Live from Iran, Film88 758
MemFun writes "The now defunct Movie88.com has became Film88.com. These are the guys that are streaming a ton of movies for $1 a piece (but not allowing you to save the movie). Of course, to avoid all the Tinsel Town Club baddies (mpaa) from shutting them down, they are now based in Iran of all places. We just finished watching the free Harry Potter movie they are offering. Question: Does this make me a criminal? I really like the selection of movies they have and stream or not, it's still pretty cool to have the ability to watch some those movies that are never on TV any more."
IRaN?! (Score:2, Funny)
And the lag must be atrocious, I mean, what are they running the site off of, a T1? Come on guys...
I still can't get over the iran part...
Re:IRaN?! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IRaN?! (Score:2, Interesting)
In all honesty though, I doubt the FBI is going to come knocking on our doors with warrants saying "You're going to jail for streaming video from Iran."
Wouldn't the provider be at risk, not the receiver?
Re:IRaN?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IRaN?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Good Point! (Score:3, Insightful)
It'd be nice if people could recognize fringe thinking and radical groups as distinct from the main body of the people in a given area. This kind of muddy thinking could have everyone thinking that anyone from Arkansas in inbred, anyone from the Midwest is some sort of pseudo-skinhead militia nut, or that anyone from the American South must believe in Slavery. Or that all Canadians are polite.
The truth is: Generalizations suck. They are automatically problematic when used to describe humans. And when you start treating everyone who has the same facial geometry and skin tone the same (shades of the bad old days long, we had hoped, gone by), you automatically start tossing out the baby with the bathwater, the bad with the good. You do a disservice to a lot of innocent, hard working folks and at the same time you probably focus on one threat vector or problem group and in so doing make it more liely you'll miss others.
Business with Iran... (Score:2)
Re:Business with Iran... (Score:2)
Re:Business with Iran... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Business with Iran... (Score:2)
See Helms-Burton. It's impractical. They're not enforcing it.
3 words (Score:2)
-Henry
Re:3 words (Score:3)
Re:3 words (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you just want some privacy? Why does every american think they cant have privacy, and must report every action to some big brother agency. Privacy is not Illegal, and its not a damn terrorist act to have privacy.
Well hmm. (Score:2, Offtopic)
That's a whole lot of bandwidth if that's the case though, ouch. If you figure regular TV is 640x480, and you're trying to spit out 20-25FPS at 10-15k per image? Youch.
I'll have to check it out and give it a try.. Theres some newer movies recently released I'd like to take a look at.
Re:Well hmm. (Score:2)
Re:Well hmm. (Score:2)
DivX por VIDA!!!!
Re:Well hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have some downloads from when they were at movie88.com (they used HTTP streaming with Apache, not RTSP streaming with RealServer, so capturing the streams was trivial). They're typically encoded at 320x240, and their DVD rips were usually open-captioned (English voice, English captions...that makes a whole lot of sense). If it's something you can't get any other way, it might be worth archiving. Otherwise, keep looking.
Re:Well hmm. (Score:2)
I think what he meant was have the movie of DVD, and route the output of the DVD player (analog) to a capture card in the PC. Then, stream the analog signal (comrpessed in real time and sent out digitally on the internet...) in a 'live broadcast' kind of way, as opposed to storing the encoded version on the PC and playing that on demand.
The reason to do that is that it requires less server power, if my understanding is correct. (Bandwidth would still be rather high, though...)
Lots of low quality porn sites do that. Heh.
Re:Well hmm. (Score:2)
You're kidding, right? Far more compute power would be needed to encode live video and stream it than would be needed to simply stream some video that's already in compressed form on your hard drive. Besides, under that situation, if 100 people want to watch $MOVIE, you would end up encoding it 100 times—and probably at lower quality than if you spent the time to encode it once and buffered it for playback on request.
Besides, why would you capture the output from a DVD player when you can easily (and quickly) rip the DVD and reencode from the MPEG-2 data on it?
