File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era 334
An anonymous reader writes "This report looks at file sharing in the post MegaUpload era. The main finding — file sharing did not go away. It did not even decrease much in North America. Mainly, file sharing became staggeringly less efficient. Instead of terabytes of North America MegaUpload traffic going to U.S. servers, most file sharing traffic now comes from Europe over far more expensive transatlantic links."
What did you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like the people who've been pirating for the last ten years are just going to say to themselves "Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's and forget that we've gotten used to not paying for our movies and getting them instantly!" just because of some raid. And as long as there are pirates sailing the high seas, *someone* will be there to sell them boats.
Blame Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
Blame Napster for making file sharing main stream. Back in the day when we had to walk uphill to school both ways the only way to pirate stuff was to be a geek or know someone who was. In the glory days most piracy happened on BBS'es, IRC and USENET. The former two were generally only available to those "in the know" while the latter was mostly used by people seeking pornography (who remembers working on PCs and finding gigabyte sized Free Agent cache directories?)
In the end even the RIAA/MPAA types know that they will never stop piracy. Driving it further underground and returning it to the domain of the technically informed would stem their perceived losses though. I'm not sure if this is an obtainable goal with the internet being what it is but you can bet they will keep trying as long as they draw breath. The only thing that will stop this is the rise of meaningful (read: cheap and easy to use) online services that make piracy more trouble than it's worth. A lot of people think that iTunes did this for music, though I would argue that Pandora has done more to negate music piracy than iTunes. I don't think you can directly translate Pandora into movies though.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time until someone develops an Android or jailbroken iOS app that allows true peer to peer piracy over bluetooth or wifi. You'd set it up to share what you want, and to search for things you're looking for. If you were friendly, you could even set it up to look for things other people you see for x amount of time are looking for. Walking on the street? Riding in a bus? File sharing everywhere you go.
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It's only a matter of time until someone develops an Android or jailbroken iOS app that allows true peer to peer piracy over bluetooth or wifi. You'd set it up to share what you want, and to search for things you're looking for. If you were friendly, you could even set it up to look for things other people you see for x amount of time are looking for. Walking on the street? Riding in a bus? File sharing everywhere you go.
Didn't Zune have a feature that did bluetooth or WiFi song sharing called 'squirt' (or 'squirting')?
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Funny)
Didn't Zune have a feature that did bluetooth or WiFi song sharing called 'squirt' (or 'squirting')?
It was squircle. Squirting is something different, but don't worry, we nerds probably will never stumble into that situation...
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Squirting is something different, but don't worry, we nerds probably will never stumble into that situation...
Why? You know, porn is shareable too!
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That is actually really cool, but the opening for trolling is huge!
name your file todays.hot.movie.avi but have it be a slideshow of the best ever internet toll shock images...
aside from that however, I think it is a really interesting idea for dense areas where person to person near field contact is likely (NY, SF, London, Tokyo, etc.)
-nB
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Insightful)
IP Trolling can't be "dealt with", like every politician does; you have to annihilate it and then salt the soil in order to optimistically dampen it's impact. The only true solution is the one of self mutilation. The global community has to reorient to a new set of rules for attribution of intellectual work in order to end this self impeding plutocratic movement.
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Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Informative)
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I believe torrent index sites in the US have all been shut down and pushed out.
What I am proposing is a bit less than the torrent, only the file has and files size portion, but no information on how to obtain the file.
If the site is simply compiling a list of pirated files in the wild, then is it doing wrong?
Arguably the list could be sold in a way for consumers to verify that a file is of pirate origi
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but torrent sites now are pushing magnet links instead, which are pretty much what you're talking about.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Informative)
On a side note I am curious how you get a hold of the torrent without a link and only a magnet file?
While it can contain a link to a tracker, most magnet links just contain a hash of the .torrent file and use the DHT system. Your torrent client would look up the hash in the DHT and find a user who is currently downloading or seeding the file. It then downloads the .torrent file from them.
Are sites containing strictly Magnet URIs, which I assume provide no resources for locating the tracker nor piers that would provide file, illegal or legal in the US?
