Remember The Pirate Bay?
Why don't studios have their own similar sites where they allow free torrents of some shows and offer paid torrents.
As a busy person, I'd much rather pay for something which guarantees:
- high quality - no subtitles - no buffering issues - no viruses - click and play
> Although the software isn't directly malicious, the used rootkit hiding techniques are exactly the same used by malicious software to hide themselves. The DRM software will cause many similar false alarms with all AV software that detect rootkits. ... Thus it is very inappropriate for commercial software to use these techniques.
> In order to download the uninstaller, he found it was necessary to provide an e-mail address (which the Sony BMG Privacy Policy implied was added to various bulk e-mail lists), and to install an ActiveX control containing backdoor methods (marked as "safe for scripting", and thus prone to exploits).
Freakin' unbelievable. And I have to pay for that shit if I'm someone who is willing to be sony's paying customer...
They don't want change, they want business as usual, but their business model is dead, it's dead and rotting and they are going to accept that one of these days. Meanwhile pirates will keep stealing their worthless products.
There is big generation gap on how the execs view the business model vs how their teenagers are using the product.
And as the new generation slowly takes over, the model will evolve.
Evolve or die right!
Also see my comment above about IP and copyright in reference to Zara copying an indie artist's designs and placing the patches on their clothing.
How come it is not ok when the shoe is on the other foot?
To be clear, I am sincerely asking here, since I go through bouts of taking one side then the other on music, movies, copyright, and other IP.
There is a case to be made that people should have a human right to see or consume any media which might be enriching to their lives, even if they can't afford to. But seeing a movie is not the same as archiving and distributing that movie.
In my opinion, software and movie piracy is a side-effect of an industry that does not properly serve it's own market. Whether it's right or wrong doesn't play a role in that. Smart people would recognize that they are playing the game wrong, and they would have adapted their model by now. Some have tried, Netflix is a great effort to move in the right direction but it's been crippled by the idiotic licensing structure of the pre-internet business model.
Without getting into debates about morality or ethics, the MPAA and RIAA are getting what they deserve for responding to these challenges by responding with hostility toward their own consumers. They have not responded properly to the situation, and they dug themselves into further trouble.
It probably is different legally.
There are civil remedies and criminal penalties.
Criminal penalties tend to apply for willful infringement for commercial gain.
So when I download a movie it doesn't count. If I download movies and sell them it does. Zara removing the copyright notices from a designer's work, placing it on their clothing, and selling it pretty clearly moves it into the criminal end of copyright violation.
On iTunes, EVERYTHING is DRM free. If you purchase it, you get a mp4 (or mov), and that's it. No DRM.
So nothing is stopping you from paying for much of this content legally.
Movies are another thing, they appear to be DRM free as long as they are on a machine that is authorized with the purchasers Apple ID. Once copied to a computer that isn't authorized, the movie will either refuse to open or ask you to authorize the computer with the purchasers Apple ID because once again all your info is embedded into the file. And if that wasn't bad enough, if you try to play a iTunes bough movie on a external device that does not support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) it will also refuse to play.
I got burned by this once. There once was a way to remove all the crap Apple puts in their movies, but the software that could strip it out hasn't been updated for ages now.
I was infuriated to discover when I bought one on my computer in work it was then just about impossible to transfer it to any device that I could actually want to listen to it on (without resorting to hacks, or the analogue hole - through which it would have amounted to about 6 CDs of content).
The licence was not transferable to other devices either so I couldn't just download it again either.
Generally hits good enough on all categories.
of course torrents still win in content. Especially newer movies.
I want to watch a newer movie.
Is it on netflix/hulu/hbo/prime? Nope
Is it on AIV paid? Yes.
How much? 20 dollars.
That's too much for a movie I probably will only watch once. Any other options? At best a rental on AIV for a few bucks. That's pretty borderline. I'd pay that to see a movie I really want to see, but for one I'm taking a risk on it's a bit much.
I'd pay more for Netflix if it meant they get those new movies quicker. People seem to lose their shit when they announce a 1 dollar price increase though. Ridiculous, but there you go.
vs torrents I can just go into a webapp and pick out a movie. It gets downloaded and organized for me. I can watch it on my PC, my TV, via streaming, copy it to my iPad. Whatever. Easy, reasonably quick, free. Downside is it's illegal and immoral. I avoid pirating any content that I can easily access (I have some older shows that never made it past DVD, and are hard to find in general), because there really is no justification. When I was a student and content was mostly in expensive blu rays, I absolutely pirated.