Ignorance = MPAA
p2pnet.net News Feature:- Canada’s The Movie Blog was started in 2003 as, " a place to give thoughts and opinions on movies and movie news".
Naturally, it’s been following events as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) vents its wrath on people who like to share online.
Read On >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even We Made More Profit Than Polar Express
By John – The Movie Blog
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the main lobbying group for Hollywood’s studios has continued it’s effort on publicly displaying it’s stupidity for all the world to see and marvel at. CNN ran a good story on the new efforts by the Band of Morons (MPAA) who recently once again yelled from a podium that they are losing billions of dollars to movie piracy. Yes, a sad tale being told by a guy in a $6000 suit. However, their story just doesn’t jive with reality or common sense.
The MPAA seemed to glean it’s strategy from the Grand Moff Tarkin school of intimidation: "Fear. Fear will keep the local systems (internet users) in line. Fear of this battle station (lawsuits).
"We have taken action against over 100 servers in many countries on four continents," said John Malcolm, the director of worldwide anti-piracy at the MPAA. He said steps were taken this week in the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Finland and the Netherlands.
What a joke. I work in a law firm. I know how much litigation can cost. It is a waste of time and energy, especially when you consider that it has little to no effect. Look at what happened with the music industry’s big crusade to sue little Sally Sweetcakes for having an NSync’ song on her computer in her bed room:
…peer-to-peer traffic dropped after the music industry first launched a series of lawsuits against individuals accused of illegal downloading, but that overall downloading has since rebounded.
But does the MPAA learn anything from this lesson? Apparently not. The only thing that results from these tyrannical lawsuits is individuals getting seriously hurt without any other world wide effect. So what’s the point? And while we’re talking about "The Point", how much REAL money is the industry losing to movie piracy anyway?
The MPAA would have you and I believe that they’re going hungry… but they can afford to spend a record $270 million dollars on making and marketing The Polar Express. They claim it’s financially crippling them… but they can afford to pay Julia Roberts (just as an example) $20 million to appear in one of their films. They claim the industry is being destroyed… all while record box office records are set year after year. They cry poor while year after year making it more expensive for you and me to go to a movie… does anyone out there feel any sympathy at all? Not me. So how much are they really losing?
Keep these common sense thoughts in mind:
1) Each download does not represent lost box office money or DVD sale. The majority of people who download something are usually getting something they didn’t bother seeing when it was in theaters… and they certainly didn’t avoid seeing it in theaters so they could watch a crappy handycam version of it 5 months later. So while they are seeing it for free… the reality is that no industry money was lost.
2) For most people it’s a novelty. A friend of mine recently gave me a handycam copy of The Incredibles. Cool. But it’s crap (like all of them), and I still went to see it in the theaters 2 more times. It’s just novel to have it there, but it certainly didn’t stop me from giving more money to the MPAA.
3) It takes FOREVER to download a movie from the net. Even with High Speed Internet it’s quite a wait… and you’re waiting for a crap copy. This deters most people who otherwise would have downloaded a 4 meg mp3.
4) With DVD burners it’s possible to copy a DVD. Oh wait a minute… we’ve been able to do that easily for the last 20 years… it’s called a VCR! That didn’t seem to slow down the industry.
There are exceptions to all the things listed above, and I’m certainly not trying to claim that the industry is losing zero dollars on movie piracy. However, the problem is not as systemic as they would have us believe.
Here’s my bit of advice to the movie industry. It’s the same advice that I gave the music industry 5 years ago. "Quit stomping your feet and beating your chest you morons! Stop persecuting teenagers with internet connections when that isn’t going to solve your problem at all! YOU CAN NOT FIGHT THIS… SO FIND A WAY TO PROFIT FROM IT INSTEAD!"
Seriously, look at the music industry. They finally clued in that fighting the internet was a losing battle… so they found a way to profit from it instead… and man are services like iTunes making money! The movie industry needs to develop it’s own paradigm and economic model for taking advantage of these trends… but there are waysto be found if they’d stop using up their time, energy and money for hunting down little Billy in his bedroom as he downloads The Girl Nexdoor.
Honestly… how are people who were clearly smart enough to get outrageously rich be so damn stupid at the same time? Is it just me? Am I out to lunch on this? Your thoughts?
