Right now it's more convenient to be a pirate if your thing is Video. Many things aren't available on iTunes. If you want any sort of serious "video ipod" experience that basically puts you in the position of breaking one law (DMCA) or another (Copyright).
agreed. i have a machine with 4 burners set up to do all of that (gordian knot, dvdflick, handbrake, etc.) and even then it's fairly inconvenient.
it would be nice if i could just download aXXo quality videos from a website, the way i used to download stuff from emusic.
just being able to run BT in the clear would speed things up quite a bit: no need for rar's, tunnels, blocklists, etc. and everyone would be more willing to seed :-)
If I am an inventor, and I spend a million dollars creating a new form of pain reliver which is incredibnly effective. The moment Irelease it, anyone else in the world can make it and give it away for free, or 1 dollar. Why would I ever have sunk my money into something which I have no chance to ever see a return on?
one of the things that needs to change along with copyright/patent is how drug trials work.
but as far as spending a million to research something goes, why would you do that?
why not do a small amount of research, publish it, let others steal it, make their improvements, and then steal it back.
this way your competitiors benefit from free research, and you benefit from their improvements, plus being the first to market is a real competitive advantage.
When it comes to music, other qualities are so obviously more important -- convenience and usefulness, for example -- than price, that I am always baffled at the argument that people just want it all for free. That's self-evidently untrue.
i would pay for convenience. piracy is easy and fun, but it can be time consuming.
i used to have a monthly e-music account that i would bottom out on a regular basis. it was a totally convenient way to amass a large collection of old indie, punk, and alternative tunes from my youth, which were kind of tough to find on BT.
the greatest feature of emusic was the download speed and the ability mark stuff for download later. i could pull stuff down at 500-600kbps which was unheard of on napster, kazaa, or BT, especially with all of the tunnelling and ip blocking i have to do to stay under the radar.
if there was a service where everything (books, movies, music, audio books, tv, etc.) was available unlimited and without DRM in formats that will play in any player (vlc, xbox media center specifically), i would gladly pay a reasonable monthly fee for it.
or better yet, just sell me a license to download everything. that way the industry can collect money without bothering to offer a service: no website to build (other than the one to buy the license) no libraries to maintain, just sell me a registration code that i can file with my ISP so they don't have to pull my plug for every infringement letter they get.
also: with everyone torrenting out in the open, you can collect marketing data on what's hot and what's not on the BT scene.
this way, i can keep using BT, and the industry can keep spying on file sharers and collect it's filthy lucre from those who pay and we can all get on with our lives.
So far, the only ideas I see on techdirt are trading dollars for pennies. Like selling a DVD of the movie on the same day you release them in the theater. Yeah, let's make it easy for a bunch of people to see the movie cheaper. YEAH! That will make us more money.
you can trade dollars for pennies, and embrace methods of marketing and distribution where those pennies are still profitable, or you can stubbornly wait for the dollars to run out.
the days of clocking big dollars on big budget content are over and they are never coming back.
people only pay for content to support creators that they believe in. that means you have to get people to believe in what you are making or they won't give you any money. this is called "connecting with fans". you can't force people to give you money. tricking them into giving it to you doesn't work either.
what you can do is reduce your distribution and marketing costs by using infinite goods to focus your marketing efforts on the people who are willing pay and then sell them stuff that they want to pay for. this is called a "reason to buy" or you can wait in vain for 1985 to come back.
1985 isn't going to come back, but you are welcome to wait anyway.
if you choose to wait, someone else will figure out how to profit in this new market and new economy and you will be out of business because the small number of people who are willing to pay will give their money to people who are selling what they want to buy.
Nice to say. But while you may be a nice guy, worthy of respect, the guy next to you is turning around and pushing the music off to torrent sites as fast as he can, banging out copies like pooh out of a constipated monkey.
wow, analogy fail.
