If You're Going To Spread FUD About Evil Cyberlockers, Maybe Don't Use Two Debunked Studies As The Basis?
from the just-saying... dept
The "Washington Legal Foundation" claims to be a legal shop filing lawsuits to protect "free enterprise" and to fight needless government regulation. In the past, the organization has been closely associated with funding from Big Tobacco, and if you look at it's recent litigation efforts, it's almost all in support of Big Pharma and Big Copyright. They helped out on the Aereo case, for example, and sided with Monsanto in its (victorious) case arguing that planting your own seeds can be infringing patents. For a group that claims to be about getting government off your back and supporting free enterprise, it seems somewhat ironic that it appears to so strongly support centralized, government-granted monopolies in the form of copyrights and patents.Either way, WLF's Glenn Lammi recently wrote a piece for Forbes (which, these days, lets basically anyone with an agenda publish), arguing that cyberlockers are evil because they're all about raking in the big bucks from infringement. The article is sloppy and not particularly well argued, in part because it relies heavily on two recent studies (funded by the industry) that have already been debunked. Lammi ignores that part, because it doesn't fit with his narrative.
You know it's going to be a bad argument when it trots out this classic trope:
“Information wants to be free” is a standard rejoinder to criticism of online entertainment piracyExcept, no, it's not the standard rejoinder. These days, it's mainly used as a strawman by people like Lammi who don't want to deal with actual arguments that are being made. Lammi goes on:
Such a sentiment may motivate some copyright thieves, but profit, not ideology, drives the proprietors of “ cyberlockers” whose business is trafficking pirated entertainment content. A recent study by the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA)—”Behind the Cyberlocker Door“— has laid bare that reality. These websites generate profit margins that lawful businesses can only dream of, and they do so on the backs of countless workers in the music, movie, and television industries.Of course, as we've noted for years, if cyberlockers were really so profitable, then shouldn't the response from the entertainment industry be to offer up such services themselves? Lammi, of course, leaves out that the DCA study was commissioned by the industry and that the methodology was so ridiculous that at least one company branded a "piracy haven" has already demanded a retraction of the report and an apology, claiming the report is defamatory. The methodology is clearly bogus. For example, it called Mega.co.nz a piracy haven because the researchers apparently have no idea how it works:
For Mega the researchers looked at 500 files that were shared online. However, the overwhelming majority of Mega’s files, which number more than 500,000,000, are never shared in public.And yet, DCA's bogus methodology insisted that the majority of files on Mega were infringing. Because they don't even understand how it works. That does not give confidence in the study -- or the fact that WLF is relying on it. Then there's the second study:
Unlike some other sites in the report, Mega is a rather traditional cloud hosting provider that’s frequently used for personal backup, through its desktop client or mobile apps for example. The files that are shared in public are the exception here, probably less than one percent of the total.
A recent KPMG study found that nearly all of the most popular TV shows and movies of the past three years (which are, not surprisingly, also the most pirated), are available through video-on-demand services.Except, as discussed, that's totally misleading. What the study found was that all of those works were available on at least one of 34 different services. Of course, if you don't use all of those services, you might not be in luck. In fact, buried deep in the report was the more telling stat that if you used the most popular movie/TV service out there, Netflix, less than 20% are available. So, uh, no, contrary to Lammi's attempt to argue that the industry has done it's part, it has not.
A vigorous debate has developed in recent years over numerous aspects of copyright protection. There can be little doubt, however, that cyberlockers are profitably inducing copyright infringement on a massive scale. The discussion should thus not be over whether infringement is occurring, but what measures legitimate businesses can take to deter and stop it.Actually, there can be plenty of doubt over that claim. Many of those sites rely on advertising, and anyone in the ad business knows that online ad rates are dropping precipitously, and many ad systems rely on clickthroughs. The folks surfing cyberlockers for free movies aren't exactly the kind of folks who click on ads. In fact, a lot of them likely use ad blockers. Yes, some cyberlockers make money from membership fees, but that just shows why the industry should be supporting authorized services like Netflix that provide a better service. And yet they don't.
There are reasonable debates to be had here, but if you're basing your arguments off of debunked studies, don't expect to be taken seriously.
