back to article SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

In response to internet technology companies leading a rousing protest against SOPA and PIPA, these bills appear to be doomed to ignominious defeat. Even the co-sponsors of these anti-piracy bills are deserting their legislation, leaving the tech world to cheer its success. But what kind of success did we achieve? As written …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. stolennomenclature
    Unhappy

    the real solution..

    Make a good product, at an affordable price, that's easy to get hold of and does not have lots of inconvenient copy protection (in other words easy to use), and most people will willingly pay for it. There will always be thieves, people who for one reason or another would rather steal something than pay for it, but this does not matter with digital content, since they don't deprive anyone of anything - they simply make a copy. For example manufacturers of VCR's and other consumer products have always lost sales to thieves who steal VCR's from homes rather than go into a shop and buy one. Its simply a fact of life. What the movie and music industries need to do is to stop persuading ordinary people to become thieves by making there products so hard to get hold of, so expensive, and of such poor quality. I think this approach will fare much better than producing crap products at outrageously high prices, and then introduce measures to try and force people to buy them.

  2. stolennomenclature
    Unhappy

    the real solution is...

    Make a good product, at an affordable price, that's easy to get hold of and does not have lots of inconvenient copy protection (in other words easy to use), and most people will willingly pay for it. There will always be thieves, people who for one reason or another would rather steal something than pay for it, but this does not matter with digital content, since they don't deprive anyone of anything - they simply make a copy. For example manufacturers of VCR's and other consumer products have always lost sales to thieves who steal VCR's from homes rather than go into a shop and buy one. Its simply a fact of life. What the movie and music industries need to do is to stop persuading ordinary people to become thieves by making there products so hard to get hold of, so expensive, and of such poor quality. I think this approach will fare much better than producing crap products at outrageously high prices, and then introduce measures to try and force people to buy them.

  3. PT

    Welcome, new commentard

    Am I the only one who finds it ironic to see Andrew Orlowski participating in a comment thread? Naturally it's not attached to one of his own articles. That would be difficult.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There will be new legislation

    While they will never stop piracy, they will increase the punishment for piracy so that the pirates really squeal.

  5. Geoffrey Swenson

    The content producers thought they could shove a draconian bill thru Congress so quickly that it would be a done deal before anyone could react. They were completely deaf to any objections from major players in the IT industry.

    This is only way I can see out of this. What we need is a system of micropayments that is easy and has low overhead, and services built around them so that people can find the content that they want.

    A significant amount of the stuff pirated isn't available by legal means over the Internet. The content providers need to fix this. Rather than fighting BitTorrent, they should work with them to provide content that users pay small fees to access either per play or per download. I would be willing to pay a few dollars for a movie download that I know is virus free, not compressed to death, and is legal. I'm doing that now with my satellite dish, and I like it.

    They content providers make up in huge volume the money the larger fees they used to make for each transaction. This works because the delivery cost of the content is approaching zero. They also get paid for good catalogs and services to FIND the content.

    There can be social groups around this content, where you can go and get the latest song from your favorite groups. Or associate with your favorite DJ that picks out new songs for you.

    The model of having smattering of a few groups get big success and other equally talented groups getting ignored may not be possible under this scenario. It is no longer necessary either, because the cost per copy is the same for a hugely popular group is the same as someone that sells a few thousand songs.

    It may be more democratic and less-controlled from the top than what they are used to. But they can make money if they will open their minds to new possibilities.

    Copying is going to be so cheap and easy that it won't work to force users to not do this. They are going to want to share content with their friends, and have backup copies. I don't see how any technology can prevent users from doing this copying, there is always some way to work around it. The way to make this work is to make doing it the legal way easy, rewarding, and fun as part of a social activity, and relatively inexpensive. Since the overheads are low, plenty of profit can be made.

    1. david wilson

      >>"The content producers thought they could shove a draconian bill thru Congress so quickly that it would be a done deal before anyone could react. "

      Maybe they were trying to slam something half-arsed and unneccessarily restrictive into the 'debate' so they can later pretend to have 'listened', and 'changed' things they weren't too bothered about in the first place.

