Piracy is necessary and doesn't hurt revenues

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Most people don't use Internet chat rooms to talk about TV shows. I believe there are "spoilers" for the upcoming new series of "Doctor Who" all over the Internet, but I've had no difficulty in not being "spoiled".

you've obviously NOT tried to NOT read game of thrones spoilers then, or any very popular detective recent detective series - The Fall, Line of Duty...
the spoiler can even be on page 1 of a newspaper.

but in case you missed it - most of the Starks are now dead

so is Tywin Lannister - and Joffrey

the "Red Wedding" made most of the front pages

the "purple Wedding" was not far behind



There you go - no need to save for that season 4 box set now - & no need to switch off when GOT comes back on the news -

[Prestidigitweeze]

The point of DVD regions was never to enforce a legal directive and so create a new class of petty criminal. It was to control the timing and pattern of distribution of a given product for the benefit of a group of companies, and to make circumventing said control a hassle for consumers who didn't want to deal with incompatibilities (standard-region players and burners) and the possible need to install special firmware or even hunt down a pattern of numbers to input into a Philips remote. It was about maximizing profits by discouraging people from bypassing that strategy. It was the geographical equivalent of Apple's walled garden: Hardware-enforced, not legally imposing.

Personally, I'd love to see Sony try to go after someone who moved to a Region 2 area and insisted on playing their Region 1 Blu-Ray discs on their Region 1 player. The media would orgasm over something that ridiculous. It's a case that will never happen because intellectual property and region-locking are two separate issues.

The same principal is now being used to bind Samsung smartphones to a particular region and to enable the detection of the installation of custom firmware so that a phone which has run, say, cyanogenmod will not be serviced by Samsung even if it's a day old because a Galaxy S5 cannot be restored to its default state without the user leaving an ineradicable record of having installed different firmware (though people are working on this).

Finding ways around Knox (and Samsung's new region-locked SIMs) is not illegal. In fact, some people I know are deserting Samsung because no other smartphone company -- not even Apple -- is annoying customers with SIM region locks. Perhaps companies like HTC and Nokia will get more business because of that. The M8 deserves a bit more market share.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Most people don't use Internet chat rooms to talk about TV shows. I believe there are "spoilers" for the upcoming new series of "Doctor Who" all over the Internet, but I've had no difficulty in not being "spoiled".

you've obviously NOT tried to NOT read game of thrones spoilers then, or any very popular detective recent detective series - The Fall, Line of Duty...

Spoliers are all over mainstream media - boih paper & online.

the spoiler can even be on page 1 of a newspaper, [ Gme of Thrones - Red Wedding] & you dare not ever flip to an entertainment section if you don't what to know " who did it" in some big finale episode of whatever....

& god help you if you are a soaps fan but your 2 weeks on some remote Greek island left you 10 episodes behind the plot, By the time you get back to somewhere you can legally view, *everyone* knows who did what to who, who's left the series, who's dead, whose been arrested for child abuse... ( whoops sorry that ones real life - they can't copyright that - yet! )

[my son used to have an australian girl friend living with us here in UK - until youve seen it 1st hand you can't appreciate the trauma , for an aussie girl, of having no legal access to current aussie episodes of Neighbours ]

but in case you missed it - all most of the Starks are now dead
so is Tywin Lannister -

So there you go - no need to save for that season 4 box set now.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I don't feel guilty about those years of downloading first, paying (i.e. buying DVDs) later, even if I don't do it any more for the simple reason that I can't afford to accumulate more physical media in my limited-space home.

I don't think the person in the article, who paid first and then upon realising they wouldn't be allowed to actually watch the paid-for content (regardless of whether they should have realised it before signing up or not) should feel guilty either. They've paid; the content creator gets what is theirs.

Is this illegal? Possibly. (Downloading for personal purposes, I've gathered, isn't illegal in all jurisdictions - so depending on how they download something, whether directly or uploading at the same time, and where they are located, it may not even be illegal.) Is it immoral? Not to me.

