

Beyond ACTA: Next secret copyright agreement negotiated this week—in Hollywood - tux1968
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/beyond-acta-next-secret-copyright-agreement-negotiated-this-weekin-hollywood.ars

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joelrunyon
This is just exasperating.

For all the work they're putting into creating a copyright regime, they could
do build their own netflix and put everything on it, charge $10/month and fix
their piracy problem like _that_.

Makes me wonder if they sort of enjoy being the evil villain in this whole
thing.

~~~
dangrossman
Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries when the
average blockbuster DVD/Blu-Ray release sells 1-2 million units a month from
each individual movie?

Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries instead of
getting a couple million from Starz, a couple million from HBO, a couple
million from Showtime, etc just to license a couple movies at a time for their
networks?

Why would they want to charge $10/month for their full libraries when they get
millions to sell a couple new releases at a time to cable operators for On
Demand rentals?

Simply licensing everything for internet streaming for a couple bucks a month
solves the piracy problem, but it also completely destroys their profits. They
make far more money with the current system of physical discs, staggered
format releases and exclusive licensing deals for different segments of their
library with different distributors than they would make giving it all away
for pennies per movie on a streaming service.

What did Netflix take in last quarter in revenues? $800 million or so? That's
just 4 times the DVD revenue from Avatar. One movie.

~~~
vijayr
why would they spend insane amounts of time and money on brokering horrible
laws? Even if these laws did pass today, they would surely crumble in a few
years?

Why would they work so hard, to gain the hatred and displeasure of the very
public that pays money to watch their work, and makes them rich in the
process?

As the parent says, may be they enjoy being the villain in this whole drama.

If they want, they can kill netflix overnight. heck, they can charge 50$ a
month, and many people would gladly pay (I know I would) _even_ if the movies
come to streaming a full month later than their theater release date.

How long do you think they can keep playing this cat and mouse game? The only
_real_ winners in this entire shit, are the lawyers.

~~~
dangrossman
I think you, and others, underestimate the enormity of the revenues the movie
studios are generating.

The MPAA represents 6 studios that produced about 15% of theatrical releases
last year. They only released 12 of the top 25 movies in theaters too. The
MPAA studios alone generate about $40 billion in revenue a year; I didn't try
to add up all the other studios, but you can imagine the total revenue is
enormous. What they spend lobbying for these laws is a pittance in comparison.

Total box office gross was $32 billion last year. Let's be generous and say
the MPAA got 50% of the box office sales despite having less than 50% of the
top movies. That leaves $24 billion in revenue from their films each year not
including the theater releases. That's $24 billion from physical discs,
licensing to cable providers, licensing to TV channels, licensing to premium
cable channels, licensing to the existing streaming services, etc.

If the MPAA studios launched a streaming service at $50 per month, this would
displace most of their revenue from other distribution models -- people would
buy far fewer DVDs and they simply wouldn't get the agreements with cable
networks, premium channels, etc. if customers can already get the movie from
this website a month after theater.

To make up for that revenue they would have to find 480 million subscribers at
$50. Do you think they can? I doubt it at that price point; that's more than
most people spend on movie consumption across all channels now. Even if they
could do it, those 480 million subscribers would only replace the revenue of
the 6 MPAA studios, not the other 85% of the movie production market.

Whenever I see a "why don't they just give us what we want and stream
everything like Netflix" suggestion, I see "why don't these companies just
burn 85% of their profits", because that'd be about the same as far as their
financials go.

~~~
vijayr
okay, thanks for the numbers. they sure are enormous.

some points though:

 _people would buy far fewer DVDs_ people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether
the studios like it or not. the studios can't do anything about it. I can't
remember the last time I bought either a movie DVD or a music DVD. I go to
spotify or netflix, or a movie theater, so simply won't watch it, if DVD is my
only option. Others might be different though.

 _I doubt it at that price point_ If I go to the theater once, the absolute
minimum I spend is 20$ (ticket + popcorn), and this is for a single guy. If I
had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big cities. so
50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would go for it.

One thing is sure - the whole situation is fucked up. It has to change, it
_will_ change. It is just that the transition period is going to be awful. And
we get to watch it, and be a part of it.

~~~
dangrossman
> people are anyway not buying DVDs, whether the studios like it or not

You're really out of touch with reality. In 2011, the top 100 movies sold
146,455,878 DVD copies (estimated, not all retailers disclose exact numbers).

Here's last week's North American DVD (non-Blu-Ray) sales:

<http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/weekly/thisweek.php>

> If I had a family, it would be in the 50-100$ range, especially in big
> cities. so 50$ is actually much cheaper, and my guess is many people would
> go for it.

This is working against you... in arguing that people would spend $50/mo for
this because it's an alternative to theaters, you're also arguing it would
cannibalize the revenue from box office sales. Remember it was 480 million
subscribers for just the MPAA's 6 studios to break even if the box office
revenue was untouched.

There's only around a billion computers in the world -- so here's a good recap
of your plan: Get every single computer owner in the world to subscribe to a
$50/month studio-backed streaming service. If they can't get every computer
owner in the world to subscribe, then they will make less money than they do
today not offering the service.

That's all it takes to see why the service doesn't exist.

