The MPAA Isn't About Helping Hollywood. It's About Preserving Its Own Need To Exist.
from the shirky-principle dept
In the past we've discussed the Shirky Principle, named after a statement by Clay Shirky that:"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."In some ways that's a corollary to Upton Sinclair's famous quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"I've long believed that the MPAA has this problem in spades. The group, which is supposed to be about helping the big Hollywood studios, has long taken a very different positions. Five years ago, we wrote about how bizarre it was that the MPAA had an entire "Content Protection" division. As we noted at the time, the organization not only had a Chief Content Protection Officer, but also an Executive VP of Content Protection, a Senior VP of Content Protection and a regular VP of Content Protection, and probably a handful of Content Protection Minions or whatever they call their non-VP worker bees.
And yet, there didn't seem to be anyone at the MPAA who had a title along the lines of "Chief Open Internet Evangelist" or "Chief Digital Business Model Strategist" or something along those lines, who could have been working with Hollywood to help transition the organization into the digital age. No, instead that transition has come in fits and starts with the MPAA itself fighting against most of the key moves and doing little to help forward thinking filmmakers and studios. In fact, if you talk to many of the up-and-coming filmmakers these days, they're just as angry about the MPAA's stance as open internet supporters -- because they realize just how counterproductive a "protection" regime is, rather than a "embrace the opportunity" regime would be.
Eli Dourado has written up a fantastic discussion of this very idea, by focusing on two key things that came out of the Sony Hack that, together, more or less highlight the point above: that the MPAA is not pro-Hollywood at all, but rather seems entirely focused on "giving itself a reason to exist, rather than solving the film industry's" challenges. Specifically he highlights these two things:
- Leaked emails revealed the Motion Picture Association of America’s ongoing plans to censor the Internet to reduce digital film piracy.
- The hack prompted a surprise, online Christmas Eve release of The Interview that let us observe the effect of a new distribution model on film revenue.
When put together, these vignettes raise important questions about the future of the film industry and its lobbying efforts. Is the MPAA really representing Hollywood’s long-term interests in Washington, or is it trying to fight old battles over and over in an attempt to justify its own existence?Dourado goes through the detailed history -- revealed by the Sony Hack -- of how, post-SOPA, the MPAA has regrouped to focus on ways to bring back site-blocking and censorship online, while simultaneously attacking Google at every turn (even when Google did exactly what the MPAA asked for and demoted sites the MPAA dislikes). As Dourado notes:
But the more striking point is what this strategy reveals about the MPAA: the organization still deeply believes in site blocking as more or less the solution to online piracy. It continues to position itself as an enemy of the open Internet.From there, he discusses the success of the online release of The Interview, pointing out how well it did. Of course, some of that may have been because of all the (somewhat questionable) news about the supposed threat from North Korea, leading some to choose to watch it for patriotic reasons. Still, Dourado notes that, while there was piracy of the film as well, much of it came outside the US, because Sony initially limited the release to US only online. And the movie did make a fair bit of money online and, perhaps more importantly, got people to pay attention to its online efforts:
And then you get to the divergence question: which strategy is best for Hollywood and the film industry... and which strategy is best for the MPAA? Take a wild guess:There is additional evidence that the online release was a win for Sony: its YouTube channel gained 243,000 new subscribers in the aftermath of the Interview release. As YouTube entrepreneurs like Michelle Phan would note, subscribers are as good as cash, a ready source of revenue for future online movie releases, if Sony decides to do more of them.
The Interview episode shows that the Internet need not be viewed only as a source of piracy. With a modest change in business model, it can also be the film industry’s next great distribution platform.
What is the best strategy for the film industry going forward? Should it continue to fight the open Internet, as it did with SOPA, and as it has continued to do through state AG investigations and lobbying the ITC? Or should it embrace the Internet as a potentially profitable distribution platform that is in any case here to stay?He goes even further, pointing out that this stupid focus on "content protection" has been shown time and time again not to work, whereas embracing the internet seems much more likely to work. But, of course, it would leave the MPAA with less things to do. And thus, to me, it goes all the way back around to the Shirky Principle. The MPAA has to keep focusing on "the piracy problem" because it has set itself up as "the solution" to that problem, perhaps knowing full well that it's a solution that can never be solved. Yet, because of this, it guarantees a large role for itself, convincing gullible studio bosses to keep forking money over to the MPAA, so that its leadership can keep earning multi-million dollar salaries.
