UK Consumers To Pay For Online Piracy 300
Wowsers writes "An article in The Times states that UK consumers will be hit with an estimated £500m ($800m US) bill to tackle online piracy. The record and film industries have managed to convince the government to get consumers to pay for their perceived losses. Meanwhile they have refused to move with the times, and change their business models. Other businesses have adapted and been successful, but the film and record industries refuse to do so. Surely they should not add another stealth tax to all consumers."
piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it won't be piracy anymore, they will just be taking delivery on the goods they paid for.
Not quite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary. They found that their old business model wasn't profitable enough so they switched to the far more lucrative business model of convincing the government to subsidize them. With the old model people could vote with their dollars (including piracy) but this new model removes all of those pesky market forces entirely.
Re:This makes my day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is much worse than in Canada. Here, we pay a tax on recordable media [tapes/CD-Rs/DVD-Rs/etc (not HD's yet)], which is to pay for copying of copyright songs (and it only took them more than 5 years to actually pay out some of the money to actual artists). But it also eliminates the legal liability of being sued by the major labels for downloading music. It's a tradeoff, for which the major labels are fighting to change politically [so they can keep collecting the tax, but go back to being able to sue downloaders].
But in the UK, this new tax sounds like they are paying the labels [er, I mean the artists], but the labels still retain the right to sue [so basically everybody is paying into a fund to sue individuals].
Obligatory Heinlein quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or turned back, for their private benefit." - Heinlein
Re:This makes my day. (Score:0, Insightful)
You're fucking stupid. Every story that makes you feel good about America is a portent of what's to come.
Re:I just wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it will be zero. This is the mafiaa; what else would it be?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:true (Score:5, Insightful)
What's actually happening is that the UK's government is forcing ISPs to warn people who they believe are breaking the law. Of course, ISPs are saying that this is expensive and that they plan to pass the costs along to consumers.
I think this is going to be a laughable clusterfuck.
It's worse than that.
The UK's government is forcing the ISPs to spend money to augment the benefits of the media business.
So, essentially, business A is paying the government to force business B to raise his prices and spend the money in business A's benefit.
And it won't be a clusterfuck because it's currently impossible to prove whether the imagined benefits will in fact exist.
Good example of piracy versus robbery (Score:5, Insightful)
With piracy, a company sells a copy and the buyer makes a copy for someone else(and whether that someone else would have bought a copy without piracy is debatable). If I buy a 99-cent song and give you a copy, that is "piracy".
With robbery, someone takes someone else's belongings. If someone takes your money without giving you anything and without your consent, that is "robbery".
This is robbery.
Re:Obligatory Heinlein quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Heinlein was wrong. The ones who "come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or turned back for their private benefit" don't do it by RIGHTS. They do it because the CAN.
And yes, they "shouldn't" even if they can, because it's not "right". But they have enough resources and it is they that decides what's right/wrong and what should/shouldn't be done.
Power always override rights and morals because in the end, actual changes are made by what has been done and what is being done, not what "should" be done.
RE:This makes my day. (Score:2, Insightful)
But AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service) still must operate inside Australian law, which gives me protection. So I cant be arrested at an Australian airport and held without charge unless I've violated a law, which means I've been charged. This may make you feel better but AQIS and the AFP are a long way off from being a TSA and declaring certain areas to be "rights free" zones.
At worse, Australia is talking about a filtering system that will be easily defeated by a VPN tunnel to Singapore (yes, its still only talking, nothing has actually been implemented yet), it's significantly more difficult to do an end run around a US airport.
Also if you read TFA, you'd also know that this bill hasn't passed yet.
I know that you're a USian and I have a policy against attacking people who do not use English as their primary language but "proposal" does not mean "signed into law".
The US introduced far worse laws like warrant-less wiretapping or giving the TSA carte blanc, so when you are in a glass house its a very good idea not to throw stones.
Re:Doesnt this make Pirated stuff, now free to all (Score:4, Insightful)
They will NEVER adapt to the new world (Score:5, Insightful)
The content industries will NEVER accept the new world because they know that in the new world, they wont be the king of the hill anymore.
Right now in the old world, companies like Sony, Warner, Fox, Universal, Disney, EMI and Paramount are king of the hill.
