
Google's Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. - PaperclipTaken
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120430/07083218708/googles-fiber-makes-mpaa-skittish-why-does-hollywood-see-all-technology-terms-piracy.shtml
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esonderegger
I think the tech community thinks the MPAA is much more monolithic than they
actually are. The individual companies are not going to agree on what content
to offer at what rates in a new high-speed market, so the MPAA is going to
talk about the one thing its members agree upon: piracy=bad.

I honestly have no idea why the MPAA spokesman decided to go on the record
about Google Fiber. If it were me, I would have just managed expectations by
pointing out that it's probably not in the interest of of MPAA member studios
to remaster their content for gigabit rates, given such a small potential
audience.

It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie
they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone
like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the residents
of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, every writer,
director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases would be up in arms
saying they're not charging enough.

~~~
magicalist
> It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie
> they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for
> someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the
> residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did,
> every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases
> would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough.

Well, that sounds like an opportunity for most industries, not a problem, but
momentum there is what it is (the dig at writers and directors is odd, since
of course the studios are in line for by far the most royalties, they're the
ones that insist on ever more draconian DRM schemes and higher prices to
"preserve" the perceived value of film, and in the 2007 writers guild strike
they wanted to give the writers _nothing_ for royalties on streaming video).

But even streaming bluray quality video, which is available for every movie on
bluray, would be a huge step up, and much more realistic for the speeds we'll
see over a "gigabit" network. I was leaning more toward Amazon video for tv
shows and movies recently, but the new 1080p itunes video has made me switch
back. Even though it's relatively poor quality for the resolution, the step up
from the 720p versions has been fantastic. Moving up to something approaching
bluray would be something else entirely, I would pay as much or more for it as
I do on itunes, and the instant gratification is something no torrent can
match.

Now the economics might not be there -- most people will mess up the video
input or not even notice the bump in resolution, and to be honest, I almost
always rent movies on itunes, not buy them (though doing so at a steady rate
basically turns me into a willing subscriber who owns nothing, which is pretty
much their dream) -- but there certainly is a viable technical option.

~~~
esonderegger
I didn't mean it as a dig at writers and directors, although going back and
re-reading my post it certainly seems like it (my bad). I merely wanted to
point out how large the number of stake-holders is for your average motion
picture. One significant reason the film industry is so slow to catch up to
the internet is because it's so hard to get those stake-holders to agree to
anything and, at least until recently, their contracts weren't written with an
eye to technologies that didn't exist yet.

I think the reason we've stand-up comedians be among the first to offer
audience-friendly distribution is that they don't have to go back an
renegotiate all their contracts to allow them to give the audience what they
want.

I agree that blu-ray quality video streaming to the home would be a huge step
forward (and actually a very reasonable usage of that bandwidth - the higher
bitrate codecs are mostly useful for reduced latency, which really isn't an
issue for Hollywood content). There would probably still have to be some
remastering, at least of the audio, which is not optimized for streaming,
which would be expensive given the current market size.

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jsz0
Just another example of how out of touch the MPAA is with reality. Any 10Mbit+
connection is perfectly adequate for downloading pirated material. It very
possibly might take an individual less time to download a torrent than to
navigate some archaic cable box UI to find the same program. Mandatory un-
skippable movie trailers on DVDs or BluRays can take longer to watch than
downloading a torrent. Why isn't the MPAA concerned about that?

~~~
gregable
While I don't disagree with your overall sentiment, most "high speed" internet
connections have rather limited upload speeds which can have some limiting
factor on peer-to-peer activity (including piracy).

~~~
greggman
Does it really matter? My nephew and his roommates managed to download 750gig
of movies in 3weeks on their comcast internet.

With the average movie size being around 750meg that's 1000 movies. (not that
I would actually know the size of a ripped movie ;-) So on gigabit they'll be
able to get more faster but if we're already at 1000 movies in 3 weeks what
does it matter? That's more than 2x than you can actually watch on those 3
weeks if you could even manage to watch 24/7

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Natsu
Ars Technica had a similar article last week. They're probably worried that
Google isn't a party to the "six strikes" copyright plan that's supposed to
start up this summer, which is a private agreement among the large content
owner/ISPs which control internet access for most Americans.

There are also rumors of some kind of video service being offered by Google,
so they might worry about that, too.

EDIT: Link = [http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/big-content-
eye...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/big-content-eyes-google-
fiber-deployment-in-kansas-city-warily.ars)

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justinjlynn
This does not surprise me at all. The existing media cartels have always
opposed new technologies that make the transfer of information between
individuals easier and faster. This is especially when the technology is dumb,
that is, it does not and can not differentiate between content which requires
a license to transfer and that which does not. When you think about it, since
they're in the business of selling intangible 'licenses' for information --
things you don't need to enjoy the information itself -- their actions make
perfect sense. What we need to do, instead of sneering at their perfectly
justified self-interest is re-examine exactly how we grant these groups the
artificial monopoly of copyright in order to ensure that the original purpose,
that is promoting the sciences and the arts, is maintained and that the
behaviour, which is now considered to be anti-social, of these groups is
modified or eliminated.

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pdubs
I'd be curious how the MPAA would view a 25% increase in sales coupled with a
50% increase in piracy.

~~~
nextparadigms
They probably think the sales would've increased 75% if piracy could not
exist, which is of course very flawed logic.

