Illegally Downloading Hollywood Movies... Right or Wrong?

If the backbone of the net wasn't rule by dumb tight corporate right wing squares like Comcast and ATT, and if people understood the value of creative works, including porn, then something UTOPIAN like this could be set up:

A fund that takes some of the money paid to access online material and gives it to the producers/artists.

There'd have to be:
a- metered bandwidth.
b- some sort of arts board to determine who gets what money. (but then that could be determined by p2p activity ranking)

read both the defences brief and the full judges ruling

there was a laundry list of examples of downloads that did not cost a sale
and one of them was specifically the download by someone from a region where the item was not sold
Funny thing is that list came from an RIAA commssion study.

Bam... You finally said what I wanted you too. So your argument for is that:

a. If it is available to EVERYBODY, then it is illegal to take without payment.

but

b. If it ISN'T available to everybody, then it is perfectly legal to take without payment.

Hmmm.... Anyone else find that a crock of shit.

So it's NOT okay to screw the guy who can't or doesn't try to restrict his art but lets screw every motherfucker who tries to keep us from watching something even if we don't really want to watch it or not, or pay for it or not.

If they weren't going to buy it anyways, then what the fuck are they doing downloading it.

There are some major holes in your arguments and I hope some judges get wise, making rulings that actually protect the artists/creators/producers instead of trying to protect the freeloading scumbags.

i have been consistant in what i have said from the begining
never changed
if you refuse to distribute your content to a market, the by definition that content is worth zero in that market. Taking it without paying does not change the value
simple math.
0=0
if i can't buy you can't claim that act of taking it cost you a sale.
simple logic.
those are very specific cases,
it just happens to perfectly apply to Bama arguement
which means it perfectly applies the thread
and since the dispute you are talking about was between him and you, it means he was right and you were wrong.

it doesn't extend beyond that arguement, so trying to apply it to your friends situation doesn't make sense, doesn't apply and has no merit whatsoever.

oh an btw
what i am saying is

b) it is perfectly legal to take it (assuming this ruling does not get overturned) the content provider doesn't provide it everywhere AND you happen to be one of the people the excluded region.


the part in red is a very important condition that must be met for this precedent to apply.

So, your saying, that Bama, who downloaded a movie that was STILL IN THEATRES, even though he could have gone to his local theatre and PAID to see it, IS RIGHT?

That those actions, as you want to stay on topic with the thread title, is PERFECTLY LEGAL?

He WANTED to see the movie and he DIDN'T want to pay for it, so he downloaded an ILLEGAL COPY.

Your saying he is right?

Two separate industries. What you're saying is that I can steal car stereos if the car industry is doing well.

It's their music and it should be their decision how they profit from it. If I sell furniture and you don't like the way I sell it, does it mean you should be able to steal it?

Your ideas may be great and they may work perfectly, but that's not the point. We're talking about stealing something from someone. Not liking a company's business model is not an excuse to rob them.

They don't sell Fiat cars in the United States. So what you're saying is that it would be perfectly legal for me to take as many of them as I want because they exclude my region in their sales?

Then I wonder why you insist on downloading against people's will.

Let's take the case you stated with your mom and the Bollywood videos she watched as a kid. If I remember correctly you said she liked the movies as a kid and wanted to see them again. They are not available to purchase so you downloaded them (or were going to download them). You can make the argument that by downloading them you are not financially hurting the owner of the movies. But if you really believe that they should be allowed to control the distribution of their movies shouldn't you honor that belief and not download them?

You stated that you think they should be allowed to control how a movie is distributed. If the producer of the movie didn't put the movie online to be downloaded then you would have to assume someone did so and that this person doesn't have the approval of the producer. So those people are taking away that right and by downloading it you are doing so as well.

Maybe you aren't doing any financial harm to them, but you are taking away their right to control how and where their movie is seen. Yet you claim to support that right.

To me this seems like you want it both ways.

It's all just bullshit arguments by people who can't afford music or movies. He doesn't believe what he says anyway, nor do the people running those sites. If they were so confident in their legal grounds, they would be setting up shop in New York City. Instead they hide out in whatever country has outdated or lax copyright laws.

Living in Costa Rica, our movie selection at theatres is rather limited and often months old. So if I see a trailer for a movie I want to see, only to know it's coming in 12 months or depending on the movie, I know it'll NEVER see a theatre here, I would not feel guilty in the slightest downloading it.