**UPDATE**
Richard added this good little paragraph in the comments: There’s no way I would consider that I’ve ever cheated the movie industry out of money, however they’ve more than cheated enough out of me with their false advertising for bad movies, poor quality of the film stock being shown, bad cinema setup causing poor quality, bad food that cost an arm and a leg (and probably is actually an arm or a leg since it’s always hotdogs for me!), creation of regionalised DVD system, etc.
December 16th, 2004 at 9:06 pm
Well can’t blame the MPAA with bad movie food. The food is handled by the movie theaters and constitute their main source of revenue. The bulk of the ticket price goes to the movie industry leaving concessions to the theaters.
December 16th, 2004 at 9:16 pm
That’s really what it comes down to, doesn’t it. If your smart, you make millions. If your dumb, you lose it all. In the end we can only hope they learn from their mistakes, but then again that only lasts so long and then it’s time to repeat history again. The cycle of making stupid mistakes and eventually learning from them, and especially of learning from history, just never ends, does it? But I suppose that is the whole meaning of life in a nut shell right there, isn’t it. Make a choice, bad or good, and learn from the consequences of them, hopefully making yourself a better person in the process. I thoroughly hope they enjoy the major backlash they are surely going to receive from all this. Hopefully they do start losing the large amounts of profits in the future that they claim they do now, and see that it all started the day they followed in the RIAA’s footsteps.
December 16th, 2004 at 9:19 pm
“man are services like iTunes making money!”
You got that wrong, but good piece otherwise
December 16th, 2004 at 11:33 pm
“For most people it’s a novelty. A friend of mine recently gave me a handycam copy of The Incredibles. Cool. But it’s crap (like all of them), and I still went to see it in the theaters 2 more times. It’s just novel to have it there, but it certainly didn’t stop me from giving more money to the MPAA.”
You should have got the DVD-screener rip which has been out for 2 weeks.
The quality is good, but didn’t like the movie, so I wouldn’t have bought it.
December 17th, 2004 at 12:17 am
I’m no fan of the MPAA, but it seems like tirades like this are just an attempt to make us feel OK about stealing movies.
December 17th, 2004 at 12:34 am
“I’m no fan of the MPAA, but it seems like tirades like this are just an attempt to make us feel OK about stealing movies. ”
Allow me to break down the concept of theft to more simplistic terms so you can understand this better.
when you steal something, you remove it from the posession of another person.
Hollywood cannot claim theft of their revenues by downloading because they had not made the revenues yet. It is like home depot claiming that peole who shop at lowes are “stealing” from home depot.
if you think that “potential revenues” should be protected, then i say go to a communist nation where the government has outlawed competition, because when you get right down to it, competition is defined as “theft of potential revenue”
December 17th, 2004 at 1:08 am
No sympathy from me.
December 17th, 2004 at 5:06 am
I love the Home Depot to Lowes analogy =P
December 17th, 2004 at 12:34 pm
In the good old days you could go to the record store and request to listen to a song or album -this sampling allowed you to decide whether to buy or not. Now mostly these shops are gone – at least partly due to the internet (sales).
If the MPAA or RIAA offered better sampling services this would at least remove some of the p2p traffic of copyright materials – and the purchases would then be bought in the knowledge that it was what was wanted. Instead we have to buy on spec – with no opportunity to return the goods as ‘not liked or not as advertised’.
Have you ever been to a film, having seen the trailer and having seen it been dissapointed? next time try asking for your money back….
Having said all that some sales sites like Amazon do offer limited sampling and downloads to entice people to buy.
Most people are unsatisfied with a copied album that they REALLY like – and go and buy it (I feel).
December 18th, 2004 at 2:06 am
We get this shit from the MPAA/RIAA *every single time* there is a major shift in entertainment technology. VHS/Betamax was going to kill the cinema. The casette tape was going to kill the music industry. The CD was going to kill music. DVD was going to kill the cinema.
Each time the RIAA/MPAA has been dragged screaming into the new technology, they’ve made (quite literally) millions of times more money than they have *ever* lost from these new technologies, and their markets have increased into new areas, often giving them extra sales from the same old IP as people replace vinyl with CDs, or VHS tapes with DVDs, etc.
