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Web Nuggets: Piracy issues. (Rant warning)

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    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeJan 16th 2012
     (3092.1)
    Problem is, the distributor insists on the piracy protection systems like DRM, and the public blames the developers.
  2.  (3092.2)
    oddbill:

    "It's not the audience putting money up front to get them made. "

    Well, actually... ;)

    But seriously, even with Iron Sky, which is a major success in crowd funding, most of the money came from traditional sources, such as film foundations,regional grants and yes, distributor money. The crowd funding stuff is used mainly for so called gap funding, which is usually handled by bank loans (IIRC).
    • CommentAuthortachyon42
    • CommentTimeJan 18th 2012
     (3092.3)
    I am sure most of you are familiar with the numerous studies done how the most proliferous pirates are those who spend the most on music and media.

    <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110727/16233815292/another-day-another-study-that-says-pirates-are-best-customers-this-time-hadopi.shtml">

    I can attest to the fact that there are good pirates, and there are bad pirates.

    A notable example is the excellent indie movie Ink. It was one of the top downloaded movies in the world for like 6 months in 2009, yet the indie filmmakers could not land a release deal with a studio, so they had to release it themselves.
    Due to torrents, Ink became somewhat of a quiet cult hit. I found it via torrents, located the site, and bought the bluray. The filmakers actually have a donate button on their site specifically for bit torrent users, any amount, even a buck if they enjoyed the movie.
    The movie reached millions of viewers(I would estimate) due to bit torrent.

    Personally, my music collection is way too huge for me to afford. I try and buy and support artists that I like, but there is no way I could support all of them on a student budget. Its commonly discussed on a music blog I follow how the blog actually costs people more money because they discover and buy more music than they thought they would.

    As everything shifts to digital media, piracy is a reaction to the fact that once you buy a digital item, IT HAS NO VALUE. You can't resell it, you can't lock it up and save it as an investment. Why would I purchase something that has no value? Thats why I try and stay away from music downloads and purchase cds, or if I want to support a movie, I will buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Books? The only thing I will download for my pc/phone is comics, due to their brevity.

    It is late, sorry for the sloppy web link...I don't post often and need to get around to looking over the forum guidelines...


    Oh...and I dislike crowd funding...but then again, I also dislike charities
    •  
      CommentAuthorMorac
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012 edited
     (3092.4)
    @tachyon: Disliking crowd funding and charities seems like an unusual stance. Care to elaborate?

    Also, to fix the link, you need to type something like this: <a href=yourlink.com>the text of the link</a>.
  5.  (3092.5)
    tachyon42:

    How about crowd investing, as we did on Iron Sky. The idea is that anyone can become an investor, with an equity investment of 1000 euros or more. What this means is that when the producers start making money off the film, all the fan investors start making money also. It's been working really well so far.
    • CommentAuthorBankara
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012
     (3092.6)
    I am going to jump in here and I am not sure if someone has already made this point but I want to point to something Frank Zappa proposed in 1983 that if it had been adopted would have killed the record industry dead and rewarded artists for creating good music. This is, of course, precisely what the record companies have been trying to head off for the last two decades. SOPA/PIPA is a last desperate attempt to continue their role of paymaster to the actual talent with their broken ass business model.

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090405/1806484395.shtml

    Worth a read since it basically describes what bittorrent is and could be twenty years before it existed. Tweak the trackers to provide information about download popularity and pay out a portion of the subscriber fees to the artists who top out the charts and you have a version of spotify that works. Copyright doesn't even enter into the equation. people create what they love and are paid according to how people respond to it and everyone has an equal chance. Now that is a model worth fighting for because there isn't a single lawyer in sight.
    • CommentAuthorMrMonk
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012 edited
     (3092.7)
    Megaupload, one of the internet's largest file-sharing sites, has been shut down by officials in the US.

    And so it begins, one day after the blackout.

    I believe that Megauploads was specifically singled out during the Senate debates on SOPA as an exemplary target of that bill. Seizing the site blocks the distribution of both infringing and non-infringing works, and should have been a major free speech issue if it occurred in the U.S. I also note that the U.S. reached out to the New Zealand government to have the founders and employees arrested. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

    This also seems to undermine the Administration's case that it needs bills like SOPA or PIPA, since it apparently can go after bad actors directly.
    •  
      CommentAuthorD.J.
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012
     (3092.8)
    Anonymous is retaliating hard and the internet is freaking out. Everything happening right now is kind of frightening, and things are going to come out the other side looking very different once the dust is settled.

    I wish there was something substantial I could do right now.
    •  
      CommentAuthordorkmuffin
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012
     (3092.9)
    If y'all look, there are definitely petitions to be signed.
  10.  (3092.10)
    Looks like the contact info/address of the MPAA CEO is online now. This is going to be interesting. Let's see if Anonymous can keep up the pressure without getting innocents caught in the crossfire...
    • CommentAuthortachyon42
    • CommentTimeJan 19th 2012
     (3092.11)
    @morac

    Crowd-funding seems to me just a fad. And its model is set up like a charity. Problem is, money is not certain, and you still must rely on dedicated investors or financial backers. But, on the flip-side, crowd-funding IS the only possible way for some film-makers to raise funds. I am familiar with Iron Sky, but follow more closely James Rolfe's(AVGN) new movie venture. Film studios exist to make a profit. This is not inherently a bad motive or purpose in life. Therefore, they choose the movies to invest in which they see generating the largest amount of revenue.



    I don't give to charities because...well, thats a discussion for a thread not on piracy.

    @vornaskotti

    1000 euros or usd is a lot of money if its not your brainchild. I think I would have a better chance making more money as an investment in the stock market. If the majority of mainstream society is not even willing to purchase movies or music anymore in light of streaming services, then how much more willing they be to invest in a film, let alone buy it on its release?


