Slyck Interviews the MPAA 139
An anonymous reader writes "P2P community and news source, Slyck, interviewed vice president Dean Garfield of the MPAA. Topics covered range from the MPAA's thoughts on BitTorrent, Limewire and DRM. Garfield acknowledges that they do not have much of a grip on the file-sharing world as they would like to believe."
Open Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Garfield: "We are studying that issue, but do not have a real answer. Identifying the scope of the commercial versus the open source problem is no easier than discerning real data on p2p usage.
Eh? Where in that question did he infer the interviewer was talking about open source anything? This sort of ridiculous statement about the open source by a clueless muppet with no idea what open source is, let along how it works, just makes him look like a jerk. The interviewer clearly meant commercial piracy as in a person selling what they make with a DVD duplication system in their garage as opposed to someone sharing something they've downloaded either through a P2P network or giving copies to their mates.
Gah. Idiot.
Loses credibility here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Garfield: "We are studying that issue, but do not have a real answer. Identifying the scope of the commercial versus the open source problem is no easier than discerning real data on p2p usage.
Last time I checked, 'open source' and casual piracy were not synonymous.
Awareness through litigation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, way to be about 15 years late. Everyone with a half a brain realizes that Hollywood should have changed their distribution methods when the Internet usage became widespread, instead of *ignoring* the problem.
"One way to look at this issue is through an analogy. At present, when you purchase a car there is computer technology in the car that keeps track of your average speed, but that technology is accepted and is viewed as net value add. However, if that technology were to automatically report the fact that you speed to the authorities then peoples perspective would change. DRM is the same. The technology is a part of a balance that is struck with the consumer."
Ewwwwwwwwwwhaaatttttt? The device doesn't curb your usage of speed; am I the only one that doesn't see how this analogy is supposed to work?
I'm going to step out on a limb and say that this war on piracy is like the war on drugs -- a glorious method of wasting resources. There's nothing you can do to keep people from *acquiring* media however they want; just as you cannot keep drugs out of America.
Yeah.
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows a worrying mindset in the entertainment industry. They believe that Closed proprietary systems (Microsoft) is good and Open systems (Linux) is bad. Of course this isn't new, we've long suspected this. Now the entertainment industry have pretty much admitted it. So don't expect future legal media formats to be able to play under Linux.
This will result in Linux users having to resort to illegal bootlegs further reinforcing the Open Source == Piracy perception which may hamper the commercial adoption of free and open systems.
the real issue is... (Score:5, Insightful)
They want all the economic advantages of the latest tech advances, but they don't want to pass those benefits on to their customers, nor even allow their customers the same tech or advantages. This is called gouging and people respond appropriately to it.
A demonstration of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
At present, when you purchase a car there is computer technology in the car that keeps track of your average speed, but that technology is accepted and is viewed as net value add.
Correct in terms of a car, but that's where he (and the **AA's at large) go wrong on DRM.
When I'm going down the road, I WANT to know how fast I'm going. I don't want to wait until the nice police officer decides to pull me over and inform me of it, nor do I want to find out a bit too late that I'm taking a curve way faster then I should. Therefore, indeed, the speedometer is a value add-it's something that I, the owner of the car, WANT in my car (and in fact, even if legal not to have one, would not purchase a car without one.)
DRM by definition cannot be a "value add", only a "value subtract". No consumer buys a DVD saying "Man, I hope they made it hard for me to back this thing up!" or "I sure hope this will refuse to play on my computer without installing a bunch of intrusive software".
Re:Loses credibility here... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:the real issue is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Put that price down to $5 and I won't download another movie. Even $10 works.
How can a tell?
I by DVDs of Taiwan and Chinese movies because they only cost about $12 or so. These are legit copies, they just aren't America sanctioned releases i.e. the DVD menus are only in Chinese and there might not be subtitles. Sure I admit I download Chinese movies sometimes, but mostly it's better to just go to the store check out the new releases and buy a couple.
But would I consider buying the same movie in the $30 "American Release", no way!
Oh and I am slightly pissed that DVDs cost significantly less than VHS tapes to make yet the consumer pays more than twice as much!
Re:A demonstration of the problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
Creativity? (Score:1, Insightful)
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two key problems that his analogy brings up. First of all, consumers would obviously resist this hypothetical speed tracking hardware. Perhaps something like this will be implemented some day, perhaps not. But it will surely be fought, and rightly so. Until the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade and we lose our constitutional right to privacy, that is.