Now, I don't bother because 99% of video stores here rent their copied DVDs of downloaded movies. I'm not saying a few, I'm saying 100% of their store inventory. So I can just hop on over to the video store, pay a few bucks and pickup a bunch of new releases currently in American theatres.

Since there are NO legit DVD rental places anywhere in my area, what would you have me do if I want to see a movie? Wait for it to come out on DVD so I can pay an overpriced fee to own it ?

I figure this adds something interesting to the discussion

still in theaters and not provided for home viewing
he said he did go to the theaters (for a laundry list of reason unrelated to price)
they don't over a home viewing now
so his actions do not take cost a single sale.
it therefore does not change the value fo the copyright material for home viewing (it is still zero)
so yes his actions meet the 4th condition of fair use and therefore not an infringement
of your exclusive rights (notwithstanding clause)
i personally believe he is jumping the gun because that ruling could be overturned, but currently, under the law
he is right you are wrong.

BTW it has nothing to do with price, if the item is sold, in a format/region/medium and you don't want to pay for it, then you are committing a copyright infringement because you are changing the value of the copyrighted material (from x to zero)

completely different that the example bama and i have been giving you.

the average musician is making 2.5 times what they were making before mp3.
This is mainly because the vast majority of independent musicians who couldn't afford to get their cd in the stores can now sell mp3.

the record companies who screw the artist over by taking 90% of their royalties are the ones that are hurting.

you keep trying to associate physcial goods with copyrighted material and they are not the same thing
if i bought furniture and i wanted to rent it out i can do that
if i bought content and i wanted to rent it out, i could not.
you can't have it both ways, if you want to change the copyright laws so that it works the same way then and only then can you claim it is theft
until that change it a fraud, not a theft.
And fair use does give me the right, because you have no exclusive right to your content for the scope of fair use. You gave everyone that right, to get the exclusive right for all commercial sales of your material.

you say you want me to answer the question without an explaination and then you bitch because they don't make sense without the explaination.

1. do you have a right to control distribution of a movie
yes you do the problem is that when you claim a copyright under the act you are also agreeing to "licience" fair use. You agree that your exclusive rights would exist for the commercial aspect of the operations, but all actions that does not change the market value of your content (fair use) would be a free market operation. You agreed to not restrict it. You can't have the exclusive rights, without such an agreement.

2. if you choose not to sell it in canada
yes- You have no responsiblity to sell it in my country, you have no responsibility to incure the cost of producing dvd, getting it put into theaters etc. But when you do that you clearly define the value of the product to be zero in that market.

3. you can sue to stop it, however if you claim copyright then by the very nature of fair use, you did authorize it distribution when you choose to not sell it in that market (by making it value zero in that market). If you want to sue as a breach of contract, the value is still zero, which means you would basically be spending thousands of dollars to claim 0 dollars (the value within that market). You have a right to sue, you will just lose (under copyright) and will win but get nothing (under breach of contract).

if the cars are not available in united states explain to me how you would take one.

he wants you to hope on the plane fly to the states, watch the movie and then fly back.

Or do the right thing by NOT supporting piracy. Just because there is legal precedent, and I use that term loosely as there haven't been enough in my estimation, doesn't make the action okay. What that dude is talking about though, IS ILLEGAL. He is paying someone to watch movies that they have no legal right to it, a copied pirated movie sitting in a video rental store. Talk about a hypocritical dumbshit. That isn't even the same topic of the discussion here.

You are obviously all about NEVER having to pay for entertainment again. We get that, and it definitely shows what age or group you belong too, the "I am entitled to EVERYTHING" group.

Your court examples mean dick, especially when people like YOU, spread the word that downloading movies is perfectly acceptable. All you have to do is look at all the torrents that are crammed with content and the number of people downloading versus the numbers of a mere 10 years ago. Give it another 10 or 15 and see what happens. Hell even 5 years ago I had never even heard of a torrent but now its all the rage.

You ask almost ANY young person, who has grown up with the internet and they NEVER pay for anything, whether it is music, videos, movies and even porn. And the most fucked up thing about it, they don't even KNOW they are doing something wrong.

Why? Because people like you, who have taken advantage of the system, got a few judges to see things your way, and led an entire generation, and future ones to come, into believeing they should get everything they want with no price tag required.

