Regal Entertainment Group: Royal assholes

Scumbags. Thank you for this - now I also know which theaters not to go to.

Revere-I think you would agree that we are a nation of laws and the filming of any movie in this manner is illegal. But this adult should get a pass?

In fact just about every theater I have been in lately has a statement stating that its a felony to do so. So what part did the adult miss? To boot, piracy of software and other intellectual property carries a pretty stiff sentence so what part of stealing did she miss? You do research, so what would be your reaction if someone broke into your lab and made off with your papers that cost megabucks off of a grant to produce. Or hey, lets steal the hard drive and CD's.

The Chinese are absolutely the worst at this and they make chop suey of our movies, software, and other intellectual property and they sit back and scoff at us. No recourse at all against them other than to file a complaint.

http://www.cybercrime.gov/ip.html
http://www.natoonline.org/piracy.htm

Finally with all of the stuff about people being prosecuted being on the news this adult made the decision that it was okay in her mind to do what she did. That is until she got caught. Permissive, liberalistic reaction to a crime. Lets just say that the crime didnt fit the punishment, post of doing it of course. Lets just say that 19 seconds isnt illegal. What about an hour and 10 on an hour and 11 minute movie? Well lets just draw the line in the sand and say well its incremental crime.

There are plenty of warnings. Its on every DVD, software case, lead in to every rented movie, on the slide show before each movie and just before the movie starts to turn that cell phone off. So lets give the 19 year old a pass.... the adult who committed a crime. Pressuring the prosecutor... Hell yeah. The companies are in business to make a profit and they are expected to do so within the laws of the US, pay their taxes and of course keep the stockholders happy. That also means that if a prosecutor doesnt enforce the law, then the law means nothing and all because someone decided that it was okay to commit an illegal act.

There is a difference between a 16 year old who by law is not an adult making a cognizant decision and a 19 year old. This person, the adult committed a crime and should be dealt with accordingly. Wonder how pissed you would have gotten if they had skateboarded thru the theater if you were watching the movie.

Hey, you there catching the air on the steps could you keep it down a bit I am trying to set up my camcorder. Screws with the audio you know?

Tell you what, just give me the keys to your lab. That way I dont have to scruffy up the door or the window when I come in to take your stuff. I dont see how a guy who raises so much hell about wiretapping which is a covert act and a crime without the law in place fails to find a problem with the covert theft of property. After I take your stuff, file a complaint afterwards with the humane society afterwards. Doing so will result in complete inaction of course and it has nothing to do with this but it will make the point that nothing got done about it. You still got your stuff stolen.

Randy: The reason you don't get it is because to you a law is a law, it doesn't matter what it is or what it covers. So taking something of real value that deprives someone else is the same as taking something of no value that doesn't deprive someone else as long as the latter is "against the law." And who makes the laws? And unmakes them to their advantage? And you don't see the difference between violating someone's privacy and taking a 20 second movie clip for your 13 year old brother.

You and I agree about one thing: you don't get it.

Separate realities. When I walk to the farmers market in San Cristobal (Chiapas) I pass by rows of stands on the way to the vegetables. They are full of movies and audio disks in boxes with their original covers. The movies cost under $2.50 and they sell thousands of them all over Mexico, all over Latin America, all over the world. It is by far the greatest volume of movie consumption. The 'industry' complains of 'lost revenues' but the people at the San Cristobal market wouldn't buy movies if they had to pay $20+ each. They simply can't afford it, the situation of 80% of the world's population. Someone has lost a sense of reality. And the greed exhibited so clearly in this case, and expressed in the political machinations of big corporations in our times, is the main reason that that 80% is spiralling down into greater poverty.

How does 20 seconds' worth of bootleg Transformers cut into the profit margin, exactly? And how many taxpayer dollars did it cost that prosecutor's office to pursue legal action at the behest of a multi-zillion-dollar corporation that undoubtedly takes every single tax break it can get?

Revere and Puckish-The law is specific and is that you shall not do it. Just as you shall not steal. Very simple. Oh I get it, you just simply dismiss it as something that isnt of value. Thats in your eyes and the law says you are both wrong.... Change the law? Until then go to jail for doing it.

Innocuous theft? Depends on whose stuff you are stealing. Ron I guess it would be greed if someone marked it up to 20 plus? Whose property is it? Certainly not the person stealing it. If those are legal copies (which I doubt) then the fees are still recovered in some manner that is acceptable to a company or person. Class warfear again? You are a big corporation, you charge too much.... in my eyes. So whats next state run media? Because they charge too much? You cant eat a DVD with very much success. Better to forget that DVD that you cant afford and buy food with the money you would have paid for it. There is a market, let it decide what the price should be. But dont steal to get what you cant afford. The assertion that this is greed is a notion based upon what? That someone cant pay for it? There are a lot of things I cant afford such as a 120 foot tri-maran cruiser. But do I call the corporation that makes it for a mere 23 million dollars greedy?
Nope... I call them craftsmen with a trade and a product that I truly want but cant afford.

There is no difference between an anti piracy law Revere and one for wiretapping. And you are right, I dont rate one law better than another. You just find one more egregious than another. Do you get to decide which laws are not to be enforced? I certainly dont.

Tell you what. The government promises not to prosecute anyone as long as they dont break the law.... Simple. It works and had the 19 year old followed the posted law, the law that everyone already knows about she wouldnt be in trouble. The reluctance of the prosecutor to enforce the law is grounds for removal. Indeed, he had to prosecute her.

