MPA: We’ve Reached A Turning Point On Piracy

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
It's nice to see the European arm of the MPAA acknowledge that, not only has progress been made in the fight against piracy, a turning point has been reached as well. It kinda makes you wonder how much things would change if there was even greater availability of digital media at a lower price point.

The president of the MPAA's European operation says he believes a turning point has been reached on piracy, with service providers and search engines beginning to understand they all have a role to play. However, it's also clear that Hollywood is fearful of opening up content across Europe, which in itself could contribute to piracy.
 
Translation:

No really, despite pirated content being even more accessible than when we started, we are rally worth being a member of. Keep funding us. We've almost managed to totally lay the blame on google, and google's clearly too big to fight on your own.
 
"If that is the case then Hollywood has probably come a long way. It certainly isn’t going to solve this problem on its own and having powerful allies on board will certainly help its cause."

"Probably" LOL, which means you have no clue. More like come a long way to a road leading to a bottomless pit... A "turning point" to another dead-end road. No, "powerful" allies mean absolutely nothing. All it takes is one guy in a basement to host a site. It astounds me how ignorant Hollywood is about technology *anything*. All you need is someone to tell you a single site to get stuff and then you can jump from site to site without even needing a search engine. I also can't believe how easy ISP's bend over spending countless hours and $ paying people to "block" the billions of illegal links, all to the whims of Hollywood. There must be some money (truckloads of it) being traded under the table somewhere. I'll just say Hollywood now has less money for these fruitless endeavors. Ever since they tried killing anydvd, I have not bought a single movie (and I will not download them illegally either) until I have a way to play movies through my HTPC again. Their loss. Great job Hollywood...
 
Last edited:
With all of the streaming services available (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc) - I have access to way more content that I have time to watch. For me, piracy would be pretty pointless as I already have too many things to do/watch and not enough time.

Streaming is not perfect. The content can be removed at will - you only had some type of "license" and not any real rights to it. The selection on the streaming sites gets stale. Content refreshes can be slow.

Do I want to buy physical copies? Nope. I have a huge collection of CDs and DVDs. They are a pain to store, easily damaged, and plus people always seem to want to borrow them (and not return them).

I'm in the US and have good broadband speeds. I wonder if the majority of pirates have regional restrictions, limited money to view/buy, etc? MPAA/RIAA has been terrified of the internet for years. They still don't know how to deal with it. Can't remember who said this (maybe Gabe Newell?) - "piracy is a customer service issue" (poorly paraphrased). Yes, you will always have people pirating content. However, how much do you spend going after them? Would they buy your goods anyway?

As a former software pirate (teenager back in the C64 days) - I pirated all kinds of games. I rarely played any of them. I never had money to buy them. Once I got a job, I could afford software. My Steam collection has a ridiculous amount of software I'll probably never even play. Heck, I even paid money to register a few shareware programs I might have pirated in the day! Back to my point. Did I deprive anyone back in the day? Not really - I had no money to buy the software so you never would have received it. Was it right to pirate it? No, not having money doesn't justify accessing something you didn't pay for.
 
I once maybe knew a guy who pirated...Then the sega dreamcast died...(Sobs)
He never pirated again >_>
 
Doesn't matter if it's justified, people are still going to do it if your content is a) hard to access, b) expensive or c) both.
 
MavericK said:
Doesn't matter if it's justified, people are still going to do it if your content is a) hard to access, b) expensive or c) both.
Click to expand...

Yup! Precisely this. It's going to happen, and while I agree that it is theft to a degree, there are other factors at play here, like social or cultural pressure, viability of the media, risk factor of parties involved, income level, etc etc.
 
I always wonder ( and doubt we'll ever know) the amount of pirated content that's counted as "lost" revenue if people are just collecting stuff and socking it away in their digital stashes never to be watched or played.

My takeaway on reading the article is their "turning point" is basically the industry are starting to recognize they need to look forward toward better availability/pricing and serving the customer demand instead of backward at the old restrict/revoke/sue-your-customers revenue model.
 
Tweak42 said:
I always wonder ( and doubt we'll ever know) the amount of pirated content that's counted as "lost" revenue if people are just collecting stuff and socking it away in their digital stashes never to be watched or played.

My takeaway on reading the article is their "turning point" is basically the industry are starting to recognize they need to look forward toward better availability/pricing and serving the customer demand instead of backward at the old restrict/revoke/sue-your-customers revenue model.
Click to expand...
If they did that from the beginning, piracy would've died out already. They are the only industry that tries to change their customers to buy their product, instead of coming out with a product that the customer wants to pay for.
 
"with service providers and search engines beginning to understand they all have a role to play."

No, you've FORCED them into these roles. It's not Googles or an ISP's responsibility to watch YOUR shit. Such bullshit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top