The fact is, everything you have said, is just justification to ease a morally bankrupt generation, who has no interest in anything other than "ME."

You want to know what people get out of all your clever arguments, court examples, and legal jargon the typical citizen wouldn't understand anyway?

"That dude said it was okay to download for free anything that we want, and here is the best part. THE COURTS SAY IT IS OKAY!"

"No shit?"

"No Shit!"

"Thats fucking great, I will never have to pay for my music and movies again!"

Your argument is spreading like a virus, converting new recruits daily, to jump on the freeloaders bandwagon. I have no clue how you DONT see this going in the wrong direction. And just because something is done over the internet, doesn't make it a victimless crime.

I guess ultimately our main disagreement is about fair use. I feel like (and interpret) fair use as being one of those things where if I put a movie out and you want to do a story about it or some kind of review of it you can use a couple of short clips from the movie without having to pay me in order to do that. The same would go with using excerpts of a book or article I wrote in a review or story. You seem to interpret it as you being able to then use it at your leisure as long as you aren't doing any damage to that person or the market value of that product.

netflix. Look into it.

they send a red envelope to your house, and it has a movie inside. If it exists on video, they usually have it. If not, they're getting it.

Oh look, you're in Costa Rica. never mind.

We aren't talking about renting out music, we are talking about giving it away.

And you can talk about how it gives you the right, but you know that's not true. Why isn't the Pirate Bay located in the United States? Why don't any of these places setup show in the U.S? I think you know the answer to that.

Like I said, it's bullshit excuses for kids who can't afford music or movies. Broke losers will always steal what they can, whether it's music or bread. It's why they are on the bottom of the food chain.

Lets say they are displaying it at a car show. According to you, you would have a right to get in the car and drive away with it since it's not sold in your country.

Watching most of you scammers try to argue rule and law is like herding cats. Wtf?

by your definitions
vcrs would be illegal because they provided an exact copy of the tv show with no additional commentary

ripping mp3 = same thing

the right of timeshifting would not exist and the billions of dollars of revenue generated from the sale of movies on dvd would not exist

billion dollar industry of mp3 and mp3 devices would not exist

Thank god the law agrees with my interpretation.

For the record that what the congress intended when they created the copyright act. They wanted protect your income from losses WITHOUT creating a monopoly that would act as a censorship tool.

only if you were a world class moron who was to stupid to realize that when you take item from the car show you deny the exhibitor the benefit of that cars use (for purpose of display) while when you make a copy the orginal is still intact to be used by the owner.

so i guess the question are you that stupid ?

because this ruling just happened, and while other countries have established that 1 download != 1 sale a long time ago. This is the first time the US courts have recognized that fact.


sony (betmax case), tivio, pvrs
RIO (mp3 case), itunes, amazon, thousands of net radio

or it could be a collection of people who believe free market is better than a government created monopoly. Who want to limit the monopoly power of copyright to what it was defined to originally, a protection of income and only income.

well that depends on the laws of his country
however if costa rica laws are similar to the states/canada then yes
he should download it from the internet for free
that what is legal.

i quite clearly said i would not do this because it had not been established by the supreme court. IT could be overturned by appeal

I have repeatedly said i support timeshifting ruling because it prevents me from paying from the same content twice (tv shows).

Which means i fall in the catagory of people who DO PAY FOR THEIR ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT.

The fact that the law support bama position and contridicts yours is the only point that you can legitimately infer from my statement.

Luckly that is the only point i am making.



when the district court ruled that timeshifting using a cloud was illegal
when they made the stupid statement that if moved my viewing time from 9pm monday to 6pm tuesday using a PVR that was legal
but if i used a cloud to do the exact same thing, that the second was illegal
i didn't cry about, i wrote a check to the eff and told all my friends in the states to do the same.
the ruling got overturned because it does not make sense logically.
I don't think the arguement is going to get overturned this time because the 1 download =1 lost sale (even when that download exist somewhere that the item is never sold) makes any sense.


so now it is my fault because you misrepresent what i am saying, and someone takes that misrepresentation as valid and claims rights they don't really have.

don't want this to happen, don't misrepresent what i am saying.

and i don't understand how you could be so stupid as to not realize that i am talking about an enviroment where content producers would make more money, while at the same time lowering prices for consumers.

after the movie theater (famous players) and the local distributor (atlantis) and the national distributor (lions gate) takes their cut a movie production company would be luck to get 97 cents out of $10 ticket.

when 10 downloads = 1 lost sale (MPAA study) to recover the revenue from the lost sale they need to charge 9.7 cents per download to break even.
I am perfectly willing to pay a quarter to see a theater movie in my home.
hell with product placement revenue, they can easily make that back and give me the movie for free using torrents.

sure the middle men will lose money (famous players, atlantis, lions gate) when people who hate going to the theaters but want to see the movie more, now have a choice.