It’s clear which strategy the MPAA, the lobbying organization, prefers. If the studios were to truly embrace the Internet, the MPAA would have a much diminished reason for existence. There is no one you need to lobby in order to release films online. Many employees, such as chairman Chris Dodd and general counsel Steven Fabrizio, would have little to do. The organization would have to go back to administering its film ratings system and asking states for ridiculous film tax credits.
The real issue here is that, as younger, more internet-savvy filmmakers continue to bubble up throughout Hollywood, sooner or later more of them are going to realize what a farce the MPAA has become. And just like the MPAA's "content protection" strategy has totally failed Hollywood, eventually it's going to totally fail itself as well. That's what you get for fighting the future, rather than embracing it.
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Filed Under: anti-piracy, content protection, hollywood, innovation, lobbying
Companies: mpaa
Reader Comments
The First Word
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And if it gets its will and it is empirically proven that even that won't work and it will harm themselves it will keep pushing for even more draconian and destructive measures. Come to think of it Google may have tried to check if this is the case by giving what they wanted to the best of their efforts. The results were more whining and plenty of abuses of the system.
THE MPAA and all the other *AAs and their international buddies do much more harm to creators than any amount of piracy could ever do.
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In any case, let us debunk your bs.
Tell me this, when they're trying to sell their film through legitimate channels, how are they going to compete with everyone else just giving it away for free?
Offering what torrent sites do. Availability and ease of use. Netflix won me because of it. When content becomes a commodity you'll get money from offering valuable stuff. You see, Netflix sees PopcornTime as a threat nowadays because it is as easy to use and offers more up to date content. There isn't much Netflix can do because the MAFIAA refuses to license the entirety of their content so there is that. In a sense, the MPAA is the biggest threat to the studios now because it's backwards ideas FORCE many people into piracy.
Stop with the high-level nonsense. Tell us exactly why their business model is wrong and how you would fix it.
Y U NO DEBATE ME MIKE? Don't make a fool of yourself, the article itself hints at what should be done and we have had plenty of articles as recent as this week that point out what needs to be done. But you are a moron so you will ignore anything that doesn't fit your agenda even if it's rubbing against your face.
If you're going to continuously lash out at the MPAA, then give us details of how you would do it better. I know you have so much experience, what with your blog and all.
Read his articles, read his reports (The Sky is Rising series and others). They are free. And if you still can't put these basic concepts through your thick skull you can HIRE Floor64 as consultants. Just scroll to the end of the page and there are contact links. Besides, being an insider you already got contacted by a TD employee to get a goddamn hangouts session with Mike so it's even easier. It's about time you stopped being such an idiot.
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Cant believe I bother to respond to this frankly.
"Tell us exactly why their business model is wrong"
They should not even have a business model in the first place. They dont do anything nor do they bring any value to game.
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I rented it from YouTube. It was pretty funny. I probably wouldn't have rented it had there not been so much press about the North Korea thing and the film being pulled. I don't think you can glean much from this one piece of datum, especially given the uniqueness of what happened.
That said, in Mike's utopian vision, everyone could simply upload the video to YouTube. In his view, nothing should be done to protect the content. How many would rent it for $6 from YouTube when there's tons of free copies available on the same platform?
Morally, though, I don't see why Mike thinks Sony, who put out over $40M to make the movie, should have to compete with everyone else, who put out nothing, to create it. What justifies the free-riding he so desperately yearns for?
He'll never address these issues, sadly. He'll just keep calling their business model outdated without ever telling us what they should do, specifically, instead.
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Second Hollywood
It looks like a second Hollywood will soon arise from a new location as the young and hungry seek to get away from MPAA and legacy studio's collective head burying.
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So the "future" that you think they should embrace is just an open Internet with no rules whatsoever. Is that right?
Point to where this was said. The exact wording mind, don't just give a vague, 'well if you read it it's obviously there' excuse, point to where exactly Mike made the claim that you are assigning to him.
Tell me this, when they're trying to sell their film through legitimate channels, how are they going to compete with everyone else just giving it away for free? Do you really think that is sustainable?
Water is free, yet companies manage to make a tidy profit selling bottled water.
Almost every movie, book, or song is available for free already if someone cares to spend the time looking, yet all of them continue to sell quite well.