      It wouldn't be the first time for something like that, nor the last.

  6. cordwainer 1

    Why is everyone here convinced IP only means electronic and entertainment?

    Part of the problem with this discussion is IP means "Intellectual Property" - defined somewhat colloquially as novel inventions deriving from an inventor's (or inventors') intellect.

    Is everyone forgetting all the different kinds of "Intellectual Property"? That the entertainment industry isn't the only one challenged by the changes in commerce brought about by the Internet?

    EVERY industry has Intellectual Property to protect: Trademarks, Designs, Chemical compositions, Methods, Patents, Copyrights, etc. Other industries are finding ways to deal with changes in distribution networks. Other industries grow and evolve with the times.

    Giving everything away for free is not the answer. Taking it without permission is no better. The inventors and creators of IP still have to eat, pay the bills, live day to day like anyone else.

    Companies can't afford to bring a product to market without the expectation of exclusivity for a certain amount of time. Otherwise, for example, all the wonderful pharmaceuticals and treatments developed during the Biotech Boom wouldn't exist. A lot of people who survive now, as a result, would be dead.

    Without IP protection, there would be no such thing as affordable "generics" - i.e., drugs on which the patent has expired, putting them in the public domain, so any company can make their own version. Because no company can afford to spend 15 years developing a drug they can't sell enough of to recoup the R&D costs.

    Those who argue piracy is not theft are deluded - of course it is. It always has been. Taking anything that doesn't belong to you is theft - trying to make it sound "romantic" or Robin-Hood-ish doesn't change facts.

    That the company selling it may be engaged in "creative" and dishonest bookkeeping (quite true: see Art Buchwald et al. among other cases against the movie industry) still doesn't entitle you to steal from them. Burglarize the home of another thief, and you're still going to jail, even if your victim does too.

    But trying to hang on to an inflated profit margin also doesn't entitle companies to overstate outrageously the amount they claim is lost to piracy each year - as they provably do.

    We'll never have any relevant discussion of Intellectual Property unless it involves ALL Intellectual Property...AND why exclusivity is absolutely necessary for innovation in the first place...AND why extending exclusive ownership of IP longer and longer makes a mockery of both the inventor and the law.

    We'll never have a relevant discussion, unless we stop acting as if what's best for the U.S. movie industry, music industry, drug, electronics, health, sports, food, beverage, clothing, agriculture, manufacturing industries, etc., is also best for the whole world, or the best way for the US to be a participant in an increasingly closer-knit global economy.

    And we'll never have a useful discussion if the customers AND the companies claim they should be allowed to steal from each other, from the inventors, or from anyone else.

    If IP weren't protected, in this and almost every other country, most inventions we enjoy would never have made it to market. The point of IP protection is the inventor deserves to benefit, has a RIGHT to benefit, from his or her own property. Without the inventor, it would not have existed. Therefore, it belongs to the creator exclusively.

    The law also states, very plainly, usurping the inventor's rights (or those of the entity to whom the inventor assigned them) to reproduce, copy, distribute, etc. - i.e., acting as if the inventor's property is your own - is theft.

    However, the law also recognizes the public, and humanity in general, have certain rights as well. Intellectual property is defined partly as that which benefits society, and therefore the government sets a limit on exclusive rights, to prevent generally useful inventions from being locked up forever, used only for the benefit of a few, affordable only to the wealthy, etc.

    Patents and copyrights must expire after a set time for the benefit of humankind, health, education, the economy, and so on. "You can't take it with you," is as true for inventors and creators as anyone else. As a result, neither you, nor your family, nor the company holding the copyright or patent is allowed to hang onto it indefinitely, or indefinitely entitled to the profits of someone else's work and imagination.

    Consequently, those who argue piracy is somehow "right" and not stealing, simply because they want it for free "now!"

    AND

    Those who argue the free exchange of information in general should be curtailed or censored to protect a limited subset of it, and thus their profits...

