BillyBoy wrote: What we are really talking about is GREED.

Why is it so wrong for a company to want to make money? Who here on this list doesn't want to make more money? I've never found *anyone* who has said, "I make exactly enough money, and I have no desire to make more." These companies want to make money because they have stockholders who bought stock to *make money*. It's amazing how many people I know who, on the one hand, delve in the stock market, yet on the other hand complain about "corporate greed." I'm sure we all know at least one person who has stock in Exxon or Shell (etc.) but also complain about gas prices. :-)

Two other general comments:
1) I find it funny how many people say pirating is wrong, but then go on to say that in this or that case it's OK.

2) The common thing I hear when pirates rationalize is that "these big greedy companies have enough money, so screw them!" Well, unfortunately the DO have a lot of money, but *they're* not the ones you're hurting. It's everyone *else* that gets hurt.

Here's an example: My movie (Sasquatch Hunters) was released on DVD by Sony last month and I found it online TWO DAYS before the release! Now, is Sony going to hurt because a bunch of people download my little low budget movie? Is Sony even going to really notice it financially? No, not at all. But it directly affects me-- a guy who put his own money into a film (a few hundred thousand dollars) and is a LONNNNGGGG way away from breaking even. Not only does it hurt me financially in the short term, it hurts in the long term: if my movie does very well, it helps me get that next job, hopefully one that I don't have to pay for myself. If it does poorly, then not only do I not make my money back, but it's unlikely that Sony or any other company will say, "hey, Fred's film did great for us, let's have him do another one." They might not be interested even if I *did* finance the next one myself.

And obviously it's worse in the music industry, because it's so much easier to download music than movies. How many great new bands are coming out nowadays compared to 10 or more years ago? It's getting too hard for new acts to make money. The record labels still make a lot, but the pirating is severely hurting the trickle down to the people who need it most.

Fred

One last thing about the "greed excuse": How would you like it if someone came into where you worked and stole something, then said you make enough money already? I'm sure you'd say the same thing I would: "How the F___ do you know how much money I make and what my expenses are??? You have NO CLUE whether I make too much-- if there even is such a thing.

To a 16 year old kid (living at home on his parents' dime of course), $500 per week is fabulously wealthy. Who here on this list thinks that if you're making $500 per week you're making too much? So who has the right to say when someone else is making too much and is being greedy? (OK, I think even Bill Gates would agree that he has plenty of money, but besides him and perhaps the other multi-billionaires...)

Fred

Fred, I’m sorry you are losing lots of money on Sasquatch Hunters because it was leaked on the Internet before the big DVD release, but some would argue that file sharing and the Internet are great marking tools to get people’s eyes to see stuff they would normally never see. At least people are seeing your work. Maybe these bootleg copies of Sasquatch Hunters will get your name in front of more people, and perhaps those people will purchase tickets or DVDs of your next feature.

I wish I had a movie that got leaked. Some of us should be so lucky.

“How many great new bands are coming out nowadays compared to 10 or more years ago? It's getting too hard for new acts to make money.”

I think that is pushing it pretty far. First off, how many great bands really came out tens years ago vs. today? 1995 wasn’t the year Led Zeppelin, The Doors, or The Beatles came out with albums. Second, stuff like Sound forge, CD-burners, and MP3’s allow artist to make music on their own terms and become their own record label. I’m not in the music “know” like some people, but I’m pretty sure the lack of good commercial artists has more to do with bad performers, stupid labels pandering to suburban American teens, the state of pop music in general, and our ears getting older. In ten years, kids will be talking about how new bands like Linken Park just don’t a chance because they can’t make money.

jkrepner wrote: but some would argue that file sharing and the Internet are great marking tools to get people’s eyes to see stuff they would normally never see. At least people are seeing your work. Maybe these bootleg copies of Sasquatch Hunters will get your name in front of more people, and perhaps those people will purchase tickets or DVDs of your next feature.

