To play devils advocate...
If you buy the DVD, you have the right to view it as many times as you'd like. You paid for the license.
If you watch it on television, you didn't pay anything for that right, unless of course, it's on cable or satellite. Those already have copyright flags available in the stream, and can only carry so much bandwidth anyway.

It's not about politicians. Politicians are managed by lobbyists, and lobbyists are funded by content holders.

So...say I'm the owner of King Kong, and it should be on public television in say...4 years from today. When it airs, it will air in nearly the same quality as it was shown in the theater, higher quality if you take display size into consideration. Shouldn't I be worried about someone taking that show and recording it via an analog source that does two things;
1. It diminishes the value of my work both visually and financially.
2. A recording on the consumer side potentially costs me my right to control where my film is shown.

What's really ironic, is the Sony set the case law in Sony vs Universal Studios, and that decision in some form, is undoubtably going to be overturned well within our lifetime. In other words, Sony is now fighting themselves, as are just about every other recorder manufacturer. And that was barely 20 years ago that the decision was rendered.
To quote/paraphrase part of that decision "a stolen jewel is merely worn, whereas intellectual property may generate a commerce all its own, when duplicated."

Until today, there has never been a worry about content being reproduced in original quality. Until recent times, social stigma prevented people from stealing.
3. Today, films can be reproduced by the average person fairly easily.
4. Today, people steal. Period. Regardless of who they are, they steal.
Add up 1, 2, 3, 4...what's my incentive to release the media at all, outside of the theatre? Of course, then I'm accused of not making my film available to the masses. Especially if it's a blockbuster like StarWars or King Kong. So, I release on DVD. But now I'm a chiseler, because I'm not letting it out to lower income people who can't afford a DVD player or a DVD.

Fact One: Content owners want to continue to control their content.
Fact Two: Huge numbers of persons steal when presented with the opportunity, regardless of social strata.

No matter how much Fact One hurts the average person, Fact Two is responsible for why Fact One hurts so much. In other words, we've done it to ourselves. Like 16 year olds that demonstrate they can't be trusted with the car, Napster, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent, and all the other P2P systems have demonstrated exactly that consumers cannot make healthy decisions about their media, and cannot be trusted to not share media over the web, therefore rendering it uncontrollable.

Just to put it in a different perspective, I was recently in Guatemala. Even 7-11 stores have guards out front with machine guns or shotguns. Why? Because of Fact One. Where's the difference between 7-11 in Guatemala and a content owner using everything at his disposal to protect what's rightfully his/hers?

It's like Pandora's Box. The moment a film is opened to the public in ANY fashion, it is a given that it will be pirated by someone, in some manner, and therefore cant be put back in the box.
Heck, Patrick, look around you. Even in this forum, someone who folks around here respect and revere is a thief and has publically demonstrated a complete lack of moral or ethic within just THIS community. Project that on a larger social scale...can you blame content owners for wanting to protect their media?

The only other option is to build in the cost of shrink much like retailers do. It's a vicious circle. Raise the price of a DVD so that the margins cover shrink/piracy/theft/etc. Then the raise of cost is used as justification for theft, because "it's too expensive for me to buy" so therefore theft is OK. We considered raising the cost of Ultimate S 2.0 to pay the cost of the domain hijacking legal fees, but is that fair to the consumer just because some folks can't keep their hands out of other's cookie jars?

Catch 22. Theft begets locks which beget smarter thieves which begets stronger locks begets more clever thieves, which....etc.

But eventually, the thieves will lose. The smarter thing to do is to maybe start teaching kiddies today that what their mommies and daddies are doing when they download unauthorized software, music, movies, images, or soon...replication designs...is wrong. Maybe, just maybe, they'll grow up with a better ethic than their parents, and restrictions will relax.

More likely, monkeys will fly outta my backside first.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I wrote above, but definitely understand and empathize with both sides of the issue.