    Are Both Wrong.

    BOTH sides need to stop limiting the scope of IP, AND stop attempting to justify dishonesty, theft, and greed.

    Then the discussion might finally become an intelligent one. Continued lies will get us nowhere, nor will the still-illogical concept somehow two wrongs make a right.

    1. TheOtherHobbbes

      The 'theft' framing is wrong

      because clearly copying is not the same as taking non-copyable items.

      The problem is the unitised model of content distribution, and the fact the corporates think only in terms of units sold or licensed, units compete with each others' financial performance, and creators of units are rewarded (or not) depending on their units' revenue and profit.

      Traditional copyright grants the right to produce unit copies. But content generation of all kinds is a much more complex which includes elements of initial investment, creative and/or technical project management, distribution management, and monetisation.

      What's needed are new models of content development that aren't based on the idea that artists are primarily paid to sell unitised and itemised products.

      This will make most people's heads explodes, but it would be possible to invest in an artist's career in an open-ended way for a fixed period - from a few months to a few decades, with an option to extend if good work appears.

      The creative output itself would be public and free.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Denial hasn't change reality yet

    And I don't expect it ever will.

  8. Haku

    The Fifth Element

    In the film The Fifth Element, Chris Tucker wears some very flamboyant outfits, in order to get him to wear those outfits, Jean-Paul Gaultier first showed him some that were even more flamboyant to which his response was along the line of "hell no", then when the less flamboyant outfits (the ones used in the film) were shown he agreed to wear them.

    My worry is that with the SOPA crushed, the lobbyists will come up with something that's not as bad as the SOPA (on the surface) but will still have a far reaching negative impact to the online world, and because it isn't as bad as the SOPA it will pass.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Are there only two sides to this discussion?

    Although I work in the tech industry I certainly don't self-identify with any of the big tech players. I absolutely do not want Google, Wikipedia, Microsoft, IBM or HP "representing" *me* in this debate. Their aims and goals (and hence lobbying efforts) do not align with my own.

    Google is perhaps the most obvious example of "big tech" being opposed to "little tech". Google directly benifits from piracy, both through YouTube and "search". So it is no surprise that Google chose to spend their lobbying money, not on stopping SOPA, but on getting themselves excluded ("foreign websites only") whilst still hving it apply to their (overseas) compeitiors.

    How can "techies" have a discussion with others when they are not even a homogeneous group?

  10. heyrick Silver badge

    My €0,02's worth

    Firstly, I think it'll be a hard sell promoting the freetard angle. But, then, who are the freetards exactly? The gist of this article is that without IP protection, there will be no incentive to create, however it fails to address the problem that WITH IP protection there is no incentive to create - just dig into deep pockets, lobby, and push for extensions to existing copyright so you can live off past glories. What is copyright now? Longer than my lifespan? Is this really justifiable?

    Secondly more and more IP holders have been pushing for less and less realistic things. Downloaded stuff (as opposed to purchased objects) are treated very differently. They are licenced. You can't sell them when you no longer need them. In some places (and I mean in developed nations) you can be found "guilty" of infringement based upon something as ephemeral as an IP address, and lobbying is ongoing to get the right of meting out a disconnection without judicial involvement and in some legislation, with little recourse to justice save dragging the matter in front of the ECHR, but Joe Average can't afford that. Now crowdsource links are to need to be vetted?

    One could say both sides are speaking from a position of greed and myopia. As long as that persists, shouting is all we're going to see...

  11. SleepyJohn
    FAIL

    See Canute and Clausewitz

    Neither the original concept of copyright nor its current bastard offspring is even remotely suitable for protecting or encouraging artistic works now that they can be digitally copied perfectly then distributed at effectively no cost, and no amount of corporate bullying and extortion will change that. The fact that the Media Industry is so mentally addled from its years of riding a gravy train with rampant greed and dishonesty that it is too stupid and lazy to see this should not be our concern. Unfortunately, because of their appalling behaviour towards we ordinary mortals they have made it so.

