Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: MPAA: Kodi Abusers Are Growing Video Piracy Threat

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Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-04-2017, 10:54 PM:

The Motion Picture Association of America has warned that the Kodi open-source media player software is abetting the emerging global threat of streaming video piracy.

In comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on "the world’s most notorious markets for content theft," the MPAA said that while Kodi was not itself illegal, it can be easily configured to direct web users to pirated TV and film content.

"Websites enable one-click installation of modified software onto set-top boxes or other internet-connected devices," the MPAA said. Then the software taps into an "infringing ecosystem" of content add-ons and portals, with more than 750 websites offering such infringing devices or software.

Related: Illegal Streams of Mayweather-McGregor Bout Reach 2.9M Viewers: Irdeto

"Online content theft undermines the economic success of film and television, threatens the livelihoods of millions of creators, and harms consumers by spreading viruses and malware," MPAA told the USTR. "In particular, streaming device piracy – enabled by preloaded piracy devices and unauthorized add-ons – poses a significant and evolving challenge. Today, 6% of North American households own a device with software configured to access pirated content."

MPAA also said that of the 38 million active Kodi users, 26 million use piracy add-on repository tvaddons.ag.

The group said such infringing traffic hurts not only copyright holders, but users who are more subject to malware, which is a revenue source for pirate sites.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/mpaa-kodi-abusers-are-growing-video-piracy-threat/169069

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-05-2017, 07:34 AM:

This sort of action really IS affecting the cinema industry. I've already watched it kill a local theatre. Kids (and even their parents) don't see the harm in their "free" downloading of in-release content, let alone content available legally for the home). They don't seem to understand the notion of "stealing" someone else's work. Why pay for a movie theatre when you can have the same thing for free?! It is very tough to compete with free.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2017, 10:52 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Why pay for a movie theatre when you can have the same thing for free?! It is very tough to compete with free.

These morons need to ask themselves if they would do their own jobs for free. Can they survive without a paycheck?

Plug and Play Piracy is yet another example proving America's population is far more gullible, stupid and naive than we would like to believe. I've been in arguments with people who swear up and down what they're doing and watching with their "fully loaded" Kodi boxes and hacked Amazon Fire Sticks is legal. They don't bother to question any of it. The stupidity element comes into play when you ask them about the movies that are literally videotaped from a movie theater screen. How is that content legal? "Um, I don't know."
[Roll Eyes]

Deep down I think they all know that what they're doing is wrong. It's no different from the free for all feeding frenzy that happened in the late 1990's with Napster. Even though Napster and other file sharing systems like Kazaa got shut down the music industry never fully recovered. Most music-listening activity is legal these days, but it's being done via single song purchases and listening to streaming services like Spotify. Album sales are in the toilet.

Arrests are finally starting to happen to people who sell Kodi boxes and Fire Sticks already loaded with piracy software. Amazon, eBay and Facebook are cracking down on users who sell fully loaded boxes on their sites. A couple of Kodi plug-ins called Navi-X and TV Addons, which make it much easier to watch pirated movies and TV shows, have apparently shut down and stopped working due to active or pending law suits. There's no doubt some other kinds of piracy plug ins will take their place (if that hasn't happened already).

The users of these Kodi boxes and modded Fire Sticks probably don't realize they're opening themselves up to more trouble than just a brush with law enforcement. Crooks can embed malware into these devices or attack vulnerabilities in them. They can take over a connected TV set and get any personal information stored inside. Worse yet, it's possible for them to use the TV as an entry point to attack anything connected to the home network. The boxes and sticks can be used to spy on people, taking note of everything they did.

People are naive though. Plenty grabbed pirated music, movies and software off Kazaa despite the risk of malware infection. They're going to keep using these plug and play piracy devices until they stop working.

Movie studios and TV networks are just going to have to up their game at securing their content. We've all pointed out the stupidity of studios making screener discs of movies for VIPs. If they stopped doing that crap and made these douchebags watch the pre-release screening of a movie in a theater then a bunch of this movie piracy would stop. All that would remain is the shitty camcorder bootlegs.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-05-2017, 12:07 PM:

I think most people sincerely believe they are legitimate and legal. After all, you can buy one right off-the-shelf at the local hardware store here so why would anyone think there was anything shady going on. And since they paid for the gadget, then the money they paid for it must cover the cost of the content too, right?

Most people aren't going to go to, say, a farmer's market and buy some corn, and then question whether that corn might have been stolen. The question simply wouldn't cross their mind. Same thing with these pirate boxes.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-05-2017, 04:08 PM:

I heard a similar argument years ago on stealing music. People reasoned that it must be legal or you would not be able to buy equipment to copy music. There are infringing and non-infringing uses for this equipment. People often do not see the difference. There is very little respect for copyright in the general public. A lot of behavior seems to be regulated by what you can get away with versus what is right. How much over the speed limit can you drive and get away with it? How many false deductions can you take on your tax return and get away with it? How much pirated music or movies can you get and still get away with it?

Harold

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-05-2017, 04:40 PM:

Harold,

I think there is a difference in your examples between government imposed rules on behavior (speed limits) or the game they have made out of taxes (if you don't know the ever changing rules, you pay more!) and stealing someone else's (private or corporate) work.

The rationals I've heard are:

1)If I had to pay for it I wouldn't have bought it anyway so they aren't losing anything.

2)It isn't stealing like stealing car. Me taking it doesn't deprive anyone else from seeing it.

3)It is too expensive to pay for (theatre, cable, ...whatever) so this is the only way I could see it.

They are all rationalizations and they are all illegal and stealing from the copyright holder(s).

Napster absolutely killed music stores and this sort of stealing will kill theatres, if not the movie business. If the making of the movies/showing of them cannot be monetized the industry will collapse. It isn't free to make a professional movie, far from.

Unlike music where "kids" now download just the song(s) they want rather than an entire album there isn't an equivalent model for movies (just download the chase scene).

Rather than wasting time working about theatres being the source of copyright theft from camcording, Hollywood should really clamp down on this illegal streaming business. There are people that rationalize and those that actually think these movies somehow are free and that is a cancer on the industry, for sure. As I said, I've already seen it kill a small town theatre where the kids just stay home and watch first run there.

Hollywood really should lengthen release windows between theatrical and home rather than help the thieves get it faster and steal the revenue.

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 10-05-2017, 06:03 PM:

I even got telemarketed by someone trying to sell me "free TV and movies" for a one-off purchase cost of a few hundred bucks. "Totally legal!"

