THE DEVIN'S ADVOCATE: STOP PIRATING, DICKHEADS - Page 4

Hey guys how do you feel about people sneaking food/drinks/candy into a movie theater?

Because it's there, it's new and it's free.

I agree with you, but I have a friend who downloads stuff like most of us change the channel. I have a feeling there are a lot of those people.

He doesn't even keep 99% of it. Just deletes and downloads more.

I did! Or...am I on ignore? Aw...

I only missed it, dreary. Only room on my ignore list for one special lady.

We could get into how downloading first-run movies hurts the theater chain as well, but fuck the back and forth on "I wasn't gonna go anyway" - let's say you're right. I still don't think the lost revenue of the theater is the reason grownups tend to not sneak into movie theaters, while having no qualms about downloading illegally. It's about getting caught, about having people know you're skirting the rules. People know they're not supposed to be pirating movies, and it comes down to being able to get away with it. They've ticked an internal box that says it's okay as long as they don't get caught. Almost every other argument is backpedaling.

The solution is clear: pimply faced movie ushers installed in every home.

If they paid for what they're sneaking in, it's not really stealing. Then again, they are taking money away from the theater. Ultimately, you might be breaking a rule, but you're not breaking the law.

I don't understand why there's any question about the economics of pirating movies - it's theft of services. We've established a system in this society where if you want to own/enter/play with/use something, the person in control of that something gets to decide if you pay for it or not. If you don't pay for it, you're stealing their services.

You can sneak into a county fair and you're not technically harming anyone or taking anything from the folks who are running the fair - you may never have even intended to go to the fair in the first place - but once you get caught without a ticket they'll call the cops on you.

As for movies being an infinite resource - what a reductive way to look at the fruits of the labors of creative people. Movies (or books or music) aren't magically appeaing fruit. They cost effort and they cost actual money. A movie isn't a solitary object in space - it's part of a director's ouevre, it's part of a studio's slate - and stealing this magically appearing apple could have an impact on the production of next year's magically appearing oranges. Even if not a mathematical impact, a real psychological one. I know filmmakers who get so disheartened when they search their movie on Twitter and see people praising the film... the film they downloaded.

Nine times out of ten it seems like the people who can't create are the ones who are okay with just taking the fruits of creation away from those who can.

I might have stretched the definition of what constitutes a rare or out-of-print work. I remember downloading Paul Schrader's "Hardcore", a movie I couldn't find anywhere, though its copyright wasn't in doubt. But I don't sneak into shows because it seems worse to me, and even more immature. Downloading "Daybreakers" seems worse than the transgression of downloading the aforementioned Schrader flick. But I'm sure it's as bad.

Hey, I have an idea, what about a feature on public domain, or unavailable movies, that Chewers feel they should be able to pirate? "Chimes at Midnight" anyone? Probably a terrible idea, yeah.

So, "theft of services", as Devin phrased it in his last post.

*edit*

Just curious, when it comes to piracy does anyone know what industry is pirated the most? Out of music, software, videogames, tv, movies, and porn?

No, because you're not stealing the movie theater popcorn, you're just not buying it.

It's like saying I'm stealing from Starbucks if I buy a pastry from them but bring in a cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts.

That's not theft of services. There's no two popcorn minimum at your local movie theater. If your theater catches you sneaking food in they can kick you out, they can't call the cops on you.

"Consequences dictate
our course of action
and it doesn't matter what's right.
It's only wrong if you get caught.
If consequences dictate
my course of action
I should play GOD
and shoot you myself."

-From a song appropriately titled: "Jerk Off"

As movies and other content is easier and cheaper to obtain in a digital format, I think domestic piracy becomes less of an issue, if it hasn't already.

Most piracy in the U.S. I assume comes from kids with a lot of time on their hands (i.e. high school and college students). As they venture forth and find jobs, get married, etc., this probably becomes less of an issue; you won't have all day to dick around online and pirate content when you're working two jobs to pay rent.

Like I mentioned before, international piracy, particularly the kind unofficially condoned by governments, is the bigger threat to content owners. This requires foreign policy strategy and isn't easily solvable, but harping on the one college kid who downloads Iron Man 2 is easy, so people focus on that.

I don't get this debate. Stealing is stealing. It is unjustifiable.

What's really happening here is that people have decided that they don't care about the law due to the anonymity of the internet. If music were still only available in places where you'd need to physically remove it to listen to it, this wouldn't be the problem that it is.