Why would they purchase my next film if they can get that for free too? Also, pointing out that your film was very popular amongst pirates is not really a good way to get another film going. :-) And lastly, what if I don't want to make another film? It's not fair for piracy to force me to make another film just to recoup the money from this one. Also, unless the figures for pirated downloads are made public (and are accurate), how would a studio know that I'm popular enough to hire?

By the way, one other byproduct of movie piracy is that films will start getting worse. No one wants to take a chance with a small intriguing film any more because there's too much money at stake. The "safe" films are big flashy effects-filled films, because at least most people will want to see them on a big screen.

Fred

PS: The other piracy rationalization I'm tired of hearing is "it's too late now, the geni's out of of the bottle." Who cares? It's up to you the individual not to steal. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to download it. (By the way, I mean "you" generally, as "the people", not you specifically, jkrepner.)

boomhower: I would venture to say we don't hear about the mom and pop folks getting ripped off because they are generally not putting out high profile works so they are much less likely to be targeted than Lucas is.

Sorry boomhower, but that isn't how it works. The FBI doesn't do squat to help small businesses because their cases don't usually meet the monetary threshold to qualify for their help. If an e-retailer get's ripped off by someone outside the country there is very little they can do on their own to track him down. The credit card companies don't lose a dime so they don't care. The burden is on the (tax paying) small business owner. But when they ask the FBI for help they don't get it because the FBI have bigger fish to fry.

So you are wrong to say that Lucas is entitled to the same protection as the rest of us. As a matter of policy, the rest of us are entitled to far less protection.

What's so damn funny is right now bet the farm all kinds of illegal DVD copies of high quality are being made in China and since Bush needs China to keep North Korea in check, he don't dare even suggest they do something serious about it or anything else they put on the black and gray markets which is HUGE. Its doesn't matter, DVD's, electronics, clothing, you name it, somebody in China is making illegal copies and dumping it all over the world.

Again the issue isn't if its legal or not, the real issue is how come such things get priority in the Bush administration? If little Geogie or his "Justice" Department were really so worried about pirated copies of movies then they would do something to prevent millions of copies being made illegally in China, not only of Star Wars but nearly every other movie with any value at all.

I don't object to Fox going after the pirates, they have deep enough pockets to do so legally, but screaming bloody murder and because of big time contributions from the entertainment industry to grease the skids in Washington to effect laws, the politicans bow to their masters.

Big business makes big time political contributions because they expect something in return and this is one example of them getting what they're paying for.

a lot of films (and tv) got worse way before you could download them on the internet .

: )

it is all public record -- nothing new on that score or even a denial ..

brief recap http://www.hierarchypedia.com/wiki/index.php/Arbusto_Energy

Slight OT, but I recently found this website that has a lot of information on copyrights that may be of value to videographers and editors:

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/index.html

BillyBoy wrote "Big business makes big time political contributions because they expect something in return and this is one example of them getting what they're paying for. "

Yeah like all the illegal campaign contributions the Chinese made to the Clinton adminstration for their nuclear secrets !!!!!

(I am learning BillyBoy makes good points :) )

It goes on beyond that really - first in Manhattan they went after street vendors and som stores who were selling DVD's of the new film the day it opened. Same hting went on out in LA from what I hear. The DVD's were made from work prints someone at a post houe had - they were anamophic transfers and had TC windows on them - in other words this was somewhat of a pro job.

Than the DVD found its way onto the net - like no one really saw that coming. A few days ago people who downloaded it from P2P places got emails form the FBI saying something like "You recently downloaded a copyrighted film blah blah blah..." I agree with BJ-M - the issue is to track down who ever leaked out the telecine video of the film. yes it is wrong but this is sort of like the age old question "if you were walking down the street and found a wallet/bag/box with $1,000 in it what would you do?"

I'd make sure to return the wallet AND the $900.
I have a conscience you know!