DRM does nothing to stop piracy. pirated stuff doesn't have any DRM on it, either because the DRM is stripped before upload, or because it was ripped from a format that never had it to begin with. all DRM does is make the pirated version more valuable AND inconvenience your paying customers.
see, a paying customers has already paid. they should be the people you treat well, after all they actually paid you.
if you prevent a paying customer from making use of your product, they will stop paying for the product.
if you want more paying customers, make paying for your product worthwhile. taking peoples' money and giving them a product that is inferior to a freely available version is a really bad idea.
as for respect... well, the recording industry is in a mexican standoff with file sharers.
the industry argument is "we will respect consumers when consumers stop file sharing."
the file sharing argument is "we will respect the industry when the industry starts to respect us."
this is great and all, but file sharing costs file sharers nothing, and fighting file sharing costs the industry money at a time when revenues are drying up.
so it doesn't matter which side is right, which side deserves respect, or even which side is legal. the fact of the matter is that this is a war of attrition and the industry is fighting with finite resources (money) and the file sharing side is fighting with unlimited resources. one side can go on indefinitely and the other side can not.
Explain to me what is bad about their business model now that wasn't bad 10 years ago. I can only see that they are not giving away their stuff for free and not giving in to file traders who want everything for nothing.
good idea: treat the paying customers with respect.
bad idea: using DRM to aggrivate and inconvenience paying customers
good idea: embrace new delivery methods that reduce costs
bad idea: waste money on dubious lawsuits
10 years ago i was trading zip disks of mp3's with co-workers and downloading mp3's from napster on dialup. i had 2 or 3 gigs back then. i have a terabyte now, easily.
most of the music i was downloading i had already bought on cassette or vinyl and it just wasn't available on CD.
that was the problem:
1) selling my old collection back to me again
2) crushing the small record stores where i learned about music thereby making the music i wanted to buy no longer available
3) raising prices while lowering quality
4) refusing to embrace digital delivery
It's only recently that movies are starting to see the "napster" effect that happened to music. People are getting faster internet connections, so sharing a 3-5gig file isn't a big deal. As more and more people realize they can download movies in reasonable amounts of time for free off of the torrents, how long will it be before the movie industry is sitting in the same spot as music?
where the hell have you been? dvd's have been available on BT for as long has BT has been around. moving movies on BT is old news.
and most traffic isn't dvd-r's it's dvd ripz. an xvid of a dvd movie is 700-1400mb, and you can move and store those a hell of a lot easier than 4.7gb. especially if you are just storing on hard disk.
the new thing is hard drive parties, where you trade and copy USB hard drives. when you are trading 500gb drives (the old ones from your file server, that you replaced with 1.5tb drives) you can move tons of stuff, like entire TV series, hundred of films, you name it.
and the great thing about hdd parties is that it doesn't take any skill, unlike the p2p scene which requires you to know how to use winrar.
The movie business has one advantage, they can just refuse to support DVD or other home based formats altogether, or severely limit the number of movies on DVD, and pretty much shut down the market. They can wait a year or longer before putting a movie on DVD. They have options, they don't need DVD sales to have income (but it certainly has become a big part of the game). Drop the DVDs, charge more for theater viewings, and stay out of the marketplace.
yeah right. theater sales are nothing compared to DVD sales, and it doesn't matter if you withhold sales or not. screeners leak well before retail release and cams are up a few days before theatrical release, 24 hours after at the absolute latest. the really good flicks, like the dark knight or the watchmen, i have downloaded half a dozen times as quality improves: crappy cam, decent cam, telesync, dvd screener, dvd rip, dvd-r.
so keep telling yourself film is safe, you're the only one who believes it.
My digital collection alone could play for a month and never hear the same song from the same artist in that time.
feh. newb. if i hit play now i *might* be able to listen to my whole collection before i'm dead. it used to be about the music. now it's just about helping the industry decline.
i used to just download songs i liked. now grab whole discographies just because i can.
lately i just burn dvds of popular mp3s (say every uk number 1 since 1955) and leave them in public places.
I bet due process wouldn't be to slow for them if we were charging them!!
they would want all their right's and time to find a loop hole !!
so why shouldn't we have the same time and rights??
you're funny. you know we don't have the same rights as corporations! especially corporations that have contributed as much money to political campaigns as the entertainment industry has!
Next time someone is stopped selling knockoff Gucci bags, don't shut them down, don't seize the inventory, let's just wait and see what the courts thing.
yeah, filesharing is just like selling knockoffs. that's where we get all that piratebay money that we have to keep in offshore accounts.
A professional musician gets paid to make music. If you are downloading music for free, then who is paying the professional musician? Not you, for one.
not to mention you would be supporting terrorism and putting piratebay money into offshore accounts.
On the post: Myth Debunking: Fans Just Want Everything For Free
Re: what i don't
...
