Illicit duplication of copyrighted DVDs and CDs

[edwest2]

Michaelangelo was constantly destitute yet continued to produce his work. Why? Because he was an artist and that was where his passion lay.

No one sits down to create art to become rich. Monetary prosperity for art is a perk that few artists achieve.

I remember Billy Joel saying that he knew guys who wanted to be musicians but wanted to get a degree “just in case.” As he said, if that is your thinking, then you probably aren’t an artist.

If you’re talking about non-commercial art, that may be true to some degree. This nonrepresentational art is its own little world.

Commercial art, on the other hand, can be profitable, provided you have the skill to give the client what he wants. I personally visited a “prestigious” commercial art studio during the day and after hours. I saw it all. Walking in, it was like being in a botanical garden for the first 300 feet and then you saw the glass doors that led to the production area. I watched the Art Director and artists in action. I know commercial artists who work for a number of different clients/companies. That way, the work is spread out and money is coming in from multiple sources, reducing the impact of any ‘dry spells.’

I know artists who do art on the side to get supplemental income, after their day job.

Ed

 

[truetofaith]

What about movies shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel?

I record them & put them on DVDs. I doubt I must buy these movies instead.

 

[Tim_D]

What about movies shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel?

I record them & put them on DVDs. I doubt I must buy these movies instead.

According to some here, any unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material is illegal and to some others, a sin.

 

[DignumEtJustum]

So has anyone taken into account the fact that even the cable company now supplies its customers with PVR digital recorders with no recording restrictions whatsoever so we don’t have to use VHS or DVDs anymore? Surely if it were so illegal to the point of being sinful, this wouldn’t be the case and the industry would be up in arms over it. One could even record the music channels onto these devices for later playback.

 

[Bonnie]

So has anyone taken into account the fact that even the cable company now supplies its customers with PVR digital recorders with no recording restrictions whatsoever so we don’t have to use VHS or DVDs anymore? Surely if it were so illegal to the point of being sinful, this wouldn’t be the case and the industry would be up in arms over it. One could even record the music channels onto these devices for later playback.

It’s because of this kind of technology that makes me believe that a single recording of something for one’s own use is not the problem - it’s making multiple recordings without permission to give away or sell.

 

[edwest2]

So has anyone taken into account the fact that even the cable company now supplies its customers with PVR digital recorders with no recording restrictions whatsoever so we don’t have to use VHS or DVDs anymore? Surely if it were so illegal to the point of being sinful, this wouldn’t be the case and the industry would be up in arms over it. One could even record the music channels onto these devices for later playback.

Permission is the key. File sharing sites have to be held accountable. Downloading from certain sites like youtube means if someone puts something up without permission/the right to do so, the copyright owner has to notify youtube to take it down. Piracy hasn’t stopped. From the Motion Picture Association of America site:

mpaa.org/?s=piracy

Ed

 

[pnewton]

Permission is the key. File sharing sites have to be held accountable. Downloading from certain sites like youtube means if someone puts something up without permission/the right to do so, the copyright owner has to notify youtube to take it down. Piracy hasn’t stopped.

I think the point was not about file sharing, but personal use. When a program is aired, there may not be permission to record and then replayed. In such a case, permission is irrelevant. The permission to broadcast means that recipients of that broadcast do not need further permission to delay pause or replay the broadcast.

While permission is needed in many situations, it bears remembering that owners of intellectual property do not win every suit they file. Some owners do not have the rights they think they have.

 

[exnihilo]

I think the point was not about file sharing, but personal use. When a program is aired, there may not be permission to record and then replayed. In such a case, permission is irrelevant. The permission to broadcast means that recipients of that broadcast do not need further permission to delay pause or replay the broadcast.

While permission is needed in many situations, it bears remembering that owners of intellectual property do not win every suit they file. Some owners do not have the rights they think they have.

There is ‘fair use’ which allows you to use copyrighted material without receiving approval or license from the owner. Fair use is established in law and precedent. This means a lot of it comes from someone being sued and defending his right to use the material. Time shifting, VCR/DVR, was opposed by the corporations. Sony had to go to court to defend it. By the way it is worth noting the corporations sued the makers of the VCR not the user. They wanted to stifle innovation for all. While the case was rightly decided it goes to show how evil and greedy the corporations are. They will try to destroy technology that they perceive hurts their monopoly. How is this good for society?

 

[edwest2]

Let’s try to put ourselves in the shoes of the evil and greedy corporations. Most of them started long ago and grew. Of course they wanted to protect their property. When I was growing up, if you missed a TV show you were out of luck. No great loss to society. Then the motion picture companies began offering various TV shows and movies on film for home movie projectors, then on VHS, then on DVD. I fail to see how society is being harmed.