If someone selling almost anything that can be turned into or is already digital format(songs/movies/books/etc) claims that they 'can't compete with free', then they are essentially saying that they can't compete, period, because they already are, and always will be.
They're really just supposed to sit back and let everybody else give their stuff away? That's your suggestion?
And again, point to the exact wording to support the claim you are assigning to him.
If it's more than that, then give us specifics, Mike.
It's not his job to tell you how to do yours, or tell them how to do theirs. And in fact it's unnecessary. I for example couldn't tell you how to fix a car if it broke down, but I can certainly point out that a car is clearly 'broken' if it can't go more than a mile without the engine dying.
You don't have to propose a solution, to be able to point out where something isn't working. It's nice if you can, but not required.
Tell us exactly why their business model is wrong and how you would fix it. If you're going to continuously lash out at the MPAA, then give us details of how you would do it better.
If you actually bothered to read what he wrote, instead of just ranting about what you think he wrote, you'd know he's already discussed this numerous times, in many articles, over many years.
Here's a few of the basic ideas you've clearly missed:
1) Do offer your product in convenient fashions, making it easy for potential customers to purchase what they want, when they want, in the format they want.
2) Do not try and screw the customer over by making them jump through multiple hoops, sign up with multiple services, and block them from being able to purchase your product due to moronic and completely outdated 'release windows' and 'This service/product is not available in your area'.
3) Do provide more than just a product to your customer. Connect with them, become a real person to them, and make them want to give you money and support you. Put a face on the company that they are buying from, and make it one that people don't want to immediately punch for any number of reasons.
4) Do not make your product so badly broken due to trying to 'protect' it against piracy('protection' that will be broken or bypassed by actual pirates, and only end up effecting paying customers), that people are driven to piracy in order to obtain a working product. If your DRM makes the legal offering significantly worse than the pirated copy, then you are just punishing those that are willing to pay you, and giving them one more reason to avoid doing so in the future.
I know you have so much experience, what with your blog and all.
As opposed to your experience doing what again? Oh, right, spending years complaining and demanding everyone else tell you, and those you support, how to do your jobs.
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It is clear that revenue generation once you embrace digital distribution and the age of the Internet requires a multi-pronged approach and further experimentation.
They key thing you always seem to miss is that simply fighting against the rising tide is a losing strategy. You criticize Mike as if he actually advocates throwing out all rules and letting chaos reign. He has never said that and your continued obtuseness is so very frustrating. Most of the solutions I have seen proposed on Techdirt are nuanced with the unique parameters associated with the particular situation.
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Show me these free copies on YouTube. I couldn't find any at all. Your question is flawed from the get go.
And like RadioactiveSmurf indicated - at least 2.5 million people choose to go the legitimate route online, even though free versions were available to them. So my answer to your question is "quite a few of them".
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No doubt the MPAA is very mindful of the RIAA's problems, that is, RIAA's funding has dried up as the music industry has embraced the internet rather than continue its futile fight against it, leaving the RIAA as an organization largely without a mission.
The MPAA certainly doesn't want itself to follow the RIAA's path, so to keep the money flowing, the MPAA must constantly find (or create) new crises that need to be trumpeted and new battles that need to be fought -- even when (as usual) the MPAA is fighting on the wrong side.
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I think this is the future that Hollywood is trying its hardest to kill.
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the mpaa
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In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people. First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
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They problem with their model is their constant distortion of supply, that never works well. e.g. I am sorry that show is only availible on Fridays at 9pm and you have to have an electrical wire connected to our supply chain if you want to 'purchase.'
They should put out their content 24/7 for a price. Their own sites, or netflix, youtube, whatever. I either belong to the site, or I pay to see it.
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I'm sure they understand the risks far greater than any of us. Regardless, what's your point? Just because there are risks, i.e., piracy, why shouldn't they do anything to mitigate those risks? I don't understand why content shouldn't be protected. Can you explain?
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Yep. Brought to you almost daily on Techdirt. Just don't ask him any questions.
It is clear that revenue generation once you embrace digital distribution and the age of the Internet requires a multi-pronged approach and further experimentation.
I have more content to stream than I could possibly ever watch. They seem to be trying new things. I'm not sure what your point is. I rent movies online from several different sources.
