SOPA (maybe?) DroppedFollow

Since the bulk of Hollywood is middlemen, start there. How much of the ticket sales, Blu-Ray/DVD sales, and digital downloads are going to the talent and operating expenses vs. how much is going to people who can easily be done away with?

iTunes did a great job at changing the music industry, so it can obviously be done.

From what I understand theaters don't make money of ticket sales, they make money on concessions. So the fat that needs to be trimmed is somewhere else.

But Maybe you would like to propose a way to stop piracy that actually has an impact on piracy, because SOPA and PIPA sure as hell won't. The only people that are going to get hurt there are the average users, not the pirates, just like every other anti-piracy bill that's gone through.

And you do realize SOPA and PIPA will have zero effect on you since the US can only control US based ISPs?

I won't argue that they need to be protected, but that can't be done in a digital environment. So instead of ******** over the legitimate user with something that has zero impact on piracy, you have to remove the incentive to pirate the material in the first place. And the only thing that is going to do that is a change to the business model.

You can increase the penalty on piracy in an attempt to decrease the incentive, but the only thing you're going to get there is the low hanging fruit.

EXACTLY how about pricing content fairly, making it easy for customers to give you their money, and getting rid of stupid streaming restrictions that make pirating more attractive?

a) Pricing content fairly: Hollywood needs to get a grip and realize people simply won't pay 20 bucks for a movie they only want to watch once. Netflix is a perfect example (in my mind) of pricing content fairly - 8 bucks a month for as much as I want to watch? Sweet!

We gave the free trial a shot and my girlfriend resolved immediately to pay the monthly fee. What's stopping studios from putting together similar services or partnering with companies who are already in the business? For example, paramount could have a streaming service like netflix with a monthly fee (maybe 5 bucks a month) which gave access to as many films from their older back catalogue as anyone could want. Then they could charge 2 bucks to "rent" a new release (24 hours access). This is just me having a brain fart, I'm sure someone who gets paid to think about how to make these studios money could figure out something even better. People only have so much time to watch stuff - so if you fill their time with affordable, on-demand content they'll be much less likely to pirate.

b) Making it easy for customers to give them money: Okay... wow, I mean I think every one of us probably has experience with a company that makes it REALLY DIFFICULT for us to give them money. My real life examples are all games - specifically XI (verified by visa was the crapper for me, others have trouble with click and steal etc) and OMFG the playstation network - I mean I don't buy games THAT often (and media go is crap so I never open it except to buy games) so I need to spend an hour downloading updates and reinstalling proprietary (crappy) programs on my machine just so I can give them money (using a prepaid card, which I love - love prepaid cards).

ANYWAY it is a HASSLE and I think to myself - gee no wonder a lot of people would rather deal with the one time hassle of setting up their PSP to play ripped games instead of paying money to waste time and be annoyed. - So yeah - this is basic. BASIC. Don't whine that you're losing money when you make it so damn hard to give you money.

This also includes making people download crappy programs (and keep them on their machine) if they want to give you money. It's a stupid way to make people uninterested in your service.

c) Stupid streaming restrictions: look folks - this is the internet. I don't care how you do it - but work out a way amongst yourselves to split the advertising cash between licensees so I can follow a link my American friend puts in chat when they're talking about a funny scene in Southpark. Don't make me go dig up the clip (which doesn't even exist) on Comedy Central. You make $0 when I swear and give up - whether I pirate the clip after or not. You know where I am looking at the link from, right? How hard is it to give comedy central a cut of the revenue you make from people on the other side of the 49th parallel? Please allow global websites to compete for my interest.

Would these things stop pirating entirely? No, and nothing will (short of shutting down the internet/spying at a level most of us wouldn't tolerate) - but they would help capture a lot of the market that isn't dead set on pirating, just frustrated with media giants that think this is still 1996.



Edited, Jan 20th 2012 11:58am by Olorinus

I have no idea where you arrived at me thinking this was about the "little guy". I don't care if the "guy" is the largest Hollywood studio, the biggest record company conglomerate or some indie guy with a guitar and a cam-phone. The have the right, under the law, to have their work protected. They also have the right to expect the government to uphold and enforce those laws. Perhaps not with a scorched earth approach but with some balanced approach that tries to find a middle ground between restricting the free flow of information and just cutting everyone off.

The "big guy" has just as much right to expect their protections under the government here as anyone else. Copyrights don't stop being enforceable just because some **** decides that he wants to watch The Dark Knight but "Hollywood" has enough money already.


In following various threads around the net I can see I've seen little to no evidence supporting that.


Apparently the emphasis is on "not at any cost" since asking hosts to be pro-active about policing their own property is such a huge burden on them.

I read the full indictment this morning.

MegaUpload didn't just turn a blind eye to copyright infringement, they actively rewarded premium users who supplied high quality rips of DVDs, in the form of cash. One dude got a check for five thousand dollars, according to an email in the indictment.

That's where the "racketeering" part came in. MegaUpload made sure that the pirated movie links never made it onto the "popular downloads" listing. They also never actually deleted infringing content after copyright holders complained, just one of the potentially dozens of unique URLs to it (the one the complaint was about.)

They're calling the entire operation the "Mega Conspiracy."

Golly, no! They were just innocent lambs with NO IDEA that any illegal file sharing might be going on!

In other news, I heard on the radio today that it cost EMI about four million dollars to make Katy Perry's latest album sound halfway decent.

They're not posting on the web forums crying about how much money Hollywood has, now are they? I have no issue with people making intelligent points about it. Temper tantrums about Hollywood and the RIAA ain't it.


There's a hell of a lot more of the former than the latter. Eliminate (or drastically reduce the number of) them and free yourself up to handle the rest. Ultimately, the concern is about your average guy on the street and whether he'll pay for a movie ticket, rent/buy a DVD or grab the movie off the internet. The goal is to take away that last option or make it annoying enough to accomplish that he just heads to the local Redbox. The guys with terrabytes of stuff are the suppliers, the guy on the street is the consumer. Break the link between them and you're accomplishing something.

Aaaaaaaand it's dead in the water.

Victory? Watch this space.

Congratulations on your vindication!

More things like Netflix, Spotify, Pandora, etc. The entertainment media industry has never been big on moving with the times. They made this exact same play when VHS recording was made possible in like '82 or whatever. Said it would cost the industry millions and society would crumble around our ears blah blah.

Essentially these companies demanding things like SOPA/PIPA need to get with the fucking times, man.