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I wouldn't go so far as to say that pirating films, music, games etc is "fair", victimless, or totally cool, but this quick little funky vid does make a good point or two. Props to my buddy Phil for this one.
And creepy. The video is creepy.
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/more-on-the-torrents
In a nutshell: as a filmmaker, I *hate* piracy because I feel it forces filmmakers to busk without permission (yes, Bit Torrent is fantastic word of mouth, etc.). That said, piracy is not going away and the winner of the war on piracy will be the one who finds a way to make money off of it, instead of creating laws which cannot realistically be enforced on an international scale.
While I enjoyed the movie above for its filmmaking, I can't upvote it because of its message. However, I'm not downvoting it, either, because I did enjoy watching it. I'm so conflicted.
i agree that it makes a sort of catch-22, but on one hand you have movie execs with tons of money spending for the latest Happy Glimore (now featuring Tom Cruise!), marketing the hell out of it and then complaining that they just broke even thanks to all the Damn Pirates....and then there's the indy filmmakers actually making good movies that only release in Select Theatres, which not everyone can get to.....and people like me with dwindling time and money. I much prefer to pre-watch a film at home and determine whether i support it or not. if i do i will go to the theatre and see it, and later buy the dvd, although i'm not so starry-eyed as to expect that everyone does the same.
anyway, if i was the MPAA, i'd go after the people who are hawking unreleased movies on physical media...they're the ones actually making money off of other people's work....before going after the audiences themselves.
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Dumb logic. Next movie I make, I'm gonna charge YOU budzos, and no one else.
Erm, so, you're saying that you still want to watch it though? If you think the film is so LAME, why are you downloading it? I just don't get the rationalle...
Downloading films is just wrong, this whole 'Share it's Fair' thing is utter crud. Movies cannot be made unless someone pays to watch and enjoy them.
Do I download movies? Yes. I have three kids, I hardly ever get to go out to the movies, so in order to find out if a flick is worth buying on DVD I do, yes, download a dvd rip of said movie, and then buy the DVD if I like it. I feel that in this way I end up buying more dvds than I otherwise would as I don't buy a movie sight unseen. Do I ever delude myself into thinking that what I'm doing is right? No, I know it's not... but it's a way of me seeing a lot more than I otherwise would. Do I feel bad about depriving filmmakers of money? I would if I were downloading a movie RATHER than going to see it in the movies, but we only get to go once in a blue moon.
It's people who blame movies on why they download, such as you elysse, who are using terrible logic. If you want it badly enough to download, then surely it isn't that bad? Or do you just like terrible movies? And if you do, you should be paying to see the terrible movies as you enjoy what they're making.
Do I download movies? Yes. I have three kids, I hardly ever get to go out to the movies, so in order to find out if a flick is worth buying on DVD I do, yes, download a dvd rip of said movie, and then buy the DVD if I like it.
i see what you did there, you flamed my arguments for downloading movies saying you didn't understand it.. and then turned around and explained how you did. clev.
for the record, i would prefer to download a film to see IF it's worth going to a theatre for, and later buy the dvd, for much the same reason you do: i have kids. if the film is not worth finding the time away from home, or co-ordinating the children, then in downloading it i have just saved myself the time, effort, cash and frustration.
and yes, the amount of films that are awful is large, you can usually spot them in a preview, but for the others...well, that's when i take the aforementioned approach.
The problem that i have is that certain people in the film industry want to make an absolute killing. I want people to be payed what they deserve, for the quality of the content they produce, and for the role that they play in that production.
Someone, somewhere, is getting a whopping great salary for doing not very much, and for every person down the line that squeezes a bit more money that they don't deserve out of the film, the end cost is going to increase further and further. Until the guy running the cinema realises that he's going to have to charge me £8 so that he can make a profit (and maybe he's over-egging that price as well).
I just checked and The Matrix made 1 billion (1x10^9) dollars from cinema stuff alone. Forget all the merchandise, royalties, box sets, reduxes, editions, and whatever else. I want to know whose pockets that lined. Cos when i have to pay £15-20 for a DVD, my pockets aren't gonna be lined for very long.
I've got 2 things to say in conclusion;
1. If you're supplying something that's not fair, people are going to say "screw you!" There's a lot of assholes out there who're out for all they can get, but there's also a lot of non-assholes out there who are tired of paying £20 for a DVD, or £10 to see a film that turns out to be absolute garbage.
2. The price has to reflect the quality! If Half-Life (1) had cost £80 when it first came out, and i had known that, today, i would STILL be playing that damn game, i would have given them twice as much.
To see The Matrix, i would have payed £10 happily. To see "National Treasure 2", i wouldn't expect to be paying more than £3. But they both cost me the same (excusing inflation). And the people responsible for presenting it to me still made a lot of money. Whereas they SHOULD be picking up a small amount of money, and a lesson to make better films in future if they want more money.
There's flaws in my argument - i don't care. I'm sick of being fleeced. And i want Nicholas Cage to provide services to myself to cover his £7 arrears.[/rant]
The world (and especially the movie industry) needs more people like Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and Courtney Love who are interested in taking a risk to make a system that works for (almost) everyone.