    No-one should be surprised then that, until a new model is developed that actually works, most of the human race will simply treat the school bully with contempt when he comes demanding their dinner money, and will proceed through life as if he didn't exist. And there it is really, as I see it. Other than to note that the most commercially successful businesses on the internet seem to be quite capable of making money without charging we peasants for anything. In stark contrast the Media Bosses, exhibiting the mentality of petty street corner drug peddlars, are so consumed with hatred for anyone who doesn't pay them that they are quite incapable of coherent thought.

    We should pity them really. They must be feeling like turkeys when the farmer rips November off the calendar. They certainly display the same intellectual prowess, apparent incapable of grasping that only extinction awaits those incapable of evolving to suit a changing environment. But frankly, I think most of us are sick of their nasty, bully-boy antics and look forward to them meeting Christmas.

  12. Davidoff
    WTF?

    World needs IP incentive to keep producing

    Does it really? I'm sure if you look back at the last two millenia of human history you'll find that humanity was very creative in many areas without IP.

    1. Charles 9

      There were conditions.

      One of them was a lack of reliable dissemination. Not just information but ANYTHING was difficult to get from one place to another until within the last 200 years or so. Intellectual property wasn't needed back then because everything was still "Just Property. There were natural restrictions in place that gave art intrinsic value. IOW, taking a book around the country involved time and manpower, so there was real work involved. Even troubadours singing the latest news and knights delivering the latest proclamations meant you were hoofing it.

      And most works of what we call art were actually COMMISSIONS: they were hired for the jobs. Either they were aristocrats looking for some "bling" to improve their social standing, or it was commissioned by the Church or State to try and attract people (the Sistine Chapel ceiling, that was a commission, and the Church paid the STEEP bill to try and get more people to come in--a lot of Baroque art had the same reasoning).

      And copying? Assuming you could do it at all (many of these works were private or part of building projects). Copying a book on the cheap would take a scribe days or weeks. An elaborate religious book with gold leaf and colored illustrations? Probably a year.

      So what changed? Let's say you could do a magic trick with a book. Cover it with a cloth, say "Hocus Pocus!", pull the cloth, and now there are three books (just an example--could be a lot more than that) where before there was just one. THAT's the kind of dilution of value art faces today, and the kind of thing that can make a starving artist worry. Because art is his life, the only thing he knows. If it can't put bread on the table...

  13. Rocketman
    Mushroom

    Put the sob's in jail

    I don't believe in stealing, it can't work to have all this stuff being stolen. Not like we are talking about essential things btw. I would like to see individuals and groups hunted down and put in jail for stealing digital products they don't own. Don't think there is anything wrong with that if done well.

    All these complex remarks. That's fine, everyone has a point to make that bears consideration. We need an international task force, that's my point. Good minds, good technology, it can be done.

    1. hplasm
      FAIL

      The SOBs being-

      THe MPIAA? Other organised crimelords^H^H^H^H content providers/lawyers? Or 'freetards' who don't own a computer but get sued for millions?

      International task force- don't make me laugh. It's already an international farce.

  14. TheOtherHobbbes

    Actually

    if you want a civilised debate about anything political, you start by keeping everyone with a net worth higher than $x million out of office.

    You also make it illegal to profit from lobbying, to sell your time for cash, or to treat law-making as anything other than a valuable but rather dull job with limited opportunities for personal profit.

    None of this is going to happen because our fucked political systems are inherently plutocratic with a thin plastic veneer of pretendy democracy. All kinds of horrors fall out from this.

    But still. It's nice to dream.

    As for IP - the issue isn't simple. Talent needs social sponsorship when it's starting out, and it needs continued social sponsorship when it continues to innovate and be creative. In the arts, getting a good mix between edgy innovation and genius and ho-hum but immensely popular entertainment is always a challenge.

    The system as it stands currently fails at every level except the ho-hum. Good musicians today give away their stuff on SoundCloud etc, where it rapidly disappears into the noise, where twenty years ago they would have been signed and had a career of sorts.