    On another thought on piracy, I have a lot of friends who go to the theaters a lot, but then will simply download the movie when it releases. Paying $10 to see 1 movie is a pretty hefty investment compared the $9 unlimited netflix model.
  12.  (3092.12)
    tachyon42:

    Yet Iron Sky has raised over 600k from crowd financing and crowd funding. The point is, there are a lot of people who are willing to do that.
  13.  (3092.13)
    Got kind of miffed and wrote something inflammatory, yet hopefully informative. News at eleven.

    The Problem With Piracy Is Ignorance – Or Artists: Stop Whining And Tell The People How You Make Money
    • CommentAuthorcosti.ra
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2012
     (3092.14)
    Piracy can't be stopped. Just some people will stop earning money

    I'm just sayn'
    • CommentAuthoricelandbob
    • CommentTimeJan 22nd 2012
     (3092.15)
    Nice piece there Janos, and it also reminded me that i don't read you blog often enough...
  16.  (3092.16)
    icelandbob:

    Cheers, man, appreciate it. As an afterthought I should've let the text rest a bit and then structure it a bit differently, but by the time I realized that, it had already spread here and there so meh. Hopefully it gets something across.
    •  
      CommentAuthorScottBieser
    • CommentTimeJan 27th 2012 edited
     (3092.17)
    The problem with copyright and IP rights are that they did not develop naturally in the common law the same way that our right not to be assaulted or killed or have our physical property stolen from us (except via taxes). It began as a state grant of privilege to publishers (not authors, originally) with the Statute of Anne in 1709.

    And as governments usually oversell their abilities, these grants were only partially enforceable by the King's (and later, the President's or Prime Minister's) men. The physical difficulties of copying works, and the replicative degeneracy effect of imperfect copying, also inhibited unauthorized copying.

    But new technologies have removed the practical roadblocks to copying, and the regime's powers have failed to pick up the slack. Worse still, any effort to curtail copying either by technology or statute seems to only alienate customers while failing to prevent the copying. Not to mention, provide governments with another tool for suppressing dissent. And so we get ACTA and SOPA and PIPA and similar moves which could likely break the Internet, and with it all the myriad benefits we've gained from it.

    Industries and business models which have grown up around copyright (and patent) are in crisis, and either their world is going to change, forever, or else we will lose the promise of the Internet and the explosion of economic and social benefits we get from freely shared information -- a cost I think too great to bear. We may not get 100-million-dollar (or the equivalent) block-buster feature films with amazing special effects anymore, for a while at least. Movie producers will have to think as much in terms of keeping costs low as they do in covering costs as they are now. The relationship between musicians and distributors will become very different. And all creators will have to focus more on connecting with their audience on a personal level than most of them are used to now.

    I was discussing IP with my brother and he pointed out that "our claim to a property right is only as good as our ability to enforce it." The time when copyrights could be effectively enforced by states, without unacceptably draconian measures, has apparently passed. We need to come up with new ways to persuade consumers of our works to compensate us for them, that is satisfactory for everyone (except perhaps the dedicated free-loaders).
  18.  (3092.18)
    By the way, SOPA might be sort of kind of gone, but the travesty that's ACTA is still very much alive and kicking:

    "Kader Arif, the EU "rapporteur" for ACTA (a copyright treaty negotiated in secret, which contains all the worst elements of SOPA, and which is coming to a vote in the EU) has turned in his report and resigned from his job, delivering a scathing rebuke to the EU negotiators and parliamentarians, and the global corporations who are pushing this through:"

    Chief ACTA Eurocrat quits in disgust at lack of democratic fundamentals in global copyright treaty
    •  
      CommentAuthorFinagle
    • CommentTimeJan 28th 2012
     (3092.19)
    I just noticed that the Pirate Bay launched a new category: Physibles - objects designed to be reproduced by a 3D printer. Now you can theoretically not just pirate the design ON an object - mug, t-shirt, automobile - but the entire object itself.

    Would any of you feel any differently about downloading and printing your own patented automobile part to fix your car, versus the theft of a song or illustration?

    Evolution: New category.

    We're always trying to foresee the future a bit here at TPB. One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. And after the internets evolutionized data to go from analog to digital, it's time for the next step.

    Today most data is born digitally. It's not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don't talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we're physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!

    We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

    The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We'll be able to print food for hungry people. We'll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We'll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.

    We believe that the future of sharing is about physible data. We're thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay - but we had no graphical artist around to make a logo. In the future, we'll download one.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFoamhead
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     (3092.20)
    Stumbled on this after following Vornaskotti's post in NEWSTRANGE (“This is Why I Pirate”: How A Groundless Copyright Threat Destroyed A Young Film Student’s Dreams and Career")

    Nothing especially new but rants are usually worth reading, as this thread shows.

    From Forbes.com:

    You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You
    Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.
    It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a “pro-piracy” piece, it is merely attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies refuse to acknowledge.


    As for ACTA, this raised an eyebrow:

    Planned Post-ACTA Repression In European Union: The Documents
    A European Commissioner responsible for the governing of 500 million people who refers to his constituents as “consumers” and describes complying at legal gunpoint as “cooperation” is just a small taste of the newspeak in the documents we find here, documents that are intended for the post-ACTA timeframe. Oh, and he doesn’t rule out shutting down your income streams either. It is not hard to see where this particular mindset comes from – and no, it is certainly not Locke’s ideas of a constitutional government or anything similarly responsible. It’s filled to the brim with terms we would otherwise only see in reports from the copyright industry lobby.

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