In any other industry, when you have one guy who deals his wares to thousands of other vendors and enforces an exclusivity relationship such as in Hollywood, allowing no other sources to produce similar work, demanding the price remain artificially high, and what do you call it?
Price fixing! Racketeering! A cartel!
Mr. Producer, do you want to support a whole cartel? How much of the product of your work is siphoned into the pockets of these middlemen that you claim are so shadowy? Is it because you don't want to pay them that you downplay their role?
Why are they entitled to a share of what you earn, when distribution models that scale and support themselves in a feedback loop like BitTorrent are available, and the people who are consuming your content will foot the bill to the cartels for these distribution contracts?
What justification is there for price fixing, where regions that have larger collections of wealth amassed into smaller groups that can afford to pay more are gouged? What basis have you to charge more in the US or Australia than in India and Africa, where digital broadcast entertainment might be more or less pervasive?
I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.
I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.
What specifically are you angry about? Is it my claim that piracy is more about convenience and personal gain than free speech? Would you disagree with that sentiment? Could you explain why?
I'm not sure what to make of the rest of your post but I think you have quite a narrow view of the film industry. I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.
>>>I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.
I believe you. The people who create the content, with jobs like editing, directing, writing, acting, camera work, special effects, logistics, costuming, set design, and even the runners and gofers are all hardworking people who "spend their time thinking about making films".
The result of the hard work done by these laborers is a film. This film's "copyrights" are "owned" by the people who financed the venture, also known as "capitalists". These are people who do "spend their time thinking about ... price fixing". Under law, they have monopoly rights regarding certain elements of copyright. Armed with these rights, they employ accountants in an attempt to make as much money as possible. The most blatant and greedy of these attempts are lumped together with the phrase "Hollywood Accounting".
There is a great contingent of consumers that would like to give more of their money to the workers, and less of their money to the financiers. Please refer to indiegogo, kickstarter, and the ancient concept of patronage for well established ways of legally doing this.
Someone who will not be named replied with the following comment, then deleted it. The commenter wasn't wrong, and it wasn't a bad comment.
>> Kickstarter ain't gonna raise enough money to fund the next Hobbit trilogy. Sorry but huge blockbusters aren't ever going to be able to find enough people willing to put down enough money via Kickstarter. Small indies yeah, hundreds of millions of dollar type summer blockbusters no.
I agree that Kickstarter is unlikely to raise 300 million dollars for the next Hobbit trilogy. I disagree that a huge blockbuster will never be crowdfunded. Transformers, Harry Potter, and Avatar all cost less than 300 million dollars. 30 million people pre-paying 10 dollars is not ridiculous, when you look at how many people use Google, and how many users Facebook claims to have.
Surprisingly, movie studios don't necessarily fund the projects that they profit from. Since you mentioned LotR universe:
"New Line made enough pre-sales in foreign markets, and there were enough subsidies to pretty much cover their costs. New Zealand was not the only subsidy. There was also the British Commonwealth subsidy and the German tax subsidy in those days. New Line didn't have to put up any cash to make that movie."
Also movie studios consistently claim to not make profits from their movies.
"However, New Line later produced accounts showing that instead of making a profit, the movies made "horrendous losses". According to Hubbard: "We found it surprising because it was one of the biggest box office success of all time.""
Other funding options: a company could start making short films and then transition into making larger, more expensive ones once it gains the trust of its audience. The films could be broken into "episodes" to reduce the amount of money that each chunk would cost. This all ignores patronage, another alternative funding mode.
Lastly, most movies aren't blockbusters. Even if everything I just said is a lie, the vast majority of movies will be just fine, because their budgets are laughably small. District 9 was shot for 30 million dollars. Primer was shot for 7000 dollars. When Harry Met Sally cost 16 million dollars. Citizen Kane cost 15 million. Pretty Woman cost 14 million. The government funded BBC has produced such things like The Office, Monty Python, and Billy Elliot on less than 5 million each.
"Piracy" or more broadly unauthorized copying, which are hard to distinguish from each other using hard facts... are about convenience as well as free speech; I know I buy large expensive tools for storing data, and I see a lot of pictures of shelves stuffed with cheap plastic discs on reddit, discs that are easy to lose and yet each cost $35 for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons is so that you can get paid for bringing me quality content.
Obviously it's not a short path from point A to point B.
I also know that as a computer enthusiast, I spent a lot of time learning to copy things that your camp would prefer I didn't copy, so that I don't have to keep collections of cheap (disposable) plastic discs. That's a huge investment too, and if the effort is duplicated... well, in the free software community especially we don't like duplicated effort. Can't someone else do it?
Then I pay for these pipes (again from my perspective: your camp) and it's really a lot simpler downloading from the cloud than making a large investment in plastic discs and time and labor spent on copying. Furthermore, according to the DMCA, if I did buy the media and try to consolidate it in accordance with fair use, long accepted as a measure in place for free speech, I am still breaking the law because of the anti-copying measures that I need to break in order to do it, which is directly illegal today. So why not just download?
