Oh, but they’re looking at the wrong numbers, of course. What other explanation could there be for phenomena like Return of the Jedi continuing to be unprofitable? Clearly piracy enforcement measures are the solution!
Common, people, think about how much more money they could be making. Just think.
Last year I saw somebody in Walmart being hassled for shoplifting. Can you believe it? That company makes billions of dollars!
Bullshit argument.
COPYING IS NOT THEFT.
Theft means something specific.
If I steal something from you, you no longer have it. If I copy something of yours, you still have it, and now I do too.
Copying isn’t theft.
This isn’t a court of law. Nobody thinks pirating movies involves canons or the boats.
My point is, I shouldn’t have to pay for things if the money is going to rich people though, right?
Quit moving the goalposts.
No, we’re saying that anti-piracy efforts aren’t worthwhile, useful, and despite piracy being more widespread than ever, the industry is still making record profits.
Which means the ANTI-PIRACY demands are all bullshit. They’re backed up by nothing. It’s the industry whining like the shitheels they are.
Piracy dooms motion picture industry to yet another record-breaking box-office year
It’s possible to think piracy is ethically dubious but still recognize that the studios are full of shit when they claim it’s costing them untold billions in profit each year or that the restrictive rules and technologies they are pushing for are a reasonable reaction to the problem.
So don’t engage in anti-piracy efforts. You know you don’t have to, right? Doctorow puts all his copyrighted works out there and gives his audience explicit permission to make copies.
You don’t get it. The studios are in the business of writing then getting rubberstamped increasingly onerous laws that do actually steal our culture and lock it up behind vault doors saying that we can’t access our own heritage.
The MPAA and the RIAA are actually stealing from the public, and depriving it of its own property.
Whether or not you want to engage in it, we’re all affected by them.
These particular rich people lost a large part of the moral high ground when they chose to try to prevent people from any copying, regardless of legality, for the stated reason that “piracy is killing the industry”.
It’s not that they’re rich. It’s that they’re liars who have used their power to enforce their will even on law-abiding people.
From the article:
In his speech yesterday Dodd repeatedly underlined the unique experience offered by a theatrical screening. “Despite the noisy suggestions otherwise, the cinema provides a unique and powerful experience that just cannot be re-created,” he said.
So would it be OK to watch a pirated movie at home if the MPAA came over first to pour some unknown sticky shit on my floor, if they sent people over at random moments to make cell phone calls while we’re watching the movie, and if I sent them $7.00 for every bowl of popcorn we eat???
Fuck that, all the disabled seats are at the front in most of the cinemas I’ve been to. Why should I get punished too?
Yeah, the design ain’t perfect.
But I gotta say the soundproof dome seems like a good idea.
That, or trapdoor seats that drop noisy moviegoers into some kind of… Pit.
We’d just change how the ramps lead into the theatres, in most Manhattan movie spaces they lead in around the 6th row or so. In my NJ town they’re actually in the back where the aisle leads in.
So you’re cool, we’ll make it work.
Sounds like living with my daughter.
