Hollywood steps up piracy fight

The big crack down has finally started to happen. Knocking on your door soon.
Only fair though, money spent making the picture and to lose income from internet piracy. Glad I don't download.

money.cnn.com...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Motion Picture Association of America announced a new campaign aimed at slowing the illegal downloading of movies off the Internet.

The MPAA, the main lobbying group for Hollywood's major studios, held a news conference Tuesday afternoon to trumpet the latest crackdown, which representatives said included both civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions around the world.

"We have taken action against over 100 servers in many countries on four continents," said John Malcolm, the director of worldwide anti-piracy at the MPAA. He said steps were taken this week in the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Finland and the Netherlands.

I view all these related "news stories" as a scare tactic to try and make people not want to download movies. It's justifiable, but the fact is they're not going to be able to stop the sharing of movies, music, games, or anything else for that matter. They probably won't even be able to slow it down. People who use the Gnutella network and other p2p networks are most at risk, especially if you share a lot files yourself. Sharing is more dangerous than downloading. I run an FTP server, (I'm not admitting to anything ), and I won't stop just because of this. As I said before I think it's all scare tactics. If you do plan on downloading movies and stuff, though, I wouldn't recommend p2p networks such as Gnutella. Those are dumb except for music anyway. (And if you use Kazaa God help you! Assuming God exists of course.) Learn to use IRC, or newsgroups, or even direct connect is better than Gnutella. The chance of getting caught is much more minimal. Although, now that I've posted this, Big Brother is taking note and planning on creating a big hoopla scare tactic to make people scared to use those, too. (Don't get me wrong, you can still get caught using those. Just be careful!) Anyway, I believe in free stuff, especially when it means getting all of my music, movies, programs, PC games, XBOX games, e-books, and everything else for free! (Again, I'm not admitting to anything! )

[edit on 15/12/04 by an3rkist]

Originally posted by an3rkist
Anyway, I believe in free stuff, especially when it means getting all of my music, movies, programs, PC games, XBOX games, e-books, and everything else for free! (Again, I'm not admitting to anything!

)

( Of course you're not admitting to anything )

No but seriously though this is just a waste of time and money for the MPAA in my opinion. They can try all they want but piracy has been around forever, and nothing they can do will change that.

[edit on 15-12-2004 by Ocelot]

damn hollywood aholes..and msoft too..they busted finreactor.com bittorrent site. Cruel world we live in...money hungry microsoft is hunting down inviduals.
-ap

While I do understand that they want their share of money from a product they created I have second thoughts about this.

I recently purchased a DVD player.
With playing DVD�s that I bought there is no problem. Playing DL�d movies either, but, and here comes why they can **** ***, when I rent a DVD, and by doing this LEGALLY have the right to vieuw it, my DVD player has huge problems playing rented DVD�s because of the anti-copy security on it.
Now I can keep trying but it ain�t funny, so what is the easiest solutio`?
Buy and download.
Secondly, Sony ie. they sell empty DVD�s and CD rom�s but complain we burn DL music and fims on it... errr hello? This is BS.

Well, perhaps the "entertainment" industry should step down from its ivory tower and look at the needs of us, everyday users. Legal DVDs and CDs are impossibly priced: of course you can save something by shopping out a bit, but prices are still very, very high. That's why p2p is so popular nowaday: not everybody can afford to cash out 15-20 bucks for each new product he desires. Step down prices a little bit and you'll see that people will return to the stores. Even better: make the product legally downloadable without restrictions for personal use. The Digital Millenium Act is clear: if you own a legally purchased product, you can make as many copies as you want, in very possible format, for personal use. I'll tell you a personal case: I purchased a music CD from a very well known company (I won't tell you the name, because it doesn't matter). It is marked on the cover as "copy controlled". I came back home and I put it into my PC to test out the new audio card and all I got was this blurred sound. Thinking of a defective product, I tried my Xbox, to no avail. I tried a couple more CD readers and nothing. Before going back to the store to return it, I slammed it into my 15-year-old Pioneer stereo and it worked like a treat. Of course this CD reader was made before the invention of copy protection and the like, so it wasn't fooled. I have no hope to get a refund, since the disk is not defective, but I also have no hopes to put the songs in MP3 format or copy them on my Xbox for my very personal use... in the while the same album is available through most p2p sites, free of charge. I am speechless.