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Filed Under: copyright, cyberlockers, fud, glenn lammi, profit
Companies: washington legal foundation
Reader Comments
The First Word
“The Internet will inevitably win
The music/movie/television industries have a long track record of fighting every technical innovation that comes along -- as documented here on TechDirt and elsewhere multiple times. They do so even when it's blindingly obvious to the smart people in the room that embracing those innovations would enable them to do the one thing that they care about: make more money. (Please. Spare me the babble about "art". If you cared about "art" then Michael Bay and Nicki Minaj would never work again.)So now here they are flogging discredited, laughable "studies" (whose conclusions were written before the research, if any, was done) and whining about cyberlockers. Yesterday it was torrents, and the day before that it was Usenet, and tomorrow it'll be something else.
Doesn't matter. Shut down all of those and we'll simply invent something else -- which you can whine about too. But we WILL do it, and once again, you'll be left hopelessly behind for a year or ten, wasting your time and money and rhetoric on feebly trying to something that you can't possibly stop.
And here's the worst part: I'm sitting on hundreds of terabytes of storage. I have all kind of bandwidth. And I can't even be bothered to download your stuff for free. Really. I could pirate movies and music and TV shows all day long but I don't: there really isn't much there that I see worthy of my time and effort. (And most of that is old and largely forgotten. Blake's 7, anyone?)
The combination of your self-entitled attitude, your persecution of file sharers, your litigious threats, and especially the horribly low quality of your collective output has so alienated me that I've gotten to the point where I've largely removed myself from your customer base. I wouldn't go see the upcoming Tetris movie (really? THAT is what passes for creativity these days?) unless you paid me. Paid me well.
I read, I take walks in the woods, I listen to my music collection (which I paid for, tyvm), I write some of my own, I watch independent/free films online, I do other things, but I certainly don't watch the dreck you put on TV or shell out $15 to sit in a meat locker of a movie theater with people on their cell phones so that I can WATCH PREVIEWS WITH THE SOUND CRANKED UP TO ELEVEN before enduring whatever rehashed tripe you've come up with this time around.
And that should frighten the hell out of you. I'm your core audience: literate, educated, cultured and with enough money to afford your ridiculous prices...and you've pretty much lost my attention. I don't feel the slightest need to see your newest blockbuster or catch any of the Oscar nominees. "Hit shows" come and go on TV, unwatched. And the pop stars you create out of hype and autotune pass by without my even bothering to learn most of their names.
I'm not alone. Others are doing the same thing. Many of them are a lot younger than I am, which is an ominous portent of what the future holds for you. You're rendering yourselves irrelevant, and THAT is a far larger problem for you then some kids sharing a copy of Spiderman 17 (or whatever it's up to now) online.
So my advice to you -- which you'll almost certainly ignore -- is to stop wasting money and time worrying about "piracy". Really. Just stop. Completely. Instead, invest those resources in making quality products, making them universally available, making them participatory, making them relevant, making them artistically brilliant. Yeah, those will get pirated too: so what? That's unimportant. What's important is that you give all of us a reason to give a damn that you even exist, because when enough of us decide that you don't...you will cease to matter.
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ha ha ha that's funny.
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Look at it this way: Should a company that rents out real lockers be held responsible for what its customers put in them? (drugs, bombs, etc.) No, that would be silly to go after them because it's out of their control. Why should cyberlockers be held to any different standards? Just because they're on the Internet?
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http://www.publicstorage.com/SiteData/RentalAgreements/FL_Agreement.doc
Try again?
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"You agree not to misuse the Dropbox services ("Services"). For example, you must not, and must not attempt to do the following...violate the law in any way including storing, publishing or sharing material that's fraudulent, defamatory, misleading, or that violates the privacy or infringes the rights of others."
https://www.dropbox.com/terms#acceptable_use
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You are quoting a rental agreement.
If someone WERE storing illegal or stolen items in said rental facility, would the rental facility be held accountable?
The answer is decidedly "no". Why? Well, it is completely improper to make a provider of a storage facility responsible for the actions of it's patrons.
I completely agree that we should treat online storage lockers just like physical ones.
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Good luck with that.