Spot you make some very well thought out and important points. My biggest problem with this "analogue" law is that if it is over the air, then it is in fact free to copy for personal use. I have an HDTV tuner card in my PC and anything that comes across the air, I am free to record with no royalties due to anyone other than the cost of the tuner card and the media for me to back it up on.

Now how fair is that Sony pushed the issue years ago so they could make some coin and won a lawsuit to do just that. Now we find them on the opposite side fighting again to get rid of what they once profited from. How fair is that? That would be aiken to a gun manufacturer selling guns and then after years of profiting getting a law pased that makes it illegal to use the gun. Bad example but you get the idea.

WRT to politicians being hired hands, that is exactly what is wrong with our country today. Only those with money can get laws passed to protect them and its screw all the poor people. Imminent domain should have tipped us off. The avergae Joe customer does not stand a chance against groups like the RIAA and MPAA unless Joe customer can up the ante and contribute dollars to the extent that the groups can.

This is why piracy has become so bad. Again, I am not defending it. With all the DRM crap and trying to control what users do with the content is a never ending battle and likely a war that will never be won as history has shown just how great all these ways to protect content can be cracked mere hours or weeks. Furthermore, when you begin to treat all customers as if they are thieves and burglars, at some point, human nature will take over and these honest customers will convert to the darker side. You can only accuse and treat honest customers badly for so wrong when they finally take the attitude that if they are going to be called thieves then they might as well act like thieves.

I think the one thing that seems get overlooked in these scenarios is that its not as much about having the ability to control the content as it is the ability to control the money they make off of their content. Demand will always dictate value of a work. If a movie is "free" on TV, I would think that the content has indeed lost some value. But because Joe customer chooses to record the free offering, the industry still sees that as a lost sale other than some guy who wanted to record a show or movie he liked.

I think the problem that niether the RIAA or MPAA seem to recognize that there is only so much money to go around. If you have only $50 to spend on content (music or movies) than thats all you have. If I spend $50 a month on music for a year and the following year I spend $25 on music and $25 on DVDs, then the RIAA claims that they have lost sales due to piracy. They fail to realize that customers start investing their entertainment dollars elsewhere. Piracy still exists but I honestly believe all the numbers they are constantly reported are fudged quite a bit.

One has to think that at some point, both industries are going to start feeling the backlash from consumers which will result in lost sales. Will they recongize that they have alienated their customers or will they atttribute the lack of sales as more evidence of piracy getting worse?

I am free to record with no royalties due to anyone other than the cost of the tuner card and the media for me to back it up on.
This is true, but that concept too, has backfired.
You can't cite Sony or anyone else as being wrong for the whole VCR vs studios/timeshifting thing. No one in 1980, EVER had the idea that in 20 or 30 years, consumers would take that same content using computers, and shift it all over the world so that everyone can enjoy it. So, change of circumstances dictate change of positioning.

What teenager in the late 60's, 70's, and early 80's didn't take LP's and put them onto a cassette as a "favorites" mix? Everyone did it. But to copy that cassette meant either you spent your whole life making mixes for friends, or you used a cheap dubber that lost high frequencies with every pass. That was then, this is now. Now, you can make a bit for bit recording of what the band recorded in the studio. No loss, no diminishing value.
You're right. Demand dictates value. Only now, demand is lesser because the milk is free. Why buy the cow?
I for one, love shifting shows via my Dish HD system. But what's funny is that I can find the same shows, at very high resolution, on Limewire and other sharing sites.
Look, I'm not in favor of all this stuff either. It's a major PITA, it's a major cost factor in the media we buy, and worse, it's soon going to hamper content creators in a very serious way.
But, society has proven that it can't self-govern in this regard.
No one is more responsible than we are. Had there never been theft, a lock would have never been invented.

It's a fascinating discussion .... as a content producer, I get riled up and try to stop piracy wherever I see it (eg ebay bootlegs, bulletin board classifieds, wherever) ...

and as a commercial dvd buyer, I don't like all the protection stuff that hampers my legitimate use of something I've bought ... like getting a great looking girlfriend but having a bra with a clasp that can't get undone easily, or a chastity belt or whatever (lol)...

excellent insights re the balance that has to be struck .. agree re consumers have shown they'll rip stuff off .. (I've had to fight several would-be content thieves this past week alone, for example)...

and this isn't even counting all the losses to pirates in Malaysia, Romania, China, Russia, Brazil and other pirates elsewhere ..

