The MPAA and EFF Cross Sabers

wigwamus writes "Motion Picture Association President Dan Glickman and Electronic Freedom Foundation co-founder Johh Perry Barlow lock horns, then knock lumps off each other over the movie business' attitude to the Internet. From the article: 'These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices.'"

Hear the audio

[wigwamus]

You can hear extended audio of Glickman v Barlow on the Newsnight 9th June podcast, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in. Download from http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewPodcast?id=136697142 [apple.com]

Electronic Freedom Foundation?

[mrnobo1024]

You would think the BBC would get the names right. It's actually the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [eff.org]

Re:that's right, we're escalating

[GPLDAN]

I'm curious why you've been modded as funny, since what you said isn't funny - it's true. Media pirates are being profiled in police documentation as people who are likely to be involved in hacking, stolen credit card rings and other scams. In fact, there is a whitepaper floating around that talks about tracking the upper echelon of hacking rings through their achilles heel - their propensity for aggregating large collections of stolen media. If you think the guys in Sweden who run the Pirate Bay are only involved in running a BT tracker for file sharing, you're incredibly naive. Raid those guys and you'd likely to find lots of other ancillary illegal activity, and running a pirate ring is just the probable cause you need to get a waarant.

Re:sooner or later the industry will give in...

[Ironsides]

which meant that when I lost one of my Futurama DVDs all I could do legally is buy another

I'd double check that if I were you. A few of the DVD manufacturers (Fox included, I believe), have a system set up so that if a disk fails, you can replace it for something like $5-$7. Basically, the cost of the media, processing and shiping.

Re:Excuse me

[kfg]

People can debate the morality and legality all they want... but if people keep wanting something for nothing, there's going to be no more something eventually.

I think you missed my point, entirely.

KFG

Re:on the contrary

[chicken_moo]

Sure, if replicating my car would cause the original to be destroyed, that would be a problem, quite obviously; and if that were the case, you wouldn't have much of a replicator, since there's still only one copy of the car in working order. Anyone with at least 2 brain cells can see that. However, the situation you propose is completely unrelated to the question at hand, since copying a file on the computer does not degrade the original, and if done correctly, does not cause any degredation in the copy either.

Which was that?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The fact of the matter is that people who create content for movies and television have to make a profit. If they don't you won't see all this wonderful stuff and listen to it."

By "wonderful stuff" does he mean the pathetic garbage that's been coming out of Hollywood in recent years? The whole movie theater profits have been falling for a while now, with people waiting untill DVD release to rent/watch the stuff. If Hollywood/music industry actually put out decent content they MIGHT, and that's a big might, have something to complain about. As it stands now, I don't go to the theater, and I rarely watch movies, because of the lack of good/innovative story. In the last 3 years I have aquired LOTR(Extended box set), Equilibrium, and Basic (which I only got because it was really cheap and someone recommended it). And I don't watch pirated content, so even if all piracy died now I still wouldn't be any more profitable to the industries.

Re:Both sides have it wrong...

[John Courtland]

Goddamnit, I meant http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ [magnetbox.com] (RIAA Radar, not RIAA watch)

Re:There is a difference/ happy fans vs SPITE

[Infoport]

A few things that should be noted: the Grateful Dead do NOT give away ALL of their "product". But, giving away some of their products gives THEM much exposure and helps others see that what they have to offer shows skill and has variation each and every time. From this they are able to build greater customer base and support and from that sell more of their other products.

For instance,

1. you still usually have to pay to see a concert. RESULT: they were the top grossing band in 1990 with almost DOUBLE the 2nd place grosser (I'm sure they did ok in other years too)
2. You are not allowed to copy and sell COMMERCIAL releases, but are allowed to copy and give away concert recordings. RESULT: happy fans police themselves and each other, and stop any illegal sales through community pressure and free concert tapes.
3. They sell t-shirts, bears, stickers, coffee cups, license plates, etc, and protect their logos.
4. they also speak up on issues and are listened to, etc because fans like how they act
5. etc etc

With unhappy people, they may copy and distribute product out of SPITE, but with happy loving fans they only do what allowed out of happiness with group, and help police themselves out of happiness too. THIS is what the Grateful Dead have achieved (now some may find a few fans distributing stuff they shouldn't but it is the small minority)

To address the quality point, the Dead allow people to bring in equipment and mike stands, usually up to 6ft or 12ft. People spend thousands on equipment. Files are made using LOSSLESS formats (not mp3), and some copies are even distributed with 5.1 sound-- these are NOT low quality copies!!!

InfoPort

Re:sooner or later the industry will give in...

[kesuki]

Just because you can use software to illegally copy music doesn't mean you're stealing from the industry. As I recall, the record industry has been doing pretty good with all the popularity of american idol. The record labels would be a lot better off in the long run if they moved ahead with the times.

Right now I'm sitting on slashdot playing games all day, but you know what, i joined the columbia house record club many years back when i first learned you can rip CDs to mp3s I only had a 486 and i So knew 'this is the greatest thing everyone will love it! You don't have to steal from anyone just because you're using p2p software or cd ripping programs. I LOVE sourceforge because they have so many wonder applications like cdex.

I really beleive the aging dinosaurs who don't learn how to play fair (sony, that means YOU) will get swollowed up by the forward thinking execs, like the owner of virgin atlantic richard branson who HAS got it right, and is trying his best to make a change. Sure he still profits heavily off musicians, and that makes me angry a lot, but at least he's trying to keep up with the times by finding new ways to draw artists and audience.

Re:Aw geez.

[czarangelus]

Hizbollah began as a group of rebel Lebanese Muslims fighting against an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But when we kill civilians, it's "justified collateral damage." When they kill civilians, it's "terrorism." What a bunch of BS.

Re:Yep

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

The salaries in the music industry are mainly going to the huge PR machine they run. The average CD costs 15-20$, the sound on it costs about 2$ to make. Packaging costs almost as much as if not more than the CD itself. The publisher gets as much out of each track on a CD as the artist. The writer gets a large cut as well. (This all true circa 1999, when I was in Internet music) The problem with the music industry is that somewhere along the line the other eight dollars before retail keystoning gets sucked up by (mainly) dumbasses wearing suits. All these dumbasses are making a steady salary and to get that steady salary they need to keep the business model working their way. Otherwise they become redundant. Now, they do things which are extremely important in the current industry- schmoozing, payola, schmoozing, payola, schmoozing.... - but if the industry changes they may not be as useful.

Where I worked during the .com's we had two offices - one in LA and one in Portland. The people in LA were generally 1) incompetent, 2) overpaid, 3) arrogant, and 4) touchy about the other three things being true. I have no reason to believe the rest of the entertainment industry is any different.

Re:sooner or later the industry will give in...

[Deagol]

I'm also wondering how long it will be before the RIAA comes up with a new media distribution format (a sort of super-audio-CD) that does something for the customer (maybe raises the sampling rate from 44k to 48k), and also uses a CSS-style encryption.

You mean like DVD-Audio [wikipedia.org]? Last time I checked, it wasn't truly cracked. There's a software hack to use WinDVD to rip the audio, but those with alternative platforms are SOL until the copy protection is truly defeated.

And this wasn't done quickly, either. According to the article I linked above, the WinDVD hack came out in 2005 -- years after DVD-Audio was released.

The content cartel is getting better with each iteration of new media.