... you won't get paid. That's why.
I want you to get paid, but I don't want you to dictate my viewing schedule or media organization, and I also don't want to pay for thousands of channels I won't watch just to get three or four I care about, once or twice a week... hope that you can see how your side are not really making it any easier for me to enjoy your work in relative comfort and with the benefit of modern technology.
Quite sure this can be somehow solved by using bitcoins...
Not sure what plastic discs have to do with anything when you can leagally buy tons of content from Hulu, Lovefilm, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and tons of other places digitally with ease.
Congratulations, friend... you have managed to take away the one concern that actually confers a benefit, and replaced it with a bill payable directly to telecom.
You should be a patent attorney.. on the Internet!
I don't know about Lovefilm, but the rest of the solutions you proposed all require an ongoing commitment to pay every month, they don't provide any copy, and they are useless without an additional recurring payment to a third party that was not involved in producing content. You misunderstood my comments about the plastic discs. I hate them because they take up space, but I love them because they can be copied!
Why are there ads in Hulu Plus?
Again, a thousand channels I will never use, and I don't get a copy of the merchandise to keep for myself. What happens when I move out to the boonies and I can't get good internet? Oh yeah, I cancel all of my web-based subscriptions and I can never watch any of my favorite shows again. How about my favorite content providers? Sure, the partners will be paid, 70% of Hulu's revenue goes to... the advertising partners.
OK, I wasn't able to find any hard numbers on how much MrScruff gets for his contribution. But you know, I don't care, if I lose my access when I cancel my credit card and internet subscription. Tell me what ongoing benefit the ISPs provide! New content? No... they just provide peering, and hopefully reliable access, and then they also mail a bill every month. And guess what... it's more than Hulu is charging.
But you're right. They earned that money. The telecom lobbyists and the streaming advertisement providers made sure that I can't legally obtain a copy of anything new for myself, and now I'll have to go on needing them forever, no matter how much favorite content I've amassed into my collection. My archives will never be complete, at least not until I've received next month's internet bill.
edit: well played, I see you can delete your own comment on HN for a limited time. Was responding to a comment about how this kind of thinking will be illegal for some time. Not sure we're at thought police, but I can't remember all of what you said. Thanks for thought-provoking.
I'm guessing from 'Unfortunately' that you're on the side of keeping the information free/available and not the side of selling the same shows to the same customers over and over again as many times as you can.
Sure, you can download them, but you want to keep them when your computer shits the bed? Good luck with that, I hope you had the foresight to de-authorize your machine so your license could be transferred to another one, some time before it crapped out and took your files down with it.
Our fair use rights flew out the window long ago. I liked those. I don't remember the last time I wanted to rent a movie.
How come there's not anyone selling magnet links to their content? It's not like they are any easier to copy than the movies themselves. You could even include a nonce in the files so you can trace back to the people who are sharing illegally.
What if there's something harmful or illegal in your content? Wouldn't it suck if I couldn't share it with my lawyer so he can help me sue you into the ground?
(that's the Royal you... like I said, I still think you're on my side in all of this. played Ingress, res0nat0r?)
I thought about it, and realized how fucked up the idea of including a nonce in a torrent is.
First of all, it would break how torrents currently work. It's not a cloud if everyone is sharing a slightly different file. I don't think you can trick the people and their computers into also sharing the part that allows their influence to be tracked, and still enjoy the benefit of the torrent protocol.
Maybe you could. I don't want to go there.
Second problem with this idea, it would not enjoy the same DMCA protections that CSS offers. (Would it?) It's a federal crime to remove a copyright control. So you put the nonce into the file to identify the buyer, and you sue him when he's caught sharing... no wait, on second thought, you pay him a referral fee, a percent of the revenue that you collect from when you sue the folks who shared under him without paying. I am trying to put a name on it, something that sounds less like a slur than what I'm actually thinking. New breed of Hollywood Jew. There, I said it.
Anyone sharing without a valid nonce could be thrown in jail then, if you can prove that they removed it (in order to share and not be tracked.) I love slippery slopes.
Price fixing! Racketeering! A cartel!
Mr. Producer, do you want to support a whole cartel? How much of the product of your work is siphoned into the pockets of these middlemen that you claim are so shadowy? Is it because you don't want to pay them that you downplay their role?
Why are they entitled to a share of what you earn, when distribution models that scale and support themselves in a feedback loop like BitTorrent are available, and the people who are consuming your content will foot the bill to the cartels for these distribution contracts?
What justification is there for price fixing, where regions that have larger collections of wealth amassed into smaller groups that can afford to pay more are gouged? What basis have you to charge more in the US or Australia than in India and Africa, where digital broadcast entertainment might be more or less pervasive?
I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.