The only time live encoding makes sense is if your source material is live...whether it's a news site, a cam girl site, or whatever, live is the only option you have. If your source material is prerecorded and you want to stream it, it makes sense to encode it once and put the already-encoded video up for streaming or download.
Re:640x480 TV? (Score:2)
Didnt detect my RealPlayer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Didnt detect my RealPlayer (Score:4, Informative)
#mv rpnp.so RealPlayer.so
#chmod +x RealPlayer.so
I found this in the Real forums. Works great.
A little late... (Score:2, Insightful)
<SARCASM>
I just robbed this bank and killed this girl. Does this make me a criminal?
</SARCASM>
Seriously, aren't you asking that question a little late? If its what you want to do, may as well do it until you're satisfied. What's the point of stopping in the middle for a change-of-heart?
Re:A little late... (Score:3, Insightful)
Once again, read the intro text. (Score:2)
Begging the question (Score:2)
Congratulations, you are begging the question!
Capturing the films? (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't Iran have pretty strict censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help but wonder, will this service be available in Iran itself? How many of the movies offered online are illegal to watch in Iran (for promoting "sex," "immorality," and being "anti-Islamic?") Will local religious fundementalists shut down the service before the MPAA can?
Re:Doesn't Iran have pretty strict censorship? (Score:5, Funny)
"I feel a great disturbance in the webserver. As if a million geeks just hit our site, then suddenly silence. We must have been posted on slashdot."
It'll be down soon (Score:5, Funny)
Then he submits the story.
Smart guy...it'll be
the low down (Score:3, Informative)
You are not in violation of copyright. You may be in violation of a law which makes it unlawful to knowingly conspire to commit copyright violation by the Iranians. The Iranians are not in violation of copyright if they aquired the films in Iran, as Iran afact does not respect American copyright.
Legally speaking (Score:2, Insightful)
As always, IANALAIHWAMcB*
(*Although I Have Watched Ally McBeal)
well...you should only support it... (Score:5, Funny)
Pity.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pity.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not exactly apples to apples, is it?
Ok, (Score:2)
No, but their use of your credit card #'s might make you look like one.
-Sean
Looks like we're doing the MPAA's job. (Score:2)
How did you pay them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever method you used, look for the MPAA to try to interfere with it, or get the government to do the interfering.
Legit movie site... (Score:4, Informative)
There's a site called http://www.intertainer.tv where you can watch movies and TV shows. The prices are higher, but they've been around since last Oct or Nov. I've used them a couple of times and they're not too bad.
I think the price for movies is a bit high, but I'm willing to support this site. I'd like to prove to the industries involved that I'll pay for content I'm interested in.
It's worth a gander if you're remotely interested in this stuff. You can find out if it'll suit you or not before you pay anything. (They have previews for movies etc, all for free.)
Re:Legit movie site... (Score:2)
This is never what software libre stood for (Score:5, Interesting)
There a a big difference between the philosophies of the software libre movement and the philosophies of people who copy files without the copyright holder's authorization.
Software libre is not about this. Yeah, RMS rants about how it would be nice if copyrights did not exist, but I don't think he would want to be in such a world. I do not think I would want to be in such a world myself. There is content out there that down right takes a lot of money to create. Movies. Music that uses an orchestra or session players. Video games. Content that would not exist in a world without copyrights.
Now, one of the things I love about the internet is that there is a lot of really great content out there which the copyright owners freely shares. mp3.com has a lot of really talented bands giving their music away (it's a shame that mp3.com is a borderline spamhaus; if you give them your email address, even when emailing a band to say you like their music, you end up on mp3.com's spam list). The whole software libre thing is about giving away some excellent software. Many authors are giving away their books. Free home-made movies. And so on.
There is enough free content out there that, dare I say, I do not think anyone needs to download copyrighted content without authorization to have a compelling internet existance. So it puzzles me that Slashdot continually links to "file sharing" programs and to pirates who share content without authorization.