But the real difference is that speeding is often an issue of life and death, both for the driver and for everyone else on the road. Piracy isn't even remotely analogous. Even if the industry could prove that piracy is hurting them so much, the "hurt" here is loss of profit. I apologize for not sympathizing with your pain, my rich corporate friend.
"The technology is a part of a balance that is struck with the consumer. The creative community distributes high quality digital content and the consumers accept that they can't randomly and wantonly redistribute that high quality digital content."
As a consumer, I do not accept that I can't randomly and wantonly redistribute their content. He's talking about how he wants things to be, and then he characterizes consumers as agreeing with him. Someone needs a reality check.
Although I do like his use of the word "stuck". Personally, I like to think that a bargain is only good if one side is getting shafted because they lack the legal and legislative resources to stand up for themselves.
Relatively obvious.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It already is a reality, you just missed the boat by about a decade.
"For example, we are still trying to learn more about what people want for entertainment, how do the(y?) want it, and how we strike a balance that is fair and gives people choice."
I can answer that for you, we want it cheap (as in ALOT cheaper than CDs), easy to download and without DRM. That will stop a larger proportion of piracy than your existing methods of beating old and young alike with legal documents. I mean you basically have a choice, use DRM piss off a large proportion of your audience, however pirates will just strip the DRM away (don't be naieve enough to think that it won't be cracked) and it'll be shared as a clean
Re:Loses credibility here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm, sure, except casual marajuans use still supports drug dealers. Perhaps not hurting anybody directly, but most certinaly directly helping somebody who is on the wrong side of the law.
Pick another example. One that is not just plain wrong.
By the way, we have had 6 marijuana related mureders here this year, and I live in the boonies.
Perhaps if using marijuana wasn't on the wrong side of the law you wouldn't have had those six murders out there in the boonies.
Christ, are they _all_ this stupid?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Way to go! (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's not surprising to me that they seem to think DRM is an addition to their product that consumers would find to be "valuable". Not sure how it's going to pan out in the long term. I think DRM is completely impossible for the next ten years...even if they got the ability to put flawless DRM capable hardware in all new TVs, DVD players, CD players, etc, it would still take at least that long to achieve sufficient market penetration with that DRM'd hardware, and that doesn't even count the inevitable flaws and backwards compaitbility issues, as well as the fact that there is no DRM standard.
Cute (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes. Those problematic open source P2P authors.
Mr. Garfield, I like hacking on P2P software. You can sic attorneys on every visible open source P2P author, and all that will happen is you will drive people underground -- and you don't need much of an underground to write all the software that anyone could ever use. You aren't going to manage to stop the production of open source P2P software.
Perhaps you'd like to look at Microsoft, Mr. Garfield. Microsoft has greater annual revenues than *all your member studios put together*. Microsoft has *clout*.
Microsoft wasn't able to quash open source development, despite spending an awful lot of money and effort on it, Mr. Garfield. I'm going to give you *very* slim chances of succeeding where they failed.
What are you going to try? PR? Microsoft did that. They called Linux a virus. They said it exposed users to liability. They said that it was insecure, and that it was *communist*, Mr. Garfield. It didn't work.
How about legislation? Maybe, if you're *really* lucky, you can manage to pay enough legislators to vote in laws criminalizing the production of software that is used to cause greater than some degree of purported damages. I don't think that you can manage that -- you'd face opposition from a lot of tech types, and a number of legislators have noticed that people don't *like* stories in the newspaper about nine-year-old girls being sued for thousands of dollars. But let's say that, despite all that, you manage it. There are a *lot* of open source programmers overseas, Mr. Garfield, and software does not understand national boundaries. The US government made export of encryption code illegal due to national security concerns for a long time. What happened? Encryption development and distribution continued, from overseas. It didn't do any good. You can't quash software development.
You going to try to track down all the people copying software and music and movies down? Mr. Garfield, one of the primary functions of a computer is to reproduce and distribute data quickly and accurately. There is *huge* demand for this, demand which far exceeds and outweighs any demand for entertainment. They have a device which does *exactly* what you don't want. There are *too many people* that want to be able to copy around movies for this to work.
How about a technical solution, Mr. Garfield? You spent plenty of effort trying to lock up DVDs -- that didn't work (you excluded Linux from your supported platforms, which was pretty stupid and put a lot of very smart Linux-using techies and crypto types to work on the problem, but even if you hadn't, it wouldn't have lasted long). You want to try again? Well, there are a lot of security types who would love to take your money and can guarantee you the moon, but it isn't going to happen.
You want to try keeping digital data from becoming analog? Good luck.
