsholders take action to provide that service, I don’t even see that what those pirates are doing is morally wrong.
Re: Re:
Where’s your outrage at these pirates? LOL! There’s no outrage.
Perhaps he read some of your comments and saw the dark, pathetic place to which that outrage leads a person.
Re: Re:
I wanna mark your post as funny but I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. Heck, I’ll mark it anyways.
Re: Re:
“companies who are doing nothing wrong”
Really? You really believe that? That these companies are doing nothing wrong?
SOPA, PIPA, Hollywood Accounting, just to name a few.
The MPAA’s position is akin to having a fire they wish to put out, refusing to use water like everybody tells them to, then complains when they decide to pour kerosene on the fire and it doesn’t improve things.
Of course the trolls never acknowledge this. They somehow think that stupidity should be forgiven in reality, while the truth is that reality is extremely harsh to idiots. Why everyone else should throw money at and be outraged for the sake of a clearly not-dying industry is completely illogical.
The Match Game
Okay so we’ve got six studios with thousands of titles and we’ve got dozens of online streaming sources, lets match up which titles are on which services. Remember, the consumer has NO FRAKING IDEA why some shows are on some services but not on others.
Connect the Title to the place you’d go you view it.
Psych—————–Netflix
Terminator———-Amazon Streaming
Family Guy———–Hulu
The Daily Show——HBO Go
All in the family——Vudu
Game of Thrones—-Crackle
Shrek 3——————UltraViolet
The Office————–Epix
Batman Begins———Mubi
Arrested Development—-Torrent
It should not be this hard to figure out how to watch that you want to see. And I’m not subscribing to 10 different services even if I can figure it out. That’s the barrier that Studios need to break down.
Re: The Match Game
New top 10 favorite comment ever.
Re: Re: The Match Game
Great comment… And I played your game. It was pretty easy… 10 lines pointing to torrent 😛
Re: Re: Re: The Match Game
this was supposed to be a reply to jeremy… arghhh… i lose 2 internets today
Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
I’m a cord-cutter who consciously decided to forgo a lot of mainstream shows and settle for Netflix and the occasional Bluray rental. With the Internet, Podcasts, etc there are so many other things I can do to pass my leisure time that I don’t missed my reduced viewing choices at all. As a consequence, I’m not even aware of many current TV shows and movies. I figure I will eventually come across any real quality stuff, and the rest is meaningless drivel.
Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
I’ve been tempted to do this…what do you do for local stations (I’m thinking of local news mostly)?
I only have a HD LCD TV so I need something that will hook up via HDMI or component.
Re: Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
I bought an antenna for OTA, but honestly have never watched anything, other than than to test it works. I figure it might be useful if something hugely major happens, but have had no reason to watch it so far. ‘Live’ TV is painful to watch now with the constant, repeated ads and trailers for stuff I have zero interest in. For local news I tend to follow local journalists on Twitter and follow their links to new news stories.
Re: Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
All over-the-air broadcast TV in the US is now digital, and most is in HD. Decent quality digital tuners have HDMI outputs, and the digital signals tend to be a lot better quality than the old bunny ears analog signals.
You can quite easily get HD local stations over the airwaves now, which is an interesting change from ta few years as analog TV was getting worse and worse due to (I presume) increased interference.