It often happens that what one person sees as justifications and excuses are meant as explanations. People explaining their reasons in a thread that directly calls for people to explain their motivations is IMHO not necessarily either justification or making excuses.

Explaining why you do something is usually not an excuse, like explaining to a child why they should brush their teeth. An excuse is often put forth as an explanation. And of course if you hae paid for a product, such as the right to watch an American TV sow in China, you should get to watch it or your money back. No arguments there.

I have certainly done things in my life that were of questionable legality. I am not trying to point a finger of blame. Many things we do in life without thinking of questionable legality. I may have hired people to do things without getting a tax number and reporting it for instance or bought goods without a sales receipt. In the municipality I live in it was illegal to give money to a panhandler and I did on occasion. And I jaywalk, or cross against the light, either intentionally or accidentally, although I do wish I wouldn't. If I got caught I would just pay the fine not give any explanations. I don't feel any noticeable guilt so I feel no need to explain. And of course if I did for some unfathomable reason try to explain, people would just say I was making excuses

Helen

[hashken]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Out of region is *not* the same thing as geo-restricted.
Geo-restricted means "not authorized for sale".
Out of region simply means "not intended for", or "not marketted to", or even simpler "import".

Try buying some original japanese anime DVDs: no hoops needed. There are plenty of authorized vendors.

That is why region-free DVD players are legal.
Importing is not illegal.

I don't think anyone is disputing the legalities of the matter. the point of contention is whether it is morally right to follow one and not the other. Just because one was declared legal and the other not, althought they essentially equate to the same thing, doesn't mean everyone needs to agree with the idea.

So, in the world of free internet, as long as unreasonable geo-restrictions and such convoluted rules exist, piracy will also exist and let me go one step further and say it is morally right too.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by hashken

So, in the world of free internet, as long as unreasonable geo-restrictions and such convoluted rules exist, piracy will also exist and let me go one step further and say it is morally right too.

Geo-restrictions on video streaming are not "unreasonable" because, as has been stated, the streaming company would have to pay a considerable amount extra for world-wide streaming rights. If you'd be happy to pay a lot more, that's fine, but many people wouldn't be.

[hashken]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Right.
And exercising those rights would take money the streaming co may not have. Note how Amazon bought LOVEFILM to get its PRIME video service into europe while Netflix had to build from scratch and took a couple years to get even a toehold; if they had world rights, they would be paying for rights they couldn't exercise for years and that wouldn't generate revenue for them or the IP owner.
Also, with regional licensing, the license (and customer relations) can go to a smaller, local player more attuned to the market who cares about their customers.

There are real business world differences between delivering ebooks worldwide and delivering video streams; there are matters of technical infrastructure build out, customer service, billing, and regulatory environment. All of which add cost and risk to running a global commercial video streaming service. And note that while Amazon took their core ebook operation global within months, they are still spending money and effort to build country-specific bookstores; they must see some significant value in localizing their operation.

Again, blanket equivalences are not a good way to look at these products; there are similarities but the differences are more important than the similarities.

This whole topic of regional restrictions hinges on the fact that the regional content supplier only has the right to stream content in his region.

When I use his service in some other region, I'm still paying the copyright holder and also the original content supplier. The only one who loses out in this is the content supplier of the new location.

But, most of the times this kind of geo-spoofing happens for the following two reasons

• There is no content supplier for the specified content in the new region
• I'm a global traveller who is going to spend a short time in the new region

In the former case there is anyway no loss to anyone. In the latter, a traveller on a short trip is anyway not going to buy a subscription for that short time and it unfair to ask him to do so. So, although we can technically argue that there is a chance of revenue loss for some party, I personally don't view it so. If the user is forced to take a subscription in this new location for this short time, I would personally view it as a revenue loss for the customer.

