MPAA on the Sue Train
The MPAA despite the failings of the RIAA in the same tactic has decided to sue file sharers. Techdirt lays it down.
What I don't get here is what they are trying to accomplish with this. It has been shown that filesharing is actually on the rise in the wake of the RIAA suits, and courts have been showing less and less tolerance for the lawsuits. Why would the MPAA take up a business practice that has been proven not to work, and only generates ill-will in your customer base?
I agree with techdirt. Theaters need to get better. The experience of watching a movie at a theater sucks. It is a VERY rare occasion where I will go out to watch a film these days. I'd prefer to wait for it on DVD instead of putting up with the cell phone calls, crying babies and people walking in 10 minutes into the film and asking me to scoot over so all 5 of his friends can sit together. Stop tacking on 5 minutes of TV ads before the films, make concessions cheaper and make films better. Don't sue your customers.
Posted by Joe Mullins at November 4, 2004 03:11 PM | TrackBackThis has nothing to do with theaters or DVDs.
This has everything to do with the ability to get movies on demand. I can torrent "any" movie I want and I have it on my desktop in an hour or less. (I've got good pipes for being in the US)
If the MPAA would offer movies online, without copy protection crippling, they would open up a new market and start making money, where they are losing it.
This goes for television too. Why doesn't HBO or Comedy Central offer its shows for download? I would gladly pay a subscription for access to Deadwood or the Daily Show.
It is a market and one which the media companies refuse to recognize. Or they recognize it but are too cautious fearing they might get ripped off. Well, MPAA you already are being ripped off.
Posted by: Mr. Kahn at November 4, 2004 05:45 PMMr. Kahn,
I got the gist that the MPAA suits are aimed at early studio leaks and screeners of new movies, which is why the discussion of the theater experience took place.
But you're definitely right, on demand download of movies is where this is all inevitably headed. And there's an easy solution to pirating and file sharing: Offer movies for $5 to own $3 to stream and do it on a fat pipe. Then you don't need copy protection because the convenience of getting it from a good solid server with high quality far out-weighs the burden of inconveniently slow crappy downloads. You'd still have to take down fast pirate servers offering your files, but that's a lot better than suing end users.
TV and Movies are in a really weird spot right now. Tivo and DVRs are allowing high quality copies of TV shows you subscribe to. So would they be angry if I as an HBO subscriber downloaded the new Carnivale after watching it on cable so that I could watch it again whenever I want? Yes they would, because they want to preserve DVD sales. This is of course despite the fact that downloaders miss out on extra DVD content.
Like I said in a previous story, I think it's going to take a big tech company to break this open just like Apple with the record industry.
Posted by: joe at November 5, 2004 08:11 AMhttp://techgoesboom.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/297
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