Hello World...

[Nick]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2014 11:22:27 -0600
"artisticforge ." <artisticforge at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello;
> 
> My point was that industry was content to allow VHS recording

But they were not content, they bitched and moaned and misrepresented
things like media lovies tend to now.

eg In Jack Valenti's testimony to the House Hearings on Home Recording
in 1982 he compared the ability of people to make copies themselves to
the Boston Strangler being alone in a house with a woman.

His business was largely based on making copies and distributing them
(whilst presenting it as silver-screen magic or similar PR), when
that got threatened he tried to get legal protection of his industry.
He was really wrong and the industry grew.

Selfishly he might not have been all wrong though, he probably
controlled proportionally less after video, hence he was just some
anti-social businessman misrepresenting things for his own ends. Using
tacky emotional arguments in a debate that is about economics and so
should be largely quantifiable.


There was also the campaign of "Home taping is killing music", but I'll
grant you that. Music is a thing of the past. If only recording had
been clamped down on then this form of art wouldn't have been wiped
out.

Oh, hang on, what's that noise coming out my stereo right now? :)

> because
> they knew that each duplication of the tape would degrade the quality
> . Therefore, VHS recording was essentially self limiting. With
> advances in technology inexpensive DVD burners, BluRay burners, etc.
> They are no longer content to turn a blind eye.

Tough shit. Technology has moved on.

> There were other various reasons that impacted the industry's thinking
> at the time. VHS and cassette tapes had a limited life-time. The VHS
> tapes had to be physically stored by the person making the recording.
> This storage requirement limited the number of tapes a person would
> maintain. Many people simply recorded over older programmes thereby
> limiting the potential for distribution of that material. The same was
> true of cassette tapes albeit to a lesser extent.

Improvements in tech available to us have been available to industry
too, and so whilst our ability to copy has dropped in cost and raised in
quality so has so much of production, distribution and other industry
things.

Should the lovies only get access to digital tech? Kinda like how it
was in the 80s/90s where huge music bizes could afford digital but the
public were slumming it with Walkmen and stuff? OK, back then the
businesses bought the expensive machines, but it gave them immense
margins and it is clear than today the industrialists want those days
back.

But tough shit, tech has moved on. For all of us.

> 
> hard drives, USB drives, memory cards have changed all that. the
> amount of data that a person may archive on Terabyte
> drives is somewhat hard to comprehend. The ease at which digital
> copies could now be "shared" was a game changer.
> The piracy sites sprung up funded by the porn ads they displayed.

Wow, random bringing up of porn, almost like you are trying smear
copyright infringers? The usual attitude is one of them being immoral
or something, but you don't make it clear what your concern actually is.

Personally I don't get porn ads on pirate sites, but I don't get ads
anywhere on the web. Though not all piracy sites are funded in that
way (whilst I don't see ads I can see easily what was blocked), plus if
you are running a system that is at best legally grey trying to get in
the mainstream advertisers will be difficult. If you want a system to
fund itself then you will end up dealing with those who tend to
otherwise also be on the margins.

Though a private network I am a member of does not use advertising at
all, it would just be a security risk. It is all hobbyists and funded
by donations.

> 
> Nowadays, a person may go to the cinema and video the entire film with
> their smartphone. within hours it would be
> on dozens of pirate sites.

Have you ever watched a cam like that? They are pretty poor quality,
but that alone undermines your point about the IP biz being OK with
people making poor quality recordings.....

> 
> Pirates Bay is still operating.
> The founders have only just recently been arrested and/or sentenced to
> jail time.
> it was only recently that thebox.bz was taken down by the site
> operators. the "rewards" no longer out weighed the "potential
> punishments."

And as time goes on piracy will just get easier and easier, there will
be more and more sites. And even if the web was purged of piracy
(hahaha) there is the rest of the internet that industry doesn't really
get. Before Napster I used to get MP3s etc. off FTP servers or IRC
(still good sources), industry bitches about TPB but ultimately
that reflects they do not recognise how a peer to peer protocol like
torrents are not dependent on a web site. (Or are the loud IP-funded
voices purposefully getting it wrong so that the public doesn't get
informed? When people think torrents=website rather than getting a
sniff of what a protocol is then they will stay ignorant. That might
mean they buy instead, but even that is a dubious conclusion).

