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Corporate America is a big issue with a lot of things. SOPA and PIPA, imo, were the Industry's knee-jerk reaction to a problem they don't want to deal with. Instead of trying to make the material harder to crack and distribute lets just make the States do it, because their budget is so much larger than ours. (Sarcasm, it really isn't.)

But, I do agree that websites do need to be held accountable for their material that they host. If they're being petitioned with citations of piracy then they need to investigate it and take it down. However, the industry needs to do it's part as well.

One of the reasons the SOPA and PIPA act's are getting a major staunch resistance, is because the act would allow them to block (censor) websites from US citizens. That for most is a scarey thought if the Government and Private Companies could block the flow of information.

Not to mention SOPA would employ Deep-packet inspection. These new devices (which are already out and available by the way) for traffic packets to be pushed through them and then they go through not just the header information but the ENTIRE packet. Which can also be reconstructed by the controller of the device. In other words, someone could read your e-mails or anything else you're sending/receiving through the internet. They scan layers 2-7 of internet traffic. Meaning skype calls, yahoo messenger conversations, anything and everything you send or receive can potentially be recorded. How does that sound for banking information?

Piracy isn't ok, but find a better way of doing it that isn't going to infringe on my privacy.

Good business is all about getting other people to spend their money so you can keep yours. In that sense, SOPA and PIPA make total sense.

Kanluwen wrote:

Insurgency Walker wrote:I have never understood why they didn't shut down the library's. All that copy writed material being passed around. Or radio stations, which broadcast product on the first wireless networks. Other peoples IP and copyrighted material needs to be protected, but there should be reasonable standards for fair use. Especially in light of the US supreme court having decided that congress can recopywrite something that has already been in the public domain.

You're trolling, right?

If you're not, I don't think you quite understand how radio stations and libraries work.

Yes, it is a bit of a troll. However.
think about what people can do with library access. You can take out a book, and copy it. Pirate it. This is not a criminal action for the library. The radio stations broadcast can be recorded by every child with a tape recorder ,( noted bad example due to freedom of airwaves). The computer allows for the diligence of sites like YouTube or other files sharing to help prevent their service from being used for illegal purpose. However, electronic media is creating a world where the providers of the service are under a greater burden than previous providers. Throw on top of that a legal system that can decide at a whim what is copyrited or recopywrited, and you have a system that is just as exploitable by legal shenanigans as by illegal pirates.

They did try to stop people home recording.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music

Similarly when everything was on floppy disk there was no copy protection. Copying was only made difficult with games by asking you to do silly things like type a specific word from the game's manual ("what is word 6 of line 8 of page 5") and the manual was often printed in a fashion to make photocopying difficult and high quality scanning was not available to many. They couldn't make the disk impossible to copy, and even the earlier CDs only had the crudest of copy protection if any.

You could simply copy the disk, we always did to make backups because a floppy disk with moving parts and easily exposed magnetic tape is fairly easy to damage and a lot of the time games were actually more expensive back then than they are today. DOOM was £30 I think when I had that back in the early 90s, games don't cost much more than than now! Space Hulk was £40 !!!

iTunes and Netflix already apparently have satisfied these market needs.

Not entirely. I'd say iTunes and Amazon MP3 have managed to satisfy much of the need for music. Given the inexpensiveness of the songs, averaging a buck, and the convience of the services I'd say that they are likely managing to capture most of the market of people who are actually willing to pay for music.

Netflix isn't really the same. It's a rental service and their streaming side was/is notorioiusly slim in it's pickings. What the movie and TV companies need to do is the iTunes or Amazon style service where they offer Blu-Ray quality downloads, with features, for $5 to $10.

Filesharing and torrent websites are really the last hurdles in the anti-piracy movement.

No, internet connections are. So long as people have access to large amounts of bandwidth they'll still be able to transmit copyrighted material. That was the point of SOPA and PIPA, not to hit just a few big targets like Megaupload, but to give them the ability to take a machete to the internet and hack down ANYONE who they even suspected of thinking about distributing anything they might want to copyright someday.

And seriously, stopping torrents? Good luck with that.

But, I do agree that websites do need to be held accountable for their material that they host. If they're being petitioned with citations of piracy then they need to investigate it and take it down. However, the industry needs to do it's part as well.

Ok, how? When you're dealing with the volume of data one of these sites would need to be able to handle to be profitable how do you scan everything that crosses your servers? What if people encrypt it? No, so long as a service is complying with existing laws and removes the offending content when notified keep enforcement where it should be, with the actual pirates.

