9 ms·

Hollywood is about to repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the music industry

121 points by blahedo 15y ago

cellurl 15y ago
If TPB would put up a tip-jar, now that would be cool!
mixmastamyk 15y ago
I sympathize but this long-winded piece didn't add much new to the discussion. tl;dr: The easiest and most convenient way to see the movies or TV shows you want is to get them illegally.
- fourspace 15y ago
  I think this was the more important bit: Again, to belabor the obvious: The illegal version isn't just free. It's better.
  - mahrain 15y ago
    Exactly, as opposed to DRM'ed files, the open formats aren't "defective by design".
    - rmc 15y ago
      Even without DRM, pirated content is usually available when you want it, as soon as it's available, in more geographic areas (try buying digital content outside USA), it's available in more formats, the file you get will work on more devices, the file you get won't have ads, the file you get won't have copyright warnings. Even if the content cartel sold unDRMed files, they still wouldn't be as good.
  - tintin 15y ago
    Exactly! This isn't about format but about content. A movie on DVD without the menus and warnings is still a movie on DVD, but better.
    - ams6110 15y ago
      There was a time when I used to rip my DVDs, for several reasons: 1) get rid of the warnings and menus and other crap. I just want the main feature; 2) preserve my investment, DVDs are the most fragile consumer media I've ever dealt with. If you have kids, one day they will set a DVD face down on the table and chances are good it will never play right again. But now I just don't buy DVDs anymore. I watch some stuff on Netflix, and am happy to pay $8/month for that service. I've mostly opted out though. I just don't see the stuff coming out of Hollywood and the TV networks as really being worth my time, regardless of cost or delivery mechanisms.
idonthack 15y ago
"about to"?
jaaron 15y ago
The article ends with the author suggesting the studios get together and create a single source for digitial delivery to make it easy for the consumers. Well, it turns out the studios are doing that, it's called DECE and the first step is a suite of DRMs and a rights locker called Ultraviolet. Unfortunately, it's a huge consortium that will have tremendous trouble actually getting anything done. It's also primarily aimed at supporting digital purchases to supplement the ailing DVD market instead of just biting the bullet and recognizing that rental and subscription are what most consumers want. Still, it's a serious effort despite it's flaws, so it's not fair to say the industry isn't taking the changes of the market seriously. A much more difficult problem is undoing the years and years of distribution rights deals and complex availability windows that plague any improvement in the market. These deals lock up content, creating exclusive windows for entrenched players and hamper true innovation. Unfortunately, solving the rights windows issue, which includes not only time but also geographic limits, is a much more difficult problem to solve with fewer incentives on incumbents to change. If they don't, the whole industry will suffer, but I don't see this issue being solved any time soon.
- archangel_one 15y ago
  I've not heard of it before, but this DECE thing is not going to create a single source for digital delivery to make it easy for consumers if it also involves a suite of DRMs and a rights locker (whatever that is). The two concepts seem entirely antithetical given that DRM inevitably makes things difficult for consumers.
  - avstraliitski 15y ago
    Don't worry about DECE. I had access to draft technical documentation on it about .. oh .. early 2009. I don't think it's breaking any NDA to discuss the overall aspects of the consortium's goals. Basically what they are trying to do is produce a global network of secure digital content distribution servers. Under their model, all digital content retailers actually sell access to this single global commercial content delivery infrastructure. However, it remains unclear to me under the proposed model: a) Who will pay for the servers b) Which devices will or will not be supported, and how media transcoding (to support differing device capabilities) will be handled c) Who the user complains to if they can't get access to the content they paid for d) What value retailers would add in such a scenario - indeed, how they would 'compete' with each other given very little control and thus capability for unique product offering Like many dreamy consortia, I see this one as dead in the water. The technical problems are significant, and there is a general lack of impetus to actually get out there are solve the problems. A DRM industry for plain media (consume only, non-interactive) that dreams of securing global distribution is, in my view, destined to self-flagellate until it is but a poor faded memory in the distant mists of time. On the other hand, DRM can enable good consumer experience: I really like Steam, for example. I recently bought my first Mac and many of the games I'd purchased on PC instantly became available in my library. After just logging in, I could download them for the new platform and play away instantly... even though I'd changed countries and gaming platforms. This is what DRM should be doing: empowering people to mobility and choice through connected media. Steam just does so many things right: content discovery, supporting smaller and independent content developers, social elements. I think the entire DRM industry should look up to Steam for a successful example of the future. Bottom line: THINK OF THE CUSTOMER.
ojbyrne 15y ago
This is why it's called "disruption." Basically there's a lot of mid-to-late career people whose (comfortable-to-extremely wealthy) lifestyles depend on ensuring that the status quo is maintained until after they retire. Après moi, le déluge.
nhebb 15y ago
My new DVR holds so few shows [...] It holds now about 20 shows, and a few movies, and is basically useless in that it fills up every few days ... I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV. Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of The Inbetweeners, season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier. If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.
- peteforde 15y ago
  You shouldn't confuse "should" and "could". I only watch a handful of shows but I have no business judging the author for spending his time however the hell he wants. I'll likely make millions of dollars before he will, and that's entirely his prerogative. It was long winded and pedantic, but he's making a solid point metaphorically: this shit is painful, and no mortal can or would navigate the morass of technical, legal and financial woes without wondering the exact same things. I feel sorry for people that don't know how to move comfortably around tech, because the one thing you and I share in common that they don't have is a choice in how this goes down on a personal level.