I do however download TV series, they are just so darn pricey.
Let's all admit one fact, good movies make alot of money regardless of pirating or not, bad movies don't make any money either way. Word of mouth is still the best way of getting to know good movies, and some movies simply have to be seen on the big screen, I regret not seeing Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen, but I bought both on DVD. Some movies I have no choice but download because frankly how else am I suppposed to see an arthouse Hungarian flick in the Middle East or Central Asia? the distribution model doesn't exist to cover viewers like me.
I believe the problem still inherently lies in an old distribution model trying to making money in a digital age, look at how the RIAA deals with their consumers their business model to this day. They need to rethink the market totally, some signs are already there, in Russia rampant piracy has forced companies to publish DVDs on the market very quickly to make back revenue from piracy, that works really well in a nation were piracy is rampant. These are the so called R9 rips that have Russian and English audio tracks.
I still think pulling down clips off Youtube is a stupid way to deal with piracy, there are countless old and new movies I watched because of clips or trailers up online, its free marketing. Pure online distribution should be readily taken up by the studios, as well as multi format releases occuring across several formats at the same time, cinema, Pay TV, rental and online (spreading revenue potential across alot more markets). Special DVD releases after 3 or so months would supplement that, HellBoy and Pitch Black made almost no money at the box office but DVD sales proved lucrative.
However re-thinking the model is harder and more risky then simply blaming piracy, but the problem won't go away at all especially with increasing digitization of the cinema format as a whole.
Death to Hollywood, enjoy her demise;
from the ashes, o glistening new nipple..ARISE!!
i don't think any movie should cost or make as much as do, why does all that money go there? there are people starving.
forget laws for a second, do you agree with this massive hollywood industry? would you prefer it brought down to size...
the only way they can get around it is for the fat cats to improve the format, i'd pay to see a 3-D Imax version (as long as i'm not sat next to some smelly loud-mouthed kid).
Do you only feel bad because other people are telling you that it is bad? Do you feel bad because the government tell you it's bad?
If you really do buy more DVDs because you download than if you didn't download, surely that isn't bad at all. For you and for the people who profit.
You downloading the films, but still contributing financially does not still mean that what you are doing is bad.
You could argue fairly though those who download and don't contribute financially are bad.
I buy DVDs for what I get on top of the movie on its own. I want something more than just some extra subtitles. You make the product more attractive and I will buy it (if the movie is also good enough to watch twice).
I don't go to the cinemas because it is a DUMP and it is ridiculously expensive making cinema trips something to treat myself with every few months. And when I do go I'm often surrounded by screaming children or the screen is covered in coke (which was attracted blackened dust like covering) making the screen even worse. Also, I find the cinema screens so lo-def compared to my monitor and friend's HD TV, it really just does not give me a cinematic experience.
#1 is definitely illegal, and #2 is not. But #1 causes no financial harm, while #2 does. Copyright laws are anachronistic.
Do I download movies? Yes. I have three kids, I hardly ever get to go out to the movies, so in order to find out if a flick is worth buying on DVD I do, yes, download a dvd rip of said movie, and then buy the DVD if I like it.
i see what you did there, you flamed my arguments for downloading movies saying you didn't understand it.. and then turned around and explained how you did. clev.
Nooo, see, what you said was "The movies are crap, that's why there's so much downloading"... Wah? My question is, "Well if the movies are so crap why are you downloading them in the first place?"
My thing was saying I have no ability to go to the movies, I don't like buying a dvd sign unseen, so I download as a preview tool. You say you do the same, and that's cool... I was just attacking the argument I've seen quite a few times "Well if they'd make better films we wouldn't download so much" Which is just so incredibly ridiculous.
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spoco2 said that they download movies even though they know that it is 'bad'.
Do you only feel bad because other people are telling you that it is bad? Do you feel bad because the government tell you it's bad?
Ahh, another of the people who think "I have decided that what I do is right, pretty much just because it goes against what the big, bad government says".
Think of it this way: If you were a film maker, and your salary, your income, the money you need to keep your family fed, comes from ticket sales etc. of the movies you make, how are you going to make ANY money if people just download your films without paying for them? You can't... end of story.
Saying 'Well, movies still make a heap of money even with downloading' doesn't make it right... if everyone downloaded them then they wouldn't... at what critical mass does it become not ok to watch the movie for free? Is it ok until x% of people do it, and then it's not ok any more because it's denying the film makers of their profit?
If you really do buy more DVDs because you download than if you didn't download, surely that isn't bad at all. For you and for the people who profit.
You downloading the films, but still contributing financially does not still mean that what you are doing is bad.
Yes, that's why I buy the DVDs, that's why I support the movies that I enjoy, but that doesn't mean that everyone who does this does... it's purely down to personal good intentions, I know PLENTY of people who buy the $2 ripoff jobs from Hong Kong and are happy with them, doesn't matter that the film maker makes nothing from that, only some shit who took a camera into a theatre. Doesn't matter that they're watching abysmal quality, they're happy that they payed $2 for a movie... I won't even download cams of films, I just don't know how people can watch them...
