By: 007

007 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:05:55 +0000

Excellent points. I only have a few things to say. First, those of us who care about such issues should really see the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” although the film mostly deals with the unopen MPAA rating system that destroys many independent films, by keeping them from being released, it also brings up some points that are relevant to your argument. The threat of pirates, for example, is not really a threat. Pirates are often also big media consumers that buy a lot of media and see a lot of movies. Yes when an average person hears that the industry thinks they’re losing millions of dollars to pirates that seems like a lot of money to us, but remember there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Where are these numbers coming from? One of the big reasons piracy happens is cost. I have a Blueray player in my PS3 now, but I own 1 Blueray movie because Bluerays are abusively priced usually around $30. Again, the industry always makes this mistake when a new format comes out. DVDs used to be obscenely priced too, but people actually do like getting media. It’s simple to use, usually has cool cover art, and the movie itself 99% of the time, is of excellent quality. So if movies were like $10, without DRM that kept you from legally copying content that you own, people wouldn’t want to go through the hassle and since a quick nickel is better than a slow dime the record and motion picture industries would make probably just as much money since they would be selling more legit copies. The advertising idea is good except that greed also gets in the way here and we have already seen huge abuses with this. Movies don’t just always have classy product placement anymore, but after paying $11 to see a movie I am often bombarded with commercials before the movie, and then product placement in the movie. The average commercial break time keeps going up, MTV is usually the most abusive with a commercial time that often exceeds 4 minutes per break meaning that you are watching about 12 minutes of commercials for every 30 minutes of TV that you’re watching. Other channels are only slightly less abusive. The funny thing about cable is that you pay for it already. There should be no commercials on cable since you pay for the service. I think the truth is that the industry is abusive, and greedy period. Your reasonable compromises would work fine if we were dealing with reasonable people, but we’re often dealing with the scum of the earth. I mean really an industry that sues grandmas for using Napster, etc. These guys steal all of the time themselves. Remember the whole Lion King Simba, Kimba fiasco? If you put Mickey Mouse on a cake in your local bakery, even Steamboat Willie, you can end up in jail for 5 years and pay a $150 thousand dollar fine…. You know what, fuck these guys, the next time they complain about piracy let’s put them on a real pirate ship and walk them off the plank. Assholes….

Comments on: Swords to Plowshares in the Multimedia Piracy war.

By: 007