It depends on how much hand-waving and bribing the MAFIAA do. Several years ago I would say that they would probably be legal, since you're not getting the file from them and the "link" to the files is very weak. Nowadays it really doesn't matter, our due process doesn't apply as long as the politicians and prosecutors are sufficiently bribed. They'll just seize your domain, block your donations, and threaten/raid your web hosts without judicial approval.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Funny)
... ...
Are sites containing strictly Magnet URIs, which I assume provide no resources for locating the tracker nor "piers" that would provide file, illegal or legal in the US?
To stop people from smirking you should refer to "peers" rather than "piers". Although the nautical image it conjures up is entertaining.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you have to set a limit somewhere. Moving from the file outwards, the first steps are now clear:
1) Hosting the file: BAD
2) Linking to the file: BAD
3) Running a portal with links to files: BAD
4) Linking to a portal with links to files: BAD
5) Running a portal with links to trackers that links to pieces of the files: BAD (mostly)
6) Linking to a portal with links to trackers that links to pieces of the files: Still okay
7) Running a portal with links to a hash values (magnet links): Still okay
8) Linking to a portal with links to a hash values (magnet links): Still okay
The magnet links are a in a grey zone. You can argue that a link to a hash value is useless without third party resources, and thus that it in itself in no way can be said to be illegal in itself.
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Sending movies over Bluetooth seems like a non-starter. Even sending an album-worth of music is a pain, and of course your recipient needs to be close enough to sneeze on you. Much easier to put it in the cloud, though we're gonna have to restrain or government from jailing people for largely legal and legitimate sharing sites.
Even that Re-whatever site is struggling to go into the first-sale resale business. The &^AA is undoubtedly trying to get some agency to raid them before they even start up.
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Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
Driving it further underground and returning it to the domain of the technically informed would stem their perceived losses though. I'm not sure if this is an obtainable goal with the internet being what it is but you can bet they will keep trying as long as they draw breath.
Not a chance. Even if we had to go back to finding files on IRC, someone would whip up an XBMC plugin that made it entirely transparent and usable by morons.
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At some point that will stop as well because those in the know will want to preserve their last free zones and protect them from the masses, because once the masses can get there easily so can the lawyers.
The other option is a darknet/TOR style network, but latency and throughput suck enough that it is not a very viable option.
-nB
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
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Things never happened this way, why do you think the ones in-the-know will start behaving like that now?
People will create new channels, only the in-the-know will use them at first. But they'll pass the secret to their friends, and that will be welcome, since those friends will bring new stuff. Then suddenly, by the power of exponential growth, the channel will be big, and lawyers will take notice. Just before that new channels will be created, and just a few will be in-the know...
That is how it has even be
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
The *AAs at this point are simply in a quixotic battle against the rules of the real world. They might as well lobby for changes in the laws of physics... it falls into the same category. Trouble is most of our legislators are oldsters, people easily bought, or people who can't understand any of the basics of the world we live in.
Every attempt to curb the "piracy" will fail because this is simply the digital laws of information work. We can take huge step backwards into the world where every piece of information is tied to a piece of paper or a piece of rock, we can try to legislate it out of existence, or we can accept it and make a world that the artists (not corporate middlemen) can make a living.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Interesting)
or we can accept it and make a world that the artists (not corporate middlemen) can make a living.
That's a great theory where music is concerned and any start up band can get going with a couple hundred bucks worth of equipment and a broadband connection. I'm not so certain how it translates into movies though. To pick one of my favorite bits of modern culture, do you think you can bring Harry Potter onto the big screen without the resources of big budget movie studio? All of the special effects, the editing, the cinematographers, the actors, director, stunt performers, etc, etc? How do you propose to see that the "artists" in this example get paid without having some sort of corporate middleman?
If you accept that movies are a part of our culture then there has to be a sane middle ground between "information wants to be free!" and "we are going to control where and when you can watch the movie you paid for"
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
To pick one of my favorite bits of modern culture, do you think you can bring Harry Potter onto the big screen without the resources of big budget movie studio?
You could try not paying actors $20,000,000 for a few weeks' work.
And, frankly, a future where movies were based more on characters and story than fancy effects wouldn't be a bad one.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
They aren't mutually exclusive you know. I'd love to see you tell the story of Harry Potter without "fancy effects" and I doubt you can say that story isn't character based.
