What the MPAA Still Isn't Telling Us 150
Scott Jaschik writes "An essay at the Inside Higher Ed site looks at the fallout from the MPAA's admission that its statistics on college student downloading were seriously wrong. Among the questions: What is the MPAA still holding back? Why isn't the MPAA changing its position on legislation? 'Perhaps the MPAA's press release acknowledging its "300 percent error" will set the stage for new, less rancorous private and public discussions about P2P piracy. Colleges and universities respect copyright; colleges and universities are engaged in serious efforts to inform and educate students about the importance of copyright. And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues, in part by ending the public posturing that portrays colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy.'"
Why download bootleg movies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, this tells me one of three things:
1. You don't watch movies at all, including those you just listed, and you are instead just spouting off about two recent movies because you read about what someone else said via some media source.
2. You do go to the theater and watch movies and saw those two which you call "trash" and you are supporting the MPAA's campaign to subvert media outlets, higher education
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean just like they did in China and North Korea?
Try Eastern Europe. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, Rome had ~500 years of tyranny, followed by ~1000 years of a split and crumbling empire with poor living conditions, rampant disease, hunger, and incredibly short lifespans. Soo... guess what? You're dead either way. Better to take a stand while you still can than wafting on a hope that "Rome will be a Republic once again! Someday. Soon. Maybe."
Of course, your rather dire attitude towards
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All movies that have come out recently, all of them big-name movies, all of them rated by the MPAA, and all of them amazing.
Not everything out t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other movies (namely slasher flicks and the like) I like to goto midnight showings on opening night. The remake of Ju-On (The Grudge) was not scary at all, and frankly rather bad. However, my buddy and I went to see it opening night at midnight...the entire theatre was
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's right. We would sneak in a jar of herring and chow down. We didn't have ANYONE sit near us:-)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, I'd suggest the LSD bef
Re: (Score:2)
"Don't watch the trailers or read the synopsis that you would normally find...it is very difficult to describe this movie in that kind of way. The only way I have found to describe it is that it is like watching a movie from the future. The Fountain feels like it was made 10 years in the future."
Now, I don't know what I will say about it in 10 years, but I will worry about that la
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly right now I'm struggling to remember the last western made movie in the last 5 years I genuinely thought was amazing, though I clearly don't have mainstream tastes, most of the films I've been really impressed with recently have all been Asian, and mostly anime. It's been nearly a decade
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
so my only choice is to violate the law by ripping the BluRay disc to remove the copy protection and play it on a media PC in HD.
the MPAA has told a large number of us HDTV owners to go F ourselves. So we do what we can. Ps. a BluRAY di
I see where you're coming from. (Score:1)
You're not downloading anything; you're just ripping the contents of the discs you bought and paid for. I have no argument with what you're doing, since I myself rip CDs that I've bought in order to put the music on my iPod, and also rip the DVDs I buy. Sure, it violates the law. I refuse to give a shit. I bought it, it's mine, and the MPAA can discuss their objections with the Devil down in Hell.
I was asking about the w4r3z kiddies who insist on wasting disc and bandwidth downloading bootleg media that t
Re: (Score:2)
I can't think of the last thing that I downloaded that I didn't already purchase.
Re: (Score:2)
One may not want to watch it, or not care too much, but to blend with "normal" people, one needs to watch some of the movies/music to connect to many people.
Does one have to watch everything? Of course not. However, I do believe that there is some minimal amount of material one has to know about to blend with other normal people.
Re: (Score:2)
Along with this type of argument would be that much of our media is nigh worthless in terms of our (US) culture. It usually takes a bit of time to determine cultural worthiness vs some fad that will dissolve within months.
---I'd just find a plot summary on the net.
I don't think that would work. Perhaps hitting the summary sites might work, but in my experience it usually doesn't work. This problem seems to rear its head when
Re: (Score:2)
Now, let's say I want to watch a program in HD, which is available on the satellite service for which I'm paying. Since I can't do that, even though I'm paying for it, my only optio
Re: (Score:2)
Our household has not went with HD yet because of these glaring problems. We will go with HD when we have full access via component or dual-dvi ports, hdmi be damned.
