Hollywood studios go after two piracy sites

Motion Picture Association of America claims sites feature links to hundreds of films, including some still showing in theaters.

The story "Hollywood studios go after two piracy sites" published September 28, 2007 at 4:51 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[johnsin]

Stomp out one fire, four more pop up..

When all is said and done there is just going to be a big giant server farm of trackers sitting on an old abandoned Oil tanker in International Waters. This is one those hypothetical situations I hear of constantly.. Does anyone know if this could be a reality at some point? I remember this is how Pirate Radio stations in the UK operated for some time.

[sismoc]

There is no such thing as piracy...

... unless someone hijacks a truckload of merchandise.

Anything else is just "unlicensed access".

Why isn't the RICO act being used against the RIAA and the MPAA? Both are organizations that use extortion to extract money from their victims.

[lorcro2000]

Those loss estimates are such BS

When you equate every copy with a lost sale you come up with fantasy numbers every time. It's frankly appalling that the news media keeps repeating those ridiculous numbers.

They should be over in Asia shutting down the factories that print copies and sell them instead of wasting their effort on the online p2p hydra. The only thing that will do is make fairly ignored examples of people and yet destroy lives with little to no impact on the actual copying quantities.

The studios are already making money hand over fist on DVD's and HD discs... this is about profit maximization, not keeping the wolf from the door, which makes it even less acceptable to do drive-by-lawsuits and use the justice system to crush private individuals under the RIAA/MPAA money sacks.

[TucsonAlexAZ]

They lose more $$ by raising ticket prices

I haven't been to a theater since the prices went above $7.50. Movies get shorter and crappier and they raise prices? Why pay for a cheap remake of a bad TV show. The only original movie I've seen in the past decade was Stardust.

[wkoziol]

Theater Prices

I know what you mean. I live on the west side of Massachusetts and the theater I go they raised their prices to $8.50 per person. They use to be a dollar less. This isn't too bad when there's another theater close by whose ticket prices are around $9.50 - $10.59 per person. I don't know about the theaters from where you live but with me everytime I pay my $8.50 I sit through roughly three minutes worth of commercials. If they are going to show three minutes worth of commercials then the prices of the tickets should be at least three dollars less. One does not pay to see commercials. And unfortunatly where I live the only other thing to do in my neck of the woods are going to bars.

[Penguinisto]

They also lose $$ by the experience.

A long time ago, people went to the theaters as a special event.
You dressed up in your best clothing. You showed respect for
your fellow moviegoers. If you brought your kids (something
that usually didn't happen), they were as quiet as a church
congregation during a funeral.

The theater was usually impeccably clean. The whole main room
was decorated, and not a dark black box that you simply sat in.
There was at most one preview of a coming attraction. Then you
got the news reels and the cartoons - these were just to allow
the projector guy to load the main event's first reels and cue
them.

Most movies back then had intermissions, to allow folks to go
out and have a smoke, to chat with friends, and to stretch your
legs (it also allowed the second set of film reels to get loaded
up).

A theater's employees fell all over themselves to be courteous
and kind, as did the owner.

--

Today, what do you have? Ten-twenty minutes of
advertisements (not to mention "placement ads" throughout the
flick). Noisy kids. Sticky floors. Sound rigging that's jacked up
way too damned high and obviously done by a tone-deaf
amateur. Insanely high concession prices. A Cattle-Car mentality
in both seating and in customer service.

...and I haven't even touched on the movies themselves. It's rare
to find a film that requires intelligence to get the jist of
anymore, y'know?

/P

[LewisinDenver]

Theaters pricing themselves out vs. buying DVD

It's gotten to the point that Movie Theaters are pricing themselves right out of the equation. $9.00 tickets (after 6pm) for 2, popcorn and drinks for 2, puts a Date at about $25-30 (add a babysitter where appropriate). When we take the kids it goes up even more (and those are before 6pm prices too!)
It's cheaper to wait for the Movie to come out on DVD, and BUY it!

[R. U. Sirius]

Show me the math

> The MPAA estimates that the industry lost $18.2 billion in 2005


Really? Instead of just parroting the industry propaganda, let's see the actual math and studies that purport to support these numbers.

[jamester333]

18.5 Billion? What..if everyone paid $50 for each download?!

Show us the numbers and exactly how those numbers were guestimated. Is there is real data on how many 'stinky dirty movie stealers' are out there? The numbers could be $100 trillion, or the numbers could be zero. What it would be like if the movie industry didn't have piracy to blame for 'possible' profit loss? Would MPAA Blame McDonald's for not selling enough Super-sized drinks with 'blockbuster' summer ads on them?

[Penguinisto]

It's called 'creative accounting' ;)

Also known as "pulling numbers out of your arse". See also MSFT
explaining Vista's sales figures ;)

It lets the MPAA throw out huge numbers to scare people with,
nothing more. If they actually had to prove it by showing year-
on-year profit numbers, you'd find an embarrassing fact: the
MPAA members are actually pulling some rather embarrassing
amounts of profits and growth each year.

/P

[NoVista]

You can't lose what you never would have had anyway

But these clowns are spending big bucks on a stable of lawyers and accountants. And the real pirates are probably the replicating plants in Asia they've offshored to ... "ah so, another run of 400,000, thank you, goodbye (click) ... Akanechan, set the counter to 750,000, that should be enough for our market."

[ralfthedog]

Mixed feelings

I have mixed feelings about the MPAA, RIAA. Theft of IP is no different than theft of physical property. If you walk into Walmart and steal a disk you are a criminal. If you download illegal content using Bit Torrent, you are just as much a criminal.

While the MPAA/RIAA have every right to sue, and potentially have pirates tossed into jail, that is not a smart thing to do. The record industries tactics are doing very little to control piracy, and quite a bit to **** off the people who buy movies and music.

The record and movie industries exist to make money. If they continue to anger their customers and cost themselves sales, they are doing a disservice to their stock holders and should be fired.

[Dr_Zinj]

Ahem, that should be "SUSPECTED piracy sites"

Until they are convicted of a crime, they are only suspects, or at most, defendants.

As far as estimating losses due to piracy, that's always been an interesting question. The theft in this case in non-material in nature, as the original movie or song never leaves the possession of the owner. So the theft is a loss of an opportunity to make money.

Which leads back to the original question of, how do you estimate the value of loss of opportunity? You have several categories of people here.

1. People who will never know of the existence of the material.
2. People who aren't interested and will never view or buy the material.
3. People who are interested and will never view or buy the material.
4. People who are interested and will view, but never buy the material.
5. People who are interested and will view and buy the material.

Categories 1-3 can be ignored as they don't participate in piracy other than by complete accident, clicking on a link without thinking about it.

Category 4 can be broken into people who can afford the material, and people who cannot afford the material. Piracy of material by people who can afford it isn't necessarily a loss. For those who pirate a song or movie and then go on to purchase the CD/DVD, the industry makes their money and the original download was an advertising expense. And it should be considered an advertising expense for those who download the material, view it once, and never watch or listen to it again. In these two cases, the piracies should not be considered losses.

Piracy of material by people who can't afford it is not, and never will be, a loss.

A piracy should only be considered a loss if the person pirating the material can afford to purchase it, intends to use it for their own income purposes, or intends to use it more than the one time necessary to determine it holds value for them.