- foobard 15y ago
  I can identify. I don't watch that much TV, but my SO does, and the hard drive on our DVR is so small that if I queue something it can delete something of hers. I have a Playstation 3 which I used for Netflix, and went through the same hassles during the PSN outage. Then it seemed like every time I went to watch a movie there was a new software update I had to have. On top of that, the repeated software updates seem to have introduced a bug where it has to resync the resolution with the TV every time I power it on or boot Netflix. I'm never buying a Sony product ever again. Netflix streaming is a great product, but has limited selection. Again, it's not that I consume that much media, but that what I want to watch usually isn't available. At the end of the day, I have a cable TV + internet subscription, as well as Netflix, and I just torrent everything. I have a server that runs deluge, and I just drop a torrent in a folder and a couple of hours later it's ready to watch. I though the piece was spot on. edit: Just thought I'd add that since the legal music stores have popped up (iTunes, Beatport, Amazon) I hardly pirate music anymore. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on music. This is why the premise of the article jives with my experience.
yason 15y ago
Yeah, so downloading torrents is still the easiest way to obtain selected works despite its complexity. He's right in that we'll just probably have to wait for a decade or so for things to get better, given the track record of the MAFIAA. However, there should still be an explicit law that allows people to legally make free copies of content that isn't available for sale in any standard format. There's never enough supply as there's demand; there's always a niche that just isn't reasonably satisfied by commerce itself. A number of various collections or redistribution of minor series can thrive on the proverbial pirate bay because there are non-commercial incentives only to support them in the first place.
- trotsky 15y ago
  Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. And it certainly shouldn't give you the legal right. In your version of reality everything produced by anyone should be available to all comers and if you don't charge for it then they'll give it away for free? What about bloody confidential documents or video of my groundbreaking experiments? I think you need to rethink that. If someone genuinely doesn't want to sell you their film anymore well, then, bugger off.
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    Very true, but what it this law only applied to very openly sold works? Let's say for sake of argument only ones that had sold a million copies. Once it's put there it's out there and it's really a shame when thrice-transferred IP from a defunct company can't be bought any more.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. I can't take it. If, however, one of those persons you shared your video with decides to share it with me (or the rest of the world), you can't do shit, to put it bluntly. To explain it differently, there are two states some piece of media (be it movie, music, books or software) can be in: Private, and public (and to those savvy C++ programmers amongst us, no, there is no "protected" :) ). As long as it is private, indeed no one has a right to gain access to it. In your example, the video would still be private as long as no one you showed / gave it to decides to share it with other people (ie, the rest of the world). Once someone decides to share it, it is no longer private. It's public. And just as much as no one has a right to demand access to something private, no one (not even you, as the original creator) has a right to stop people from sharing something if they had access to it, thus no longer making it private. To put this in perspective for the music and movie industry, as well as software authors and writers: there is but one (very simple) way of controlling your creation: don't share it with anyone else. Either that, or publish it, accepting the consequences that come with that decision, one being that you cannot stop people from sharing your creation. tl;dr: I can't demand access from you, but neither can you demand me to stop sharing once I have.
dasil003 15y ago
I'm sorry, but acting like torrenting is a superior user experience to Netflix is not credible. Sure pirating has its advantages, but it's no panacaea. For one thing, who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it? The disk space requirements are huge, and the quality and availability issues are problematic. Netflix may not have everything streaming, but they have a pretty good selection at your fingertips, and with DVD coverage you can fill in the gaps of most stuff that you really want to watch. The problem is the "industry" is not monolithic, and if you think about Netflix cannibalizing $200/month cable subscriptions (for all premium channels) into $10/month streaming, you can see where some of the players are gonna drag their feet. It'd be great if big content could come together a create an amazing service for everyone, but they don't have the chops or the incentive.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America). > The disk space requirements are huge Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway? > quality and availability issues are problematic They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches). If anything, the quality is MUCH higher when torrenting than it is when streaming (legally or illegally).
  - danssig 15y ago
    >There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find This isn't the case for me. I watch mostly "foreign" films (i.e. films in a language I don't speak or understand). If the subtitles aren't included it can be a nightmare to find some (I won't watch dubbed movies). Sometimes you can't find any subtitles at all (I once had a movie sitting on my HD for over a year waiting for subtitles to show up for it), often when you do find them they're out of sync [1] or awful translations written by people who don't speak one (or both!) languages very well. Often whole chunks of the movie will be left out or have one word explanations. So for me, the quality is not remotely better via torrents, that's just literally the only option for what I want to watch. [1] Apparently different formats actually run at different speeds, causing the subtitles to drift if they were made for a different format. I didn't want to know about this and if the media industry had provided me some way of consuming this content I wouldn't have had to learn about it.