I completely agree that the RIAA and the MPAA have always been overzealous about copyrights. The HRAA was an abomination; it killed the consumer DAT. As an electronic musician in the early 1990s that had to spend $1200 instead of $300-$600 for a digital tape deck because of the RIAA's actions, I am no friend of their copyright overzealousness.
However, the path of civil disobediance is not to copy movies en masse so that people can view movies without paying for them. Such self serving actions do not look very good in the harsh light of the courtroom; I think such activities contribute to the large number of lost court cases which are trying to fight the abomination called the DMCA.
If you wish to fight the DMCA and the even more evil children of the DMCA, it is important to make a clear stand that we are against this because the law is wrong, not because it gets in the way of having our pirated content fix.
- Sam
Re:This is never what software libre stood for (Score:2)
Plus, the quality of the films are much lower than that of VHS. If the big 'pirates' wanted to distribute content, they'd go to Blockbuster, dump it into their pc: analog, dvd, whatever.
Sure, this service isn't legit. And you're right, the MPAA is over-zealous. Consumers (obviously) WANT a service like this, and if the MPAA isn't going to offer it, someone else will (even without legal merit). As the argument is commonly made, if the powers that be would just offer a similar service in an accessible, non-restrictive, don't-assume-you're-a-thief format, people would subscribe. But they're scared.
IMHO, this isn't the same Napster debate, all over again.
Hey (Score:2)
In all seriousness, are there any actual movie makers who are legitimately giving away their movies in watchable form (e.g. DivX)?
I would definitely take the time to download these, if I thought I could support a fledgeling industry. Do you know of any, though?
Re:Hey (Score:2)
Points out idiocy (Score:2)
If instead they were offering this service, right now, the operation in Iran would exist, and the MPAA would be making this money. I'm not going to sit here and suggest for a moment that this is somehow morally right, or justifiable. But I think all of this does make the point that the MPAA should stop trying to hold back the ocean with their legal brooms and start providing the services people want.
If they don't, somebody else will.
Oh, bull. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just crap. Ever hear of Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven? They're these old dead guys who used to write some tunes. A lot of them, in fact. They even got paid for it. And they didn't have copyrights.
Re:Oh, bull. (Score:4, Insightful)
Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
They may not have had legal copyrights, but they had methods to protect their music.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend the day doing whatever he wanted.
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.ht
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is never what software libre stood for (Score:3)
Thanks for asking in a civil manner. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Before I get into this, please understand that I'm not really looking for an argument. If you disagree with my ideas, you're naturally welcome to say so, but if you do you probably won't get a satisfactory response out of me. I apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.
(Much of this comes from reading this [gnu.org], and RMS's other writings. Any misunderstanding on my part of RMS's philosophy is all his fault. Just kidding.)
First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.
Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.
I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.
I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.
I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.
I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.
I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.
So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.
But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.
The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:
All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.
RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.
So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."
RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page [gnu.org] to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.
This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)
I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.
These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with your program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"
This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.
1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.
2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.
3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.
All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to "hate, hate, hate" RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose all that they stand for.
(Now I sit back and watch my karma evaporate.)
OMG Do you know what we just did!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
MPAA and its cronies have a fit. Huddle together to see whats the best they could do. Disagree on forcing Bush to send a SAM in to the heart of Iran
Jack Valenti registers on Slashdot with a new nick "MemFun", posts the story on Slashdot
Sits back and waits till Film88 gets slashdotted in to oblivion.
Laughs, walks away holding the hand of a 20 something.
Guess we're going into Iran now... (Score:2)
; )
-b
Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:5, Insightful)
The MPAA is bad. I'd wager most of the technology-literate world has figured that out by now. They're moneygrubbing monopolists, no doubt about it.
The current system of copyright and distribution is broken - no doubt about it.
But when you steal something, you're still stealing it. No amount of arguments about how the Iranians don't subscribe to international patent law, or about the fact that Film88 bought the movies and are just renting them, will change that.
So through some miracle of legal justification, you may in fact not be breaking the law. That's for the courts (or politics) to decide. You're buying from a thief. That might not make you a thief by legal definition, but what does it make you by moral definition?
