
EFF: The Entertainment Industry's Dystopia of the Future - ALee
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/entertainment-industrys-dystopia-future
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carbocation
Software piracy strikes me as something most appropriately cast as a civil
offense. Like physical theft, it allows the 'thief' to freely obtain something
they would not otherwise have had without paying. But with physical theft,
there is a risk of physical violence or damage. With piracy, there is not. So,
while I can understand certain aspects of a physical theft to incur criminal
charges, I think piracy is less deserving of a criminal label. Without trying
to make a judgment about the pros and cons of piracy for an industry (because
there appear to be both), I simply want to suggest that music piracy is very
low on the list of things that I want my government to be involved in.

The RIAA/MPAA are co-opting the government into spending taxpayer dollars to
enforce the recording industry's licensing policies. It's a crafty but
regressive strategy that seems unlikely to be successful in the long term.

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j-g-faustus
"The planned release of a blockbuster motion picture should be acknowledged as
an event that attracts the focused efforts of copyright thieves... Enforcement
agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan a similarly focused
preventive and responsive strategy. An interagency task force should work with
industry to ... react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary."

Looks like the movie and music industry thinks that file sharing is a threat
to society along the lines of terrorism.

~~~
wmf
IIRC, one of their talking points a few years back was that piracy funds
terrorism. They're just trying to get to the root of the problem.

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praptak
Making outlandish requests in order to get a better deal is an old practice
but even with that taken into account this is ... disturbing. I'd rather live
in a world with no commercial content at all.

~~~
cabalamat
Then don't buy anything from any RIAA/MPAA company, and persuade all your
friends that doing so is unethical.

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kiba
It would seem to me, that to the hollywood mind, nothing would seem more
outrageous and more insane than letting go of control over the distribution
mechanism of movies and media.

However, it would seem that moviemakers who embrace no control would be a
greater threat than the renegade filesharers.

They would probably already found a business model that embrace p2p. All it
take is for a ruthless media entrepreneur to wreck creative destruction over
the existing order of Hollywood.

~~~
rjett
I'm trying to brainstorm what a model that embraced p2p would look like in the
context of the movie industry. For music, it means concert ticket prices have
gone way up. To some extent, I think the same effect can be seen in movie
ticket prices (though production budgets have skyrocketed for blockbuster
movies over time and this also affects movie ticket prices). I paid $17 to go
see Avatar in IMAX!

I think the music industry can get by w/ higher and higher concert prices
because each concert/venue is a separate,unique product and people don't mind
paying for a band they really like. In the movie industry, although there is a
small subset of moviegoers who will go see the same movie 6 times in the
theater, the product is completely consistent through each viewing so after a
certain point of price hikes, I think less and less people will attend movies
in the theater.

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GHFigs
Can I see the EFF's Utopia of the Future for comparison?

~~~
chris11
The eff wrote an essay on how to deal with music piracy.

They basically said that although artists need to be fairly compensated that
piracy is not going to disappear. They also think that government interference
should be minimized and that fans will always be better at distribution.

Their suggestion is voluntary collective licensing. Basically artists join
licensing organizations and fans pay money to the organization to get the
right to legally download music. Artists don't have to join, but non-member
artists would be faced with the tough task of collecting money from infringing
fans.

They also suggest compulsory licensing for property that owners refuse to
license at any cost. They note that the government has done this in other
cases. Compulsory licensing was enforced with radio, internet radio,
cable/satellite tv, and player pianos.

Links:

[http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-
collectiv...](http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-
licensing-music-file-sharing)

<http://www.eff.org/pages/making-p2p-legal>

Overall the suggestions seem reasonable from my point of view.