It's a bunch of kids in a school waving wands around. If Ealing Studios had made it in the 50s it would have cost less than a million dollars in today's money even with Alec Guinness playing one of the leads.
Heck, I've seen at least one TV show with a very similar plot and I guarantee you they didn't have a multi-million dollar budget for each episode.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Interesting)
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Harry potter would be a simple movie to do. There is nothing in that could not be done with some plastic models, and a little time painting negatives. Would it look like it does today, nope, but it would perfectly clear to the audience what is happening and they would have no trouble understanding what stuff was "supposed to be".
Look at classic Star Trek, you don't need CGI to tell the story of man battles alien lizard man, a guy in a rubber suit works fine. You don't need CGI to have space ships firing
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Really? Star Wars special effects were about as fancy as effects got in the 70s.
Most other films of the time compared badly. The Star Wars "making of" documentaries were both popular and fascinating because people really did want to see how those fancy new effects were made.
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The original trilogy had excellent pacing, great actors, plots that generally made sense, fight scenes that made less sense, and terrible dialogue that the actors strained to make work.
The prequel trilogy had out-of-control pacing, mostly mediocre actors who were totally subordinate to Lucas, plots that didn't make sense, fight scenes reminiscent of Dragonball Z absurdity, and terrible dialogue.
There was a review of Phantom Menace that got a lot of attention on YouTube, years after the fact, in which the re
Movie budgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Movies could be produced for far less than what is typically spent on them, and at a reasonable quality level. What makes a movie like The Matrix great is not the special effects or the bogus accounting, but the story that it tells, and that story could be told on a lower budget, with good acting, good directing, and good camerawork replacing much of the technology that is thrown at movies today. Movies are indeed part of our culture; special effects need not be.
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What makes a movie like The Matrix great is not the special effects
No, presentation was 90% of that movie. The story itself was boring and far-fetched, what philosophy student hasn't heard the 'brain-in-a-vat' problem? And using humans as a source of energy? Really? They hadn't heard of fission, or coal? What were the people in Zion using then?
It was the acting, the cinematography, and special effects that made the Matrix. Think of any memorable scene, and I'll bet it's related to one of those.
In fact, look at it the other way. Imagine how great HHGTG could have been,
Re:Movie budgets (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Movie budgets (Score:4, Informative)
That isn't a good comparison if you are trying to make your point.
Using your numbers Memento had an 8 times return on investment and Inception only had a 5.16 times return on investment. Memento was the more profitable movie from an investment standpoint.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
People will still pay for stuff. Hell, the MPAA had record profits each year from 2006 to 2010.
Movies provide an actual valuable service, that some guy in his home connection can't replace for free: huge screens to appreciate those expensive special effects and pretty photography.
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Re:Blame Napster (Score:4, Insightful)
Kevin Smith made Clerks for less than $20,000 and it went on to make $20 million in the box office, not to mention millions in home media and network sales and the launching of his career.
I get just as much entertainment from user submissions on Youtube as I do from huge blockbusters these days. I think the only people terrified of a "Hollywood-less" future is Hollywood itself.
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the trailer for Iron Sky, http://www.ironsky.net/ [ironsky.net] - then check out their budget http://www.ironsky.net/site/support/finance/ [ironsky.net]
This is their second film, the first one (the most popular film ever created in Finland) was mainly distributed (for free) over bittorrent.
Looks better than anything set to come out of Hollywood this year, IMO.
Conclusion: If Hollywood dies, we'll still have good movies. Not that there's much chance of that, seeing as they're making more money than ever...
Re:Blame Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, and playing devil's advocate here, they are actually winning the war. Yes, SOPA and PIPA may not have gone through, but it was the fact that if the US turned off another country's domain, it might be considered an act of war, with the ramifications that comes with it, similar to a naval blockade is considered an act of war for a port.
Here is how the *AA is winning the war:
1: ISPs will hand them logs now by request. Not by court order. This allows long fishing expeditions.
2: Treaties like only appear on the news after they are signed. It only was a lucky happenstance that this didn't happen with ACTA.
3: Foreigners who have never set foot on US soil are being held criminally liable for breaking US laws. Picture Americans being deported to Saudi Arabia or Syria for lashings or beheadings because they were viewing pr0n.
