I'm not talking about fair use/backup copies/"I-HAVE-to-be-able-to-use-the-media-player-of-MY-choice."drfsupercenter wrote: I have a few comments to that end.
One, I have quite a large collection of legally-owned movies... bigger than almost all of my friends. I'm not against paying for movies... most of the ones I copy I already own. But is it such a crime to not want to carry the original copies around with me? When it's just as easy to burn a DVD-R and not care if it gets ruined?
As far as who piracy is hurting... how does it hurt the actors and technical crew members? Those people all sign contracts, and make most of their money before the movie even comes out.
From that point, the majority of the profits goes to the studio. And does it really look like Fox, WB, Sony, Viacom, etc. need more money? The same goes with music - I once read that a recording artist only makes about 10 cents from every CD sold. I would rather send them a dime in an envelope and then download the music for free... Why would I support giving a record label 90% of the profit? (And for that reason, there are actually a few recording artists who encourage "piracy", because of issues they've had with their recording label)
So really, pirates aren't really hurting the actors, they're helping. I'm not trying to stick anything to the man, I'm simply trying to get the most out of my media. Why would I buy a DVD and then buy an iTunes copy? I can make my own iTunes copy! Why would I buy a song on iTunes and then re-buy it in WMA? Etcetera, etcetera. I always pay to see movies in theaters - with the exception of a couple of "bad" movies I wanted to see purely to see if the reviews were right, I don't watch camrips. So don't think I'm going around stealing movies. And heck, piracy isn't stealing... they still have the original!
For that matter, Sony has even admitted making money from piracy. What I mean is this. People buy PSP systems, and then flash them so they can play free games. Same with the Nintendo DS, Wii, etc. And I'm talking people would wouldn't buy the system at all if they couldn't get free games. I can find a link to the press article if you want, but I know one of the higher-ups at Sony made a press statement saying they're actually benefiting from PSP hacking. And yet they continue to hunt down and destroy the hackers. Shame.
You suggested an iTunes re-release of a vintage Disney album should be DRM-stripped and shared among members explicitly to avoid payment on copyrighted material, and you offered to facilitate such actions. That's not a defensible position, ethically or legally, and it suggest your motives in promoting copy protection/DRM-breaking are not entitled to any benefit of doubt.
I shouldn't have to address this. There's no good reason you should be allowed to argue in defense of piracy on a site which generates income from legitimate sales and which relies on the goodwill of the studios to create content of its own.
Speaking as a creator of intellectual property and copyrighted content, your attitude about my rights sucks.
Piracy benefits no one so much as pirates. Period.
Your ideas about music royalties bear correcting, though I think it's important to note you could have fact-checked yourself in a fraction of the time you spend spouting bad information on this forum. Recording contract law is endlessly convoluted, but for simplicity's sake: songwriter/publishing royalties are 6-9 cents pert track under 5 minutes in length depending on whether or not the label has negotiated the statutory rate downward; recording artist royalties are generally 10%. On a fifteen-track album with a sticker price of $15, that's $2.50 or so due the composersand recording artists. But before the record has a chance to generate a penny in revenue, the label has laid out money which it's entitled to recoup before declaring a profit and sharing out royalties with the recording artists. That means the recording artists, being the last folks to get paid, are the first to get screwed by piracy. And since a label's recoupable expenses include costs incurred during recording, producing, mastering, pressing, distributing, and promoting the record, as well as video production and tour support, your purchase price represents monies already spent on physical resources and the work of a raft of personnel: the producer, the recording engineer, the recording studio secretary, session musicians, instrument techs, photographers, caterers, line workers at the pressing plant, graphic artists, stage managers, tour managers, hotel cleaning ladies, screenprinters, follow-spot operators, limo drivers, truck drivers, personal assistants, accountants, camera operators, gaffers, janitors, luthiers, piano tuners, vocal coaches, copy writers, wardrobe techs, welders, electricians, carpenters...and whether you like it or not, you don't get to parse out and evaluate the individual costs you wish to pay for an album any more than for your car, your computer, or an order of fries. And since you're living at home, making a negligible contribution to the GDP, without firsthand experience in the effort required to make a career and earn your own way in the world---much less the self-sacrifices required to support a family---I fail to see what would entitle you to decide who gets paid and how much.
Yes, a lot of people get paid up front. The idea that piracy somehow doesn't hurt them is pure fallacy. It takes a lot of money to make a film. Where do you suppose that money comes from? Profits. Lost profits can't be re-invested in production: they represent films that aren't made and the thousands of people not collecting paychecks on work never commissioned. That matters more than ever at a time like this when every dime counts, when the economy is in the tank, when unemployment is going up and businesses are going under, when people realize their investments a worth a third less than they were a year ago (my kids' prepaid college tuition funds are worth less now than what we originally put into them). In 2005 they figure the US film industry lost about 8% revenue to piracy, more than 6 billion dollars. Any attempt to parse out Disney's share would be folly, but as one of the big 6 mega-conglomerate studios, it's surely not an insignificant number. Say their share of loss was $500 million---that's more than the budgets of The Pacifier, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Sky High, Chicken Little, and the first Chronicles of Narnia film <i>combined</i>; that's more than half the Disney-branded release schedule for the year, and including the single biggest-budgeted among them.
