mkultra

I hate the new commercials they have started running during the trailers before movies, the one that has the 'real' stuntmen and other behind the scenes people saying don't steal my babies milk money. Especially since everyone in them is really an actor.

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In the words of Jello: "Punk ain't no religious cult,punk means thinking for yourself. You ain't hardcore cause you spike your hair, when a jock still lives inside your head."

Pip

I can't believe nobody has commented on this yet. (Maybe because it's just one insignificant flaw unrelated to the main issue, but still.) The music industry was alive and kicking way back in the 18:th century.

SecretMethod70

On this topic of copyright, I HIGHLY recommend Lawrence Lessig's talk on <a href="http://www.boycott-riaa.com/lessig/">"free culture."</a> It is about 30 minutes long and I recommend the flash version so that you can listen to the talk and watch the visual aides at the same time.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

SVT01Cobra

Keep in mind, Mr Wallace, that this was written from an American perspective. I don't know how movie rentals are in Belgium.
However, over here in America, the city I live in has 3 Blockbusters, and they are ALWAYS sold out of "Guaranteed In-Stock" New Releases, and shit, there's like 30 or more movies in each store.

I usually go rent movies that I would like to see. I download those that I CANT get otherwise. Like the Fastlane series on Fox, etc...
But the hundreds of millions of people that went to see Spiderman 2 GROSSLY overshadow the 5-600 that downloaded it on their computers. (estimated, of course. :P)

Saying that downloading movies hurts the industry is a bit of an exaggeration.

I do understand that what I do is wrong, whether it's music or a movie does not matter, but I'm well aware of the consequences.

Reese

I'm afraid you are partly wrong here Cynthetiq. Blockbuster deals with someone like Rentrak www.newppt.com, They pay 2 dollars per movie and give Rentrak like 50% of the profits, after so many weeks they can sell the movie back to rentrak or put on it their shelves to sell it. That is how they can have 50 of the same movie. The studios may get profits from rentrak or they may just get a one time fee, I'm unsure how it works after that.

Mom and pop stores, like mine buy from places like Waxworks http://www.waxworksonline.com/ We don't even deal with VHS anymore because they are too expensive(50-60$ sometimes) And the only real advantage to ordering from our distributor is the fact that we are guaranteed to get our movies and we get them a few days early. It's actually cheaper for us to drive to Wal-mart and buy them but we can't drive to walmart every Tuesday and they don't always have every movie released that day.

If you have multiple stores, mostly new inventory, and enough shelf space then there's a great advantage to joining someone like Rentrak, but if you have a single location and mostly existing inventory like just about every Mom and Pop video store, it becomes a hassle to keep your inventory seperate from theirs.

Back on topic:
Downloading in place of rental is just as bad as anything else. We bought 10 Shrek 2 dvds and a few VHS, and on Saturday night 3 of them had rented because everyone that came in had already seen a pirated copy.

Copyright Infringement is BASICALLY theft. It's intellectial PROPERTY that has an infinite amount of copies. When you take a copy the owner now has infinite -1 copies of this property. Copyright Infringement isn't any more legal than theft and they are very similar in nature, People say it's theft because theft is more understood than Copyright Infringment.

Copyright Infringement DOES hurt the MPAA and RIAA. Currently the pain is equivilent to a pin prick but the numbers were rising and pretty soon NO ONE would be buying CDs and DVDs. They took action early to stop this. I don't really agree with suing a 12 year old or grandmother for downloading 5-6 songs but some people were trading thousands of songs. I don't really like the way the RIAA does business but that doesn't mean depriving them of profits is any less illegal.

I know I'm forgetting something...

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Stompy

What's interesting is how the MPAA made claims, "Oh, we're losing so much money due to piracy," yet last year was the 2nd biggest income in their entire history ($9 billion), and all this while P2P usage was UP.

I think that just about ends the debate right there about whether or not it hurts them financially. Is it morally wrong? Sometimes. I think it's more wrong for someone to constantly churn out crap and market it to others, but hey, I guess we're all entitled to our opinions. As long as companies are allowed to get away with that, then I have no problems with downloading things.

If you make something good, it will sell regardless of the piracy that goes on. The new eminem CD comes out in a week, right? The damn thing is already available online, but how much do you wanna bet it's gonna sell like crazy?

