Broadcast Flags!

[Eric]

http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/

I wanted to jump on the random thread starting craze.

[Nev]

If y'all would pay for media every once in awhile, Hollywood wouldn't be quite as rabid as it is about DRM...

[Tortolia]

Like hell they wouldn't.

[Nev]

Whatever, Tort.

[Tortolia]

If the technology even threatens to disrupt their position in any way, they'd be up in arms over it.

The fact there's a bit more evidence of this going on might strengthen their argument some, but they'd be making it period.

[Nev]

Sure, I'd agree with that to some extent. If someone came along and told you that they were cutting your pay by, say, 2%, with no reason given whatsoever other than "I want to enjoy what you're working on but I don't want to pay for it", what would you do?

And I believe that if piracy wasn't the problem it is, Hollywood wouldn't have a reason to institute a serious DRM system. Who wants to waste that much time programming?

It's just aggravating to me that people will continue to pirate things and then claim that it's a victimless crime - which is to say, most of my friends. It's not like there's a way to stop it, but I wish to whatever deities may or may not exist that they wouldn't keep lying to themselves about the fact that it is a form of theft, and that it has repercussions in the industry.

[Tortolia]

Instituting a DRM system if there was no piracy would effectively be locking the barn door before the horse got out, not after.

Which, in theory, is the proper way to go about it.

[Nev]

Well, yeah, if you postulate that people are horses. There's a lot of truth to the idea that people are always going to pirate shit no matter what, though.

[SineSwiper]

The main problem is that people who pirate stuff probably aren't going to buy the damn thing anyway, even if they couldn't pirate it. *AA's claims that piracy is cutting into their profits is total bullshit. They are still making a ton of money. Movie sales are going down slightly because people prefer DVDs or they think that movie prices are too high (recent poll, was on CNN when I saw it). As far as music, crappy bands with formuliac flavors and high CD prices. (Why the fuck aren't CDs at tape prices? Tapes didn't cost fucking $15-20 twenty years ago.)

*AA is just using piracy as a scapegoat. Whether they like it or not, piracy as been around for a long time. Of course, it's corporate thinking (a fucking oxymoron if I saw one), so they pick a lame excuse and consider it their life mission for a few years. It's also corporate thinking to find ways to rape the consumer as much as possible. Sure, lock it down with DRM, then raise the prices again.