Re: Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
i am thinking along the same lines, the *main* stumbling block to cutting the cord is SWMBO: likes to watch sports prob even more than i do (but i’m so pissed at Big Media, i’d sooner cut the cable and miss out on most sports)…
1. there are decent antennas which will give you a BETTER HD picture than the crappy digital signal through cable/sat, i’m seriously considering those simply for that reason alone…
‘good’ ones i saw start about 50-60 bucks, and depending on how handy you are, not too much trouble to install…
(go to tvfool.com, and they have all kinds of good advice on using OTA HD antenna, etc; as well as a program which will tell you what is/isn’t available in your EXACT location…)
2. yes, as previous posters mentioned, netflix sux big time… selection has gone to shit… *LOVE* the *IDEA* of the service (and may pick up the amazon prime crap), but the selection is close to useless…
*used* to subscribe (the price ‘increase’ didn’t mean anything to me, we ONLY did online streaming, don’t give a shit about getting DVD’s through the mail), but when they started pulling all sorts of content due to Big Media bullying, we dumped them…
too bad…
3. of course, the elephant in the room is: WE HAVE NO CHOICE for our ISP; in our so-called ‘free market’ ‘capitalist’ system, ALL THE FUCKERS collude with -apparently ‘legal’- ‘non-compete’ agreements: I CAN’T GET A ‘COMPETITOR’ to our SHITTY DSL service, NO MATTER WHAT…
we went over 6 months with 3mb/sec service running about 1/10th to 1/20th of that speed; of course, the ISP didn’t give a shit, and lied to us the whole time we complained…
(oh, AND -ON THEIR OWN- *said* the would compensate us in some fashion, never did, then we called back, and they gave us a whopping $25 off our bill for 6 months+ of crap service; when we called about *that*, they said we had NEVER CONTACTED them over the slow service: LYING SCUMBAG MOTHER FUCKERS: we called nearly weekly, ‘chatted’ online a handful of times, and all we got were lies and bullshit…)
3. getting to the point Big Media makes using their products so expensive and onerous, i’m about ready to simply throw the teevee out the window… screw those useless bastards…
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
Re: Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this question, and it makes me a little sad. Nothing personal at all, TTB, I’m making a larger observation.
The thing that makes me sad is that we have reached a point where there are people who actually don’t know how to get TV unless it comes out of a cable. Watching TV without paying a cable company is becoming one of those arcane arts like how to work a dial telephone or how to play a phonograph record.
It wasn’t terribly long ago that everyone knew how to hook up an antenna for OTA broadcasts and hooking up cable TV was the arcane art. God, I’m old.
Re: Re: Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
well, the cable company will send someone out to hook up your cable for you, usually with a service charge.
so maybe there’s money to be made to hook up people with an antennae? Heck, you could “rent” them the $50 worth of equipment for $10 a month and it would still be cheaper than cable so people would pay.
Re: Slowly but surely, obscurity will be a problem for them
We’re actually doing this next month. Lose the cable, upgrade our internet package, add Hulu Plus for a whopping $8… and watch all the shows we’re already watching streamed to the TV over our Roku box. Not a huge savings, only $43/month, but considering that’s 4% (yes, 4%) of our monthly income it makes a difference.
Seriously, the MPAA needs to hire communications people who actually deal with consumers, rather than politically-focused ones.
Not going to happen. Everyone they hire is going to be politically-focused, because everyone they hire is going to be an ex-politician (who just happened to support the MPAA’s legislation, totally a coincidence guys, honest).
As I read this, the thing that stood out most was not that the MPAA was up to their typical tricks, but was in fact
they send out spokesperson Kate Bedingfield — who just recently joined the MPAA from the White House
It got me to thinking. Maybe what we need is for any high-level Federal position (elected officials, cabinet-level appointees, agency heads, and any other Federally appointed individuals) to sign what amounts to a non-compete contract, that states they will not be allowed to work for or take money from any industry for 5 years after leaving their government position. I mean the industry does it all the time, and when you hold one of those high-level positions you are essentially working for the people of the United States and all industries would technically fall under competition.
Not realistic but still a good thought in my opinion.
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As long as we’re dreaming, lets set the penalty to ‘treason’, with punishments to match.
Far too often the bills they introduce, and the laws they try and get passed help their future employers at the cost of the rest of the economy in general, and if intentionally sabotaging the economy in exchange for a cushy future job isn’t already counted as treason, it bloody well should be.
Hulu? Netflix? You mean those services that they’ve been trying to kill for how many years now? Now all of a sudden they want to take credit for their existence after all the damage they’ve done to them?