I didn't know about Amazon MP3! Awesome. I don't want to have to deal with iTunes, so I was looking for another service to purchase my music from- I lost my collection a couple of years ago.

I like it a lot. A little while back they made your account a cloud drive so you can download the song onto any device you own. No more one download limit.

Tyyr wrote:Netflix isn't really the same. It's a rental service and their streaming side was/is notorioiusly slim in it's pickings.

The problem is that it WANTS to have more stuff in its streaming side, but entertainment companies prevent it from doing so.

Amazon MP3 is indeed the best thing since sliced bread. You should be using it.

They will be getting a big pile of my money come friday, when I gets paid

It's not that good ya'know. I've used it twice: first time I bought a Disturbed album. The tracks I bought won't play on my phone. I bought another single track and that plays on my phone. Not sure if bad download...

Probably a bad download. They distribute DRM free MP3's so I can't really imagine why they wouldn't play on any modern phone. Then again I've never downloaded an entire album.

The problem is that it WANTS to have more stuff in its streaming side, but entertainment companies prevent it from doing so.

Oh I'm aware of it. I was a Netflix member until their most recent feth up. The entertainment companies are fighting a losing battle. This is their chance to monetize this method of distribution. They are steadfastly clinging to printed media sales. Ask the music industry how well that works.

biccat wrote:iTunes and Netflix already apparently have satisfied these market needs.

To some extent. Netflix is still a limited library, and iTunes is fairly specific to Apple platforms, and has some truly obnoxious ownership limitations.

These companies are a good start, but we need others to enter the market and provide greater variety, and more reliable control over our downloaded material.

Filesharing and torrent websites are really the last hurdles in the anti-piracy movement.

I'm not sure how they'll deal with torrents. Although eliminating easily accessible torrents will go a long way towards bringing piracy down to managable levels.

I'm not sure they can, other than to offer a product that's more reliable (no hidden trojans, no porn spliced halfway through) and easier to download (there's a problem when I can find a pirated copy in seconds, but I have to spend hours hunting through legal sites for a copy).

What I'm saying is we need better versions of iTunes and Netflix.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:Pretty much this. Problem is the big American (lets be honest, they are American) businesses trying to get new laws like SOPA and PIPA through will not try to encourage sales from better services and cheaper prices because they won't make as much money; in their eyes anyway. Valve's pulled it off and they rake in millions (I assume), so why nobody else does it in other entertainment industries is rather confounding. I suppose it'll change when the current CEO's retire with gold-plated diamond-encrusted pensions and fresher people will take over with a better mindset.

A lot of it is just people stuck in old modes of business, seeing the internet as a threat, not an opportunity. Add in the complexity of copyright laws making it very hard to set up a decent service, and no-one having any idea how much anything should cost and I think that explains most of the delay in getting stuff on-line.

Also I'd like to make it clear that I'm not condoning what's happening as a sin - only pointing it out since it hasn't been mentioned yet. I've never used torrenting or filesharing websites to gain illegal material

I take PDF copies of 40K and WHFB army books, for armies other than my own, so I can read up on what I might expect in a game. I'd never buy them otherwise, and always buy the army book for any army I'm actually collecting. Oh, and my parent's give pirated DVDs they bought in Bali, that I only really take because it's kind of quaint

Other than that, I downloaded Game of Thrones because you can't get it here otherwise. And used to watch movies my housemates downloaded through our network, but I'd always buy them if I liked them. And when Game of Thrones finally comes out over here I'll buy that.

I agree that artists and the companies that finance them deserve compensation for their products. If they make them available on-line I'd happily buy them.

sebster wrote:(there's a problem when I can find a pirated copy in seconds, but I have to spend hours hunting through legal sites for a copy).

I KNOW! This is a problem I have when I'm trying to find certain programs to watch online. I WANT to watch them legally, commercials and all ala services like Hulu, but I can't fething find the damnable things.

But I could find most of them illegally, if I wanted to, in a two second google search.

That is the exact problem that animation video imports faced.

Why would a viewer wait a year for a disc of a show when he can watch it subtitled within a week or two of the original broadcast?

Why can't major media publishing companies manage to put out legal subbed shows in a timely manner when a bunch of fans can do it?

The discrepancy between these situations has pretty much gutted the North American anime DVD industry.

Instead of trying to make the material harder to crack and distribute

Steam, widely-considered the best DRM method while also providing many, many services to its users, is actually still easy to crack even though its pretty much the hardest DRM out there.

How much harder can they make it?

a timely manner when a bunch of fans can do it?

Fans have much more time and don't actually need to be paid.

