[Awetopsy]

This is scary stuff.

Imagine Hollyood banning your VCR or Camcorder...

Hollywood wants to plug the "Analog Hole"

[elam]

It's not actually about banning anything, rather Hoolywood's desire to control the evolution of technology.

The MPAA wants to embed into Analog to Digital Coversion chips, which are in just about every technology imaginable, a watermark, that would prohibit the transfer of copyrighted material.

Just another bullet in the MPAA's gun that's pointed at the American consumer.

There's also this brilliant piece of legislation , which is essentially the same thing.

Let's retard economic growth and technological innovation, and alienate our customers so we can protect our awful movie making machine. The stupidity never ends with these guys, or their pocketed politicians.
Check out The Eldred Case, which is about copyright law in general.
And there are some interesting audio clips at the EFF website, one of which is a debate with Jack Valenti, the 80 year old dinosaur/president of the MPAA, about copyright.
You can write your senators too, you know.

[ May 24, 2002: Message edited by: elam ]

[Liser Studios]

What's the use of writing to your senator's if their bought out by these Hollywood guys? They'll just say "That's nice, but he's paying me 200 million bucs for this law to pass! You're paying me nothing!"

[elam]

Well, if it's one thing that politicians listen too more than corporate cash, it's the possibility of not getting re-elected.

And for me personally, I can't stand by and do nothing while this bullshit goes on. So I write(or type as the case may be).

It isn't about an individual letter, but volume. Get enough letters, they take notice.

[BloodStone]

What bothers me is that in the big picture, these companies really aren't losing that much money. They make millions of dollars per year, but it seems that isn't enough for them. This reminds me of the moments when athletes demand a pay increase for some reason. It makes me so sick.

[Awetopsy]

basically if they get their way.. people will jsut move to the black market to get their equipment with unregulated chips.. sorta like the mod chip for playstation.

No matter what anti piracy scheme they think of somebody will circumvent it and make it mainstream. It will just become more illegal, but people who pirate stuff like that dont really care how legal it is anyways... so the only people getting punished is the honest consumer.

Basically Hollywood will be be promoting wider spread illegal activity. The tighter they make the law, the more people are going to slip through it.

[BloodStone]

Exactly. No matter what they do, someone can get around it. Its just a big waste of money that way. They should settle for the cheap methods that keep the general population from copying. There are a large chunk of people who don't own mod chips.

[Pat]

The problem isn't getting around the chip, it's paying for it. Consumers are made to pay higher prices for these unneeded components. We're paying for these media company's protection and peace of mind.

Frankly, the more I consider it, the more I realize there's a very close tie between moderate levels of consumer piracy and greater profits for copyright holders. Consumer piracy networks are far more effective at distributing media than many people assume. In fact, they're often times more effective at getting the products into the hands of the buying public than any other traditional method. This results in a strange "try before you buy" dynamic, where a good mp3, movie or software title ends up being purchased after intially being pirated. We want the rest of the album, the liner notes, the clearer copy, the documentation or the product support. Is piracy actually driving traditional sales? I tried to download a 700 meg movie file once. It's was a pain in the ass. If your time is worth any amount of money, it's almost always cost effective to run down to the local Best Buy to purchase the DVD for $19. I know a guy who spent 2 days looking for and downloading a Dreamcast ISO of Virtua Tennis. He burned 8 CD's in order to get it to work. All this time and effort to get a game for free that only costs $9.00 brand new. I guess the moral there is that it's the challenge and not the product these people want.

I'm not advocating piracy in any manner, but these trends are interesting. I'm also very curious to know if album sales are down now that Napster is dead. I suspect the link between sales and piracy goes quite counter to what the media companies are expecting.

-Pat

[ May 24, 2002: Message edited by: Pat ]

[Steelwind]

How many companies use 3DS MAX because those who work there got their hands on a pirate copy? Hm? Think about it.

[strata]

well Macromedias method for getting flash and dreamweaver out there... they made the registration extremely easy to break, which meant that people who were starting out as webdesigners and developers (the people who don't buy the software) would start using these products, since A. They had a good reputation, and B. There was never any problem getting a crack for them... and we all know that once a user starts using a product, be it a car, razor or software, they're very unlikely to switch later down the line when they've gotten comfortable and learned to use their product of choice.
Thus Macromedia got it's first major consumer base, and of course once these people got professional jobs, that's the software they're going to use.

This hasn't really ever been a secret though...

[gLitterbug]

I hate "marketing-strategies".

[kig]

The funny part about that A/D-converter stuff is that every sensor that displays information in a digital format has one. Digital thermometers, yes, digital pressure meters, you betcha, even computer mice have them. And they certainly aren't too hard to make yourself either. This whole thing just seems like Hollywood & music industry trolling lawmakers and trying to pass the cost of enforcing their copyrights onto the electronics manufacturers.

[ May 26, 2002: Message edited by: kig ]