But that free market competition.

Actually I am not opposed to ripping a CD to MP3s so you can play it on your computer or your MP3 player nor am I opposed to recording a TV show or movie that was on cable so you can watch it later.

What I am opposed to is someone who buys a CD, burns it to MP3 format then shares it via torrent or P2P with thousands of other people. I know that technically they are only sharing a small portion of the MP3 with each leecher and not the entire thing, but to me that is still contributing to the theft. If you drive someone to the bus station knowing that they are going to take a bus across town and rob a bank, your driving them (even though it only accounts for a tiny portion of their action) still helps them carry out the theft.

I am also opposed to people just being able to download whatever they want for free. Say for example a movie is released on DVD in the US, but not in Canada. If you are in Canada you can't get the DVD so it seems to me like you feel that you are allowed to download the movie because you are not doing the company that released/produced the movie any harm. They have no market in Canada so you are not taking a sale away from them when you download it. I happen to feel that they should be able to control their distribution. If they don't want people in Canada having access to their movie (for whatever reason) then they should be afforded that right.

To me there is a big difference between someone using a torrent as a time shifting device (IE they missed an episode of a TV show so they download it) and someone who uses it to get free movies and music. If we are being honest when it comes to movies and music most of the people using it are doing it for the later. They want the music/movie and they don't want to have to pay for it. To me that is wrong.

the fundamental point of the copyright act was that it was designed to give you just enough of a monopoly to create an insentive to create work. Because it was so easy to copy material, while very difficult to produce the first one (books are easier to print then write in the first place) some level of monopoly control was necessary promote the artistic endeavor.

The congress has debated it, intensely because american economic system believes that monopolies are bad and were illegal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
the new law had to balance between both extreme conditions
and that is why they created a conditional monopoly limited in scope to only income protection by putting a not withstanding clause around all the exclusive rights.

standard oil had that level of control and they used it sell their gasoline to their stations cutting competition and selling non monopoly products at monopoly prices.

But that is not what we are talking about and you know it
the movie industry has used the monopoly that copyright to charge monopoly prices for concessions.

Like standard oil who charge monopoly prices for non gasoline items by restricting access to their stations, the movie theaters are doing the same thing with consessions. Forcing bama to go to the theater and charging 20 bucks for 3 dollars worth of candy and popcorn is the same type of abuse.

The ruling we are talking about finally get the law back into the balance it was originally created to maintain. It forces the movie studios to release the movies at the same time across all media streams so that competition between the venues will exist.

Failure to do so creates the competition via fair use. In my mind that is a good thing for both the copyright holder (since they now have multiple streams of liciencing fees) and consumer (competition in the distribution). The only people who suffer are the middle men who should have been competiting in the begining anyway.

Gideongallery don't you see the numbers? Don't you see what piracy has done to adult, music, movie, software, etc industries? You sound like a drug addict defending his addiction.

First off the movie industry doesn't set the price of the concessions. The theater owners do. I'm sure there are some theaters out there that are owned by movie studios ( or some chains that cut deals with movie studios) , but most of them are not. Nobody is forcing you to go to a theater and watch a movie and if you decide to go you don't have to spend money on concessions. The movie industry wants a monopoly so that you will pay to go see their movie in the theater. For example, Paramount puts out a movie. They only release it in theaters because they want you to pay the premium price to go see it. They could give two shits if you buy popcorn or not and they don't care what that popcorn costs. Also, there is an independent movie theater where I live that plays indie movies and lesser known movies. Often times when they are playing a movie they are the only place in town you can see it. They have a full on monopoly for that movie at that time. Yet they charge a very fair price for tickets and for concessions. A candy bar that would cost you $1 in the store they will charge you $1.25 for. A ticket to see the movie is usually $7.