    Now they do music part time. Which is everyone's loss.

    The issue isn't really copyright, it's about nurturing and rewarding real talent. Copyright is one - old-fashioned - way to do that.

    But given the ease with which it's easy to copy digital media, a complete rethink is needed. Breaking up the media monopolies into hundreds of much smaller niche companies would be a good start.

    Meanwhile freetards need to consider the possibility that piracy really does kill innovation. As a software developer, I know there's no point working on certain projects because they *will* be pirated because of their use-value, and I will *not* get a fair return.

    So I don't bother.

    If there's a win for anyone here, I'm not sure where it is.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "world needs IP incentive to keep producing"

    Utter, utter bollocks.

    If you only produce something because you're expecting an easy pay check then it's not worth producing.

    If we made IP laws more sensible, we'd see more art and less pop-culture tat.

    The medical industry might have a problem, but it needs a good kick up the arse anyway.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      The Hollywood sets box office records every year. Invariably, the most "pirated" movies are the ones that beat those records. Clearly, "piracy" is not a problem for them.

      They don't need an "IP incentive", they already have a lucrative monopoly, now all they want is to guarantee that nobody will ever be able to invent or do anything that may threaten that monopoly in the future. SOPA and PIPA would give them that guarantee.

  16. Juillen 1

    Dangerous slide.

    All this talk of 'theft' of intellectual property.. Read:

    http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/

    This details a case (now resolved, and not in a good way), whereby rights are taken back from the Public Domain and placed back in copyright once they had already, by contract (the original law) been given to the public.

    US supreme court has essentially said it can take anything back from the public domain anytime it chooses. There is now no truly effective public domain that can be relied on. And if you say it can't happen, this story tells you the effects of it already having happened. With Disney et. al. chasing more extensions, it'll be easy enough for this to happen again.

    Now, depriving someone of something is pretty much the definition of theft. In this case though, it's media corporations that are leaning on the government (using bribery/lobbying) representatives to create laws to get the media corporations what they want. They're using the law as a tool to steal from everyone.

    Couple this in with the current state that the US keeps threatening to embargo people that don't harmonise their copyright/patent laws with the US standards, and it sets the scene for a globalisation of this practice.

  17. Chris007
    Mushroom

    Given how hollywood came into existence

    by stealing copyright from Edison et al they're the last people to be lecturing on copyright.

  18. mattblack

    The argument that strong IP is necessary is much weaker than it sounds...

    Arguments about IP should be based on pragmatic not ideological grounds. For example, if holders overcharge for IP there will be more piracy; if holders don't release content in convenient forms there will be more piracy (try finding the DVD of the move Zero Effect in the UK, never mind the online version or compare the size of Lovefilm's DVD library to their streaming library).

    The fastest way for content providers to limit piracy is to compete with it in convenience and not to rip consumers off on the price.

    Besides, there is a distinction between profits and excessive profits from exploiting a monopoly and most capitalist governments normally restrict the second. Except, it seems, for IP and copyright where content providers have grown fat and lazy on excessive monopoly margins. In reality IP protection is a bargain with government to allow a monopoly in exchange for something else (for patents, its public disclosure of innovations). But the argument that content would dry up without strong protection sounds good but is less obvious in the light of history than you would expect. For a proper discussion see the debate here: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6647/do-patents-boost-innovation

  19. JC 2
    Mushroom

    BS

    We do not need IP to keep producing. IP just gives people an illusion that their work is worth more than they were paid for it at the time and so they try to spend energy working less on production and more on attacking others.

    Only retarded people think their thoughts are SO special that they, unlike generations before them, should be entitled to pittance from those who come after. What will happen to industries if IP were abolished? They'd actually have to continue innovating to make a profit, and do so in collaboration instead of back-stabbing, what a terrible thing that is!