Here's their website

It seems they have had a call from SkyTV, and lawyers are involved, so they are currently not selling, but they were.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-05-2017, 06:52 PM:

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I went to visit her family. I had never heard of Kodi before, but her brother brought it up to show how any movie he wanted was right there to watch. I was absolutely astonished to see how easy it was for people to access pirated content. Worse is that some of the family members were under the impression it was a totally legitimate and legal service since they were streaming instead of downloading.

I wasn't going to start an argument with my girlfriend's family over the legal or ethical ramifications. But I have to assume this service will be bad news for our business if people can access the content so easily. The interface wasn't substantially different from Netflix or any of the legitimate streaming services.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-05-2017, 07:12 PM:

As I've said, people really do genuinely believe it's legal.

They bought it in a store, it came in a professionally designed box and the gadget looks like any other gadget that you would have in your house. If it was a bare circuit board with wires and globs of solder hanging off of it and you bought it from Vinnie in a back alley it would give a different impression, but it's not. It looks very professional, it's sold at legitimate stores, and it works just as well as any other internet-enabled device when you get it home and plug it in.

A huge percentage of the customers who buy this device have no idea that there's anything shady or illegal going on. It's a magic box that hooks up to my TV and I bought it at a local store. What could possibly be wrong with that?

The hardware store here used to sell (and maybe still does sell) subscriptions and equipment for satellite television. I don't think folks see these pirate boxes as being anything different than what they used to have on the shelf there. "I paid for this box fair and square, and even paid sales taxes on it. How could it possibly be illegal?"

A couple of weeks ago I had a girl phone me. "Are you playing It this week?" No, I played that last week. This week I'm playing something else. "Oh. Well, that's ok since my boyfriend downloaded it already anyway."

People see nothing wrong with that. I don't say anything about it either -- why pick a fight with a (potential) customer over an issue that you can't win anyway.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-05-2017, 08:32 PM:

People only think "stealing" is "walking off with something that isn't yours." They apparently don't think movies really exist -- since they're not walking out of a store with a disk, they figure they're just TV programs. And since the airwaves are full of TV programs that are all just "there" all the time, so if something is available on a device you pay for, how could it be stealing?

I think Bobby is right, that most people would say they "had their doubts" and the whole thing is "too good to be true" but at the same time....they want those movies, dammit!

My wife works in another city, and does not have cable TV or internet at the apartment she lives in for the few days a week she's out of town. A co-worker suggested one of those "enhanced" Kodi devices to her. She said it seemed suspicious to be able to watch all the movies for free, but the co-worker had insisted it was completely legal, and since he was a smart banker dude, and worked in the IT department of the bank, she figured it had to be legit. He even gave her some printout that explained how it all worked and went on and on about how it was TOTALLY LEGAL.

Needless to say, after I set her straight about it, she told him she was not interested, but how many people are out there not having a clue what they're doing and not having a theater owner telling them the truth about it?

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-05-2017, 09:31 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
People only think "stealing" is "walking off with something that isn't yours."

Almost every time I have caught people theatre hopping they have said something to the effect of "I didn't think it was an issue since we paid for a ticket and it's not crowded". I think many people don't view it as stealing because they are not taking something with a finite supply.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 10-06-2017, 04:05 PM:

Recently I've seen that whenever I post the pictures for our program, I'll see someone (usually an attractive female from Asia) post a link for the same film. "Watch full length movies - FREE!" it usually says. Of course I delete and ban the "user". It seems as though it's the picture that triggers whatever it is that posts.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-06-2017, 08:06 PM:

Gotta love bots. Is that on Twitter, Facebook or another forum?

quote: Steve Guttag
Hollywood really should lengthen release windows between theatrical and home rather than help the thieves get it faster and steal the revenue.

The movie studios and their media company bosses are still fixated on shrinking theatrical release windows ever shorter. They're doing it for two ploys. One is the positive cash flow game of minimizing interest payments on borrowed movie production money. The other is trying to cut marketing costs. They say the theatrical ad campaign can sort of double as the home video campaign as well if the release window is short enough. Maybe the studios still have the fantasy that more people will buy copies of a specific movie if it gets to home video faster.

The problem is the home video business of selling movies has gone to hell. Neighborhood video rental stores are an endangered species, and extinct in many small to medium size towns. Brick and mortar stores that specialize in selling movies, music and/or books are also endangered. Many people have switched from collecting movies on disc to merely streaming them via Netflix. Or they watch pirated versions on those Kodi boxes and modded Amazon Fire Sticks. After all, it isn't just theatrical release screener discs and camcorder bootlegs being uploaded. Retail Blu-ray discs and digital downloads are also ripped and uploaded to these piracy sites as soon as they become available.

The movie studios have also kind of screwed themselves with making their movie discs less desirable to buy. It seems like they're deliberately minimizing the effort they put into these retail products (uninspired packaging, few if any extras and sometimes even dodgy video encodes). They've made no secret they would like to cut out retail partners like Walmart, Target and Best Buy as well as online merchants like Amazon. The studios want to sell movie downloads and/or streams direct to consumers.

But just how many consumers are actually buying movie downloads? Personally, I already have too much in the way of computer files, images, media, etc. backed up on hard discs. I don't need terabytes worth of Hollywood movies to add to that burden. If the customer is having to stream his movie purchase from the cloud then why not just watch the same movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime (or Kodi)?

I certainly can't speak for the buying habits of others, but I personally rarely ever buy movies on disc anymore. I've never bought a "HD digital" download movie. Most of the money I spend on movies is spent at movie theaters.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-07-2017, 12:14 AM:

The last movie I bought on disk was "The Founder," a really good flick about the guy who built the McDonald's empire. We didn't play that film and I really thought it looked good, and I wasn't disappointed. I have had zero desire to own any other movie this year, so far.

We have a Netflix account but my wife uses it more than I do, since she's without internet or cable TV in her "work" apartment. Most of my Netflixing is standup comedy shows... I can't remember the last time I watched a whole movie on it.

I will admit, however, that I'm not exactly the average bear when it comes to TV watching. Since I own a theater, I'm tired of most movies by the time we're finished playing them so it leaves me with little desire to own them. Far as I can remember, the last movie we played that I had a strong desire to buy was "Sully," and then I didn't buy it because it was too freaking expensive. Maybe I'll look for a used one right now.

Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 10-07-2017, 09:06 PM:

Streaming and piracy is just one big joke - meant to destroy the exhibitor business by devaluing content. First why would anyone pay for anything when it is free on pirate bay and endless free streaming sites?
Netflix and Kodbi boxes are just for those too dense to realize that all it takes is an internet connection to get anything.
Kodi is bad enough - but at least the super lazy can just plug it in and scroll endless junk. Netflix, however, is for the truly even more dense who need the absolutely worse interface - knock off of emule 2002 and a paid subscription to watch already free content.
The solution is very simple - but the money whore studios do not want to put up the cash and partner directly with ISP's. If signatures were placed on all streamed content - at the ISP point - similar to basic IP filtering that would be the end of free streaming. At least Kodi would be stopped - torrents that is another story but it could also be curtailed if studios actually cared.
Once again the issue with the money whores is that they do not want to pay for the pipe - letting the likes of netflix do it for them. Race to the bottom.
Ultimately the issue is - do people want to watch movies at home where they always sit surrounded by the lameness and sameness of their 1984 future or do they want to sit at the multiplex where at least you can see more of your own replicants and enjoy a large golden topping popcorn?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-07-2017, 09:27 PM:

quote: Steve Guttag
I think there is a difference in your examples between government imposed rules on behavior (speed limits) or the game they have made out of taxes (if you don't know the ever changing rules, you pay more!) and stealing someone else's (private or corporate) work.

Actually, all three are very similar. Copyright legislation is a set of government-imposed rules on behavior, just like the tax code and speed limits are.

It has only existed for about the past three centuries: before the ability to copy intellectual property for a fraction of the cost of creating it in the first place (i.e. the invention of printing), there was no need for it. To give two examples, the Statute of Anne and Article 1, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution appeared in response to the mass reproduction of printed texts becoming widespread in the jurisdictions they affected. The theft of physical property, however, has been illegal literally for as long as the rule of law has existed.

Intellectual property is a more abstract concept than physical property (especially for those who have never created any IP that is of significant financial value, i.e. about 99.98% of the population), which is surely a big part of the reason why such a large proportion of the population do not believe copyright theft to be as serious as the theft of physical objects, or even, in some cases, an act of theft at all.

Steve's comparison with speed limits is actually a relevant one: the overwhelming majority of the population don't believe that defying those is wrong, either. There is no social stigma in admitting to friends, relatives and co-workers that you got a speeding ticket in the way that there would be if you were busted for DUI. You almost never encounter anyone obeying the speed limit on any of the roads I regularly drive on, or have ever regularly driven on.

Opinion polls regularly show that an overwhelming majority of the population would support doing away with speed limits, and most copyright law. It doesn't happen, because for various reasons that are off limits for this forum, no mainstream political party with a realistic chance of being elected to serious office has ever been willing to act on them.

The other aspect of Hollywood's uphill struggle is that when Joe Public thinks of Hollywood, (s)he doesn't think of the thousands of middle class, middle income earners who comprise the bulk of Hollywood's workforce: instead, (s)he thinks of badly behaved millionaire celebrities. When buying a Kodi box, the average purchaser probably figures that if this makes it a little more difficult for Harvey Weinstein to afford his latest payoff and NDA for some wannabe starlet he did something gross and disgusting to, (s)he's not going to lose any sleep over that.

Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 10-07-2017, 11:47 PM:

Yes - but Kodi boxes could be stopped immediately if the studios really cared. Partner up with the ISP's - the pipe - instead of some ponzi scheme like netflix. Pirating only exists because large amounts of data is allowed to be downloaded and streamed without tracking. The problem is that studios are always looking for money on the floor and simply cannot see beyond that next percentage to the spiral to the bottom.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-08-2017, 02:21 AM:

I think "paying for the pipe" would be a huge undertaking from a bookkeeping and tracking standpoint. ISPs go in and out of business all the time. It's way easier and cheaper for a studio to do business with a few big companies like Netflix and let those companies deal with things like collecting subscriber fees.

It's the same reason you can't buy a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup direct from the Campbell company. If they dealt with every individual soup-loving consumer, it would create a nightmare of expenses.

Things tend to work the way they do for a reason.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-08-2017, 06:13 AM:

Leo, the problem with the speed limit (versus most other laws) is that the number assigned to speed limtis is more arbitrary. How is the number derived? Is it safety? If so, is it to be 100% safe or reduce acidents to "an acceptable level." And even if it is the latter, then what is with "speed zones" where the limite, on the same road, same condidtions, suddenly drop 10-20 MPH for a few blocks? Speed limits are treated as a game whereby, as you have noted, most people know they can exceed the posted limit by 5--10 MPH (varies by area, just to make the game more fun). You get away with it just enough to almost encourge it to the point that the police can always make their quotas by an endless supply of speeders. In work zones is really the places that they take is seriously by having photo enforcement. It is a "we're serious this time" sort of statement. There are also other areas (typically near schools) where again, society puts up a "we're serioius" statement. But that can also be interpreted is that in other earas "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, don't get too carried away."

Stealing phystical or intelectual property is never okay though. The problem with intelectual property is that the owner has to find out about the theft and then enforce their copyright. Disney will, if they find out about it. Unfortunately, this also reinforces the public perception that they have legal content because the public doesn's see much in the way of torrent site prosecution and, in particular, people getting serious fines/jail time for having these illegal devices. You start busting people for having these devices and use them to get to people that are offering and running the sites. This is a multi-billion dollar problem and should be treated as such.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-08-2017, 09:35 AM:

Regarding speed limits, at least in California, a posted speed limit must be supported by a traffic study completed within the past 5 years if radar is to be used as evidence. If no traffic study was done in the past 5 years, the radar evidence is inadmissible. That law discourages arbitrary speed limits.

I think we benefit by following the law to the best of our understanding as opposed to what we can get away with.

Harold

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-08-2017, 01:03 PM:

I think that a lot of people lose respect for copyright because of the exceptionally long terms involved. People would understand a copyright on something that was made last year, for example, but don't understand why something made in 1935 is still under copyright. "You mean something that was made before my grandmother was born is still copyrighted?"