They key thing you always seem to miss is that simply fighting against the rising tide is a losing strategy. You criticize Mike as if he actually advocates throwing out all rules and letting chaos reign. He has never said that and your continued obtuseness is so very frustrating. Most of the solutions I have seen proposed on Techdirt are nuanced with the unique parameters associated with the particular situation.
Mike doesn't think YouTube should be liable for anything that its users do--even if YouTube knows about it and directly profits from it. Heck, he's not sure that Ulbricht should be liable for running Silk Road, even though he encouraged others to sell drugs and directly profited from each transaction. He doesn't think YouTube's users should be liable for anything either. That's just suing the "fans." Protecting content in any way is just holding on to a dinosaur business model. I think it's clear that Mike sees nothing wrong with anyone uploading whatever they like to YouTube. Has he ever indicated otherwise? Of course, he won't just talk about these things directly. That would be too easy.
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Dude, again, kindly shut the fuck up. You are not even in the ballpark of the conversation
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You missed my point. In Mike's utopian world, where content is unprotected, many copies would be on YouTube. The fact that you didn't find any reflects the actual world we live in, where YouTube is renting copies and has no reason to compete with itself.
And like RadioactiveSmurf indicated - at least 2.5 million people choose to go the legitimate route online, even though free versions were available to them. So my answer to your question is "quite a few of them".
I'm one of those who went the "legitimate route." So what? Not everyone is a selfish pirate. We know that. What does that have to do with protecting content?
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Its not just Mike, actually its codified in law.
'Protecting the content' STFU
Actually, Mike should be honored that he has shaken the MPAA up enough for them to send out a clown like you.
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Are you really comparing copyrighted works to tangible goods? I thought that wasn't allowed on Techdirt. Regardless, I don't get your point. How is water, which is tangible and needed for survival, like a movie stream, which is nontangible and unnecessary?
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I am not sure I concur with that. Make something worth watching and I will pay for it. Nothing vexing about this at all. Make it not available everywhere out the gate costs idiots money.
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This is their own fault. If they hold titles in reserve, they may loose value. Perhaps you and the MPAA should look into business school.
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MPAA Controls the Theaters - for now
With digital distribution, streaming, and such, even control of the theaters is mattering less and less each year.
This is the fear - for if the MPAA loses control of the theater distribution, it's pretty much all over for the MPAA.
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Re: MPAA Controls the Theaters - for now
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If you want to create an income, then create something people are thankfull for, with quality.......with the userbase of free......cant think of a better system to tell whats quality and whats not.......i cant think of a better system to let artists know how they can improve, and maybe create the next big one
Hire competent community devs i.e. communicates with the user base , who listen to their users, who can add new requested features that would in turn keep or introduce new users
THATS whats happening RIGHT now, without multi million corporations........THATS how they need to start thinking, THATS what they need to START embracing
NOT
"The MPAA has to keep focusing on "the piracy problem" because it has set itself up as "the solution" to that problem, perhaps knowing full well that it's a solution that can never be solved. Yet, because of this, it guarantees a large role for itself, convincing gullible studio bosses to keep forking money over to the MPAA, so that its leadership can keep earning multi-million dollar salaries."
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What specifics do you need? You're proving he's right every time you pay for his free content.
There's so much irony here, but one of the biggest is your misconception that piracy is hard, or even risky. It's not, despite millions upon millions of dollars the MPAA and studios have thrown at it. In other words, Mike's "utopian vision" already exists as far as your complaint is concerned.
Here's the thing. A content company isn't competing with pirates. This is a fallacy, and one that even a slight amount of logic utterly destroys. There's only one scenario where piracy even affects a content creator, and that's the scenario where a potential customer would have bought their product, but due to free alternatives, chose not to. Every other scenario is completely irrelevant; maybe the person chose to pirate, but wouldn't have bought the product anyway, or the person didn't pirate, and wouldn't have bought the product ever, or they bought the product. None of those scenarios are slightly affected by piracy, although for some reason everyone gets hung up over the first one. If by some miracle they couldn't pirate your stuff, they still wouldn't buy it, so the end result is the same.
The actual problem, where someone could have been a customer but chose to pirate instead, is always fixed by one of two things: either you make the product available at a price they're willing to pay, or you improve your service to a level that they're willing to pay. If you don't fix one of those two things, all you're doing is creating the person who pirates but wouldn't have bought it anyway, by definition.
