Of course signing this is probably against the DMCA

I'm willing to pay for streaming on demand of any movie I want to watch. That the copyright owners are losing money by not providing their content to me in that format, forcing me to find alternative sources, is not my fault.

Wow.

Explain to me why we need to keep creating new laws that cover already existing laws?

Piracy and copyright infringement is already illegal. The end.

Yes, I agree the MPAA and RIAA have gone about this whole mess completely wrong (like SurfaceTension said... we want to stream all of your content and pay you for it.).

But beyond the specifics of how copyright holders have gone about protecting themselves... what exactly do new laws help anyone?

Why is everybody biatching about SOPA? Government always knows best.

/Vote third party

I don't know what I would do without torrents.

Dr J Zoidberg: I don't know what I would do without torrents.

I imagine it's something like this:



"I just thought of something I'd like to watch right now."
"That's a damn shame."

downstairs: what exactly do new laws help anyone?

My guess?

Because currently the RIAA/MPAA people have to go to civil court, get a judgment, actually collect the money, etc. That's a huge hassle and takes a lot work.

By making it a criminal problem, the tax payers pay for it and police investigate it. They want to outsource their own legal work to the American people as a whole.

My other guess?

They honestly believe that if they just crack down hard enough, piracy will magically disappear.

Just like that time when drugs were a huge problem, and then we passed a series of harsher and harsher laws against drugs, and everyone stopped using them forever.

Speaking of copyright infringement. I found myself falling in love with the Deus Ex Human Revolution OST, which I was able to listen to via youtube. I wanted to buy it so I could have a local copy to bring with me and not have to stream from youtube all the time. What's the first thing I do? Well being that I have a WP7, I looked in the Zune Marketplace, no luck. Then I looked on iTunes, no luck. Amazon? Nope, not even a physical copy. HMV? They list it, but it wasn't out yet. When it did come out the only store in all of Canada that had a copy was Montreal. That's a bit far from me.

In my search, I found that it is readily available to purchase online from plenty of places... In the USA. I've hit this before, it seems that some of the labels have issue with the lax (more lax) copyright laws in Canada and sometimes restrict or delay an album arriving here, in fears that we would then buy it, and upload it to the internet. Which is completely and utterly bumfarked retarded. You won't sell it to us because you think we will go an pirate it afterwards? Really? So what are we supposed to do, you idiots?

This happens in plenty of other countries as well. I wish the record companies would wake up and realize that by delaying releases to geopolitical regions, they are only encouraging further copyright infringement

/End rant
//FYI, HMV has the album on order for me, no extra cost
///End CSB

frepnog: for the love of tfspm stop using that. buggy whips were a product that eventually no one needed or wanted any longer, thus the production ceased. the product (s) being made by our entertainment conglomerates is still very much wanted and needed. the analogy does. not. work.

It does though. Think of buggies and whips in terms of their ability to get you to point B from point A. Now think of media. CDs, DVDs, marketing and such are the buggy and whip, they are outmoded by the internet and it's various means of distribution and promotion. Instead of realizing this, embracing it and ensuring that content gets out as fast as possible to EVERYWHERE via any means that people want to consume it, they instead are holding onto their old models of sales and marketing of regional staggered releases , trying to shoehorn it into the new digital age and people are saying "No! I want it now, I want it affordable, I want it were ever I am, stop making me jump though so many loopholes and give me options!"

the_sidewinder: frepnog: for the love of tfspm stop using that. buggy whips were a product that eventually no one needed or wanted any longer, thus the production ceased. the product (s) being made by our entertainment conglomerates is still very much wanted and needed. the analogy does. not. work.

It does though. Think of buggies and whips in terms of their ability to get you to point B from point A. Now think of media. CDs, DVDs, marketing and such are the buggy and whip, they are outmoded by the internet and it's various means of distribution and promotion. Instead of realizing this, embracing it and ensuring that content gets out as fast as possible to EVERYWHERE via any means that people want to consume it, they instead are holding onto their old models of sales and marketing of regional staggered releases , trying to shoehorn it into the new digital age and people are saying "No! I want it now, I want it affordable, I want it were ever I am, stop making me jump though so many loopholes and give me options!"

No way. The sheer majority of people still want DVDs. Just because people from your generation, who share your desires- the people you hang out with- don't, doesn't mean DVDs aren't far and above the #1 way people get their movies.

It may very well change... but its going to be awhile.

This is actually very interesting - I only skimmed the article and didn't see who signed it but based upon my own limited web surfing nobody thinks this is a good idea and almost everyone is clamoring for patent and copyright reform. Granted I frequent places like Fark, Slashdot and TechDirt so I may not be seeing the whole picture but most reasonable people agree that piracy is wrong (well - not sure about TechDirt), but think that things like Happy Birthday should have ended up in public domain by now.

But from other shiat I've read you've got large corporations like Google against SOPA and the greedheads at RIAA/MPAA for it who spend lots of lobbyist money. It's corporation against corporation.

Then again if EFF is for it, Congress is probably against it.

downstairs: we want to stream all of your content and pay you for it.

The hell we do. I want to see sponsors in the credits like the old days and no more commercials or unskipable ads.

Use the talent to tell me each show who's keeping the lights on and what their website is. Then, gimme gimme gimme that show. If I should need what your sponsors peddle, I will pay them first

But I don't really feel like cutting a check to a middle man like the production company each time I want to watch a 10 minute clip.

ReapTheChaos: I don't even own a television anymore, I watch all my TV online at (legitimate) sites like Hulu and NetFlix. I've said for years that this is the future of television. Who wants to revolve their lives around some arbitrary TV schedule when I can watch what I want when it fits my schedule. That being said, I still think there's a huge market for DVD's for movie buffs like myself. I cant think of anything dumber than having to download and store all my movies on a hard drive. I currently have over 1000 titles in my collection and I add more every month. I'm not going to trust something that valuable to a medium that is known to fail.

It will be interesting to see which way this goes. I have the opposite viewpoint-not so much with video but with my particular passion, music.

I have a bunch of money "invested" in my audio setup, and the last thing I want is music with lossy compression streaming into it. I am only interesting in either CD's or lossless copies. For now, that means local storage.

And lots of backups.