That spills over into "this whole copyright thing is ridiculous" and there you have where it is today. "Founders copyright" (14 years, possibly renewable for another 14) would be a lot more defensible from a common sense standpoint than what we have now.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-08-2017, 01:49 PM:

What is the term for copyright now? I seem to remember something like life of the author plus 70 years. Also, does copyright work like patents as far as the author compared to inventor? Patents are issued to individuals, but the patent term is not related to the life of the individual. I think the patent term is now something like 20 years from date of filing (and, I think it used to be 20 years from date of invention). Are copyrights issued to "natural persons" (not corporations)? They may be assigned to corporations, but it seems like the term would be limited to "life of the author plus 70 years). It would probably be simpler if copyrights had a fixed term from either date of creation or date of registration. That way you would not have to figure out if the author is still alive or when he/she died.

Patents and copyrights are an exchange of value between the inventor/author and the public. In exchange for disclosure, the inventor/author gains a limited term monopoly on the creation. After that, the invention or copyrighted work goes into the public domain. The term has to be long enough to encourage inventors and authors but short enough for the public to get some value out of the disclosure.

Harold

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-08-2017, 01:52 PM:

I agree that copyright law should be changed to allow public domain MUCH sooner than it does. I'd make it closer to patent law and definitely not beyond 50-years. There comes a point where you really have milked the economical value out of it. The copyright only exists because we in society have made such laws. As has been pointed out above, if not for the movable type printing press, it wasn't much of an issue before.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-08-2017, 02:13 PM:

quote: Harold Hallikainen
Are copyrights issued to "natural persons" (not corporations)?

Both. If you read the fine print at the end of movies you'll often see something along the lines of "For international copyright purposes Movie Production Company is the author of this film."
Disney is one of the big instigators behind extended copyright. The Mouse would be out of copyright years ago if the law hadn't changed.
Copyright in the US was originally, IIRC, thirteen years. The purpose of copyright and patents, according to the Constitution is: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." , not to make a bundle of money for the author, corporation or their offspring.
But that boat has sailed, hit an iceberg, sunk and had a movie made about it, so we're not going back.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-08-2017, 02:45 PM:

Copyright didn't really have much application to regular people until the advent of computers, photocopiers and cassette tape recorders. You couldn't copy a book without a printing press, you couldn't copy a record without a record press, and so on. So copyright as a concept only really mattered to commercial enterprises who had the equipment and some method to sell those things for a profit.

Joe Blow at home couldn't copy his LP or this week's best selling novel or his copy of Vogue magazine and give it to his friend next door. So copyright as an abstract concept really didn't have any effect on Joe.

And again, I think the excessively long terms lead to a general contempt for copyright overall. If people view the entire regime as a rip-off, they won't make a distinction between the latest thing versus the 1935 player piano roll transcription.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-08-2017, 04:19 PM:

Copyright is a pretty difficult balance. On one side, it's important that people who create, are protected by law to benefit from what they create. But it should also not be this perpetual license to print money without adding anything of value, which is essentially what it has become, with all those extensions. If copyright never expires, it becomes a weapon against it's original purpose: To motivate people to create.

But also, copyright in the digital age, where everything is interconnected and easily copied, is a pretty difficult concept to maintain. People also like to share stuff around, it's a pretty natural habit. In most cases this is a good habit, it's the way we transfer knowledge. Without it, we would probably still be stuck in the dark ages.

Copyright in the digital age is looking for a place, for a solution.

I think the solution is not in manically trying to protect content distribution, like studios and content owners are trying to do with DRM systems and the whole security chain also present in DCI for example. The problem with those systems is that they end up being more a hindrance for the legitimate user, than a real roadblock to privacy. They're even a real threat to long-time archival.

Every major DRM scheme has failed upon now. AACS was soon to hit the toilet to never return, and it now looks like AACS 2.0 is also going to bite the dust. So, while the legitimate content owner, who paid premium for his or her disc or download isn't allowed to make a backup copy, the pirate gets all the goodies and can make copies he/she wants. He even doesn't have to care about a working HDCP chain for example.

The problem also isn't on the punishment side. Most people don't know, because they never face the potential consequences, but downloading and especially spreading copyright protected content can lead to punishment that can severely impact your life.

The problem is that people don't see the value in content anymore, they think it has to be free. The content industry also isn't really helping. With their ever-shrinking theatrical release windows for example, and the push to streaming to any device, they're seriously hurting the perceived value of their own content. And to be honest: What's the value of watching a movie on your tablet or mobile phone? It's a sub-par experience and it's the experience people are willing to pay for, not so much the content itself.

So, in order to fix the copyright issues we're having, people should be made aware about the value of content. About the fact that it takes some serious efforts to create this content and that this process supports a major industry, not only consisting of a bunch of super-wealthy Hollywood asshats, but also a whole bunch of average Joes like themselves.

I think we should start educating people early on, even in school we should be thought that what we create, has value. That if what you create has some qualities to it, that it even can pay a living. It's this what also inspires people to choose a career in this field.

On the other hand, the industry should focus more on experiences, because like I mentioned, that's what people are really after. Most people don't want to own a particular movie. Even though many people used to buy a certain movie, they only bought it, because it was the only way they could experience it. Both the content and exhibition industry should focus on that aspect of the content they produce.

I watched "Blade Runner 2049" the other night, on a big screen, with bombastic sound, the way it should be. I was surrounded by this dark, forbidden world for 2 hours and 45 minutes and I liked every minute of it, as did the people around me. It's an experience I will never forget. The same movie on the TV in my living room? A nice evening filler. The same movie on a tablet or computer screen? What? 2 hours and 45 minutes? Forget about it, I'll watch the highlights and be done with it...

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-08-2017, 08:39 PM:

US Copyright terms are at https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf .

For recently created material:

1. A work is protected when it is created and fixed to tangible form.

2. For an individual author, the term is life of the author plus 70 years.

3. For a work created by two or more authors, the term is 70 years past the death of the last surviving author.

4. For works for hire, the term is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

There are a bunch of other scenarios and stuff copyrighted under previous laws.

For Mickey Mouse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse#Legal_issues ), it looks like it was created and published in 1928. As a work for hire, it would expire in 2023. It's interesting that Mickey Mouse is also registered as a trademark. Trademark identifies the originator of a product, so, it seems like you would not be able to create new Mickey Mouse cartoons or other products since that would be a trademark violation, but you'd be able to make as many copies of the 1928 movie as you wanted.

Harold

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-09-2017, 02:11 AM:

In many jurisdictions around the globe, the copyright on Steamboat Willie expired a while ago and as such, it's perfectly legal to distribute it, without asking Disney for permission or even paying them for the privilege.

