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- Topics: Active | Unanswered
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
SOPA means if this site was some anti-government forum all you have to do is create a random user, post a link to copyrighted material and they can shut the entire site down.
Out of interest - is it possible for that to already happen by a random user being created and uploading illegal material of other kinds? Maybe child porn or bomb plans or something that? I'm not sure what powers already exist...but I'd be surprised if the powers that be were toothless in such a regard.
As for the issue in general i see a couple of distinct sides of it.
1. The internet is the first time in history a mass communications device has been publicly available to everyone. Television and Radio were tightly controlled by the governments. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point there is a move to regain some control - as it's really untested what will happen to allow free communication between so many people at once. That sounds like a paranoid conspiracy right? Keep in mind that 0.1% of the population of the world control 22% of the wealth of it. Some mechanisms needs to keep that in place unless we all want to start sharing fairly. And that's not likely. So yeah..we do need to keep an eye out for attempts to shut it down.
2. The "The Industry is to Blame for being jerks/not adapting" argument I think is just a justification to legitimise the cold fact that we ALL wanted shit for free. Who are "the industry" anyway? People talk about it like all of the creative industries are an actual person. I mean most of the commercial music business was controlled by 5 labels (then 4, now 3!). So you're talking about like 4 people who are CEOs of companies that have always been in deathly competition with each other anyway, whose entire business model was always high risk (the 99% of shit they do that wasn't successful was always paid for by the 1% that blows up and goes gangbusters). Think about the qualification you'd need to make thoise decisions. Ability with money. Hopefully some creative skill at choosing...why would these have been people who understood fast what computers were going to change. Movies are even worse. Some of the studios basically bet the farm on every summer release. Given it can cost tens if not hundreds of millions to make a movie..they have enough issues.
The reason they don't adapt is NO ONE has any fucking solution to the problem. Music has adapted and run 360 deals and so on to try and find a way to keep some income, they've cut prices, they've created more bonus packs and so on...but the bottom line is you can't compete with FREE.
Sure the labels have been assholes at times, double dipping, high prices or whatever...but it doesn't mater how good they are to me...it's not going to be better than free. Same reason I don't pay for hugs. You can be the nicest chick in the world...but I don't need to pay for something I can get free now.
So i dunno, all i read about is how the mythical figure of "The Industry" was a jerk and had it coming. When actually it's a handful of companies, and all the people who ran them over the years, who had no reason to expect their entire business model to pretty much become invalid over night, and moreover we can go on as much as we want with our vigilante justice that we're punishing the corporates for being bad - but I know in my heart it's got nothing to do with it - it comes down to I live in a capitalist country and so my pay check only goes so far - so every dollar I save not buying music is a dollar I get to spend on something else I want or need. And I dunno about you - but I often don't have enough dollars for all that stuff. It's about getting shit for free not about anything else. I know that's true in my heart and I think if most people look a little deeper they'd find the grandstanding about corporate ethics isn't consistent with the rest of what they tolerate in society or even pay attention to, it's all an excuse.
- mickronson
- Rep: 118
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
Always destroys any piracy argument for me
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
I've been banging this drum for years and I'll post it again:
1.Shit music, Itunes, Recordable CD-R Killed the music business WAY more than Illegal Downloaders
Go look at the numbers.. the singles STILL SELL like a motherfucker. I think Black Eyed Pesas sold like 5 to 6 million digital downloads of a couple of their singles. Why buy a CD when u can DL the 3 or 4 singles at 1.29 a pop?
I think in my lifetime, I have owned 4 or 5 of every GNR and Bon Jovi CD. u buy CD, scratch it all to fuck... go re buy. with the CD-R u just burn copies, so they lose the come back busines
Most people who illegally DL, wouldnt buy the music anyway. I DL U2's last CD. never have bought a U2 album, listened, didn't like it, deleted it.
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
2. The "The Industry is to Blame for being jerks/not adapting" argument I think is just a justification to legitimise the cold fact that we ALL wanted shit for free. Who are "the industry" anyway? People talk about it like all of the creative industries are an actual person. I mean most of the commercial music business was controlled by 5 labels (then 4, now 3!). So you're talking about like 4 people who are CEOs of companies that have always been in deathly competition with each other anyway, whose entire business model was always high risk (the 99% of shit they do that wasn't successful was always paid for by the 1% that blows up and goes gangbusters). Think about the qualification you'd need to make thoise decisions. Ability with money. Hopefully some creative skill at choosing...why would these have been people who understood fast what computers were going to change. Movies are even worse. Some of the studios basically bet the farm on every summer release. Given it can cost tens if not hundreds of millions to make a movie..they have enough issues.