~~~
pavel_lishin
(25% increase in sales) - (50% increase in piracy) = (-25% net loss!)

Good meeting, guys, send out the lawyers and let's go hit the strip club.

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PaulHoule
... to be fair, Hollywood does license a number of streaming and download
services that will take advantage of good broadband, such as Netflix, Amazon
Instant Video, VUDU, iTunes Store, etc.

Hollywood certainly will let you watch movies and TV shows at a variety of
price points, even if it does reserve some control over what is available at
what price and when.

~~~
patrickk
" _...even if it does reserve some control over what is available at what
price and when._ "

And _crucially_ where. If you are outside the US, much of this is either not
available or heavily restricted. Hence piracy is the _only_ option to watch
some movies or shows, depending on where you live. You hear about these great
new shows online, then guess what...you can't watch them legally, even if you
want to.

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enoptix
I wish it were possible to have some sort of multi-channel funnel view of
people who pirate content. Did they pirate a song and then proceed to buy the
album? Did they pirate a the first movie of a series and then later legally
purchase the rest of the series? Do they just pirate content and never
purchase anything?

I think these are interesting questions. Who wants to build something to
answer them?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Wouldn't that basically require everyone who pirates to take a questionnaire
to truthfully answer?

For the record, I've been watching X-Files on Hulu on my laptop. I've made it
through season two, but will probably just download AVI's of the rest of the
seasons, because my Wifi barely works in the kitchen, and the video quality
goes down.

Am I ethically in the clear if I stream the Hulu episodes on my desktop, while
watching pirated AVI's in the kitchen?

~~~
reginaldo
The general question is interesting... I think about it in the lines of:

Is it ok if I take a shortcut to get something that I am entitled to have
access to because the rules by which my access is should abide by are
basically bullshit?

I tend to think it is ok. I'm also indebted to Grace Hopper [1], who came up
with the gem _It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission_
, a behavior that I often find useful. Also, I tend to give the highest level
of access to people working under my supervision so they can do their jobs
without any avoidable hassle. It's important to be consistent, after all.

But (there's always a but) some content creators don't have the same pragmatic
thinking I pride myself in having, and will tell you convoluted stories like
"we don't sell the music/video, we sell the physical disc with the thing
inside, and you can only access such thing trough the disc". And sometimes
these convoluted stories do stick. Except that when you have a network as the
distribution channel they don't work anymore and become plain bizarre "we sell
you only the nontransferable right of watching/listening to this only up to 3
times in the next 24 hours and will not refund you if our network goes down
and you're unable to watch".

So, my answer to you, and to the general question is: IMHO, you're ethically
in the clear, but legally your situation might raise some concerns. Obligatory
disclaimer: this is not legal advice. I would love to see what other people
think about all this, though.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper>

~~~
bo1024
If we were to achieve open and free-as-in-software standards, you wouldn't
have this moral dilemma.

When you pay for the right to use copyrighted content, you should get to use
it on your terms -- in the kitchen or in the family room or wherever you want.
You should be allowed to back up your content in case your computer crashes
and you should be allowed to watch it when you want, even if your Internet is
out.

If content isn't offered on those terms, don't take it.

~~~
b1daly
Your kind of begging the question here. When media was mostly physical, you
did have many if those rights you describe. The problem is networked digital
devices make large scale (unauthorized) copying and distribution cheap,
trivial, and unavoidable. Selling popular (and expensive to make) media
content without DRM and legal (and enforceable ) anti-pirating laws is simply
not viable IMO.

At least I've never heard a scheme floated that seemed remotely plausible as
in industry business structure to do this. I'm music producer and in arguments
where I've explained how expensive it is to produce music and how hard it is
to recoup an investment, when people have understood my argument, they've
thrown up their hands, saying if the music industry is that bad why would
anyone even do it? And I think it points to a general devaluing of creative
work afoot in the culture. That might not seem like a big deal to some, I
think a lot of really don't care about what kinds of media get made or how:
it's just hard tu take the same peoples cries of injustice on the part of the
MPAA as a serious threat to human progress because they can't watch what they
want, whenever they want, for a super low price (or free). It might be that
some awesome new business model exists to support an industry that creates
digital IP products that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity and IP but I
haven't heard any proposed

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jjcm
Any innovation in technology presents a company with two options - adapt, or
risk failure. The MPAA mitigates this by trying to stop innovation. It's a
valid business strategy, albeit one that isn't very good for PR. Luckily more
and more people are becoming aware of what's going on with all of this
PIPA/SOPA/CISPA/ACTA/ETC-A stuff.

~~~
MichaelGG
You may want to reconsider "It is a valid business strategy": it isn't valid
if it does not work.

~~~
roc
'Worked' from whose perspective?

Delaying is invariably cheaper and more effective for any given quarter's
financial results. And after several decades of our market becoming
increasingly quarterly-number obsessed, it seems only fair to judge the
soundness of decision-making based on the market standards.

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wmf
This article seems like pointless MPAA-baiting. We already knew they didn't
like P2P and anything that enables it.

~~~
benologist
It's not MPAA-baiting. It's HN-baiting, and TechDirt are getting very good at
it.

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tomrod
A butterfly flapping its wings in Sweden makes the MPAA skittish too,
unfortunately.

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vampirechicken
How soon do you think, before Google's fiber begins to get accidentally
severed in shared conduit spaces?

~~~
jrockway
My guess is never.

