NEWS: MPAA Under Investigation for Illegal NYPD Payoffs

This same witchhunt occured with the development of VHS. They feared that their empire would come crumbling down. Why do you think you have to read around those mundane FBI warnings before you watch any movie? Now with the development of various digital formats, the MPAA is once again crying that it will destroy their corporate enterprise. The MPAA is technophobic.

boogyman you're right just look at the link I provided. Downloading movies has actually helped a bit, as I personally download movies to check them out and if I like them I see it. One example of this is Sin City, I downloaded it first liked the first bit of it then went to see it in the Theatres yesturday. I'm probably going to buy the DVD as well when that comes out. Casettes didn't kill the Recording Industries either, infact they made the RIAA stronger unfortunately. Music Business will always be around, the Recording Business is dead and dying slowly but surely. 'Tis the way of the market force called "Creative Distruction"

Originally posted by PlausibleDeniability
If I were to STEAL a porsche and drive happily away then porsche (or the dealer) WOULD lose money.

Not only the dealer would lose the sale-commissioned money, but the company and its employees that builds the Porsche would lose the money as well.

Do you think Porsche employees would manufacture and build Porsches for free?

The same is true for the film and TV studios having to pay their employees and contractors for all kinds of services for every film or TV series that has been made.

And I wonder why California have such very high costs of living with all the luxuries and convenient things available.

Personally I think the MPAA can go to hell along with the RIAA, I know a lot of artists and musicians and these corporate types only seek to screw the artists anyway they can. If you ask me the best way to have prevented this was to pay the NYPD better. I live in NYC and everyone likes to talk about how Guilliani cleaned it up, but how did he do that, on the the backs of the NYPD. These guys are out there getting shot at, stabbed, and stuck with dirty needles and barely get paid more than a teacher. If we paid our police enough that they could feed their families and actually have a life outside of chasing criminals to make our lives safer we wouldn't have to worry about them accepting rewards for busting criminals.

I've had my run ins with the law, and the amount of effort they put into chasing me is more than worthy of an increase in pay.

'stealing' a digital song is not the same as stealing a porsche. what it is the same is, is looking at a porsche in detail, then getting scrap parts and paints, and building an exact replica of the porsche yourself, piece by piece for personal use only or for other people to build replicas of. that is not illegal.

when downloading a song over p2p networks, the internet or whatever medium you choose, you are using software to examine the song then reconstruct it on your computer, an exact replica, electron by electron. is that stealing?

Originally posted by boogyman
If times are so drastic why has the movie industry managed to spend an ever increasing amount of money on movies. Movies are being made with unprecedently high budgets. Yet here we are least twenty years after the advent of video tape and vcrs. If piracy causes so much damage to the film industry why wasnt the film industry wiped out with the advent of video tape?
The film industry has done the exact opposite of colapse under pressure, if anything its expanded and thrived.

Again, on the contrary, Studios produce a limited number of tent pole films that will garner the summer dollars, but very rarely break even within the first several years of release. To acquire the talent and the 3-4,000 screens needed, they to create a profit sharing program with all the parties involved. They bank on the world wide appeal of the film, hoping to garner an international audience during its initial run. A movie with a 150 million dollar budget isn't just produced for the United States, it's produced for Europe, South America, and Asia as well.

When the budgets get larger, it allows the film makers extra weeks and months to film. When the budgets get smaller, they filmmaker cannot have as much control over the lighting, the special effects, and the critical camera shots.

The reason that piracy didn't wipe out the film industry during the home video market, is because the actual films on VHS tapes were sold at ridiculous prices, $95-$105 per tape. Most contained a type of Macrovision copy guard that most people never bothered to try and bypass. Because the films weren't digital, copies to tape would degrade after time. Quite simply, technology was not adaquete to truly do widespread damage. For films released in the theatres, Camcorders were too big and bulky, and the ability to then distribute these copies were tedious and time consuming. You rarely saw film pirates outside of the major, metropoliton cities. The advent of file sharing systems has simply allowed for the distribution to become easier.

The only thing filesharing does, is eventually return us to the days when movies cost a $100 to buy during the first 6 months of release. It dramatically lowers the budgets of genre films, film that pirates mainly go after. Experimental digital technology, being perfected now, makes it impossible to record movies that are played on specially designed movie screens. That cost is then passed on to the consumer to even more. Don't like paying $15 for a movie? It's gonna be $20

And, you're slowly inching us towards the days when "collecting" is a thing of the past. When our current discs are replaced with cheap, encoded, bidegradable discs that stop working after a single viewing. And why?
Because, you are guys are too damn cheap to cough up 3 bucks to rent the thing at Blockbuster.

Piracy has already completely wiped out the Hong Kong film industry. They went from producing over 300 movies a year in the early 90's, to now producing a little over 50 a year. WHY? Because 95% of their audience in mainland China pirates their films. Right now in the United States, an average of 200,000 films are pirated off the internet a day. That number increases as download speed increases.

In conclusion, the arrogance of some of the posters in this thread is simply astounding. Movies are a want, not a need. Just because something is produced, does not give you the automatic right to have it. You have to pay for it, like any other service.