bsiemon 15y ago
In the golden days of media distribution (the 90s?) X amount if money was made. They will do anything to make X again and then after that anything to make more than X.
orangechicken 15y ago
I certainly identified with the spirit of the article and know that people are willing to pay money for legal access to digital content when it's easy and has the stuff people want. I'm one of them. Since I signed up for Rhapsody about a year ago, my downloading of music illegally has plummeted. I trade the small amount of Downloader's Guilt for $10/mo and have access to (almost) everything I want to listen to. (And from wherever I want to listen to it: my computer, my phone, my home stereo.) Before Rhapsody, I was downloading gigabytes of albums – I hadn't bought a CD in the new millenium (save those from smaller bands I wanted to personally supported). Now the music industry has me as a customer again, and monthly. Hollywood needs a Rhapsody to survive.
- Huppie 15y ago
  The usual problems sadly also apply to Rhapsody: "Sorry, we are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier at this time. We are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier in Netherlands (substitute for just about any non-US country) at this time. For the latest music and entertainment offers in your country, click Current Offers. Click Cancel to end this session. If you believe you've received this message in error, check to make sure your country and language settings are accurate. "
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Indeed. Don't look at torrents. Go look at many of the download services rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. They all have one thing in common: they charge money. This means that there is a segment of people out there who are willing to pay, but whoes needs are for one reason or another are not met under the current system. If you want to grow the market try to capture them.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    Of course, all these sites are charging for is taking away the inconvenience of the free download option. If you use JDownloader[0] and don't want to see something right away, you can use these sites just as well without paying them a single cent. The most significant exception are the other sites, such as HotFile, which use ReCAPTCHA, making JDownloader much less useful. 0: http://jdownloader.org/ http://jdownloader.org/
coffeeaddicted 15y ago
Situation is even worse in Europa. We have no Hulu or anything comparable. If the movie industry doesn't learn that Europe is only ~10ms away from the States when you're in the net it will have even more trouble in that market. I'm chatting with friends in America, I'm occasionally working for companies in the US (from my home in Germany) and I'm certainly visiting imdb.com and similar websites to inform myself about movies. So why do I have to wait half a year until a (often badly synchronized) version of a series arrives here on legal channels? Most like even first on pay-TV (not that I even would have a TV anymore these days...I want to watch movies when I have time and not when some station thinks I should take the time). All while streaming-services are found in less than 5 minutes (who is still using risky torrent services anyway?) Give me a no-hassle-fair-price download service and I'll be fine paying for good movies. But right now I have not yet found a legal way of watching movies on my computer except waiting for the DVD's - and even those I don't really watch in a legal way as I'm using DeCSS to watch them on Linux.
- thirdsun 15y ago
  Given that I'm from germany too I have to agree. If you want to watch movies and TV shows in their original language illegal sources are almost the only way to do that. I'd gladly pay for netflix or something similar, but i'm not allowed to. And don't get me started on music streaming - when people talk about those lucky europeans with their Spotify accounts, we germans are still left out - thanks to the GEMA i guess.
  - paulnelligan 15y ago
    I recently moved to Germany from Ireland, and I must say I find it extremely limited in terms of what you can and can watch - half of youtube is blocked!!
    - kahawe 15y ago
      Seriously, frakk the frakking useless GEMA and frakk that youtube "sorry, not available in your country" screen. I am trying to see something on the internet for crying out loud!
hootmon 15y ago
Will Hollywood shoot themselves in the foot just as the same multinationals did with music? Yes Are they also destroying the very quality of thier product just as they did with music, Yes. As the music companies gravitated to only hiring the stupidist most vain and illiterate 'artists' (hip hop morons), the movies are slowly but surely gravitating to slock like M. Bay and JJ. Both of which excel at grinding out total cliche cinema.
benaston 15y ago
Oh yes. The whole movie industry needs to change. When a new movie comes out I want to see it that day, on my laptop/TV/home theatre in HD. If I am constrained to a single viewing for a period, fine. I do not want to see it in a smelly, sticky, noisy public theatre. Will this ever happen? Unlikely.
joejohnson 15y ago
Best line in the article: "If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible."
int3rnaut 15y ago
Size matters. I think as similar as these two industries are, the big deciding factor in this particular war is the size of files being downloaded. Video files are mammoth in comparison to music files and the Cable and Internet companies know this--there are obvious infrastructural problems in play, but the recent move by a number of ISP's to cap the data transfer capacity of its clients is a huge factor in this war on pirating--I mean where I live in Canada 1/2 of the major players have adopted this, with the 2nd committed to it but unsure of when it will be fully in place--so when that does happen I'll be forced into a cap of 100gb a month for the price I previously afforded with stiff penalties for going over--in this day and age 100gb, especially in terms of TV and movies is hardly anything. Couple that with my desire to play online games, surf the internet, stream on youtube etc and my fun time options are severely limited. If anything I think Hollywood lucked out on the fact that ISP's have hit a roadblock in terms of bandwidth and what they can afford to provide.
chopsueyar 15y ago
How many terabytes would it take to store all the television shows and movies from the US in standard definition for the past 30 years? How about only the shows you and your family/friends want? Storage prices will continue to drop. At some point in the near future it will be less expensive to have an entire collection of video stored locally, rather than try to create the infrastructure to stream across the country or globe.

