Researchers find Megaupload shutdown hurt box office revenues
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Someone more statistical than I can correct me on this, but by using on average 21 observations per movie (presumably for different weeks), aren't they creating dependence between observations which will artificially increase the p-values and r-squared?
What this shouldn't be used for, though, is the default excuse by pirates when stealing intellectual property. "My theft actually helps, see?!?!?" Even if there is some financial gain, more is lost when the fundamental IP rights are stolen.
Apart from your failure to demonstrate an understanding of the difference between unlicensed duplication and denial through theft this bit still doesn't quite make sense to me.
Are you saying that the IPR are worth more than their direct fiscal benefit and that this benefit is some how reduced even if more money is made by the rights holders?
Could you expand on your reasoning?
If the findings are correct then for some tortuous infringer's then yes it would seem the most likely causality is that their unlicensed use of the material is of benefit [in promulgating the cultural worth¹ and] in bringing more financial benefit to the industry. If.
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¹ but who cares about that!
Intellectual property rights, themselves, are more important than the monetary gain. The right to own the product of your work is incredibly important to the creator's life. If you make something, whether it be a wood carving, a sandwich, or even a computer program or piece of music, that thing is yours. To take that something from someone without consent is theft.
When it comes to intellectual property, the only way to control the thing is to control its distribution. If the creator has no ability to set the terms by which the book, song, software program, etc. can be used, then there's no such thing as ownership of the created work.
I think that's a worse loss than any temporary financial gain that could be had by the loss of IP rights, as those IP rights are everything to the creator. If a creator doesn't own what he creates, and he can't trade his creation on his own terms, how can he succeed in life? Where's that pride of knowing that what you made is YOURS and you can control it?
Imagine a situation where an accomplished, proud artist spends years painting what he considers his life's masterpiece. Then the next evening, a thief runs off with painting, but leaves a stack of $100 million in cash with a note that says "SOLD!". Was the artist justly compensated? Would there be articles written about how art theft could leave artists with more money than on the market?
In my experience, pirates don't plagiarize. They simply don't do it. Attribution is always preserved.
However, I've heard many times on HN that piracy means stealing a work and not giving credit. They rattle on about how terrible it is to have people out there removing your name from your work.
I know plagiarism does happen, but I've never seen a plagiarized work on the Pirate Bay, or Usenet, or any of the other places where you can download copyrighted material for free.
It's hard to violate the GPL without plagiarizing.
Yes, that's precisely what I've seen people get annoyed about when the issue of copyright violation comes up.
> If my product gives attribution to the original authors, but I do not release my source code, then I am in violation of the GPL, but I am not a plagiarist.
I thought the GPL allowed binary-only distribution as long as there was a link or similar in the program to somewhere the source was available, but apparently not.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#UnchangedJustBinary
"The general rule is, if you distribute binaries, you must distribute the complete corresponding source code too. The exception for the case where you received a written offer for source code is quite limited."
If the painter wants to control his painting, he has to give up on selling it, yet somehow authors of digital works get to control the stuff after they sold it.
The idea that you should not _be able_ to sell a copy of a book without also selling distribution rights to that book strikes me as anti-capitalist.
I'm not with you on that one. "distribution rights" in this context would have to be artificially enforced by government, since it doesn't exist naturally in a market place.
I'm not saying that government shouldn't enforce these distribution rights (I don't think anybody should for instance burn pirated movies to blank DVDs and sell them on the street).
But to call it "anti-capitalist" because of lack of law and regulation on the governments side strikes me as kinda ironic. Wouldn't it be the exact opposite, more capitalistic if every individual can sell and buy without interference?
The government's role is limited to enforcing contracts, and government interference is in limiting what contracts can be established between parties.
But it has not been taken. Hence the reason why a whole new category of law was invented to restrict copying, as it was specifically not covered by property law (and still isn't).
> If a creator doesn't own what he creates, and he can't trade his creation on his own terms, how can he succeed in life?
The vast majority of people who create copyrighted works never make any money from it, much less make enough to live off. Being able to live of the revenue from works you created is something only a tiny little sliver of those who create can do. So your claim is hyperbole at best. Some people depend on copyright for their success and income, but most do not. Arguably most works are never even widely distributed.
But even if we accepted this claim, it is irrelevant: Society does not owe you a guarantee of success. Copyright is a restriction added largely for the purpose of promoting creation by offering the governments support in the creation of an artificial monopoly. It is a grant by society for the gain of society, not to guarantee you success. And it is ours to take away.
> Where's that pride of knowing that what you made is YOURS and you can control it?
Why do you need control to be able to be proud of what you created? There's no connection.
OTOH, if I print, or make a handwritten copy of this same poem, preserving the name of the author, I'm not stealing. It may be debatable what I actually did, but I did not steal.
Every time I see well defined concept being reused to mean something different than it meant for hundreds of years I'm cautious. I think everyone should be.
Kant wrote a bit about it.
Or maybe the paper itself? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246
It's always hard to tell with statistics, but I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the extra publicity from file sharing outweighs the negative effects for those smaller movies.
There could be a lot of other factors that were leading to this development, e.g. studios concentrating more on pushing blockbuster movies, generally a weak indie/strong blockbuster movie season, etc.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirate...
If you add all footage from the trailers, it can be about 10 minutes, maybe more.
You could presumably then tailor trailers to particular groups to emphasise desired attributes.
Downside to that is that if you sit through a few trailers you could literally have seen a-third of the movie before you go to watch it.
I enjoy movies orders of magnitude more now not already having seen the set piece scenes / heard the important lines.
If you have seen the movie True Grit - either the old or the new one - compare the trailer to the 1969 version, which essentially gives out all the plotpoints - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN-j4GDqjv4 - and the trailer to the 2010 version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUiCu-zuAgM .
Note, I don't go to movies because I normally leave disappointed.
It has been proven that once people have an inferior version of something they are more willing to pay full price for a good version.