    1. david wilson

      @BS

      >>"We do not need IP to keep producing. IP just gives people an illusion that their work is worth more than they were paid for it at the time"

      So, if I record music I've written, and sell my first CD of it for £5, that £5 is the total of what I should get paid for it, and to think otherwise is 'an illusion'?

      If I design and make an electronic product, once I've sold one, there should be /no/ way to stop some big company making blatant copies and undercutting me, however much it cost me to get the first one made?

      Or should I be forced to work only for hire, for companies big enough to undercut everyone else?

      Or does your 'at the time' cover some undefined period of time which would depend on whether and when you might want to copy something?

  20. Sirius Lee
    Unhappy

    Hopelessly naive

    My working assumption is that politicians (of any stripe) are not dumb. However they have to get their heads around lots of issues at any one time, some in their legislature, some in their constituency. So their bandwidth is limited. Not surprisingly, then, that they respond most readily to simple, easily comprehended messages they can regurgitate at will.

    If that message comes from organs that are used to packaging a message succinctly, ones the politicians have grown up believing are societies whistle-blowers, who they have cultivated as channels to the voting public then its not surprising the owners of those organs are listened to (just see what's been going on in the UK over the last couple of years). Especially if their message includes "save jobs" or "evil foreigners".

    By contrast the tech world is only indirectly connected to the political classes. So what choice does the tech world have when the legislation is for the media groups that are so close to the politicians?

    By rights the media world should recuse itself and take no part in a debate in which it has such a direct interest (we'd expect that of any public official that is conflicted). Bu that's never going to happen. In my view, this is the root cause of the tension in this debate.

    The tech world does not have the cozy relationship with politicians that media organ do. However many of the tech world's stars have very close relations with voters. While politicians are only listening to one beguiling voice any conciliation is meaningless and the only mechanism is to shout loudly enough that voter hear a different story.

    The world over, media services and their business models are under threat. Again, look at the problems manifest in the UK media industry and lengths to which papers have gone to publish anything as circulation volumes and revenues decline. Its not a surprise media outfits are responding to protect their own but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to protect their own and everyone else's expense.

    In democratic society it is the voter which has the last say. For the last few hundred years the media groups have been the ones purveying the message to voters and which have acted as an informed critic. But in this case they cannot act critically. They cannot be objective. Nor is the tech world objective on the issue and it is not designed to be critical.

    In such a circumstance there is no scope for rationality and, ultimately, the voter decides who they tell their elected representatives to believe - probably by listening to the loudest voice.

  21. Carl
    FAIL

    FWIW

    First, the idea that you can "Stop Online Piracy" is in the first place flawed. If some kid in SriLanka wants to make copies of a DVD his mate bought while on holiday in Italy he's going to do it. The act of "piracy" has already happened.

    So the problem becomes "Stopping the Dissemination of Pirated Material". But again, if some kid in Prague wants to serve stuff via his DYNDNS'd bedroom system then he's going to do that too.

    So the problem now becomes "Stopping the Consumption of Pirated Material". But, AGAIN, if some kid in Vietnam decides he wants to watch a movie then he's going to do that too.

    Note. None of these kids and their mates and their parents and their mates live in the USA, so as far they are concerned Uncle Sam can frankly swivel.

    So the problem now becomes "Stopping the Consumption of Pirated Material in territories controlled by the USA". ie. the USA. Well OK, the USA and those who are in thrall to it. ie the usual suspects: AU, NZ, UK, CA.

    But why do people in the areas download? Its because they are not motivated to watch movie X at price Y, whether because they dont have the $ or if they dont care enough for the movie producer/actor/genre to part with $.

    And this is normal in any market. You can sell on price, quality or features. But not everyone in the market looks at these factors the same way.

    Would I pay 20$ to go see "Pirate of the Caribbean 4"? No, because I dont like Capt.Sparrow.

    Would I pay 5$ to rent it 6 months later? I guess, if there was no footy on the telly.

    Would I sit and watch it for a buck this time next year? Sure. If it was raining out.