121 points by blahedo 15y ago

If TPB would put up a tip-jar, now that would be cool!

I sympathize but this long-winded piece didn't add much new to the discussion. tl;dr: The easiest and most convenient way to see the movies or TV shows you want is to get them illegally.

fourspace 15y ago
I think this was the more important bit: Again, to belabor the obvious: The illegal version isn't just free. It's better.
- mahrain 15y ago
  Exactly, as opposed to DRM'ed files, the open formats aren't "defective by design".
  - rmc 15y ago
    Even without DRM, pirated content is usually available when you want it, as soon as it's available, in more geographic areas (try buying digital content outside USA), it's available in more formats, the file you get will work on more devices, the file you get won't have ads, the file you get won't have copyright warnings. Even if the content cartel sold unDRMed files, they still wouldn't be as good.
- tintin 15y ago
  Exactly! This isn't about format but about content. A movie on DVD without the menus and warnings is still a movie on DVD, but better.
  - ams6110 15y ago
    There was a time when I used to rip my DVDs, for several reasons: 1) get rid of the warnings and menus and other crap. I just want the main feature; 2) preserve my investment, DVDs are the most fragile consumer media I've ever dealt with. If you have kids, one day they will set a DVD face down on the table and chances are good it will never play right again. But now I just don't buy DVDs anymore. I watch some stuff on Netflix, and am happy to pay $8/month for that service. I've mostly opted out though. I just don't see the stuff coming out of Hollywood and the TV networks as really being worth my time, regardless of cost or delivery mechanisms.

idonthack 15y ago

"about to"?

jaaron 15y ago

The article ends with the author suggesting the studios get together and create a single source for digitial delivery to make it easy for the consumers. Well, it turns out the studios are doing that, it's called DECE and the first step is a suite of DRMs and a rights locker called Ultraviolet. Unfortunately, it's a huge consortium that will have tremendous trouble actually getting anything done. It's also primarily aimed at supporting digital purchases to supplement the ailing DVD market instead of just biting the bullet and recognizing that rental and subscription are what most consumers want. Still, it's a serious effort despite it's flaws, so it's not fair to say the industry isn't taking the changes of the market seriously. A much more difficult problem is undoing the years and years of distribution rights deals and complex availability windows that plague any improvement in the market. These deals lock up content, creating exclusive windows for entrenched players and hamper true innovation. Unfortunately, solving the rights windows issue, which includes not only time but also geographic limits, is a much more difficult problem to solve with fewer incentives on incumbents to change. If they don't, the whole industry will suffer, but I don't see this issue being solved any time soon.

