I guess it’s safe to say that you’ve never lived in Quebec.
Anyone advocating world-wide release as a countermeasure to piracy:
What in the bloody blue blazes makes you think you’ve come up with the cure for cancer?
Do you think that you’ve come up with a new idea and if the guys at Warner would just listen to you, you would solve all their problems? While you might see yourself sitting on top of the mountain helping lesser mortals with your wisdom, perhaps you should realize that with the hundreds and thousands of people working in the upper management of the studios, one of them surely has proposed such an easy solution, and for some reason it was not implemented.
And before you start ranting about how stupid all of them are and how they are all protecting their own little fiefdoms, upper corporate management always has an eye on the bottom line. If wiping out piracy were so easy and so cost effective, it would have been done. Period. End of conversation. If these lumbering behemoths smell money, they become nimble gazelles. Don’t fool yourself otherwise.
Full disclosure 1: I do not work for the movie industry, nor do I consult to it.
Full disclosure 2: I often rant about stupid policies and dumb corporate politics; but I’ve also seen how they can move when there’s EPS in the water.
minty, the thief is completely guilty. There is not an iota of doubt in my mind. So are those who purchase the film.
I don’t know how else to say this. There is no level of guilt I am trying to place over this. Guilty is guilty. My point is simply that there are customers willing to pay, but not willing to wait.
This doesn’t make them any better than any other thief, but it clearly is an important thing to note when the business plans to sell their product to these people eventually.
Get off your pulpit. You aren’t a minister of truth either. :rolleyes:
Let’s do some simple fucking math, shall we? If they claim to be losing billions to piracy, and we know it wouldn’t cost billions to translate movies to release them to major markets simultaneously, then obviously something isn’t adding up.
mangetout
Well, I’m glad you aren’t going to make that extension because it’s a pretty silly thing to argue. There is a distinction between knowing that a crime might be happening somewhere if you knew where to look and being the direct witness to a probable crime.
muffin
I see.
Another thing you won’t be doing, apparently, is explaining why you think it is more moral for criminal organizations to profit from a film than for movie studios, distributers, and retail outlets. That must be some kinf of popcorn.
Whatever makes you think that I believe that it is more moral for criminal organizations to profit from a film than the studios, distributors and retail outlets? That’s utterly absurd.
What I have put forth is that if practical considerations are to be ignored, and only moral considerations are to be considered, then it is not appropriate to support the pirates, but at the same time it is not appropriate to support cultural assimilation. There are more moral positions in a dispute than to support one side or the other. In this case, my moral position is to not support either. Plain and simple neutrality.
Getting back to practical considerations as opposed to strictly moral considerations, I have stated a couple of times that if I thought the videographer was pirating for mass distribution, rather than for personal use, then I would report. If you are concerned that I am doing it for NIMBY self interest rather than out of a greater moral purpose in defence of Hollywood, then go ahead and refute my position, but try not to misconstrue it.
And as I have set out previously, I am far from convinced that a person pirating in a cinema is probably pirating for mass distribution, but rather, I expect is pirating for personal use. As such, I’m not about to bother to report, and instead will leave the industry to deal with its own contract enforcement. If you believe that a personal use pirate should be reported, go ahead and report. I have no problem with you doing so, although I my choice would be to watch the movie I had paid for. Just remember (and this is a very important point), if you are going to get up in the middle of a show to report a personal use pirate, don’t forget to pick up some hot popcorn for me on your way back in
That is the immediate consequence of the moral stance you are taking. I agree that it is absurd.
Yet, as I have already explained, by doing nothing you suport both, not neither. You support the pirates by reducing their risk of detection. You support cultural assimilation by making it easier for the pirates to supply Hollywood films to foreign markets.
You are “neutral” on nothing. You make a choice which benefits criminal organizations at the expense of film producers, distributers, et. al. while simultaneously granting your tacit approval for both intellectual piracy and cultural assimilation. Apparently, it only offends your morals when western ideas are propogated through legal channels. Black market cultural assimilation flies below your moral radar.
Yes, and I expect that your probability analysis is informed more by innate idealism than by either direct or anecdotal information. We know that a large and profitable black market for pirated films exists. I have seen no similar information for the plethora of moviegoers who videotape films for their own personal collections.
