Is piracy that bad?

[cuprohastes]

Hollywood claims it'll destroy an entire multi-billion dollar industry - But Hollywood got started in California because they were hiding out from Edison because they were pirating his camera technology. And Edison was making money selling pirate copies of 'The first men in the moon'.

America, a young country, was also infamous for never paying

Comments

[kakoukorakos]

That really sums it all up perfectly. The real problem is the irrational greed that knows no bounds, if they are given their way, the recording and film industries will probably damage themselves more than they manage squeeze the rest of the country and world for. One thing is fairly likely as far as I'm concerned anyway-- I won't be buying any more Blu-ray movies (I don't have an actual Blu-Ray player) if the studios manage to shut down the places where I can download a digital copy of my damn movies so I can actually watch them.

[silverfur]

I think bigger problem than the Studios squeezing us, is the Governments using the Studios and their greed as a smokescreen to set up stuff to see what their citizens are pretending to think about. And of course, to have a suitably large hammer to hit anything they don't like with.

One should never forget that Al Capone did time for tax evasion, since nothing else could be rpoven...

[the_s_guy]

I like how it inherently assumes that destroying a multibilliondollar industry is a bad thing.

Y'see, people are people. They'll always find a way to do what they want to do, and there are a zillion ways to be entertained which don't require the Hollywood model.

The distribution system is not the product. Movies are not DVDs or video tapes any more than Shakespeare's plays were a certain set of props or actors. Novels aren't paper and glue, or even physical bookshops and libraries. Songs, it turns out, don't need a giant industry when the composers and performers can reach listeners directly.

All these historical oddities were merely temporary crutches. Useful at the time, but never inherent to the actual product. No matter how much has been poured into making them faster, fancier, more extensive and ubiquitous, their limited life was built into them from the start. They're a pretty chrysalis, nothing more.

Roy Batty said it best: Time to die.

[cuprohastes]

Those mo politic media companies are also the people who finance and do the advertising for movies, tv and music. It's all very well saying you can go direct, but who pays to make the product? You can't have a 100 million dollar kick starter fund!