~~~
joelrunyon
Do you have numbers on year-over-year sales for DVDs?

While they're still big, I would assume that they're declining.I think what
the parent commenter was trying to make as the streaming is how people are
going to be consuming information. Not everyone's there yet, of course, but
thats where things are shifting to.

It would make sense for MPAA to set itself up to succeed in the coming world
where the majority of people want to stream their entertainment,rather than
trying to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out.

~~~
dangrossman
What would make sense is to set itself up to succeed in the streaming world
AND try to preserve a model that is slowly being phased out. Which,
unsurprisingly, is exactly what they're doing. They ARE licensing movies to
Netflix, Amazon VOD/Prime, iTunes, Hulu, etc. after all. They're just picking
and choosing what parts of their catalog to stream and when to offer it such
that it won't cannibalize the revenue from DVD sales and other sources they
don't need to give up yet.

All they have to do to maximize revenue in the coming world is to shift
timelines -- release more movies faster on the streaming services as the
effect of doing so has less of an effect on other distribution channels.

~~~
joelrunyon
I would agree with you, but they're trying to preserve the dying model's
functions in the new model, which doesn't operate like that.

I completely agree with you, that doing something like you mentioned makes
sense, but it doesn't excuse them from trying to censor the internet, buy
congress and be an online bully that gets to take down entire sites for
actions their users have done.

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waterlesscloud
Compulsory licensing. Shorter copyright terms. These are the reasonable
responses.

In politics, you've got to define the playing field if you want to win. If you
let the big copyright holders do all the defining, we get more of what we've
gotten. We need a different viewpoint to balance things out.

~~~
1010011010
It's time to not just resist further expansion of copyright and copyright
enforcement, but to push back.

* Reduce copyright terms to the original 14 years.

* Retroactively.

* Make copyright non-renewable

* Require registration of works with the copyright office

* Assess an annual fee proportional to revenue earned from the copyrighted work

* Provide for stiff penalties for asserting copyright over works you do not hold the copyright to.

* Affirm that public domain works can never be copyrighted.

Make them fight on those terms.

~~~
mindslight
The content cartels would be quite alright with these terms (they'd of course
fight them in the short term, though). Their primary goal is to revert us to
the days of receive-only information display terminals (TV). To actually push
back:

 __* A right to Internet access (RAND terms, no 'identity'-based blacklisting
by government or ISP)

 __* A right to personal computing devices (and require unlockable
bootloaders)

 __* Decriminalization of anything copyright related, civil penalties only.

 __* A right for one's computing infrastructure to stay intact throughout
court proceedings. (Seizing someone's servers gags them without due process).

------
po
I live in Japan and here I have seen some talk/debate of wether or not to join
the TPP on TV and in the news. My first time hearing about it was on Japanese
TV. Many Japanese are nervous about the effect of IP restrictions on the
manga/self-publishing industry in Japan:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
Pacific_Strategic_Economi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
Pacific_Strategic_Economic_Partnership#Controversy_over_Intellectual_Property_.28IP.29_provisions)

There is a desire not to be left out of an important partnership, but they are
wary to end up on the exploitive end of a bad deal. I think everyone is still
trying to figure out what is in this thing.

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bad_user
The Internet is disrupting old media, content industries, governments and
democracy, being the ultimate platform for disruptive businesses, for freedom
of speech, for the mass distribution of leaked secrets, for organizing
revolutions.

After years of laughing about it and ignoring it, 2010 was the year that broke
the camel's back, with the Wikileaks releases and the Tunisian revolution and
the Egyptian revolutionand with iTunes and Amazon starting to influence people
over what's cool or not.

It's freaking them out, as people are suddenly able to think for themselves.

This indeed is the year of the storm, the year in which they are trying to put
the genie back in the bottle.

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goblin89
Just occurred to me: once it'll become too costly to consume, will people just
start being creative and make things more? That's a benefit in the long run, I
guess.

~~~
lnguyen
They've trained the public for generations to _not_ use their imagination and
creativity. The withdrawal is probably painful enough to keep them going for a
while even past that point.

------
politician
Did we expect them to go quietly into the night?

------
shareme
I say secret deals with corrupt politicians means no comprising with these
assholes

We should now on assume that every politician is bought and paid for until
otherwise proven innocent.

The tech industry needs to take the kid gloves off

~~~
bad_user
The tech industry is operating within the limits imposed by the government and
their shareholders. If the FBI were to shut Google down, even for a couple of
days, that would be devastating to their bottom line.

That's why there isn't much they can do about it, other than to inform people
of what's going on.

Ultimately the power lies with the people. It is the people that have to call
their representative, or take it out on the streets if necessary, or to
boycott the companies involved.

Also, we as developers, must fight back by promoting and working on
alternative protocols for distributing content that bypasses firewalls and
protects the privacy of users.

