Hollywood Must Be Destroyed

[littlequietguy]

Film is hopefully doomed. They never make a profit on a major film so as not to pay royalties and profit sharing, but are somehow profitable. There are more rats than SOPA/PIPA here. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

As someone who likes movies (and tv), I feel l like I should contest this. I'm not sure how to argue the point though. Have you never enjoyed a Pixar movie? There is a great community of low budget short films and such, but I don't believe that losing all the great high budget films that are yet to come is an acceptable loss. I believe that many of your favorite movies would be significantly worse on the "indie business plan", i.e. kickstarter+pay what you want+digital distribution+fan support. Not to mention that we'd have to come up with a new way to view movies on the big screen. And this is coming from someone who didn't like Avatar and did like Primer if that counts for anything.

I know it's easy to see a bunch of webcomics giving away stuff for free and thinking that that's the way to do it, but try to widen your viewpoint a little.

[Elementoid]

Instead of Hollywood, I'm a little more concerned that some of the people that are supposed to be representing us thought that this legislation was a good idea in the first place.

I think Kazerad is right on the money, though. This technology isn't going to go away, no matter how many laws end up being put in place. It would be far better for the entertainment industry, in the long run, to adapt to it, rather than frenetically try to keep people from using it.

[Bohandas]

Several years ago I would've agreed with you here, but my opinions have kind of changed over time as I've learned more about business practices. I think piracy really has to be considered from a historical/economic perspective.

Back in the days of Ye Olde, movies and music had scarcity like any other product. If you wanted a record, you had to buy it from a company with a record cutter, and the company needed to pay a musician so they'd have something to cut into the record. It's the same way a shoe company might buy leather from a third party and then use specialized equipment to make a shoe. You had to pirate a record the same way you "pirated" a shoe: throwing it in your backpack and tiptoeing out of the store.

However, technology has gone in a direction that removes the whole scarcity aspect from movies, music, books, or any other sort of information. Once you write a book, for instance, you can instantaneously produce and distribute a literally infinite amount of copies at no additional cost - and so can anyone else. Companies that try to treat information as a limited resource are suffering. After all, if prices are low for things in plentiful supply, then what is the market price of something that exists in infinite quantities?

The answer is zero. The only way you can make any money selling information is to enforce artificial scarcity - in essence, working against technology itself. Again, it helps to compare to another product: imagine someone made an affordable machine that could instantly produce shoes at no cost, and the footwear industry responded by telling everyone "okay... don't use it. Keep buying from us". That's what is basically happening here.

Is this bad for musicians, directors, writers, etc? Not really, to be honest. It's only different. It necessitates different business strategies. Companies like Steam and Spotify manage to maintain scarcity by selling rights for you to use their limited physical machines. Musicians can make money through live concerts, selling a limited number of tickets. Online authors can make money through advertising, selling a limited amount of prime adspace. All of these business routes are unaffected by online piracy because they don't put themselves at odds with technology. They sell a product that exists in limited quantities, and which cannot be instantly duplicated by just anyone.

So yeah. I don't think piracy is bad. Rather, I think it represents a necessary change in how some businesses run. Even if America passes laws to prevent piracy with perfect success, it will continue to exist in other countries. Companies that have piracy-immune business models will continue to generate revenue from these countries, which will gradually put them ahead of their competitors. It will be a slow progression, but it can only end in one place: us one day looking back and asking "why did we ever call that 'piracy'?".

This.

[kholhaus]

I never understood why it was called piracy.

Pirates don't make replicas of other things. They pillage and raze villages.

They're PIRATES.

[Bohandas]

I never understood why it was called piracy.

Pirates don't make replicas of other things. They pillage and raze villages.

They're PIRATES.