If you care about film, about literature, about music, about ANY creative pursuit in a real way then buy your entertainment through legal channels. It's fundamentally disrespectful to the creator of that entertainment not to do so.

I respect Devin's acknowledgement of the "grey line" when it comes to entertainment that's not available in any form (the Star Wars Christmas special is a perfect example), because I think that in turn acknowledges that some piracy is understandable, even if it's still wrong.

But pirating something readily available in the marketplace? It's just stealing, done with the comfort of anonymity. And the worst part about it is that its not stealing bread to feed a hungry family, or blankets/clothes to keep them warm - acts that are unlawful but human and understandable and defensible to whatever extent. It's not the taking of arguably-public resources, like water.

It's just stealing the Wolverine movie, because you can. You don't need that movie - you just don't want to participate in the act of exchanging money for goods and services. That's theft. Play games of semantics all you'd like, but don't act hurt when someone states the obvious.

Hell, I don't even buy mp3's anymore, I buy the CD when it's a new release at Best Buy. I bought LCD Soundsystem's new one yesterday and it was $7.99, cheaper than iTunes, I believe, and I get the physical media too.

You get a better quality file as well.

If for no other reason (and ethically/legally, there are plenty), I hate piracy because you almost always get some sort of inferior product.

Also, with shit like Netflix now, there's pretty much no "but I can't afford it" excuse. Don't tell me that at the very LEAST you can't afford a few bucks a month for Netflix. If you can't, you've got bigger problems than "but how can I watch movies?" Sort those out first. The rest will follow.

Devin, as a writer and the son of writers, I agree that creative works cost effort, resources, etc. And I also agree that if you get caught stealing anything, whether it's services, a physical product or a virtual object, you should be punished. And I agree that the act of theft on its own is wrong regardless of whether or not there's a danger of being caught. But that doesn't solve the problem of determining how much actual economic damage is done and what the appropriate punishment is as a result.

Physical crimes are so much easier when it comes to determining punishment. You can start from the baseline that the theft effectively robbed someone of selling a product. Virtual items aren't as simple. That's not just me talking, that's what the GAO found in their report.

Thought experiment: Assuming that all piracy stopped right now and the people who pirate content chose instead to just not consume the stuff they used the steal, the industry would be more or less in the same place economically speaking. No one would be "losing" money to theft and just as many virtual products would be sold as when piracy was running rampant. There are no damages in this case because there's no piracy, but at the same time the baseline of revenue in both sets of circumstances remains the same for the industry. The same isn't true with physical products (or even most services). Virtual products are a new element.

Now we know that in reality, some (perhaps even most) of those pirates would stop being scuzzballs and would actually purchase the content they want. So there has to be some level of economic impact. But it's still not measurable simply because we have no way of knowing how many of those pirates would buy the stuff they steal. And when you're basing laws and international treaties on supposed damages, that becomes a problem.

Alternative punishment: Devin throws a brick at you, in a manner of his choosing.

Of course, if you set a baseline for punishment that had nothing to do with the supposed economic damage of the crime, that skirts the issue and solves the problem.

One issue I haven't seen mentioned yet is how the media industries, along with collusion by retailers, have created a Catch-22 that somewhat encourage piracy - the return policies.

If I (for example; I'm lazy and don't want to pepper my examples with hypothetical "one"s, "a person"s, "he or she"s, etc.) buy something from a retail store I can usually return it for a full refund if dissatisfied for any reason. Some stores will charge a restocking fee, which seems fair if I simply decide I don't like or don't need the product after opening the package and/or trying it out, but seems unfair if the product is defective, damaged, or deceptive. However, these policies do not extend to media such as books, CDs, DVDs or video games. The retailer will usually only exchange for the same title, if that. And while I understand why the industries and retailers have these rules, I don't necessarily agree with them, as they are restrictive on the vast majority of honest consumers because of the potential actions of the few who would, say, buy a CD, rip it, share it online, and then bring it back for a full refund.


If I buy a PC game for which my system meets the requirements posted on the box but I take it home and find out it simply doesn't work, even after downloading the latest patches and video card drivers, I should be able to return it for a full refund. But to even get store credit usually requires a long, philosophical conversation with a manager. The product should work as advertised. And what if I don't agree with the software company's license agreement? It says right there in a legally-binding contract that I should return it to the retailer for a full refund. But I can't.