For Disney, the issue is indeed primarily in the main character in this cartoon (and the other two cartoons from the same year). But like you pointed out, the trademarks they filed give anybody trying to publish products with Mickey Mouse in it a hard time.

Also, Mickey Mouse went through a few noticeable iterations, before it ended up looking like it looks today, those alterations themselves are also original works with their own set of expiry dates.

So, even if those trademarks would not hold, the only thing this would really be good for is if you'd be running some shady knock-off company and are producing tableware with 1928's Mickey on it.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-09-2017, 06:54 AM:

As I mentioned before, those time limits are absurd. Cut them in half and things get much more reasonable.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 10-09-2017, 11:08 AM:

And then there is the issue of underlying rights (music/story) for public domain works.

When a work drops into public domain, that should include all underlying rights as long as the public domain work is not altered. The law is ambiguous in this regard, and ambiguity breeds contempt.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-09-2017, 01:21 PM:

For there to be underlying rights, they need to be as old as the work itself or older. So, in many cases the copyright of those works has already expired when the rights of the "adapted work" expires or it expires with the work itself.

There can be fringe cases, for example if the work is a movie and the underlying work is a book. The book is probably copyrighted by a singular author, while the movie is almost always "work for hire".

quote: Steve Guttag
Cut them in half and things get much more reasonable.

I still think that's pretty much outrageous. Always keep the original intent of copyright in mind: It's intended to motivate people to create new original works. Once it becomes an almost perpetual license to earn cash on the same work, it will no longer motivate licensees to create new, original content, but rather to milk it to the maximum extent.

Why not put it in line with patents? A patent gives you a monopoly of 20 years on any invention considered new and "inventive". Those 20 years should be ample time to profit from your original work.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-09-2017, 02:29 PM:

Just to be contrarian, if we cut the copyright to 20 years, how do get movie studios or other holders of copyrighted movies, to preserve, restore and re-release old films?

Not saying I agree with the current copyright law, but we have lost so much of film history as it is and I don't think the LOC is up to that degree of restoration and preservation.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-09-2017, 02:47 PM:

I can appreciate it being longer than a patent. There is a difference there. The idea of patents is that technology builds on itself and there is an inherent obsolescence. Literature and other forms of IP can often be timeless. I have less problem giving an author ownership of their unique work for their life time and maybe their spouse, I'm less interested in giving copyright to very long terms beyond that (if at all), leaving corporate copyright to deal with (e.g. Disney or any studio). Most movies have a shelf-life. It isn't that older ones are not appreciated or enjoyed by new audiences but it isn't like significant revenue is going to be generated by the VAST MAJORITY of the older titles. You also get the nonsense of movies like It's a Wonderful Life that go out of copyright and back in. There are movies like Citizen Kane that really are pivotal in the history of cinema that should be in the public domain now . Disney could legitimately argue that many of their titles are timeless and with target audiences of young viewers that the value of their catalog titles keeps renewing with each generation. But I think that is the exception rather than the rule.

While you could argue that keeping the copyright to a studio allows that studio to preserve a title. However it can be argued that a studio could effectively kill a title by not deeming it worthy of such expense where someone else could take it on if they had (legal) access to the material to work with. The studio, owning the OCN will still have the best source material, if they wanted it. But lets face it, if not for some collectors, some titles would have been lost by the studios too!

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-09-2017, 05:48 PM:

I'm not so worried about the proper archival of movies, in the case of a drastic reduction of copyright terms.

In the past, private collectors and independent film archives have often proven to do a better job at preserving film than those studios have been. Actually, if you're running a film archive, copyright might actually be a hindrance.

The only way a film archive can recoup some money is either by doing restaurations paid for by third parties or by lending out the content in their archive. The latter part can still be problematic for any content covered by active copyrights.

Also, studios tend to go bust, split themselves up, have themselves taken over, merged back again and raised from the death from time to time. The underlying copyrights, especially for the more obscure content nobody really cares about, often remain in limbo. Even the more popular content can become stuck in limbo, as they fight over who actually owns it.

With the exception of only a select few, movies usually end up having a commercial value of close to zero after 20 or more years. The intellectual property in the movie itself is something different though. If you look at an extreme example like Star Wars, you'll see that almost all the IP inside those movies has been trademarked and kept active for the last 40 years, so those rights never expired.

So, if the copyright on a movie would expire after 20 years, nobody would be able to make a movie using Star Wars characters that wasn't sanctioned by LucasFilm/Disney, yet we would never have to pay 20th Century Fox again for the privilege of running it.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 10-14-2017, 11:16 AM:

Here's another article on copyright terms and an exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/internet-archive-puts-full-out-of-print-books-from-20s-and-30s-online/?comments=1

Harold

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 11-02-2017, 07:10 PM:

quote: Martin McCaffery
Just to be contrarian, if we cut the copyright to 20 years, how do get movie studios or other holders of copyrighted movies, to preserve, restore and re-release old films?

Not saying I agree with the current copyright law, but we have lost so much of film history as it is and I don't think the LOC is up to that degree of restoration and preservation.

Absolutely agree. Having copyrights expire sooner would counter-intuitively not help the distribution of that work. Quite the opposite and we can see this in book publishing, where with a few exceptions (like Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas and other works that are taught in schools), out of copyright books are generally not published because as soon as a publisher does so, another publisher can come along and charge a dollar less with a competitive edition.

There were numerous examples of works that fell out of copyright because they weren't renewed and all you could buy were really crappy VHS or DVD editions of them because no one would put any money into them. I think "It's A Wonderful Life" was one of those works.

For works other than sound recordings, these are the rules for works registered or first published the U.S.:
Published works before 1923 are generally now in the public domain.

Published 1923-1977:
Without copyright notice: in the public domain.

Published 1923-1963:
With copyright notice, but not renewed: in the public domain
With copyright notice and renewed: 95 years from publication date

Published 1964-1977:
With copyright notice: 95 years from publication date.

Published 1978 to 3/1/89:
Without notice and without registration within 5 years: in the public domain

Without notice but with registration within 5 years or created after '77 and published with notice: 70 years after death of author. If corporately owned, earlier of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation.

Created before 1978 and published with notice in specified period: the later of above or 12/31/2047.

Published 3/1/1989 to 12/31/2002:
Created after 1977: 70 years after death of author. If corporately owned, earlier of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation.

Created before 1977: the later of above or 12/31/2047.

Published after 2002:
70 years after death of author. If corporately owned, earlier of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation.