It's a difficult balance, the continually inventing new locks, and people inventing new keys to unlock it ... I know for one I'll be looking at 3rd party DRM solutions, so at least it's a major pita for would-be casual thieves to take stuff, that should help a lot ... like music.yahoo.com's model, where you have to relicense monthly for song access (unless you know about tunebite s/w etc) ..


ken

So, as DSE said the whole think ends up as a Catch 22. Usually that means the issue isn't being looked at in the right way.
So technology has changed the world, that's hardly a unique event. As a race we do seem capable of working out new ways to deal with the changes technology brings, the only problems are caused by those who want to cling onto the ways of the past. The Charge of the Light Brigade is a pretty good example of just how bad trying to cling onto the bygone days can be.
So why all the doom and gloom?
Technology has given the content providors a way to distribute their product at almost no cost and they're wingeing about it, truly bizare, I'd bet Coke and GM wouldn't see it that way.
So the only real issue is them getting paid when we view the content, perhaps if they focussed more on that side of the equation than trying to stop the content being delivered they could evolve a new business model that was viable under the new technology. One things for sure, the genie is out of the bottle and I can't for the life of me recall anytime in history when it got put back in the bottle.
For over 50 years now mankind has had the technology to obliterate itself, if we accept the rationale that man is basically evil we wouldn't be here now. We might do lots of dumb things as a species but somehow we muddle through, I'd go a lot further than that and say we do quite well considering how bad we could be.

Let's look at this another way. There's nothing immoral going on, unlike physical theft or drugs or murder no one gets hurt. But it's unethical because the creators are deprived of their just rewards. There's no moral imperative to prevent P2P or whatever sharing of content. There's an ethical imperative though to ensure that those creating the content continue to have the means to make more content, otherwise as DSE noted they'll simply stop providing content and hence again we've got a catch 22. The P2P networks become valueless as there's no 'water' to run through the pipes.

I'm not for a minute saying this is going to be an easy shift for us to adjust to but I cannot imagine how we're not going to have to. This, as DSE noted goes way beyond music and movies, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the genetic codes for a 'perfect' baby up for sale on eBay in my lifetime. The music piracy issue is only the small tip of a very big iceberg, we need to resolve it and move on, much bigger issues are looming and they will entail far more dramatic challenges.
Bob (or is it my clone?)

I understand all of your points and dont dispute any of them. I just have a serious problem with companies who once profited from something legal that they now claim should be outlawed all because they didnt have the forsight to see it biting them in the ass.

It reminds me of an interview I saw once with Madonna. She was talking about modern singers who get by without any talent and basically use their sex appeal and dressing like a slut to sell albums. Kind of the pot calling kettle black huh?

And Bob is right. This goes much further than just content. I would say this entire concept has been around since mankind began. I just feel that laws that were passed that companies benefited from should not be overturned because the companies no longer enjoy the profits they once did from the previous law.

Again, this would be the same as me performing abortions and getting a law passed to allow me to perform them and then 20 years later trying to get a bill that would outlaw them because I no longer benefit the way I did in the beginning.

Bob was also right about the industries lack of progress in new business models. Itunes has proven that people want digital content and many have paid honestly for it. Even pirates show their is a desire for digital content. But its the industries that have been slow footed to begin to adopt an online distribution model. IMO, they wont even begin to develp a model until they can successfully lock us out of the ability to copy under current law. That is when I believe that we will see the first business model that not only distributes online but also implements the number of times you can view it or pay perview/listen.

Again, these same companies will charge nearly the same price claiming that they need to recoup their costs of investments for the network infrastructure (which is already in place and capable of handling it) similar to the crap we heard when the compact disc came out. Digital distribution IMO will be the biggest money maker as once the content is produced and digitally ready for distribution, profits should come quicker as the need for packaging/shipping/etc... fade away.

