So the film and music industry thinks it's being hard done by and thus is pursuing anyone it can, dragging their sorry arses into court ..
Your internet service provider may fall foul of these guys, if it hasn't already. You may have your own government abandon you and let Them drag you kicking and screaming from your own country to the US where they can hit you for ridiculous amounts of money.
You may even suffer the indignity of having what must be the worst playlist ever made public before being slugged $80,000 per song in court for your efforts.
Of course this is all in the name of preventing the callous public from depriving artists from their rightful income (*cough*bllsht*cough)
yah, so I guess The Industry would completely understand when the artists go after the recording industry for unpaid royalties in the billions and just hand over the cash right? yeah no stupid.
So what IS the problem? Are the artists being deprived? Is the Industry losing billions? Will they PROMISE not to make any more crappy Australian films if we download enough to send them broke?
The way the industry figures it, every song or movie downloaded is a sale they didn't make. They interpret this in dollars then send their minions/lobbyists/running dogs off to harass governments into passing laws to make the downloading of stuff illegal.
News guys - it's not.. It's breach of COPYRIGHT not theft.
And another thing, pirates? really? Come on.. Pirates were those guys who had DVD burning setups in the back of the shop spinning off fakes which they sold for profit, they were NOT the people who bought the movies, neither are the people who now download the movies.
Newsflash for The Industry - attacking your customers is not the way to inspire loyalty, and you're gonna face a nasty baaaacklaaaaash! I know of people who have stopped buying, renting or going to the movies who now only buy second hand DVD's. Suck on that.
Oh wait, I hear an industry apologist approaching wailing about the movie industry collapsing - ok buddy, let's look at a few theories floating about these days as to why The Industry may not be as hard up as they say.
Music sales are down. Um yeah, they are, that's true.
Background to that: The music industry saw the biggest EVER increase in CD sales the year Napster P2P was introduced- EVER! Sales have fallen slooowly since then, but they've not yet got to the point pre-Napster, so in fact The Industry is still riding the wave and can go shut the fck up. Some have suggested that Napster made it easy for people to hear stuff thy would not normally hear of the radio and after they took a liking to what the heard they went out and bought it .. Coz that's what people do when they like stuff - we hoard, it's our nature. In fact Napster did for The Industry exactly what radio did all those years back, it made the music available to people.
Film sales are down. Um yeah, not true.
The Industry is booming and making more than ever before, except in Oz where our incestuous film industry just keeps swallowing the tax breaks, doling out the jobs to has-beens and producing the same amateurish quirky/gritty crud that no one likes.
One Industry observer noted an interesting reason why sales of certain movies is down, and they made an observation .. We have the Internet; Some movies are crud; we read reviews on the internet that say a movie is teeming with flies and so we don't give you our money to sit through it, simple! He noted that in years gone by movie releases would be staggered out across the world and so say for the first week everyone would go sit through an excruciating pile of dross before word got out to the rest of the community that they'd have a more satisfying experience putting their money in the blender. Nowadays people are sitting there in world premieres tapping out a review for IMDB.COM before the movie has even finished, subsequently The Industry is seeing some movies bomb in the first week of release. They don't get to shuffle it off to the next town/state/country and sucker the next crowd like they once did
too bad, so sad - your movie flopped, suck it up. District 9 cost sod all and is still raking it in, Avatar is steaming along. Make us something decent and we WILL pay to see it - fact.
And don't try stupid tactics like this to attempt to garner public sympathy, when you get caught uploading videos and then complaining about pirate material YOU UPLOADED, it just makes you look like the lying pack of mongrels you are
Another reason sales are failing - World of Warcraft. Come on and face it. each person pays $15 a month for unlimited entertainment. Dude, the video store charges $10 for 5 movies for a week - apples to apples that's $40 a month to play roulette as to whether your 7 1/2-ish hours a week of watching time will be fun or painful. I can sink 40 freaking hours a week into WoW, 160 hours a month into WoW for $15 and I'd play more if the boss would quit asking me to come back to work!
you cannot compete. Computer games score 1, Film industry zero.
Television? laugh! no one watches anymore suckers.. I discovered I had no reception on my TV the other day when I was feeling too sick to stumble into Onyxia's lair and beat the crap out her Dragoness, and when I went outside to see why the neighbour told me a sodding ibis landed on it some time last year and busted the antenna off .. I had no idea! Shows how much I miss it.
Other industry observers have said the Film Industry needs to consider a new business model, using the internets and . uh, something - maybe like errrrmmm, the one the i-Fruit Company uses. OK, Industry observer, you're dismissed now ..fool.
Face it, they want all your Earth Monies and they wants them now - no way the bastar.. er, The Industry is going to actually sell you a movie for a dollar. Come on. Here in Oz when VHS movies were on the shelves beside their slimline cousins we were seeing prices of $20 for a VHS and $30 for a DVD. so um yeah right - there's a lot more cost in VHS cassette manufacturing so why are the DVD's more expensive?
No.. Don't open your mouth, you're just going to lie to me Mr Industry person. Treat me like a fool and see how far it gets you..
STAMP, glue, DVD is done. load 500 cassettes into the 500 VHS recorders, press play on the master and record on the burners, come back in two hours. manually unload and reload then repeat. Anything you'd care to add? no, didn't think so.
No what you guys want is to see the never ending profits from the 'uptake days', you don't want to accept that markets can saturate, plateau or even fall quite naturally. You want to be immune from the economic hardships the rest of the world may be enduring.. I understand this. You think your gods dammit, and we MUST give you what you want!
OK let's play pretend for a bit.
Imagine a world without the Internets.
Imagine a world without mp3 players or those expensive Fruit Company fashion accessories.
Imagine there is no such thing as a DVD burner, a video player or recorder, a tape deck (that's cassettes, mouthbreather) and keyfob remote controlled central locking in your car - in fact dammit, let's pretend cars don't even have locks on the doors.
How on earth could a film industry survive?
Could the stars get rich and buy multistory houses overlooking the Californian coast, yachts, dozens of cars? - I ask this because I genuinely care.. Could they travel the world, explore lives of leisure hobnobbing it with royalty and generally living so wildly beyond anything I can ever imagine for myself?
People would have to go to cinemas to watch these movies.. and they'd probably demand their money back from time to time if they didn't like the film .. and the owners would refund them without question. People would clap at the end of movies, and often ashtrays would be provided for us smokers. I guess people would only go once a week too, probably on Saturdays to see the matinee - and they migh buy an icecream too.
What about musicians? I mean, say if music only ever came piped across the airwaves by radio - or was sold to the public on flat disks of vinyl - could The Industry possibly survive?
hmmmmmmm, one can only wonder.
4:10 a.m. - 2010-03-19
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