This is circular. The only thing that classifies them as “criminal organizations” is the fact that they profit. Anyway, for many of us, the issue is not whether unauthorized taping of films iraises legal issues, but whether it raises moral issues. It is morally correct to violate stupid and unjust laws.
And exactly how are intellectual property laws stupid or unjust?
I’m gonna have to go with “Who cares?” on this one. The whole issue of “when good people do nothing” applies to genocide and rape. I don’t think it applies to a major corporation being bilked out of a few pennies on the dollar. To tell you the truth, I don’t give a flying f*** about that corporation. I don’t feel any sympathy for them, they are not even a person. They provide a service that I like, and should that service ever be jeopardized, then I might speak up and say something so that I can continue to recieve my service. However I’m not going to report something that minor and trivial. This is just an offshoot of the whole “Capitalism is holy, we must do our best to protect it school”, well you know f*** capitalism, in a free market the strong markets will survive, if the movie studios (giant entities with amazing clout) ever suddenly up and disappear, then we’re without movies for a little while, and every person who ever copied a tape or bought a bootleg might have to rethink their strategy. However this isn’t going to happen. Businesses have ways to compensate for loss and people have been camcording movies for almost 20 years now, despite all this movies are making more money than ever. When you see a young girl get raped, worry about it. When you see someone get beat up for being a “nigger” worry about it. When you see someone violating someone’s copyright, forget that you even thought about it.
Copyright’s in America are so out of hand that it’s hard to care about them anymore. The idea that JRR Tolkiens family still holds a copyright on The Lord of the Rings is absolutely ridiculous in my mind. I don’t know when the concept that a good idea should be a meal ticket for you and your family for eternity came about, but I can’t wait til it disappears. I don’t care if it’s suddenly legal to print Mickey Mouse on a shirt without paying royalties to Disney. I don’t care if Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings make 2 million dollars less on video sales they are both pushing a billion in the Worldwide Box Office anyway. Not to mention most people will buy the VHS and especially the DVD rather than watch the bootleg. Most people htat buy bootlegs do it just so they can have it while waiting for the movie to come out on a superior format when they will buy it anyway.
Not to mention, in NY tickets for movies are 10 bucks a ticket, and in my mind $ 10 gives you fair use rights. If you can prove that the guy is running a bootlegging operation, then say something. If you can’t, then take another bite of popcorn and finish your movie. No one is out of a job because that guy taped the Royal Tennenbaums.
Erek
Oh holy capitalism forgive me for I have failed you.
As a programmer, everything I do at work is protected by intellectual property laws. And yet I’d say the intellectual property (specifically copyright) laws we have today are stupid and unjust.
At least patents are intellectual property done right. If I patent a drug that cures cancer, I can reap the profits for a couple decades. Then it reverts to the public domain, and society as a whole benefits because anyone can manufacture the drug.
On the other hand, if I write a short story or draw a picture of a mouse, it won’t go into the public domain until I am long since dead.
No other profession is like that. Carpenters don’t get to charge royalties every time you walk on the deck they built for you. Plumbers don’t get to explicitly approve or disapprove each time you flush the toilet. If you want to keep making money as a plumber, you have to keep plumbing - you can’t just do it once and then sit back in your Lazy-Boy waiting for the checks to come in.
Thank you mswas. I suppose there is no way to convert those who worship the “free market” capitalist god.
Mr2001, you underestimate how crappy the patent system is. On my own, I searched the US Patent Office website for examples of ridiculous patents. I came up with Breast-Enhancing, Herbal Compositions. There’s also the patent of carrots. Somewhere a guy has patented diets containing basically any food, but I can’t find it at the moment. These are inventions that must be protected by law!
I agree, the patent office needs to review applications better before rubber-stamping them… preferably, a patent relating to computers would be reviewed by several experienced members of the computer field before it’s approved. I don’t know how they do it now, but nobody with half a clue would have approved a patent on hyperlinks or one-click shopping.
However, the concepts behind patents are more sensible than copyright: 1) you have to explicitly register for patent protection; 2) you have the patent for a short, fixed period of time, you can renew it for another short period of time, and then it’s gone; 3) the patent office keeps accessible copies of every patent.
Contrast #3 to copyrights - breaking the encryption on a DVD is illegal under the DMCA, so what happens when it goes into the public domain? You still have to have a licensed DVD player to watch the movie, which means you still have to pay to use it. If the copyright office archived protected works in unencrypted forms, that wouldn’t happen.