One thing that has really bothered me with the whole DRM thing is how everytime something gets developed that is supposed the costs are passed on to the consumers. Understood that is the way of business. But please rationalize why consumers have to keep paying for companies continued failures to secure their own product, one that severely limits the customers ability to consume the content in the manner they see fit?

Sorry for going off topic but as each day passes, I grow more frustrated with having to pay higher costs because I choose to be part of the honest and ethical part of society. My fear is one day I will have had enough and join the dark side and rebel just as they have. Lets hope Im wrong.

Spot and you guys have all made good points and have written excellent threads, but to get to the very bottom of this issue, to get to the nitty gritty, it needs to be understood why conscience flies out of the window with regard to intellectual rights.

Few who copy rented DVDs would steal a DVD of the shelf at Blockbuster. What is the difference I hear them say, between my copying this DVD to share with some of my friends next week than asking them over tonight to see the original with me? If I rent a DVD I pay the same if I watch it alone or whether the whole family watches. So how is that different from each member of the family watching the "cached" copy on different days, even if one of them watches it after the original is returned? The financial position of the renter is not altered I hear them say. Try to explain to these people that if they had not shown the the copy to X, then X might have rented it themselves, and you will likely be laughed at. And I understand that to some extent, because 95% of the movies I watch are free (on TV or at a friends house etc) and I would never pay good money to watch but a handful of them. So it really is unlikely that these people who saw it for free would ever have paid to rent it themselves.

I feel that if the industry could explain these type of thought process, I don't mean just list various opinions, but explain in a scientific psychological way then the problem could be addressed.

Michael S

Did anyone read/hear/see the news about how the Greatful Dead "powers that be" decided to stop the bootlegging of the band? What was clairified after fans, and band members, started to complain is that the label/management decided they owned all soundboard bootlegs and are cleaning them up for release. So the non-soundboard recordings are still fine. Now here is the thing - on the one hand the band set the standard for the audience coming in and taping shows so i don't see anything legal that could be done. On the other hand whoever ran the sound at any show could claim a right because it is there "mix" - direct and clean that is being given out. However if the greatful Dead charged extra money for "tapers seats" that included a feed to the soundboard as Metallica did than can't it be argued that those recordings are "owned" by whoever paid the extra money to tie in to the sound board and tape them?

Ok, so I bring this up here because things have been getting out of hand for a while now. Right now the TWU is on strike in NYC. Why? Money, benefits...the same old thing all unions come around to. I see unions as a major reason costs have gone up overall. I went and say Aly & Aj and The Cheetah Girls and by the time all was said and done I had paid about 20 bucks in "fees" on top on ticket costs. Shirts at the show were 30 - 35 bucks, there was a hoody for 50 bucks!!! Glow sticks were 5 bucks a pop. As Spot said everyone has their hand in the artists pocket. Aly and Aj probably get 500 - 750 bucks each night of the tour (maybe, it might be less) - they don't even have their whole band with them and their mom is their tour manager. Money goes to the local union crew, a % of the merch goes to the local venues...and so on.

Ok - so now lets go to the thread more directly. if I walk into a movie theatre with a video camera and video tape the film - well, unless I have permission from some higher up at the studio than it is wrong. If I take that tape and sell it it becomes even more wrong and for sure illegal. If I take it and give it away for free it is still wrong and illegal. However if I air that same movie on TV in any shape of form, than there is an almost 100% "guarentee" that people will somehow record it. Forget VCR's for a moment - we have PC TV cards that record, we have TIVO we have things like cell phones and PSP's now as well. Matter of fact we are sort of taking huge steps back in quality, IMO, when people can record things to view on cell phones or other handheld video devices. I remember being so excited playing with the VFW delveopers kit and being able to capture and encode a postage stamp sized trailer, with mono audio, at a small size of about 80 megs and have it download from the web. So now we can do a postage stamp sized video with a cell phone and send it off to all our buddies in a few kilobytes. I am not so sure this is a good thing. So lets go back to the first thing I asked - about the Dead. There was a "given" that any number of people were taping the shows. Likewise when anything airs on TV there is a given that someone is taping it. I have never seen this as any problem any more than it was ever a problem when people recorded radio shows, or even songs, off the radio. I have done both - yet I also continue to buy CD's and DVD's as well as go to see live concerts and movies in movie theatres. So do most all the people I know.

