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UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

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Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#91

Post by prepend »

rebelos wrote: post #14
ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

> You cannot have both

Yet, we do have both. We are at both peak piracy and peak revenue for digital content.

I think it’s false that people state that these things are exclusive.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#92

Post by prepend »

loxias wrote: post #90
rebelos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

Remember that narrow window of time when Netflix had All The TV and was the only streaming platform, which you could access for a low monthly fee? I've always thought and argued that while money might be part of the motivation for digital piracy, ease of access and user experience is also a large component. 10 bucks a month to stream anything, without commercials, was great! For those few years I didn't download anyt…

Disney is already pushing a package of Hulu+Disney+espn. My family wants both Hulu and Disney+ but no one cares about espn. They are already starting and it’s only a matter of time until hbo is $15 or $14 when bundled with peacock (or whatever).

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#93

Post by Joakal »

blibble wrote: post #18

> Which Allegedly Caused Tens of Millions of Dollars in Losses so how many uploaded movies is that? 3?

$500k for first offence and $1m for each next offence. At "tens", we're talking about $20-90m?

So, that means 21-91 DVDs.

In other news, if you wilfully share a copyrighted picture of an American citizen, that's a $500,000 fine and USA will extradite and jail you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#94

Post by 29athrowaway »

ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

Many serious electronic crimes can be described as copying bits.

Like illegally exfiltrating and distributing PII, credit card info, etc.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#95

Post by [deleted] »

mattl wrote: post #80
new_guy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People would much rather pay Netflix a small monthly fee for unlimited access to all the TV shows they watch than hunt them down online. Except Netflix, Now TV and Amazon Prime etc DON'T HAVE any of the shows I actually want to watch. It's farcical. I want to pay them, I want to watch shows legally but I can't, so I end up watching them on the 'illegal' sites that do have them.

What shows or movies do you want to watch that none of them are on Netflix or Amazon Prime?

[deleted]

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#96

Post by lolinder »

HotHotLava wrote: post #60
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be impossible to make a living writing books or recording music or movies? Because that's what it amounts to. Imagine writing a book, selling a copy for $10 to the first reader, and then the rest of the readers get it for free. Or printing a book and having a competing publisher type it up and sell it, taking all the profit.

Even in that strawman version of the argument, competing publishers would not be able to "steal" all the profit because they also could only sell the books more or less at cost. The price floor for physical books in such a world would, I imagine, be set by some chinese on-demand printing factories. Business models for authors would shift towards patreon supporters, subscription fees for periodical releases, signed co…

Definitely not looking forward to the day of ad-supported ebooks. "Sponsored" paragraphs injected into the middle of a chapter? Or maybe flashy banner ads alongside? Sounds like a nightmare.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#97

Post by foerbert »

crazygringo wrote: post #34
DennisP wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So change the business model. In the words of Robert Heinlein: "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange…

What business model would you suggest, that is capable of financing the TV and films we like to watch? I'm not aware of anything that works in practice, except for legally enforced copyright for at least a handful of years. And enforcing copyright means making torrenting etc. of infringing material illegal. (Of course, whether it should be 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 years is a separate matter.) And copying the music…

I'm not sure Netflix would agree that a low monthly subscription is not enough to fund TV and movie development, but regardless...

Fairly recently I saw a very interesting proposal for this. The basic idea was to base it off of how artist commissions work, and combine that with crowdfunding. A creator can decide how much they need to make a thing - including both costs and how much profit they need to find it worth doing - can use crowdfunding to get the payment upfront. Then once they make the thing, it gets freely released.

This works out for everybody. The creator has already obtained the amount of profit they desired. The people who paid to have to created have gotten it. The people who didn't pay can enjoy it if they wish. And overall everybody who "engaged" with the content now has a better idea of how trustworthy the creator is. The people who did not pay this time may have gained enough confidence to pay for the creators next project.

Obviously, there are many realities to face here. The degree of departure from the current model is rather large. It's not something you can just flip the switch on tomorrow and expect everything to just magically work out with no pain. But I think it's an interesting idea, and one that meshes better with the realities of the digital medium than the current status quo.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#98

Post by ndesaulniers »

loxias wrote: post #90
rebelos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

Remember that narrow window of time when Netflix had All The TV and was the only streaming platform, which you could access for a low monthly fee? I've always thought and argued that while money might be part of the motivation for digital piracy, ease of access and user experience is also a large component. 10 bucks a month to stream anything, without commercials, was great! For those few years I didn't download anyt…

> Remember that narrow window of time when Netflix had All The TV and was the only streaming platform, which you could access for a low monthly fee?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I have all the streaming services, and yet now I find that most of what I want to watch is not licensed to any service! I'm constantly using justwatch.com and yet still many famous movies aren't being licensed by any of the services I have (at least in the US).

Piracy it is then, and I guess it's time to start canceling these subscriptions to services that no longer license the kind of content they used to.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#99

Post by haswell »

tptacek wrote: post #83
ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

These people are accused of fraudulently obtaining the bits that they copied, which suggests that your whole argument would apply just as directly to credit card numbers, which are also just bits, amenable to the fundamental mechanisms of technology. As for the sentencing, as always: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

This is a fantastic read. The sentencing process has always been a black box in my mental model of the world, and this was enlightening.
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