Federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties…
I’m generally against the illegal downloading of movies or music. It’s theft. And as much as we might decry the profiteering of distributors and record/music industry “suits,” the creative people who make these things get paid, too, when we pay for them.
Still, it bugs the shit out of me when I want to see a movie and it’s not available online legally. I had a hankering to watch The Return of the Living Dead (1985) last night. I don’t own it on DVD, so I went to see if it was available for streaming on Netflix. It wasn’t. I went to Amazon to see if they had a download. They didn’t. I went to iTunes to see if I could rent or buy it as an instant download–but no. Nothing.
On a whim I searched for it on youtube–and there it was, divided up in to 16 parts. It was mostly all there, too, except for a 5 minute section mysteriously missing from the middle. (I think it was the part where Trash strips in the graveyard, which tells me it had probably been pulled for the nudity rather than copyright infringement.) The quality was surprisingly watchable, even full-screened on my laptop.
I would have gladly paid a few bucks to rent it or a few more to buy it as a digital download. Since it wasn’t available, I went the path of least resistance. Was it wrong? I suppose it was. But it’s also bad business to fail to provide your customers what they want.
Tags: movies, technology
July 27th, 2010
“It’s theft.”
I know some might think this is nitpicky – and in a way, it is. But by the same means, given your background I expect you to get it exactly right. It’s not theft. Theft is taking something that belongs to someone else. It is fundamentally wrong, because you are depriving them of something that is theirs. Illegally downloading is not theft because you are depriving no one of anything. It is copyright infringement or “piracy” (which is such a silly term for this). Just so I’m not misunderstood, I’m not advocating it – it is still wrong. But it is a different kind of wrong than stealing/theft. I would argue that it’s a lesser wrong – that theft is something fundamentally and universally wrong, and a crime against a person while copyright infringement merely against the law. I’ll save the rant about how messed up our IP laws are for another time – except to make the point that IP is an imaginary construct. There is no intrinsic or absolute value. We’ve chosen a framework of allowing a “limited term” monopoly on copying of ideas in order to help reward and encourage their creation. OK rant over. But suffice to say, as a content creator and someone who works directly in a technology field, I expect you to make make the distinction between theft and copyright infringement.
Onto your last point – I don’t know. I’m pretty much in the same boat. In general, I pay for content. Our system sucks that the creators tend to get too small of a percentage for their work and people and companies that add very little if any value to the mix get rewarded too well. That said, paying is still the way to show appreciate for the work done by actors, directors, producers, camera operators, makeup artists, and on and on. I wish more of them will eliminate the middle men – especially bands & musicians who should all sign their own deals with iTunes, Amazon, etc in place of Sony, Warner, EMI etc. If something isn’t easily available for purchase, I don’t feel much guilt over “finding” a copy elsewhere. And I rip all of my purchases media for use on other devices how I see fit with out the slightest hesitation. Not the least – because I have kids and though I believe in purchasing my content, once I have, it’s mine and no way I’m paying for it a second time. Obviously the cost of a movie or CD is not for the physical disc itself – it’s for the right to play the content. Which means just because the disc itself is scratched or broken doesn’t mean I lose my right to the content.
July 27th, 2010
You are quite correct–piracy, not theft.
And I rip all of my purchases media for use on other devices how I see fit with out the slightest hesitation.
It’s now legal to break DRM as long as it’s not to violate copyright.
just because the disc itself is scratched or broken doesn’t mean I lose my right to the content.
I couldn’t agree more.
July 28th, 2010
But it’s also bad business to fail to provide your customers what they want.
It may be inconvenient for you, but “bad” is defined by the business. Sometimes the infrastructure and resource investment to sell something in a specific manner and/or to a specific market segment is not worth it. They’d lose money.
With older films there could be all sorts of licensing problems and whatnot that prevent an equitable revenue model from emerging. But this is also a gray area. If you bought a used copy of the movie at a garage sale the studio sees none of that money. So what’s the difference if you watch it on YouTube? But I do know this: if there were millions of people clamoring to see this film each year they’d quickly find a way to make money off of that. In the meantime I don’t have any moral discomfort with a handful of people watching it on YouTube.
July 28th, 2010
Well, good!
You should watch the movie, by the way. It’s a gem. Scary, funny, campy, sexy. Cheeseball horror doesn’t get any better than this.