Oh, wait. I forgot. We're all geeks here, so the only moral imperatives are: 1) information wants to be free, and 2) anyone trying to impede my freedom in any way is evil.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sharing information is clearly a moral and good thing to do. From the first monkey who let the other monkeys know about a tiger down by the river, humanity has *revered* the sharing of information. Only our system of laws makes it (sometimes) a bad thing to do.
In this case the moral man sees nothing wrong with distributing information or with receiving information. The legal man sees that distributing the information in this manner would be illegal in the U.S., who knows in Iran.
And both the moral and legal man know that there is no theft involved.
1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious
taking and removing of personal property, with an intent
to deprive the rightful owner of the same
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether it is a good thing, well, that depends. Sharing with an 11 year old a method of creating poisonous liquids is *NOT* a good thing. Much of what we deem good is situationally dependant.
As far as US law goes, check out The 'No Electronic Theft' Act. It looks like the law considers this theft now.
Also, the legal definition you quoted is correct, but not complete. You used the definition for larceny, but missed the ones for robbery, burglary, and piracy. It helps if you bring all the information to the table so that people can make up their own minds.
Finally, just to give a more useful definition, I'll quote from *the source* for the English language and leave you with the appropriate Oxford English Dictionary's definition of stealing (theft being the "act of stealing"): "take (another's property) illegally or without right or permission, esp. in secret".
Personally I think the existing copyright system in the US is out of whack. I'd prefer one of the older systems, such as 26 years for a copyright with a renewal of 26 years going automatically to the original authors/musicians/etc. Let 'works for hire' run a flat 50 years. Let the copyrights tilt back towards a more reasonably balance between creators/copyright holders and the public at large.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:3, Interesting)
The key factor that distinguishes information from almost anything else is that it cannot be taken - sharing increases the world's pool of information, without bound. Economists call this "excludable" vs. "non-excludable" - my use of your car excludes you from using it, my use of your song does not. That's why using your song isn't theft - it isn't possible to "deprive the rightful owner of the same".
There are different ways to manage excludable resources. One way is to create the concept of ownership and enforce it through laws. Another way is to hold all property in common. There are blends, such as societies where mobile property is held privately but the land is held in common. None of these has really been proven to be better than others. Similarly there are different ways to manage non-excludable resources. But excludable and non-excludable resources are fundamentally very different, and making leaps of logic like "we do X for cars, therefore X is the best way to handle songs" is not a good argument.
It's a matter of opinion to say that creative works should be treated differently from facts. In the U.S., commercial database vendors [vendors of information, not vendors of database software] are trying to change U.S. copyright law to protect facts. If the law is changed so that saying "The Yankees won today's game, 6-5" is illegal - which is literally what they're trying to do - will you still feel that the law aligns with your moral feelings?
Most artists *don't* want to get paid. They want lots of people to experience and appreciate their work, which is rewarding beyond money. Most singers, most painters, most writers, never get paid a cent for their art and are perfectly happy with that situation.
I'll just close by noting that all intellectual property is recent - none of it existed before the 1700's. We did acceptably well without intellectual property - had the golden ages of Rome and Greece and China, had the Renaissance, etc. Last night I attended an Indigo Girls concert in Radio City Music Hall. Since my seat in the Hall is an excludable resource, I paid for the privilege of occupying it. The Indigo Girls will still be able to profit from concerts *no matter what* society does with non-excludable resources.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a false analogy. Forgery increases the amount of money relative to the amount of goods, making everybody's money worth less. Each forged bill in effect steals a tiny amount of money from every other bill out there.
Forgery is more equivalent to spam clogging the backbones and mail servers. One spam doesn't really hurt anybody, but when they reach a substantial percentage of traffic, then they cost everyone.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly the same applies to copyright enfringement and the artists labor. Each act of copyright infringement is an attack on the artists compensation. It undermines the artists ability to obtain compensation for the workk, because it creates the possibility that those who would be willing to pay the artist to obtain the work will not.