And Dropbox isn't run like Hotfile or Megaupload were, is it?
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I don't think of Dropbox or Google Drive as cyberlockers.
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you'll 'win' every time ! ! !
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Megaupload, Hotfile, Rapidshare, etc were completely aware that their lockers were being used for illegal purposes and took no real action to stop it.
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Google links to illegal sites. Does that mean it's Google's job to police the internet and actively hunt down said sites and delist them?
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Stop lying. That statement is demonstrably false.
Heck, Megaupload created a tool for the Hollywood studios to go and remove links they thought were infringing, with no verification needed. And of course, the studios abused it and removed perfectly legal content including free open source software and other content that the legitimate copyright holders wanted on Megaupload.
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As far as I know, assuming that the storage facility did not know about the illegal property being stored then no, they wouldn't be facing criminal penalties -- because they didn't break the law.
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Is Public Storage supposed to frisk clients as they bring stuff in or break into their lockers and seach them?
Grow up, boy.
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No, a cyberlocker is , a one-click hosting site that happens to be on the internet. Calling them "lockers" is a trick used by copyright advocates to put the information in the though mode of physical items that need to be manufactured, and therefore are limited in how they cannot be shared and used like gasoline, instead of seeing information as the unlimed resource it truly is.
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I have a Google Drive subscription for 1 TB of storage. I am using maybe 35 GB worth of said storage and all of that is from emails, pictures I've taken, documents I've created within Drive and original recordings of my own songs.
So no, cyberlockers ate not primarily used for infringement. They're used for the storing if personal files by the majority of people.
If you want to say otherwise then be a man and back it up with tangible evidence. Not assumptions, hearsay or anything that isn't an actual verifiable fact.
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I believe you are projecting your own use of cyberlockers onto the whole of everybody else here. Just because you use them solely for piracy doesn't mean they are not used by plenty of other legitimate people for legitimate purposes.
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ha ha ha that's funny.
Where have I heard that argument before...? Oh yeah.
'Are you seriously trying to suggest that the primary use of [VCR's/MP3 players] isn't infringement?
ha ha ha that's funny.'
You know if you lot would stop trying to kill off the next golden goose, and start using them to make money, you'd be a lot better off, both short and long-term.
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I use them to store large graphics files for clients to review.
Perfectly legal, boy.
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Typical
In other words, a bunch of lying hypocrites. Typical.
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Re: Typical
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Who said otherwise?
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Studies you don't like are declared debunked, even if you haven't debunked them. Yet, other ridiculous claims are repeated as true, even if they're ridiculous on their face. Tehranian's "$4.544 billion" figure comes to mind. That number is so dumb, and based on such ridiculous premises, that I honestly can't believe you still cite it as you did last month: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140825/07343128313/could-taking-selfie-museum-violate-copyright- law.shtml Another example is the claim that patent trolls cost $29B per year: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120626/10452719493/29-billion-spent-dealing-with-patent-trolls-u s-alone-last-year.shtml The methodology there was ridiculous, but you just repeated the figure as if it were true. How is that you're so skeptical of studies you don't like, but then you turn off your inner skeptic when it's a study result you do like? Care to address the double standard? Do you even see that you do this?
Of course, as we've noted for years, if cyberlockers were really so profitable, then shouldn't the response from the entertainment industry be to offer up such services themselves?
You're saying that cyberlockers aren't profitable because the "entertainment industry" doesn't chose to offer cyberlockers. How does that make sense? How could the decision to not offer something prove that that thing is not profitable? It doesn't. It's just terrible logic on your part.
Lammi, of course, leaves out that the DCA study was commissioned by the industry and that the methodology was so ridiculous that at least one company branded a "piracy haven" has already demanded a retraction of the report and an apology, claiming the report is defamatory. The methodology is clearly bogus.
Other than your disagreement with their conclusion about Mega, can you actually tell us specifically what it is about the methodology that's "clearly bogus"? What about all of the other sites they looked at? You haven't debunked the methodology because you haven't actually even discussed what their methodology is. You're just rushing to call it debunked without actually debunking it. Again, the double standard.
