The MPAA and EFF Cross Sabers 401
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.'"
sooner or later the industry will give in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing bits to concrete items? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copying a song does not deprive anybody of the item - only the entity that controls how money is made from the transaction
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
KFG
Excuse me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
People with old world business experience going up against young idealists
In either case, new ideas actually quite often do win.
Great analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear EFF: It's probably not such a good idea to align yourself with terrorist groups. Remember:
"But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"
Re:sooner or later the industry will give in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me (Score:2, Insightful)
Your Barney downloads would not even exist.
Oh. .
KFG
Thats it, i'm going home (Score:2, Insightful)
This kind of "play by my rules or I'm taking my ball and going home" attitude is disgusting. When will these suits realize that technology is change by its very essence and refusal to accept change breads discontent. There totalitarianistic utopia has ended but they refuse to seek out new means to an end. Do they realy believe a threat of "noones gonna make movies anymore if they can only become millionaires instead of multi-millionaires" is gonna work?
This is all about distribution (Score:5, Insightful)
20 years ago if you wanted a movie you had to hop in the car. Even for home viewing of a VHS you had to go to the video store.
The MPAA and RIAA need to face the fact that the internet is essentially a broadcast/time-shifted medium which casts to a broader audience than ever. And how do broadcaster's make their money? Advertising.
This may or may not be a popular notion - but it is my opinion that the best way to support movies and music in the future is via product endorsement. Yes, that's right. You might see wayne's world-esqe [google.com] product placement rise - but isn't everyday life just product placement anyhow? look around you and count the consumer items that have no labeling on them. Our movies and music should follow suit and become freely distributable.
They cannot hold back the tide forever - I think it is inevitable.
Aw geez. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm generally a Barlow fan, but that's some of the most poorestly chosen words in the history of language. Just what the MPAA, RIAA, et al. and their paid governement servants need, a little more help getting the little guy who just wants a backup copy of a movie sent to Gitmo.
deaf ears (Score:5, Insightful)
"Look, this works. I have proof."
"I refuse to believe it can work."
If they can't listen to reason, we'll have to wait for them to die, it seems.
The problem is lack of alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
To say it's a battle between free and paid is oversimplifying: iPod + iTunes is wildly succesful. It's paid, but it leverages the ease of the internet to get legally downloaded music.
If these industries had tried to embrace the new tech instead of surpressing it, most would go to them, and the black market would be a fringe issue.
For movies, the choice right now is either online and illegal/unpaid, or offline and legal.
A lot of people are choosing online, not illegal.
Example: if they offered movies for download, or online streaming movies and paid subscription, and the price wasn't retarded, a LOT of people would ditch piratebay et al.
My $0.02
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yep (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the tea is crap in America and good in Britain.
MORTAL KOMBAT! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can tell Dan Glickman's age in his speech:
- Microsoft: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005
- Washington Mutual: 2 dollars given out in $2 denominations(the $2 bill)
- Gentleware: Poseidon(Community Edition)
- Wal Mart / Sam's Club: Sampled foods from selected vendors
- Arby's: Chicken Fingers(?)
- Google
It doesn't defy the law of nature, it's a useful technique called marketing!Old man should see this [google.com]
In a contest they would.
Business will indeed win. (Score:2, Insightful)
In a way, business is always the winner. It's often just not the same businesses.
Re:on the contrary (Score:4, Insightful)
How? Why would copying a stream of bits degrade the original?
Re:Thats it, i'm going home (Score:2, Insightful)
The other night I paid three bucks to perform a song.
I wrote the song for free because I had an itch to scratch (a very lovely itch, I might ad).
The itch writes songs, records them and sells them as an independant. God bless CD Baby.
The idea that art will curl up and die without without strong IP rights is ludicrous. Art was invented by people with no such rights.
KFG
Re:This is all about distribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at allofmp3.com... do people flock to it because of its questionable legality? No, they flock to it because they get the music the want easily, quickly, and in good quality with no DRM and lots of options. And people flock to iTunes for similar reasons.
Yes, there are 17 year old pirates who want to steal for the sake of stealing, but once they get jobs & make some real money their time becomes valuable, and they buy your product IF you offer it for a fair price.
I'd gladly spend $3 to download a one time rental movie that I can watch on my TV, or $.50 to buy a non-drmd losslessly compressed song (actually if it's lossless I'll even accept reasonable DRM... if it's already compressed, no way tho) if you can provide me the guarantee of quality & a convenient shopping experience & a promise that I'm not downloading some virus from whatever today's napster is... those features are a service that people will pay for, the problem is finding the price points people will accept. iTunes really seems to have done this, which dissapoints the piss outa me, cause it's way over what I think is fair.