You're not fighting the good fight againt "Evil Corporations", you're only hurting yourself, and the artists behind the camera.

Experimental digital technology, being perfected now, makes it impossible to record movies that are played on specially designed movie screens.

And I predict that it will be cracked in 2 months

In conclusion, the arrogance of some of the posters in this thread is simply astounding. Movies are a want, not a need. Just because something is produced, does not give you the automatic right to have it. You have to pay for it, like any other service.

Naw you're being the arrogant one assuming that we should conform to the way the MPAA and RIAA want to do business. THEY dropped the ball by not offering alternatives and it's only NOW that iTunes et al are starting to become viable and it's the ONLY segment of growth in the Recording Industry. On the Indy curcuit(the people who embrased filesharing first to try to get out from under the thumb of the Media Elite) they are growing at approx 20 % a year!

You are regurgitating the same old arguments that were used against VCR's and Casettes.

Sharing is not Stealing, get that through your head! Ripping and then Selling access to the stuff IS stealing as defined by the Betamax case and will be reaffirmed in the current Grokster Case. The Law is on OUR side, either get with the program and figure out how to make money or get run over and let the next generation of Entertainment companies take over. Simple as that...

[edit on 24-4-2005 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by sardion2000
You are regurgitating the same old arguments that were used against VCR's and Casettes.

Sharing is not Stealing, get that through your head! Ripping and then Selling access to the stuff IS stealing as defined by the Betamax case and will be reaffirmed in the current Grokster Case. The Law is on OUR side, either get with the program and figure out how to make money or get run over and let the next generation of Entertainment companies take over. Simple as that...

[edit on 24-4-2005 by sardion2000]

Okay, I'm going to restate my argument, bcause it obviously hasn't sunk in. I don't care about music. I don't care about the RIAA. A guy can record an album in his basement studio and release it. It costs far less to produce and promote a music album than it does a movie.

I am talking about films, and the reason you keep bringing up the music industry is to the muddy the waters and conjoin the two business models - even though they work on completely diferent levels. More to the fact, I could honestly care less if you rented a movie at Blockbuster and duped it for a friend.

But, you can't do it for a hundred people, or a thousand people, and that's the real issue here.

I'm talking about a guy taking a camcorder, as you so glibly pointed out, and illegally recording a film in the theatre. Then distributing that film for free across the globe for anyone to watch it.

That's NOT sharing, that's illegally distributing a product against the wishes of the owner. You don't get to produce your own GAP shirts, because you can't afford them, and then hand those out to people. You're nothing more than a common street hood, hiding by a computer screen, justifying your actions. It's digital anarchy, and I hope you get sued for everything that you have.

More to the point, it's not a question of copying for yourself. It's distribution, and that's what's going to get you in trouble. The films are not public domain. It's not your property. You don't own it. So, you have absolutely no rights whatsoever to redistribute it. You can justify it anyway that you want, but it still makes you a thief.

As for the Grokster case, the Betamax law, aka Sony vs. Univeral Studios (1986), was already weakened by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals verdict that essentially shut down Napster in 2001. The reason why Grokster is going to get nailed, is because they sell ads on their website and on their product, thus profiting from your illegal distribution.

The Law is not on your side. Your ability to illegally distribute the pirated materials is protected by a techicality, in that the owners of avenue that you choose to distribute cannot currently be held liable for YOUR illegal actions. They can and will target you individually for infringing upon their copyright.

You're not even a consumer, so you have no right to tell these corporations that they should change their business model to suit your need. This isn't about fighting the good fight against evil corporations, this about you being too cheap to go see a movie. I don't go to your work and steal Whoppers, because I don't like Burger King's current business model, and their drive through is too slow. You're a thief, and a cheap one, at least rats on the street admit what they are.

Let me try to put things in perspective, I don't want to ARGUE for or against anything, but I'd like to try to look at this situation as OBJECTIVELY and CLEARLY as possible, to make sense of it, to really understand what is going on, not to determine "right" or "wrong".

A company that makes PHYSICAL products spends money on essentially 3 things:

1) Initial investment so you have the capability to produce your product (equipment, buildings, hardware/software, whatever).
2) Salary of everyone involved, because they need to eat/pay rent/wear clothes/etc.
3) Each new product costs money to CREATE initially, but in addition, each COPY also costs money, since it is a physical product that requires physical materials.


A company that makes INTELLECTUAL property spends money on essentially 3 things:

1) Initial investment so you have the capability to produce your product (equipment, buildings, hardware/software, whatever).
2) Salary of everyone involved, because they need to eat/pay rent/wear clothes/etc.
3) Each new product costs money to CREATE initially, but each COPY is free because it is digital and making copies is like copying a file on your computer (physical CD's don't count because we're not talking about stealing CD's from stores here, we're talking about "stealing" the digital part only, and those are separate issues).

Let's say ONE person buys the physical product, like a car, and then everyone else in the world invades the factory and steals all the other cars. Well, then the company loses essentially all its money, because the investment they made into EACH NEW CAR is taken away from them without any return, except for the very first car. Company files bankrupcy and goes out of business.

