Ars Technica has an interesting story up today detailing the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy's analysis of P2P traffic of illegal movie downloads in France between November 2007 and June 2008, which found that more people than ever are illegally downloading some of the top domestic and foreign films.
The organization found that 90 percent of all P2P downloads came from the most popular films in theaters and that a "daily average of 450,000 downloads (in December, it was 536,000 per day), and a monthly average of over 14 million downloads" was witnessed.
Allegedly stunned by the gall of all those awful pirates, the organization felt it was necessary to send one of its hacks out to make a statement detailing how appalled it was at the information it obtained. But no one saw this one coming.
"We are facing a major phenomenon that can endanger the film industry and audiovisual industries. We did not expect such figures," ALPA director Frederic Delacroix said in a statement to the AFP.
Wow. Hold your horses for a minute here. This piracy problem can "endanger the film industry?" This should probably be filed under the "dumbest things I've heard all month heading."
If piracy kills the film industry and suddenly theaters from across the globe are closing up shop, I'll be the first to laugh, and I'll bet I won't even be laughing the loudest.
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For the past decade, one of the most important debates raging in the tech industry is on the topic of piracy. Some people say that it should be stopped with the help of lawsuits and others suggest it can only be done by being slightly nicer by forcing people to pay for media. But whatever happened to the common sense route? Surely it has been espoused before and some even follow it. Why are some organizations so far behind?
As Amazon has proven, allowing people to do what they want actually works in an environment where they can easily get the same song elsewhere for free. In other words, why fight city hall when all you really need to do is agree?
Believe it or not, there is a way to almost entirely wipe out piracy once and for all. No, it's not by suing those responsible or forcing people into situations. Instead, it's by giving us what we want in a nice package for an affordable price. Does that sound so hard?
... Read moreAccording to a recent report from the Associated Press, the Motion Picture Association of America--Hollywood's antipiracy wing--admitted to releasing data that was not only factually incorrect, it grossly overstated the impact college students have on the movie industry's losses.
The MPAA claims its original figure citing a 44 percent loss due to college piracy was inflated by a whopping 29 percent. In fact, the MPAA admitted that the actual impact college students have on the industry's revenue loss is just 15 percent.
"The 44 percent figure was used to show that if college campuses could somehow solve this problem on this campus, then it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry," an expert covering the case said. The new figures prove "any solution on campus will have only a small impact on the industry itself."
So why do the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America focus so much of their time on college students? Is there something that these disgusting organizations aren't telling us? Are college students really that bad? Sadly, it's just another example of these organizations trying to vilify the easy target when the real violators are left to roam free.
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At CES on Monday, I was invited over to the Blu-ray booth to speak with top executives at the major Hollywood studios supporting Blu-ray. And while I didn't have the chance to speak with every studio, I did get to speak with the president and chief operating officer at LionsGate, Steve Beeks.
And while Beeks seemed like he had solid command over the finer points of the movie industry, I was interested to see why his studio chose Blu-ray over the alternative.
Expecting the canned answer like, "Well, we thought it was the superior format and I'm happy to say that we were right," you could imagine my surprise when the very first reason he gave was Blu-ray's piracy controls.
For those of you who don't know, Blu-ray's piracy controls--largely based on AACS, BD+, and BD-ROM Mark--are easily the most stringent format to date and have only partially been circumvented to this point.
Regardless, I was utterly appalled at the thought that with all of its benefits--high-capacity, interesting new features to employ while playing movies, major industry backing--Beeks chose piracy as the first talking point.
Of course, I had to find out more.
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