archangel_one 15y ago
I've not heard of it before, but this DECE thing is not going to create a single source for digital delivery to make it easy for consumers if it also involves a suite of DRMs and a rights locker (whatever that is). The two concepts seem entirely antithetical given that DRM inevitably makes things difficult for consumers.
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  Don't worry about DECE. I had access to draft technical documentation on it about .. oh .. early 2009. I don't think it's breaking any NDA to discuss the overall aspects of the consortium's goals. Basically what they are trying to do is produce a global network of secure digital content distribution servers. Under their model, all digital content retailers actually sell access to this single global commercial content delivery infrastructure. However, it remains unclear to me under the proposed model: a) Who will pay for the servers b) Which devices will or will not be supported, and how media transcoding (to support differing device capabilities) will be handled c) Who the user complains to if they can't get access to the content they paid for d) What value retailers would add in such a scenario - indeed, how they would 'compete' with each other given very little control and thus capability for unique product offering Like many dreamy consortia, I see this one as dead in the water. The technical problems are significant, and there is a general lack of impetus to actually get out there are solve the problems. A DRM industry for plain media (consume only, non-interactive) that dreams of securing global distribution is, in my view, destined to self-flagellate until it is but a poor faded memory in the distant mists of time. On the other hand, DRM can enable good consumer experience: I really like Steam, for example. I recently bought my first Mac and many of the games I'd purchased on PC instantly became available in my library. After just logging in, I could download them for the new platform and play away instantly... even though I'd changed countries and gaming platforms. This is what DRM should be doing: empowering people to mobility and choice through connected media. Steam just does so many things right: content discovery, supporting smaller and independent content developers, social elements. I think the entire DRM industry should look up to Steam for a successful example of the future. Bottom line: THINK OF THE CUSTOMER.

ojbyrne 15y ago

This is why it's called "disruption." Basically there's a lot of mid-to-late career people whose (comfortable-to-extremely wealthy) lifestyles depend on ensuring that the status quo is maintained until after they retire. Après moi, le déluge.

nhebb 15y ago

My new DVR holds so few shows [...] It holds now about 20 shows, and a few movies, and is basically useless in that it fills up every few days ... I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV. Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of The Inbetweeners, season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier. If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.

peteforde 15y ago
You shouldn't confuse "should" and "could". I only watch a handful of shows but I have no business judging the author for spending his time however the hell he wants. I'll likely make millions of dollars before he will, and that's entirely his prerogative. It was long winded and pedantic, but he's making a solid point metaphorically: this shit is painful, and no mortal can or would navigate the morass of technical, legal and financial woes without wondering the exact same things. I feel sorry for people that don't know how to move comfortably around tech, because the one thing you and I share in common that they don't have is a choice in how this goes down on a personal level.
foobard 15y ago
I can identify. I don't watch that much TV, but my SO does, and the hard drive on our DVR is so small that if I queue something it can delete something of hers. I have a Playstation 3 which I used for Netflix, and went through the same hassles during the PSN outage. Then it seemed like every time I went to watch a movie there was a new software update I had to have. On top of that, the repeated software updates seem to have introduced a bug where it has to resync the resolution with the TV every time I power it on or boot Netflix. I'm never buying a Sony product ever again. Netflix streaming is a great product, but has limited selection. Again, it's not that I consume that much media, but that what I want to watch usually isn't available. At the end of the day, I have a cable TV + internet subscription, as well as Netflix, and I just torrent everything. I have a server that runs deluge, and I just drop a torrent in a folder and a couple of hours later it's ready to watch. I though the piece was spot on. edit: Just thought I'd add that since the legal music stores have popped up (iTunes, Beatport, Amazon) I hardly pirate music anymore. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on music. This is why the premise of the article jives with my experience.