So I go back to the whole "P2P is causing the industry to loose billions" concept across the board. Lets look at live music - my daughter really wanted to see Clay Aiken and I was going to take her until I saw tickets were about 100 bucks a pop. A few years ago BSB were 150 bucks and Britney Spears was 120. To Kiss fans paying 150 bucks to see the orginal members put on make up after 20 years or so I am sure was well worth it - but to pay that same amount for some of these new acts that have been around for less that a decade is just insane. Now go to the cost of movies - paying 3 bucks is ok. Paying 6 bucks is accepted but in some theatres it is 10 bucks or more. Sorry - but I will pay 15 bucks to "own" some DVD's but not to see a film in a theatre. IMAX maybe, an all day film festival of restored Preston Sturges films maybe. Ok, so now talk about DVD's - when they came out they were "cheap", comnpred to VHS all DVD's were "sell through" at less than 20 bucks. It was the wave of the future. But now that people (Read - industry movers and shakers) have caught on prices have sored. I picked up a copy of the new Barbie 3D film for my daughter today because it was on sale for 10 bucks. My wife said, rather loudly I might add, "Ten Dollars?!?!?! How come it is 25 in F.Y.E???" Yeah - go into a T.W.E owned store (Which F.Y.E is) or go into a Best Buy - DVD's and CD's are 5 - 10 bucks more expensive than most places. (Hey I went into Big Lots a few weeks ago and they had stacks of Anime for $3.99 - same stuff F.Y.E is selling for 29.95) Some time even more expenise than the SRP - for example the last feature I cut Lions Gate put out and has a SRP of $19.95 but good ole T.W.E stores sell it for 23.95.

So ok, if you still don't get my point it is this - I agree with Patrick and Spot and Ken but I also think the industry has to wake up. You can't go out and do PPV events and think that no one will record it somehow for later viewing...or to keep and show to friends. Same goes for anything aired on TV, free or pay. I don't think it lessons the value in any way because something is aired on "free" TV and someone tapes it. I *do* think the value of a product is somewhat lessoned when someone gets their hands on a studio print/workprint and puts out DVD quality version before a film hits the theatres however. However at that point really we are talking about, as so many around here like to say, "apples and oranges". it is getting old to hear the same old excuse about consumers being at fault. May as well start blaming enigneers for creating backing tracks and puitting so many touring musicians out of work. Heck blame Adobe, Sony, Avid and so on for putting hundreds out of work because so many can now do it themselves.

Has anyone here *not* recorded something on TV? Has anyone here *not* recorded somehting on TV and saved it? Has anyone here *not* played a DVD or a CD at a gathering of friends and/or family? Has anyone here *not* loaned a friend or family member a video/DVD/CD of yours? (If so do you tell them 'Now please do not copy this'?)

At some point the lawyers and powers that be will make it so hard to do anything than really all you can do is "lease" something and listen to it in your own head.

Sony was just awarded the "2005 Stupid Tech Trick Grand Prize" by the influential eWeek magazine, illustrated with a large dunce cap with a prominent blue ribbon on it in the latest issue.

Personally, I will not buy a copy-protected CD. Why not? Because it's been something like 10 years since I last put a CD in a CD player to listen to it.

I see the CD only as a pre-made backup for the electronic copy I listen to on my computer, etc.

I don't let other people copy my CDs, and I never asked to copy anybody else's.

(Only two people have even asked to copy my CDs/DVDs. One is a very senior law enforcement officer, the other teaches ethics at the university level...)

Buying DRM-protected electronic files? Then I'd have to worry about backing up both the content and the keys, and I'd have to hope that the particular DRM will function on my next operating system, otherwise I just lost everything.