If you don't want to pay $10 to see a movie and you can't manage to sit through a movie without eating popcorn, candy or soda, you can always wait until it comes out on video, go rent it for $4 and buy your food at the store. The price comes down with time which means that the monopoly doesn't force you to pay a certain price.

- movie gets released in theater and costs you around $10 to see it.
- a handful of months later the same movie gets released on DVD. You can now own it for around $15 or rent it for about $4.
- a while later there is a decent chance that the movie will be on some kind of pay cable service like HBO or Showtime. If you are a subscriber to those services it costs you nothing extra to watch it.
- a while later that movie may then make it to regular TV or cable where you can watch it for free. If it never does make it to that by now it is an old release and can probably be rented for $1.50 or purchased for less than $10

Oil and gas prices don't go down if you wait. If I go to the station today gas is one price. Six months from now they won't sell me the "old" gas for 1/3rd the cost.

Movie prices are set based on convenience and experience. If Iron Man comes out in theaters and I want badly to see it I will have to pay the premium price to see it today on the big screen. If I want to wait a while the price for seeing it will go down as will the size of the screen I see it on. There is a theater near me where they offer full barko-lounge style reclining seats. These chairs look like something you would want in your living room. They are very comfortable an can fully recline. They also offer all kinds of great food and have theaters where there are no kids allowed. But the tickets cost $20 each. You are paying for the experience and a very comfy chair, digital projector screen and great sound. There is no law saying you have to go see it there at all, you can drive less than a mile away and see the same movie for half the price in a regular theater.

Like I said if you are willing to wait you can see it for free or for very cheap so in this case you can say that any monopoly the movie industry has isn't hurting the consumer. It is allowing those consumers that are willing to pay a premium price to see the movie right now on the big screen and those that would rather wait and pay less or see it at home can do exactly that.

All of this said none of this gives me the right to download a movie I have never paid for and watch it for free.

I think his argument is that if these industries would stop fighting it and would embrace the technology they would make more money using it then ever before.

please start shooting content so i can steal it from you at "zero loss" to you. you get to keep all the film and negatives... i just want to steal the images and videos and distribute them and make paysites because it will cost you nothing and you've argued yourself right out of having any rights to the material anyway.

much appreciated.

i like asian girls.

They can embrace it all they want as long as people can get it for free the people who produce it are losing money.

I agree. If 10,000 people download a CD there is no telling how many of those people would have actually purchased the CD if the download wasn't available. It might be 1 it might be 5,000. Even if it is 1, that is 1 lost sale. Some will then argue that getting the CD into the hands of those people helps make more fans and those fans will buy concert tickets and things like that down the road. That may be true, but it may not be and at this point there is no way of knowing what those potential new fans will spend and if that is more than what was lost in sales to the free downloads.

You guys are too wrapped up in in wet towels to see benefits in what people (like myself) do online...

ADAPT - EVOLVE - PROSPER

Just a few years ago if you missed out on your favorite TV show the only way to see it was to download it off the net. Networks didn't put the shows up for people to view. Then, they got wise and decided that since people were distributing the shows anyway, they might as well do it themselves and put in their own advertising and a much higher quality of product.

Guess what - new revenue stream. Not only on the show itself but for their main site as they get visitors to their main pages too and what does that bring? Increased revenue stream..

Don't you think the studio's will wise up as well and start selling monthly memberships to their catalog of movies too?

I know I'd pay a monthly membership to 20th Century Fox for access to their catalog of movies and watch whatever I want as many times as I want in HD instead of some crappy cam with shitty audio. And my guess... so would you.

So would people who live in countries where movies aren't released. That's a shitload of new revenue.

Not long from now this will be a reality - a new choice and you'll join one of the studio's website and think "this is soooooooo cool" and forget that it's the same guy's you're trying to rake through the coals now that forced the new option...

I think something like this would make them some nice money. However, it will not really curb piracy. Sure there are some people who download because they have limited access otherwise so they may join a program like this. Most people do it (when it comes to movies and music, not really TV shows) because they want something for free. When you see the top 10 list of the most downloaded movies on the torrents at least half of them are always movies that are still in the theater.

All that said, it would probably open up some new revenue for the studios even if they just let you pay per view and charged like a $1 to watch a movie online.

