JMS on Usenet
Message
Subject: Re: ATTN JMS: File Sharing, Sci-Fi TV and the art of motorcycle Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:07:17 +0000 (UTC) From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated >Legality and morality are not equal. No, not always. But my point, to which you respond, is that it's illegal. If you want to argue morality, that's later down in the message. (Actually, there are values, mores and laws...the former two eventually morphing into the third. Just for any sociology students kicking around.) >You *say* you don't want to indulge in the metaphor, but you then >proceed to use the typical horribly flawed metaphor. > You CAN do it, sure. But does that make it right? > >No, because you've deprived the store of that *physical property*. It's >no longer there for them to make money on. > >With someone downloading something, there is no "physical loss". > Is the matter physical loss or financial loss? For the writer, there is sure as heck a physical loss in one fewer check that arrives. And I would point out that one of the two models I used did NOT result in physical loss, which takes out your "horribly flawed" argument on the face of it. Copying a book and returning it does not remove the physical book...but most people who think nothing of downloading a movie get a serious case of the ooks when copying a whole book. So if you were saying the metaphor was false because it relied on physicality, you're wrong on both relevant cases. >But... wait... at the moment, that individual isn't getting *anything* >for US-based individuals. It's only treading on the *possibility* of >residuals. Not correct. I don't even quite know what you're trying to say here. Each time an episode runs, the people who made it get a royalty. So your point here doesn't parse. >People who are so fanatic as to spend four hours downloading an >online version of a TV episode are also likely to be watching it again >anyway when it airs Please show your work here. Do you have any figures at all to back this up, or are you just pulling this out of your backside? Because I've seen plenty of people who've said, on boards, that they watched a given episode of Jeremiah on download, and didn't watch it on broadcast. That is anecdotal, yes, but so is yours...please back it up or we'll have to dismiss this one. >People who aren't that fanatic -- people who download it, watch >it, and then could care less about the actual television airing -- >probably weren't going to watch it past the first run anyway. And thus they are irrelvant to the discussion. >This is >important because the first-run of the show is pretty much a sure >thing. No, it's not. Where do you get this stuff? Yes, it's a sure thing to BROADCAST, sure, but any FUTURE airings or seasons are affected by ratings, and ratings can be diminished if lots of people have already seen it on the nets. Case in point...I know that a lot of British fans didn't watch Jeremiah when it got there because they'd seen the downloads. (I know, I saw the discussions.) So now we have to parse between the original US broadcast and all the rest of the world. >Now, any future airings (and thus, future >residuals) are going to be based upon the network's belief that there >will be repeat viewers. But those people who stole it who "never >watched it the first time" were never going to be a contributor to the >residuals anyway. You're simply not making any sense. Their "belief that there will be repeat viewers" is based on the NUMBER OF VIEWERS WHO TUNED IN. If the net has cut into that, then guess what, their computations are not going to be very positive. >In other words, the residuals argument is a red herring. No, it's not...if only because you are deliberately confining your argument to the first broadcast of a given show, not the rest of the time it's on the air. You can't support the rest of your argument, so you try to limit it to the first broadcast. Residuals specifically refer to subsequent broadcasts. >(a) people who are >going to keep watching it whenever you air it because they're uberfans, The only thing wrong with this is that it ain't so, and is unsupported by you or anyone else. >Thus, downloaders have *zero* effect on residuals. Sorry, you can use "thus" all you want, but you haven't proven anything. All you're doing is throwing a lot of verbiage to defend your right to take anything you want to take, whenever you want to take it. How is what you are doing, or defending, any different than going into a library, borrowing a book, making a bunch of copies of the book for your friends, and giving it away free? It isn't. Not in the smallest regard. Let me be straight: IT'S NOT YOURS. Okay? Are we clear on this? The book is not yours to duplicate for others because you can hold one copy in your hand and photocopy it. It's not your RIGHT to do so. You are NOT a publisher, you are NOT a distributer. You can have what's yours, but you can NOT go around making copies for other people or uploading it. You mention morality...yeah, we all have competing moralities...but from