I have been a CD/DVD content producer and seller for 8 years, and yes, I have seen illegal copying problems with certain customers. Large companies, large non-profit organizations, individuals, it doesn't matter.

Short term, there are two things that can be done and that are helpful:

1. Make it less attractive to copy. Example: charge $3,000 (say) for a wedding video including 100 DVDs, or including only 1 DVD for $2,950.

2. Tie in support and other added value, such as described by Ken Calhoun above (this has worked very well for me also).

Long term, we really need to get this into the public's mindset that stealing is wrong.

The latter is more of a challenge when there is so much unethical stuff going on around us, as exemplified by crooked politicians at all levels of government.

They have a feeling that they are above the law, so their constituents start feeling the same way. And often it is justified with some high-falutin', nice sounding reasons why they felt compelled to do what they do. "Who would Jesus torture?," as the bumper sticker goes).

Stealing goes very deep into the human psyche. In fact, it's so deep that it's not even exclusive to humans.

Animals steal each other's food all the time.

For example, certain birds who gather food for the winter and store it in holes in tree trunks.

The honest ones just stuff the food into the tree trunks and don't worry about it.

The crooked birds, who are too lazy to gather food themselves, just watch in hiding while somebody else does the dirty work, then go pick it up and find another tree trunk to hide it in.

The difference is that the crooked birds always look around while hiding the food to make sure there isn't another crooked bird waiting to steal their booty. So the bad conscience is there even among birds.

All the DRM methods accomplish one thing only:

They prevent "honest people" from copying for themselves, some legitimate reasons for this have been mentioned earlier.

They do nothing whatsoever, not one bit (no pun intended), to stop industrial pirating.

I think the P2P networks should be pursued every which way from Friday as far as they are being used to pass on Other People's IP illegally.

I think people selling major feature film DVDs in the streets for a few dollars should be provided free food & lodging at taxpayers' expense (not Guantanamo Bay, that should be reserved for our politicians, with free water boarding morning and afternoon as that is not torture per the most most elevated upholders of the law in this country).

I also think that the major content providers are not invulnerable. My prediction is that if they persist in making it more and more difficult, and more and more expensive, to enjoy their offerings, customers will tell them to shove it and they will go for smaller providers who may have less quality but with much less hassle.

DVD sales dropping? They sure are, it's very obvious from the industry statistics, as well as from looking at the huge bargain bins at Blockbuster etc., where even fairly new films on DVD go for $5-$8 each. Why?

Perhaps people are tired of buying their favorite films over and over again as new formats are introduced, and at least in bigger cities there may be an expectation that HD disks of some kind will be arriving soon, turning their expensive DVD collections into laughing stock again (after those replaced the laser discs that replaced VHS cassettes for serious enthusiasts many years ago).

"I feel that if the industry could explain these type of thought process, I don't mean just list various opinions, but explain in a scientific psychological way then the problem could be addressed."

Theres your rub right there. I dont think the industry cares about science or the reasons people pirate. They dont even care about proving how they come o the ridiculous numbers they claim to lose every year due to piracy meanwhile profits continue to increase. We cant even get them to actually breakdown how it costs so much for a DVD/CD and where does the money go while the artists hardly make any money if at all.

The first step for them is to accept that they cannot win the piracy war. Instead of continuing to shovel money into dumb ass DRM schemes or anti copy protection and instead invest it in researching a better online business model or ways to increase sales or lower prices, then this war will continue and the pirates and the labels will continue to win (labels make money either way) and the honest consumer will continue to pay increased pricing all for being ethical and honest. So whos getting screwed worse? The labels or the honest customer?

I love threads like these. Whats so cool about them is how civil we all can be while we all have our own views. One thing for sure is that indy film makers will lose worse than the big boys and most wont have the nifty MPAA on our side fighting for us to get paid.

BTW: How much does it cost to join the MPAA and get their "protection'?