To make a long story short, downloading any of these isn't the same as physical theft (and I'm sure this point was made somewhere above) and only becomes a problem when you introduce a hypothetical situation like "What if everyone just downloaded them?" Well, what if? Then we'd have a problem, but not everyone does.

There's also a lot of false assumptions that are made when discussing copyright infringement, and a popular one being, "Everyone who downloaded this item would've paid for it regardless." Not true. I've downloaded about 25-30 PS2 games in the past 7 months, and most of them haven't held my attention for more than a few days. I woudln't have rented them either... most I would've paid no mind to. To me, a game isn't worth buying unless it really sucks you in. No $$ lost there. Do I have the right to just up and download it? Nah, but I'll do it anyway considering it doesn't matter either way.

As for movies... the only movie worth seeing last year was Lord of the Rings, and I haven't even seen THAT yet. Oh, and Kill Bill (there might be one or two others, but I can't think of em right now). I've downloaded a LOT of DVDs of movies that came out in 2003, but had I not downloaded them, I wouldn't have cared to see them either way. I might've seen em through netflix, but I pay a constant fee through them. Even during months I don't rent movies from em! No $$ lost there.

I'll always download movies, games, and music. Those that I feel are worth buying, I'll buy, but other than that, I've been suckered into buying too much stuff for far too long only to find out it sucks ass. It's about time the average joe has leverage over the industry, IMO.

The whole thing really doesn't concern me either way. I'm sick of hearing people whine about it. Honestly, the more I hear people whine or complain about it, the more I download

[edit]
Here's a good article as to why music sales have declined: http://www.economist.com/displaystor...ory_id=3329169

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KMA-628

Um, no it doesn't. Gross income means nothing without comparing net profit. If costs went up unproportional to income going up, the profits could be much less than years prior, therefore, they could in fact be making less money.

Also, isn't your $9 billion number a collective number? Did every studio increase income? What about profit?

You have to compare net profit over a period of years to make the claim you are making. And even that will only give you a collective answer. Some studios may be getting hurt while others may not, no way to know without comparing several years worth of information for each studio individually.

asshopo

I pirate games/music/software for 3 reasons.

#1) You buy something that sucks, you can't return it.
#2) Kind of like #1 relating to music, I will not pay $14.99 for a shit album that has 2 good songs.
#3) I generally can't afford $25 movies, $50 games, and $15 CDs because I have to support my kids and wife.

If I wouldn't be spending the money in the first place, where is the "loss of profit"?

iccky

fckm just expressed very elloquinly the tension inherent in copyright law. It sould be added that the founders were particularly uncomfortable with the idea of patents and copyrights.

Two quotes from Jefferson. You can skip these if it's too much but I think they're great:

Here, Jefferson states the obvious: intelectual property is a monopoly. If you copyright a song, you can decide who gets to buy it, and at what price, with all the harmful economic effects that monopolies have. He agknowledges the opposing argument: that without monopolies people whould not produced new knowledge and grants that temporary monopolies may be a necessary evil to overcome this. Still he doubts their value. Implicit in his last statemnt is the idea that if you grant limited monopolies, they will eventually grow to unlimited monopolies, something that has been bourne out in fact.

There are two key points. The first is that, as fckm stated, the consumption of intelectual property is nonrrivalrous, that you useing my intelectual property does not diminish your own ability to enjoy the intelectual property. Indeed, everyone can enjoy the same intelectual property at the same time, and this is a good thing because it ensures a limitless diversity of ideas for everyone.

The second is that Jefferson speaks of intelectual property not being property in nature, meaning in an ideal world. In the actual world the property part of intelectual property is a necessary evil, but should be viewed as just that, evil, and should be minimized whenever possible.

So the current state of copyright law is a farce. This doesn't mean that downloading is ok, since artists and comanies should have exclusive rights to a product for a limited time as an incentive to produce. But if copyright only lasted for a suitable ammount of time for this to happen, say five or ten years, I think most illegal downloading would stop. People who really didn't want to pay for something (and probably wouldn't anyway) would wait until it was legal, since that would be a reasonable amount of time not 95 years as under the current law.