I prefer quality, I prefer rewarding the filmmakers, but so many people DON'T... I'm happy with the way that I use these means, but the issue is that the means themselves can and are used so much more as just a method of watching stuff for free... and the more people that do that, the less money the films make, the less chance there is for edgier films to be made because all hollywood will make are those films 'guaranteed' to pull in a trillion dollars regardless of downloading.
You could argue fairly though those who download and don't contribute financially are bad. It's not so much the actual act I find to be 'bad' as such, it's those people who are of the opinion that it's 'right' and that things should be 'shared' and everything should be free..
How the crap do those people expect the artists to actually make money in this utopian world where all entertainment is shared for free? It's just people trying to justify not paying for stuff...
Piracy is a pain in the ass.
Spoco2's spot on on this issue. The problem is, many people on VideoSift use BitTorrent to download films/songs to see/hear what they're like before actually going out to buy them. Fine, that's great, but Sifters are normally great in general. But as you have probably come to know, Sifters don't exactly think act like the majority of the public, do we? The majority of people download pirated movies and songs simply for the fact that they don't want to pay for it. That is stealing. That is no different than shoplifting. You don't understand the feeling you get when you're out at your booth selling your CDs to a group of "fans" only for one to buy 1 copy of the CD and turning around to others in a kind of wink and telling their friends, right in front of my face, that "don't buy one...one copy is enough...you get what I mean". Oh yeah, like I don't know what they were going to do with it.
Not to mention the times where a fan would walk up to my friend holding out a CD for him to sign...except it was on a generic CD-RW disc.
And it happens everytime, everyday.
Hey, I'm not saying copyright laws aren't archaic and anarchist. I'm not saying it comes from an old distribution model. There are loopholes and a lot of very good points have been made here on this thread, as always, and I relish reading them. But the main thing is, a majority of people are pirating
simply because they don't want to buy the real copy, and it destroys the creative juice out of so many artists. I am willing to bet that even if a final, new distribution model is accomodated for the internet, most people will still continue to hack. Just think about it: "Download movie from the net for $4.99? Or download for free? Hmm..."
It's not a hard choice, you're going to get the same package no matter if you pay it or not, and people will continue to pirate no matter what innovative business model is thrusted upon them as most people will only think of themselves, not the artists. And it was always the job of corporations to think up business models in the first place, not artists. Why else would artists sign for them and make them what they are now? So, don't expect a "better" model to support artists directly and bypass the evil you all hate any time soon.
Remember, we're talking about the majority of people here, not Sifters. We're not talking about fans of Radiohead, who scarificed oh so much potential profit but can only be successful in doing what they did with the huge amount of fanbase they already have, we're talking more like fans of Britney Spears.
Before I end my tirade, just let me underline what I'm talking about here. Forget plagiarism. Forget the sharing with friends/families. I'm talking about the act of downloading films, products, for personal entertainment without the intention of actually buying the damn thing at all. And this is what most of pirating is. Don't justify it.
And so many people act.all.so.decent.and.proud.like.they.are.the.righteous.ones.for.doing.it.
Rant over. Thank you, and good night.
this is the most ridiculous argument. if laws get a lot tougher people will pretty much stop downloading, if not then we will do it because we can because the format they're using can be shared free and easily in this way. should it be legal? if so -the punishment should fit this pseudo-crime. just a slap on the wrist. it is almost a paradox of what is justifiably right or wrong, like watching some forms of illegal porn.
TV stations broadcast shows for free, so why can't I record them and put on my iPod? Name one good reason.
Anyways, it isn't piracy. It is copyright violation. It's like going to the library or bookstore and photocopying a whole book and then returning it.
Period. It is not property theft. It may be a lost sale, but so is renting it from BlockBuster. If I want the original product they are making I can buy it.
Copyright is a privilege extended for the specific purpose of increasing creative output, it no longer does that, everybody knows it, and we don't respect it any more.I don't know if copyright can be recovered at this point, the public no longer values the institution because it has been used to damage culture instead of nurturing it.
If copyright is to be saved it will have to take into account that copyright/patent periods should be shrinking, not growing. Moore's law should be applied to these systems. Their potential to assist creativity is proportional to the amount of time it takes to disseminate the information through the most efficient channel available. The faster information can be monetized, the less time creators should be given monopoly privilege to monetize it.
Anybody who is hating on P2P should remember that their is no evidence that sharing music/movies results in any reduction in unit sales, and the statistical analysis of P2P data shows a supporting correlation on sales, largely beneficial to lesser known films/musicians. The MP/RIAA hates P2P because it does the only thing their clients do, advertise, far better and at far lower cost, it does not lose them money, it simply makes them obsolete.
The conflation of property and copy-monopoly is both absurd and intellectually dishonest. this vid points that out, though it does not address the nub of the problem. Remember everything made before 1980 should be public domain by the original meaning of the term.