Its especially ironic when you realize that the MPAA and RIAA have far more piratical traits than the people who they've labeled as "pirates"; They're ruthless, greedy, dishonest, have no regard for the wellbeing of others...
(and I could probably go on from there, but thinking too much about the MPAA and RIAA actually makes me feel physically sick, so I should probably stop while I'm still feeling OK)

[Bluesunnyday]

Look, guys. I think we're over-reacting here. This legislation might be a few thousand steps in the wrong direction, but think about what you're doing here. YOU'RE CRYING FOR THE BLOOD OF NON-INDIE MOVIES. I know that it seems like indie developers/musicians/whatever have things going the right way, but think. Part of the reason they're usually Indie is because THEY AREN'T WELL KNOWN. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to search through Google for 5 hours to find a quality movie/game/song. Piracy is illegal. We need to realize this. You can rationalize it all you want, but it's ILLEGAL. Why are we not realizing this?

[Bohandas]

Piracy is illegal. We need to realize this. You can rationalize it all you want, but it's ILLEGAL. Why are we not realizing this?

I'm not saying that piracy should be legal. I explicitly stated that in the topic post. I'm saying that we need to abandon copyrighted works entirely, whether legally viewed or otherwise.

[Kazerad]

I know that it seems like indie developers/musicians/whatever have things going the right way, but think. Part of the reason they're usually Indie is because THEY AREN'T WELL KNOWN. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to search through Google for 5 hours to find a quality movie/game/song.

"Indie" doesn't mean "unknown". It means something was produced without the financial backing of a major company. With the internet and improved television networks it is becoming more and more viable for indie movies/games to be mainstream. Many developers are independent by choice because it means abiding by less constraints from a parent company.

Piracy is illegal. We need to realize this. You can rationalize it all you want, but it's ILLEGAL. Why are we not realizing this?

I know it's illegal, but that doesn't mean I think it should be. As I outlined above, I think the laws against it are unsustainable and will ultimately do economic harm.

[Bohandas]

Piracy is illegal. We need to realize this. You can rationalize it all you want, but it's ILLEGAL. Why are we not realizing this?

What the hell does the established law have to do with what's right and what's wrong!? I never said it was legal. I never said that people should risk arrest by doing illegal things. If I had been of a mind to suggest that people do things that are illegal I would have told everybody to murder Chris Dodd and to desecrate Jack Valenti's grave; However, as much as they both richly deserve it, I recognize that these courses of action are bad ideas and not a good way to go about doing things.

Piracy most certainly IS Illegal, BUT it ISN'T Wrong, (and CERTAINLY NOT wrong to the tune of $250000 worth of wrong per offense).

Why does everybody always confuse Legal and Illegal with Right and Wrong!? What fantastical utopia do you live in where the two concepts even appear to be correlated!? The two concepts couldn't be more unrelated!!!

[Bluesunnyday]

What the hell does the established law have to do with what's right and what's wrong!? I never said it was legal. I never said that people should risk arrest by doing illegal things. If I had been of a mind to suggest that people do things that are illegal I would have told everybody to murder Chris Dodd and to desecrate Jack Valenti's grave; However, as much as they both richly deserve it, I recognize that these courses of action are bad ideas and not a good way to go about doing things.

Piracy most certainly IS Illegal, BUT it ISN'T Wrong, (and CERTAINLY NOT wrong to the tune of $250000 worth of wrong per offense).

Why does everybody always confuse Legal and Illegal with Right and Wrong!? What fantastical utopia do you live in where the two concepts even appear to be correlated!? The two concepts couldn't be more unrelated!!!

Murder is illegal. Following your logic, that makes murder not wrong.

Giving to charity is legal. Following your logic, giving to charity is not right.

It may apply to some things, but to other things it's just plain ridiculous.

[Namboto]

Murder is illegal. Following your logic, that makes murder not wrong.

Giving to charity is legal. Following your logic, giving to charity is not right.

It may apply to some things, but to other things it's just plain ridiculous.

