RIAA, MPAA wish for anti-piracy spyware

General Discussion (off topic) Anything and everyt
1
If the music and movie industries had their way, they’d have spyware on every computer for the purpose of catching copyright infringement.

I’m not making this up. The Recording Industry and Motion Picture Associations of America actually offered up the idea to the government as a way to enforce intellectual property law. The U.S. Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is seeking these comments as it forms a “Joint Strategic Plan” for cracking down on copyright infringement.
Spyware (or as the MPAA and RIAA put it, “Consumer tools for managing copyright infringement from the home”), is just one of the measures recommended by the entertainment industry. On the Internet service provider side, they’d like to see bandwidth throttling, traffic filtering, content recognition technologies and Web site blocking and redirection, complete with warning messages and quarantines of repeat offending sites.

All those other recommendations seem pretty obvious coming from Big Content. Of course they’d love to have piracy sites and people who illegally share copyrighted music effectively erased from the Internet.

But the idea of anti-piracy spyware just doesn’t make any sense. Surely they’re not asking the government to make people install software, because that’s way too extreme and maybe unconstitutional. But if the anti-piracy tools are voluntary, what’s the point? To help parents keep tabs on what their kids are downloading? Even if that’s the case, there’s technically nothing stopping the RIAA and MPAA from offering this kind of tool on their own, without government help. Not that anyone would install it after Sony BMG messed up computers with its rootkit software.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, “these comments are just an entertainment industry wishlist, an exercise in asking for the moon.” But they highlight how the industries would gladly jeopardize privacy and freedom in order to protect their copyrights. They also show that the RIAA and MPAA are full of bad ideas.


The RIAA and MPAA also need to learn the internet isn’t going away

2

I have a simple way to prevent piracy, make the price for music Cd’s, and movies more reasonable. Don’t charge me $15 for a cd when $5 would cover the cost to record the music and pay the artists. Don’t charge me $30 for a bluray just becasue it’s new technology, it does not cost 3 times as much to make as it does a dvd. If new music was $5 a cd and movies were $10, I think people would not pirate anymore. And in exchange the companies would make more money because more people would buy the content, but in the end it’s what it has always been about, greed. They want to make as much money as possible in every aspect and in every way possible.

3

Pirates make the products, movies and music much more popular. It’s free advertising. But those a-holes that run entertainment studios never take that into account. Well, they do, but they can’t show it.

4

I find it hard to believe when MPAA says piracy is costing people jobs :-TD My question is, How could it be possible that it’s costing people’s jobs when there making record breaking profits for the last couple of years ???

5

Always the same discussion, altough all of you know you are not right.

Yes, movies and music are far too expensive, but if people would make some kind of strike and not attend them so much, they would be less expensive: it is only a business offer/demand ratio like in any other business.

No, at least at the time speaking, music and movie majors have not prosecuted mister everybody for a few downloaded music and movies: all the documented cases concern people having downloaded thousands of them (and sometime reselling them), and no one can say that any of these people could afford paying 2000 X 5$ instead of 2000 x 15$.

I already said in the past that, even if on a very small scale, i have (or had, more and more, paid software is only useful for very specific needs) not myself paid for everything i use.

But i am conscious of such an infringment, and i wouldn’t have any argument to protest if even the small end user like me came to be caught.

In books, scientifical work, movies, music…, intellectual property is protected by the law like industrial property is suppose to be, and yes, it is a normal behaviour and makes a lot of people live outside of authors or engineers themselves.
MGM is near out of business, isn’t it?

Now, the discussion whether to state if some lousy musician or movies author deserves royalties often very disproportionnated to their talent is another story, and still depends of the offer/demand logic:
if you don’t like double zeros, don’t listen or watch them, they shall fall by themselves.
if you do, you actually deserve to be stolen.

As a last comment, i of course advocate for complete privacy, and the only fact that Microsoft tries to spy you from Media player and DRM even if you don’t use it (or that Comodo tries in the same way to sell your soul to ask.com, a known spyware) is an insult.

But how many of you don’t actually sell, but give this privacy to whatever “social network” on earth?

Be fair, say you want to download and not be caught, it is perfectly understandable; but don’t use unfair arguments regarding privacy and intellectual property.

6

Just let me say this, I have not spent the money on a cd or DVD in years, why because I can stream most of my music and watch streamed movies online. But today I actually went and bought the Avatar bluray/dvd set, for $20. I though it was a fair price for both. That is my first retail buy in over 5 years, so every once in a while even I will buy a movie or CD. ;D

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I haven’t even downloaded any videos/movies…I don’t care about things like that. With music and software (and some e-books), however…it is a different matter. 88)

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Your right. Example a game here= borderlands:$100
That’ s absurd. No wonder people download.

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I always “test” before I buy. Unless it’s a darn good movie/game I don’t bother paying for it. But if it’s a good one, I find it more than fair to pay.

Why would I pay for a game that I play 5 minutes and find a complete waste of my time and developing time…

eXp

10

They don’t release demos most of the time, that’s a problem too.

11

Granted I think games are expensive, but thats why I don’t play them much :stuck_out_tongue:

But music and DVDs/Blu-rays I think are quite cheap. Avatar DVD/BD set was £16 and that’s new, normally If I wait about 3 weeks I can get a BD for about £10, I don’t think thats too bad. (I have yet to watch the Avatar BD as my player needs a firmware upgrade 88)) Mainly if you shop around you can get them cheap. I saw a BD of a TV show I wanted one shop was charging £50 the other £18 ;D.

If you buy MP3 Albums there normally about £5 for me, but more in shops because they love to make money off the Cover Prints and CD’s

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But you have illegal downloading to thank for the cheaper prices. I remember when new albums where selling near the £20 mark now most are under a tenner.

Cheers
Shaun