I can’t access HBOGO because I don’t have it with a cable provider. So yeah, you are doing nothing to stop the top rated downloaded tv show Game of Thrones from millions of people enjoying it so effortlessly.
Dear MPAA,
No matter what laws you pass, no matter what police force you raise, no matter how many success stories you publish, no matter how many times you cry foul, no matter how much you kick and scream, piracy will exist to make up for your shortcomings.
You could pass a law enabling public execution of pirates and people will still continue to pirate.
As long as you keep trying to treat the symptoms, the problem will continue and spread.
This is not a war you can win by passing laws or demonizing pirates. The sooner you shut up and realize this, the sooner you will have the biggest impact on piracy.
Re: Re:
“You could pass a law enabling public execution of pirates and people will still continue to pirate.”
Remember the article a few weeks back about the music pirates in North Korea? Those guys ARE risking death, to listen to free music (free as in beer and libre)
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The sooner they realize that the more ways they embrace new ways to sell us what we want the more money they will make and the more we will seek those ways.
Why are we still having this debate?
Seriously, this debate has been going on for so long pre-vhs days yet the content industries (and that is what we should be focusing on not the big bad wolf MPAA which could not act the way it does if the big CI’s told it to stop) have not realized yet that they create a good with infinite distribution possibilities.
If you have a product that you can sell an infinite number of times with each sale costing you a nominal amount and each successive sale costing you less and less to produce the product the normal business person would work as hard as they can to sell as many as possible. Even going to the point of cutting the price below what they normally would charge for it.
Why would they do that?
Because they smart enough to know that they will never run out of product. So the more they sell the more they will make. They are also smart enough to know that not every potential customer is going to buy at the higher price. Consumers do not have infinitely deep wallets. So consumers have to decide where their money is going to get the most value. As the price comes down the perceived value that the consumer feels they are getting for their money goes up.
That is what it comes down to. Value.
I will also give a personal example. My wife and I may rent 1 movie a month from our big name TV service provider because it cost us around $6.00 to $7.00 just for the one movie. And that is usually only when neither of us feel like running to the Redbox a half mile away.
But we rent 10-12 movies a month from the Redbox. We even rent movies we don’t know or have not heard about (gotten a few really bad movies that way) because we know the worst case is we are out $1.29 if it sucks and we don’t finish it.
With our TV provider because of the cost it HAS to be a movie we both know is going to be good and worth the 6-7 bucks.
Perceived value is everything. So the TV provider gets $6-7 a month from us. Redbox gets $12.90-15.48 from us. So the choice for us is this, get one we might like or get 5 that are more chancy. We think we get more VALUE for our money by taking the Redbox route.
Re: Why are we still having this debate?
To finish my thought above…
The content industries believe that to maintain the value of their product they need to keep artificial restrictions and artificial high prices on their product.
In other words they fail to see the value in selling more to get more. The think that they will get more by selling at a higher price when all that does is limit the number of customers who match their thoughts about perceived value.
Re: Re: Why are we still having this debate?
Precisely. My local supermarket frequently has single disc editions of old Disney movies, such as the Lion King, at ?20. Yes, I know, Lion King is a much loved classic but still! The movie’s almost twenty years old. Surely it should have dropped in price!
Perhaps the thinking here is that
1) Its a much loved movie
2) There is only a finite number of discs
3) Because of high (perceived) demand for this movie, price must therefore be high.
Except…that completely ignores the internet and the fact I can get the movie for free right now if I want. Why should I shell out ?20 for a single disc? What do I get out of it, other than a feeling of being completely ripped off?
Re: Why are we still having this debate?
“So the TV provider gets $6-7 a month from us. Redbox gets $12.90-15.48 from us”
Yeah but the tv provider only had to pay for one movie and served you from a central resource directly.
Redbox had to pay to buy 10-12 physical items, which they have to not lose or damage, which they had to transport to the location you rented it from and then only receive a total of $1.29 for your rental.