Anytime: Works prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person's official duties no copyright

The rules vary for works first published outside the U.S. Too many to detail here.

Sound recordings (but not the underlying published works which use the above rules) have separate rules, which I won't detail here, but any sound recordings fixed prior to February 15, 1972 are only subject to state common law protection until 2067, although there are cases still being fought in the courts over this.

One of the reasons Congress kept extending copyright terms was because of lobbying by Disney. Disney told Congress that if copyright didn't get extended, someone could take Mickey Mouse and make porn cartoons, a quite ridiculous argument, but Congress bought it anyway. This when when Steamboat Willie was about to lose copyright protection. Back in 1909, copyright was 28 years + a 28 year renewal period. It's been extended many times since by Congress.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-02-2017, 11:54 PM:

quote: Martin Brooks
Disney told Congress that if copyright didn't get extended, someone could take Mickey Mouse and make porn cartoons, a quite ridiculous argument, but Congress bought it anyway.

Thanks in part to modern computer technology that makes some forms of animation easier, faster & cheaper there are indeed hardcore porn parodies of popular cartoons, such as The Simpsons. But these guerilla-style productions are getting made regardless of copyright law.

I support keeping copyright law terms as is rather than drastically shortening them. My father has written several military non-fiction books. I'd very much rather he continue to receive royalties on his own work than have it fall into the public domain and allow other publishers to make money off it without having done any actual work researching and writing the books.

Posted by William Kucharski (Member # 7246) on 01-04-2018, 08:11 AM:

I don't stream; I only purchase Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs.

I could chime in with my usual rant that I'd rather watch at home at times because no one in my living room is checking Facebook every five minutes on their phone, but there's nothing that beats a cinema sized screen; every time I see a favorite movie I'm used to seeing at home in a theater I notice new visual details on the screen.

I think the problem is more than ever before both in experience and certainly in behavior, people see no difference between watching at home and in a theater.

Add to that that most youths and young adults now see all content as "free" except for the greedy industry, and its an issue.

What's surprising is I know a few people who actually work at studios that feel that way.

Posted by Greg Routenburg (Member # 1742) on 01-04-2018, 12:45 PM:

I think a large part of the problem that no one seems interested in exploring is, why people do it in the first place. It's all well and good to say that people do it because it's free but why are people looking for a free alternative in the first place? Here in Canada, a very large percentage of the folks I know that own and operate illicit streaming boxes do so because it's all they can afford while working their two or three minimum wage jobs to support themselves and their families. As a society, we've deprived them of their free time and a reasonable wage so who do we think will sacrifice what little time & financial resources they have left to go pay for a movie at a cinema? I can't think of many.

I agree that content owners should be paid for their hard work and investment. The solution isn't to create steeper fines or increase jail time for those who use these devices though. That's the same thinking as cutting off a person's hand for stealing a loaf of bread from a market cart. Who think's that's reasonable?

DRM doesn't work either. The overhead for the content owner is very high and every DRM scheme that's been released for the home market so far has been defeated. Once's it's broken, it creates an avalanche of piracy that can't be stopped. It's a bad idea that's never worked.

No, the solution is to create an economy for middle class people to thrive in. There will always be a small number of people who choose to pirate things anyway. Interestingly enough, it's not always the super poor. It's often the very wealthy who are cheap and feel entitled. For the most part though, people like to go out. People like to have fun with their friends. People like to buy good quality products and get a good experience if it is within their means. If given a fair chance, people will support a fair economy. Let's stop treating the symptoms of the problem and attack the cause.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-04-2018, 01:54 PM:

You make very good points, except for this part right here:

quote: Greg Routenburg
a very large percentage of the folks I know that own and operate illicit streaming boxes do so because it's all they can afford

People these days feel like they are entitled to everything that's out there. Where people used to say "I can't afford this, so I can't have it" they now say "I can't afford this, but there must be some way I can still get it."

If the "way" is illegal, that doesn't matter.

THAT is the problem with today's society regarding entertainment. The issue is that it's too easy to do the illegal thing and get away with it, combined with the fact that people really don't think of it as "stealing" because they're not walking out of a building clutching something in their hand.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-04-2018, 06:43 PM:

The other problem with the "can't afford" argument is it's often because of choices rather than strictly because of income. I understand that the cost of living has risen faster than wages in many places in the country. However, there is one thing about movies that has been true for decades: the cost of a movie ticket is roughly equal to an hour's work at minimum wage.

In the current environment you have to qualify that by saying a regular 2D movie at a regular theatre. The math doesn't work when you look at the various premium options out there.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-04-2018, 06:47 PM:

quote: Greg Routenburg
Here in Canada, a very large percentage of the folks I know that own and operate illicit streaming boxes do so because it's all they can afford while working their two or three minimum wage jobs to support themselves and their families. As a society, we've deprived them of their free time and a reasonable wage so who do we think will sacrifice what little time & financial resources they have left to go pay for a movie at a cinema?

This is a great "justification" for why they do it so they don't feel like thieves. The issue I have is that there are plenty of low cost ways to pay for entertainment at home. Somebody who can't afford to go to a cinema isn't forced to steal content at home to get entertainment.

Streaming services are very cheap. In order to watch illegal content, they have to have internet service. Decent speed internet service costs more than those streaming services. There is a ton of free (legal) ad supported video content through TV networks or youtube. Then there is the free, over the air TV and radio as well.

Your argument is saying that if somebody can't afford to go to Disney World, they can just sneak in because society didn't give them a good enough paying job to afford it.

The reason people illegally stream is because it is easy and they can get away with it. There are tons of people that can easily afford to go to the cinema that have hacked Amazon fire sticks or Kodi boxes. It is 100% WRONG no matter if somebody is a millionaire or if they make minimum wage. Nobody has a "right" to receive entertainment that cost somebody else time and money to produce.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-05-2018, 02:15 PM:

I don't know, I kind of think "society" has chosen to be at this exact point here in Canada (and the U.S.). It's no excuse for theft. Society chose "cheap" decades ago and seem surprised that businesses can no longer pay the "living" wages they used to.

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 01-31-2019, 09:57 AM:

It has been 390 days since the last post.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 01-31-2019, 09:57 AM:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/free-tv-box-maker-agrees-to-shut-down-and-pay-14-5m-to-copyright-holders/?comments=1

Netflix, Amazon, and Hollywood studios shut down maker of “free TV” box

Per settlement, Dragon Box will pay $14.5M and close piracy-enabling services.