No one is arguing that... I agree they could or should have by now, jumped on this and tried to nip it in the bud. Funny thing is, they ALREADY have these websites set up for exactly that. Ever heard of Netflix? I pay $17 a month and have a HUGE library to choose from, some that I can watch right on my computer. Hell, when new releases come out, I don't even have to go to the rental store, it's in my mailbox when I get home. THE SAME DAY IT COMES OUT.

The problem is, people want free shit. Look at you, you admit to downloading still in theatre movies, because you dont want to pay. What is going to make you pay if a better option avails itself, which there already is with Netflix? Why are you not taking advantage of that already? Because you don't want to pay. Thats why.

A survey taken to see if these sites are curbing illegal download came to this conclusion:
"US consumers are still downloading movies illegally despite the growing availability of subscription based movie download services according to a study conducted by Advanis Inc... Yet 79% of those downloading movies are still doing so illegally, according to the study and is estimated to be costing the industry $598 million."

Personally I would LOVE to have all the studios getting online and offering their movies because I don't mind spending money. Put guess what, the studios AREN'T behind this yet. And when they do I will be first in line to take advantage.

Let me have access to your sites... Or what tube should I go to. I got "fair use" rights after all. Don't I?

But thats different though, right?

would you pay that same price if iron man was released at the same time in a downloaded stream for a fair price. (marvel studios profit + cost of distribution). I wouldn't and my dad who lost his leg below the knee definately would not because the inconvience of sitting (even in your super duper theater) is unreasonable.


As long as that is true, we are talking about monopoly profits being extended to non monopoly goods and services. I have no problem with the marvel studios getting monopoly profits for their content. The copyright act grants them that right. I have a problem with famous player and the distributors getting monopoly profits. The copyright act does not grant them that right.


your rationalizing charging monopoly prices for non monopoly goods by saying it really doesn't hurt the consumer that much. The point is what would be the price if theaters had to compete with simultantious distribution on dvd/online. If people could see the movie right now, without having to go to the theater. the difference between the competitive price and the non competitive prices is the damage to the consumer. There are people like me (hell even bama made such a declaration) who would be perfectly willing to pay for such services but are denied such an option becuase of an attempt to extract monopoly profits for ancilary services even though the law does not allow such an act.

until that happens under the current law the act of downloading for free from the torrents is fair use. And the fair market competition is the unauthorized distribution of the same content.

oh and looking at concession prices now when the theaters are forced to compete with downloadable cams of their movies is not a legitimate representation of the true cost of the monopoly

you need to look at the prices of concessions and ticket prices before the torrents effected the market and it was a manual piracy that they had to worry about.

gideongallery, when someone creates something, they own the rights to it. when you buy something or license something, it comes with certain rights. those rights are codified in law.

you continue to confuse the word "rights" which is defined by law with "what i feel i'm entitled to" which is just your own subjective idea and by the terms of the transaction set by the owner of those rights.

you discuss this as if watching Iron Man is a basic human need along side of food, shelter, medical care, sex or water. its not. its entertainment. you don't need it, watching iron man for free is not a right, and your contract with society which is the law we have created as a society on both the local, state and federal level as well as international law, makes that quite clear.

wanting change or disagreeing with how things are... doesn't mean you then somehow have some inherent legal right to do as you choose and act out side the laws that govern our nation.

you mean the copyright act the one that has both the section that defines the copyrightholders exclusive rights AND the fair use rights granted to the rest of the public for the exact same content.

absolutely not, i am talking about the fair use rights that were condified in the act
and that were the bases for the striking down of the 1 download = 1 lost sale arguement by the district court. As well as all the other fair use rights i have been talking about (timeshifting, format shifting etc)

never said it was a right in the same level, however neither is the right to make a profit, or the right to monopoly profits. These are rights granted by the copyright act
the right to make a monopoly profit from your content is granted by the exclusive right statutes of the act, while the rights i am talking about are established by the fair use statutes.

I don't i currently only timeshift content i bought
The court ruling that the district court just made, make his actions legal under the law.
While he is admitting to doing it now, i will wait until at least the appeals court uphold that decision
It however does not change the fact right now, bama is acting within the scope of the law that govern your nation.
While you guys are arguing for things that are beyond the scope of the law as it is currently written and interpreted by the relevent courts.