And, TV just isn't that important in our household. We watch about 4 series at most, along with some news. We're on the net more reading news and stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, past performance determines future behavior and all..
Re: (Score:2)
We will go with HD when we have full access via component or dual-dvi ports, hdmi be damned.
You need to be careful: HDMI is just a connector—roughly speaking, HDMI = DVI + SPDIF (in a single, smaller, connector). HDCP (the copy-prevention protocol) runs just as happily over DVI as over HDMI, as the two are electrically identical.
On the positive side, of course, that means you don't need to rule out all products that come with HDMI ports, as it's quite possible for a device to use HDMI without being "evil".
Re: (Score:2)
Finding a HDMI setup with HDCP these days is rather easy... until you rule out devices with buggy firmware
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If you download everything, you are in a much better
position to be aware of it and know enough to comment
about it.
Re: (Score:1)
If there's one thing I'd like to know about the P2P controversy, it's this: why would people bother to waste bandwidth and disk space downloading bootleg copies of most of the garbage that the MPAA (not to mention RIAA member labels) attempts to foist upon the public? If anything, the MPAA should be paying people to watch garbage like Meet the Spartans and Untraceable.
The MPAA does have some redeeming content. The What the Bleep series [whatthebleep.com] is good example of this.
Redeeming features (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunate childish reaction too many take (Score:2)
Its the old and stupid "Get back at the man" mentality. Its vindictive and childish. As such the people who act this way are the least likely to be able to do anything rationale meaning their "plight" if prolonged. Prolonged until they get supplanted by people who do things with maturity.
Right now its this face that the RIAA/MPAA presents as its opposition, a face that the public can easily ignore as something it wants no association with. Wher
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
a) I am a Collage Student and my choice was not eat for an entire day so I could pay to see this movie.. or Download a crappy version off the internet.
b) All the reviews said the movie
This may come as a shock, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
In Other Words... (Score:2)
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Why don't people understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
The MPAA and RIAA aren't interested in anything except changing the publics' perception of their "plight". By recognizing their flawed research and statistics it would mean that their campaign to flood the eyes and ears of the uninformed via the media outlets, who are hungry for trash, would possibly end.
They are currently winning the war over parents and the majority of educational administrators who are worried that those they have jurisdiction over are doing things that someone told them was theft. They don't want to have others look poorly on them and they are going to spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring that they are doing everything they can to stop this horrible threat to our youth! Unfortunately, that comes at a serious cost in an arena that is notoriously short on funding and which should honestly have a lot more important shit to worry about.
What is the most tiring is that the media outlet continue to eat what the MPAA/RIAA are feeding them and the parents don't sit down to think about anything other than how to "talk to their kids about drugs" errr, I mean "stealing"! I guess because many of us who are either just becoming parents or aren't planning for kids for at least a few more years have sat through the majority of the Nancy-period and the bullshit anti-drug messages, we are more immune to being bombarded with this crap. Unfortunately, the rest of them are all caving to the media pressure. "Don't let this happen to you!"
I wish that more higher education institutions had the ability to pull off what Harvard did but the financial funding just isn't there to fight it in the short term but instead, wasting resources and funds over the long term is. The MPAA/RIAA knows exactly what they are doing and how to exploit those they are attacking and it sucks, bad.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd have to disagree. Using the RIAA as an example, their member-companies are watching sales continue to decline. Sure, some will blame piracy but those of us with a clue know that a failure to adapt to the new digital age in a timely manner and a continued trend of releasing a sub-par product at an inflated price has done more to harm their bottom lines than "piracy" ever could. So, forgive me if I think the M
Re:Why don't people understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, you could view it as them playing the long game. They know that their business model is shot to hell, and that today there's nothing that they can do about it because general purpose computing devices ultimately treat all bits equally, so they've lost their cartel monopoly on high quality distribution.
However, look at what they're doing in response: sowing FUD, reframing the debate, and buying politicians. I believe that their long term goal is to put the genie back in the bottle and outlaw general purpose computing devices that treat arbitrary bits as copyable by default. Perhaps it's not a credible goal, perhaps its even risible, but bear in mind that they've already got Redmond in their corner [wikipedia.org], so it's not completely beyond the pale.