You want to try keeping analog data from becoming digital? This is a new, interesting one. You're now trying to plug a hole that requires *one* person with *one* analog-to-digital encoding device somewhere in the *world* per movie. It makes no more sense than trying to use CSS to keep people from getting at DVD content. It's just not a feasible approach.
I know that this is a really appalling concept, and one that you probably don't want to entertain. But it is possible -- just possible -- that your only solution is to reduce costs to where the convenience and guaranteed quality of buying your product from you outweighs the inconvenience of pirating. That means that you have to trim all your excess fat. That means that maybe you can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars producing and marketing a movie. Maybe you can't *have* actors that get tens of millions of dollars for every work. Maybe you need to use CG, and can't afford to recompen
WTF?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is from Slyck! Last time I checked those technologies did things like disabling HD output unless you are using HDMI (with support for a no-copy flag). WTF?!? Not only are most HD displays manufactured to this date lacking an HDMI input, but such technology eliminates my FAIR USE RIGHT to make a full quality backup! What kind of a sell-out crappy-ass solution is that?
If you want to make sure I never pirate content here are a few tips:
Once these requirements are met, all my media will be obtained 100% legally because it will just make sense!
I am willing to pay a reasonable amount for convenience, quality, and flexability.
Re:Open Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe he misunderstood Slyck. I think a fair interpretation of 'commercial' would be: P2P programs that are supported by advertising.
I wouldn't necessarily get my panties in a bunch.
ANNOTATED INTERVIEW (Score:3, Insightful)
BitTorrent
Slyck: With your outreach to Bram Cohen, it appears that you are trying to bridge the gap between file-sharing developers and content providers. How do you think this interview can bridge the gap between file-sharers and the MPAA?
Garfield: "Stereotypes are often borne out of silence and a lack of understanding. (understand us, we're greedy) This dialogue, as well as our work with Bram and others, is aimed at creating greater understanding through conversation and action. (or coercion)
"The motion picture industry is working aggressively (aka, threatening to sue people) to take advantage of ( or exploit) wide array of digital distribution platforms (aka universal controll) and to provide consumers (aka coerce into using) a wide array of legitimate (aka, we can strangle you with content controlls) options for enjoying movies and television shows. Slyck is a great venue for sharing our plans (aka siezing controll) for the digital future and gaining feedback."
Legislation
Slyck: Do you feel that the future of your industry will better be served by legislative means only or through negotiated compromise and cooperation to eliminate the sources of first run high quality pirated material?
Garfield: "Even in the movies it is rare that silver bullets truly work. (aka we make crapy content most of the time) Our strategies for addressing the promises (of total controll) and pitfalls (loss of monopoly) of the digital age are and have to be multi-faceted. In some instances our solution (coercion) will be legislative (bought off)in others it will be based on negotiated compromise (lawsuits). It is worth noting that those two principles are not mutually exclusive. It is often said that the legislative process is like making sausage - - it is a messy compromise. (no 100% monopoly) Even where we go down the legislative route there is always a lot of dialogue and compromise." (and payola)
Thinking that this implied a reluctance on their part to litigate, we then asked; Does the MPAA feel its legal actions, on behalf of its member companies, helps or deters transition P2P users to legal alternatives?
Garfield: "We think that it helps to move P2P users away from the illegitimate (ones that we can't monopolize) systems. When people understand that the risks and costs of engaging in this conduct are significant many of those people will stop. (so death threats are next) Not everyone does change their behavior and right now we are having the unintended effect of helping to move people from one illegal service to another. (oops) LimeWire has recently soared in popularity (it has? is this a trap?), because of the closure of other illegal P2P services. That is not lost on us. We are working on strategies to address that problem. (perhaps physical torture and violence?)
"Moreover, as we roll out more and more legitimate alternatives ( that we can monopolize) we will also have a greater impact (ream people for more overpriced content). We also know that many people, not Slyck readers but others, don't often recognize that downloading and posting movies via some P2P groups is illegal (they don't care) and some parents don't know what kinds of things their kids are doing on line. ( aka - consider suing the parents too) It is our hope that these suits will raise community awareness to piracy (boarding ships and murdering people? NOT! ) and its consequences (our cartel gets broken) and I think our legal actions help to achieve that goal." (to restore the cartel)
Statistics
Given that few would support commercial piracy, and given the poor publicity over the use of DRM, how much of their problem is directly caused by commercial piracy?
Garfield: "We are studying that issue, but do not have a real answer. Identifying the scope of the commercial versus
Pot != Murder (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually think the analogy isn't too bad: The only reason that pot is illegal and alcohol & tabacco aren't is pretty much an accident of history. There's no actual reason to distinguish between these drugs (and they are all three drugs, but only two are legal).