4: Piracy is being forced to the edges. This is success right here. Once piracy is forced to transatlantic or transpacific links, it isn't hard for ISPs to charge users for bandwidth use across those links, similar to how AT&T charges $250 a terabyte with DSL now.
5: DRM stacks are everywhere. The next generation of Windows 8 logo compliant PCs can be said to have a hardware level DRM stack with the signed UEFI mechanism that cannot be disabled, and if disabled, content like programs and games won't work.
6: It is becoming harder and harder for devices to get jailbroken. The PS3 took almost five years to have a single signficant crack, and that is currently fixed, with PSN detecting and auto-banning modified consoles. Modified xboxes are tossed off XBL instantly. Even iPhones are taking longer and longer to have a significant JB, and the Cydia market has to virtually recode stuff like Winterboard from scratch. Even with that, all it takes is a restore, a forced upgrade to the latest iOS, and iOS users are back at square one.
7: One essentially is forced to use a VPS if one doesn't want to be ratted out. Of course, good VPSes are suspect.
So, compared to this time about a decade ago, life is a lot tougher -- there are nowhere near the open wireless connections (warchalking is long gone), people who had open wi-fi connections are facing steep fines or jail times due to abuse, and the PC is essentially a dead platform when it comes to gaming.
Yes, SOPA was a battle that was conceded, but the war is still being won by the *AA.
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Just because you can't search for it in Google doesn't mean it's not on the Internet.
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The only thing that will stop this is the rise of meaningful (read: cheap and easy to use) online services that make piracy more trouble than it's worth. A lot of people think that iTunes did this for music, though I would argue that Pandora has done more to negate music piracy than iTunes. I don't think you can directly translate Pandora into movies though.
Sure you can. It's called Netflix.
Sure, Netflix is subscription-based rather than 'free', but it still provides tons of watchable content for a very reasonable monthly fee across several platforms. (If you strongly prefer 'free', then try Hulu if you're in the states, or can spoof being there.)
True, you can't save the movies you like to disk and keep them for 50 years, and you have no control over the content they offer from week to week. But I don't know (I'm not in the states), can you d/l and save son
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's
Yeah, piracy didn't exist in the 90s. Do we get the don't copy that floppy [youtube.com] guy back too?
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People copied floppies. And look at what became of the software industry.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's
Yeah, piracy didn't exist in the 90s. Do we get the don't copy that floppy [youtube.com] guy back too?
I think my first "copy party experience" was in a church, in 1983ish... Everybody had their box of 100+ floppies and you'd walk around and see if there was anything you wanted, "borrow it" for 5 minutes to make a copy, rinse, lather, and repeat, for hours.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think my first "copy party experience" was in a church, in 1983ish... Everybody had their box of 100+ floppies and you'd walk around and see if there was anything you wanted, "borrow it" for 5 minutes to make a copy, rinse, lather, and repeat, for hours.
For me it was in high school, all the nerds wandered around with boxes of flopppies, some of us custom painted our boxes, or put stickers so everyone knew who was cool...
When the school had all Apple computers we used to trade games and utilities straight across, disk for disk... If you didn't have something someone else was interested in, you didn't get their stuff. But once we all started upgrading to PCs, we were a lot more free about "sure, copy anything you want". I don't know what changed, really, same people, mostly the same physical floppy disks, too...
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So if the content sucks then why pirate it?
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To see if you like it?
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Because you hope you'll get something entertaining? Not to mention that downloading a file doesn't take that much effort (and you can do other things while you wait). Why not?
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Because they paid for people to announce how THIS version does not suck. So you constantly live in the (false) hope that it's true.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> That's why we don't feel compelled to repay the artists behind the content.
Or maybe they *do* want to pay the *artist* but not the media machine, the lawyers, the middlemen etc.
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Copies of music and movies are not scarce resources anymore. We no longer require specialized industrial equipment to make those copies, and it costs almost nothing to make a copy. With an effectively unlimited supply, we should expect copies of music and movies to cost nothing; the industry needs to find some new scare-but-demanded way to enjoy entertainment, or focus more on the ways they have left.