You have a totally valid point, but what unfortunately it highlights that the cable provider and/or just the studio (depending on the deal between the two) made a heck of a lot more money with their offering than redbox made from theirs, and at less risk.
Re: Re: Why are we still having this debate?
“Yeah but the tv provider only had to pay for one movie and served you from a central resource directly.
Redbox had to pay to buy 10-12 physical items, which they have to not lose or damage, which they had to transport to the location you rented it from and then only receive a total of $1.29 for your rental.”
But I, as Joe Consumer,
DON’T
GIVE
A
SHIT
about who makes what or how much it costs to serve ME. I only care about MY COST to watch/enjoy/consume something, and if it even available AT ALL (hello, Gargoyles cartoon!)
Until you, them, and everyone else in the content industry gets a SINGLE FUCKING CLUE about this, don’t come bitching to me if I choose not to buy something, or complain about where I get it from.
Also see Cynic at #34 above, he hits the nail directly on the head about this entire issue.
Re: Re: Why are we still having this debate?
Now just imagine if the studio / cable provider provided their movies from their central resource for $1.29ea. In that scenario they are getting the $15.48 with the greater margin and less risk.
Why wouldn’t they want that?
@1
no its not options is the fact distribution is near zero now
they want to get paid for it….
if we use ther old model and remove distribution
its like pennies a album
if you remove need a theatres and cable and satellite
well what do those cost to build and operate?
ya right eh?
then you get technology so good that you could create an animated actor or musician and then just add sound you create overlaying it and why do i need hollywood at all?
GO ahead make copyright for ever and ever…..
im already moving to a create my own entertainment with the idea that ill give it out freely with a donate button for the rich whom want to brag
Aththe end of the day
?At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,? Bedingfield added.
At the end of the day ripping people off for stuff you get paid for over and over and over and over for ever and then
using all that technology so you dont even need actors hardly constitutes hard work….
no industry gets paid what an actor does for a day of supposed work
then to get money afterwards and labels as well….
na your the ones stealing from society
commericals were supposed to pay for stuff and the 10$ ticket price was supposed to pay for it
you just want more and more
well society has had enough and now your gonna see the results of your actions in the future.
if your innovating where is all the good sci fi shows?
NONE ZERO ZILCH….
the sci fi network had to change to syfy and now its more like the dinosaur/wwe network
continuum is just how corporations see themselves as running the world and anyone even democracy people are just terrorists…i so want the bitch in that show to get offed…DIE YOU ANTI DEMOCRATIC BITCH
Re: Aththe end of the day
“continuum is just how corporations see themselves as running the world and anyone even democracy people are just terrorists…i so want the bitch in that show to get offed…DIE YOU ANTI DEMOCRATIC BITCH”
Really?
As someone on the left, I see it as a rather heavy handed diatribe against the corporations, with “our heroine” week by week realising how awful, underhanded and amoral the corporate run culture she’s come from really is.
It’s like Dylan Moran in Monster talking about people telling him about the latest in moronic idiocy from GW Bush, as if it was possible for us to think less of them.
Continue to disappoint
Every couple of months I will activate my account with Hulu Plus or Netflix thinking there might be something new to watch. ALWAYS, within a few days I cancel. Either Hulu Plus restricts what I can watch on my ipad or Netflix just doesn’t have anything new worth watching.
Why does the industry care where I watch something, especially if I am watching advertising with a paid service like Hulu Plus.
The industry practices definitely make the more savvy internet user use “other” methods for obtaining the content they want to watch but cannot get thru any legimate method.
Re: Continue to disappoint
Perhaps you should login to Netflix to find something old to watch. There’s amazing great stuff on Netflix if you don’t restrict your viewing to whatever’s been made in the last 6 months. There’s over a 100 years of cinema out there and trust me, you have not seen all the good stuff.
Admittedly limited to just the one program wailed about by Wales, but if I recall correctly it is produced by HBO, a Time Warner subsidiary…which I believe is not a member of the MPAA because it is not a movie studio. Castigating the MPAA because of this series is particularly inapt.