Ultimately, it costs everyone, because the people who commit copyright infringement are effectively being subsidised by those who pay for the copyrighted work. There are two possible outcomes: either these people end up paying more, or the availability of material is compromised.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that we should find a scheme to compensate artists fairly. But current copyright law is just a game we all agree to play, not something that Jehovah handed down. Even the current copyright laws create, "the possibility that those who sould be willing to pay the artist to obtain the work will not." Consider the library, for example. Or listening to music on the radio. Or a friend who lends you an album. All perfectly legal, and all create that possibility.
I think the current system is flawed, and I think the ability of the record companies to buy the legislation they like undermines the democratic process so severely that I could see why some people believe civil disobedience is the only route to pressuring the record companies. Personally, I pay for all my music, but the argument on the other side isn't absurd.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:2)
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:2)
It's especially sad because it's true.
Is it any wonder why the MPAA and RIAA are out to fuck everyone over? Who's more immoral? Everyone is! It's a mobius strip of immorality! The only sure thing is that it will all end worse for everyone.
But is it really stealing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a clear cut moral issue. What it really comes down to is this: are the labels and movie studios losing money due to piracy? All available evidence points to the notion that they're profiting from it. So far, that is. I figure the *AAs are working so hard to prevent piracy out of a (reasonable) fear that it will get out of hand and later on they will lose a lot of money from it. But until I see any evidence that piracy hurts the content distributers, I'll "pirate" with a clear conscience. And even after that, I'll buy from the musician-owned labels first.
I expect that Film88 buys DVDs, rips them, then streams them. So they have stolen nothing. What they are doing is circumventing the MPAA's business model, which may or may not be morally wrong, but it falls quite outside of "theft." We need new terms and new legislation to appropriately deal with this sort of thing.
Re:Semantics.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see your point when it relates to any artist alive today, or any label who bought the rights to an artist's work and needs to make a return on their investment (even if they screw the artist out of all their royalties in the process), but what if the people who invested time and/or money into the creation of the work are all long gone? For instance, I would love to set up a site where people could download mp3s of old blues tunes. These songs are hard to find, and much of the time you have to buy a whole CD to get the one song you want to hear. This can get very expensive. Now, the original artists are all long dead and for the most part have no kin to speak of. The original record companies who pressed the 78s so long ago are for the most part long gone bust, and sold their rights for a song to whatever major labels own them today. This is maybe the first pure american music, and most of it's not getting heard, in the name of power, control and money. What's more, musicians all over the world are unable to hear many songs that would inspire them to make more music of their own. The way I see it, it's immoral not to spread these recordings to as many people as possible.
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man? (Score:3, Interesting)
We wouldn't have any "content", because the artists wouldn't be compensated if everyone freeloaded. This is the problem with piracy. Those who pirate are hypocrites, because they are parisiting those who pay for the work. They fail the basic moral test that one should not engage in behaviours that one wouldn't wish others to adopt, and since the pirates depend on others paying for content, they flunk. What an honest an decent person who had objections would do is boycott (boycotting means you go without in protest, not that you simply bypass the payment process)
I do it because I feel as though when a company or industry artificially raises prices simply because there is no alternative, I am no longer obligated to abide by their rules. I would love to purchase all my music, movies, etc. But I couldn't possibly afford to.
Why not steal a rolls royce ? Don't they "cost too much" ? Isn't going without a choice, or do you have some sort of inalienable right to be provided with free entertainment ?
Why? Because we're offered only that which is incredibly overpriced, but yet which could be dirt cheap if it weren't owned by profiteering gluttons. Look at Maya 4. The price dropped some $3000 per license.
Your claims about products that "cost too much" are arbitrary and nonsensical. How do you determine what a product "should" cost ? IMO, market forces should determine it. If the market are willing to pay $7000- for Maya, then it is not overpriced. You don't get to unilaterally decide how much developers should get paid. If you can't afford it, you go without their product, and they go without your money. If they do overprice, not enough people will pay up, but you aren't the last word on what is "overpriced". The price dropped, and there's nothing wrong with that. Market value changes. This is not unusual -- the entire investment industry revolves around the fact that market value changes. My pentium I is cheaper now than it was before. So is any software package written by a company who's folded. That doesn't mean it "cost too much" in the first place.