The amusing part is that the person who pirates, but may have become a customer, is actually more likely to increase profits than the opposite. Why? If they considered paying they probably have an interest in your product. By pirating it, they are being exposed to the quality of content you create. If they like it, they are more likely to consider purchasing other products from you in the future.
This is known in fancy business terms as "advertising." Companies pay millions of dollars per year in advertising. A 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl costs around $4 million. And piracy is advertising, even if it isn't authorized. The best part? It's free. So your worst possible scenario, the person who would have bought, but chose not to due to the availability of free alternatives, just got a full advertisement that didn't cost you a cent (again, because unless your product is at a price or service level they're willing to pay for, they aren't going to pay...this is common sense).
This works even better for the younger crowd. Kids in high school and college rarely have a ton of expendable income, if any. They aren't going to buy a lot of content because they simply can't afford to. No amount of anti-piracy is going to magically change their income; without access to your content, they simply aren't going to buy it.
You know what free access to your stuff causes, though? Interest. Habit. Fandom. Things that, once they do have more expendable income than free time, makes your better service and reasonably priced product more appealing. Studies have shown over and over again that individuals with the highest piracy rates are usually the ones that spend the most money on content. Which is obvious if you think about it; fans want MORE.
Do you think HBO subscriptions would have risen as much if Game of Thrones was only available via HBO, and not piracy? Of course not. The only people watching would be those that already had a subscription. People bought it because they wanted to watch the show the second it came out. And they were willing to pay a ton for it (HBO is really expensive, especially if you don't already have cable).
So yes, they're supposed to sit back and let other people give their stuff away, like they've effectively been doing for years. All that money going to ineffectual lawyers and lobbying could instead go to making a service so good, with so much content, that people will flock to it, and piracy will die out except for the few diehards that refuse to pay for anything (which, incidentally, will never be your customers).
Granted, this sucks for the lawyers and lobbyists making bank on exploiting the content industry, but sorry if I don't really care about the people who are adding nothing to our economy. Which is the whole point of this article, really...the MPAA is made of up lawyers and lobbyists, not content creators.
Funny how that works.
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As soon as the movie showed up on YouTube it was "unprotected". Where do you think the torrents came from?
And I'm guessing that the 2.5 million YouTube number would be much higher if it wasn't limited to the US. You can basically disregard any piracy numbers from outside the US in this comparison since that's the only choice that was available to them.
I'm one of those who went the "legitimate route." So what? Not everyone is a selfish pirate. We know that. What does that have to do with protecting content?
This is where our philosophies disagree. You seem to think that the public needs to be forced into paying like children or else zero money will be made. I happen to think that's a bunch of hogwash. Most everybody will gladly pay a price they think is fair for a movie as long as it's convenient and available when it's desired. That's a pretty much a proven fact when you consider that Hollywood's bottom lines continue grow despite piracy. I believe that protecting the content actually hinders their sales. One number I would really like to see instead of "sales lost to piracy" is "sales lost to DRM, release windows & unavailability".
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You keep saying that as if there's a shred of truth in it.
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Just as Australians were forced in this case due to region blocking. They couldn't buy legal access.
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So, this analogy is moronic. And thus, of course, deemed "insightful" on Techdirt.
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Yet people consistently pay for bottled water, including brands like Dasani, which is literally filtered tap water. In both cases we're talking about an essentially unlimited resource, which not coincidentally tends to be free or close to it (weird thing, that supply and demand principle, especially when supply approaches infinity...).
Your comparison to the necessity and tangibility of both things is irrelevant. He wasn't talking about water in general, which is finite and valuable, but about water for drinking in communities, where it is effectively unlimited and available for free. And yet people still pay for that same resource when it's completely unnecessary to do so.
This directly counters your statement that people won't pay for something if they can get it for free and the resource is unlimited. This is demonstrably false.
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* installing a rootkit onto my machine for a copy i legally bought;
* enforcing censorship "that has worked well in repressive regimes such as china, so it should work here";
* curtailing the free expression of others without a whiff of due process;
* preventing people from connecting through the most revolutionary communication medium since the mainstream adoption of the printing press (a la gutenberg)?
fuck no.
as said in the past, "your rights end where mine begin".
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And by communities I assume he means in the home, where most refrigerators will give you essentially the same thing as the majority of bottled water. And even if the water is from special place, it's still essentially water (there isn't a ton you can do to modify plain water). Even a drinking fountain is not giving you a significantly different product from a bottle of Dasani or Aquafina, other than the plastic bottle.