I hate to harp on it but the business model's gotta change. Like you said, the anime production company should at the very least be producing a subtitled version of the show for U.S. distribution. Charge $0.50 or $1 an episode and post them up immediately after the show airs. I know I'd have happily paid for the shows I used to watch like that. The big reason to pirate the shows was exactly what you said. I could watch a fan-sub'd pirated copy of a show within a few days, a week tops of it airing instead of waiting six months or a year, maybe even more, for the actual DVD to come out. And when it does come out, I've already seen it, a lot.

Hmm, maybe instead of bothering with DVD sales just focus entirely on the streaming. After an episode airs put it up for download for a buck or two. Maybe more for short run OVAs but at $1 an episode a season long anime will generate almost as much revenue as DVD would and since you're offering it in a timely manner probably make you a hell of a lot more since it's likely to be pirated less. Hell, you'd probably make even more since you'd be reducing each episode to the level of an impulse purchase. A buck or two at a time is a lot easier to rationalize than $30 or more for a DVD.

Steam, widely-considered the best DRM method while also providing many, many services to its users, is actually still easy to crack even though its pretty much the hardest DRM out there.

How much harder can they make it?

That's the point, we're already at the point where DRM in it's quest to be harder to crack is starting to intrude on the paying customer's experience. Steam is what I would call "hard enough." It's pretty solid DRM, and yes it can be worked around, but on the whole it's a very unobtrusive DRM that does it's job without making me feel like a criminal. On top of that I get benefits from it, it's made getting games incredibly easy. I really think Steam has managed to put itself in a great position. It's good DRM and at the same time it's made it so easy to get games that for many people the desire to pirate is greatly reduced. It's winning on both fronts, harder to priate and reducing the desire to do it in the first place.

There's no point in imagining you can "win" the piracy battle. All you can do is what retailers do. Put safeguards in place to reduce it as much as you can, punish the offenders you catch, and for feth's sake don't alienate your paying customers in the process of doing it.

Fans have much more time and don't actually need to be paid.

Uhhh, bwah? They're the production company. They have a script before they ever start production of an episode. Getting it translated is not a big deal. They're already doing Japanese subtitles, all this would be is a separate set of English subtitles. It's not hard and its a hell of a lot cheaper than watching your business on an entire continent go down the crapper.

Kilkrazy wrote:That is the exact problem that animation video imports faced.

Why would a viewer wait a year for a disc of a show when he can watch it subtitled within a week or two of the original broadcast?

Why can't major media publishing companies manage to put out legal subbed shows in a timely manner when a bunch of fans can do it?

The discrepancy between these situations has pretty much gutted the North American anime DVD industry.

There are some very very good signs on the anime front. It seems that the anime studios are significantly more willing to work with netflix and hulu than the big studios. Every week there are 20 more shows added to the streaming services. There's still a ton missing, but it's a very good sign.

Mr Hyena wrote:

Instead of trying to make the material harder to crack and distribute

Steam, widely-considered the best DRM method while also providing many, many services to its users, is actually still easy to crack even though its pretty much the hardest DRM out there.

How much harder can they make it?

a timely manner when a bunch of fans can do it?

Fans have much more time and don't actually need to be paid.

Fans have much less time because they have full time jobs not working for media publishing companies subbing and distributing animes. They do it as a service because the publishers don't.

If publishers want to sell their stuff to people, they are going to have to pay for production to prepare the stuff to sell.

I work in a video production department which does localisation with subtitles of videos to distribute via the internet. Using an argument from authority, I can tell you that it is a fairly cheap and quick process when organised properly.

The big publishers have not been arsed to do so.

They have lost a lot of business as a result.

There's no point in imagining you can "win" the piracy battle. All you can do is what retailers do. Put safeguards in place to reduce it as much as you can, punish the offenders you catch, and for feth's sake don't alienate your paying customers in the process of doing it.

Well, the economy is screwed then.

Da Boss wrote:I don't believe in categorical imperatives, and it's easy to find fringe cases where these things are acceptable, but you know that's not what I was talking about, right?

But there are exceptions, and how about a more general one.

DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these. Some things it's been years. I wanted the Master of the Universe film, it's on Region 2 now, but it was out 5-10 years ago in the US. The Directors cut of the Arnie film Commando hasn't seen a Region 2 release yet has been on Region 1 for years, all we have is the dog-tired old version of the film hacked to bits by censors and with none of the special features.

And then there's a incredibly annoying habit they have of not releasing stuff both sides of the Atlantic at the same time, meaning even if a release is on the books we're waiting months for it to appear - by which time you're spoiled.

They should pull theirs heads out of their asses and give people a fair chance to buy things instead of making downloading the only option. They use the region coding as a means to price control in different countries, that's why our region 2 DVDs are so much more expensive than your region 1 DVDs.