Now, did the software development and marketing costs suddenly drop in half? No.
Costs do not determine the price in any other industry either. They are certainly a constraint on prices, but they are not the only factor that determines them. By the way, how do you know that it's profitable for them to sell at $3000 ? One thing that happens in the computer games market is that games sell for spare change after two years, but it doesn't follow that this price would have been a profitable price for the publisher to sell it for when the game came out.
How inflated is the price now? Is their actual cost $100 or so?
I doubt it. This is roughly double the cost for computer games (the assumption is that the game companies barely break even, this is true for the most part), and these have much higher sales numbers than specialised professional software. But this is not relevant anyway.
If they can drop it $3000 on a whim, they could drop it further, but choose not to. The same holds true in other situations.
But you're assuming that they could make a profit at that price. You have no basis for that claim.
Now, can anyone tell me that we couldn't see the same movie for $15 or so if the movie industry wasn't so greedy?
Movies don't always make money either. They have high revenue, but also very high cost. Again, your claims of "greed" are arbitrary and nonsensical.
It's usually legal for them to overcharge the hell out of people, but what about morality? If what they're doing is immoral, why are we then bound by their priciples?
There's nothing immoral about charging market value for an item, and making a profit in the process.
Start charging based on costs as opposed to how much cash you can squeeze out of people, and I'll stop downloading.
Since movies aren't that profitable, the "costs" come down to personnel and material costs. Not much can be done about the material costs, but let's address the personnel costs. Is it "moral" for one person to ask for more money than another ? If I'm a programmer, is it "moral" for me to ask for 10 times the compensation of a minimum wage worker, and keep it all to myself ? Or is it immoral to ask for the going rate for my profession ?
You can download the movies, is that their problem (Score:2, Insightful)
In the case of Movie88, all it took was some carefully crafted HTTP headers and the correct software, and each website is different, but as long as something enters my computer there will always be away to keep it there.
Great (Score:2, Insightful)
Two sides to this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it: By pushing for legislation of that nature, the movie industry is, by implication, accusing the entire U.S. population of being (at best) unruly kids that can't be trusted to run a computer without 'Big Brother' watching, or at worst outright thieves.
That implication alone is going to be more than enough to piss people off on a grand scale, and provide more than enough motivation to want to tweak the collective nose of the big media companies.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do know there needs to be balance in any situation. The extreme of mandating copy protection hardware in every digital device on the planet is just as wrong as the extreme of stealing movies and music.
There's got to be a happy medium that both sides can agree on. I'm just not sure if the movie industry is going to want anything less than total control.
Progressive Iran? (Score:2)
Do you really think this is because of some enlightened stance towards copyright law by the Iranian government? Or is it more likely that this service is either
a) unknown to the Iranian government in the firstplace
b) ignored by the Iranian government
c) bribing officials in the Iranian government
I think all three of those are equally likely. Joke about how funny it is that film88.com is "free" to run this service in Iran, but not the US, but understand that this is probably more due to a general state of lawlessness or cluelessness on the part of the Iranian government rather than enlightened policy. I, for one, will not be moving to Iran any time soon.
Can someone with technical knowledge tell me... (Score:2)
Just what thr MPAA.... (Score:2)
I Can See The PSA's Allready... (Score:3, Funny)
A little harmless fun..."
"....I helped Iranian terrorists purchase weapon's grade plutonium....
...I was just having fun...."
etc...
"Paid for by The Federal Bureau of Scaring the Shit Out of Americans and the Committee to Re-Elect the President"
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Come to think of it, I think intertainer.tv might be supported by the MPAA. Not sure, though. It's easy to overlook it when you have Senator Disney trying to pass heavy handed legislation to put a stop to it.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
In the same vein, just because the internet could be used for piracy, doesn't mean you have the right to call me a crook and try to take my rights away.