Don't write off the ??AAs. They are rich, powerful, they consider that they they enjoy a right to be profitable, and they are utterly without ethics or effective oversight. I suspect that eventually we'll be relying on Europe to prevent a Intel/Microsoft/??AA super-cartel from forcing a computing monoculture on us where arbitrary bits are uncopyable by default.
Laugh if you like, but first consider who the next President is likely to be, and her unabashed view that Washington actually should be run by lobbyists and corporate interests.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And no, the Warner Music CEO doesn't count.
Re: (Score:2)
This caused more piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Please think of the recording artists (Score:5, Funny)
Kyle: What's the matter with him?
Detective: This month he was hoping to have a gold-plated shark tank bar installed right next to the pool, but thanks to people downloading his music for free, he must now wait a few months before he can afford it. [a close-up of Lars sobbing] Come. There's more. [leads them away. Next seen is a small airport at night] Here's Britney Spears' private jet. Notice anything? [a shot of Britney boarding a plane, then stopping to look at it before entering] Britney used to have a Gulfstream IV. Now she's had to sell it and get a Gulfstream III because people like you chose to download her music for free. [Britney gives a heavy sigh and goes inside.] The Gulfstream III doesn't even have a remote control for its surround-sound DVD system. Still think downloading music for free is no big deal?
Kyle: We... didn't realize what we were doing, eh...
Detective: That is the folly of man. Now look in this window. [they are at another mansion, and they look inside a picture window] Here you see the loving family of Master P. [He's shown tossing a basketball to his wife while his kid tries to catch it] Next week is his son's birthday and, all he's ever wanted was an island in French Polynesia. [his mom lowers the ball and gives it to the boy, who smiles, picks it up and drops it. It rolls away and he goes after it]
Kyle: So, he's gonna get it, right?
Detective: I see an island without an owner. If things keep going the way they are, the child will not get his tropical paradise.
Stan: [apologetically] We're sorry! We'll, we'll never download music for free again!
Detective: [somberly, dramatically] Man must learn to think of these horrible outcomes before he acts selfishly or else... I fear... recording artists will be forever doomed to a life of only semi-luxury.
Re:Please think of the recording artists (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually.. (Score:1)
Re:Please think of the recording artists (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why long established bands like Metallica and U2 are the only musicians who care enough about piracy to speak out on it- they are the rare exceptions of musicians who actually are getting paid for album sales.
See this Courney Love essay [salon.com]. (Yes, Courtney Love wrote an informative essay on the topic. Who knew?)
Re: (Score:2)
Musicians make their money from touring, from playing to audiences for money.
It's not that cut and dried.
In general:
Hilarious! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They're not lying! (Score:2)
When head of the MPAA a couple of decades ago Jack Valenti said "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack The Ripper was to women".
In short, they're not liars. They're just stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Courtney Love's 2000 speech [salon.com]
Ummm (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be so harsh, after all he also was 50% right.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
they were wrote up the story on an old Pentium PC.
-
The Price Is Right with Host Dan Glickman! (Score:5, Funny)
Dan Glickman: Researchers? We're an organization of lawyers, not scienticians! We make the numbers, not find them. But it can't be too high or it will be unrealistic and people will ask questions but the higher it is, the more blame we can put on it.
MPAA Secretary: 50 percent?
Dan Glickman: Too high, go lower.
MPAA Secretary: 30 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 40 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 45 percent?
Dan Glickman: Lower.
MPAA Secretary: 41 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 42 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 43 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 44 percent?
Dan Glickman: Ding ding ding!
MPAA Secretary: But sir, that's a lot of money, what if they ask questions?
Dan Glickman: Oh, grow up, it's in PowerPoint! PowerPoint is never wrong. Rocket scientists don't even question what's in PowerPoint [nasa.gov]! What is your problem?
In all seriousness though, I've drawn up solutions on green engineering paper in the middle of meetings with pencil and everytime my boss hated it. But if I went back to my desk and made a box with a computer pointing to another box full of fecal matter in PowerPoint, management gobbles that right up without asking any questions.