Region locking is pretty much the worst, most anti-consumer concept. It has no real place in a globalized marketplace and I feel like it's going to fade into oblivion in the next 20 years as HD standards start to converge naturally.

Howard A Treesong wrote:DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

biccat wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

I don't think he's saying they have a legal obligation, he's complaining that as a customer, his needs are not being met by the producer of the media.

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to be mad about.

Well, the economy is screwed then.

No, the economy will be just fine. Did you not consider the example I gave? Theft is a very real part of doing business in any arena. Shoplifting is rampant and you don't see stores shuttering their doors over it do you? No, because they have figured out how to deal with it as best they can and part of the cost of every item you buy goes towards covering loss from theft. Businesses will survive theft just fine.

The problem with the entertainment industry is that instead of accepting that piracy is going to happen and looking for the best way to combat it without pissing their customers as well as ways to remove the incentive to do it they are just trying to get the government to give them control over the internet. I've put up suggestions on how to combat piracy before in this very thread. Namely, accept that their old method of doing business isn't going to work anymore and look to offer their product in a method people want at a price they are willing to pay for it.

Business isn't screwed, they're just being stupid about it at the moment.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

I don't even... seriously? That's your argument? Accept that the companies who control this content don't want you to see it, ever, and just walk away? That's your argument? Not that the companies are morons and are ignoring an obvious market? If people are willing to pirate it to get it then there is a market not being served. If they have no intention of releasing content into a market then what do they care if someone in that market pirates it? They had no intention of taking his money anyway.

Rented Tritium wrote:

biccat wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

I don't think he's saying they have a legal obligation, he's complaining that as a customer, his needs are not being met by the producer of the media.

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to be mad about.

Good point. But people use the "I can't watch X" as an excuse for piracy.

biccat wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

Not really, they can use the region coding to cut off customers in certain parts of the world if that is their wish. But people, being people, will want those things. They create the very demand that can only be satisfied through illegal sharing, then complain that people fileshare. Rather than doing the obvious, like actually selling it in their area or opening the region coding so you can just buy from abroad, they attack the fans of their own programmes and films.

How about the way that they put "anti-piracy" messages on the front of DVDs that you cannot skip over, thus punishing a person for buying the legit copy by making them endure your BS, while a person getting an illegal copy can just put it in and watch the damn film.

I really don't think they help themselves.

biccat wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

biccat wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:DVD region coding prevents people watching stuff. There are lots of things on Region 1 released in the US that I can't get because they are not released elsewhere. I have no way of seeing these.

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

I don't think he's saying they have a legal obligation, he's complaining that as a customer, his needs are not being met by the producer of the media.

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to be mad about.

Good point. But people use the "I can't watch X" as an excuse for piracy.

Yeah, it's a horrible excuse, but it's a good explanation.

On the microscale, a person who defends their actions that way is being dumb. But on the macroscale, it's a great way to explain an element of WHY this problem is occurring. The studios have inadvertently incentivized it by resisting earlier efforts to more widely distribute the product. Now they're struggling to catch up because the digital distribution train is leaving and the pirates are all on board.

When digital distribution was first happening, it made little short term sense for studios to use it, but in the longterm avoiding it has driven piracy.

Tyyr wrote:

So? Do you have a right to access any content simply because you want to see/hear/use it? There's no obligation for companies to provide you with product if there's no market for it.

I don't even... seriously?

Well, you should. Seriously.

Tyyr wrote:That's your argument? Accept that the companies who control this content don't want you to see it, ever, and just walk away? That's your argument?

Well, yes. It's their content and if they don't want to people in Australia to see it, I have no problem with that.

Tyyr wrote:Not that the companies are morons and are ignoring an obvious market? If people are willing to pirate it to get it then there is a market not being served.

Not necessarily. It means there's a market not being served at a price they demand. If you're not willing to pay what the content provider demands then you aren't entitled to it. Of course, you can always complain about the lack of service, but it's not an excuse for piracy.

Tyyr wrote:If they have no intention of releasing content into a market then what do they care if someone in that market pirates it? They had no intention of taking his money anyway.

Because it's theft. And it distorts the market in the area, making it less likely that later producers will release products in the market in the future.

biccat wrote:Because it's theft. And it distorts the market in the area, making it less likely that later producers will release products in the market in the future.

Well, it's not theft.

The rest of this is true, though. It deflates the equilibrium price by artificially satisfying demand in advance of the release. It's still a problem, but it's not theft, it's piracy.

There's a reason we have different words. They mean different things.