Re:Economics (Score:4, Interesting)
Tragedy of the Commons (Score:4, Insightful)
In our village we have a surviving section of a Roman road, and a small, protected wood of ancient hardwood. They are open to the public all the year round. The preservation committee has enough cash to go to the High Court for an injunction against people who might try to damage them, but almost every year we get some moron trying to destroy the road by ploughing it up with a Range Rover, or trying to vandalise the wood. We are prepared to defend both, but we have to be.
The problem is that a nasty minority spoils things for the majority. Security at the Glastonbury costs a fortune because of the people who try to destroy the security fence - which is needed because those same people used to break in and try to wreck the festival.
This isn't a rant against file sharing. I think the recording industry is its own worst enemy - it is purely entrepreneurial and entrepreneurs should never have special rights over real property. But, at the end of the day, the real answer is drastic: if you don't want performance to be free, do not encode it digitally and accept that restraint.
But perhaps that's what you meant?
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Sort of. My point was more like "if you want people to pay you just for producing something that is essentially free"—ignoring concerts and stuff—"then make them want to donate to you. Nothing else will work. And no, you will not rake in millions of dollars of profit. You only got those dollars because you created artificial scarcity. The consumers who have been giving you that money don't care about the value of the product; they just want side benefits, and so have no incentive not to exploit
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if you don't want performance to be free, do not encode it digitally and accept that restraint.
Sure, except that the bands that do make their songs available online will become more popular and see more revenue from their live shows. The way for musicians to monetize filesharing is to use filesharing as a form of from advertising, and if we stopped spinning our wheels trying to keep copyright alive we could spend our time developing systems that enhance the advertising capability of filesharing. Imagine if when you downloaded a song, you also could receive information on when and where the band t
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It's not like the people who've been pirating for the last ten years are just going to say to themselves "Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's and forget that we've gotten used to not paying for our movies and getting them instantly.
Interestingly, the most popular items are not movies but television shows. But that's neither here nor there -- Even if the MPAA stopped charging for movies and TV shows "pirate" distribution would continue, because the quality is superior. Let's look at the selling points for "pirate" distribution content;
Wrong way around (Score:5, Insightful)
The MPAA currently can only compete on one of these points -- cost.
Actually the MPAA can effectively compete on all the other points EXCEPT cost...they can do everything you list, better than any pirate, except give it away for free. The fact that they are ignoring all the other points and trying to compete on cost is why they are having such a hard time. If they released content commercial free, at the same time as (or even in advance) of broadcast in multiple DRM-free formats for a low cost the chances are that they would attract customers willing to pay for the simple convenience vs. searching dodgy websites for content of unknown quality which is only available after broadcast.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
Era?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more annoyed at the wording - "In the post ____ era, the world will never be the same."
Re:Era?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more annoyed at the wording - "In the post ____ era, the world will never be the same."
Especially in this case, where the "Post MegaUpload Era" isn't even three weeks old.
Re:Era?! (Score:5, Funny)
I'd agree with you, but in the eons that have passed in this, the post-TaoPhoenix's-post era, it's become entirely irrelevant. Just like the first half of my post, in this post-Captain-Spam's-first-half-of-his-post era.
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*blink*
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And how different will my world be post-MegaUpload? I never even heard of MegaUpload until they got busted... Sure rocks my world...
Sneaker Net (Score:5, Funny)
My file sharing will not be stopped
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But is it file "sharing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I never even thought of Megaupload-like sites as "file sharing". If that's file sharing, then every website is sharing with you lots of html, css and image files. I'd rather call that "File publishing". You upload a file to a server which is then published to the world. "File sharing" to me implies some form of P2P technology where users literally share local files and bandwidth with other member of a network.
Re:But is it file "sharing"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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How is this 'insightful'? To me, from what you describe, I see "File sharing" and "File publishing" as entirely synonymous. You certainly aren't sharing your local file unless you are using a multi-seat system (even then temporary copies might be made within the system).
The emperor has no clothes. There IS NO DIFFERENCE. The unproductive elements within our power authority heirarchies want the essence of FTP, and even the cp/copy commands to be under their control. They don't want encrypted smtp email
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I'd rather call that "File publishing". You upload a file to a server which is then published to the world.
In plain English:
Unlicensed, unlimited, wholesale re-distributon for profit ---and for the prime uploader to Mega, a juicy cash bounty.