yason 15y ago

Yeah, so downloading torrents is still the easiest way to obtain selected works despite its complexity. He's right in that we'll just probably have to wait for a decade or so for things to get better, given the track record of the MAFIAA. However, there should still be an explicit law that allows people to legally make free copies of content that isn't available for sale in any standard format. There's never enough supply as there's demand; there's always a niche that just isn't reasonably satisfied by commerce itself. A number of various collections or redistribution of minor series can thrive on the proverbial pirate bay because there are non-commercial incentives only to support them in the first place.

trotsky 15y ago
Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. And it certainly shouldn't give you the legal right. In your version of reality everything produced by anyone should be available to all comers and if you don't charge for it then they'll give it away for free? What about bloody confidential documents or video of my groundbreaking experiments? I think you need to rethink that. If someone genuinely doesn't want to sell you their film anymore well, then, bugger off.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  Very true, but what it this law only applied to very openly sold works? Let's say for sake of argument only ones that had sold a million copies. Once it's put there it's out there and it's really a shame when thrice-transferred IP from a defunct company can't be bought any more.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. I can't take it. If, however, one of those persons you shared your video with decides to share it with me (or the rest of the world), you can't do shit, to put it bluntly. To explain it differently, there are two states some piece of media (be it movie, music, books or software) can be in: Private, and public (and to those savvy C++ programmers amongst us, no, there is no "protected" :) ). As long as it is private, indeed no one has a right to gain access to it. In your example, the video would still be private as long as no one you showed / gave it to decides to share it with other people (ie, the rest of the world). Once someone decides to share it, it is no longer private. It's public. And just as much as no one has a right to demand access to something private, no one (not even you, as the original creator) has a right to stop people from sharing something if they had access to it, thus no longer making it private. To put this in perspective for the music and movie industry, as well as software authors and writers: there is but one (very simple) way of controlling your creation: don't share it with anyone else. Either that, or publish it, accepting the consequences that come with that decision, one being that you cannot stop people from sharing your creation. tl;dr: I can't demand access from you, but neither can you demand me to stop sharing once I have.

dasil003 15y ago

I'm sorry, but acting like torrenting is a superior user experience to Netflix is not credible. Sure pirating has its advantages, but it's no panacaea. For one thing, who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it? The disk space requirements are huge, and the quality and availability issues are problematic. Netflix may not have everything streaming, but they have a pretty good selection at your fingertips, and with DVD coverage you can fill in the gaps of most stuff that you really want to watch. The problem is the "industry" is not monolithic, and if you think about Netflix cannibalizing $200/month cable subscriptions (for all premium channels) into $10/month streaming, you can see where some of the players are gonna drag their feet. It'd be great if big content could come together a create an amazing service for everyone, but they don't have the chops or the incentive.

w1ntermute 15y ago
> who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America). > The disk space requirements are huge Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway? > quality and availability issues are problematic They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches). If anything, the quality is MUCH higher when torrenting than it is when streaming (legally or illegally).
- danssig 15y ago
  >There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find This isn't the case for me. I watch mostly "foreign" films (i.e. films in a language I don't speak or understand). If the subtitles aren't included it can be a nightmare to find some (I won't watch dubbed movies). Sometimes you can't find any subtitles at all (I once had a movie sitting on my HD for over a year waiting for subtitles to show up for it), often when you do find them they're out of sync [1] or awful translations written by people who don't speak one (or both!) languages very well. Often whole chunks of the movie will be left out or have one word explanations. So for me, the quality is not remotely better via torrents, that's just literally the only option for what I want to watch. [1] Apparently different formats actually run at different speeds, causing the subtitles to drift if they were made for a different format. I didn't want to know about this and if the media industry had provided me some way of consuming this content I wouldn't have had to learn about it.

bsiemon 15y ago

In the golden days of media distribution (the 90s?) X amount if money was made. They will do anything to make X again and then after that anything to make more than X.

orangechicken 15y ago

I certainly identified with the spirit of the article and know that people are willing to pay money for legal access to digital content when it's easy and has the stuff people want. I'm one of them. Since I signed up for Rhapsody about a year ago, my downloading of music illegally has plummeted. I trade the small amount of Downloader's Guilt for $10/mo and have access to (almost) everything I want to listen to. (And from wherever I want to listen to it: my computer, my phone, my home stereo.) Before Rhapsody, I was downloading gigabytes of albums – I hadn't bought a CD in the new millenium (save those from smaller bands I wanted to personally supported). Now the music industry has me as a customer again, and monthly. Hollywood needs a Rhapsody to survive.