I like how everything desireable in the "land of the free" gets tied up in red tape and then moves at less than a snails pace.
Simple solution: There is no solution. Once released, it's up for grabs, just like a sack of 100 dollar bills falling from a window onto a crowded street and blowing everywhere. It's against the law to take those bills too, but I'd bet 75 to 85% of the very people that use this forum would be running and grabbing as much as they could.
Now money is desireable to everybody, but Media?
I know a lot is stolen, but I still believe that a huge percentage of it has to be going to the lowest of the low. And that means even though their DVDs are bit for bit perfect, their DVD players and TVs look like crap and most are too stupid to know the difference or how to set them up properly. Not much different than losing the high end on those old cassette tapes. That means all the Hollywood lawyers are again counting electrons and using these theorys as their argument. If Hollywood would just fire those lawyers, they'd probably recoup their losses.
Who's going to rip Hollywood DVDs in Malaysia or China if there aren't any released in those languages? How many asians are going to want "english only" speaking titles?
So, you have idiots in the states who buy or rip bootlegs and watch on horribly calibrated equipment or foreigners that don't mind ripping copies from another country.
If they dub their own language in, that will diminish the acting of the movie. If they include subtitles, well they're always totally distacting to me and ruin the look of the movie no matter what. (the old missing high end on the cassette tape analogy) In other words, it's no longer bit for bit, a perfect copy. It's sub-par.
How few people can there be, who'll actually steal and also have the right equipment and knowledge to get the best quality? Yes, some. But everybody I know, that knows how to set their equipment up, would never bother with stolen anything.
A huge majority of the public never bothers with a single dial on their TVs except the most common buttons on the remote. They would never bother with trying to calibrate. Most don't even know that it's needed. They like those over-fried colors

Whos fault is this? It's those filthy, friggin', electron counting, B.B. stackers. YES! LAWYERS. Their real skill is bending both you and the justice system, over.


The year is now 2033. A man with a photographic memory has been fined $1.5 million and was sentenced to 3 years in prison for remembering a movie too well. He was able to make accurate sketches of what he saw in his mind and was able to speak the dialogue, verbatim. Lawyers argued "We can't have people retaining memories of movies this well. This man no longer needs to see this movie and this kind of ability needs to be addressed as this will eventually cause a huge financial crunch on the potential profits of media in general as more memory enhancing drugs are released in years to come."

HEY NOW! ; - )

How many asians are going to want "english only" speaking titles?
having traveled extensively in Asia, I can tell you that there are MILLIONS. You'll find these in Malaysia, all over Hong Kong, and even on the streets of NYC.
Additionally, you'll find thousands pirated films that have been redubbed. Into ALL kinds of languages. And they sell in different qualities, too. Very cheap for VCD versions, then it moves up to MPEG 2 versions.
While dubbing might ruin the acting for you, bear in mind that in many other countries dubbed movies are the rule, not the exception.

***Additionally, you'll find thousands pirated films that have been redubbed. Into ALL kinds of languages. And they sell in different qualities, too. Very cheap for VCD versions, then it moves up to MPEG 2 versions.
While dubbing might ruin the acting for you, bear in mind that in many other countries dubbed movies are the rule, not the exception.***

So now we have to be concerned with the quality they will accept even though we think it stinks, you still want to cash in as soon as they accept a certain level. This is where the electron counting starts.

So, you're saying it's OK to take a car from someone's driveway if it's a beater with rusty fenders and noisy exhaust, but it's not OK to steal a Mercedes that the owner just recently bought?
Or looking at it from a different angle still, maybe the snickers bar on the shelf has an expiration date, but the owner of the store paid for it, so he'd like to sell it. However, since it's expired, it's OK to take it without paying him for it?

It's really weird how this subject comes up exactly in cycles. Search the forums. It's almost an indicator of the cycles of ethics.
Additionally, quit applying the concepts of copyright and theft to each other. Substitute physical property for IP, and all of a sudden it takes on a new meaning. It's actually exactly the same thing, in some ways, worse. But for some, it's no big thing.