Then there's the second study:
A recent KPMG study found that nearly all of the most popular TV shows and movies of the past three years (which are, not surprisingly, also the most pirated), are available through video-on-demand services.
Except, as discussed, that's totally misleading. What the study found was that all of those works were available on at least one of 34 different services.
They say the videos are "available though video-on-demand services," and you say that's "totally misleading" because there were "34 different services"? Again, how is it misleading? The report was very upfront about what percentage of films were available on the different types of services. Again, you just want it to be debunked, but you haven't debunked it.
In fact, buried deep in the report was the more telling stat that if you used the most popular movie/TV service out there, Netflix, less than 20% are available.
This is just so dumb. It wasn't "buried deep in the report," it was included in a full-sized graphic on page 8, IIRC. That's not "buried deep." The report was very upfront and honest about everything it said. Why the need to pretend like they weren't?
There are reasonable debates to be had here, but if you're basing your arguments off of debunked studies, don't expect to be taken seriously.
When are you going to have a "reasonable debate" rather than making unsupported claims that these reports are debunked? Posts like this just make you look unreasonable. How are we to take you seriously?
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Just like what you did right now, in demanding, yet again, a reasonable debate (further question, why did you put them in scare quotes?)
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I have no idea what that is. Sorry!
My point is that Mike didn't actually look at the methodology in the reports. For example, the cyberlocker report is here: https://media.gractions.com/314A5A5A9ABBBBC5E3BD824CF47C46EF4B9D3A76/8854660c-1bbb-4166-aa20-2dd9828 9e80c.pdf
He hasn't shown, for example, that their conclusion is wrong that 80% of the content at the top cyberlockers is pirated. He hasn't shown that the revenue or net figures for these sites is wrong because the methodology is flawed. He just has some silly argument that they must not be profitable because some unidentified "industry" isn't doing it. That makes no sense. Let's see actual analysis of the actual methodology. If he can't provide that, then he hasn't debunked it.
Just like what you did right now, in demanding, yet again, a reasonable debate (further question, why did you put them in scare quotes?)
I was quoting Mike. He said "reasonable debates." It wasn't scare quotes. It was just regular quotes.
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The study's authors haven't shown their numbers are correct (rather than pulled out of their asses) and now it's Mike's fault?
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I have no idea what that is. Sorry!
My point is that Mike didn't actually look at the methodology in the reports. For example, the cyberlocker report is here: https://media.gractions.com/314A5A5A9ABBBBC5E3BD824CF47C46EF4B9D3A76/8854660c-1bbb-4166-aa20-2dd9828 9e80c.pdf
He hasn't shown, for example, that their conclusion is wrong that 80% of the content at the top cyberlockers is pirated. He hasn't shown that the revenue or net figures for these sites is wrong because the methodology is flawed. He just has some silly argument that they must not be profitable because some unidentified "industry" isn't doing it. That makes no sense. Let's see actual analysis of the actual methodology. If he can't provide that, then he hasn't debunked it.
Just like what you did right now, in demanding, yet again, a reasonable debate (further question, why did you put them in scare quotes?)
I was quoting Mike. He said "reasonable debates." It wasn't scare quotes. It was just regular quotes.
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Let's see actual analysis of the actual methodology. If he can't provide that, then he hasn't debunked it.
It's been debunked. Just because you can't be bothered to CLICK ON THE LINK PROVIDED IN THE ARTICLE doesn't mean that it hasn't.
Let's see actual analysis of the actual methodology.
Alrighty then:
Which is right there in THE LINKED ARTICLE at http://torrentfreak.com/report-brands-dotcoms-mega-a-piracy-haven-140918/
Debunked.
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Let's see actual analysis of the actual methodology.
Alrighty then:
For Mega the researchers looked at 500 files that were shared online. However, the overwhelming majority of Mega’s files, which number more than 500,000,000, are never shared in public.
Which is right there in THE LINKED ARTICLE at http://torrentfreak.com/report-brands-dotcoms-mega-a-piracy-haven-140918/
Debunked.