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Time Warner owns Warner Bros. which is very much an MPAA member. I think it’s safe to say Time Warner and the MPAA are pretty buddy-buddy.
Also, the MPAA included “HBO Go” in the list of services in its statement.
Re: Re: Re:
That does not change, if my understanding is correct, the fact that HBO is not a member of the MPAA, and this article is about how the MPAA is dropping the ball.
Currently, HBO GO is provided by HBO to persons who have HBO subscriptions with certain companies, and HBO is working to add other companies to the list. Of course, each of these require contracts between those companies and HBO, and doubtless those companies are trying to negotiate such contracts.
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The owner of HBO(Time Warner) is though.
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It doesn’t change the fact that the owner of HBO is part of the MPAA, which means HBO is a proxy.
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You know that Jimmy Wales didn’t say anything about the MPAA, right? He said “hollywood” and “the media industry” then used Game of Thrones as an example.
The MPAA chose to respond.
So if it’s an irrelevant connection, the MPAA are the ones making it.
none so blind as those that will not see
out of curiosity, what was Bedingfield’s job at the white house? it must obviously have been real important to the entertainment industries to give her a job with them now she’s left the other side of politics. or could she just be a ‘friend’ of Dodd or someone else equally as important?
Want to know the biggest irony of all this? Even if they should “win” and everyone goes back to plastic disk, players today can’t even play what’s been purchased.
Remember the days of placing a tape into a player and it instantly played the movie?
Now consumers don’t even have that choice in their physically purchased product.
But you know, there’s a silver lining here: Eventually, Hollywood will have literally closed off every technical avenue at their disposal so no one, buyers or not, can watch the content.
Why should we stop them from self-destructing again?
Re: Re:
“Remember the days of placing a tape into a player and it instantly played the movie?”
Umm…no? That never happened. Every single VHS or DVD I got before the days of broadband had unskippable ads and anti-piracy warnings.
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“Every single VHS or DVD I got before the days of broadband had unskippable ads and anti-piracy warnings.”
Erm, no. VHS had warnings, but they sure as hell were skippable…
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Only if you call fast forwarding for 3 minutes while you watch the ads in fast motion ‘skippable’.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
3 minutes? The warnings I remember lasted far less time than that at normal speed…
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Original: Every single VHS or DVD I got before the days of broadband had unskippable ads and anti-piracy warnings.
Mine: fast forwarding for 3 minutes while you watch the ads…
Yours: …warnings…
Sure, the warnings only lasted between 5 & 10 seconds of that. Still far too long imho.
Re: Re: Re:
Umm…no? That never happened. Every single VHS or DVD I got before the days of broadband had unskippable ads and anti-piracy warnings.
…Since when was anything on a VHS unskippable?
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“That never happened.”
The hell it didn’t.
I remember when VHS movies didn’t even have the FBI logo.
But I confess: I’m old. 🙂
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John Wayne movies.
“The Cabin in the Woods” is no longer in theaters in my area. It won’t be on DVD until the middle of September. I’d like to watch it now. I’d pay to watch it now. But no. There has to be some artificial gap between the two releases. This might have worked when the public had no choice but to wait but we don’t have to wait anymore
Hmmm…lets see, the guy is from London and the MPAA representative gave him the options below:
Hulu:
Wikipedia quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu
HBO Go:
Quote:
Source: http://www.hbogo.com
Not available in the U.K.
Vudu:
Only available in the US.
Owned by Walmart.
UltraViolet:
Authentication scheme, not a delivery of media or services.
Wikipedia quote:
Epix:
Owned by Viacom (via Paramount Pictures), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate.
Wikipedia quote:
Only available in the US.
EpixHD quote:
Quote from MUBI:
Look, we have all these ways people can watch it, but if they are not available anywhere else in the world that is not our fault, like isn’t our fault for making “exclusive” deals with dozens of partners in a single country so the consumer needs to pay for 20 different options to watch what he wants.