JON BRODKIN - 1/30/2019, 9:50 AM

The entertainment industry has scored a big victory over the maker of a "free TV" box that helped users watch pirated video.

Dragon Media Inc., whose "Dragon Box" device connects to TVs and lets users watch video without a cable TV or streaming service subscription, has agreed to shut down the Dragon Box services and pay $14.5 million in damages to plaintiffs from the entertainment industry.

Dragon Media was sued in January 2018 by Netflix, Amazon, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. Dragon Media's lawyer initially predicted that the lawsuit would backfire on the entertainment industry, but the Dragon Box maker must have decided it had little chance of winning at trial.

The plaintiffs and defendant filed a proposed settlement Monday at US District Court for the Central District of California.

The settlement requires Dragon Media to "cease all operation of the Dragon Box system" and related services within five days. Under the settlement, "[j]udgment shall be entered against Defendants and in favor of Plaintiffs on Plaintiffs' claims of copyright infringement, and damages shall be awarded to Plaintiffs in the amount of US $14,500,000," the document says.

Dragon Media, Dragon Media owner Paul Christoforo, and reseller Jeff Williams "[s]hall be further enjoined from operating any website, system, software, or service that is substantially similar to the Dragon Box service," the settlement says.

The settlement also prohibits the defendants from making its source code or other technology available to others.

Plaintiffs previously shut down “TickBox”

The plaintiffs in the case are part of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which has been trying to stamp out piracy of its members' content.

"ACE is pleased the agreement will ensure the immediate shutdown of the illegal Dragon Box system," an ACE spokesperson said, according to Variety. "The theft of creative content is a pervasive threat to the dynamic legal marketplace for movie and television content, and ACE will continue its global efforts to advance creativity."

In September 2018, ACE members scored another favorable settlement over the maker of a similar streaming device called the TickBox, winning a permanent injunction and $25 million in damages.

Before agreeing to settle, Dragon Media argued that it was merely facilitating access to online content rather than providing pirated TV itself. The entertainment industry plaintiffs' complaint provided a much different description, saying that Dragon Media provided custom software to help users of its device obtain pirated content. The complaint said:

When a customer selects "DRAGON MEDIA" for the first time, the device prompts the customer to download the "DragonBox" software. After clicking through the guided "Media Setup," the device downloads and installs the latest version of Dragon Media.

Once the Dragon Media software application has been downloaded and installed onto the Dragon Box device, the customer is presented a multi-page home screen that presents the customer with categories to select. These categories include "Sports," "4Kids," "Videos," "IPTV," and "TV Shows," among others... In total, Defendants provide customers with over 80 add-ons as part of their suite of Dragon Media add-ons to access all of the "Unlimited Shows, Movies, [and] Live Sporting events."

Dragon Media temporarily stopped sales after the lawsuit was filed last year but "later decided to change its business model, moving from a Kodi-addon platform subscription-based services," TorrentFreak wrote today. "First, it moved to 'BlendTV' and a few months later to 'My TV Hub.'"

However, the settlement requires Dragon Media to shut down both BlendTV and My TV Hub at the same time that it shuts down the Dragon Box service. The settlement defines the Dragon Box Service as "the hardware devices preloaded with copyright infringing software, addons, programs, applications, and all related services that Defendant marketed, promoted, sold, and supported." The settlement defines BlendTV as "the copyright-infringing software, programs, applications, and services that transmit or otherwise communicate television programs and motion pictures over the Internet that Defendant marketed, promoted, sold, and supported."

----

Though this is not "Kodi box," it is similar. Also read the comments at the end of the article. Finally, I heard recently that about 95% of pirated content includes the forensic watermark indicating the serial number of the media block that was used to play back the content along with the time of playback. 5% does not include a watermark.

Harold

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-31-2019, 12:39 PM:

quote: Martin McCaffrey
...not saying I agree with the current copyright law, but we have lost so much of film history as it is and I don't think the LOC is up to that degree of restoration and preservation.

Counter-intuitively, shortening copyright duration might actually encourage preservation and restoration.

While it is certainly true that longer copyright terms have encouraged rights holders to do more of their own preservation and restoration, there are two drawbacks for that.

1 - They can, and if market forces will allow it, do, charge top dollar for access to the results: in some cases, as much as it costs to see newly produced content. 2 - It encourages investment in a tiny minority of popular classics, and discourages investment in minority interest content, including curatorial investment in making it more popular. For example, why do you think The Red Shoes has undergone three major restorations since the 1980s? Because it's still in copyright, and it's a popular classic. Constantly restoring it keeps it in copyright, because the restoration is a work of intellectual property in itself, separate from the source material the restorers started with.

Let's say, for example, that copyright in all moving image content was limited to 20 years, after which it all drops into the public domain. The studios would no longer be able to make money out of their hit movies and TV shows after a couple of decades, and therefore they probably would cut back on investment in their archival operations. But the flip side of that would be that independent preservationists and restorers would be able to move in and work on that older material, at lower cost to them, and deliver the result at lower cost to the consumer. So if you think that at $20 for the BD, the restoration of Jaws I scanned from a 16mm 'scope print on a Moviestuff or a Tobin, and then cleaned up using Da Vinci on my Mac is too expensive for what it is, then a competitor can come along and do their own, and sell it for $10.

Furthermore, obscure movies from the 1970s that very few people have heard of that are currently sitting unrestored or re-released because the studios or big nonprofit archives can't do it because the math doesn't work for them, probably could be worked on by the new generation of home preservationists using the new generation of technology that has radically reduced the cost of entry to this profession, but currently isn't because of copyright restrictions.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-31-2019, 01:33 PM:

In the context of movies and TV shows I think shortening copyright to a term such as 20 years may have nasty, unintended consequences.

If a certain catalog property turns 20 years old what's to stop a movie studio from simply destroying all the original negatives and other related assets? Not every studio head thinks the same way, but scorched earth is definitely one possibility here. If they can no longer make money off a specific property why keep it around for anyone else to do the same? By the way 20 years is a freaking short amount of time. The Matrix is turning 20 years old in March; 1999 doesn't seem like all that long ago.

Let's say a movie studio is willing to let others fart around re-releasing their works. Who will take control of storing and maintaining negatives and other assets for those re-releases? The original studio might as well throw all that stuff in the trash if they can no longer monetize it. Even with movies shot with digital cameras there is a big data storage burden that comes with each show. No form of data storage is truly long term reliable either; so it has to leap-frog from one set of storage volumes to other sets every few years. All of that stuff costs money.