Now, you can set your DVR and watch anything whenever you want. And one channel features old TV shows.

Ed

 

[pnewton]

Let’s try to put ourselves in the shoes of the evil and greedy corporations. Most of them started long ago and grew. Of course they wanted to protect their property. When I was growing up, if you missed a TV show you were out of luck. No great loss to society. Then the motion picture companies began offering various TV shows and movies on film for home movie projectors, then on VHS, then on DVD. I fail to see how society is being harmed.

No one is being harmed. The point is that if they has been able to block the ability to record movies, then it would have been a hardship (if that word can even be used about movies) for many people. I was working shift work even back in the time of VCR’s. That innovation allowed many of us to watch programming that everyone else got to watch. DVR’s have now made the process easier, as has On Demand offerings.

Yet the owners of this intellectual property at one time wanted this unavailable. So it is an interesting question. If they had won and stopped SONY from distributing VCR’s would it still be stealing to own one and make copies? Is moral law a matter of court ruling?

 

[twoangels]

A friend of mine has a CD / DVD duplicator and is very engaged in apostolic work of various kinds. Anyways, I’m wondering if it is a sin to duplicate copyrighted DVDs and CDs and just hand them out on a large scale to persons. His basic intention in itself as good is presupposed and he is handing them out at no cost.

It violates US copyright laws and we are called to respect the civil laws. Without copyright, though, morally it’s complicated. Copyright laws create an artificial market by prohibiting the copying of something. Copying is not stealing in a technical sense. Afterall, if I steal your coat, you no longer have a coat. If I make a copy of your coat, you still have a coat. I just have a coat just like yours.

See the issue is that anything that is easily reproduced tends to be something there isn’t much of a market for. Afterall, the market only exists because of scarcity. The supply has to be lower than the demand. If everyone wants something of which there is only one of, they can’t all have it so the market value goes up. Whereas, if you create something that can be easily copied, the market value is non-existant.

Granted, it was assumed that violations of copyright would actually hurt artists more than it does. But what we’ve discovered so far is that obscurity hurts artists more than copyright violations. In fact, pirated material tends to act like free marketing. It can actually increase the sales of a product provided the copy includes the type of information people can google to find the real you and where you actually sell your work. Whereas if I give people the license to copy my work, I may hurt my ability to give the license to someone else who wants the exclusive license to it. So stolen work is the type of free advertising that you can tell your publisher “Hey I can give you the exclusive license. I can’t control the thieves (who I’ve now acknowledged are helping).”

It’s simply not that straight forward of a thing as stealing, but we are supposed to respect the laws of our land and treat others as we’d like to be treated.

 

[twoangels]

Not necessarily. What about newlyweds who give out mix CD’s for souvenirs at wedding receptions? Those are duplicated 100x a pop in some cases, per wedding, per day. Are you suggesting that those wedding gift mix CD’s are illegal?

LOL. It actually is. Most people don’t understand copyright law enough. Most people violate it all the time without realizing it.

What about music mix CD’s (mix tapes of the pre-CD era) someone gives to friends or family? That’s not illegal.

Yes, that is.

 

[edwest2]

It violates US copyright laws and we are called to respect the civil laws. Without copyright, though, morally it’s complicated. Copyright laws create an artificial market by prohibiting the copying of something. Copying is not stealing in a technical sense. Afterall, if I steal your coat, you no longer have a coat. If I make a copy of your coat, you still have a coat. I just have a coat just like yours.

See the issue is that anything that is easily reproduced tends to be something there isn’t much of a market for. Afterall, the market only exists because of scarcity. The supply has to be lower than the demand. If everyone wants something of which there is only one of, they can’t all have it so the market value goes up. Whereas, if you create something that can be easily copied, the market value is non-existant.

Granted, it was assumed that violations of copyright would actually hurt artists more than it does. But what we’ve discovered so far is that obscurity hurts artists more than copyright violations. In fact, pirated material tends to act like free marketing. It can actually increase the sales of a product provided the copy includes the type of information people can google to find the real you and where you actually sell your work. Whereas if I give people the license to copy my work, I may hurt my ability to give the license to someone else who wants the exclusive license to it. So stolen work is the type of free advertising that you can tell your publisher “Hey I can give you the exclusive license. I can’t control the thieves (who I’ve now acknowledged are helping).”

It’s simply not that straight forward of a thing as stealing, but we are supposed to respect the laws of our land and treat others as we’d like to be treated.

Scarcity doesn’t mean greedy corporations don’t stop growing. Marketing is not free, not good marketing. That’s what marketing firms are for. Free advertising doesn’t mean anything. Before the internet, the greedy corporations grew and young artists from the 1950s got famous, very famous. In pre-internet days, everything was about the size of the Great Lakes. Now it’s the size of all the oceans combined. A lot of the junk that gets submitted and rejected by real companies ends up on the internet. We’ve gone from finding a needle in a haystack to a haystack the size of the moon. The same is true in Hollywood. Thanks to a Hollywood Script Editor, I found out that they were seeing as much bad material as I was. It’s hard to find the good stuff - there’s way too much for the average person to sort through.