At this point, it's a question of mroality vs. legality. Am I right? Probably not. Do have a conscience about it? I used to until they tried to turn my computer into a set-top box.
Frankly, I have 0 sympathy for an industry that thinks it should take my rights away when I don't agree with it's ancient business model anymore.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:2)
It's not a question of legality versus morality; if it were, doing the right thing would be illegal. In this case, though, doing the wrong thing is what's illegal.
I do agree that the industry here is trying to take your rights away. But this site has nothing to do with that effort, nor any other; it's simply some moneygrubbers violating copyright for profit.
-Billy
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a question of could be used. It is being used for piracy.
And last time I checked neither you nor anyone else has the right to steal. So no one is taking your "rights" away.
The parent post is entirely correct. If you want a service someone is not currently providing with their property, start your own service and negotiate the use of their property. This is like saying, hey I want a cab ride to the airport and the cab driver will not drive that far out of his area, screw him I'll just take his cab and use it anyway. But of course I'll leave him money for gas (as if that makes everything OK).
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
Just don't try and spin your attitude toward this as some kind of passive resistance crap for the good of us all. It's very plain to me, and to the rest of the people reading this, that your motives in this matter are purely out of base self interest. You want your movies for cheap and if they aren't provided that way, by the gods you're going to make your own way to them. Learn a bit of self control. How about getting up the courage to actually not see whatever blockbuster movie the studios you hate so much are putting out. That hurts them far more in the end than you pirating. Sacrifice. It's a part of life.
Of course, neither those idiots like you, nor the MPAA appear to be familliar with the concept, so we're going to have to struggle with the karma your greed saddles all of us with. Thanks a bunch, pal.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
Insurance rates are just loss rates spread out over large groups. In the physical world, there is still a loss that is not necessarily present with information. Otherwise libaries would have been outlawed long ago for freely giving out valuable copyrighted information.
Nice try, though.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
If it cost a car manufacture $100 total, including labor and all that jazz, how would you feel about them trying to sell it to you for $20,000? The MPAA could easily provide Film88's service, but they won't for incredibly petty reasons.
You guys are seriously misinterpreting me here. Im not saying 'break the law when you disagree', Im saying "Hey look, I'm paying money to watch a movie on the web. Too bad the people who made the movie aren't getting that money when they could be." That's a little different than saying "Well I'm going to download movies from Kazaa for free instead."
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not complaining about the cost of DVD's. I own quite a few DVD's actually. That's not my complaint at all. Nope. 0. Zilch.
There are movies I'd prefer to rent. Renting, though, can be a hassle. This is especially true since I'm a pedestrian and don't want to walk 20 minutes 1 way to Blockbuster. I'd rather rent over the internet. My willingness to pay $1 as opposed to downloading the movie for free on Kazaa proves that my intentions are good. Heck, I today pay more than that, I'm a subscriber to www.intertainer.tv. (I think they're legit with the MPAA, btw... not sure tho.)
You can say I'm 'rationalizing theft' all you want, the truth of the matter is that I'm a consumer willing to spend money to meet my needs. Do business with me if you want my money.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:2)
I don't understand how all of you can be against the MPAA for not providing these services, but when anybody does suddenly you're willing to defend the MPAA just to prove people wrong. The worst part is that my words are getting twisted around.
If you think I'm not making sense, then ask for clarification instead of simply assuming that I'm some evil jackass who won't pay for anything.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I'm not 100% sure that Iran is a signatory to the international copyright laws anyway. So what exactly the MPAA could do is unclear...
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
They obviously bought the movie and now they rent it out
What did I miss? Oh, its digital so its evil
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
1) buy a video from the store for $15
2) lend said video for $5 to a friend overnight, providing I dont retain any copys of said video
3) get said video back off friend, lend to another friend for $5
4) after doing this 20 times, sell video for $5.