If I buy a DVD that simply won't work in my player, no matter how many duplicate titles it's exchanged for, I should be entitled to a refund (sometimes the transfer is cheap and won't play in some players, and rarely a retailer erroneously stocks DVDs for the wrong region). Plus, some DVDs lock out user controls such as the menu or search buttons for an inordinate amount of time to force me to watch previews or other nonsense. They should be returnable just on principle.

If I rush out to by the latest, say, Dethklok CD and upon first listening I discover the band decided to make an experimental album of Europop, shouldn't I be able to return it? You can return food that tastes like shit to the grocery store. What if it was recorded so poorly as to make it unlistenable, even to the point of risking blowing my speakers from the DC clips and distortion? Back in the old days of Vinyl albums you could "try before you buy" but now if you're lucky you can hear some short clips, that were presumably not ripped from a factory CD, by pressing some buttons on a terminal.


The problem with each of the above example is I couldn't know exactly what I was getting before purchasing the product and opened it, thereby negating my ability to return it for a full refund. Sure, circumstances vary and most reasonable store managers will accommodate me, but I shouldn't have to overcome the hurdle of convincing him or her I did not open the package to pirate the material. Media vendors can be even more difficult to deal with; try losing your product key for a given piece of software and reinstalling it.

Of course just because certain industries have ridiculous or overbearing policies regarding transfer of their intellectual properties does not make it okay to break the law to seek out alternative means to obtain media you have already purchased or plan to buy, but it does encourage it for the percentage of consumers who are willing to cross that line while leaving a bad taste in the mouths of dissatisfied consumers who are not. So by creating punitive policies to combat piracy they are also creating new pirates to some, perhaps great, degree.

Like being from Canada.

Yes. I am completely serious the brick would solve all these problems. Indeed.

I'm no lawguy, but I don't believe our current system takes into account the damage done to a victim when convicting someone for theft. Stealing 1000 bucks from Trump is just like stealing 1000 bucks from me in the eyes of the law, isn't it?

So why does the economic impact on the industry matter? Who cares? This is like having a health care policy discussion with a guy who has just been hit by a car.

Yes, that is absolutely right. There is no excuse for pirating stuff that is readily available on the market and is cheap ($1!!!), even free, sort of (your library, although that comes out of your local taxes).

I still don't feel bad about pirating foreign music though. That stuff will never be available here (in the U.S.), even through importers, so I don't feel about that. Due to regional restrictions the content owners never would have had a sale from me anyway. I actually actively sought out imported music from Europe (Italian, Greek, Irish)that I would pay for; the term 'slim pickings' applied.

I've seen countless people successfully get refunds from movie theaters because a movie wasn't what they thought it would be (subtitles are a big example here). I do not believe they should have gotten those refunds. And I've bought a bunch of albums I've hated. Never occurred to me that I should be able to return them because they were bad.

Yes, a thousand times yes, thank you. You are not entitled to a refund for a movie or an album you don't like. The price of the product does not guarantee you will like it, and it's not the responsibility of the record store or the theater to reimburse you if the album or film doesn't tickle your fancy. At all.

See it like this:
If it wouldn't be for piracy, all those third world countries would not get US propaganda in the quantities they are consuming it in now.
No Russians playing Modern Warfare 2, no South Americans watching Man On Fire and no Chinese watching Iron Man 2. Maybe the US government should pay out the entertainment companies with a flat tax.

btw why is the word piracy even associated with this? Are men armed with RPGs capturing super tankers in the same league as illegal downloaders?
I'm working in the industry myself but what I also don't like is propagandistic escalation of words just to have a stronger argument.
Same shit with the war on drugs and war on terror. It's not a war, and illegal downloading should not be compared to raping or robbing or any other serious crime. This is just rethorical escalation done by the lobbyists to get the populace in the frame of mind that this is a serious offense.
it is serious if you are in the business of making money off it or doing it on a large scale, but the married couple who downloads an episode of 30 Rock cause it hasn't come out in their country and there is no box set yet? I don#t know man, but I would not put them on the no-fly-list yet. You never know what the blowback will be.

QFT. The theater didn't make the movie. Didn't like it/were offended? Tough shit.

Now, movie presented shittily? Sound crappy, bulb flickering too much, framed improperly, fine, give a refund. But the theater has very little say in what films it programs.

I think this has already been covered in the thread, but how do people feel about paying to see a movie that they already like/have seen and sneaking into a theater they have less interest in? I've been on some boards where that attitude of "there's no way I'm giving director X any more of my money, I'll go fork down $ for a ticket to Up! again and sneak in" is somehow considered less piratical (is that a word? if not, I just coined it).