    DId I pay 20$ to go see the District9? Yes, because I like Peter Jackson and Sci Fi.

    I even bought the DVD too (once it was on sale, 7$)

    The studios still havent figured out that all they need to do is offer movies for download in limited numbers at a price point that changes over time. Whats so hard about that? Until they wrap their heads around people's motivations for consuming content they will have people ("pirates") plugging the gap.

    One thing I know for sure - co-opting the state to defend their cartels on the taxpayers' dime is not the way to go. Not when they are making record profits. It stinks.

    1. L.B

      I agree with everything you wrote, but would also add.

      Many of the official online sources for media content provide a service that is vastly inferior to the quality of downloaded content.

      Take the BBC; if I miss a program (not likely as there are only about 4 shows a year I like) when it was broadcast there are a number of options to catch up:

      1. iPlayer a great offering - for some.

      2. Wait 6 months and buy a very expensive box set.

      3. Wait 2,3,4,... months and try to remember to carry on watching the series when its repeated.

      ...others?

      42. Find a download site and wait a while.

      There are some real problems with some of the above offerings:

      1. If you live outside a major city your ADSL connection may to slow to provide a decent viewing experience. This is made worse by contention if you happen to want to watch any time from 18:00 to 22:00, the only time most people who work for a living can access it.

      There is also the fact that the reason you missed a program was due to being away for a few weeks or just not having the time right now, which means that the show has been taken off iPlayer or timed out before you can see it.

      2, or 3 or whatever: If you are 3 episodes into a season waiting months to have another go or just try to figure out what you missed, when there are other options is not ideal. Let alone the idea of paying a significant amount of money (typically £30-50) for something you may only ever watch once of twice.

      Option 42: The download - and the quality option.

      - With ADSL is does not matter how long it takes to download something, and once its done you have all the time you want to catch up when it suit you, where ever you are, and on the device you choose.

      - Also the quality will typically be much better that any streamed service, as the stream must have the bit rate limited to your typical download rate. Whereas the download can take hours to download without affective you eventual view experience.

      - There is also the option for those with busy lives to collect a whole set ready for when they have the time, be that next month or a few hours on Sunday afternoon.

      In the UK we are forced to pay the TV TAX (£145p/a) to have a TV, and many think they are getting very poor value as it is. Lots more still pay £20+pm extra for Sky/Cable on top of the TV license to actually have some TV they actually want to watch.

      Considering how much some of us are already paying, is really too much to ask for a legal way to download high quality content without all the time and quality restrictions, even if you have a poor quality internet connection.

      The majority would probably not save vast amounts of shows locally simply because they would run out of disk space on the laptop/PC/media-box. Plus while they are subscribing they could just download it again to watch next year if they wanted it.

      Such a system would also be a good marketing tool, as the likes of Sky would know 100% what people want to watch and what they don't care much about as they would just have to count the downloads. They could even look at paying the studios directly according to downloads of the programs.

      The downside would be a loss of some advertising revenue, but people like me never watch the ads anyway as I nearly always record TV so I can skip them anyway.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    by any means go after pirates however....

    have due process and protect open source, happy this ill planned bit of legislation was cancelled.

    yes go after illegal practises but do not confuse the bad guys with the open source software developer which are very kind in sharing their efforts and studies at no cost to the consumer.

    And at no time this SOPA/PIPA bill had any recognition of community open source and did nothing to protect it, and no mention or provisions for this kind of technologies was made.

    Further more no one recognizes this open source industry for training people in tech development, at most time for no cost to employers as it is a community based technology, and it is a way bigger society then the UK prime minister thought of...

  23. 2cent

    Original Art Resold

    Release of the original product. Distribution = 1.

    Legal websites owned by Media Distribution to redistribute resale of copy 1 = 0.

    Number of copies that could be resold, making millions of transactions at penny's to entire world = 0.

    Media companies legitimizes itself = 0.

    Media companies invested in ReDigi technology = 0 assumed.