There is a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Zoom ahead how many years? Now we have the internet and you can get the album quicker than running to the store (kill reason #1) and if you encode it right the quality is the same or at least undiscernable to the untrained ear (kill reason #2)
Now I'm a firm believer that there is a middle ground but JPB is way off base saying they can just take "their" model nowadays. Times have changed, man!
Re:deaf ears (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he's actually saying "I don't need to see it. I know it can't be true."
"If You Got a Warrant, I Guess You Gotta Come In" (Score:3, Insightful)
And that always works out well, doesn't it?
But the folks to whom the EFF is pitching -- the college kids and twenty-somethings who are donating to them and actually paying for the EFF people to fly comfortably cross-country from SF to DC so frequently (I'll never figure that move to the West Coast out...), they'll probably think that "JPB RAWWKS, D00D!! KICK A$$!! FAWK, YEAH!!" and pony up some more dough for the EFF coffers, so in the end, it's probably a brilliant idea to keep tilting at those windmills with tie-dyed lances.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Without going into much detail, or even providing a link (i'm that lazy and at work so I shouldn't even be here) - Canada decided smokers would pay out the ass if they heavily taxed cig's, i mean heavily, i think at the time it was early 90's and suddenly the price of the dirty cancer sticks jumped a couple of dollars. they still paid. for awhile. than, oddly enough, people found some stores that sold cheaper slightly less taxed (OK, not taxed at all) cigs at some stores. Canadians liking to save money like everyone else opted for the lower cost. I inquired into it a bit and discovered that pirate rings for cigarettes had been established - in some cases it was local reserves, others it was smuggling from the US, and local stores were frequently buying quantities of cigarettes of people who sure didn't look very official.
the gov't saw this happening and took immediate steps to stop it that succeeded, they dropped the tax on the cigarettes and learned a valuable lesson - when you charge a lot for crap, people stop buying it. now to bring this up to today, in the article the MPAA advise that they need to pay these people salaries so they will continue to produce, i whole heartedly agree, but not million dollar salaries, if you need to make several million for working for a few weeks and can't get by without it, than screw you and the horse you rode in on. if the product was priced more on par with the value the consumer got from it than they wouldn't be having this problem.
Re:Yep (Score:3, Insightful)
Except when they don't. Don't confuse the aggregate power of the profit motive as evidence for the competence of individuals.
In this case, it is the business people who are living in a fantasy land, and the "idealists" are the ones thwacking them with the cold cruel club of reality.
Re:Aw geez. (Score:3, Insightful)
I am going to guess choice two, assuming the man has any working synapes left.
And this is exactly why. (Score:5, Insightful)
People are powerless when they are convinced they are powerless.
Re:that's right, we're escalating (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, they're into evil stuff like hosting legal torrent tracking files (probable cause? I guess by your logic that the NSA has probable cause to investigate me because I post on slashdot and criticize the current administration's actions as of iate). They're into other nasty evil stuff like running banner ads (oh gosh, more probable cause!) and distributing free porn (OMG more probable cause), all legal in their home country. The problem there is corruption.
If they are doing stuff which is illegal, let authorities find actual probable cause grounded in legalities and not engage in corrupt practices by giving in to our (the American) government when Bush granted the MPAA a favor and pushed Sweden's government into illegal activities, similar to what our government has been doing here since 2001/09/11. The political elite are just using the Muslim extremists as an excuse to grab more power and money for themselves, and to use it as an excuse to gravitate toward one single global government where there are no checks and balances, and where those who are in power will always remain in power.
Work For Free (Score:2, Insightful)
Entertainment Industry Is Against Sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
What the entertainment industry and ilk are against is sharing. It is only through their imposition of selfishness and self importance on the ability of others to share that they can make money. Unfortunately, this makes them net negative resources to society because in doing so, they compromise the free flow of information necessary to a technically and culturally advancing civilization. Imagine if they had been around when humans only had oral history as a way to pass information between people and generations. There would be no tape recorders, no CDs, and certainly no computers.
Piracy is when someone actually takes something of value and realizes the value of it themselves. The Hong Kong outfits that take a movie, stamp it on a DVD, and then package and sell it as if were the original are pirates in this sense. It makes sense to have copyright laws preventing this type of activity. However, to use the parlance of the summary," 17 year old kids" are not "Hezbollah". They are not terrorists. They are not pirates. Pirates do not share. They are simply sharing information with each other (and us), which is a virtue we espouse to younger generations. The effort of the entertainment industry to criminalize their behavior is an affront to all of us who share thoughts, ideas, and anything else we choose to share without charge.
Re:Ar ye pirates.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Very simple. It's the same reason that the police harass ravers instead of the local hells angels rally.