I have my own personal bias against limiting copyright terms on books since my father is a published author. He still gets some royalties on his earliest books written back in the late 1980's. A 20 year copyright term would have most of his stuff thrown into the public domain. If my dad were to pass away the rights to his books wouldn't pass to my brother and I. But other people would be free to make money off it.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-31-2019, 01:57 PM:

As a published author myself, the copyright system has worked against me, and helped to ensure that only a tiny audience will ever read my work. Of the two books I've written, the first is now out of print, and the second is so expensive that no-one apart from university libraries will ever buy it. I made almost nothing in royalties from it (about $150 since it was published), and if I had self-published the thing and sold it myself for $10 a copy, I'm sure it would have been read by thousands more people than have actually done so, despite the fact that I would also have been on my own as far as marketing and promotion was concerned. However, although I retain ownership of the copyright, I signed exclusive publication rights over to the publisher, meaning that anyone who wants to read it has little option but to cough up the $70.

I was using 20 years as a hypothetical example, not seriously suggesting it. IMHO, 50 years would be more reasonable. That would give whoever spent the money creating a work of IP every reasonable and fair chance of earning it back again, plus a reasonable profit.

I do agree completely that reducing copyright terms would discourage studio investment in back end preservation work, including the long-term passive conservation of physical masters. This is what happened before TV and then home video created an aftermarket for theatrical movies. One studio literally dumped tens of thousands of cans into the Pacific.

This debate has been had before: when the big nonprofit archives (LoC, MoMA, UCLA, British Film Institute, etc. etc.) started to preserve studio movies seriously in the 1950s and '60s, their critics pointed out that taxpayers should not be on the hook for preserving IP owned, and monetized, by others. Their response was that eventually that IP would expire, and these movies would be in the public domain, and that if the taxpayer accepted the bill to preserve books, paintings, [sarcasm alert]all the old Roman and Ancient Egyptian crap in the British Museum, etc. etc.[/sarcasm alert], then why don't movies qualify?

However - and this is my real point - the studios are already gaming the system, to extend the copyright term in effect indefinitely in the 0.01% of their holdings that are perpetual money earners for them, by "restoring" them at regular intervals (and thus creating a new copyright work) and trying to pull the previous version out of circulation.

Placing shorter and fairer limits on copyright duration, and building in more legal safeguards to encourage access to copyright expired material, would therefore be a net gain. The downside may well be, as you predict, that taxpayers have to fund more back end preservation, but I suspect that this bill would be more than offset by growth in cultural economic activity as a whole.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-31-2019, 08:29 PM:

quote: Harold Hallikainen
Before agreeing to settle, Dragon Media argued that it was merely facilitating access to online content rather than providing pirated TV itself.

I doubt this will put to rest the argument about creators of a platform not being responsible for illegal conduct on their platform. But I hope it will cause others to think twice about providing these platforms. However, I am not naive. I realize this will only cause these platforms to find ways to operate further outside the law. But getting rid of a platform which operates like more familiar streaming services will likely make it more difficult for the less tech savvy people to use the services.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 02-03-2019, 06:12 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Counter-intuitively, shortening copyright duration might actually encourage preservation and restoration.

I don't agree. If you look at what happened with movies and TV shows that fell into the public domain and were issued by various companies on VHS, while those companies did make the items available, they were almost universally shoddy and unrestored. And the reason why is because no company wants to put money into something when you know that if it's even moderately successful, someone else will come along and re-release the same work and compete with you. In the analog era, it was hard to steal your version and make decent copies. But in the digital era, every copy is a master.

That's one of the reasons Universal never bothered releasing the early silent horror films on disc. If they were still copyrighted, they probably would have.

If you look at the publishing industry, you'll see bookstores carrying public domain titles, but it's mainly "the big hits": Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alexander Dumas, Oscar Wilde, Frankenstein, Dracula, Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, the Oz stories, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc. And even there, publishers are reluctant because if any start selling, another publisher can come along and do a prettier cover and sell it for a dollar less and take away sales from the first publisher. Back in the day, the cost of typesetting kept "anyone" from doing this, but today, with OCR, it's not hard to simply take another edition of the book, capture it, and issue another edition.

Now with a book, one can argue that as long as it's legible and complete, it's good enough. But with a movie, crappy captures from bad source material ruins the film.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-03-2019, 09:04 PM:

As against which, audiences are now probably less tolerant of crappy captures from bad source material than they were in the pre-1080p era, because on anything better than a CRT NTSC TV, their crappiness has nowhere to hide.

quote: Martin Brooks
And the reason why is because no company wants to put money into something when you know that if it's even moderately successful, someone else will come along and re-release the same work and compete with you. In the analog era, it was hard to steal your version and make decent copies. But in the digital era, every copy is a master.

I wasn't arguing for letting them do that (take someone else's remastering and republish it). An act of remastering or restoration is itself a copyright work. For example, if I take a phonograph record from the 1920s, make a needle drop capture from it, then import the resulting raw .WAV file into Diamond Cut, apply an EQ curve, some noise reduction, and edit out some the more egregious pops and scratches, there are at least two copyrights in the final output from that process: the copyright in the original recording I started with (and potentially other copyrights nested within that, e.g. music publishing), and the copyright in the remastering that I did. If the source recording is public domain free and clear, the copyright still exists in my remastering. Someone else who owns another copy of the same record can do the same thing him- or herself, and they will own the copyright to their remastering. But they can't take mine and republish it (and in the case of audio material at any rate, digital forensic analysis makes this easy to detect, as this scandal demonstrated).

In the case of a movie, if the copyright in the originally released film is allowed to exist more or less forever (which is what the studios would like), then only the rights owner, or people they authorize, can publish re-releases or restorations. We are living with the situation that encourages: The Red Shoes gets six figures spent on it every decade or so, while 99% of the other surviving British movies from the late 1940s will never be seen again (other than by professional historians and researchers).

If, on the other hand, they were all in the public domain, then the archives holding them would be able to charge a reasonable access fee for anyone wanting to remaster the preservation material for publishing (the charge would be for physical access to the material, not copyright licensing), and anyone who felt they could make a reasonable profit out of publishing them would be able to do so. Hopefully, that would make it viable to publish material that is only likely to sell a few hundred copies, rather than several thousand being the minimum needed to make such a project possible.