The only way the MPAA/RIAA can fail if they are pigheaded and stupid enough to keep attacking their customers, and refuse to back the new technology. When content producers realise they can sell more copies directly to fans over the internet for less money and make a *lot* more profit than having the music publisher as pointless middleman taking an exhorbitent share of the profits, then it’s game over for the MPAA/RIAA. The MPAA/RIAA arn’t worried about the loss of their IP or money, they are worried about the loss of their position as middlemen creaming off money by screwing the musician, movie maker and customer. The harder they fight, the quicker that day will come.
December 19th, 2004 at 8:02 pm
Such sadness,the mpaa will be turned to dust if they don’t learn to make movies available for download for a good price,look at some porn sites which do this and they make lots of money,join the industry standard,downloading is a must instead of going to the theatre to eat stale food.
December 23rd, 2004 at 10:45 pm
I’ve read the postings available and have concluded that we, ordinary citizens, have always cornered the market on common sense! There’s nothing wrong with money as tool to accomplish things and help people, but it does make the collective mind of organizations and corporations, like the MPAA and the RIAA, juvenile at best. It’s the old “It’s my ball and I don’t want you to play with it” childish ploy being played out in our court system. Meanwhile, us “ordinary”, common sense people, for the most part, sit back and allow these “nuckleheads” to skip along like a child with no cares, to effectively change laws. Speak up, yes, but DO SOMETHING! 321Studios, maker of DVD XCOPY, repeatedly asked us to write our congress concerning this very thing. How many of us actually did? I know I did! I, then, urged anyone who’d listen to the same. Guess what, it’s not too late! Tell the lawmakers how pathetically stupid and childish the MPAA and RIAA are!
Kudos to those who provide avenues for people to vent their frustrations, but don’t stop there.
December 24th, 2004 at 2:37 pm
i totally agree with your statement
December 26th, 2004 at 3:16 am
>It is like home depot claiming that peole who shop at lowes are “stealing” from home depot.
Well, the people who shop at Lowes are ’stealing’ from Home Depot, in a competitive sense. This isn’t the problem of the consumer, however. This is the problem of Home Depot’s management and marketing. If they want better sales and to ’steal’ back from Lowes, then they need to offer better deals to get the consumers into their stores.
This is exactly what the Music and Movie industries should do. Instead of threatening lawsuits, harassing very likely innocent people and generally being the bad guy to their paying customers, they should offer attractive and more inticing deals to counter the P2P networks. If there were commercial places to get the content that are better quality, with better reliability and availability than what P2P offers, I have no doubt the consumer will come. I know that I would. Since there is literally nothing else, P2P reigns.
“Build it and they will come.” –Field of Dreams
December 26th, 2004 at 3:30 am
>they are worried about the loss of their position as middlemen creaming off money by screwing the musician, movie maker and customer.
Yes, you hit the nail square on the head. This is the entire and sole reason the executives are screaming, throwing tantrums and filing lawsuits. They are afraid that their days are numbered. And, in fact, they are. Once the artists realize they can create their content and sell it directly to their fan base without a middleman or any unfair contractual obligations, the middleman will then no longer be necessary.
But, the one thing that will have to change is the Clear Channel conglomerate that owns most radio stations that ‘choose’ the content that will be aired. Until alternative radio (Internet or Satellite not owned by a huge conglomerate) outnumbers ‘over the air content’, ‘pop music’ will be dominated by Clear Channel and the other few people who control the content. This means that artists are still over a barrel to get their material played. In other words, unless they play the middleman/bad contract game, their material will never be heard on the radio no matter how brilliant it is.
January 5th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
Well, actually nobody really believes, that the movie industrie gets poor by p2p networks.
The only thing MPAA achieves is that new techonologies are developed to replace the server based linksites by p2p based link ratings (exeem) and untrackable tunneled web traffic (i2p).
So they achieved nothing for their purpose (to avoid data piracy). Instead they accelarate techonologie-developement wich comes quite handy for real criminals (terrorists, child porn, snuff, etc…)
They should just sit back and think about that, but its already to late.
So they only can lie down in grief, that they lost the battle bevore it started and made the world a safer place for the real scum!