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Originally Posted by 42041 /forum/post/22022710
Funny, I've been seeing those warnings for decades and yet I can still find just about any music, video game, or movie online. How many years does a strategy have to utterly fail until we can admit it doesn't work?
Unfortunately, though, that applies to almost every law. I mean... people still get killed and robbed, but we have had laws against doing both for pretty much forever in modern society... so, you wouldn't argue that the laws are useless, right?
Laws serve multiple purposes... In part they are to deter people, but the other part is to permit agreed-upon punishment for people who break those laws.
As for the warnings on the discs... that serves the same purpose as publishing the laws. With the copyright law right there on the disc, it is difficult for any potential pirate to be able to make a claim that they "didn't know" it was against the law. Without that warning, you can bet someone somewhere would claim they didn't know.... much like some in this very thread didn't seem to know, for example.
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Originally Posted by Will2007 /forum/post/22022895
Correct. It's pointless to lecture legitimate purchasers of the discs. It fact, it's counterproductive to do so. This is the point lost on the MPAA and the studios that comprise it.
Well... who would you lecture? Lecturing the criminal is even more useless, no? I mean... do you lecture the guy coming out of the bank with the sack of money and a ski mask about the illegality of robbing banks?
When is the best time to educate people on the dangers of drinking and driving... when they are sober and therefore not in violation of the law? OR when they are already drinking to the point where their comprehension skills are hindered?
Of course you lecture the people who and when they are not violating the law. That's the only people who will listen! Lecturing the guy who already decided to steal the movie does zero good.
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Originally Posted by 42041 /forum/post/22023420
Maybe a Twilight Time release will get uploaded by some guy who bought it. Those people are not the ones the MPAA desperately wants to nab. The Star Wars blus were online weeks before street date. Same for the Lord of the Rings, Avatar (which had fresh BD+ protection and was ripped before AnyDVD updated their software to deal with it... so much for amateur work), etc. The piracy groups have inside sources.
Exactly. Now, I'm sure Twilight Time would argue (and correctly I might add) that they absolutely care when someone steals one of their movies because they have small business model and many of their movies aren't selling out their limited run so it directly could affect their bottom line if someone steals a copy rather than pay $30 for a legitimate one!
But ultimately the "big boys" only get involved when something major is stolen. Also the point made where people get copies illegally before street date... which usually means there is an insider (either the movie company OR the disc-manufacturing plant) taking the "golden master" and copying it.
Some pirates are in it for bootlegging and making money... others use the "stick it to the man" approach when giving things away... and both do harm to the system.
It's really the same thing as those embedded devices in movies and CDs that the retail stores have to deactivate when you buy so the alarm doesn't beep...or those god-awful contraptions some stores lock their movies and CDs inside that have to be removed with a special key by the cashier. Those too are necessary evils because people were stealing physical copies from the stores.
IF we move to more and more online (especially digital copy) distribution... there will be less retail theft of movies and music and far more stolen copies.
I hear all the time about how stealing a digital copy doesn't harm a company because either: the person wasn't going to buy anyway, or it doesn't prevent sales to others because it isn't physical inventory... but that completely ignores the other aspect of theft, which is... if you don't pay, you aren't entitled.
If I sneak into a movie theater, it doesn't stop them from selling all the tickets (if I stand and don't take a paying customer seat)... but I'm getting to see a movie that I am NOT entitled to see because I didn't pay. Whether it affects the other sales or not is irrelevant.
And all of that leads back to... the forced non-skippable stuff on our Blu-rays... and yes, it means we pay and get annoyed by them... but the blame should be at the feet of all the people who have been ripping and stealing that is leaving the studios scrambling to figure out ways to deter and educate people about not stealing their product.
Another interesting thing about movie and music theft... Most of the theft is by people who could afford to buy them. Homeless and hungry and poor people tend to steal food and clothes and things they need to live... the movie and music thefts tend to be from middle and upper class thieves, so there's not any way to defend it really.