I’m sure most of us are old enough to remember the drug war the US waged from the 80s through the 90s. During this war millions of people had their lives ruined not from using pot, but from being arrested and imprisoned for using pot.
Well, apparently the copyright industry in the US has set its sites on copyright infringement as the next war the US government should fight against its citizenry.
NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead.
“Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,” Cotton said. “If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.” Cotton’s comments come in Paul Stweeting’s report on Hollywood’s latest shenanigans on Capitol Hill.
Yeah.
Why not do away with Police altogether… and use private security firms on Hollywood’s payroll?
Too much OCP? (reference to Robocop 1…)
rathole did you notice, on several Verhoeven’s films like Robocop , Totall Recall, and Starship Troopers, the society is a ruled by a fascist dictatorship and/or giant private companies? Hmmmm……. /rathole
Just say no:
– To Crappy movies
– To Overpaid Movie “Stars”
– To Hollywood executives who think they deserve outrageous profits
– To ridiculous assertions on pirating, when the real issue is poor product
Would somebody tell Rick Cotton to get a grip, then get a life….
Taxpayer dollars for market enforcement?
Whats the definition of a state that is controlled by big business interests? No, not GOUSA–I thought it was fascism, but my first two dictionaries just have a picture of Cheney, so I’m not sure.
First off, “Intellectual Property” doesn’t exist. People who use that expression want to mislead and create confusion. IP is used to mean Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks, which are three completely different things. I haven’t seen one single instance where putting them together has helped create an enlightened discussion.
In this particular case, let’s first take Patents and Trademarks out of the picture, because it’s not what Rick Cotton is talking about.
That leaves us with Copyright, which is not property, but let’s move on.
The last nail in the coffin is that “hundreds of billions of dollars of loss a year” is a fallacy. End of discussion. Nothing can be salvaged from Rick Cottons’ comments.
So if anyone talks to you about “Intellectual Property” and dares to compare that to “other kinds of properties”, just walk away. That person’s intention is not to help you understand anything, but to create confusion and to mislead you.
Swell. With our luck, the government will take people like Cotton seriously. Guard the corporations, and to hell with the average citizen in his home.
#2 – They’re already weighing hiring private security guards in places in New Brunswick, Canada, where there aren’t enough local police or mounties to patrol the towns.
http://tinyurl.com/27gv9h
[Please use TinyUrl.com – ed.]
6. No such thing as IP huh? Easy to google.
Well, you have a good theme in your post but you take it too far. IP does and should exist, to deny it is to not address the ABUSE of IP law. And what is a free market but a bunch of people making mistakes?
There’s a simple solution to reducing IP theft: lower the copyright length down to five to ten years.
I may download and occasional movie, and a few songs, but if I like something, I end up buying a copy. If I don’t like it, I delete it cause I won’t watch it again anyway.
I will not spend 20-30 or more bux on a movie I might like. I do not watch PPV. Renting is not an option cause I watch most of the movies I watch on my computer when I travel and it does not have an optical drive. It is just easier to download than to try and rip a DVD.
Don
Lets see those 100’s of billions…
Once you Pay for the cops,
Once you get the Hijackers, and NOT the buyers…
There are probably ALOT of persons that Buy the Disks and dont know/care that its a hijacked copy.
But there are other reasons They ARENT making the money.
Theater Prices.
DVD prices.
Gas prices to go see a movie 5-10-20 miles away, at a Theater NEAR you.
COST to a theater to SHOW a piece of CRAP, and after the first day, ALOT of persons will know it is CRAP.
Even Indie movies have become either turds or shit so abstract you need to be high in order to understand it.
I want to see what junk science they use to tabulate
their piracy losses…
no doubt they hired the same people that formulate those
hard numbers we see on how many people die each year of second hand smoke..
soon, we’ll probably have to go back to the passworded BBS days to retain “unrestricted” access..
I still have my copies of Mustang and Renegade BBS in a box somewhere for the occasion too.. 🙂
-wait, i just figured this whole shindig out..
i bet by making all these grandios claims, they can write
off untold *billions* in taxes due to piracy losses..!
talk about a sweet and easy way to cook the books..
someone with the knowhow should look into what the big
movie & record corps are claiming on their tax statements and see if any of it correlates to piracy..
Had a raid of a “flea market”, here in Oregon, last week.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/12/0018247
Didn’t hassle the people there to buy stuff – because they couldn’t -prove- the potential buyers knew it wasn’t legit…
But they did confiscate a pile of CDs & DVDs…
But remember, it is casual file-trading that is the culprit. NOT the people stamping-out thousands, and tens-of-thousands, of discs for resale. 🙁
The slashdot article links to one in the Oregonian.
My favorite line from the Oregonian article:
Cohen was amazed by the quality of some of the bogus CDs and packaging, saying a good percentage of the Hillsboro discs were being counterfeited by a million-dollar replication machine like the music industry uses.
Reminds me of John’s article about the “black hole” of piracy, and how the DVD-9 brand was rumored to be controlled by Triads – with their commercial-quality DVD-presses operating on ships anchored in international waters.
Hollywood is so lame, there are at least five third installments in the theatres. In order to have your ideas stolen, don’t you have to come with (new) ideas first? They’re actually making Bollywood look attractive! Radio isn’t much better. Build a better moat, and wonder why nobody shows up.
I Just found REDBOX. Rent any new DVD for a buck a night! That’s even cheaper than the pirates. Woo Hoo!! Now I’m just waiting for the kiosk where I can download playlists to an MP3. Slacker, Sansa and the rest mentioned on the front page of today’s Waltz Treat Journal look promising. Build it and they do come.
Redbox doesn’t have very many locations.
0. “…millions of people had their lives ruined not from using pot, but from being arrested and imprisoned for using pot. ”
I think there’s an executed murderer who thought similarly about his own situation.
RBG
#14
That’s because if they do that they’ll realize the reason for so many losses is themselves and no one wants to be the scapegoat.
Drug war of 80’s & 90’s? It is still going on, still wasting billions, so that the merchants of drugs can be increasingly violent to protect their profits, so that the police become increasingly violent and militarized, to build larger police organizations. Legalize or decriminalize all drugs, eliminate the dealers/producers, eliminate drug squads and SWAT, and seek treatment for the addicts.
Drug War. Lets see. Drugs cheaper then ever. Check. prisons full. Check. People who started it still in office. Check . Hell it makes that other war look won.
Let’s see, the logic must go something like this:
A movie can cost $ 200 million to make, therefore every single pirated DVD or downloaded movie or movie clip costs us $ 200 million!
That means we’ve lost more money than has ever existed in the Universe! Everybody in the world owes us $ 200 MILLION! (Send your checks immediately to ….)
#18 and 19 – And the selection is worthless. If a smattering of top hits satisfies your entertainment needs, you don’t deserve entertainment.
#24 – The sad thing is that you could make 200 movies for that same money, and chances are they’d all be better than the new Silver Surfer movie.
They should take all the police and guards out of the banks and put them in the blockbusters… let the people rob the banks, but follow them home and make sure they don’t copy that DVD!