Would I pay the same price to download a movie when it was released in a theater? Maybe. I don't go to the theater that much. Mostly it is about having to sit with 500 people I don't know and listen to them chomp like cattle during the movie. But if I really want to see the movie bad enough I do go (and I go to a couple of smaller indie theaters where the crowds are a little different with more regularity). So maybe if I wanted to see the movie that weekend, but didn't care about seeing it on the big screen I would be willing to pay that price.

When it comes to concessions should we also cut the rule that you can't bring beer into ball parks? They do that not to control the alcohol intake like the claim, but so they can charge you $8 for a beer. the same with concerts they charge you $40 for a T shirt you can buy online or at a music store for half that. It is less about monopoly and more about convenience.



It isn't hurting the consumer. If you don't get to see Iron Man on the opening weekend your life isn't going to end. If you have to wait a few months to see Iron Man on DVD because it is too expensive for you to see in the theater, again, your life isn't going to end. You are hurt. You are not damaged. You will eventually get to see Iron Man at a price you can afford, you just have to wait your turn.

Just because you want to see it when you want to see it for whatever price you feel is fair, doesn't mean that you are entitled to that and because it isn't available to you for a price you want to pay does not give you the right to take it. I'm no legal scholar, but I have read about fair use enough to know that just taking something because you feel the price or distribution of the item is not fair is not fair use.

Sure back in the day when it was manual piracy they were dealing with ticket prices were reasonable. They have gone through the roof over the last 5-7 years. In the theater near me about 5 years ago a matinee was $3.50 and a full price show was $6.50. Those prices were that way for a very long time leading up to that date. In the last 5-7 years those prices have jumped to $8.50 for a matinee and $10 for a full price show.

So you can easily make the argument that torrents and downloading have caused the price to rise because they are losing profits so they make up for it with higher prices. This is nothing new. If a store has stuff stolen from it they pass the cost of those stolen goods onto the customers in the form of slightly higher prices.

If a movie were available in all platforms: DVD, theater, pay per view, online stream and download from the first day it was released it would probably cause the cost of a ticket to either bottom out in order to compete, or go up in hopes of cashing in on those still willing to pay to go to the theater. Would it make more money overall for the studio? Doubtful. There would still be a ton of people downloading it for free and those that were paying for legit views would pay less so the profit from the movie would be less.

marvel studios in your iron man example makes like 97 cents of the ticket price
they made more money from the product placement for the car and the burger king. Merchandising(burger king) made more for marvel than they made from the box office for that movie. since those deals are based on eyeballs (irregardless of weather they see it in the theater, or pirate it) those numbers would go up significantly if they licienced it across the mediums. Add branding bugs, to the mix and you could easily make it up on volume (10 to 1 according to the mpaa means you only have to get 9.7 cents per downloader to break even). Sell the branding bugs to advertisers (burger king) and you could make that 10 cents per viewer easily, especially when streaming tv shows are selling show wide prerolls for $120/k or 12 cents per viewer.

Now we are talking about a different thing though. Marvel didn't fully produce Iron Man. Paramount put up most of the money and saw a lions share of the profit. As part of their licensing agreement Marvel got a piece of the box office take instead of just a flat fee for using the character. They also licensed the character to places like Burger King and the people that made the action figures. Paramount putting big dollars behind the movie, getting it made and getting a lot of people to see it helped make Marvel more for its licensing. Marvel benefited by getting some nice profit without having to expose themselves to much risk.

Licensing prices can be directly related to box office power or perceived box office power. If a movie is coming out that has nobody of note in it and is not something big and mainstream it is going to be hard to sell product placements and licensing deals to Burger King. Take, for example, The Punisher: War Zone. This is another Marvel movie and it comes from a very popular comic, yet if flopped at the box office and will die a slow death on DVD. Why? Maybe it is because there was nobody of name associated with it. Maybe it was marketed wrongly. Maybe it was released at a bad time. Who knows for sure. But if you charge a company big dollars to have their product in your movie and the movie flops, what you will be able to charge for future product placements goes down drastically. It is easy to say that money can be made with a big budget movie that has major movie stars and well known director in it (not to count a huge multi-million dollar ad campaign). It is not so easy for the smaller movie to make that money when the box office take and viewership is less certain. Even if you are giving the movie away for free in an online stream there is no guarantee that you will get any number of viewers.