Box office takes talk (Score:2)
I'd think that if downloading were really having a huge impact, that number would be more like 10 million a week total for the box office top 10 movies.
Gross isn't everything. (Score:1)
Deep thought (Score:2)
The *IAAs just need a bit of lovin'
A great man once said... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ooops, sorry, insta-Godwin.
But we see the same tactics from the RIAA all the time - persistently referring to copyright infringement as stealing (maybe I should redefine "RIAA executive" as "sex offender"? I'd love to be able to change the meanings of legally applicable terms to suit my preference), persistently telling us that "piracy" loses a magical $X billion from the economy every year, that it supports terrorism/drug dealers/the mafia/anyone else seen as "bad". Lies. More lies. TFA (a good, polite rant) is just a catalogue of their lies and, occasionally spin-tastic back-pedalling. And yet such an organisation is not only allowed to exist, but to get in bed with the government too? And now they want to get their greasy paws on every privately owned internet connection in the US?
Sorry, no. I think my insta-Godwin was half-warranted in the case of these capricious fucks.
A great man being George Creel? (Score:3, Informative)
No insta-Godwin for you...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A good book to read on what happened in the US during WW1 is Barrie's 'The Great Influenza'.
Re: (Score:2)
Given that this article is directly about propaganda, you get a free pass in comparing them to the Nazis.
Re: (Score:2)
Whilst the loses undoubtedly is an outright lie the claim that piracy (where actual money changes hands) funds all sorts of bad things probably is true. Just that the amount of money involved is trivial compared with that from o
why do people think this matters? (Score:5, Insightful)
movies will still be made for $100 million. the studios will just make their money only in the theatres. there just will be no more online/ dvd/ vhs aftermarket
oh yeah, remember the vhs? that the studios fought tooth and nail in the 1980s because it was going to kill their movie business? which they now count as a huge cash cow? and which they now vigorously defend? pffft. yeah, like those guys understand a damn thing about what they are talking about
people announced the death of the moviehouse in the 1950s. why? television. this was two decades before "Jaws" and the birth of the summer blockbuster. some genius prognostication there, huh? same with those predicting the internet, and the hdtv, and all of that will kill the theatre. uh, no. history repeating itself. the theatre business is secure, really
studios will still make lots of money, people will still jam movie houses, no matter what a bunch of asocial slashdotters in their parent's basement say. watching anime on a 17 inch monitor by yourself in your basement is NOT a threat to people going to the movies on dates, in families, in groups, to see the blockbuster first, etc. no matter what technological advance is made. seriously
hollywood: you're just going to have to wean yourself of the dvd aftermarket. there will be nothing online to match that cash cow, and the internet is going to kill that cash cow. go ahead and pass a bunch of laws, pay off some congressman, step up in enforcement. doesn't matter in the least. that cash cow is going bye bye, nothing is going to replace it. deal with that, nothing is changing that fact
just put yourself in your 1980s "the aftermarket is going to kill the movie business!" point of view, you'll get used to the change
morons
Re: (Score:2)
in their living room on a 60" TV or using some sort of projector.
Your characterization is wildly out of touch with reality.
Take a $1000 projector, about 12 feet of throw distance and
add a well setup surround sound system and the MPAA is f*cked.
This is what the non-asocial non-slashdot reading types are
all doing in the suburbs. What do you think they do with all of
that gratuitous space in t
some said the same thing about the tv in the 1950s (Score:2)
why?
they did studies. it's sort of a post-modern church. psychologiclly, people go there to feel like part of a community, the other gasps, laughs, etc. in a movie house heighten the experience. yes, dorothy, that effect is taking into account the crying babies, the asshole with the cell phone, etc.
seriously: the hdtv, internet movies, etc. will not alter the money made at theatres. because its a controlled venue, a must have experience. its p
VHS different than the internet (Score:2)
The real problem with MPAA is not that piracy is not theft, but its motives. The real motive behind MPAA is not that "piracy is bad", but that "we are not as filthy rich as we could be if you did not copy our data". So, since the rich don't play fair, it's only justified to copy a movie for personal use (n
you're quite ignorant (Score:2)
quality and financial outlay is a funny thing. the golden age of high quality cinema is from an age when hollywood only made money from theatres. and i don't know about you, but i've seen plenty of $100 million dollar pieces of shit, and plenty of $100,000 gems. as for "respect" i don't think the royalty of the incans or aztecs got
How much is really "Internet Piracy?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, "bootlegging" costs them $2.4 million. This is typically "hard piracy" or a guy on a street corner selling a copied DVD for $5. Let's give the MPAA this figure.