If my friend copies the video I lend them, they are infringing on copyright - not me.
This is no different, providing the content provider has at least 1 copy of the video for each copy they are streaming.
They can sell it cheaper then blockbuster because:
1) They rent the movie for 90 minutes. Then they can rent it again. A 90 minute movie can be let upto 16 times a day, providing the times its let out are right (note this doesnt mean they can let 16 copys of the movie out at once for each copy they own)
2) They dont have as many monkeys behind the counter trying to upsell you popcorn
3) No high street costs
4) No tapes going missing
5) Minimal overheads
Only major expenses are
1) Streaming servers
2) Bandwidth
I agreee that this site may not have a copy of the movie for each copy it streams out at once, but it doesnt mean the principal is wrong.
Re:Let's be reasonable (Score:3, Informative)
Do you KNOW how EASY it is to rip/compress DVDs?!
www.divx-digest.com
www.doom9.org
www.divx.co
HTH and RTFM
"I helped kill a judge" (Score:3, Offtopic)
have you seen those TV commercials about buying drugs "helps kill judges" because you are funding terrorists? These commercials forget to mention that:
Re:"I helped kill a judge" (Score:2)
Wait a minute, you didn't just cite "theonion" did you? Uh, I assume this post is a funny, I'll give the poster the benefit of the doubt.
Re:How sad... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually.... (Score:4, Informative)
(this is harry potter...)
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP fred:2174 customer.redbus.trueserver.nl:http ESTABLISHED
Re:That's what you get... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:That's what you get... (Score:2)
btw, the US Constitution gives congress the power to allow for copyrights for reasonable time, if it should chose to do so.
Other rights are not granted bt the constitution. The constitution is a means to protect the inaliably rights of the people. In short, with or with out the constitution, you have the right to expouse you views, however, without the constitution, you have no right to copyrights, at all.
What if IRAN wanted to shut down a US server because it violated one of there laws?
Re:Can't save it? (Score:3, Insightful)
As you mentioned, they're doing streaming HTTP, which Real won't save, and they have some very good techs who have made it as difficult as possible to connect with a non-Real client.. (I'm sure it's possible, but I gave up on that route)
it wouldn't be that hard to record the stream on a network level. As I understand it, you can rig squid to cache realplayer
Yes, this would work, but it would be kind of like using a sledgehammer to swat a mosquito..
A better solution is epoxy [freshmeat.net], which I used on Movie88 with great success.
Re:You are a criminal (Score:2, Funny)
If you could look past the "I deserve to get it for free" aspect that everyone here always trumpets, maybe you should ask yourself why you would support a country that condones terror. Way to look past the source, idiots. What if YOUR dollar went to buy a ticket for a terrorist.
C'mon. You might not have ethics for copyrights, but how about some ethics for human rights, at least.
Re:You are a criminal (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean the way all that US tax money given to Afghanistan over the years may have gone to terrrorists? (see http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst110501.h
Re:Does this make you a Criminal ? Yes of course. (Score:4, Insightful)
Put aside your lame "intellectual property" bias for two seconds, and you'll realize that the viewer in this case committed no crime. Copyright law restricts the transmission of works, not the reception thereof. You might argue, in this case, that the viewer is making an unauthorized duplication, but if the bits are streamed then no duplication is made... this is essentially a broadcast. If I set up a radio station and play only infringing materials over the air, the listeners are not guilty of a crime.
Re:Slashdot steal-nothing mentality (Score:2)
First, I don't understand why the distinction between stealing and copyright infringement is so important to the slashdot herd. The bottom line is that they are freeloading criminals. Second, here are some definitions of "steal" that may be interesting:
I'd say that by this definition, copyright infringement does amount to stealing. I'd say that all three of these definitions apply -- (b) may be debatable, but (a) and (c) clearly apply.
Re:Does this make you a Criminal ? Yes of course. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bah... (Score:2)
Re:Let's See.. (Score:2, Funny)
Dude!
Gas-operated, semi-automatic weapons for $110!?!? What's the URL?