So, lets stick to the topic, not to who wrote the topic.
you must be new here. welcome to techdirt and enjoy your stay. bathroom's down the hall and on the right.
On the post: Myth Debunking: Fans Just Want Everything For Free
Re: Re: Re: Price is only one factor
agreed. i have a machine with 4 burners set up to do all of that (gordian knot, dvdflick, handbrake, etc.) and even then it's fairly inconvenient.
it would be nice if i could just download aXXo quality videos from a website, the way i used to download stuff from emusic.
just being able to run BT in the clear would speed things up quite a bit: no need for rar's, tunnels, blocklists, etc. and everyone would be more willing to seed :-)
On the post: Myth Debunking: Fans Just Want Everything For Free
Re:
one of the things that needs to change along with copyright/patent is how drug trials work.
but as far as spending a million to research something goes, why would you do that?
why not do a small amount of research, publish it, let others steal it, make their improvements, and then steal it back.
this way your competitiors benefit from free research, and you benefit from their improvements, plus being the first to market is a real competitive advantage.
On the post: Myth Debunking: Fans Just Want Everything For Free
Re: Price is only one factor
i would pay for convenience. piracy is easy and fun, but it can be time consuming.
i used to have a monthly e-music account that i would bottom out on a regular basis. it was a totally convenient way to amass a large collection of old indie, punk, and alternative tunes from my youth, which were kind of tough to find on BT.
the greatest feature of emusic was the download speed and the ability mark stuff for download later. i could pull stuff down at 500-600kbps which was unheard of on napster, kazaa, or BT, especially with all of the tunnelling and ip blocking i have to do to stay under the radar.
if there was a service where everything (books, movies, music, audio books, tv, etc.) was available unlimited and without DRM in formats that will play in any player (vlc, xbox media center specifically), i would gladly pay a reasonable monthly fee for it.
or better yet, just sell me a license to download everything. that way the industry can collect money without bothering to offer a service: no website to build (other than the one to buy the license) no libraries to maintain, just sell me a registration code that i can file with my ISP so they don't have to pull my plug for every infringement letter they get.
also: with everyone torrenting out in the open, you can collect marketing data on what's hot and what's not on the BT scene.
this way, i can keep using BT, and the industry can keep spying on file sharers and collect it's filthy lucre from those who pay and we can all get on with our lives.
On the post: Myth Debunking: Fans Just Want Everything For Free
Re:
you can trade dollars for pennies, and embrace methods of marketing and distribution where those pennies are still profitable, or you can stubbornly wait for the dollars to run out.
the days of clocking big dollars on big budget content are over and they are never coming back.
people only pay for content to support creators that they believe in. that means you have to get people to believe in what you are making or they won't give you any money. this is called "connecting with fans". you can't force people to give you money. tricking them into giving it to you doesn't work either.
what you can do is reduce your distribution and marketing costs by using infinite goods to focus your marketing efforts on the people who are willing pay and then sell them stuff that they want to pay for. this is called a "reason to buy" or you can wait in vain for 1985 to come back.
1985 isn't going to come back, but you are welcome to wait anyway.
if you choose to wait, someone else will figure out how to profit in this new market and new economy and you will be out of business because the small number of people who are willing to pay will give their money to people who are selling what they want to buy.
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Techdirt's Very Existance
getting paid to be obtuse isn't a good enough excuse?
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yeah, that's about right.
wow, analogy fail.
DRM does nothing to stop piracy. pirated stuff doesn't have any DRM on it, either because the DRM is stripped before upload, or because it was ripped from a format that never had it to begin with. all DRM does is make the pirated version more valuable AND inconvenience your paying customers.
see, a paying customers has already paid. they should be the people you treat well, after all they actually paid you.
if you prevent a paying customer from making use of your product, they will stop paying for the product.
if you want more paying customers, make paying for your product worthwhile. taking peoples' money and giving them a product that is inferior to a freely available version is a really bad idea.
as for respect... well, the recording industry is in a mexican standoff with file sharers.
the industry argument is "we will respect consumers when consumers stop file sharing."
the file sharing argument is "we will respect the industry when the industry starts to respect us."
this is great and all, but file sharing costs file sharers nothing, and fighting file sharing costs the industry money at a time when revenues are drying up.
so it doesn't matter which side is right, which side deserves respect, or even which side is legal. the fact of the matter is that this is a war of attrition and the industry is fighting with finite resources (money) and the file sharing side is fighting with unlimited resources. one side can go on indefinitely and the other side can not.
