I Tried To Watch Game Of Thrones...
Hollywood’s core piracy “problem” is perfectly captured in this one cartoon by The Oatmeal.
In fact, I’ve had this exact debate with myself. I really want to watch Game of Thrones. But I’m not an HBO subscriber because I’m not a cable subscriber and unfortunately, the two go hand-in-hand, no matter what I’m willing to pay.
Speaking of “willing to pay”, okay fine, I can’t get Game of Thrones on HBO, but I’m willing to pay a quite a bit of money to get it via iTunes. Wait. Nope. Can’t do that either. At least not for a few more months — well over a year after the first season wrapped.
Netflix? Nope. Not streaming or DVD/Blu-ray. Amazon? Nope. HBO.com? Not unless I’m a cable subscriber.
So my options are…
…
…well, I only have one option. Thanks Hollywood!
[via Yun on Twitter]
To Catch A Hypocrite
Yesterday, Jason Kincaid posted damning evidence of VEVO, the online music video entity jointly owned by a few major record labels, committing piracy at their boozy event at Sundance this year.
Watch the video, then read Jason’s full story. It’s worth it.
Today, VEVO’s CEO has responded. Here’s his stance:
A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN’s broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.
Which reads a lot like:
Holy fucking shit. We’re so fucked. Is there anyway on Earth we can spin this so it doesn’t look so bad? … Anyone? … Okay, fuck you all, I’ve got it! We’ll say that we were so grossly negligent at our own event that some some shady, masked criminals — preferably foreigners — illegally took control of our laptops to access the game. It was actually an elaborate terrorist plot, if you must know. We’re investigating — and we’ve hired the same people that O.J. Simpson is using to find the real killers.
As Jason says, it’s probably impossible to prove this dipshit is lying, but come on: common sense and Occam’s razor here. Someone was clearly refreshing the feed over and over again. And it never was taken down the entire time Jason was watching.
Either VEVO employees take extremely long bathroom breaks as a group, or — wait for it — they were the pirates!
These assclowns should be fined out of existence or go to jail for a level of hypocrisy so bad that it makes Newt Gingrich seem like a good husband fully qualified to lecture others on ethics. By the music labels’ own definition, they are now criminals.
This situation perfectly highlights the SOPA/PIPA times we live in. As Jason writes:
Sure, there are some people who will duck the bill when they can — but many of them were never going to buy the content they downloaded in the first place. And a huge swath of ‘pirates’ are driven to their ways because it’s easier to stream or download something via an illegal site, not because they’re averse to paying for content. Stick a bunch of DRM and ads in front of the media they’ve already paid for, and they may opt to go with the path of least resistance next time.
Why would VEVO pirate content? Because it was easier than getting it legally. This is the actual root cause of piracy online. It’s not shady, masked individuals at swanky events commandeering computers to pirate for the hell of it. It’s VEVO employees. It’s everyone.
Why Not Try An Infinity-Day Window?
Matt Drance on Warner Bros. idiotic new 56-day DVD rental window:
Also under this new deal, pirated movies remain free of charge, free of non-skippable ads, free of five-minute load times, and are now nearly three months ahead of the competition.
And:
iTunes changed the music industry because it was more convenient than stealing. Most people made the value judgment that ten bucks for a clean, legal digital album was worth the alternative of fishing around for files that may or may not be damaged or infected.
It’s really — honestly — surprising that Hollywood doesn’t understand such a simple concept. Even stranger is that they can look to the music industry as an example and learn from the mistakes there, but they refuse.
Hollywood isn’t going to die anytime soon — but it won’t be from lack of trying. The pain is coming. In a big way.
How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the U.S. Economy?
Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman of Freakonomics discuss the claims that piracy leads to $250 billion a year in loses and 750,000 American jobs lost:
The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”
And:
So what’s the real number? At this point, we simply don’t know. And this leads us to a second problem: one which is not so much about data, as about actual economic effects. There are certainly a lot of people who download music and movies without paying. It’s clear that, at least in some cases, piracy substitutes for a legitimate transaction — for example, a person who would have bought the DVD of the new Kate Beckinsale vampire film (who is that, actually?) but instead downloads it for free on Bit Torrent. In other cases, the person pirating the movie or song would never have bought it. This is especially true if the consumer lives in a relatively poor country, like China, and is simply unable to afford to pay for the films and music he downloads.
Do we count this latter category of downloads as “lost sales”? Not if we’re honest.
Warner Bros. Recruits Students to Spy on Pirates | TorrentFreak
The better solution to piracy? Easy, legal access to movies. Something which Warner Bros. doesn’t seem to get.