It looks like piracy to me.
It's now less convenient (Score:3)
Other filesharing sites (filesonic comes to mind, but there are others) have either disabled file sharing, or changed it in such a way as to make it less convenient, never mind efficient.
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Actually, for me, it didn't take long to discover that putlocker was actually a better host for the 'pirated' mythbusters episodes I was watching than megavideo was (on my given hardware/OS/browser-stack platform). The process of working around megavideo's demise also led me back to bugmenot.com which I had forgotten about, to get premium file downloads from videoweed (whose non-registration video player was worse than megavideo's for my setup, but like I said, putlocker is better than both).
tv-links.eu -
People have been pirating stuff (Score:5, Informative)
on computers since there were computers, 1 website is not going to stop them, all websites will not stop them, what will stop them is a change in how things are done.
If people are "too cheap" to buy your product maybe your product is too expensive.
If people are getting pirate copies of your software to avoid the iron fisted DRM bullshit, well maybe get rid of your DRM bullshit.
If people are downloading your movie to watch once then never again maybe you should make it easier for people to watch.
just a thought that no one making this shit wants to hear
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This is a bit of a self-defeating position... because a person who claims that the work is too expensive as an excuse to download an infringing copy of it is still proclaiming that they actually *DO* place a high amount of value on the work - the real problem is, quite simply, not that the work does not have the value being asked for (a view which is contradicted by the fact that some people are willing to actually pay for the
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They won't know if they like it until after they try it.
as an excuse to download an infringing copy of it is still proclaiming that they actually *DO* place a high amount of value on the work
It could be that it doesn't have enough value to them to buy it (seriously, downloading something isn't that difficult, so just downloading it doesn't mean that they place a "high amount of value on the work") or it could be, as you said, that they're just cheap.
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They place just as much value on the work as somebody who was willing to pay for it, because the reason a person is willing to pay for it is because they want to use it, and the reason a person downloads a work is because they want to use it.
The same value, either way. If it wasn't worth the amount of money being asked for, then nobody would be in the former category.
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The same value, either way.
Not really. One places enough value in it to pay for it, and the other doesn't. They probably don't value the work enough (yet, anyway) to justify going out and buying it. Downloading may be much simpler to them.
If it wasn't worth the amount of money being asked for, then nobody would be in the former category.
The value of the work is subjective. As such, different people value the work differently. You seem to be lumping everyone together in a single category and pretending as if the value of the work is objective.
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That's a completely absurd argument. By your argument, the value of a "free, take me" couch covered with bed bugs is equal to the value of a new couch from a furniture store. This is true only if you cannot afford the new couch and absolutely have to have the couch.
In the real world, there are always alternatives, whether it is a low-end version of a program, a similar program at a lower cost, a different movie at a lower cost, watching videos on YouTube, or piracy. The utility of a particular product de
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Re:People have been pirating stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
That's perfectly reasonable, so long as the creators accept that many people outside that demographic—the people who cannot afford it—are going to pirate it because it still has utility, but not enough to justify the cost. This is the way things used to work before the content industry got a huge hair up its ass.
The problem is that the content industry has started making false claims that the lost sales caused by piracy are beyond their control, when in fact, those lost sales are entirely within their control. They are then using that argument to try to stop the piracy so that they can squeeze those same unrealistically high prices not only out of the target demographic—the ones who can afford that price—but also out of the folks who are not in its target demographic and can't afford it.
In short, the content industry is forgetting the first law of commerce—high margins or high volume: choose one. It is within their right to choose high margins; however, that is their choice, and they must live with the consequences. High rates of piracy are a direct consequence of pricing a product outside the range of the average consumer.
Want to stop piracy? Sell first-run movies at the same $5 price point as ten-year-old movies. Piracy will drop like a rock, just as it did with music when folks got the ability to buy single tracks for 99 cents. It's that simple. The fact that they aren't willing to do that is their problem, not the government's problem, and it isn't the government's responsibility to prop them up because they failed first-semester business 101.
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That's like suggesting that cable companies should just accept that people outside of the demographic that cable TV is marketed to are going to, if you'll forgive the expression, "steal" cable simply because they want to have it.
