03-16-2002, 08:01 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Battle Intensifies Over Right to Copy
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,89164,tk,dn031402X,00.asp
There are some nasty copyright battles brewing down in the US, and it's important for all of us to pay attention. Where the US goes legally, many other countries follow (especially Canada) so I can only imagine how bad things will become if these new laws pass. MP3 will effectively be outlawed because there's no built-in DRM security. It's almost unbelievable how far-reaching the repercussions of this would be: taping TV shows would become illegal. I'm absolutely infuriated at the powers that be in the entertainment industry for trying to push this asinine law into being. Mark my words, DRM will be a sore point between consumers and the entertainment industry for at least another decade before a real solution is arrived at.
"Could making an MP3 mix of your favorite songs and recording Sex in the City on your PC or VCR turn you into a criminal? That's exactly what consumer advocates are warning, as Washington and Hollywood gang up on the issue of digital copyright and piracy....
...Adding some urgency to the debate is a bill authored by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Commerce Committee, that would make illegal the creation, selling, or distribution of "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies." The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) orders that copy protection be built into everything from your PC and handheld to your TiVo recorder and TV set-top box."
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03-17-2002, 12:13 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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What Did You Expect?
Jason, the minute forty percent of the US record-buying population started "trading" music instead of buying it, the handwriting was on the wall. Look at it this way, it costs more to produce a Hollywood Blockbuster than it costs to build a local shopping mall. No one would even think about walking through a mall robbing it store by store, yet few people with a fast connection think twice about "trading" music or movies. As we speak copies of "Lord Of The Rings" are available right now p2p as two 300MB DivX files.
Now which cost more money to build, your local shopping mall or Lord Of The Rings? And if you were that film's producer, how would you feel standing by and helplessly watching your film being "traded" to death? FYI a producer can't do a thing in the US except go to the courts and/or have expensive lawyers send out cease and desist orders to ISPs. In the meantime, the producer is being robbed blind. This is exactly what happened at movie88.com last month. The guy had every major film of the past five years online for $1 each for almost two months before Hollywood got him shut down. How many hundreds of thousands of films did he distribute before he was shut down? The supreme irony is that in the end, he was complaining because people were stealing HIS stolen movies by trading passwords on the Internet. Ya gotta love it!
So I repeat - what did you expect? It is kind of sad when you think of it. We may actually need these laws to protect us from ourselves because we don't have the self-control to "just say no" to material we have no rights to. Of course the saddest thing is that the 40% with little self-control or moral code are now ruining it for the 60% who have always played by the book...
Tom
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03-17-2002, 12:33 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 16
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There is always the opposing pt of view: there is so much trading because consumers feel ripped off. DVDs are a bit expensive, same with CDs (whose prices seem to have gone up even). DVD is obviously much better than those highly compressed divx files, just as CD is better than 128kbps mp3. However, most music and movies that these producers make is trash. I would spend the $$$ for DVDs and CDs only for stuff that is quality. Why buy a CD with only one good song on it and 10 trash? Or a movie whose artisitic value approaches the nutritive qualities of popcorn? The entertainment industry needs a new distribution and pricing model. However, for the time being it is easier (and obviously cheaper) to go around suing everybody and closing sites and networks.
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03-17-2002, 04:54 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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James - I agree about quality, but poor quality is no excuse for theft. If you think that makes sense, try breaking into Macy's tonight and walking out with a couple of thousand dollars worth of costume jewelry. The answer is - don't buy the material and don't "trade" it on-line. The minute Hollywood and musicians can't earn a living because of POOR QUALITY and not THEFT OF PRODUCT, is the day we all start to see and hear better entertainment.
BTW - the best way to look at this is putting yourself in an artist's or producer's shoes. "Umm, sorry James, we can't pay you this week, all of your work was stolen so we have no money to pay you. We think you're great though so try again next week!" Or here is another one I've seen on forums "Jeez James, we'd love to pay you but all our customers claim that 'art should be free'!"
As far as the cost of entertainment - how old are you James? When prerecorded video tapes first became popular 20 years ago they cost anywhere from $70 to $100! Current DVDs are twice the quality and only 20% of what tapes USED to cost. Many $100 million dollar films on DVD now cost less than a music CD that cost .1% of that to produce!
As far as music, hits are hits because you have gotten used to hearing them through repetition. If you like a particular artist who takes pride in his/her work, the chances are very good that after listening to the entire CD you will like it just as much as the "hit." If you are talking about buying "one hit wonders" then the simple solution is don't buy the CD until you sample it at places like Amazon. Whatever you do - don't "trade" anything - that is what has gotten us to the point we are today. Hollywood is trying to protect property that is being ripped off right in front of their eyes.
Now here is a very unique challenge to all the folks here who have any doubts that "trading" isn't theft. Let's get 100 of you to throw $1,000 each into a production fund for an ultra low-budget 35mm theatrical film. You guys will have script and casting approval through majority rule and a sign-off on the release print. If it succeeds and we can keep it from "traders" each of you make a profit. If it succeeds and winds up on the Internet we lose our shirts. Any takers?
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03-17-2002, 05:00 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 4
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TomB-
There are so many falacies in your argument, and I don't think they even address the real issue. First of all, your analogy of walking through a mall "robbing it store by store" doesn't work - If someone walks into sears and walks out with a lawnmower, that lawnmower is GONE. Not only can the store not sell it, but the money they used to buy it with is gone as well. Digital information is the only thing that can be duplicated like this - the lawnmower is still sitting in sears, but somebody is using a duplicate at the same time.