These people will shoot back and fight back.. Grandma and some college kid will roll over and say "ow dont hurt me! I'm sorry" these organized piracy rings will turn around and kill the cops that raid their shop, kill the families of the cops and then kill the Exec that sent the cops after them.
Why take on a hard target when you can pick on the easy ones, the general american public.
Re:Pirating is Selfish and Parasitic (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:There is a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 2: Sell your cds in massive numbers to anyone who wants a better quality recording.
Step 3: Profit!
Wait
Typical MPAA crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Patently untrue, as the renaissance of truly independant movies coming out today prove. It is based on the presumpition that money is the only motivation that moves people to create. That is hardly the case, and in generaly, artists who are motivated only by money make an inferior product.
Living next door to Hollywood, I know a number of people in the industry, and all of them are motivated by various combinations of three things: money - yes, they do want to get paid to do it, so they can do it all the time, a desire for fame (which is far easier to meet online these days), and a need to create (which will never go way until the day they die). Mostly, they create because they don't know how to stop.
What Hollywood needs to fear isn't pirates, who, from the evidence we've seen so far, actually increase industry revenues rather than decrease it. Rather, Hollywood should (and does) fear the interent as an independent (as in, beyond their corporate control, and outside their revenue stream) distribution channel. It is no longer necessary to sell your soul to a big studio for a distribution deal to deliver your movie to an audience. Between digital video (which Max Allen Collins called "the keys to the kingdom") and the internet, it is not possible to make a movie, and sell it commercially to people all over the world, and make a profit doing so for an investment smaller than the price of a new car.
It is, I suppose, a happy coincidence for the movie industry that mandatory copy restrictions that depend on patents that require substantial cash outlay to use will just happen to continue to lock out indpendent industry outsiders from the market. I say "happy coincidence" because I see no reason to believe that the indstury tycoons are smart enough to have planned it that way on purpose.
Free music (Score:1, Insightful)
So here it goes:
1. Free music
2. More collaborations with others underground musicians
2.b More contacts, friends and partys, B2B ideas sharing
3. More free music
4. No label to pay
5. More people @ my shows
???
== Profit!
IN YOUR FACE RIAA
Let's not.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"If You Got a Warrant, I Guess You Gotta Come I (Score:3, Insightful)
But for the EFF, it's about making money, and Good Theatre keeps the donations rolling in. They've become a kind of "Digital Rights PETA."
Too expensive! (Score:2, Insightful)
The music recording and movie industry are clinging to outdated business plans, distribution and cost models, because they have been seeing increasing profits as the costs of production and distribution drop.
The technologists have seen the same thing, and ask: "why should I pay $17 for a CD when I can download the songs for $0.99 each off iTunes, or $0.11 each off AllofMP3.com?"
The answer probably lies somewhere between the two. Distribute non-DRM'd music and videos at a reasonable price. After all, making a small amount of money is better than making none. AllofMP3.com succeeds by making the price reasonable. It probably won't be around much longer, but that means there's going to be a vacuum...and an oppportunity. Unfortunately, the recording industry is probably *not* agile or innovative enough to capitalize on that opportunity.
It aint just the music... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yep (Score:3, Insightful)
Too true, and while their business model may not survive, there is no denying that big business owns the IP. Whether their content gets distributed for pennies 'per use' or dollars per DVD, they still win.
What infuriates me the most personally is that these companies are allowed to hold IP hostage. If it weren't for the 'Hezbollah' this stuff might never see the light of day again.
Example#1. I would happily buy old MST3K episodes legally (yeah I'm wierd), but many of them simply aren't available at any price.
Example#2. The Sci-fi channel bought up rights to the original outer limits, therefore shutting out my local PBS station. Which would be ok if they actually aired them occassionally, but you know...they dont.
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
The movie industry claims we are forced to choose: either kill technology innovation or the movie industry won't survive. My proposed message to the movie industry: don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I could care less if no more hollywood movies are ever made.
Re:Thats it, i'm going home (Score:2, Insightful)
Ya ever hear a major movie studio/music distributor announce at a press conference that:
"Well, we couldn't find any decent material this year, so we aren't going to be releasing anything."
No? Didn't think so.
By their very nature they are required to push out a stream of something, even if they themselves know it's total dreck.
1067 channels; 24/7; and nothin's on.
KFG
sigh .... it's a metaphor ... (Score:2, Insightful)
In this case I think that point that's being made is that the 17yr olds are not playing by the 'rules' at leats not by the rules of big business because they're not engaged with the system - suppose instead we say "it's a bright new wild-west frontier and some stuffy victorian gentleman is saying 'hey old chap that's not cricket' - see another metaphor - but from times gone by - the 'Hezbollah' is an idea standing in for something else - it may push your buttins right now 20 years from now it will be just a word, but it also wont carry the idea of 'working outside the existing legal system' that it does now
The funny part is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real deal in all this mess is that content creators "REALLY DON'T NEED THE *AA ANYMORE" since for not much more than a data center contract, any record label, including independents, can set up their own music distribution system over the Internet. The entire need for a music and movie distribution organization (i.e., the *AAs) no longer exists.