Again, however, All the rationalization of potential lost of gained profits doesn't change the fact that you can't just download a movie because you don't feel the price of the ticket is fair.

if that were true then the 1 download != 1 lost sale would never have happened
quite simply there would be no one who could/would legitimately complain that they would not be a lost sale

what about the countries where the movie does not play at all.
what about people like my dad who because of a handicap can't go to the theater
there are countless examples of people who can't buy the content in the theater delivered format, but would buy it in a streamed to your home format if it was provided.
People who if they did not download would not purchase it at all ( 9/10 downloaders according to the MPAA study)

You are rationalizing the damage plain and simple.
if the your life is not going to end is the bases of your arguement then your life is not going to end if you don't make 9 cents of profit (1 sale in 10 that it actually cost)

your life is not going to end if you don't have the right to prevent 9 people who could not /would not buy from you from seeing your content.

the fact is for the example we are talking about , you suffer zero economic loss from the piracy if all the cams disappeared bama would still not go to the theater to see the movie
he would wait for it to come out on dvd because the theater experience is what he is avoiding.

infact based on your arguement bama i will pay for it later arguement applies and the copyright holder is fully paid when it finally airs on tv.
9/10 people who download a movie would never have bought the movie in at that time/place it was offered (mpaa own study)

again price is not the consideration for th 9/10 people we are talking about, it things like format availablity, or just availablity that are the issue. it the inconviences that are unassociated with price.
only when it is available in all medium charging the monopoly pricing for the studio (not the distribution companies). where the distribution companies must compete with each other to deliver the content licienced at monopoly prices can you make the price arguement. I think that if that were done the online stream would win, because by cutting all the middle men out of the look they could easily pay full monopoly prices and still give the content away for free.

iron man was the first movie fully produced by marvel studios so you are dead wrong on this
production for the movie was paid fully by marvel
distribution was handled by paramount and they did spend between 50-75 million in promoting the movie across a lot o mediums but they did not cover any of the actual production budget.



and again we are not talking about price, the numbers i am giving you are based on the recovery cost to compensate for the lost revenue due to piracy. it has everything to do with The tiny fraction of the box office that they are getting for that distribution medium. if you were to completely eliminate the piracy 9/10 people who download would NOT go to see the movie in the theater for a laundry list of reasons, all unrelated to price. The fact that the cost allocation necessary to recover the 1 lost sale, means they would only have to charge 9 cents does not mean that is the price they will charge. They will charge a profit maximizing price and when they do, only those people who are representative of a true lost sale would pirate the content. Everyone else would buy it.
1 download = 1 sale would be true, so the same legal liabilities would apply.

That being said, if the studios favored one distribution medium over another because of equity investment or partnership deals (paramount stake in famous players) then sherman anti trust laws should apply because a copyright is a government granted monopoly.

Downloading movies is wrong. You should shoplift the DVD.

Well, clearly this argument is going nowhere. I'm not going to convince you and you won't convince me one way or the other.

To me it is less about money and more about artists being able to control the distribution of their work. If they don't want certain people to see it, they should be allowed that right and in a previous post you seemed to agree with me on that.

Then you argue that anyone should have access to it as long as it isn't damaging the company. I disagree. Damages or not, the owner of the movie (or music or art or book or whatever) should get to decide for themselves how and where it is distributed. That is it. That is my point. It doesn't matter if you downloading a copy of it doesn't damage them, you should not be allowed to do it if they don't want you to.

Access to movies and music is not a basic human right. If a movie isn't playing in a theater near you, tough shit. If you can't make it to the theater because of physical problems, wait until it comes out on DVD and order a copy of it and have it sent to your house. If it is not available for sale to you where you live, get over it. Life will go on if you don't get to see Iron Man. The studio may lose out on some revenue, but if that is the choice they have made, they should be allowed to make that choice.

Maybe you are correct about Marvel producing Iron Man. I would like to see where you saw that they only got 97 cents from each ticket sale because that seems awfully low.




I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree that 9 out of 10 downloaders are not motivated by price. I think price is the number one reason people download stuff. They can either pay $15 for the DVD or get it for free online. I'm not saying every one of those people represents a lost sales, but to say 9 out of 10 are not motivated by price is stretching it. I would say just the opposite that about 8 out of 10 are motivated by price.