Please spell it out for me: (1) What is the exact claim in the report? Are they claiming that ~80% of ALL files on Mega are infringing? Or are they only talking about the percentage of publicly-available files? (2) Whatever the beef is with the percentage of infringing files for Mega, how does that apply to the other 29 filelockers in the report? (3) What about all of the other claims in the report other than the percentage of infringing files? (4) How does disagreeing with one number (even though you haven't explained exactly what it is about this number they got wrong) mean that the ENTIRE report is "debunked"?
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This is the most true/accurate thing you've said: that you need things spelled out for you.
(1) What is the exact claim in the report?
Are they claiming that ~80% of ALL files on Mega are infringing?
Yes. See above.
Or are they only talking about the percentage of publicly-available files?
No. See above.
(2) Whatever the beef is with the percentage of infringing files for Mega, how does that apply to the other 29 filelockers in the report?
It applies to all 29 of them in the same way. See above.
(3) What about all of the other claims in the report other than the percentage of infringing files?
(4) How does disagreeing with one number (even though you haven't explained (4) How does disagreeing with one number (even though you haven't explained exactly what it is about this number they got wrong) mean that the ENTIRE report is "debunked"?) mean that the ENTIRE report is "debunked"?
These two are similar enough to be tackled as one.
The problem, if you would open up your eyes to see it, is that the rest of their conclusions are founded on that faulty premise. There's a legal term "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" with which you should familiarize yourself.
As for me not explaining " ... exactly what it is about this number they got wrong," I already have in several other comments. Do try to keep up.
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Here's why Mike's reliance on that paper is so dumb: It assumes that all sorts of things that Mike would say are not infringing are in fact infringement. For example, look at Mike's original post about the paper: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071119/015956.shtml Mike says: "Replying to an email with quoted text? Infringement! Reply to 20 emails? You're looking at $3 million in statutory damages." The problem with that is that Mike doesn't actually think that replying to an email is infringement. And he's right, because it's not. Imagine if someone were sued for infringement for replying to an email with quoted text. Mike would vigorously defend that person, and rightly so. But when that same stupid claim is part of a paper that makes copyright look dumb, it's repeated without question. That's the double standard I'm talking about.
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I thought the article was pretty clear, but here goes. The researchers took 500 files that were shared online from Mega and determined that 81.4% were infringing. They then assumed that percentage was accurate for the entire site. I'd first ask how they determined these files were infringing considering you cannot actually do that without a court telling you they are, but assuming they are correct, they selected the 500 files from a subset of files shared publicly and that is a very small subset of the files on the site. Not only does that call into question the validity of the sample set, but they selected from a group that satisfied a requirement for the file to be infringing since it is legal to make backups of copyright material and store them without sharing.
That's a pretty big problem with their "study" and calls into question their results.
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You haven't shown us anything. They collected a random sample of 500 files for each site. Unless you can tell me how their methodology in collecting those 500 samples is wrong, or even what the margin of error is, I don't see how you've demonstrated that it "calls into question their results." Can you be more specific? As far as a court being needed to determine if they're infringing, I think that's bullshit. Also, these were publicly available files, not private backups.
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1. public files available for download by anyone
2. private files accessible by only approved groups and the uploader.
Mikes conclusion very clearly states that taking a a sample from only the publicly available files is a bad sample set because the publicly available files account for less than the majority of all files stored on mega it is by definition not a representative sample of the data which taints all results derived by the report.
This is because it could be that publicly available files contain a statistically higher amount of infringing property, but it could also be true that none of the private files hosted by mega contain infringing material. An if that was true then the report suggests a wildly larger amount of infringement than may actually be occurring, and we will never know because the data is bogus.
That is why the report is bogus. Because it uses a non representative sample of data to draw conclusions.
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1. public files available for download by anyone
2. private files accessible by only approved groups and the uploader.
Mikes conclusion very clearly states that taking a a sample from only the publicly available files is a bad sample set because the publicly available files account for less than the majority of all files stored on mega it is by definition not a representative sample of the data which taints all results derived by the report.
This is because it could be that publicly available files contain a statistically higher amount of infringing property, but it could also be true that none of the private files hosted by mega contain infringing material. An if that was true then the report suggests a wildly larger amount of infringement than may actually be occurring, and we will never know because the data is bogus.
That is why the report is bogus. Because it uses a non representative sample of data to draw conclusions.