The next portion is $1.4 billion "lost" to illegal copying. Now this isn't someone putting Star Wars up on a P2P network. This is someone taking their Star Wars DVD and making a backup copy of it. Apparently, the MPAA feels that you should pay for backup copies and not doing so is costing them money. This is likely just a load of horse manure, but let's leave it be for now because the next one is what really interests me.
Finally, they claim $2.3 billion in losses to "internet piracy". Since they claim that most of the losses are overseas (say, 40%) and 15% of the US Internet piracy happens on campuses, that's $138 million ($2.3 Billion * 0.4 * 0.15). Now, they also are claiming that each P2P copy downloaded is a lost sale. I disagree with that and think that the real "lost sales" figures are far lower. I'm willing to grant them a compromise, though, and assume that a one in three downloaded copies is a lost sale. This takes the losses figure down to $46 million. Finally, some of those "lost sales" would have been used copies, rentals, or other legal "reduced cost" methods. So let's assume that this takes reduces their revenue by 20% (again, being generous)*. This takes their Internet Piracy loss down to just under $37 million.
So for $37 million lost annually, the MPAA wants severe Federal laws that would deny students a college education if someone else on the campus pirates a movie?
* Ok, I pulled a lot of the numbers out of my behind, but so did the MPAA. At least my numbers are likely to be closer to reality.
Re: (Score:2)
I think there is something like 16 million students enrolled in colleges & universities in the U.S. each year. Using your figures, that means $2.30 per student. So I guess they think it's fair that because you "took" $2.30 from them, they should take $100,000 from you.
Re: (Score:2)
If we're gonna play horseshoes....
I'm gonna toss a $zero out there for the win
-
Re: (Score:2)
As an aside, the RIAA don't just make this stuff up. You need to have had about a kilo of marching powder up your nose before you start thinking up numbers as big as that. Observe this example:
Non-coked-up RIAA executive 1: So how much did we lose to downloading this year?
Non-coked-up RIAA executive 2: Well, when you factor in the fact that most of what we cal
Hold up a minute... (Score:2)
What the **AA still are not telling us is how and where they found what proof (if any) that P2P file sharing is hurting their business, nor have the quantified how the quality of their product taints that estimate. Remember that old adage about comparing apples and oranges?
Now, factor in the damage done by Radiohead or NIN. How does that affect their bottom line, and tell me in dollars and cents because wild ass guesses are not good enough in a court of law where they are claiming dollar and
There's Method Here (Score:4, Insightful)
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Choosing and Selecting (Score:2)
For that to happen, colleges and universities will have to stop being dens of digital piracy. Everybody who's been to college in the last 10 or 15 years knows it's true. Slashdot it being ridiculous, ignoring well-known facts because they happen to di
Simple answer? (Score:2)
Colleges are Teaching This?!?!? (Score:2)
colleges and universities are engaged in serious efforts to inform and educate students about the importance of copyright
When I entered college in 2001, my college was engaged in a serious effort to show all incoming freshman a film depicting the trouble of over-indulging in alcohol and the risks of taking advantage of women while they are intoxicated. To me, this is a real serious concern because of the way lives can be ruined during only a single thoughtless night of events.
I hardly think "copyright" should even be considered in the same ballpark as "rape". If the music industry really has a problem with college stude
Look at how much money they make! (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:2)
So that's why they (or at least some of them) are trying to force universities that do not have anti-piracy infrastructures (filters, monitoring, etc) in place to lose their federal funding? Wow, that does show a lot of respect.
I think that the MPAA and RIAA should not be allowed to interfere with anything regarding universities, except maybe as cases to ana
Re: (Score:2)
My ADSL is 3072:768 - roughly half a T1's worth of uplink, 2 T1s' worth of downlink.
-uso.