If you steal a Snickers bar from the store shelf and consume it, the only persons involved are you and the store owner. If you rip a DVD and make 5 copies, then whether the owner would have sold those 5 copies or not doesn't matter, it's still 5 pieces of his product out there that no one paid for. Even if they hate it, never watch it, whatever, it's been stolen. It's not as easy to replicate a snickers bar.
Sculptors are next in line to be ripped off. With personal fabrication systems just around the corner, who's to say what can and can't be stolen?

So, you got a bunch of great, very carefully shot images of a sculpture, or a proprietary plastic or metal design such as a camera shoe for a tripod. You feed the images into your computer, use the modeling software to tweak it, and output it via your personal fabricator in wood, plastic, or light metal. Maybe you saw a cool part on American Chopper, and a pirate has the PF code for you to make your own, or someone has hacked into their computer system to steal the CAD code.

It shouldn't have to be locked down, but it all has to be locked down. Otherwise, our ideas no longer have value. Since the beginning of time, our ideas as individuals have always been valued by the collective. Now, the collective seems to believe that members of the collective no longer have a right to own their individual thoughts or creations. "If it's better for one, it belongs to all" says the collective.
Is that really what anyone here believes? If so, why bother to try to create?

The comment about the film buff who remembered too much made me think about the musical works I can hear in my head from begging to end and often enjoy doing just that, and this made me think of Mozart who went to the Sistine chapel and heard a work that was copyrighted in that only the Sistine choir was allowed to sing it, and went home and wrote it out and got his church choir to sing it too. Now most lovers of the musical arts honor Mozart for this feat of pirating. Do you notice the problem with perception on this subject?

Oh yes! How about Shakespeare getting a writ from Boccaccio? . .Or, or Plato being summonsed by Socrates? Or, or, or . . all us Homo Sapiens being summonsed by all those Homo Epithiceans? Tell yah what .. I'm seeing my solicitor later on any ANY future Homo Digitalis wishing to nick my gene pool! ! ! Oh yes! .. Not forgetting to summons myself for thinking what I thought yesterday!

Grazie

Grazie,
thank you, I was just about to post something absurdly long winded and you've summed it up in a nutshell.
Let me add that the only true theft of art is plagarism. I think that we hear so little about that today amongst all the hubris over copyright illustrates the sorry state of art in general. Not that I know much about art but DSE seems to want us to believe that we should rank the greatness of art by how much the artist died owning, oddly enough I seem to recall most of them died owing :)

Ah yes, and what's all this noise about the DaVinci code, is that the CSS key to the Mona Lisa?

Bob.

"The year is now 2033. A man with a photographic memory has been fined $1.5 million and was sentenced to 3 years in prison for remembering a movie too well."

Hate to tell you, but i already do this now. ;) Well, mine is more an audiographic memory as i can usually hear verbatim almost any music recording i've listened to in the past, right down to all the scratches and dust on the LP we had of "West Side Story" when i was a kid many hundred moons ago.* I can whistle along with the music or tap out the beat and others around me can (but not necessarily do) enjoy it along with me.

My wife's memory isn't as good, but once she gets a song down she can sing it back with all the fidelity of the original. She even imitates the voice and accent of the original singer with uncanny accuracy.

So, where do we go to turn ourselves in to the authorities?

*This came in really handy over the past few weeks while i was essentially deaf recovering from an ear infection. I'd be sitting there smiling and someone would scream into my ear to ask me what i was doing. I'd say, "shhhhh, i'm listening to Mozart's 'Piano Concerto No. 9'". That would get a few raised eyebrows, then the person would walk away, shaking their head, worrying deeply about me.

Since the beginning of time, our ideas as individuals have always been valued by the collective. Now, the collective seems to believe that members of the collective no longer have a right to own their individual thoughts or creations. "If it's better for one, it belongs to all" says the collective.

...and then Atlas shrugged. ;-)

It all boils down to one word...

integrity.

"It all boils down to one word...

integrity."

BINGO! However you cant expect those that are honest to remain integrable when the labels treat them as thieves from the beginning.