With the new world order eliminating the huge production costs (you dont NEED a big studio full of gear to record a song anymore, you can do it in your garage with a PC, some software and some microphones to record with) and distribution costs (you can distribute your songs either for free or for pay online very easily without a middleman), you dont need the big dinosaurs anymore and they are doing everything they can to stop it from happening.
And unlike previous times when disruptive technologies were invented, those who stand to loose the most have the ear of government and are attempting to outlaw the disruptive technologies BEFORE they become mainstream.
Re:Good example of piracy versus robbery (Score:2, Insightful)
What today *AA call "piracy" is just copying. They know they would look stupid if they want money for copying, and that's why they call it "piracy". Welcome our newspeak overlords ...
Re:This would make me so reluctant to buy music (Score:2, Insightful)
they may be first we're probably next.
Re:Not quite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Society has no obligation to break windows so that the window maker has a job. The recording industry is by any reasonable standard, a failure without government intervention on their behalf. They no doubt employ thousands of people but they no longer feel the need to produce anything so their reason for being no longer exists. The resources squandered on providing jobs for doing worthless tasks are better allocated elsewhere.
Re:Perceived enjoyment. (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago it was rare for most people to regularly communicate with those in other countries, and if they did it was likely to be a very slow exchange involving letters written on paper... Movies would come out in one country and people in another wouldn't even realise until the same movie came out in their country 6 months later. And then there were format differences (NTSC, PAL etc) which made it more difficult to play foreign videos.
When i was younger, any media my parents bought me, they would make me copy and play the copy because as a child the chance of me damaging the original was pretty high.
Now, media is digital so the format difference becomes irrelevant, so they try to create an artificial difference (region coding)...
People regularly communicate worldwide, so when something comes out in one country people in another hear about it and get exposed to the marketing, only they have no legitimate way to obtain it... By the time it comes out in their country, it's already old news on the internet.
People want to copy the media they legitimately purchased onto multiple devices, portable players, media jukeboxes (large hard drives so lots of media is available immediately without the hassle of swapping disks), in-car players, backup copies...
People might want to play out of region movies/games, perhaps they bought some on holiday, perhaps some media isn't available in their country at all, although they will still be exposed to talk of it on the internet.
Nowadays, only "pirate" copies provide the fair use rights we were once able to exercise or would like to exercise using new technology.
Consider that the "pirates" are providing a superior product for a lower cost. In fact, if the pirates charged the same price their product would still be superior. Without artificial help from the government, the media companies business model simply couldn't exist.... Your tax dollars are paying to prop up a broken business model so that what little money you have left after tax can go to them too in exchange for a crippled product.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Like somebody from Canada posted above, we too have a tax on recordable media such as CD-R and DVD-R (but no HDD's) which is supposedly paid to recording artists who suffer from illegal copying. It is actually legal in the Netherlands to copy music or video from another source (neighbour, friend, internet) if it is for personal use. Naturally the recording industry association is trying to change the law, but just a few months a great move was made by our government showing that they will not be easily influenced by the media lobby:
They ruled that copying of copyrighted material will be made illegal only when the industry makes content readily available online for a fair price and without any DRM restrictions that would limit the usage of the material. This to me seems the perfect response to the tactics the industry is employing to try to keep their outdated business model alive. If they try to block innovation the consumer will find ways to work around it, the consumer owns the government so it always seems strange to me that in western so-called democratic society the government seems to be protecting the business more from the consumer than the other way round. It also shows the Labour party is far from its original socialist roots, I'm glad I don't have to vote in the British elections!
Re:true (Score:2, Insightful)
Piracy is theft
Copyrights are not property, they are special, temporary rights granted by the government for a limited time to encourage particular kinds of activities. Therefore, copyright violations are not theft. Furthermore, we as a society get to define what actions constitute a copyright violation.
Re:This makes my day. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, he's making the point that ignoring problems for other people until they directly affect you is a terribly stupid idea. Slippery slope, and all that.
We are all criminals now. (Score:5, Insightful)
According to this fluff piece in the Times.
What's a poor citizen to do?
Every single UK broadband subscriber will be taxed / fined an extra £25 per year, to prop up the film and music industry.
Nice work if you can get it.
Why not subsidise the fax industry as well, and the cassette tape industry, and while we are at it, how about the buggy whip manufacturing industry?
Business has a thing called "externalisation", what it boils down to is putting as much cost as possible outside the business, a classic example is a textile mill that externalises the cost of polluting, simply by dumping the pollutants into the local river. Someone else, downstream, can pick up the tab.