Give me one good reason to expect that anyone should ever have some sort inalienable right to have absolutely eve
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Stealing cable is more like stealing a DVD because you are directly utilizing a physical product that the cable company provides without their consent. Piracy is actually more like asking your neighbor (who has cable) to record a show for you and bring you the tape.
Also, if 70% of a cable company's under-30 customers admit to stealing cable at some point in your lives, that is a pretty clear indication that cable prices are way, way too high, or that there is inadequate competition. As long as we're talki
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> the real problem is, quite simply, not that the work does not have the value being asked for (a view which is contradicted by the fact that some people are
> willing to actually pay for the work), but that the person expressing that sentiment is just being cheap - whether that is because they genuinely cannot
> afford the work or not.
Well value is relative, not absolute. Some people will pay market value for a house in a neighbourhood with a homeowners association. To me, that drops the value to a
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What does the copyright holder lose when piracy happens? Exclusivity. Copyright is supposed to be be an exclusive right to decide who may copy a work. When somebody else does that without permission, they directly impact
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Specifically:
I have no problem buying a product if it is worth it (there is opinion here, my value assignment may be higher/lower then yours)
I do not buy DRM stuff for my PCs. I only allow iTunes and similar stuff on one PC in the house (as a pragmatic issue), not on any others.
I would watch downloaded movies from the studios if they made them available, I'd even deal with an embedded ad or two and one trailer (more than that and I'll start looking for something stripped of that).
Look to Netflix as a viabl
color me surprised (Score:2)
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Exactly.
File sharing is here, its not going away. Any attempt to make it go away is just stupid when set against the backdrop of the internet and technology. Their BEST HOPE is to keep delaying things long enough to update their business model... which doesn't seem to be what they are trying too hard to do.
We are only going to get more bandwidth, more connected, and more able to share, and more secure in that ability, I expect this to be about as effective as sueing the clouds for bad weather. Or attempting
Sorry, what? (Score:2)
Archaic models of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't fight it, put ads on it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking back at the stuff I "pirate" it's really kinda funny. It's mostly TV shows that are no longer on the air. Shit I would watch on Hulu if they had it. It baffles me that the TV networks are so bad at this concept. Put a show that's been off the air for 5, 10, 20, 50 years or more and slap some modern advertisements on it and you can do what you've ALWAYS done and make money off of advertising. Off shows that you've already paid the production price... it's practically free for fuck sake.
You get targeted ads, a clear picture of what people are interested in watching, and you're continuing to make money off of your legacy. But no they only want to put the last 3 to 5 episodes off the current season. So stupid. I pirate less because of sites like Hulu. Their business model, making money off adds, doesn't even have to change. How can they fucking not see it? So. god. damned. stupid.
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Their goal is not to try and serve their customers better, but how to squeeze more money out of them.
But Amazon does NOT offer reasonable prices (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not willing to pay $3 to watch a 27 year old movie [amazon.com]. I'm ESPECIALLY not going to do so on top of an $80/year subscription to have the 'privilege' of paying those kinds of ridiculous fees.
Nope, Netflix [roku.com] at $8 or $9 a month is about right for just about everything I want to watch. When I can't find what I want to watch there, Hulu Plus [roku.com] for another $8 a month fills in the holes. (Although I'm finding that my faimly just doesn't care as much about Hulu Plus as I thought they might be.)
Then there's all the free or cheap movie resources [roku.com] of all kinds to fill up your evenings, specialty channels [roku.com], streaming music [roku.com], news [roku.com], private channels created by the community [roku.com], and more galore!
Forget using your MythTV box for anything other than a basic media center for serving up your ripped DVDs and CDs. Drop your cable TV subscription and get yourself a Roku instead. :-)
There is no stopping it (Score:2)
What it did do... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The real loss on "piracy" comes from the copies made to CD-R and DVD-R that are regularly sold on the Asian street markets. The loss is multi-million each year and it is a *real* loss as compared to the bogus loss numbers we are subjected to in the media over file sharing.
However no one ever goes after THAT problem. Why? It would take actual diplomatic work.
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After all, people keep telling me on Slashdot that the pirates are not to be counted as lost sales since they would not buy it anyway.
The most I've seen is people saying that someone downloading copyrighted material doesn't necessarily result in a lost sale. Not always.
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