4 ms·

In any other industry, when you have one guy who deals his wares to thousands of other vendors and enforces an exclusivity relationship such as in Hollywood, al

by yebyen 14y ago

In any other industry, when you have one guy who deals his wares to thousands of other vendors and enforces an exclusivity relationship such as in Hollywood, allowing no other sources to produce similar work, demanding the price remain artificially high, and what do you call it? Price fixing! Racketeering! A cartel! Mr. Producer, do you want to support a whole cartel? How much of the product of your work is siphoned into the pockets of these middlemen that you claim are so shadowy? Is it because you don't want to pay them that you downplay their role? Why are they entitled to a share of what you earn, when distribution models that scale and support themselves in a feedback loop like BitTorrent are available, and the people who are consuming your content will foot the bill to the cartels for these distribution contracts? What justification is there for price fixing, where regions that have larger collections of wealth amassed into smaller groups that can afford to pay more are gouged? What basis have you to charge more in the US or Australia than in India and Africa, where digital broadcast entertainment might be more or less pervasive? I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.

MrScruff 14y ago
I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this. What specifically are you angry about? Is it my claim that piracy is more about convenience and personal gain than free speech? Would you disagree with that sentiment? Could you explain why? I'm not sure what to make of the rest of your post but I think you have quite a narrow view of the film industry. I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.
- yebyen 14y ago
  "Piracy" or more broadly unauthorized copying, which are hard to distinguish from each other using hard facts... are about convenience as well as free speech; I know I buy large expensive tools for storing data, and I see a lot of pictures of shelves stuffed with cheap plastic discs on reddit, discs that are easy to lose and yet each cost $35 for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons is so that you can get paid for bringing me quality content. Obviously it's not a short path from point A to point B. I also know that as a computer enthusiast, I spent a lot of time learning to copy things that your camp would prefer I didn't copy, so that I don't have to keep collections of cheap (disposable) plastic discs. That's a huge investment too, and if the effort is duplicated... well, in the free software community especially we don't like duplicated effort. Can't someone else do it? Then I pay for these pipes (again from my perspective: your camp) and it's really a lot simpler downloading from the cloud than making a large investment in plastic discs and time and labor spent on copying. Furthermore, according to the DMCA, if I did buy the media and try to consolidate it in accordance with fair use, long accepted as a measure in place for free speech, I am still breaking the law because of the anti-copying measures that I need to break in order to do it, which is directly illegal today. So why not just download? ... you won't get paid. That's why. I want you to get paid, but I don't want you to dictate my viewing schedule or media organization, and I also don't want to pay for thousands of channels I won't watch just to get three or four I care about, once or twice a week... hope that you can see how your side are not really making it any easier for me to enjoy your work in relative comfort and with the benefit of modern technology. Quite sure this can be somehow solved by using bitcoins...
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    Not sure what plastic discs have to do with anything when you can leagally buy tons of content from Hulu, Lovefilm, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and tons of other places digitally with ease.
    - yebyen 14y ago
      Congratulations, friend... you have managed to take away the one concern that actually confers a benefit, and replaced it with a bill payable directly to telecom. You should be a patent attorney.. on the Internet! I don't know about Lovefilm, but the rest of the solutions you proposed all require an ongoing commitment to pay every month, they don't provide any copy, and they are useless without an additional recurring payment to a third party that was not involved in producing content. You misunderstood my comments about the plastic discs. I hate them because they take up space, but I love them because they can be copied! Why are there ads in Hulu Plus? Again, a thousand channels I will never use, and I don't get a copy of the merchandise to keep for myself. What happens when I move out to the boonies and I can't get good internet? Oh yeah, I cancel all of my web-based subscriptions and I can never watch any of my favorite shows again. How about my favorite content providers? Sure, the partners will be paid, 70% of Hulu's revenue goes to... the advertising partners. OK, I wasn't able to find any hard numbers on how much MrScruff gets for his contribution. But you know, I don't care, if I lose my access when I cancel my credit card and internet subscription. Tell me what ongoing benefit the ISPs provide! New content? No... they just provide peering, and hopefully reliable access, and then they also mail a bill every month. And guess what... it's more than Hulu is charging. But you're right. They earned that money. The telecom lobbyists and the streaming advertisement providers made sure that I can't legally obtain a copy of anything new for myself, and now I'll have to go on needing them forever, no matter how much favorite content I've amassed into my collection. My archives will never be complete, at least not until I've received next month's internet bill.

