3 ms·

"Those Hollywood movies would not be created if it was legal to distribute them for free." I find this to be one of the most hilarious stances of IP advocates.

"Those Hollywood movies would not be created if it was legal to distribute them for free." I find this to be one of the most hilarious stances of IP advocates. Yes, $50+ million classics like Blade 2 might not be created without the monopoly system of copyright protection. IP apologists act like we would be in a movieless, art-free world if we got rid of copyright.

rayiner 14y ago
I didn't say we wouldn't have movies. I said we wouldn't have big budget Hollywood films. Which would be fine with me, but those are the subject of the major traffic on TPB. That's the part I find tremendously disingenuous. All this tall about art--there is a ton of great free or cheap art. Indie movies, music, etc. But people don't want that. They want the high budget entertainment products. Well, it's the copyright system that makes those products viable. Without copyright, you'd have lots of art, but not the kind the torrenters are interested in.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  Do note that mostly what people go after is what they are being marketed with. If you give multi-million marketing budget to an indie film, do you honestly believe it would fare pale in comparison in popularity against a Hollywood product? You don't need lots of money to make good art. You need lots of money to make people aware of the said art. As you have noted, commercial art is made for the sake of making money, not for the sake of making art for people interested. This of course conflicts and clashes hard with the way TPB operates, the way indie works operate and the way the whole industry and business operates.
  - CJefferson 14y ago
    Yes, I do. Because Hollywood isn't stupid. If they could make just as much money from a one million dollar film, with the same sized advertising budget, they would. On average film takings are surprisingly closely related to cost.
    - zxcdw 14y ago
      I doubt you'd get much funding for marketing if the movie itself is "cheap". Though it depends alot on the content. You simply don't produce something like the next blockbuster Bond-movie with a million. However, that doesn't man you need more than a million for an enjoyable decent movie. The same applies to games and other forms of entertainment too. Consider for example Minecraft or Terraria or Gangnam Style as examples. There's so much great stuff out there which nobody knows about, which is produced with a fraction of the cost it takes to produce "AAA" content. If only it were more accessible to people! Of course having more resources at your disposal means more opportunities to make good content(or inversely, decreases the risk to produce utter shit). However, markets in which supply is higher than demand(as in, more content is being produced than the consumer has time to consume) marketing grows into a greater role. This is exactly the case with entertainment - even more so in modern days. Never before has there been so much entertainment available for a consumer than today, as such it's not only movies fighting for consumer attention, but different forms of entertainment. Because the landscape has changed, big AAA producers have to change along too, or then forcefully try to keep their business models intact with attacking the change in forms of illogical and unfair legal means, see MPAA and RIAA as great examples of this. While the industries make more money than ever, these guys cry out loud for lost profit, how can this be true? You tell me. But luckily, if the progress continues as it has thus far, year by year we have more digital culture available to more people! More entertainment availale for sharing and consuming and filesharing and as such information sharing becomes more and more a cultural thing.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > I said we wouldn't have big budget Hollywood films.[...]Well, it's the copyright system that makes those products viable. You'd have a tough time coming up with empirical data to support that hypothesis.

rayiner 14y ago

I didn't say we wouldn't have movies. I said we wouldn't have big budget Hollywood films. Which would be fine with me, but those are the subject of the major traffic on TPB. That's the part I find tremendously disingenuous. All this tall about art--there is a ton of great free or cheap art. Indie movies, music, etc. But people don't want that. They want the high budget entertainment products. Well, it's the copyright system that makes those products viable. Without copyright, you'd have lots of art, but not the kind the torrenters are interested in.

zxcdw 14y ago
Do note that mostly what people go after is what they are being marketed with. If you give multi-million marketing budget to an indie film, do you honestly believe it would fare pale in comparison in popularity against a Hollywood product? You don't need lots of money to make good art. You need lots of money to make people aware of the said art. As you have noted, commercial art is made for the sake of making money, not for the sake of making art for people interested. This of course conflicts and clashes hard with the way TPB operates, the way indie works operate and the way the whole industry and business operates.
- CJefferson 14y ago
  Yes, I do. Because Hollywood isn't stupid. If they could make just as much money from a one million dollar film, with the same sized advertising budget, they would. On average film takings are surprisingly closely related to cost.
  - zxcdw 14y ago
    I doubt you'd get much funding for marketing if the movie itself is "cheap". Though it depends alot on the content. You simply don't produce something like the next blockbuster Bond-movie with a million. However, that doesn't man you need more than a million for an enjoyable decent movie. The same applies to games and other forms of entertainment too. Consider for example Minecraft or Terraria or Gangnam Style as examples. There's so much great stuff out there which nobody knows about, which is produced with a fraction of the cost it takes to produce "AAA" content. If only it were more accessible to people! Of course having more resources at your disposal means more opportunities to make good content(or inversely, decreases the risk to produce utter shit). However, markets in which supply is higher than demand(as in, more content is being produced than the consumer has time to consume) marketing grows into a greater role. This is exactly the case with entertainment - even more so in modern days. Never before has there been so much entertainment available for a consumer than today, as such it's not only movies fighting for consumer attention, but different forms of entertainment. Because the landscape has changed, big AAA producers have to change along too, or then forcefully try to keep their business models intact with attacking the change in forms of illogical and unfair legal means, see MPAA and RIAA as great examples of this. While the industries make more money than ever, these guys cry out loud for lost profit, how can this be true? You tell me. But luckily, if the progress continues as it has thus far, year by year we have more digital culture available to more people! More entertainment availale for sharing and consuming and filesharing and as such information sharing becomes more and more a cultural thing.
vibrunazo 14y ago
> I said we wouldn't have big budget Hollywood films.[...]Well, it's the copyright system that makes those products viable. You'd have a tough time coming up with empirical data to support that hypothesis.