That IS an awful argument. I bought the latest James Patterson paperback at Penn Station while waiting for an LIRR train; the book was pretty awful, but I wasn't about to go the same bookshop and ask for a refund because I didn't like it.

Well, piracy of old was taking things that didn't belong to you, selling them and making a profit. Which is what plenty of the digital pirates do. And I'm sure they don't mind the appropriated symbolism of the free spirit roaming the seas, answerable to no one. Of course, they leave out the whole "Get caught and hanged" part of the pirate lifestyle.

Basing payment off of whether you liked or didn't like what you got is ridiculous. It's your job to decide what you want to purchase, and to make an informed decision. It's the store's job to give you what you ask for in exchange for money.

That's it.

In an age where you can legally log on and listen to samples of most available music, and can watch extensive trailers for films, the "I didn't get what I thought I'd get" approach is particularly indefensible.

This isn't meant to sound dickish, just straightforward.

Theft is theft.

More like a wrongheaded political act. If you're going to boycott, have some willpower.

Here's something to consider. What if someone checks out some CD's from their local library and rips them to their iPod? Would that be considered piracy? If they deleted the songs from their iPod by the date the CD's were due back to the library, would it cease to be piracy?

This is something I've thought about before, as the Omaha Public Library system has a pretty decent selection of music.

You initially obtained the music through legal means, and are utilizing the information for personal use. I'm willing to call that not piracy.

Now, sharing that same CD on Limewire? Piracy.

ok but then the title pirate would fit for maybe 0.1 percent of all illegal downloaders, the other 99.9% are "only" downloading for immediate personal use und most often delete the stuff after they have tried, watched, played, read it.

Back to my inital example with Twin Peaks. I got the first season and the first 2nd season DVDs from a friend on DVD. watched it. I got hooked. Wanted to watch the remaining 2nd season (couple of episodes). Friend was away for a couple of days so I couldn't get the last disc. I tried hard to watch the remaining episodes on the free CBS archive stream but got a geo-restriction. I saw the 2nd boxset was not on sale as English-German version (this was before 2007). So I pretty much was out of options other than waiting for flea market, waiting for my friend to come back from holiday or watching it as a free stream on some site.

Due to their restrictions they lost the opportunity to have me watch official ads on the CBS site.

And stuff lke geo-restrictions, draconian DRM on music or games where a legit customer has an inferior product compared to the "pirated" version and the upcoming draconian Blu-ray implementations will drive more and more normal people to google for alternatives. Right now the industry is hurting itself if it thinks it can create more value for the customer by locking him in.

You're right. Actually, when it comes to fines under the U.S. Copyright Act, the amount is a range between $750 to $150,000 per act of theft. That's why Jammie Thomas was fined $1.92 million for stealing 24 music tracks using Kazaa. It's a case of statutory damages -- it's statutory instead of actual because it's so hard to determine the actual losses. Better to just go ahead and make it an astronomical sum since it's hard to figure out how much money the company lost as a result.

But that doesn't stop an industry from citing bogus damage figures in order to drive the fine up as high as it can when convincing a jury to award damages. More importantly, it's bogus figures that entertainment industries are using to push forward political agendas like ACTA, which could really become a massive headache if they go forward (and could affect everything from the entertainment industry to net neutrality in the process).

In my eyes, the worst effect of piracy is that it causes industries to lash out and create policies and shape laws that punish legitimate customers more than those who steal their products (which, sadly enough, helps create more pirates).

Agreed. You pay money to watch a movie, not like a movie.

If a store chooses to be cool and give you your money back because you misunderstood what you were buying (be it CD, DVD, or book), good on them. But they certainly shouldn't have to. Researching a product before buying it is your job.

This is the perfect example of the selfish child mindset. Ready to get blown away by a fact? Here goes:

NOBODY OWES YOU TWIN PEAKS


Think about that. You don't have any specific rights or guarantees to seeing TWIN PEAKS season 2. It's crazy, right?

But wait, it gets better:

NOBODY OWES YOU WHAT YOU WANT THE WAY YOU WANT IT.

That means if a company doesn't want to (or can't - geo-restrictions are based in pre-digital agreements most of the time) sell you the item you want in the way you want it, you don't get to have that item. It doesn't mean you get to steal it.

If you think this is bad business, I recommend not doing business with these companies. But again, that doesn't give you the right to steal it. You have two options: take part in their retail system and get the item you want or don't take part and don't get the item.