Mario

>>> I'd make sure to return the wallet AND the $900.
I have a conscience you know!<<<

And the 100 is your reward....I see. ;)

Sort of a PS - Within 30 seconds after I posted I was able to find, and yes Download (well not in 30 seconds), the new Star Wars, via a simple search term - "episode 3". But hey - guess what? This is not the studio version I was talking about above - this is a German version. Clean telecine of the film, no window burns and dubbed in German. I don't speak German so overall this is pretty useless to me and I posted here only because of the fact I did not use bitorrent and used a simple, basic, search term and there it was.

filmy wrote: yes it is wrong but this is sort of like the age old question "if you were walking down the street and found a wallet/bag/box with $1,000 in it what would you do?"
-----

What if you were walking down the street at night and you noticed that a bank's front door was open and the safe was open too? Would you go in and help yourself to some cash, figuring, "well it's their own fault for leaving the door and safe open"? Or would you know that it's wrong and that you'd get into trouble?

If you were in the mood to kill someone and a kid happened to walk down the alley you were in, would you kill him? Hey, the kid's stupid enough to be on his own...

Just because the industry does something stupid (let a copy of the film get out) doesn't miraculously absolve all subsequent thieves of guilt. Or to put it another way, just because someone makes the crime easy doesn't mean it's not still a crime.

I think that what the FBI and movie studios and record companies are doing is making sure that everyone knows that downloading free movies and music that's copyrighted is illegal. The publicity helps get the word out. Hopefully parents will also do their part by including illegal downloading as another thing they teach their kids not to do. Not that kids always listen to their parents, but at least they'll know it's wrong, then it's up to them to do the right thing.

There's no way to stop piracy completely, but that doesn't mean we should give up.

Fred

fwtep:

based on what I said, which is a fairly common question you get asked on school and in things like boy scouts and so on, the "correct" answer is to go to the police with the money. The reality becomes a bit more clear if you ask this - "You find a penny on the street, what do you do?" Most of us pick it up. We don't ask if someone lost it, we don't take it to the police. Most of us even say "Found a penny, that's good luck." So now it becomes more of an issue of honesty and what it is that you find. Still the "correct" answer is to report it. I just posted that I was able to find and download the new Star Wars film - and it was to prove that you don't need to be some hacker kiddie or be using a P2P network to do it. it was just my point to agree with the fact that it is out there - and this is a huge film that is *really* out there. (and yes I reported the site in question to the MPAA and got rid of the film - and now I know many will jump on me for that wih many thoughts about murder and such)

Fred.... there are crimes and then there are real crimes. I can think of all kinds of nuisance "crimes" which are more the result of bad law. Copyright violations frequently fall into that category. For an example, technically its a "crime" to make a photocopy of pages of a book, yet every public library I have even visited have photocopy machines and you see people copying pages from books. Should the FBI post agents in every public library or maybe use local police officers to stake out public libraries and make it a priority to arrest these people?

How about people that jaywalk or walk across the street on a red light. Again in many communities those things are breaking the law too.

Because it was a nice day I went for a longish bike ride and made mental note of all the law breaking I saw. Myself, I ran many stop signs. Technically that's breaking the law, but bicyclists do it constantly and I have yet to see anyone arrested or ticked it for it.

I saw people driving through intersections when the light was yellow. Again according to the law they should have stopped, they had plenty of time to do so safely, but none did. I saw cars making left turns into four lane streets and again technically they should have turned into the left most lane but many made a wide turn and went to and stayed in the right lane. Darn if they all didn't get away with it. I didn't even mention those that didn't put their turn signals on before turning or those that obvious were going over the speed limit and those that didn't bother to put on their seat belts.

My point is simple. If you add up all the "law breaking" by average citizens in a typical day and if we had enough police to strickly enforced all the laws on the books I bet half, maybe more of the people would be fined or arrested nearly everytime they stepped outside.

Yes, making or downloading a pirated copy of some movie is against the law. Nobody in this forum suggested otherwise. However in the grand scheme things it doesn't and shouldn't rise to the point it gets the attention of the FBI. Such things are the reason we have attorneys and a civil court system. Big corporations useing the federal system for the pursuit of such "criminals" is stupid, a waste of taxpayer money and never has been and never will be supported by this taxpayer. The FBI's job is suppose to protect our country from REAL bad guys. Remember, little Georgie says we're at war.
(

Billyboy, first of all, out here in LA I do see people get ticketed for jaywalking or not stopping at stop signs when on a bike (a friend of mine got one of those tickets). It's not enforced as well as some other laws though but it is enforced.