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yeah, that's about right.
good idea: treat the paying customers with respect.
bad idea: using DRM to aggrivate and inconvenience paying customers
good idea: embrace new delivery methods that reduce costs
bad idea: waste money on dubious lawsuits
10 years ago i was trading zip disks of mp3's with co-workers and downloading mp3's from napster on dialup. i had 2 or 3 gigs back then. i have a terabyte now, easily.
most of the music i was downloading i had already bought on cassette or vinyl and it just wasn't available on CD.
that was the problem:
1) selling my old collection back to me again
2) crushing the small record stores where i learned about music thereby making the music i wanted to buy no longer available
3) raising prices while lowering quality
4) refusing to embrace digital delivery
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re:
dude, those days are over and they are never coming back.
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
if you aren't paying for inventory, why is there a store? if the inventory can be had for nothing, the customers would just go get it from the source.
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
where the hell have you been? dvd's have been available on BT for as long has BT has been around. moving movies on BT is old news.
and most traffic isn't dvd-r's it's dvd ripz. an xvid of a dvd movie is 700-1400mb, and you can move and store those a hell of a lot easier than 4.7gb. especially if you are just storing on hard disk.
the new thing is hard drive parties, where you trade and copy USB hard drives. when you are trading 500gb drives (the old ones from your file server, that you replaced with 1.5tb drives) you can move tons of stuff, like entire TV series, hundred of films, you name it.
and the great thing about hdd parties is that it doesn't take any skill, unlike the p2p scene which requires you to know how to use winrar.
The movie business has one advantage, they can just refuse to support DVD or other home based formats altogether, or severely limit the number of movies on DVD, and pretty much shut down the market. They can wait a year or longer before putting a movie on DVD. They have options, they don't need DVD sales to have income (but it certainly has become a big part of the game). Drop the DVDs, charge more for theater viewings, and stay out of the marketplace.
yeah right. theater sales are nothing compared to DVD sales, and it doesn't matter if you withhold sales or not. screeners leak well before retail release and cams are up a few days before theatrical release, 24 hours after at the absolute latest. the really good flicks, like the dark knight or the watchmen, i have downloaded half a dozen times as quality improves: crappy cam, decent cam, telesync, dvd screener, dvd rip, dvd-r.
so keep telling yourself film is safe, you're the only one who believes it.
On the post: Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
feh. newb. if i hit play now i *might* be able to listen to my whole collection before i'm dead. it used to be about the music. now it's just about helping the industry decline.
i used to just download songs i liked. now grab whole discographies just because i can.
lately i just burn dvds of popular mp3s (say every uk number 1 since 1955) and leave them in public places.
On the post: University Offers New Grade For Cheating Students: FD
Re: Re: Re: now much you wanna bet
no, it was my paper you cheat.
On the post: Hollywood Says Due Process Is Too Damn Slow
Re:
they would want all their right's and time to find a loop hole !!
so why shouldn't we have the same time and rights??
you're funny. you know we don't have the same rights as corporations! especially corporations that have contributed as much money to political campaigns as the entertainment industry has!
On the post: Reveal Poor Web Security... Have RSA Threaten You With Trademark Infringement
Re: So..
trademark might have been used to help consumers in like the 60's or something, but today copyright and trademark are about stifling free speech.
you use trademark and copyright to force people to remove content that you don't like.
On the post: Patry: It's Not Copyright That Creates Value, It's Consumers' Willingness To Buy
i thought patry shut down over music industry knuckleheads
his farewell post made it sound like the absurdity of the content industry made his own posts sound like he was anti-copyright.
has he gone over to the copyright reform dark side?
On the post: Hollywood Says Due Process Is Too Damn Slow
Re:
yeah, filesharing is just like selling knockoffs. that's where we get all that piratebay money that we have to keep in offshore accounts.
On the post: Copyright Length And The Life Of Mickey Mouse
Re: Re: Re: whoa, good point here
and it's a good thing too, otherwise piracy would be rampant.
On the post: Copyright Length And The Life Of Mickey Mouse
Re: Re: Re: whoa, good point here
slow down there partner. try to keep that reckless optimism in check.
On the post: Musician: Any Aspiring Musician Should Download As Much Music As He Can
Re: Professional musician
not to mention you would be supporting terrorism and putting piratebay money into offshore accounts.
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