Huppie 15y ago
The usual problems sadly also apply to Rhapsody: "Sorry, we are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier at this time. We are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier in Netherlands (substitute for just about any non-US country) at this time. For the latest music and entertainment offers in your country, click Current Offers. Click Cancel to end this session. If you believe you've received this message in error, check to make sure your country and language settings are accurate. "
tomjen3 15y ago
Indeed. Don't look at torrents. Go look at many of the download services rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. They all have one thing in common: they charge money. This means that there is a segment of people out there who are willing to pay, but whoes needs are for one reason or another are not met under the current system. If you want to grow the market try to capture them.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  Of course, all these sites are charging for is taking away the inconvenience of the free download option. If you use JDownloader[0] and don't want to see something right away, you can use these sites just as well without paying them a single cent. The most significant exception are the other sites, such as HotFile, which use ReCAPTCHA, making JDownloader much less useful. 0: http://jdownloader.org/ http://jdownloader.org/

coffeeaddicted 15y ago

Situation is even worse in Europa. We have no Hulu or anything comparable. If the movie industry doesn't learn that Europe is only ~10ms away from the States when you're in the net it will have even more trouble in that market. I'm chatting with friends in America, I'm occasionally working for companies in the US (from my home in Germany) and I'm certainly visiting imdb.com and similar websites to inform myself about movies. So why do I have to wait half a year until a (often badly synchronized) version of a series arrives here on legal channels? Most like even first on pay-TV (not that I even would have a TV anymore these days...I want to watch movies when I have time and not when some station thinks I should take the time). All while streaming-services are found in less than 5 minutes (who is still using risky torrent services anyway?) Give me a no-hassle-fair-price download service and I'll be fine paying for good movies. But right now I have not yet found a legal way of watching movies on my computer except waiting for the DVD's - and even those I don't really watch in a legal way as I'm using DeCSS to watch them on Linux.

thirdsun 15y ago
Given that I'm from germany too I have to agree. If you want to watch movies and TV shows in their original language illegal sources are almost the only way to do that. I'd gladly pay for netflix or something similar, but i'm not allowed to. And don't get me started on music streaming - when people talk about those lucky europeans with their Spotify accounts, we germans are still left out - thanks to the GEMA i guess.
- paulnelligan 15y ago
  I recently moved to Germany from Ireland, and I must say I find it extremely limited in terms of what you can and can watch - half of youtube is blocked!!
  - kahawe 15y ago
    Seriously, frakk the frakking useless GEMA and frakk that youtube "sorry, not available in your country" screen. I am trying to see something on the internet for crying out loud!

hootmon 15y ago

Will Hollywood shoot themselves in the foot just as the same multinationals did with music? Yes Are they also destroying the very quality of thier product just as they did with music, Yes. As the music companies gravitated to only hiring the stupidist most vain and illiterate 'artists' (hip hop morons), the movies are slowly but surely gravitating to slock like M. Bay and JJ. Both of which excel at grinding out total cliche cinema.

benaston 15y ago

Oh yes. The whole movie industry needs to change. When a new movie comes out I want to see it that day, on my laptop/TV/home theatre in HD. If I am constrained to a single viewing for a period, fine. I do not want to see it in a smelly, sticky, noisy public theatre. Will this ever happen? Unlikely.

joejohnson 15y ago

Best line in the article: "If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible."

int3rnaut 15y ago

Size matters. I think as similar as these two industries are, the big deciding factor in this particular war is the size of files being downloaded. Video files are mammoth in comparison to music files and the Cable and Internet companies know this--there are obvious infrastructural problems in play, but the recent move by a number of ISP's to cap the data transfer capacity of its clients is a huge factor in this war on pirating--I mean where I live in Canada 1/2 of the major players have adopted this, with the 2nd committed to it but unsure of when it will be fully in place--so when that does happen I'll be forced into a cap of 100gb a month for the price I previously afforded with stiff penalties for going over--in this day and age 100gb, especially in terms of TV and movies is hardly anything. Couple that with my desire to play online games, surf the internet, stream on youtube etc and my fun time options are severely limited. If anything I think Hollywood lucked out on the fact that ISP's have hit a roadblock in terms of bandwidth and what they can afford to provide.

chopsueyar 15y ago

How many terabytes would it take to store all the television shows and movies from the US in standard definition for the past 30 years? How about only the shows you and your family/friends want? Storage prices will continue to drop. At some point in the near future it will be less expensive to have an entire collection of video stored locally, rather than try to create the infrastructure to stream across the country or globe.