People pay for the convenience and perceived value of bottled water, not because it's a superior, finite product that they can't easily get elsewhere.
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Re: RIAA/MPAA
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If one or two people go "huh, I didn't think about it that way" the energy was worth it =).
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Because it wants to break the Internet and censor without any due process - just their word.
As far as how to fix it, well, that's exactly their fucking problem. They're free to go the way of all other things that were rendered obsolete, like the 8-track, Dodo, etc.
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antidirt: the self-refuting bot...
hys-fucking-sterical...
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The product that is being stolen, the movies that are produced by Hollywood, is the exact same one that is in theaters.
The analogy is truly moronic. But if that's all you guys have, hey, go for it.
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My two cents
If the MPAA could count exactly how many times I've done this, they would put that number in their spreadsheet that eventually totals up the amount of money "lost to piracy" based on various values such as theatre ticket prices and/or home video sales.
The problem is that my numbers shouldn't count in that column because I've never once said, "Well now that I've seen it, I don't have to buy it." I also tend to avoid theatres for a number of reasons and the film playing isn't at the top of that list.
Alternatively, if I rented a specific movie from RedBox, then I've still basically saw the movie "for free." Granted, I pay a one-time fee to RedBox for every disc I rent, BUT that money just goes to RedBox. After they've purchased the disc, they turn it over many times and not only get their money back for the original purchase price, but also make a nice profit. And I'm assuming as movies get older, they sell used discs back to their customer gaining them even more money.
So how do you really define "piracy"? If someone downloads a free movie after it's left the theatres just to "see if it's any good," then who's being harmed here? A lot of us don't drop down $15 to $20 on a Blu-ray disc to see if a movie is any good and even more of us choose to skip the theatres do to high prices or bad film reviews. But let's say I did buy a movie and invited 20 friends over to watch it with me, then are those other 19 people considered pirates because they didn't pay to see it?
If I downloaded a crappy movie for free and watched it, then deleted it and never bought the Blu-ray because the movie was terrible, am I still a pirate?
The MPAA is making everyone believe that real money is being lost do to piracy, but the real problem is you can't speculate how much that actually is. I'm sure there are a handful of people out there that do download movies as opposed to buying them, but in order to say that they effectively stole the dollar equivalent of movies they would have bought retail means you would have to know for sure whether they would have actually ever bought those movies! On the same token, what's stopping people from just signing up to Netflix, renting all the discs they can get a hold of and burning copies at home?
The proof is in the pudding. The most pirated material (be it film, music or software) is generally the most profitable. My theory is that if your content isn't turning a profit, it's not piracy that caused it...it probably just isn't very good.
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And you people wonder why everyone mocks you?
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I am lucky in that I live in a part of the country where the tap water is superior in every respect to bottled water: it's safer and it tastes better. But even here, I see people buying bottled water. It's pure insanity.
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I believe the point of the article is that it's not serving those studios well.
You did read it, right?
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Second, I'm not sure you have the order correct. If I convince someone that giving me a million dollars is a good idea, and then I represent them in doing so, I'm technically doing as instructed. That doesn't change the fact that the action has a lot of benefit for me, and not for them, and that I didn't encourage the harmful behavior.
Those limited studios are doing something that actively harms themselves, and they are being encouraged to do so by the MPAA, which has convinced them it's not only necessary economically, but morally the right thing to do. Both are complete bullcrap, but it's an effective lie.
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Re: My two cents
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Nobody has ever said they shouldn't do anything, but it's pretty damn clear that what they are doing now is not working. You seem to be suffering from the MPAA's special kind of insanity, where they do the same thing over and over and expect the results to change. Don’t you think it's time they tried something completely different?
There have been dozens of independent studies done over the years making a very strong case that piracy costs company's a lot less than they claim, and actually help them a lot more than they'd admit. Platforms like iTunes and Netflix overwhelmingly prove that people will pay for reasonably priced content that is offered in a convenient, consumer-friendly method. This is something the MPAA's member studios have failed spectacularly at. A bit of common sense would suggest that diverting a significant amount of the money and time spend on anti-piracy efforts into meeting consumer's widespread pleas for better content provided the way people actually want could well provide a nett benefit for everyone (except maybe IP lawyers...). Piracy will never go away entirely, but who cares if everyone is getting more of what they want.