Can you show me in the report where they say that they're using the numbers from the publicly-available files to make conclusions about the non-publicly-available files? I'm not saying that's not true. I just don't remember seeing that. What page is that on? Or did they only limit their percentage to the publicly-available files? I'm not sure I understand exactly what this criticism is.
Regardless, even if that's true for Mega, what does that have to do with the other 29 filelockers? It makes no sense to decide that the entire report, which makes many claims, is "bogus" because you disagree with one particular part of it.
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Yes, I can. From THE VERY FIRST PAGE of the report:
They even have a purty graph of it on page 42, since reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong suit.
FFS, can't you even be bothered to look at the report you're trying to DEFEND?!?! You've already made it clear you won't look at the ones that debunk it; the least you could do is read the one making the shoddy claims.
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First of all, they weren't random. Can't you be bothered to read the article? They were ONLY from publicly posted links.
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How would they search the unsearchable private parts? That said, how does randomly searching the public parts mean that it's not random? Isn't it a random selection from the available set?
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I'm not sure. That's THEIR problem. But one they should sort out before making a claim like this:
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Sure, but then the conclusions ONLY APPLY TO THE AVAILABLE SET.
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This indicates that a large part of Megas income is from providing a service to individuals for backup purposes, or co-operation in carrying out projects, and has nothing to do with encouraging infringement.
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He's clearly a liar.
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No, they didn't. The collected a random sample of files that were publicly shared. That's a very specific subset (and a minority of) the files stored on the site. Their sample selection is clearly skewed and cannot be taken as representational of the contents of the site as a whole.
Also, this is a bit of a red herring. The legal standard for declaring something as an illegal tool for infringement is (among other things) that there there must be no "substantial legal use". The way courts have ruled, "substantial" does not even mean "the larger percentage" of use. The legitimate use can be relatively small and still count.
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It'll be hidden before the day is through, don't worry. That said, I really am disappointed by posts like this. I know Mike can do better.
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You realise that you have failed to refute any of Mikes points right?
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Things are about to get interesting
- The cost of medical treatment has increased several times faster than the rate of inflation for decades.
- The biggest driver of this trend has been the increase in costs of pharmaceuticals. (The second-biggest is our ridiculous, insane medical insurance system, but that's a matter for a different comment.)
- The biggest factor behind high pharmaceutical prices is a lack of competition, as shown by the far lower prices at which generic versions of the same drug are offered for almost every drug that has a generic version.
- The reason little to no competition exists in so many cases is the ability for pharmaceutical companies to obtain patent coverage on their drugs and charge monopoly prices rather than market prices.
- The baby boom generation, the largest demographic group in America, is currently beginning to retire, to age, and to draw on government benefits such as Medicare.
- With aging comes health problems, and the increased need to use Medicare.
- An exponentially increasing demand for expensive pharmaceuticals will inevitably strain our already-overstressed, over-indebted Treasury beyond the breaking point.
- A nation running out of money has far greater repercussions than simply a financial crisis; it historically leads to systemic meltdown, riots, shortages of food and other basic supplies, and the breakdown of social order very quickly.
Conclusion: We are on the verge of reaching the point at which there is an irreconcilable conflict between the existence of pharmaceutical patents and the national security of the USA. It will be interesting to watch politicians who are strongly in favor of both concepts try to deal with this simple truth.
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Re: Things are about to get interesting
Most politicians sold America out to corporations long ago.
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Again, you just want it to be debunked, but you haven't debunked it.
You're being intentionally obtuse here. These studies have already been debunked and there are LINKS helpfully provided for them. Look! Here they are again:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140930/06320728672/mpaa-tries-to-ignore-fact-that-study-it -paid-reveals-very-few-top-films-are-available-netflix.shtml
http://torrentfreak.com/report-brands-do tcoms-mega-a-piracy-haven-140918/
It is thoroughly misleading (another term you can't seem to wrap your head around) by claiming that they haven't been debunked just because the debunking doesn't occur in this article.
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Financial Position
If I record some show playing over the air or on cable via video tape, DVR, or other, and then spend some time with a video processing program and cut the commercials out, that is perfectly legal. Settle law, so to speak.
vs
Watching said show, maybe even several times, paying for cable and ignoring the commercials, then download said show via a torrent.