So many people here criticising perfectly reasonable business decisions.
Let’s see if an analogy will help.
Imagine I’m running a store.
Now sure, I could make the products I sell available to everyone who wants to buy from my store.
But I have discovered, that if I use a system of staggered availability I can make more, especially as I can target promotional materials at the different groups.
So for example, I can promote a sale on some top quality luxury products for white male business people one week before moving on to a different category, say the upwardly mobile Asians then onto black people, pimps and drug dealers (The PC brigade won’t lets us say the N word “Ne’erdowells” I show no fear) before hitting up the Wetbacks.
It can help with the kudos attached to the item for sale if there is a group that’s completely excluded, say snail eating freedom hating French people.
Obviously each successive group has less money to spend on Rolexes and we have a duty to maximise profits.
There would be nothing unreasonable about this in the physical world so why the heck don’t people understand the advantage of staggered release windows in the digital world of infinite supply.
Re: Re:
Darn, for Rolexes please read as top quality luxury products.
Obviously the good people who make ridiculous overpriced status symbols for those with fragile egos would never be racist in any way whatsoever, nor would the associate themselves with anyone who was.
Re: Re:
“There would be nothing unreasonable about this in the physical world so why the heck don’t people understand the advantage of staggered release windows in the digital world of infinite supply.”
The crappy analogy you described would almost certainly be illegal if you were to block one race from buying instead of another. There’s no problem in *marketing* to different people at different times, but it’s idiocy to actually block people from buying just because it’s inconvenient to your marketing strategy.
The reason people don’t “understand” is because it’s failing, and the fools in the industry don’t understand that it’s this very strategy that drives many to piracy in the first place.
Re: Re: Re:
Hmm, you say it’s failing
But as box office records are being broken
and sales of everything pretty much across the board other than CD are up, what we’re not getting is that it’s working just fine for them.
They just want to make it work even better, from their point of view.
That means, government takes over a lot of the costs of copyright enforcement, passes legislation to bypass those pesky courts that occasionally ask for proof of wrongdoing or at least harm of some kind, perhaps mandating some kind of tax on ISPs or blank media etc.
Why wouldn’t these ridiculous amoral people pursue the line they are currently pursuing, it saves them money and makes them money and gives them a cause they can rail against.
You know, a bit like, the US and Arabs or the old South African apartheid government and people of colour, or any other idiocy you can think of.
Re: Re:
You see, the problem is that this business plan, like all business plans, comes with a downside. If you really do maximize profits by doing things that way, then go for it!
But don’t come back with righteous indignation about the problems that the chosen plan causes or worsens. That’s part of the deal you chose.
And, most importantly, don’t bribe and pressure legislators into altering laws that cause great damage to innocent people and society in an attempt to mitigate those problems.
If the problems that come with a business plan are unbearably egregious, then the business plan is flawed and a different approach is required — no matter how “reasonable” that plan may be.
Re: Re: Re:
“But don’t come back with righteous indignation about the problems that the chosen plan causes or worsens. That’s part of the deal you chose.
And, most importantly, don’t bribe and pressure legislators into altering laws that cause great damage to innocent people and society in an attempt to mitigate those problems.”
Why shouldn’t they, if the legislators are can be bribed or will succumb to pressure to legislate to support my business model why on earth would I do anything else.
More importantly, in a democracy, if people cared then the people who passed such legislation would never get elected again, so the fact is democracy has spoken.
Copyright can and therefore should be extended in both reach and time, government funded agencies can and therefore should do the job of policing to prevent people infringing copyright whether they benefit from doing so or not.
Don’t think that corporations have no regard for the costs being put onto the taxpayers either, court cases cost a lot of money and as you will have noticed the corporations are going to great lengths to reduce the costs by getting legislation passed that will bypass the court system completely.