(he was saying that the definitions do not match up, not that something cannot be defined as true for both. It would be like me saying that a rectangle is not a square; the statement is true, but so is the statement that a square is a rectangle. Legal does not necessarily mean right, and wrong does not necessarily mean illegal. While he omitted the "necessarily", he did imply it)

[Bluesunnyday]

(he was saying that the definitions do not match up, not that something cannot be defined as true for both. It would be like me saying that a rectangle is not a square; the statement is true, but so is the statement that a square is a rectangle. Legal does not necessarily mean right, and wrong does not necessarily mean illegal. While he omitted the "necessarily", he did imply it)

Let us remember that he mentioned that they "Couldn't be more far apart". I'd make an anarchy joke, but that would be rude of me.

[Bohandas]

(he was saying that the definitions do not match up, not that something cannot be defined as true for both. It would be like me saying that a rectangle is not a square; the statement is true, but so is the statement that a square is a rectangle. Legal does not necessarily mean right, and wrong does not necessarily mean illegal. While he omitted the "necessarily", he did imply it)

Indeed. Things can overlap without necessarily being strongly or directly correlated or related.

I suppose, however, that I should drop the hyperbole and admit to Bluesunntday that there is a weak correlation between legality and rightness, but the correlation is not nearly as strong as many people believe, and it is certainly very far from absolute.

[Namboto]

Let us remember that he mentioned that they "Couldn't be more far apart". I'd make an anarchy joke, but that would be rude of me.

Let us also remember that he was talking about concepts, not specific things. And he said "unrelated", not "more far apart".

Also you should understand that by mentioning your abstinence from rudeness, you are actually being rude. It would be like me saying "I could call you a [generic_insult], but that would be rude"

[Bluesunnyday]

Look, I just think we shouldn't be hasty here. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. Also, yes, it'd be better if there were incentives for paying instead of attempted punishments for NOT playing, in the case of DRM... Or is it DRC? I honestly forgot...

[kholhaus]

I've said this numerous times.

If you provide a better service than the pirates, the piracy industry (if you can call it that) would die out.

Very rarely do people pirate because of money.

If big companies aren't willing to buck up a few hundred/thousand dollars to broaden an audience, or remove a faulty system in place, then it's their own fault that so many people pirate their product. It was their choice that
they weren't willing to fill those complaints. Why should they get to ravage their user-base/audience by doing this? If anything their logic is backwards.

[Namboto]

Look, I just think we shouldn't be hasty here. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. Also, yes, it'd be better if there were incentives for paying instead of attempted punishments for NOT playing, in the case of DRM... Or is it DRC? I honestly forgot...

DRM is stupid because it punishes the people who buy the product, which makes it much more tempting to pirate it.

Also yeah, if they made it easier to get the music and support the artist themselves, a lot more people would get it legitimately.

[Kazerad]

Look, I just think we shouldn't be hasty here. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. Also, yes, it'd be better if there were incentives for paying instead of attempted punishments for NOT playing, in the case of DRM... Or is it DRC? I honestly forgot...

An incentive for paying is functionally the same thing as a punishment for not paying. If an author gives a signed copy of his book to anyone who pays for it, then people who don't pay are basically "punished" by not receiving a signed copy. Similarly, "the police won't come after you" is an incentive that keeps many people from stealing.

I think it kind of misses the point of the issue, too. Like Kholhaus gets at above, it's primarily an issue of competition. Pirates often provide better service for lower costs. They aren't actually taking away anyone's property away to do this - they are literally only hurting companies by out-competing them.

I don't mean to imply that I support pure, barbaric, laissez-faire capitalism - I think some things (such as patent law) are both important and enforceable. But with the current state of technology, I think we have reached the point that movies, software, and other copyable material may have to be treated as public goods. They are no longer Rival (me watching the movie will not keep you from watching the movie) and they are no longer excludable (in practice, there is nothing to stop me from acquiring the movie). I think the business practices built around these goods will have to adjust accordingly.

[williamcll]

Guys
Guys

Bollywood

That is all.

[rj lake]

Murder is illegal. Following your logic, that makes murder not wrong.

Giving to charity is legal. Following your logic, giving to charity is not right.

