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To the filmmakers, who HATE piracy...

TheOpusFuller said:
1. The middle man is dying off. So why bother with distribution!? If making money is your argument then it doesn't matter considering your movie is on torrents and you're not making any money through distribution as it is. So that leaves me asking again, why are you even using a middle man.

2. Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Is this your personal pot of money? doubtful.
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1. Because there is still more money to be made from the traditional route than self distribution.

2. I am personally responsible to ever single investor for their money. I promised I would do everything possible to return on their investment. If you don't treat that as your personal pot of money, then I don't see a lot of people with cash to put in a movie clamoring to invest with that frame of mind.
 
Agreed that in many cases, people are seeing the film that wouldn't have gone otherwise.

BUT. No doubt that piracy is bleeding profit from the studio system in a huge way. This means producers are less and less inclined to take risks, more inclined to repeat what has worked in the past.

This equals recycled concepts, gigantic budgets put into things that can cross-promote across media platforms. Equals less creativity.

I'm in on Ntpiracy.
 
I think if one starts looking at this as a percentage problem rather than a real monies problem, it becomes more mentally manageable and one can begin to see the effect on the larger companies as being as bad or worse than it is even for the smaller indies... although we don't have the cash basin to swim in while we bleed profits, it'd be dumb for them to not try to patch holes in a boat with holes in it while your entire livelihood and everyone around you depends on the boat continuing to float.
 
PRODUCERS SUING 5,000 TORRENT USERS

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45307

PRODUCERS SUING 5,000 TORRENT USERS

Even ["Hurt Locker" production entity] Voltage doesn't know the names of the defendants, who have been identified only by their IP addresses. It plans to subpoena ISPs this week to get the users' names.

Once it's identified these people, they'll be sent letters inviting them to cough up $1,500 to settle - and warning them that it'll be ten times as much if they don't pay up and the case goes all the way to court.
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I hope more and more Hollywood studios do this. If they can do similar to how NAPSTER nailed a few users who violated copyright, then we can see some tangible plugging of the holes that piracy causes.

Piracy is theft. Just because it seems like it's okay does not make it so and it can be stopped. Once the IP tracing goes into effect, then maybe it will start to curbing of the illegal distribution.
 
Piracy can not be stopped. Get rid of one type of P2P software 4 more pop up. Even if they win all 5000 cases this will be none thing more than a speed bump in the road of the tech age.

Sonnyboo I have to ask, since I'm guessing you're in your late 30s early 40s, have you ever used a video tape to record a show or a movie on tv or even a dvr? Because those are types of piracy.
 
ignorance

TheBuck said:
Sonnyboo I have to ask, since I'm guessing you're in your late 30s early 40s, have you ever used a video tape to record a show or a movie on tv or even a dvr? Because those are types of piracy.
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VCR and DVR recordings of copyrighted materials are covered by fair use laws. The only time that using a VCR to record a show or movie is illegal is when you sell it or give it to someone else. It was "priacy" when you connected two VCR's together and tried to dub a copy. Then they invented MACROVISION protection and there was the whole "light-dark-light-dark" of the video image, which is still used in encoding the DVD's to prevent VHS copies from those, even though no one is making VCR's anymore.

Plus, if a movie is being broadcast on TV or cable or satellite, the copyright holders got PAID for it. Not even close to the same thing as Internet Piracy. Usually, by the time a film was broadcast on TV or cable, it had long since had it's release in theaters, then home video, and had generated multiple revenue streams. The copyright holders had made a profit before putting it into the venue of television where it could be more freely copied and recorded.

With Internet Piracy, as was the case last year with X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE, the copy was online almost 2 months before the theatrical release. It was given away freely before any revenue was even possible to be made.

The act of Internet Piracy is destroying the business model, and ironically, the potential careers of many of the people on this forum. There are less ways to make money with film today because of the amount of money being lost. The independent filmmaker is taking the brunt of the losses, while the studio and corporate side can take a hit from their huge sums of money, that means they are buying less product and creating less opportunities.

I guess with age comes the wisdom of knowing right from wrong and not stupidly wanting to partake in the loss of money for the industry I work in for a living.

Yes, I used to download music and movies... until my own movie was on the torrent sites. The loss of tens of thousands of dollars to my investors changed my opinion on this. I will never download illegally. Sure, it was great to see movies and get music for free. But you're taking away money from the people you are stealing from. It is theft. You are getting a product without paying for it. If you download movies and music, you are contributing to the loss of money for the artists. As filmmakers, this is reprehensible and it's disintegrating our own future.
 
Let me preface this post by saying piracy is wrong, as well as illegal. That being said, piracy is not theft. Piracy is not stealing. Anyone who argues otherwise is undermining the overall argument. If I steal something, I am physically depriving someone else of having what was stolen. Piracy is copyright infringement. Copyright infringement, according to wikipedia, is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works covered by copyright law, in a way that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.

Anyone calling piracy theft is giving ammo to those on the other side of the argument. If you lie about piracy being theft, why should they consider anything else you say to be true?
 
SinEater said:
Anyone calling piracy theft is giving ammo to those on the other side of the argument. If you lie about piracy being theft, why should they consider anything else you say to be true?
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No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act) - Just because there is no physical DVD does not negate the theft. Theft is in the name of the law. Since the United States law considers it "electronic theft", I do too. How is that a lie? I agree 100% that it is theft and that's hardly a perception issue - you are stealing something you did not pay for, albeit electronically, but it is still theft with no gray area.

Also from Wikipedia: With the passage of the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), US copyright law was changed to allow for the civil and criminal prosecution of persons allegedly engaged in copying of copyrighted works without permission that did not result in personal financial gain; historically, the criminal copyright law required infringement to be for financial gain. Among other things, the NET Act altered the definition of financial gain to include bartering and trading. In addition, under this US law, members of software piracy groups could also be prosecuted for participation in a criminal enterprise.
 
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File Sharing or Piracy is very black and white. There's no gray area for either side. Here are what the two sides think.

1 - Anti-Piracy People/Groups
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Piracy is ruining the music and film industry. We pay a lot of money to finish these things and when people give it away for free it takes away potential customers. People don't feel that they're stealing anything because it's not material but they are. People need to realize that what they're doing is wrong.

2 - Pirates / File Sharers
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There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. It's as if one of my friend let me borrow the movie / CD and let me use it for as long as I want. If it's terrible it's not like I'm going to buy it anyways.
 
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