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Re: Re: Re: My two cents
There's no misrepresentation. It sounds like you're trying to do PR damage control for them.
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And there we come to it. People here are arguing that protection is meaningless because its too easy to circumvent, too inaccurate and buggy 'when it works, and frankly eroding away far more rights from the population and culture of the society than any of the meager non-benefits execs 'think' it provides. So when people offer alternatives, you simply say 'But what does that have to do with my meaningless attempts at total control?'
That is the PROBLEM.
This head in the sand idea that there is only ONE PATH TO SALVATION! And it's the least effective, most expensive one.
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A lot like this comment ._.
I appreciate your frustration and frankly back your position, but there's enough angry ranting rhetoric from the other side. We need more constructive criticism. Even if the idi... erm.. individual... completely rejects your point of view, the discourse and discussion is important to spread the debate and bring about the fresh flow of ideas from the community :)
Fight with logic and debate, not anger or hatred. Otherwise, the terrorists... sorry... the Gatekeepers win!
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I'd make a great ruler, though. Elect me. :-)
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They are pumping far more money and resources into fighting piracy, then they are ever going to make in returns on their investment, even if their methods were having any sort of appreciable effect. That is the definition of a bad business move.
Piracy could vanish, and I'm willing to bet between a return to release windows, geoblocking and overpricing content and a sudden DROP in exposure, they would see revenues drop below >current
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Sorry, you set yourself up for this. You could even shoot yourself down better than I can.
I'll start out with "a free download and a library rental" are just bits in computers and networks.
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Please quote the line where Mike said this. Or did you pull this out of your ass as usual?
*clicks report for you bein an asshat*
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Jealous much? Tough luck.
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I don't think anyone's saying they should do *nothing*. But, *anything* is a wide range of options. There are lines, and your heroes cross them regularly.
They can do things that are workable, realistic, and don't remove the rights of innocent third parties. Funny how you miss these caveats in your attempt to tilt those windmills.
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I might have considered it, had that option been allowed to me. Funnily enough, the pirates would have had no problem giving me a copy had I asked.
Do you see the obvious problems yet?
"What justifies the free-riding he so desperately yearns for?"
Why do your arguments depend on a alternate reality fantasy that has nothing to do with Mike's actual opinions?
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Only the piss-poor analogies that you tend to come up with to argue with strawmen. Analogies that bear some relationship to reality are fine.
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But it makes a fantastic scapegoat. Why make good films or improve your distribution model when you can whine about piracy and those poor corn farmers who are losing money because people aren't buying as much popcorn in cinemas (yes, they actually said that).
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Why does Antidirt keep missing this? He says it all the time!
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GOLD! Have my insightful vote dear sir!
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IHBT&IAFFT
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..and this is why you fail. You can't even properly identify the product being sold.
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/end sarcasm
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MPAA uselessness
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There are many natural scarcities that exist around the creation of content, all discussed frequently on Techdirt. Let's look at a few:
1) The creation & initial release of new content. Once created and released, content is infinite, and attempting to control it is both futile and immoral -- but the ability to create new content is a scarcity, and the ability to make the decision to initially share it with the world is held naturally by the creator. This can be leveraged by moving the focus from paying for copies of an existing work to paying for the creation of new work (such as crowdfunding, corporate and private commissions, and private patronage) and by maximizing the value of the first-mover advantage with smart marketing.
2) Access to the artist. This is a natural scarcity that many people will pay for, and has always been a huge chunk of artist revenue generation. It can be leveraged in all media: musicians perform live; authors do speaking tours; filmmakers do Q&As and special appearances; visual artists hold private exhibitions.
3) Physical merchandise. Despite attempts by copyright advocates to paint this as the weak panacea of "lots of t-shirts", there are many examples of creators building merchandise fortunes around their work. And if we're talking about $200-million+ Hollywood movies, that has been a huge component of the equation since Star Wars.
That's just a start. When you're done dismissing all those with minimal reasoning, maybe I'll list some more.
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Wyrm Oroboros
Some day, far in the future, humanity will realize that this statement is true for ALL institutions, including political, religious, medical, academic, moral and security institutions.
Of course, by that time, there will be no such institutions feeding on human society, because people cannot realize this truth as long as such institutions exist.
What a nasty circle we have wrought.