You know, I watched the first season of Twin Peaks and got hooked too. I wanted to watch the second season right then. But seeing as this was 1990 and Season Two hadn't been shot yet, I had to wait four months to see it. So I've got no sympathy for you.

What's more retarded:

(a) Games are art

or

(b) Piracy isn't really stealing?

Going off of Devin's most recent post, can someone explain the reason for geo restrictions in the digital age for me?

For example, I tried buying international music on iTunes, but I got a response back from their tech support that, say, a compilation of European club music is only available in certain countries. The U.S. version of iTunes couldnt access that, but a German version of iTunes can. Ditto for a Greek solo artist; only iTunes.gr is compatible.

I seriously don't understand the reasoning behind this. Nobody else is importing this stuff. Don't they understand that they're losing sales?

Also the very same people are claiming since 2 years that they break records in theaters and have very good financial years. The blowback is already there, people don't believe what the movie industry is saying...
When they tell you in the same week that wolverine is the most pirated movie of the moment, and that it also made good money, what do you think the casual pirate is gonna say ? "In fact I don't do much harm"

Again, you aren't entitled to watch Twin Peaks at your own discretion unless you have paid for it.

And double again, you are justifying stealing because an industry won't bend to your whims.

So, your justification for stealing is that they still made money? Can I have half your paycheck since you should be able to live on half of what you earn?

To be serious, I'm thinking it boils down to one question: What is property? How is that concept mutating? Certainly people have taken whatever they can for free (and bootlegged it for a profit) for decades, but for a generation that has now grown up with the ease and speed of the internet, the immediate gratification taken as a given, it's a whole new frontier, and they don't know any other reality. To such people, Devin may as well be making Charlie-Brown's-teacher noises; the ethics/morality doesn't compute. And some of them aren't trying to be assholes. It's just the water they were born in, you know? That's not to excuse it, but we may be seeing a very wide philosophical generation gap here.

Devin's in his mid-thirties, I think, as are many of you; I'm pushing 40. We didn't have billions of forbidden fruit just hanging there for the picking when we were growing up. If we wanted to watch a major box-office flick at home, we had to wait two or three years for the ABC Saturday Night Movie Event or some shit. The kids that have been steeped in this culture have no concept of waiting. And to them, we're the ones who don't get it, yelling "Get off my lawn, and don't download anything! Why, in my day..."

Not to piss anyone off, but every "What if" post I read sounds like someone's looking for a loophole. It's like when Mom tells you you can't do something, and you look for ways around it.

So, for the cheap seats: if you take a laptop, at 12:35 AM and stand on one foot on the Equator for that full minute, you can download whatever you want and it's not piracy. Okay?

Just wanted to quote this, because it's so well put. JonStrickland's been doing a great job discussing these nuances in a civil manner.

To absurdly reduce it, my point of view is:

1. Piracy=theft=bad
2. Current copyright laws are terrible and likely to get worse before they get better.
3. The huge settlements the RIAA/MPAA are going for are NUTS.
4. #2 and #3 don't make #1 OK. Lobby to change the laws. Lobby for Net Neutrality. Vote for Creative-Commons friendly/rational copyright friendly politicians. Support Netflix. Support artists who use Creative Commons licenses. But don't pirate as some sort of a misguided protest.

I'm not excusing it, but think about it: there were kids who were in grade school when Napster first appeared. Those same kids, now in college, probably now see very little distinction between using limewire/Pirate Bay and iTunes.

Another problem: how does the industry deal with new 'innovation' from college-level engineering and computer science students? Some computing genius in a dorm room could be writing code that enables us to share music via telepathic communication, and then where would the industry be?

Of course, I'm being facetious with the last example, but my point was, with technology advancing as fast as it is, and it being advanced by essentially kids, the studios could be looking at another entirely new business model/threat inside of another few years.

You guys tell me; should the MPAA be holding seminars in university Science and Engineering departments titled: 'Invent Responsibly'? Wasn't it a Danish university Computer Science student who reverse engineered the DVD enforcement code?

I think this is a problem. I think it's actually THE problem. With a whole generation growing up feeling entitled to their media for free, how far off are we from a point where professional quality media ceases to exist?

(b)

And I think this will be of interest to people engaged in this "debate." http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18...tures-pre.html
I find it very strange that the site is taking the stance that Nicolas Chartier is an unreasonable asshole. Maybe he is, in real life, but I don't see why he needs to coddle someone telling him how to protect his creative property.