  24. JHNW

    IP defence internationally

    with SOPA thrown-out where does that leave US business - if you don't protect at home how can US business expect to protect their IP overseas from unauthorised exploitation and theft: come On USA get real, set an example and find a better solution.

  25. SleepyJohn
    FAIL

    Like an old, tired dog that's gone rabid

    It is ironic, is it not, that every day the pea-brained execs of the Media Industry sit down at their computers to continue astonishing us with their extraordinary ignorance of the digital world, and disgust us with their rabidly vindictive treatment of customers, they see a shining example of how it should be done.

    Google may have its faults but perhaps those charmless Media execs should ask themselves how it manages to provide anyone in the world, instantly and for free, information that could potentiallly be more valuable than the sum total of the whole entertainment industry's annual turnover. And has never, as far as I know, sued old ladies, cats, single mothers or babies for copying it.

    It really is not rocket science. Rather than frantically and futilely trying to stop the world from disseminating its products, it effectively encourages them to do so and then rents out the incredible, world-wide network that all those 'pirates' have freely and enthusiastically built for it. Was that really so difficult to grasp? Sadly, yes apparently, for people with the mentality of street-corner drug-peddling thugs.

    And yes, I know about privacy and being the product etc, but really, whose model would you rather pass to your children? How would they feel about typing a TV show, song or movie name into Google and just have it play? And only have to see adverts that genuinely might interest them; small, unobtrusive ones tucked away at the side? Do you see them whingeing about Google knowing which sites they recently visited? Or what country their computer is in?

    Or would they prefer to risk being extradited to a hideous American prison for 16 years whenever they overhear a car radio at the traffic lights? Frankly, the Media Industry needs to be put down, like an old, tired dog that has gone rabid and keeps attacking the children. And leave the internet to those with the brains to use it properly.

  26. Bench

    SOPA

    In the UK this is largely seen as US money trying to further sap the world. We totally oppose the assumption that the US can automatically extradite anyone they choose, especially when no law has been broken in that person's country.

    Remember kids, home-taping is killing music.

  27. Zero-Hour
    Megaphone

    And Piracy is caused by . . .

    Simple answer . . . Greed.

    On BOTH sides.

    The greedy corporations trying to squeeze every penny out of everyone as many times over as they can, and the consumers wanting things as cheaply as possible.

    Some people will always pirate. Even if you could buy movies online for 10p they would still pirate. This won't change, no matter how hard they try to prevent it. On the other hand these people will probably not purchase anyhing anyway, so no revenue is lost.

    While the greedy corporations insist on phasing releases globally, attempt to enforce with region coding etc there will be pirates.

    The easy way to reduce pirates to the lowest possible level, is to release globally to all markets on the same day, and AT THE SAME PRICE, and make it reasonable.

    Screwing one country on price and release date just breeds piracy. Here in the UK, we regulary have to wait long after the US release date, and pay a much higher price for the same product. What do they expect ?

    I buy my movies, always have since the days of betamax. In fact I have paid for some movies many times over, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray etc. But I resent having to pay 50-100% more than I would if I lived in the U.S.

    I occasionally download music on a try before I buy basis, but always purchase the CD if I like it, in fact last CD I downloaded, I went on to purchase every CD the band had put out, plus I made a point in buying direct from the Band's webside to maximise thier benefit.

    If the Media corporations played fair, made their product available to everyone AT THE SAME TIME, and AT THE SAME price, online and convienient, scrap region coding, piracy would be a shadow of itsself and they would not have to go to such great lengths to attempt to prevent it.

    They are creating a self-perpetuating disaster for themselves caused by greed. They are the only one who will ever fix it. No amount of legislation will stop it.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe people are angry at being shafted by corrupt politicians and a callous media industry.

    Anyone who supports SOPA & PIPA is eitheran ignorant fool, corrupt or so self interested that they couldn't give a stuff about basic freedoms as long as they benefit. When it comes to politicians I suspect most are all three.

    And you wonder why people are shouting?

    TBH it's only ever been the way to get these people to listen.

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.