MPAA Response to White House Position on Anti-Piracy Legislation
blog.mpaa.org
blog.mpaa.org
Also I have no idea what they mean when they say they are innovative. This is a mish mash of 'jobs' and 'thieves' and 'innovation' all over the place, tastelessly.
I guess I just get annoyed when institutions or industries make arguments for their relevance through legislation. They mention the status quo, but entertainment wants to hold onto a status quo where entertainment is a highly profitable industry, and they're willing to try and do it by creating legislation. Good artists are always going to prevail, but shitty business models don't need to be protected.
Bullshit. The film industry is boasting record profits, piracy has had a negligible effect on American jobs.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-...
The pirates aren't taking the money they would have spent on content and burning it. Instead, they're spending that money on something else. So it's not that jobs were lost, or even that the total GDP was reduced. It's simply that the money was spent elsewhere: it flowed into coffers other than those of the MPAA or the RIAA.
So at the very worst, from an economic perspective, the damage is that resource allocation is happening somewhat inefficiently, with money being directed to the consumer's second-higher priority relative to Content. There's no reason to think that in the big picture this is harming total employment or GDP any more than a thousand other inefficiencies that regulations have created in the market.
It also gets murky quick when you try to decide whether a job is destroyed, created, or moved.
So this was a lot of wasted time because first we'd need to agree on a methodology for measuring this stuff, and that's a hard thing to do.
MPAA
The Walt Disney Company 156,000
Time Warner 32,000
General Electric 287,000
Comcast 102,000
News Corporation 51,000
Viacom 10,900
Sony 168,200
RIAA Big 4
Citigroup (!) 260,000
Vivendi 54,560
Total: 1,121,660
If the same allegations were laid against any other industry in the United States like the automotive industry or Wall Street, there would be more indignation.
I get that it takes a lot of people across the production chain to get media developed and delivered to the end consumer, but I have yet to be shown how piracy impacts those people.
I'm not naive, people steal content. They do it all the time, in fact. Hell, I download show off of BT every so often. But how much of that revenue did you actually lose? Just tell me, I want to know.
Why are legitimate movie downloads (that are locked with DRM) as expensive as DVDs? Why is it that when I purchase digital content I'm simply renting it, I don't actually own any of it?
The MPAA serves the interests of studios executives, plain and simple. They don't serve their own ecosystems; if they did, they would innovate more and attempt to actually create more value for their own employees (and related businesses).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
(Not available on the 18th though... :-)
Right... the film and music industries are among the least innovative industries, as Fred Wilson reminds us http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-busines...
MPAA is representing global thieves, they steal opportunities, expression and free culture from everyone who doesnt own intellectual property. They deprive all independent artists from mixing and contributing to society. MPAA is victimizing itself on a daily basis, while oppressing all independent producers, oppressing all small job-creators.
That's one of my pet peeves, right there. The phrase "common-sense legislation" seems to be a code for either "we can't come up with a rational argument", or "you're not worth the trouble of proving this". Either way, the party saying this is hoping that we'll simply accept it at face value, and not think about it more deeply.
It's common sense that the sun revolves around the earth, and the idea of Evolution is completely offensive to common sense. The fact that something is appealing to our intuition is really only loosely related to its veracity.
Really? In spite of that grossly inflated figure, how many jobs depend on a fully-functional and uncensored internet?
Over the past century Copyright has been strengthened and protected to ever higher levels. There is no status quo here, it's all one sided and they dare say this when we tug back a little?
I was thinking the other night as a commentator did a pitch for a show airing later in the week. Logo, short message, date and time.
And I got mad. Mad because I couldn't press a button on my remote and just schedule it to record that. We live in a world where the DVR has won, every cable provider I can name is running a promotion where they're bundling their own home brand DVR box with a cable package. Yet, no new models have arisen to enhance the DVR experience beyond simple recording. They've begrudgingly accepted the devices, but otherwise it's business as usual.
Think about it. If you're going to spend air time to tell me about a show, it would behoove you to let me effortlessly schedule a recording of the show. I liked the pitch, I was hooked, I wanted to watch it. But I didn't want to go out of my way to find it, despite the fact that all the information was right in front of me.
Of course they've tried this. Half assed. Poorly implemented "Go Interactive!" initiatives that never get used. And the so called Interactive programming adds no value, I'm not even certain what they do since I've never been inspired to press the button during the rare occasions when the on screen prompt appears.
Which extends in to the second problem. They set themselves up for failure with systems like this, only to use them as a prop to say "See, the old model is better!" See all of their stunted and disorganized digital distribution channels for further examples. They're getting better, but only because they have to because they look so poor when you compare them to something like Netflix.
We're not going to be able to make them innovate. Horse vs. Water. Frankly I don't know what it will take for them to come around at this point, but I know we must staunchly oppose and fight any attempt to further stifle the progress we are all making in spite of them, all in the name of preserving their old way of life.
Passing SOPA is critical compared to what?
Repairing our economy? Bringing home the troops? Let me say it again: piracy has not had a material affect on the entertainment industry; on the contrary, they're having record years of gross profit.
This is honest debate?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111114/23145216770/house-...
So, Senator, who is guilty of "misinformation"?
So basically, they support free speech, as long as they approve of it?
This should be the last straw for all countries to wring the control over DNS and generic domains away from USA. The soon-to-be international copyright and patent troll is dangerous to hold the keys.