Ethics of Critic Screeners - Page 2

The market would need to change drastically here for that to work.

Bolivian filmmakers understand this. Which is why they ultimately make their own movies available at the lowest price possible on DVD - essentially bootlegging their own movies - rather than watch them be pirated by someone else.

To expand on your Playboy example... Say you wanted to buy a copy of Playboy and the only copy of Playboy is one that has been scanned and printed out on photo paper.

Okay... So I'll just jack off with the Victoria's Secret catalog that was mailed to my house...

And the Victoria's Secret catalog is printed out in the same way.

Fuck it, I'll just use my imagination.

A virus has been passed through your system, nestled in your head, insuring that your "imagination" is the thoughts of someone else.

That's basically what it's like.

I'm exaggerating for comic effect, of course, but my point is there isn't a choice. They try to establish strict import tax laws and the prices of products go up, people get lynched. If one day you could buy an LCD flat screen for 750 but, the next day it goes for 1600 due to tax laws... It's an unsustainable market.

And when pretty much all new movie releases are available widely for the equivalent of 2 dollars (7 dollars on Blu Ray), why would anyone spend a third of their monthly salary having it mailed in officially through an import house?

Not saying I like or support any of this. Just saying I understand why it happens. I wish the market would change.

In an ideal world, they would figure out a way to make original products affordable and readily available in every market. The best way to combat piracy is to render it unnecessary.

I feel like the HBO analogy is a bad one here. Now, admittedly I don't know what their subscription contract looks like either, but I think it's a subscription to show HBO in the household that has subscribed to it, and that's it. So it doesn't matter how many people you have over to watch HBO, as long as they're all watching it in your household, which is subscribed to HBO, it should be fine. If it were per person, HBO would be asking for quadruple the subscription cost for a family of four. So, it's really not analogous to screeners at all.

But how is that different than the reasoning that if the studio wanted to exclude family and friends of a critic from viewing a screener, they would have included specific wording to that effect?

I was pressing the analogy in response to BruceL's reasoning, which seemed to suggest a positive obligation on the viewer to seek out a legitimate avenue of compensating the "content creator" unless they have specifically exempted you from paying. TV is an area where the legit avenue is widely available, specific exemptions are not, and no one sees a problem with such a simple sidestepping of payment.

Darkmite suggestion that ad revenue provides the answer makes sense for traditional network TV, but DVRs have thrown a big wrinkle in that. And it applies less to cable, and even less to ad-less pay cable, which have more in common with studio pictures than TV for these purposes.

This is basically all that needs to be said. Honestly, if you guys are concerned about the morality of watching screeners -- and I have no idea whether Ripoll's original post was genuine, or another one of his "oh I'm so quirky" posts* -- get some cooler friends. That's all there is to it.

There is nothing wrong with watching a screener if it was obtained through purely legal means. Last time I checked, ain't nothin in the MPAA guidelines about friendship being against the law.

Jesus.

*Nothing but love, brother R.

Maybe? Maybe not? But you're right about DVR adding a wrinkle.

I wonder if a percentage of that DVR "rental" fee is then factored into the network's ad pricing.

"You wanna charge me how much for ad space, when you're allowing your customers to easily skip through my ads?"

Different dynamic from the VCR days, as now the cable companies are providing you with the means.

After reading the thread and having nothing else on which to base my conclusion... I've got this:

The ethical weight of any action with regards to someone else's property is entirely dependent on the method and medium by which aforementioned property was obtained.

IF the property was provided BY the creator/owner/distributor, all use of the property is ethically restricted to the specific terms set forth in the transfer of ownership.

IF the property was acquired in ANY OTHER fashion, the use of the property is ethically restricted to the specific stance of the creator/owner/distributor with regards to the method used to acquire aforementioned property.

How's that?

Jared: nicely done. That matches my feeling.

That's... actually pretty damn good.

Nice one Jared. Cheers.