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Actually, no. Were they to solve their problem then they would have no plausible reason to exist and they would have to either become something new with a new purpose, or dissolve.
Look back in history and add up all the institutions that actually solved the problem they were created to solve and then dissolved of their own free will.
The resulting number should be as close to zero as is possible without being a negative number.
The problem is not so much in the concept of an institution being founded to solve a specific problem, as it is in the execution of the plan.
After a year or so, the people involved will have rung up a few good shots over the bow of their target, gaining a "Good Name" for their institution.
Having a "Good Name" however, attracts criminals.
Criminals absolutely adore an institution that has a good name because then they can infiltrate and utilize the institution for their own less than honest purposes and use the "Good Name" of the institution as a facade to hide behind.
If you think it is difficult to infiltrate an institution, you need only look to the shenanigans of the Scientologists over the last few decades to see the myriad methods of removing the unwanted members of an organization and replacing them with your own people.
The longer an institution exists, the more corrupt it becomes, until it is 100% inhabited by organized criminals.
Criminals who have found asylum inside an institution can get away with all sorts of criminal activities by using the non-profit status of the institution, for instance, or by using the institution's premises or transportation vehicles for illicit purposes.
Many other criminal activities become enabled when you are protected by an institution's good public image.
Eventually though, an infiltrated institution has to start paying attention to its public image - usually after being caught numerous times doing criminal things - and this is when they start to manufacture the "evils" they were created to defeat, so to speak, to insure that the public believes they are necessary in order to defeat that new array of manufactured evils arising in the land.
So as you can see, institutions never solve the problem for which they were created. They simply become criminal organizations and manufacture the very problems they were formed to solve.
Government and religion are two of the oldest institutions on earth and neither has succeeded in solving the problems their creation was based upon.
C'est la vie eh. :)
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Re: Other options and workable solutions do exist
Unfortunately the MPAA and many other studio employees seem to beleive that if a solution exists, that they should be given it for free. That they can be trusted implicitely to know what to do with it. That they couldn't possibly mess things up. etc.
The solution to movie piracy is in itself intellectual property. As such they should understand and be willing to obtain it in the same way their movies are expected to be sold.
With any product or service which can not be returned, without assurances that the purchaser has not or will not use it without authorization, the terms and means of payment must be negotiated FIRST! Imagine everyone being able to go to a movie theatre to watch a movie, and only after they have watched the movie, deciding what if anything they will pay for it. This would be evidently rediculous.
Yet, when the MPAA is informed that a solution to movie piracy exists, they act like they are entitled to it for free, and that they should be implicitly trusted to make sure the person who provided it will recieve due credit, and that they will decide what if any monetary reward they will receive. This is where the MPAA is completely ridiculous.
If you are truely interested in knowing more about ways to solve this problem, then recognise that security starts at the top. The top is the studio CEO's, not the MPAA.
The MPAA could have been a facilitator, but chose not to be.
If more interested, then check-out the web-site Intellectualpropertyprotectionexpert.net. You can then contact me directly if you still have further questions.
At least you are asking the right questions. Good Luck!
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Re: MPAA Controls the Theaters - for now
As a previous owner/operator of a movie theatre in Canada, I can give you a better understanding of this situation.
In the early 1900's (sometime around the 1930's), the public became concerned about censorship issues and warnings to the public about the content in a movie. There was a large public demand for the government to become involved in this censorship issue.
The large studios fearing government intervention in this censorship issued, offered to establish the MPAA and thereby provivide self-censorship. This was considered acceptable, and as such it is the MPAA that provides the rating information on films.
In contrast, in Canada, we actually have government controlled censors. The bigger provinces like Ontario, have their own censors, and some of the smaller provinces (like the maritime ones) share in providing this service to the public. So to exhibit a movie in Canada, the applicable censor rating from the appropriate government must be provided and advertised with any movie exhibited in a movie theatre in Canada. The censorhip process is meant to be a service to protect the public.
The MPAA's rating process is in the United States, only just a process of informing the public about the content in the movie and how offensive or in-offensive it may be.
The idea of sef-regulating bodies in an industry is not unussual. Doctors, lawyers, and accoutants, also have self-regulating bodies over members in their industry/profession.
The real problem is that the MPAA has expanded its mandate into areas (like trying to stop movie piracy), which it is not qualified or authorised to deal with.
I hope this helps.
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