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Today's Transgender Day of Remembrance Honors the Dead
Ah, the storied halls of America's finest institutions, the bastions of educational excellence, and the homes of our country's future leaders. Columbia, Boston, Penn, Duke, Vanderbilt, and yes, the University of Chicago — these are just a few of the schools that have long ranked as the best of the best.
Not in the eyes of the RIAA and MPAA. These schools are epicenters of the widespread evil known as piracy and the most recent target for lawsuits against file sharers. On a list of the largest university offenders of copyright infringement (piracy), University of Chicago comes in at number 16 in movie piracy. Nearby, Purdue even managed to take the gold star as highest overall ranking on the RIAA and MPAA lists.
The schools on the list show no discernible pattern, since many of the nation's largest universities didn't even make the cut.
The MPAA estimates that 44% of all illegal copyright users are college students, and those rich bastards are holding out on ol' Daddy MPAA to the tune of $500 million a year. That money rightfully belongs to the Church of Scientology.
That is why the RIAA and MPAA have helped to introduce the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act, which would allow universities to tap the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) Program to fund "innovative on-campus, anti-piracy pilot programs designed to reduce digital piracy."
Also, in the continuing good fight against university students, the RIAA is now allowing them to pre-emptively settle their lawsuit if they have been subpoenaed. Since University of Chicago only runs a paltry $34,000 a year, if you get one of the recently sent 400 RIAA letters, just head on over p2plawsuits.com to clear your name for a small fee. Well, you may have to drop out of school since the current going rate is about $750 per infringing song (one student was hit up for $590,000).
Oh, yeah, and EMI announced that songs on iTunes will no longer have DRM, but you won't be able to afford them when they become available in May if you just settled with the RIAA.
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Read the Copyright Act. Piracy is illegal (that's why it's called "piracy.") The motion picture and music industries are entitled to enforce their rights. If you think it shouldn't have these rights, lobby Congress to change them. Though, if you're successful, don't expect to get to see a lot of $150 million budget big summer movies.
Everyone focuses on the movies that make $500 million but forget about the many many other movies that barely break even or that lose $50 to 100 million or more. I'm not saying that sucessful movie and music people don't make a lot of money, but everyone forgets that it's a VERY unpredictable business, and you can't build test versions of your product -- you need many tens of millions to make a movie and tens of million more to advertise it and after all that money it can still be a big stinking flop. The rare $500 million-grossing movie pays for a lot of other losses. Like yacht building or commercial real estate development these are high risk/high return businesses. That's why it's a problem when people steal copies of successful films instead of paying for them.
Buster,
That's all well and good, and you're right, it is their copyright to enforce. It's just both movie and music industries of late have shown zero interest in ever taking chances that they've cranked out many terrible products.
Couple this with complete lack of imagination in marketing their wares and zero flexibility in their distribution model (especially in a rapidly shifting time when they need to be more nimble) and you can see why they've decided to get all sue crazy and blame "pirates" rather than actually improve the way they do business.
And now they expect the universities to take money out of funds meant to possible improve college campuses just in case someone downloads "Scary Movie 4" or some American Idol reject's new album. Fantastic.
Wow, Completely Useless, your screen name really fits your comment.
"It's just both movie and music industries of late have shown zero interest in ever taking chances that they've cranked out many terrible products."
This has nothing to do with copyright or intellectual property. Nothing.
The content of the work is irrelevant; whether you like it or not has no bearing on how legal or illegal it is to copy and distribute without permission.
You fail to explain why you think everyone wants to pirate such mediocre content, anyway. Are you trying to argue that piracy wouldn't be illegal if Hollywood had better taste?
That's more ridiculous than copyright law itself.
No, I was just pointing out how their WHOLE system is dying. Not just their silly way of how they're going about their defense of copyright.
The VAST majority of the movie industry's earnings come from domestic opening weekend and foreign DVD sales. (This means movies are being specifically targeted at 15 year olds and Asian markets). And foreign piracy (especially in Russia and China) are WAY worse than a couple thousand college kids on Bit Torrent.
I was arguing for a complete revamp of their funding, marketing, and distribution model and I explained that poorly.
No need for personal attacks... pedophile.
As an '03 grad of Purdue, I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations.
And as for 'buster' and 'pylbug', check out techdirt.com. It's a good tech news source that definately makes some valid points - along the lines of what 'useless' is after. Their market is broken, and the way they go about defending what's left of it rides a very thin line of legal.
As a recording artist, I should be getting a piece of the money recovered by the RIAA, et al.
You'd think.
But no.
So where does the money go? Not to the people who made the movies or the records. Follow the money.
They know their distribution technology is outdated, and they're grabbing cash while they still can.
That's cute, Completely Useless. Such a charmer.
Olderty, I wasn't arguing that their business model isn't broken. If you re-read my comment, you'll see I was merely pointing out that the quality of the content has no bearing on the legality of piracy. Quality of content and copyright are two very different things. (I don't care for either most of the time, but that's not the point.) Can you point to something specific on techdirt that proves otherwise? I see nothing that says pirating a "good" movie is any more okay than pirating a "bad" movie, which is what Completely Useless originally implied. Lack of imagination has nothing to do with protection of intellectual property. It doesn't matter if you agree with copyright law or not.
[BTW, there's no "a" in definitely.]
Professor pylbug, thank you so much for spelling lesson. Boy, was my face red!!
[BTW, don't be a douche bag, no meaning was lost in translating an 'a' to an 'i'.]
I don't think you even read what I stated above, other than to run a spell-checker on it. You saw your username and needed to reply. I didn't even use the word copyright or piracy, did not advocate it, and did not defend 'useless' other than to say techdirt.com is a good website reporting on such topics. To quote myself:
"It's a good tech news source that definately makes some valid points - along the lines of what 'useless' is after."
[I left the 'a' there for you.]
Techdirt does not advocate piracy either, only fair use. No, I am not affiliated with the website.
[[I like brackets too!]]
Thanks for such intellectual conversation, Olderty. It's totally my fault that you can't spell.