Originally posted by Kakugo
I also have no hopes to put the songs in MP3 format or copy them on my Xbox for my very personal use... in the while the same album is available through most p2p sites, free of charge. I am speechless.

Although the same album is available on p2p sites, (quite possibly with some minor audio glitches as a minor copyright infringement annoyance), I don't doubt that if you really wanted to you could make mp3s from your "copyright-protected" CD. With a search on Google you might find a free program that'll do it for you, or talk to a couple people on IRC, or in a relevant forum. "Hackers" as they are often referred to are more than happy to crack copyright protections like that, and will usually make a free program that will bypass the protection for you.

To me the true artist that should be paid are the artist that turn that film or music or game into little 1's and 0's that can go through a phone line and rearrange itself on your computer.

The problem I think lies with the companies that produce the movies/games/music, because most of them also produce the hardware to crack and "illegally" download the material. Like Sony for instance, they make my computer with a great movie software program for playing movies, burning movies, etc. They also make the movies. They is a big hoopla about pirates using digital video cameras to record movies in theaters. So Sony alters the digital film of the movies so it flickers when recorded with a digital video camera. Last month, Sony annouced they have produced a new video camera that will overide the flicker of the new movies at theaters. Sounds weird, but they play both sides of the fence, making money on both ends. So screw these companies, that is who is concerned about the money anyway. Bands make hardly anything off of cd sales, they make all their money on merchandise and ticket sales for tours. I think music should be free to download, if you like the band, you will buy a $40 ticket when they come to your town, and a $20 t shirt probally and I guarantee the band will pocket more cash from that than 1000 cd sales.

Well, you have bands like one of my favorites: the Dave Matthews Band, that allows people to record it's concerts on tape, and trade them with people. There's a HUGE society of people who trade these bootlegged concerts. Just have a look at how many concerts this one guys has, or do a search for DMB trade lists if you want to trade with some people:

www.geocities.com...

Yet Dave Matthews Band still makes TONS of money off the sale of their CDs, even though their live songs, which are better than the album versions, are 100% legally free. A lot of people, (not me!), will download the music, and if they like it they'll buy the CD to support the band in hopes they'll make MORE good music.

However, this thread is about Hollywood losing money off downloads of MOVIES. This is slightly more complicated, but I think y'all know my opinion on this: free is good and I like it a lot!

yea i download movies...well i used to..then i f-ed up my comp...now i just download random crap off the internet...

i say useeee whatever you want...download whhhhhhhatever you want...even porn...if they want to stop piracy...they have to stop making movies...so i say...do what you can...have fun..and steal steal STEAL!

Now I can keep trying but it ain�t funny, so what is the easiest solutio`?
Buy and download.

There is another way: rent (borrow) and rip. There's (cheap, even free) software that will defeat any protection, you just need a halfway decent computer with a dvd burner. (Gets rid of regional coding, too...) I'm not officially suggesting it, mind you...although you could call it off-site backup in case the video store burns down

Some dvd players are more forgiving than others, too.

Two things they should do: lower the price of dvds, and make movies available for legal download.

The main thing that has stopped me downloading music is that the quality is generally crap. Same with downloaded movies, I expect, although I've bener tried it.

It's all bribery.

The government's get cash for from hollywood movie studio's to bring down the sites. Without going through the legal process.

The reality is they are bring down the sites simply because it providers a link to copyrighted materical. But the copyright materical is not on the site.

So if i give a street address of stolen materical? which i didn't steal. Should i be taken to court?

This the measures that hollywood is taking.

Then you go into issue of stealing, hard object's and copyied materical.

Their is difference going into a shop and stealing a hard copy version of hl2, and downloading it off the net.

They call it stealing, piracy, but it's just copying materical that creators don't want copyied. But they use the term steal so it weight more in court.

Digital data has it's benfits can easily be duplicated for very low cost. Hollywoof and music industry benfits from this. But it has it's flaw's which is it can also be copied by consumers and the people over the world without buying the product.



[edit on 15-12-2004 by Thinker]

Basically, the battle against piracy is unwinnable.

Too many lawless countries to put servers in, no way to control the intraweb. There will always be data havens and hackers and stuff. Until technology gets to the point where you can actively police this sort of thing, even trying is pointless.

DE

Thanks for the tip an3arkist. My case was to prove that while hackers can defeat the copy protection and violate copyrights a without problem, legitimate customers can't do what the Digital Millenium Act authorize them to do.