One gray area where geo-spoofing might cause actual harm is when I have a legal content supplier for my area, who because of local rules and taxes charges more for the same content than a foreign content supplier, say Netflix. Now, in this case illegally (still a gray area ), acessing the content from Netflix, by geo-spoofing, is actually causing real harm to my local content supplier.

I'm not sure how to prevent this and in our connected world, I don't think it can be too. The only way would be for the Governments to ensure that their local content suppliers can stay competitive with the global ones. (Or follow China's way and create a great Internet Firewall )

[eschwartz]

And what is wrong with sticking to enforcing a confirmed in-country billing address and payment system? If someone has a US address and credit card, and buys from a US service, then even if they travel they wouldn't be purchasing another country's service. Also, the sale happened inside the region where the rights are held. Distributors make more money when they don't georestrict. No pirates are stopped either way. At least this way they could stop paying for security theater. And get more (legal) customers.

[hashken]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Geo-restrictions on video streaming are not "unreasonable" because, as has been stated, the streaming company would have to pay a considerable amount extra for world-wide streaming rights. If you'd be happy to pay a lot more, that's fine, but many people wouldn't be.

As I had said in my other post, let us not have a single company with world-wide rights. All arguments for companies with regional rights are valid.

My point is even when companies have only local rights, when a small number of their users use it when they are abroad, it still doesn't affect anyone in the whole ecosystem. Copyright holder gets his cash, local content supplier gets his cash, foreign content supplier gets nothing; but he would have anyway got nothing as a person is not going to buy a subscription service from the foreign content supplier for the few days he is going to stay abroad.

Some may argue that my last point is not valid and that the foreign content supplier is indeed losing out. But, I would disagree, as when trying to balance the rights and welfare of everyone in the whole system, someone has to take care of the end customers too.

[Greg Anos]

The best answer is because they can....

Let me provide a little history. (Set the WAYBAC machine to 1996)

DVD standards are being set. Hollywood refused to play (to release content), because of th great fear of piracy. No machines will be released because of no content to play it them.

Hardware manufacturers ask Hollywood - "what would make you happy, so that you would release content?"

Hollywood response with - "super-tough encryption, that can't be broken (snicker), and region codes so we can release the content in waves. (Say, region 2 first, then region 1, the region 3, ect., each separated by 3 months, so the revenue can be spread out over time.)

Manufacturer - "You want it, you got it! We'll use CSS encryption, which we are told cannot be broken (1996, remember), and we will put region codes on the discs, and regions codes on the machines so they won't play on any machine without the right region code. Here's the contract, look it over."

Hollywood didn't understand anything about maunfacturing, looked over the contract, and stepped on the dotted line.

Hollywood assumed that all the manufacturers would make separate models for each region....<sucker...>

The manufacturers made only one model with an automated control override to set a region on a machine at the final step. That way they could reset stock dependent upon sales in any particular region. It also left open a back door for region code overrides...

The manufacturers were following the letter of the contract, each machine met the contractual requirement of region code limitation for the region it was being sent to.

Meanwhile, back in the US, Hollywood was brib....err, lobbying Congress to pass the DCMA, which made bypassing both the encryption and region codes a Felony. (see one of my revious posts for the exact DMCA wording.) It passed, and Hollywood thought they were all set. Can't record, can't decrypt, can't bypass the region code, and who was going to ship a PAL machine to a NSTC world? (And that may have been forbidden in the major maunfacturer contracts. I know that in 1999, I wanted a standard sized (26") 16X9 television to watch DVD's on. They were deliberately not sold in the US, to force the US consumers to by HDTV big screen 40" and larger, at $3,000 USD and up, just to get the 16x9 form. I ordered at a SONY 26" 16X9, top of the line, at $2,000 (with shipping to the US from the UK, the shipping costing as much as the TV) and being informed my order was being declined as SONY allowed the 16X9s to be shipped everywherre in the world except the US! I didn't bother to try to get a PAL DVD player shipped....)