But the bigger question is that you have a problem with the FBI getting involved. If they don't, who should? Who should the "copyright police" be? Should you call the local police? You're not suggesting that lawyers are who you call when you find someone selling pirated DVD's on the streetcorner, are you? So if there should be a police branch (or whatever) that would handle this stuff, what's the difference whether you call it the police or the FBI? It still costs the taxpayer money. So what's your point? You seem to be saying it's a lost battle so we should just give up and rip up the copyright laws. If that's the case, a lot of people will be out of work and there will be no incentive to do anything in the arts.

And I'd call someone stealing a copy of my movie a real crime, not a nusiance crime. My landlord prefers me to pay in cash rather than piracy rationalizations. But I'll try again next month-- when she wants the rent I'll tell her that I don't have it, but that I saw someone jaywalk and not get ticketed, so it should be OK that I don't have the rent money.

Fred

Hate to break it to ya, but la la land isn't typical of America. If anyone got ticked for jaywalking in Illinois and it got to court the judge would probably order the cop to go for psychological testging to see if he still had all his marbles for issuing a ticket in the first place.

You answered your own question. There shouldn't be "copyright police" It should be treated as a civil matter. The FBI is for tracking down and arresting CRIMINIALS. You know, REAL bad guys, that rob banks, kidnap, cross state lines went doing crimes, things like that. Technically, yea its a "crime" to pirate movies, then again if you look at Title 8, 12, 13, etc. there a zillion things that technically are "crimes" under federal law. Its a matter of priorites. As far as importance, pirating movies should be oh about 10,000th on the list of what's important.

The second point is it shouldn't cost the taxpayer anything. I'm not harmed if someone makes a pirated copy of a movie. If the movie producer feels he's been harmed, then sue them.

"Why is it so wrong for a company to want to make money? Who here on this list doesn't want to make more money? I've never found *anyone* who has said, "I make exactly enough money, and I have no desire to make more."


Youre missing the point here. Big Corporations are always touting how much money they make on opening weekends with their records. But then turn to the public and cry that piracy is killing their income. Piracy is WRONG either way. HOWEVER, the public could care less about big business because they have a ton of cash. Piracy and its effects harm the small indie film maker MORE than the big guys even though the big guys get pirated more often.

The small indie maker will never get close to what Lucas would make so if the indie's film is pirated, he will be more impacted than Lucas would. When you have guys like Gates and his $40B, your hard working consumer could care less if Bill loses a billion on piracy. Again, not saying piracy is right but when companies use the public and the media to foster sympathy claiming lost revenue from sales but NEVER show an income decrease from year to year, the consumer jsut doesnt buy the crying crap.

If I sunk $50k into a film and it was pirated, I would be devastated financially. Lucas would hardly be hurt like that. As long as the RIAA and the MPAA and the BSA choose to use the media to cry to public that they are losing money on piracy while your average Joe works twice hard and twice as long and doesnt even come close to making what those companies make, your average consumer could care less.

I aiken the bellyaching to those of pro ball players that cry they cant feed their families unless they get a $10M contract extention. Or groups like Metallica that cry foul on bootleggers when it was the very bootleggers that end up making them a more attractive band for a label to market and make cash off of.

So when Lucas and others cry that they only made X amount of dollars due to piracy, forgive me if I could care less that they CAN afford it whereas someone like Stonefield or Jay would be crippled if their films were pirated.

In closing, I agree with BB. (I cant believe it either) The thing that is lost on everyone is how government services are being used to protect bi businesses but the same protections are not afforded to smaller companies with much more to lose with regards to career longevity. Disagree with me? Call the FBI tomorrow and tell them that someone is pirating your film and see how long it takes them to respond and take action with the SAME VIGOR they did for Lucas....just dont hold your breath waiting for it to happen it it does at all.

pmasters,
Don't forget that the money that's reported in those box office figures includes the money that the theaters keep, which is a huge chunk. Plus, a movie like the new Star Wars has to make back well over 200 million dollars just to break even. That amounts to well over 300 million a the box office just to break even. Also, the bigger the opening weekend (when it's as big as SW's was), the faster the dropoff will be, because everyone saw it already on opening weekend.