It may apply to some things, but to other things it's just plain ridiculous.

i'm just going to jump in here to say that this is the most mind-numbingly stupid thing i have read since i attempted to get through atlas shrugged four years ago.

are you a real person

how did you even get there from "legality and morality are unrelated"

how

[Wheeeeeeatthins]

bluesunnyday legality does not define whether something is right or wrong. Common law dictates that laws represent the will of the people; however, inefficiencies like too much power concentrated in those not acting in the public's good or campaigns of misinformation can result in law not actually expressing the good of the public.

Here are some examples of three laws that show how legality does not necessarily determine :
Legal and Moral: It is illegal to murder. Refraining from murder is moral and in the public's interest.
Legal but Neither Moral or Immoral: It is illegal in the state of Ohio to cause a fish to become intoxicated. Fish inebriation is a morally-dubious area and the law does not do anything for the public good because seriously no one cares.
Legal but Neither Moral or Immoral: Miscegenation, or interracial dating, sex and marriage, was once illegal in the US. Interracial relations are not seen as any more right or wrong than intraracial relations nowadays. Miscegenation laws nowadays would not reflect the public good; they would punish a certain group of people for actions with no detriment to society's well-being. Laws against it would not suddenly make interracial relations immoral.
Legal but Immoral: In Nazi occupied territories, it was illegal to hide a Jewish person or other marked person. Turning members of a group who have done nothing wrong over to authorities known to be hostile to that group is immoral.

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sadly, at a public university I had to ask a professor who was also supposed to be my guidance counselor what she would do if forced to act in re: Jew Hiding Law when she was instructing the marketing class that legality is morality and she said "I don't know, that's tough; though I had some relatives who were lost in the Holocaust... I'd hope I'd be able to do the right thing"

To put this succinctly: the law does not make something right or wrong. It is for whether or not something is right or wrong that laws are made; sometimes the law does not reflect this and social action should then be taken to correct this.


Piracy has benefits to society as well as detriments--on the plus, it allows those whose willing price to pay for a product (whether that's determined in the individual by overpricing or lack of income) is less than the set price to have creative exposure to media they normally would miss out on resulting in increased societal welfare* and creative gains to future artistic efforts by allowing low-income future innovators to compose from a broader bank of creative material. On the minus, it means that existing producers of music/film may not receive as much income from their works--especially those who thrive in the current creative industries--and therefore may not be able to gain financial independence. I'd argue that the overall supply of music/film creators/producers has changed so much thanks to information available on the internet that the industry model is obsolete due to the vastly reduced barrier of entry to the market. The ability for artists to learn music/film/whathaveyou, produce it and distribute it is so much easier now that there is no need for a system of creation based on a limited number of elite producers (the major companies and studios) and distributors (clearchannel radio/regal entertainment group).

*this is just an example graph to show one way utility works; here is one I just made now for this specific thing

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the piracy discussed here is of a theoretical nature and "we" is not a literal "we". Winners don't do smack

[Bluesunnyday]

i'm just going to jump in here to say that this is the most mind-numbingly stupid thing i have read since i attempted to get through atlas shrugged four years ago.

are you a real person

how did you even get there from "legality and morality are unrelated"

how

HEY! I am nowhere near Atlas Shrugged levels of stupidity! I may be stupid, but I REFUSE to be associated with Ayn Rand! Also, I am really ashamed of that post now that I've had time to think about it. I'd just like to apologize for that...

[Kazerad]

I'd just like to apologize for that...

It is too late to apologize. Take your Avatar Of Shame:


(I'm kidding)

But yeah, Wheatthin's summary is excellent. The issue of piracy is a lot more complicated than simply "it's a crime, we have to stop it".

[atomicCascade]

Agreed. Though I really don't like the term piracy. Copying is much closer to the truth. Seriously though, piracy is really exagerated in the US. But is it really that bad?
Also, my statistics teacher once said something that you should take to heart: "Correlation does not imply causation" Similarly, while the laws of a people ought to reflect their will and their morality, it never does in practice due to the fact that the people can never seem to voice thwir opinions in a way that the leaders can understand, and such opinions are usually disregarded when they are. I don't know if its a flaw of the system or a flaw with our species, but for now I can only affirm that it is a fact of life.