And when you talk about Lord of the Rings being availiable on P2P - I don't know about you, but I would WAY rather pay 12 bucks to go see a large crisp version in a theater than try to find a bootleg copy and watch it grainy on my PC monitor. Same with music, I want the liner notes and printed case - I don't see it being serious competition. Whats happening to the entertainment industry is the same thing that happened to horse couriers with the introduction of the train, automobile and airplane. Its not music and movie production that is being threatened here, its the industries death-grip on the distribution system.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that you should go and download music and movies, I'm saying that we allready HAVE laws against that, we don't need to go further to protect the industries profits and take more and more away from the consumer. Why shouldn't I be able to make a backup copy of my CD's for car or office? Why shouldn't I be able to build my own PC's without DRM hardware just because the entertainment industry percieves it as a threat to their income model? Maybe its time for them to adapt to reality instead of constantly trying to layer law upon law until we can't watch TV without permission from Sony and a barcode on our foreheads.
-Blah
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03-17-2002, 05:56 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 1
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Its amazing how much I hear about damages from P2P from the entertainment industry. If they really wanted to make a dent in piracy they would shut down the distributors who of bootlegged music on New York City streets. You can walk on any block in lower Manhattan and buy music cd's for $5 and now DVD's for $10. I don't know about some of the people here but I am not going to buy another 1000 albums with a digital rights system that tells me please insert $1.00 for the next five minutes.
I heard this anaolgy before and I am repeating it. If someone sells water in a desert where it has never rained before and a huge fortune and then one one day it begins to rain. What does the water merchant do? Does he legislate to make freely collecting rainwater illegal? Or does he adapt?
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03-17-2002, 06:16 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 667
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This isn't at all about whether it's right for people to trade things they haven't purchased legally; it isn't. It's about whether it's right to take away our ability to use what we HAVE purchased legally. Currently, we have certain rights under copyright law, including the right to make copies for personal use or study, to make back up copies, etc. The copyright holder doesn't have to assist us in exercising those rights (e.g. they can protect their media), but neither can they actively infringe on them (e.g. they can't add code that deletes your hard drive if you copy a program).
If they had their way, the big media producers would have you pay every time you watched a movie, listened to a song or read a book, and this fight is about that.
TomB is suggesting that this is about theft of intellectualy property, painting a picture of the big producers going out of business from Napster-like products. Nonsense. The Lord of the Rings has already covered the cost of ALL THREE movies from the theatre receipts of the first movie alone. TomB's issue isn't about them going broke or not, it's about whether they earn $1.2 billion in profits for a given year or $1.4 billion.
I'm not arguing that they're not losing money or that they don't have a right to be upset about it, but this fight is about whether legitimate consumers pay for the big media producers to make their extra profits. If this particular bill passes, it would mean society stripping away virtually all of our consumer rights, costing us collectively billions more than we're currently paying, just to raise the producers' profits by an extra 10-20% or so.
Piracy is not something to be supported, but having honest people getting screwed by the big media companies is NOT an acceptable alternative. :evil:
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03-17-2002, 08:19 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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Hey guys, this was a wake-up call about why the copyright crush is happening - not a defense or personal attack! In fact I clearly stated that the few are ruining it for the many. All it takes is ONE guy compressing and posting a copy of The Matrix on line and through nuclear shares ONE guy has done more damage in one day, than 1,000 street corner hacks working New York City for a year. As far as a producer's right to make money - what are you saying - it's OK to steal from a rich guy? Well the sad truth is that less than 1% of the theatrical films that are released each year make anything close to Lord of The Rings and less than 20% make money. If that shocks you, look at the cost of filmmaking, the number of films done each year and the amazing level of "trading."
As far as the lawn-mowers and DVDs - bad example. Sure the actual duplication of the DVD cost a buck but it cost MILLIONS for even what is called a low-budget film to get to the one buck DVD stage. And for every sale that is lost through a "share" the producer lost from a $2 to $8 profit on a legitimate sale (producer's cut). What completely blows me away is that most people don't understand that copying and "sharing" a file - even for one friend is not only breaking the law, it is plain wrong. The only thing I can come up with is that the folks posting here are either very young or have never lost sleep over an income that isn't happening because a "successful" piece of work is being "shared" and not "paid for." 
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03-17-2002, 08:58 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 16
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It's funny that the recording industry did themselves in. Why did they have to adopt digital media like CDs and DVDs? Digital is easy to copy with computers. In fact, pirated video CDs were popular in China long before Napster. It is only when network bandwidth caught up with the size of these files that the recording industry started screaming. Should have thought about it earlier. It will be really scary if a couple of companies unrelated to the IT industry start to dictate what type of components go into a PC and its OS, all through legislation. Big Brother?
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03-17-2002, 10:45 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 55
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DRM issues
For articles on this issue see Jeff Kirvin's www.writingonyourpalm.net.
The problem with DRM is the hassle it poses to law abiding users. It took Audible.com over a month to sort me out when I changed my Jornada and couldn't access previous downloads.
A major advantage of "digital piracy" is car theft - here in the UK you can usually claim a maximum of 100 ukp ($140 US?) of "personal goods" on your car insurance - that is less than 10 CDs, let alone any other items. So I copy my legally bought CDs on my CD-RW and use those copies in my car. Will DRM stop me from doing this?
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Linear Mode