These days there are loads of private file sharing networks, at varying
levels of hidden. Even offline people will provide copies of stuff to
friends and family, and as all the cheap tech you pointed at continues
to not be banned the offline copying stands to increase more and more.

/me goes to have a look at the state of pirate sites on TOR. Even on the
plain-web I think FOSI is still out there! Awww, looks like he closed
things in 2013.


> 
> My friends at Big FInish Productions saw their series Sapphire and
> Steel essentially killed off solely because of piracy.

Perhaps the programme was shit and copyright infringement is an easy
patsy?[1] The investors are likely to accept certain things, copyright
infringement is a bogeyman in that biz.

If this thing was killed by piracy I guess it will be really well
seeded on the TPB? Hahaha, 12 seeds and 2 leechers. So 2 people, on
this planet of 7 billion+ are currently downloading this? Assuming
those downloaders would have bought the DVDs if not available for
zero (a highly dodgy assumption, likely utterly wrong) then would those
kinds of numbers have a decent bearing on your friends' business? I
doubt it.

Also this TV programme was made 79-82. Which exact piracy website or
protocol geared up for IP violation, or system otherwise (eg hooky VHS
at car boots), crushed the sales of this in the 80s and 90s? And much of
the 2000s.

Can you also clarify if your friends completely control the copyright on
this TV programme now and always have? If not, then they cannot honestly
blame piracy. There will be some entity other than a pirate who can say
yes or no to the programme being distributed, probably ITV. Even if ITV
have repeated this programme then that stands to be a barrier to people
buying the DVDs too.


[1] If this pun is more creative than anything in S&S then I stand by
my assumption that it was shit :)

> 
> Peoples investments and employment is at stake.

Yes, I have touched on this in another email. I don't like to see
people's livelihoods vanish but that is what technology does to people.
We have seen it happen so much that as a species we really should have
learned by now!

> There has to be a reasonable compromise that does not seemingly demand
> that the Treasury doors be unlocked so the Treasury may be plundered.

IMHO ludicrous structures have been built now, plunder has to happen to
drag things back to a realistic level.

Or we apply IP type protections to other industries. What about
the estate of a plumber being rewarded for 70 years after the plumbers'
death with loo royalties?

> 
> No doubt programmes will be pirated no matter what is done to stop or
> discourage it.

When the choice is stupid consumption appliances or people actually
being able to use the machines they own to the fullest of their
capabilities, I'll go for the latter. One of the reasons I often break
IP law is because the legal options are so crap and limited.

And unaffordable, but if I can't afford something then it cannot be a
problem if I just make a copy.

We all get to judge what is affordable to us or not, I guess I could buy
cheaper food and spend the difference on a TV, licence, recording
device, probably a TV service, a service to avoid adverts....

I am thinking you might try and call out my judgements of what I can
and cannot afford. But economic freedom only for a certain class of
people (probably business owners) sounds like the underpinnings of some
kind of aristocracy, or otherwise unequal society.

Nick


> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Nick <nick at i.lucanops.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 16:51:48 +0200
> > J <j at mailsorter.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> artisticforge . wrote:
> >> <snip>
> >> > get_iplayer, bypasses all of that and is grabbing a digital copy
> >> > of the BBC content. there is a fundamental difference.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I don't follow your overall argument. My Foxsat DVR grabs digital
> >> copies of broadcast media and the cheapo sat card in my PC
> >> similarly dumps the ts straight to disk. I can hear/view those
> >> files without restriction and anyone in the UK could do the same.
> >
> > I started a reply and gave up because of the contradictory nature.
> > It seems he was OK with people using the best technology in the
> > past (VHS era), but these days people should not use the best
> > technology can offer.
> >
> > We should use artificially complicated and limited things instead so
> > that it is like the past. Screen capture means the computer cannot
> > be used as a general purpose device, it has to be used as a
> > recording machine while the thing is on. Plus there are supposedly
> > shortcomings with the software, it doesn't do what it is meant to
> > very well by the sounds of it.
> >
> > But of course in the past a major US movie exec hammed it up in
> > court trying to get home video tech banned to protect cinemas and
> > the movie biz status-quo. But those benefiting off the status-quo
> > mostly ended up with a better lot, home video tech opened the door
> > for rentals and video sales. What worry about things now is likely
> > mis-guided.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org
> > http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
> 
> 
>