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Originally posted by Kwicko:
You know about Redbox, right?

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Jesus Christ, Pirate

After reportedly feeding a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was recently served with formal legal notice from industry trade associations, demanding that he cease and desist from what they charge is an illegal food-sharing operation under the terms of the Miracle Millennium Anti-Replication Act (MMAA).

Miracle-working rabbis like Mr. Christ, and their alleged property rights infringements, have been the center of controversy in recent years. They’re the subject of a public education campaign by the Foodstuffs Producers Association of Galilee and Judea. Loaves and fishes producers argue that unauthorized replication of food, since it deprives them of revenues to which they are entitled, amounts to stealing. Sympathetic rabbis in synagogues throughout Palestine are reading FPAGJ public service announcements, aimed at countering public perceptions that “everybody does it” and “it’s just a little thing,” to their flocks: “Don’t bakers and fishermen deserve to be paid?” Many Torah schools have adopted FPAGJ “anti-foodlifting” curricula.

In related news, the Wine Industry Association of Palestine has complained amid surfacing reports that Jesus, in another alleged act of illegal sharing, also replicated wine at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee.

Physicians’ licensing boards, likewise, point to alleged eyewitness accounts of Jesus practicing medicine without a license. This unauthorized medical practice, according to widespread reports, has extended to lepers, the lame, the halt, the blind, a man with a palsied hand, a woman with an issue of blood, and assorted victims of demonic possession. The medical industry denounces Jesus’ actions as unfair competition. According to a spokesman for the Galilean Medical Association, “it’s unfair to expect a licensed physician who spent years as an apprentice and who has to cover the overhead from office space to compete with some carpenter who just waves his hands around and heals people for free.”

Although the Embalmers’ Guild has also complained of rumored resurrections of the dead, legal experts say there is no actual statute defining that particular activity as a criminal offense.

On the other side, a small but growing movement of gustatory property opponents takes issue with the “piracy” label. They argue that copying food, as an inherently non-rivalrous activity, isn’t theft; because the newly replicated food is created ex nihilo, nobody else’s stock of food is diminished. Fisherman Simon Bar Jonah of Galilee and his brother Andrew agree. “Instead of trying to suppress competition, the fishing industry should replace its archaic business model. Opportunities are out there for anyone willing to innovate. We haven’t lost a denarius because of Jesus’ food-sharing.”

But authorities aren’t buying it. Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea, recently announced plans to crack down on gustatory property pirates like Jesus. “If you think I’m going to wash my hands of this Jesus guy, God love him, think again. Replicating loaves, fishes and wine is stealing, just the same as a smash-and-grab at Macy’s. This is a big effing deal.”

Next week: Johann Gutenberg, unauthorized book-sharer.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
You know about Redbox, right?

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

instead of profiting off the content by throwing it far and wide,

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Originally posted by Storymark:
How exactly do they make a profit by "throwing it far and wide"?

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Originally posted by Storymark:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
You know about Redbox, right?

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Those are good if you watch less than 8 movies a month, and only watch mainstream stuff.

I do neither, so Redbox is worthless to me. Netflix, price increase and all, is still the best deal around.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

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Originally posted by Storymark:
How exactly do they make a profit by "throwing it far and wide"?

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By finding a way to get your product to the customer in a useable form, yes, it's really that simple.

DRM is a special kind of evil, tales abound about screwed up PCs, bricked Kindles, dropped authentication servers, and oh by the way, if you have any books from Fictionwise, prepare to be fucked some more...
But it's not *JUST* DRM, oh no - look at retro gaming, especially retro-arcade gaming, now some games and console companies have, finally, pulled their head out of their ass and started offering retro content, but for the longest time people who wanted it were UNABLE TO BUY the products they wanted.

So exactly where does a company get off complaining about "lost profits" on something they they DO NOT SELL IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER, that cannot even be OBTAINED save technical wizardy and what some would call piracy - you *FIND* me a Star Castle or Tailgunner arcade machine, if you can, and yet they have the bloody nerve to complain about ROMs ?

Oh how bout Vectrex - do you even know what one *IS* ?
And in THAT case I don't think they've got no room to bitch cause the units are not available any more and the ROM data in question came off MY cartridges, which *I* fucking paid for, thankee.

Or how bout Anime that was never released in region one, never WILL be released in region one - how on earth are they "losing money" on something they refuse to sell to customers who friggin want it, in fact put tremendous amounts of personal effort into not only obtaining it but often translating it, people who would be DELIRIOUSLY HAPPY to friggin pay for it, if they ever had a chance to ?