After a few million DVD player had been sold, word started leaking out that, one - some players had separate chips that controlled region codes, which could be replaced with chips bypassing the region code limits, and two - many has software control codes that allow the same bypassing. Hollywood hadn't placed strict contractual limitations on the disc sales, figuring that the hardware limits would stop regional leakage...Which left the current system, which is easy to bypass.

When it came to allowing streaming, Hollywood learned from the earlier DVD control failure, and put strict geo-checking in the streaming provider's contract language. They couldn't sell to anyone outside their defined region. Of course, just like there was a way around DVD region codes, there is a way around the streaming geo-restrictions limitations. One merely "spoofs" the internet address, and off one goes.

In the end, one is not any more legal (at least from a US perspective) than the other. It's just that one is easier to beat. If one is paying for the content, neither way is "piracy", mererly obtaining access to what has been legally purchased....

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

If one is paying for the content, neither way is "piracy", mererly obtaining access to what has been legally purchased....

Not disputing morality, but is this really legal and not considered piracy? Ideally if one is cheated by a B&M store, one is given the wrong or defective product or no product at all, if one has exhausted the usual methods of getting the product, then one should be able to legally just march into the store and take the right product. I suspect this is not the case.

Of course, as you said, because they can.

Helen

[hashken]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Not disputing morality, but is this really legal and not considered piracy? Ideally if one is cheated by a B&M store, one is given the wrong or defective product or no product at all, if one has exhausted the usual methods of getting the product, then one should be able to legally just march into the store and take the right product. I suspect this is not the case.

Of course, as you said, because they can.

Helen

I also agree it is not exactly legal.

But, if I get cheated by a B&M store, I have the option of going to another B&M store to get the same product and I can forever avoid the former one. But, in case of these content distributors, there is almost absolute monopoly in their respective regions (atleast in developing countries like mine), and you are stuck with them.

So, you are either forced to play by their rules or you are going to say, screw this, I'm going to take matters into my hands. But, of course, these conglomerates have successfully lobbied the gvernments to make any and all kinds of such circumventions illegal, although they maybe morally right. So, if you are going to follow the latter method, you are just doing it at your own risk.

As long as you are somehow paying back the original copyright holder, I don't think any of this is morally wrong, the question is whether it is legally right, and if not, how much you are willing to risk for it.

[Greg Anos]

I didn't say that both ways are legal. In the US, both ways are illegal. However, your country may differ.

The streaming geo-restrictions were designed to be more able to be directly enforced, while the DVD turned out to be much harder to enforce, due to the multiple hands the control must go through. (and on such shakey legal ground, due to First Amendment rights, that the copyright holders did not want to risk a trial. But the illegality is still on the books.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The streaming geo-restrictions were designed to be more able to be directly enforced, while the DVD turned out to be much harder to enforce, due to the multiple hands the control must go through. (and on such shakey legal ground, due to First Amendment rights, that the copyright holders did not want to risk a trial. But the illegality is still on the books.)

What "books", Ralph? Will you point out, please, exactly what law you believe is broken by buying an out-of-region DVD? You've repeatedly made the claim that it's illegal, but have failed to back up your claim with one shred of supporting evidence.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What "books", Ralph? Will you point out, please, exactly what law you believe is broken by buying an out-of-region DVD? You've repeatedly made the claim that it's illegal, but have failed to back up your claim with one shred of supporting evidence.

At the risk of being banned - HarryT, you are completely and totally wrong in the above statement.

IN THIS THREAD, POST #56:

Direct quote:

" Here is the US letter of the law (from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act):

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title...; to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.

A region code (in the US) qualified as a "technological measure".

I make no comment on othe countries' laws.... "

In the US, it would be a violation of the DCMA. Now I agree that no cases have been brought to trial, and it might fail under US Constitution First Amendment rights, but until a case is brought to trial and appealed to make that determination, one way or the other, the law stands...

An unenforced law is still a law.

Or are you saying that you can purchase an out-of-region disc, legally, so you can look at the disc on a shelf. because if you played it, that would be illegal under US law.