Let's say ONE person buys a DIGITAL product, like a song, and then makes millions of copies and gives them away free to everyone else. Then the entire investment by the music/movie studio, which includes people and equipment, yields no return as well. So yes, if the song is $1, then that's all they have to show for all their investment, and they have NO money to make another song again (it would be pointless to borrow again from the bank, if they'll only make $1 again for it)
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What can we see from this? Well, yes, TECHNICALLY, if you buy something and then make your OWN copies of it with your OWN equipment (even if you use a star trek replicator to make copies of your own car and give those copies away for free), then no you didn't STEAL anything, that is true, because nothing is TAKEN from the company itself. But you DO deprive the company of returns for their investment, which includes numbers 1, 2, and 3 above. If a company does not make MORE than it invests, then it FAILS and cannot continue to exist. If you only make $1 or less for every $1 that you invest, then it makes absolutely no sense to invest, you'd not be MAKING MONEY, which is the point!

Now for a second Imagine if we ALL suddenly had Star Trek replicators and we could make infinite copies of ANY physical object, like a car. Well, we buy ONE car, and we can make millions of copies and freely give those copies to everyone on the planet. Then of course, either the car company will completely go broke and have NO money to make any new cars or even survive as a company, or they'll have to charge practically nothing for each new car they make (which they cannot, because it costs a lot to make each one!). UNLESS the company had its own replicator, and could make infinite copies of their cars for free - in which case each car would cost about as much as each mp3 file, around $1, since they only have to spend money on the INITIAL investment to make the first car, just like the music/movie industry only spends initial investment to create the movie/album/song, and then copies are free to make!

So even though it takes nothing to copy an mp3 millions of times, it takes a LOT of money to make the very first song, to pay for the quality equipment (if you want a quality song), for the talented artists, for the editors, for everyone involved.

What is my conclusion?

Stealing is "taking what belongs to someone else", so if you buy a song, it now belongs to you, and if you make copies, they are YOURS too so you're not stealing if you make copies and give'em to everyone. BUT the outcome is the same, which is, you deprive the company of its returns!

Now what is the problem? The problem is that the artists do not just get a SALARY and make a "living", and the people who make this stuff don't just make a salary, they make a FORTUNE!! So it costs them $0.20 to make a CD that they sell for $15, and end up making a FORTUNE and buying big boats and 15 cars and 3 mansions!

If their paychecks were only $40,000 a year or so, I'd never EVER deprive them of their returns, I have too much sympathy for people to cut someone's $40,000 in half and make them struggle only to survive. But when the paychecks are $1,000,000 a year, I have no problem with cutting THEIR paychecks in half or more, they'll just have to suck it up and get over it, they still have more than many of us will ever make in our lifetimes, and if they are pissed off that they only get a million or 500 grand instead of a kazillion-bajillion, then we should send them to communist China and see how they like their "equal pay" so they calm the f* down and get off their pedastal!#&*(#@

No, I'm not supporting communism, but neither am I supporting capitalism - both systems do not work for only one reason: Human selfishness. Capitalism allows the elite few to have god-like riches while many starve, and communism completely cuts off your ability to make more money except if you go into crime, which means there is no real incentive to be creative and work, and PLENTY of incentive to steal/kill/etc.

Capitalism just makes it "legal" to be a psychopath that doesn't give a flying f* about anyone but their own power and money, despite the fact that you share this planet with billions of other humans. So what do we do? Well, the only way to CHANGE anything, is for every person to suddenly change and stop being so selfish. As long as selfish and psychopathic people exist, they will find a way to "rise to the top", be it legal or not. If you make it illegal then they'll do it illegally. If you make it legal, they'll do it both ways. But either way, the most psychopathic and the greediest, who are willing to stop at nothing and do whatever it takes, will always win over those who have a conscience and sympathy for MANKIND.

So my suggestion to everyone with naive yet idealistic hopes to "change the world" is, stop trying because you can't, it is the way it is for a reason, that reason being the nature of mankind - but you can CHANGE YOURSELF, and maybe inspire others to also change themselves, but this world will nevertheless remain the playground of the greedy, ruthless, and the corrupt. And catch 22 is, for those with a conscience to do anything to change the world, they'd have to step over their own conscience and become ruthless power-hungry psychopaths to stand a chance to compete with the very psychopaths they'd want removed from power/control of this world, which would make you the same exact thing anyway, and so you'd defeat your own purpose as a result!

If mankind changes its own service to self and greedy nature, the world will follow. Until that day, it won't change!

Good news is: There is a way to get the f* off this blood-stained rock, which is oh so beautiful but oh so corrupt and abused, and find a new beautiful planet for those who are fed up with the "terror" of the situation on this planet as it is! And it has EVERYTHING to do with fundementally changing yourself so you no longer fit, no longer "belong" here. We wouldn't be here if we all didn't belong, if we didn't "fit" in this world. Maybe if we change ourselves and no longer fit with this world, we won't be here. But the devil, as always, is in the details.

Ahem... *straightens bowtie*. Thanks for your time =D

-Mike

[edit on 25-4-2005 by lilblam]