Music, at long last, has finally begun to adapt, but what of the days where even FINDING some obscure bands work at all was nigh unto hopeless, and for a fact you sure hell couldn't order it - do you think those folks woulda been happy to pay a nominal fee to have good quality CDs or MP3s, if they could only have gotten them ?
But no, instead of seeking to profit from a demand they refused to acknowledge, the first reaction of the music companies was to spitefully cut them off - WHILE, mind you, and you can look this up, they were in the process of being severely penalized for decades of deliberate and intentional price fixing and other chicanery of that nature, the hypocrisy was so abundant it was apalling.


All that said, you might have noted from previous discussions here that I don't have netflix, that I prefer to actually OWN movies, games, anime, books - because I consider most of the industry untrustworthy, because I want control of content I purchase so that it cannot be remotely deleted(1), disabled(2), or held hostage for more money(3) - once it's in my physical possession you can't pull that bullshit on me, so I am willing to shell out a little more up front rather than trust notoriously rapacious fuckheads not to shaft me, a lesson I think is being learned here by many.

Sure, I fight for the best bargains on the stuff, but I DO buy it, provided anyone gives me the goddamn opportunity to do so - and I buy a fuckton of it over time since it's prettymuch my only entertainment expense, in fact in a twisted kind of irony I shorted the food budget this week to pay for a copy of The Hunger Games Trilogy, in real, physical BOOKS.

Which brings me to the point...
*FIND* me a legal means to BUY Macross7 - even full retail!
(Don't get me started on Harmony Gold, just don't, not after what they did to FASA)
Or how bout the Elfen Lied Episode 7.5 OVA ?
Or Rozen Maiden: Traumend ?
Or Evangelion: Death and Rebirth ?
End of Evangelion ?

I could go on, but you get the point, and it's just as bad with games - hell, the entire flippin reason WHY I bought a damn PS1 in the first place is that it's the ONLY platform in which an english translation of Tactics Ogre even EXISTS ?


I can also tell that you likely didn't read Eric Flints commentary which also includes some good points, like how people are *not* raving, slavering beasts just lookin for a chance to steal shit, and treating them so alienates your customer base, ask Geneon and ADV just how *WELL* that worked out for them, especially when they combined it with locking the content into ever smaller and smaller means of distribution so that even fans practically throwing their money that them couldn't obtain it ?
(Funimation, on the other hand, "threw it far and wide" and seem to be making money hand over fist, damn sure they got plenty of mine!)
In fact that myth of folks being naturally wicked and needing to be controlled for their own good is something that does a damn lot of harm in other ways as well, and is never, ever issued without a nefarious purpose behind it, this lame bullshit is just a further extension of that blatant asininity, most folk would no more "pirate" something they could have in full for $3.99 than they would panhandle on their lunch break for a couple extra bucks, it's a matter of basic decency and self respect, and if you choose to assume people as a whole don't have even than much of it, we really got nothin left to talk about.

To borrow a quote from Dreamtrove - it's raining soup and they're standing out there with forks.

All of those involved in this mess, Sony, Starz, Netflix - seem to be of the mind that NO money is better than LESS money, and are busy killing the golden goose here, all the while trying like hell to blame the very people all but throwing money at them, and you expect me to feel any damn sympathy here ?
Oh I don't think so.


-Frem
(1) - http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/
(2) - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090109/0306503344.shtml
(3) - (Luaces V. Directv 1997 Miami)

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Originally posted by Storymark:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
You know about Redbox, right?

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Those are good if you watch less than 8 movies a month, and only watch mainstream stuff.

I do neither, so Redbox is worthless to me. Netflix, price increase and all, is still the best deal around.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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I rarely watch even 8 movies a month, and rarely watch mainstream stuff. I went and saw the last Harry Potter movie in a theater, which was the first time I'd been to a theater since Serenity came out in September '05.

I looked into Netflix, but there was stuff I wanted that they didn't offer at all via streaming, and the having DVDs sent to me was going to run ANOTHER $8 a month - every month, whether I watch anything or not - so it just wasn't a good fit for me. When there's new shows on TV, I rarely rent movies at all. Thanksgiving thru New Years, and a bit in the summer, is about all the spare time I've got to catch up on recent releases and documentaries, and I'm already woefully behind on both, and the new TV season is about to start.

And I really think I should be able to sue Netflix for hundreds of thousands of dollars for billing my credit card $7.99, considering I've never had an account with them in any form at all, and now likely never will. Never mind that they instantly refunded me the money - that's like me pirating movies and then offering to give them back a copy if I get caught. If I do it, the penalties are harsh; why isn't that a two-way street? :)

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Originally posted by Storymark:
So you're answer is... they just should.

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Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )

Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.

The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.

There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!

Alles in ordnung!

I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:

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