my moral persepctive, as well as the law, it's wrong, pal. Pure and simple. You can dance around it all you want, but that's the core of it. It's wrong, and it's illegal, and it's theft. Period. >Then there's the DVD argument, the people who dupe the crap out of >DVDs. These fall into a couple categories as well: > >o People who dupe everything they can just to dupe everything they can. > > Any studio who believes that the people who have DVD-R collections >with 10,000 movies on them were *really really* going to actually PAY >FOR 10,000 discs need to have their heads examined. This is money the >studios *weren't going to see anyway*. > We're not talking about individuals duping 10,000 copies...we're talking about individuals who digitize movies and TV eps and put them ON THE NET for 10,000 people to individually download. If you're going to keep changing the parameters of the discussion to make your case easier, we can't really have a conversation, now can we? >But downloading the show *isn't* actually stealing. As shown above, it >isn't taking a penny from their pockets. > You have NOT s hown this, sorry. And it IS stealing. You don't want to THINK of it as stealing because that would mean thinking of yourself as a thief, and you don't like that...people don't like to be told when they're being bad, but you can use all the soft language you want, it doesn't make it any less theft. >On the flip side of course, we have the studios, the guys who want to >tell me that if I want to watch the latest episode of Lost, which they >aired on TV for free, on my laptop while travelling across the country, >I've got to subject myself to three different levels of DRM to make >them happy. So it's okay to steal if it's from a big company? Is that your moral position? And if you're talking about one ep which you digitized for your own purposes, not for uploading, then again you're changing subjects to cloud the argument. >For a product that they gave away for free over unencrypted and >unprotected airwaves. > Yeah, she was wearing a short skirt, she deserved what she got. >I think I speak for many people when I say that's a load of shite. >First, you feel the need to fall back on the ever-flawed "consumption >metaphor", where your "deadbeat" consumes things which then prevent >their consumption by others. What a narrow definition you have of theft..and again, you haven't shown it's shite, or disproven the point. When you cut into something that puts residuals in the hands of artists, sorry,b ut that's a physical harm. >Second, in many cases, these are people who *want* to give money to the >rightsholders. Who *want* to be viewing the program via "approved" >methods. But the rightsholders do stupid things, like say "well, we'll >only let people in North America view our content." Stupid. Really? Studio A has the RIGHTS for North America ONLY. So they make a deal with a foreign distributer, sooner or later. The foreign distributer then -- wait for it -- pays the studio money which GOES TO THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE SHOW. That's the way the system WORKS. It's not a "stupid thing," it's each company having their own bite of the market. >If this was about "getting the rightsholders paid their due share" the >rightsholders would be bending over so far backwards that they could >kiss their ankles trying to get the data out there everywhere in >gazillions of formats, charging for all of them, and acknowledging that >the few remaining people who weren't willing to pay were people they >weren't going to get money from anyway because they're the type of >people who just don't pay for things. But they can't because there's competing markets. The studios have as many arms in as many countries as they can, and where they have arms, they distribute, which defeats your point. Where they DON'T have arms or deals they CAN'T distribute. It's not like they come in offshore with pirate masks saying "Arr, beger, here's our shows, matey." They need to have someone in that other country who will distribute it, or it can't be shown. What part of that baffles you? But the thing of it is...and this is the part that gets me...all your arguments are very philsophical and self-congratulatory, but leaving aside entirely the issue of legality (which is one hell of a lot to leave aside), and morality (ditto), and physicality.... THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THESE SHOWS, the people like those on Galactica who started this conversation, people like me and others, the people you say you respect, HAVE ASKED YOU TO STOP DOING IT...have been pleading with you, don't do it...don't you understand that you are hurting the field, hurting jobs...this isn't theoretical, this is the real, honest to god people who MAKE WHAT YOU SAY YOU LIKE, asking you to PLEASE not do this. And your message back to them is: fuck off, I do what I want. Nice. Real nice. jms (jmsatb5@aol.com) (all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd., permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine and don't send me story ideas)