What is the difference? I mean the practical difference, not the niggling issues revolving around copyright holders insisting on getting paid for every viewing multiplied by the number of guests in my home. I mean the practical difference as the copyright holder winds up in exactly the same financial position, they got paid for the broadcast and commercial viewing (or not viewing).
So, what is the problem outside of the butthurt because the copyright holders wants and desires that are outside of the law?
Downloading is illegal? Same financial position. Copyright holder loses control of their IP? Same financial position. Recording? Same financial position.
So long as I don't sell my 'recording', just what is the problem?
I know what they want, a broadcast form of the Internet where they control their IP at all times for life of the creator plus 70 to 120 years, or wherever that number winds up after the next round of congresscritter bribery.
Oh, and the same goes for music.
Storing it on a cyberlocker changes nothing. Setting your cyberlocker up to share such content changes nothing, except it is possible that some of those downloaders didn't do the recording themselves.
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Stepping on the wrong toes
Right. How dare those sites do this! That's the prerogative of the fat, bloated, insanely greedy pigs who RUN the music, movie and television industries.
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The Internet will inevitably win
So now here they are flogging discredited, laughable "studies" (whose conclusions were written before the research, if any, was done) and whining about cyberlockers. Yesterday it was torrents, and the day before that it was Usenet, and tomorrow it'll be something else.
Doesn't matter. Shut down all of those and we'll simply invent something else -- which you can whine about too. But we WILL do it, and once again, you'll be left hopelessly behind for a year or ten, wasting your time and money and rhetoric on feebly trying to something that you can't possibly stop.
And here's the worst part: I'm sitting on hundreds of terabytes of storage. I have all kind of bandwidth. And I can't even be bothered to download your stuff for free. Really. I could pirate movies and music and TV shows all day long but I don't: there really isn't much there that I see worthy of my time and effort. (And most of that is old and largely forgotten. Blake's 7, anyone?)
The combination of your self-entitled attitude, your persecution of file sharers, your litigious threats, and especially the horribly low quality of your collective output has so alienated me that I've gotten to the point where I've largely removed myself from your customer base. I wouldn't go see the upcoming Tetris movie (really? THAT is what passes for creativity these days?) unless you paid me. Paid me well.
I read, I take walks in the woods, I listen to my music collection (which I paid for, tyvm), I write some of my own, I watch independent/free films online, I do other things, but I certainly don't watch the dreck you put on TV or shell out $15 to sit in a meat locker of a movie theater with people on their cell phones so that I can WATCH PREVIEWS WITH THE SOUND CRANKED UP TO ELEVEN before enduring whatever rehashed tripe you've come up with this time around.
And that should frighten the hell out of you. I'm your core audience: literate, educated, cultured and with enough money to afford your ridiculous prices...and you've pretty much lost my attention. I don't feel the slightest need to see your newest blockbuster or catch any of the Oscar nominees. "Hit shows" come and go on TV, unwatched. And the pop stars you create out of hype and autotune pass by without my even bothering to learn most of their names.
I'm not alone. Others are doing the same thing. Many of them are a lot younger than I am, which is an ominous portent of what the future holds for you. You're rendering yourselves irrelevant, and THAT is a far larger problem for you then some kids sharing a copy of Spiderman 17 (or whatever it's up to now) online.
So my advice to you -- which you'll almost certainly ignore -- is to stop wasting money and time worrying about "piracy". Really. Just stop. Completely. Instead, invest those resources in making quality products, making them universally available, making them participatory, making them relevant, making them artistically brilliant. Yeah, those will get pirated too: so what? That's unimportant. What's important is that you give all of us a reason to give a damn that you even exist, because when enough of us decide that you don't...you will cease to matter.
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How about you name a technology that they haven't fought against?
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He's been up in the latest funniest comments thread, writing up stirring defenses on why average_joe and Whatever must be allowed to be spammy little assholes.
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Awesome comment, have my insightful vote dear sir. With few exceptions I'm currently part of the crowd that does not care. It has been this way for a few years now.
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