The internet may be different than the real world, but only in so far as legislation that would be unthinkable in the real world is not only considered but actively pursued by governments. Whereas they went to a lot of effort to put an end to the kind of business model where people could decide not to sell anything to any of them black folks.
But the real problem isn’t the corporations or the politicians, it’s the electorate who refuse to bring consequences to bear on elected representatives who work against the best interests of their electorates.
Hold up a mirror people, that person you see there, that’s why this insane IP century is going the way it’s going and unless you do something about it, it won’t get any better.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Personally I would love to take attorneys (from ALL areas of specialization) and burn them to death on live TV.
If things keep going the way they are, you’ll see that and more. Next time OWS happens, it wont be passive hipsters and dead heads, its going to be working class and lower white collar people dragging shitbags onto the streets and beating them to death. LOL at legislation.
Re: Re: Re:2 Bloodbath
And I can just see the police retaliating with 50cal GPMGs
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So at the end of the day your conclusion is to accomodate others for their ridiculosity, and if we refuse to do so things will only get worse, so we should just suck it up?
Tell you what, I got a better idea: I’m not going to consume anything they push out. I’ve been spending more money on videogames, and only the few I’m interested in. They won’t be getting money from me, and if they want to push out more laws that insinuate I must be a pirate so they can take my money that they don’t deserve, they’ll have a huge wave of backlash coming their way.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I would agree with your argument if there were actually alternatives to vote for. But there aren’t. “Vote the bastards out” accomplishes nothing when you only have a pool of bastards to replace them with.
Also, the problem isn’t only corrupt politicians. It’s a corrupt political system. A completely honest politician cannot accomplish a thing in Washington.
Netflix: uses my already very low and expensive data from my ISP. No thanks.
Hulu: Only available in the US, thus keeping the resource(s) scarce.
MPAA: Geniuses who can only try to spin any argument against them into propaganda to try to save face.
Strangely enough, I too want movie "piracy" to end
Studies — and practical statistics of ticket and video sales — strongly suggest that online file sharing is helping Hollywood, rather than hurting it.
So for the love of all that’s good and decent, please stop sharing movie files online. The only way we’re going to kill Hollywood dead as the dinosaur is to give it what its tiny little dinosaur brain wants — strangling control of its own rotten products.
Good riddance to these repulsive half-wits.
Yes they do so much for us we should be on our knees giving thanks.
It seems that The Hill deleted all of the comments in tier blog. I rad it about 1/2 an hour ago and I didn’t see anything cringe worthy.
Although most of the comments were lambasting a few of the commenters for not addressing the question.
Too bad, it looked like a good discussion was going there.
But, but...pirates
Are any of the folks who use the phrase “Pirate Mike” unironically available to put together a couple coherent sentences that addresses why their conversations always exclude people like me who pay for digital items every week and why we get crappy services?
Basically all I ever get is that companies don’t want my money because of piracy.
Re: But, but...pirates
Yeah, that’s exactly the problem. I’ve been saying the same things for years, and all I ever get is false accusations even though I almost certainly own more movies (and music, videogames, etc.) than any of these people. They demand proof I buy, and on the odd occasion I supply it, they mysteriously disappear from the conversation, only to toss out the same tired accusations in the next thread.
Their attitude to Mike is similar – they attack him personally for being a pirate and for supporting piracy, even though I’ve never seen any proof of either of these. The simplest explanation is that they seem to think that pointing out problems is the same as causing them. No wonder this argument never goes anywhere, with them making and defending the same mistakes over and over.
The entertainment companies have been absolutely great at bitching about their potential customers being the problem. I know of no other business that would survive suing their own sources of income and survive for any length of time.
Notice that no Top 10 now stays on the charts beyond a few weeks. It points to them having damaged people wanting their goods and it is showing up in the lack of longevity for those same goods.