I'm sorry but that's not true at all.
The only people who downloaded everything for free, would've never ever ever ever bought the product to begin with.
The rest of us like supporting the artist. Like myself. My favorite artists, I ALWAYS buy their stuff. ALWAYS. I was given MP3 ZIP files of Alice In Chains' Black Gives Way To Blue way before the release, and didn't listen to it, because I wanted to buy one of my favorite artist's return album at the store, with cold hard cash.
For the rest artists and the rest of the fans who download and dump, why did they want shit for free?
For fun? The consumer had been paying for the product for years.
Maybe they wanted shit for free, because they felt like they had paid enough.
When I first started downloading, way back in 1998, I actually felt guilty about and felt kinda scummy for doing it. I was new to the internet, and did it rarely because I didn't want to be greedy (you know like the industry).
And the more and more I thought about it, the more of the hypocrisy and total bullshit I saw the situation.
So I gotta feel bad because I paid $20 bucks a CD for years, when most of the music was utter garbage waiting for a fucking can?
So I gotta feel bad that housewives and 13-year old kids are getting sued for $250,000 because Lars fuckin Ulrich needs a gold-lined pool>
THAT SHIT right there is what ended up burying the music industry EVEN MORE was the public perception of them being even more greedy. Suing 80-year olds because their grandkids used the computer one weekend. What a joke.
And yet Duff wants to use those same people to support him to stay rich. And then he gives some lame ass story about "the little people" who lost their jobs.
No mother fucker, the little people lost their jobs because YOU and you're fuckin' PRODUCER buddies didn't want to take a hit in the ass either to your own profit margin. YOU caused them to lose their jobs!
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
Wow, I am so disappointed by Duff's lack of insight on this topic. At one point in his rant he says something about the need for the government to be able to shut down sites that profit from online piracy. That's there already, plain and simple. It's called a fair trial with a due process. What SOPA and PIPA are trying to achieve is put the burden and responsibility of deciding when something is illegal in the hands of private companies. The Googles and the Facebooks of the world would be judge, jury and executioner in the world of intellectual property. And when they don't do a good enough job of it, they face draconian consequences in the form of being shut down completely, loosing all their funding, etc... even for those parts of their user generated content that are perfectly legit. No wonder they oppose this.
Why do the record and movie industries feel they deserve special treatment? Why do they feel that all this business with being innocent until proven guilty and burden of proof being theirs and all is fine for most things but not for fuckin' entertainment?
Most people opposing SOPA/PIPA aren't against it because of WHAT it tries to solve, they are against it because of HOW they are trying to solve it. I am personally also against what they are trying to solve, but that's another debate altogether.
Re: Duff: Quit Whining About SOPA and PIPA
I used to go to the movies with my father when I was a kid. My dad was unemployed at the time we started going, after basically getting fucked over by the government. One of the first adult movies I saw "Memphis Belle" which was a major factor in pushing me into historic aviation. Not the single reason, but a major part. I knew a little about WW2 and aeroplanes even then, and when the B-17's took off for their mission I was so excited and scared at the same time, I had to go to the toilet.
I used to go to the movies with my first girlfriend when I was 12. We held hands, venturing into those unknown territories of girlfriend and boyfriend. She's on my Facebook list, just having movied to Spain. Nice to keep in touch.
I used to go to the movies with my first real girlfriend when I was 21-22. We used to bring our friends to watch whatever we could. We split up, but we did see a lot of movies when we were together.
I have a pretty well paid job, I just bought a house. I have a car too. But I don't go to the movies any more. I've been there once the last year, and it was due to the fact we had visitors from abroad and wanted to show them a good time. I paid for their movie tickets, and there were four of us. I paid almost 70 dollars for all of us. Ticket for one of us? Do the math.
I don't go to the movies any longer. One movie costs me 17 dollars. Can I afford it? Sure, I do, if I really want to. But do I want to spend 17 dollars to watch a movie? No, I don't. They have pushed the prices so far up, it just makes me not wanna go. I don't wanna spend 17 dollars x 2 for me and my wife to watch a movie. I have better things to spend my money on.
Back when I first went to see a movie, they cost about 6-7 dollars in 1991-1993. The increase in price is quite something.
And people still wonder why large masses of people download.
