Once Again NY Expands 'Anti-Piracy' Laws Based On No Evidence
from the but-of-course dept
You may recall a few years ago that the MPAA totally made up numbers about how big a "problem" camcording was in New York (if you added up their percentages, it came out that significantly more than 100% of all worldwide camcorded movies came from NY and Canada). But, it's not like New York politicians pay attention to the actual facts. After all, we're talking about the same folks who basically took an NBC Universal propaganda video and pretended it was their own. So, of course, the "anti-camcording" law passed.As always, however, stricter laws are never enough for the folks at the MPAA and the RIAA. When those laws fail to change anything, rather than realizing that maybe (just maybe) they should be helping their member studios & labels adapt to the changing times, they instead focus on ratcheting up the laws even more. So, the news that New York has "expanded" its anti-bootlegging law to now include other forms of storage, including hard drives, flash drives and memory cards, is not surprising. It seems that bootleggers in New York were actually changing with the times (while the labels were not), and had moved on from selling bootlegs on discs.
Still, I really have to wonder if the "bootleg" trade is as big a problem as the industry likes to make it out to be. Considering all of this stuff is available online, who's really walking down Canal Street buying a hard drive of bootleg music these days?
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Filed Under: anti-piracy, bootlegs, new york
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If you have to litigate your business model into survival, you are an utter failure.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 8th, 2011 @ 11:00pm
I hear there are some shops in Italy that don't want to pay the local security people every month and they're trying to actually get laws enforced against what they're calling a "protection racket." What idiots. Total failures, all of them.
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 8th, 2011 @ 11:00pm
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Re: Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 8th, 2011 @ 11:00pm
Only if the laws are logical. Many are not.
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Re: Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 8th, 2011 @ 11:00pm
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 8th, 2011 @ 11:00pm
Unlike your example, piracy in general could be lessened if the entertainment industries would actually listen to and serve their markets, but they refuse to do so.
Nearly 2 decades ago, the music industry chose to litigate their stagnating business model instead of adapting or co-opting the ideas and models of such as Napster. Talk about lost sales.
They spent money to sue instead of earn. That is failure on an epic scale.
They are unable, and worse, unwilling to compete because dependence upon IP enforcement has made them lazy, stupid, weak, and mean.
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I've seen my share of bootleg MP3 CD sellers at local flea markets. (Entire artist's catalog on 1 or 2 CDs' as MP3's) No hard drives or thumb drives. Yet....
This is not as far fetched as you may believe. $75 USB external hard drive with 60 movies on it for $100. Sounds about right. $25 a pop profit for just copy/paste work.
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Yep, Mike is right. Not adapting to the times and actually trying to give your customers what they want would equal a death sentence for any other business.
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Thought not.
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Does the $20 go to the artists, director, writer, etc., or does 99% of it go to the distributor and get dumped into Hollywood accounting? Why does the movie cost $20 when the distributors say that most of the cost is in distribution and they aren't paying the cost for medium. Seems like the cost is a little unreasonable given that the cost to the distributor is far less. If the $20 was going to make more movies, it would seem like a good idea, but with the money disappearing into hookers and blow, no thanks. (Then again, even though the trolls will say otherwise, my choice is, and has been to go without then to contribute to illicit activities of hookers and blow.)
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Actually, the studios should be thinking about this now (Patent Pending) delivery method. They'll have to license it with me, but I think they can afford my fees, even with their losses in the billions. I'll cut them a break, and write it off as charity.
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They still do, just bought a 32GB MicroSD card for my phone and it came with an offer to download a movie for free. Movie was in .WMV format and DRM'd, and wouldn't play on either my phone or my Linux computer.
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It would have been cheaper to buy another card without the promotion and rip a rented movie to it that would play in any device you wished.
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usually shit games. just like it'd be crappy movies.
I think i got a crimecraft disk with my last upgrade.
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One definition of insanity?
We seem to have gotten really good at it. Unfortunately it doesn't work... so we try to apply it even harder.
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Re: One definition of insanity?
Just trying to clarify.
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Funny story
The assortment of CDs were amazing. They even included the full jeweled cases, cover art, the works. It would have been difficult to point out the fakes, which I think probably all were.
The key defining factor in figuring out that the merchandise was fake was when you started examining artists, and you found compilation albums that were never made, albums that do not exist. But hey, the music was exactly what the covers said, so at least they were good quality fakes (And yes they worked, just be careful buying PlayStation games, because if you don't have the mods, they will fail).
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There's a trend here
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Are you kidding? Bootlegs are sold on the streetcorner in every neighborhood. Yes its a problem. The business model of the studios is pay lots of artists and technicians and financiers and everyone's lawyer, and then sell the product for a few years and turn a profit. The business model in bootlegging? Steal it, move it, and move on. You don't need many stats to know where that wind blows - more crap not worth bootlegging. Want quality, interesting entertainment? Pay those who can deliver it. At least you will have a moral basis from which to complain about that crap movie you just paid $20+ to see.
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It's got to be true - I saw it on Seinfeld
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"Sponsors say the state has a serious problem with piracy from street vendors and retail locations openly selling fraudulent audio recordings and supplied by large underground manufacturing and distribution operations."
For varying definitions of large, as the types of things they are talking about are often produced by a huge factory of a corner of a room with a computer.
Someone please explain how if the Labels/Studios can't compete with "free" how the hell are the Bootleggers managing to do it?
Oh maybe its because they are offering something people want, at a good price, and without all kinds of insane DRM.
So once again we see real world evidence that people are willing to pay for what they want how they want it.
Hmmmm so we can keep making laws to retard the expansion of technology to keep a business model based on vinyl discs afloat, or we could stop holding their hand and push them out of the nest to learn to adapt.
One wonders if we stopped wasting resources trying to hold innovation back, what amazing things we could have today.
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Quote:
Should read like this:
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Those people selling bootlegs are in a way benefiting the economy, where do those people think the bootleggers expend their money? On the Bahamas? In luxury yatches build in Europe?
Bootleggers are not the ones that hoard money and send that money outside the country to Suisse banks or some fiscal paradise in the Cayman Islands removing huge amounts of money from circulation, those bootleggers are not the ones that "repatriate" money to France, Japan and other countries, those bootleggers are not the ones that live in Ireland(Bono this is a cheap shot at you) and put all their money there not in NY.
Also those bootlegger are workers too, illegal workers that create a market and help sustain it with no protections at all on their side, which benefits the artists even if it is not a direct benefit.
How many bootlegger have a jet? How many bootleggers(street vendors) have even healthcare?
Why are NY helping other take money away from the local economy? why?
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Or, hey, why arrest stick-up kids? What do you think they do with the money they steal? Invest it in foreign banks? Those kids are liberating that bourgeois money for the little guy!
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Who knew.
Now the Wallstreet people took the money from every single little guy in America and put their money outside that system, why should people be grateful to them again?
If the hookers "steal" from them I wont care, if the blow dealer steal money from them I won't care, just as I don't care that people are "stealing" from big labels and studios.
Also why is prostitution not regulated and those workers protected from abuse?
Why is that drugs are not regulated and generating safer usage and sales?
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No evidence?
Once that's in place, anything you can imagine will sail through to become law.
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in answer to your question
Actually you would be surprised those guys do enough business to keep coming back and do it again day after day. If you eat a meal in china town there is a reasonable chance someone will come in the restaurant and offer to sell you a DVD.
As to the articles point, no. On the street, I have never been offered a flash drive with a movie on it, only DVD's. Whether it is true for others or not I do not know.
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