I personally have no trouble with this. The sooner they go bankrupt, the better off the nation will be. All this pushing for ever increasing penalties has not worked any better than the same solution applied to the Drug Wars has. It’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
“?Our studios are constantly partnering and innovating new ways for audiences to watch the movies and TV shows they love: Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Crackle, UltraViolet, Epix, MUBI ? and that just barely scratches the surface. There are more legitimate avenues available today to watch movies and TV shows online than ever before, and our studios are continuing to innovate every day to bring audiences even more options.?
In other words, you will watch the shows that we will let you watch when we feel like it!
Lol at the list of terrible online services. Hulu is pretty alright but Hollywood seems to totally hate them not to mention they seem to try and cut programming all the time on Hulu.
I've never understood ...
“‘?At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,? Bedingfield added.”
I’ve never understood why, if the org really believe this, they were willing to tolerate their members willfully not selling product wherever, whenever and however.
If downloading without paying is stealing, then refusing to sell something is by that same logic also stealing. In both cases you’re denying money to a creator from a potential sale.
If you refuse to sell to someone that’s money out of my pocket, same as if they consume and refuse to buy.
The Chinese Solution
Was recently in Shanghai, I took an LCC from Haneda and it only cost me $70. While I was in Shanghai I did the usual stuff, shopping, checking in with friends and family (cousin’s company sent him to manage their factories in China). Noticed the hotel I was staying at had all the latest movies Spiderman, latest Batman?it’s not even out yet but they had it as well as other movies. I noticed too that the Bamboo Firewall doesn’t stop TPB or other DLing sites and nobody is worried that the Chinese Internet Police will shut down these sites.
Very possibly, the Chinese are the biggest shoppers in the world. Put them in a store with an armload of cash and they’ll go wild but, if they can’t find a genuine Prada bag they’ll quickly snatch up a fake and when it comes to they’ll eagerly buy stuff but if they can’t get Spiderman, Batman, True Lies or Game of Thrones because the studios won’t release it in the PRC, they’ll gladly steal it and their excuse is
“The big companies don’t give me what I want then I take it!” We’re just relearning to do this in the West and the big media companies are soon going to learn that, like the Chinese, we want to see or listen to what we want to, when we want to at a price that we want to pay. If they don’t then like the Chinese I’m not adverse to taking it.
Hulu, what, what, what and what?
I’m sorry, but that list of things they’re doing has only one item on it that I’ve ever heard of before… And I thought they were working on breaking Hulu?
Thanks for the list MPAA, now I know which services to avoid. I don’t plan on supporting your nazi campaign for world domination.
?At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,? Bedingfield added.
Out of convenience? Well it looks like thats the only part they managed to get close to correct, but more often its the *ONLY* alternative.
Re: Re:
The convenience part is the only thing you got right. If you think I’m waiting 5 years to see Game of Thrones Season 1 legally in Japan then you must be crazy! And if you think I’m going to spend ?5,000 for a CD at a brick and mortar store in Shibuya you need to be locked up with all the other price gouging lunatics.
They want to pass all these new laws and create backroom dealings, yet they cannot even see that they created this whole mess in the first place. They had 20 years while the internet evolved into the high bandwidth machine it is today, they had plenty of warning to innovate. Any internet expert always knew that mass file sharing would take control away from big content once broadband speeds evolved.
Our politicians are so bought.
A cultural problem
Rights holders, banks, pretty much all the same and pretty easy to reign in if there were ever any organization. The shooting in Aurora is a good example. That model of entertainment distribution took a major hit this last week end. We can kill it altogether by simply not supporting shooting galleries. Warner will not release their box office for the weekend and probably for the run for a long time. Their profits will be obscene.
tired of being screwed by the banks? Don’t use their products. If 25% of us would stop using debit and credit cards for one week, I guarantee you would have the banking industries full attention. Take a break, read a book from the library. Save your money.
Re: A cultural problem
You do realize that anywhere that lots of people go qualifies as a “shooting gallery”, right? Malls, schools, restaurants, department stores, airport security lines, and lots of other things all qualify as shooting galleries. Not supporting them would be beyond impractical.