US Telephone users are finally going to get to stop paying for the Spanish American war, but when will recording artists get to stop paying for 'breakage of vynl disks' on their contracts?
Its not about DRM, its about stolen wealth, and the *AA is currently stealing it, blatantly stealing it. They counter claim that because they were unable to steal it from content buyers, it was stolen from them.... I'm calling BS.
Now, the price of content is high because of the *AAs of the world, but if content providers could get out of the draconian contract they signed, and start providing content over the Internet at reasonable costs to users for the 'PURCHASE' of said content, most users would happily just purchase the content as its not worth the effort to most people to be illegal or even figure out the ins and outs of stealing it. Additionally, any kind of licensing setup that allowed fair use (backup copies, multiple players, etc.) would be accepted easily if the price was low enough (see iFanboi rhetoric for an example).
Its pure "pot and kettle black and white" when it comes to the *AA claiming downloaders and file sharers are stealing from them.
Focus In (Score:3, Insightful)
"Aging Men" (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
What we observers know is that models and technology pass from existence, not art. Mr. Glickman represents a bureaucracy that currently dominates western movie production and distribution. He'd like us to think that he is doing something noble but his intentions are not. He isn't fighting to save art. He isn't even fighting to save the industry. He is fighting to save the model on which the industry is currently locked into.
Every bureaucrat hates innovation. They hate new ways of doing things which are more productive. Innovation makes the old people and old ways look incompetent, and no one likes to look incompetent.
I have no doubt that movies and movie makers will survive. Mr. Glickman might even survive, but not by trying to fit his old model over the new one. I'm sure he will land on his feet either way.
I thought I would say it because I don't think that Mr. Barlow did an adequate job.
Re:"If You Got a Warrant, I Guess You Gotta Come I (Score:3, Insightful)
The EFF needs to exist because of the legislation being created in D.C. That's where all the serious lobbying outfits are based. But the EFF is not serious (it's a fact that none of the legislators take them seriously any more), so they *moved* from DC, to the West Coast, in the late '90s (Google it). It was regarded, by anyone with half a clue regarding how US government policy works, as their "Jump the Shark" moment.
Now, the EFF is about fresh-faced interns who genuinely believe they are "doing good," cocktail parties with high-level luminaries from the companies you iterated so the rank-and-file legal beagles can network their way into corporate gigs, flying business class, and drumming up new crises every quarter or so to coincide with their fundraising drives.
Hey, so it goes. It's how the world works...
Re:Yep (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Aw geez. (Score:4, Insightful)
Both are bad. One is worse.
Re:Excuse me (Score:1, Insightful)
As it is to ascribe false motives to those with whom we disagree.
Oversight on both sides (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing that seems to be over looked in all of this is actual economics. MPAA says they need to pay the directors etc big bucks to work. Fine, do that. One problem, I don't want to pay that much for the final product. The MPAA is an organized monopoly. My company doesn't have that luxary. If it costs us too much to make a chip, our competitor will do it for less and we'll be out of business. It is that simple. Think Dell.
I'm not saying copying movies is the best thing to do, but don't bitch to me that you have to pay your out-of-wack bills either. $5 is what I'll pay to see a movie. If $5 * #_of_tickets isn't enough money for your $200M movie, that is not my problem. Don't cry to me about ticket sales decreasing while ticket prices are increasing. Supply and demand is not balanced so fix your business model.
If Nicole Kidman wants $20M per movie and that blows the budget, don't hire her. She'll adjust too after being unemployed like many Americans (or Australians).
Re:Yep (Score:1, Insightful)
No. The bad news (for EFF) is that while this dedicated foe will be alive but bankrupt when the old guys are dead, a new generation will have taken the aforementioned old guys' place and will have inherited all of their wealth, power and influence. They'll still be calling the shots while the "younger and dedicated foe" will be struggling through debt slavery.
Re:This is all about distribution (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry but, this is a complete non-starter.
I refuse to watch commercials, and product placement in your story WILL distract you. Do you want your latest Tom Clancy to include a plug for eyeglasses, there in the middle of chapter 17?
I sure as hell can't accept product placement in "The Village", it just doesn't WORK! I watch movies to escape, not to check the irrelevant list-of-things-I-haven't-bought-yet.
Re:Ar ye pirates.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And this is exactly why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Individual persons may be powerless at times, but never people.