We’ve done Licensing as a Licensee and Licensor. I’ve read enough contracts that I can write them myself. They can be structured any way you want. Exclusive, non-exclusive. How is it that massive companies can have the same characters depicted on greeting cards to kids clothing to books and other media? I’ve been in the business long enough to decipher the arcane texts known as contracts.

The market exists only for things that are high quality, well done. I don’t want something bad - poorly done - even if it costs me nothing. Just because media can be turned into digital bits does not make it any different from what a person sees on TV.

And we will continue to do everything we can to stop pirates. Fortunately, our fans contact us to let us know where our material is available for illegal download.

Ed

 

[twoangels]

Scarcity doesn’t mean greedy corporations don’t stop growing.

I’m confused by this company because what I said is that scarcity is what creates the market. Before self-publication and file sharing, the size of the market was controlled by the fact that it was more difficult to make copies and the fact that companies could time their release schedules and thus control, to some level, their competition. Add that to them having strong name recognition, and wider distribution than smaller companies, this again contributed to a greater scarcity which helped them to continue to grow.

But now, Amazon owns the bulk of the market, and self-publishing has created an avalanche of competition. Now, granted, the bulk of self-published material isn’t very good, but oddly enough the scammers who produce garbage regularly (sometimes just click bait that gets caught late. They sign up for Amazon select and then have literally nothing but junk text with the opening page being a link to the last page “Get a free amazon gift card.” The reader clicks the link, goes to the last page, returns the book, and the scammer gets paid for all the pages “read” between their first page and the page the link sent the reader to). Honestly, these scammers make more money than people who are actually trying to produce quality material). And that’s with Amazon trying to shut them down as soon as they’re aware of it.

Marketing is not free, not good marketing. That’s what marketing firms are for. Free advertising doesn’t mean anything.

Paying for marketing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good marketing either. The key to understand is that if you’re paying for marketing, you should be paying for someone to give you access to advertising space that is in high demand. For instance, the cost of ad time during the superbowl is insanely expensive because so many people watch the superbowl and thus will see the adds. Companies buy a huge sum of money for the space but ALSO spend big bucks on the quality of their commercials because they’re competing with other advertisers who have paid for similiar slots. They want to make their content memorable.

It’s gotten to the point, though, where their shooting for their ad to go viral on youtube. That’s the free part. People watching the superbowl ad love the humor or whatever so much in the add that they find it on youtube and share it. If enough people love it, it gets passed around. This started out as pirarcy, but now the coorporations post the videos on their own accounts when the add shows so that the quality is improved. It also provides a more direct link to their products than a pirated copy would.

My point is not that piracy is the greatest free advertising on the planet. What I’m saying is that there’s no evidence that it actually reduces sales. And yes, there are people who consume free content and then love it so much that they buy a legit copy. Or they tell their friends who actually buy a legit copy than going downloading a pirated copy.

And for the record, Monty Python increased their DVD sales by 23,000% by posting their videos for free on Youtube. fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000

 

[edwest2]

Pre-internet, if the demand was high enough, more copies were made, whether it was a record, book, etc. The companies involved made that obvious. Open up a book and you’ll see a number of printings listed, 1st printing to 15th printing or more. Companies did not want to lose sales so they kept reprinting to satisfy demand. Like movies, no one can predict which media item will hit and which will miss. In theory, a ton of junk media will remain available in unlimited quantity forever. Junk is junk even if it’s now available in digital bits.

Reviews on amazon are worth reading. I’m not paying money for junk, no matter what type of media it is.

Most creators do not know how to promote themselves. And they don’t know how to produce engaging marketing pieces. Having been involved in marketing myself, it’s an art form built on a large knowledge base. It involves a lot of research and time. Things cannot just be thrown together. The better a company is, the faster they can produce something worth seeing/reading.

Piracy reduces our sales. We know that first-hand. Free is the price everyone can pay. Why should I buy a real copy when I have a perfect free copy?

"One example of how the industry has successfully combated piracy came when the FBI shut down HTML Comics, a website which hosted over 5,700 series of comics.

"By April 2010, the website claimed to have an average of 1.6 million visits per day and more than 6,630,021 pages of comic books offered for unrestricted viewing. Ridding the Internet of such a large source of pirated content is a major victory for the comic industry and the publishing industry in general."

And access to ad and promo sites is easy. I’ve compiled lists, and that can be do it yourself and highly targeted - if you know what you’re doing.

Ed