But I agree, touting huge box office numbers doesn't exactly make people sympathetic.

As for Lucas, the MPAA and the RIAA, they're screaming now because if they don't it's going to get much worse very fast. Five years ago there might have been a few hundred downloads of a new movie on its opening day, now it's up to 16,000. If nothing is done, it'll be significantly higher in the next few years. (Actually I bet that that 16,000 figure is too low. I suspec there are/were plenty of other sites that didn't get counted.)

And again I say it's not the fat cats who get hurt by it, it's the average Joe. So the non-industry average Joe's need to be made aware of that.

As for whether the FBI would do as much for me as they are for Lucas, you're right, I don't think they would. BUT, I don't want them to stop helping Lucas just because of that. That would be dumb. That's like saying, "if you don't give that guy a ticket for speeding you shouldn't be allowed to give ANYONE a ticket for speeding." Also, in helping poor little Lucas they're indirectly (or even directly) helping everyone else.

Lastly, as you said, piracy hurts the small indie people more than, say, Tom Hanks. But as I pointed out, the average Joe doesn't know the difference. I'm sure, as I pointed out, they look at my film and see Sony Pictures and think "screw Sony!" And it's not just me, it's other people who worked on the film too-- and these aren't billionaires. How about this for a rule of thumb: If it seems like a low budget B movie, don't pirate it. :-)

By the way folks, sorry to ramble on about all of this, it's just that it's something that's important to me. And yes, it was even before I made my movie.

>>>How about this for a rule of thumb: If it seems like a low budget B movie, don't pirate it. :-)<<<

You know that is funny. :)

There was a video compnay and I forget who now - but they put out lots of B movies and they had this unwritten motto - "We don't put copyguard on our videos. So go ahead and make copies for your friends" They wanted the product out there and I always thought they had the right concept...amd this was years ago, long before the internet exploded and long before things like bittorent were around. This was "I'll hook up my VCR to yours so we can make a copy" days.

I will go back to something I said maybe a year ago when this topic came up - well, not about SW3 but about P2P and such - I think for anyone "new" or for most indy's the whole downloading and sharing is great. It means more exposure and it means you have a worldwide potential fanbase.

At the other end we have a film like SW3, which made something like 150 million in the US during the first 3 days. I have no doubts it will make more and I have no doubt that it will make even more when it come sout on DVD and even more when the box set comes out and so on and so on. I will wager many of the people downloading this are mega Star Wars geeks who just want a copy *now* just to be able to say "Hey guess what I have..." and will also buy up all the Star Wars merchandise they can find *and* buy the DVD(s) when they come out *and* have already seen it in a theatre more than once. In either case, by letter of the law, it is not legal to duplicate and download films...but I can tell you first hand that the MPAA does not care about the small indy films...about 10 years ago I called to report some of the films we had put out were being bootlegged and I was told flat out "We really do not care about films being bootlegged unless they come from a major studio" and that was it. This was when the MPAA and the VSDA had a big push with the "Call 1-800-...." campaign to report bootleg videos.

I dunno - at times I really don't have much sympathy. I get angry when the little guy is ripped off and nobody helps, I get mad when the big guy with lots of money stomps on the little guy who has nothing. This is life.

Another issue is we're really taking phantom "loss" when it comes to piracy. It isn't that the priates stole tanagable property like somebody walking into a 7-11 and stealing a six pack of beer. Those that downloaded Star Wars off the Internet probably the vast majority would never buy the legimate DVD when it comes out. So all this crap that Lucas "lost" x dollars is just that... pure crap. He hasn't lost anything. In fact some that got a look a Star Wars by downloading an illegal copy may now actually go see it on the big screen. Like filmy said others did it just to do it, and say they've seen it. The news buzz of the piracy also is great advertising helping draw a audience to go see it that otherwise may not have. BTW, I'm going to go see it on the big screen tomorrow. <wink>