by yebyen 14y ago

MrScruff 14y ago

I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this. What specifically are you angry about? Is it my claim that piracy is more about convenience and personal gain than free speech? Would you disagree with that sentiment? Could you explain why? I'm not sure what to make of the rest of your post but I think you have quite a narrow view of the film industry. I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.

yebyen 14y ago
"Piracy" or more broadly unauthorized copying, which are hard to distinguish from each other using hard facts... are about convenience as well as free speech; I know I buy large expensive tools for storing data, and I see a lot of pictures of shelves stuffed with cheap plastic discs on reddit, discs that are easy to lose and yet each cost $35 for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons is so that you can get paid for bringing me quality content. Obviously it's not a short path from point A to point B. I also know that as a computer enthusiast, I spent a lot of time learning to copy things that your camp would prefer I didn't copy, so that I don't have to keep collections of cheap (disposable) plastic discs. That's a huge investment too, and if the effort is duplicated... well, in the free software community especially we don't like duplicated effort. Can't someone else do it? Then I pay for these pipes (again from my perspective: your camp) and it's really a lot simpler downloading from the cloud than making a large investment in plastic discs and time and labor spent on copying. Furthermore, according to the DMCA, if I did buy the media and try to consolidate it in accordance with fair use, long accepted as a measure in place for free speech, I am still breaking the law because of the anti-copying measures that I need to break in order to do it, which is directly illegal today. So why not just download? ... you won't get paid. That's why. I want you to get paid, but I don't want you to dictate my viewing schedule or media organization, and I also don't want to pay for thousands of channels I won't watch just to get three or four I care about, once or twice a week... hope that you can see how your side are not really making it any easier for me to enjoy your work in relative comfort and with the benefit of modern technology. Quite sure this can be somehow solved by using bitcoins...
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  Not sure what plastic discs have to do with anything when you can leagally buy tons of content from Hulu, Lovefilm, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and tons of other places digitally with ease.
  - yebyen 14y ago
    Congratulations, friend... you have managed to take away the one concern that actually confers a benefit, and replaced it with a bill payable directly to telecom. You should be a patent attorney.. on the Internet! I don't know about Lovefilm, but the rest of the solutions you proposed all require an ongoing commitment to pay every month, they don't provide any copy, and they are useless without an additional recurring payment to a third party that was not involved in producing content. You misunderstood my comments about the plastic discs. I hate them because they take up space, but I love them because they can be copied! Why are there ads in Hulu Plus? Again, a thousand channels I will never use, and I don't get a copy of the merchandise to keep for myself. What happens when I move out to the boonies and I can't get good internet? Oh yeah, I cancel all of my web-based subscriptions and I can never watch any of my favorite shows again. How about my favorite content providers? Sure, the partners will be paid, 70% of Hulu's revenue goes to... the advertising partners. OK, I wasn't able to find any hard numbers on how much MrScruff gets for his contribution. But you know, I don't care, if I lose my access when I cancel my credit card and internet subscription. Tell me what ongoing benefit the ISPs provide! New content? No... they just provide peering, and hopefully reliable access, and then they also mail a bill every month. And guess what... it's more than Hulu is charging. But you're right. They earned that money. The telecom lobbyists and the streaming advertisement providers made sure that I can't legally obtain a copy of anything new for myself, and now I'll have to go on needing them forever, no matter how much favorite content I've amassed into my collection. My archives will never be complete, at least not until I've received next month's internet bill.