The justification for this is that allegedly the latest Star Trek movie was downloaded 11 million times in 2009.
Around 150 million visits to the cinema per year happen in the UK, if you take the alleged 11 million star treks, add in the harry potters, avatars (holds hand up) etc etc it is no stretch of the imagination to claim that 150 million movie downloads happened in the UK in 2009.
According to this metric, and the false logic employed, if downloading was banned, cinema attendances would double.
Bullshit.
Here is why;
1. There is the false logic assumption that if I had not downloaded Avatar, I would have gone to the cinema and paid to see it. This is utterly false. You would have to pay me at least £5 to set foot in a cinema, to compensate me for the travel, mobile phones, noisy bastards, no smoking or drinking, inability to pause, crap seats, etc etc.
2. There is the false logic assumption that people like me with 46 1080p screens who prefer the comforts of our own homes would substitute the video rental shop for the cinema. Rubbish. The video rental shops don't have anything new, or anything good, or much choice of anything, and quite apart from that I have no interest in watching a Blu-ray that does not let me skip past 15 minutes of promo crap.
3. There is a false logic assumption that the media in question (whether it is cinema or rental) is value for money, I am simply not prepared to pay £5 per head for a cinema ticket, or £5 a night for a DVD, for 90 minutes of "entertainment" It is just way too expensive.
4. There is a false logic assumption, in short, that the 11 million downloads of Star Trek represent even 1 single lost cinema sale or DVD rental... You are reading this because it is free, would you pay £5 to read it? Stupid question. Would you pay £0.01 to read it? Stupid question.
5. There is a false logic assumption that the decline in cinema attendance figures, record sales, etc, say compared to 1970, is due to a change in people's attitudes, we have suddenly become a nation of thieves. Simply not true. These EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS were made about the compact audio cassette.
6. There is a false logic assumption that it is acceptable to impose a fine / tax / tariff on EVERYONE, that would be like mandating that I must buy a television licence, even though I haven't watched television for 20 years.
7. There is a false logic assumption that the technologies that they are going to deploy are actually going to catch people illegally sharing copyright material, ONLY, and NO-ONE ELSE, and indeed this is implicitly acknowledged in the desire to fine / tax / tariff ALL users of broadband, irrespective of what they do.
8. There is a false logic assumption that we are dealing with a static target, the ever evolving technology means that it really does not matter what methods you use to counter copyright violations (NOT copyright theft, no one is stealing your actual copyright, and no one is depriving anyone else of their use) because within the month (and I am being generous) they will be cracked.
9. T
Being right in one thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
...doesn't mean being right in everything.
So I do actually agree on a few things with muslim extremists, but not on all.
As of late, my main feeling towards the US of A has been of sorrow. A great nation with great people. Falling prey to the claws of headless and faceless capitalist interest groups, buying their way all throughout an otherwise great society.
Re:They will NEVER adapt to the new world (Score:4, Insightful)
Good film cameras, films, lenses, and lightning are expensive,
Rubbish. The movie industry has inflated itself to death. Why would you feel sympathy for someone who has smoked 70 cigarettes a day, on receiving the news that he has cancer? Why worry about the 500 lb man who is dying of heart disease? It's not the price of the "film cameras, films, lenses (wait, you already charged me for the camera!) and lighting". The BIGGEST item on a movie's budget is MARKETING. All those commercials on TV and radio. All those mini "infomercials" about the "making of movie X" before the launch. They cost money. Then there's wages. Why the hell must an actor earn several MILLION dollars for performing? Then, WAY DOWN AT THE BOTTOM, there's the actual production cost for the carpenters, electricians, etc.
Just like the investment banks that started paying themselves multi million dollar bonuses, they've inflated their professions. Now no one wants to work for an investment bank for less, and they whine that they "HAVE TO" pay these huge bonuses to attract talent. For movies - idem. The marketing is a penis-stroking maneuver. Oh I need to spend $200 million in advertising to increase my box office revenue by ...tadaa... $201 million. Oh and we HAVE to pay $10+ million dollars to get Whatshisname to play the lead role, because no other lesser human can make a decent movie (cough - what was the total production cost of Slumdog millionaire again? $250k?)... No, I feel no sympathy. And it ain't the cellulose film that costs $100 million.
Re:I'm not sure what's worse; (Score:4, Insightful)