The particular law in place about this has been around for some 50 or so years with add-ons. So unless this kid is deaf, has a white cane and a dog she cant plead ingnorance. Best to take the fine and the record that goes with it rather than FJC Atlanta. Sorry but I flatly disagree that she should be given a pass.

Randolph,

I would ask you again, what loss did the state or the theater/movie company incur? And had the case gone to the court do you really believe a judge would accept any such argument, that the law is the law and the rule of the law had been broken? Absolutely not.

What's more, why is the prosecutor for Arlington County giving in to pressure from a business? Do you suppose that as a private citizen you'd be able to lobby a prosecutor to pursue a case in which you suffered no loss? Try looking at this link:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/civil-rights/tigerdirect-unlawfully-res…

Reveres, you think that's raw?

It least it has a minimal and scanty figleaf of pro-forma legality to cover it's otherwise buck-naked insanity.

Now, how about the case of a multi-billion dollar entertainment corporation which perpetrated literally millions of cases of felony computer intrusion in its quest to protect its intellectual property?

For those of you who have been following the information security news, yeah, I'm referring to the Sony DRM rootkit affair. Spend some quality time at the link I just gave you, if you have not yet come to grips with what your real masters now require of you when you load that new music CD. Bruce Scheier, who should need no introduction to information security people, pretty much lays out its entire sorry history.

Minus the lack of effective legal reaction to an act that might have gotten you or I stuffed into some torture cell in Gitmo, minus legal representation and habeas corpus, had we been so insane as to commit it. Gotta love the war on terra.

Randy, here, I just saw you defend criminal prosecution for an act whose destructive effect was less than spitting on the sidewalk. I have NOT seen you attacking corporations when they commit felonies of truly enormous weight and destructive effect.

Where does this disconnect come from?

The 'industry' complains of 'lost revenues' but the people at the San Cristobal market wouldn't buy movies if they had to pay $20+ each.

Far be it from me to sympathize with a bunch of indecently prosperous movie producers, but I think that an excellent case could be made that the good people of San Cristobal would be far better off if they could not in fact afford crappy movies and were forced to find healthier alternatives with which to entertain themselves.

Not only do I not think that the world would end if cheap access to Michael Bay films were to be curtailed, that would be the proverbial win-win situation.

I note the recent study which observes that one in four American adults read no books at all last year. Not a single one. Perhaps we could arrange for the studios to price their "product" out of reach of people here, as well. I would chip in to cover the legal costs.

--

Well here we go again. It doesnt matter one whit that it may or may not have cut into someones bottom line. The fact is that it isnt allowed, period B8. Is there a line established by law? Yup and it starts with the record button. That line is covered over and over for those who dont seem to understand that it applies to THEM! Innocuous loss if any? Yup, but they dont have to prove anything other than the law was violated. Does it make them assholes? I qualify for that statement regularly but failing to make your case isnt cause to say that they are assholes. I would have pursued it civil rather than crim. That is a signal though that they arent going to take it any longer. Nor is it in anyones purview to determine that a 20 buck DVD is too expensive in anyones mind but their own. You always have the right not to buy it.

Mind now the girl plead guilty... so she ackowledged the crime. The prosecutor really had no choice but to prosecute her when it was brought to their attention. His attitude was that it was no big deal and it was, except in the eyes of the beholder and the law. From what I understand about the "pressure" being brought to bear it was threat of legal action against the prosecutor in the local bar association. Yep, they would have Nifong'ed him. He doesnt have the right to say no to prosecution when presented with credible evidence. And the girl was indeed guilty by her own admission. She faced a lot more than the 71 bucks... jail time. So the Berne Convention and US copyright laws are found, by the judiciary and the legislative branches to be intolerant and have prescribed penalties for not complying on their turf.

The article in wired suggested that a bunch of people should take portions of the movies and send them to the theater people. Uh, thats pretty dumb and they might all get jail time once THAT is presented to a prosecutor.

AS for your link, very nice story but what does that have to do with unlawful copying of a movie? Thats an entirely different matter and as you are trapped on a plane for hours its the same thing. A civil matter. Unless someone laid hands on this person to prevent a departure its not assault and thats the reason there was no arrest. To block someones way is though unlawful unless you have observed a criminal act. They could have detained the person legally then E.g. The unpaid for stuff in the bag if there was any. If someone attacked you having paid for your stuff then you have millions in your hands. Sound like they better settle this one before it hits a court. They will lose their implied right to inspect a shoppers bag. Some places it IS legal to inspect it such as Sams, Costco etc because thats a club and not a general retail outlet.

Same thing happened here in a Wal-Mart re the Tiger thing. A person slipped something into the cart of a person checking out without their knowledge. The checkout person missed it. Got to the door and was detained for "shoplifting" by the security guard and put hands on her. The woman being a black belt in karate promptly defended herself and trashed one s. guard and three very burly people from the back room. She moved to her car and loaded up and was attacked again. Down go another two. Running battle if you will. Finally the police show up and she is cuffed and taken downtown and put no struggle up for the police. Two hospitalized.

She was first charged with assault to keep her in jail and then released on her own recognizance until the hearing after the video was played showing the person who slipped it onto her cart. Cops were pretty pissed. Wal Mart apparently settled out of court because I saw one little blip in the newspaper afterward that they apologized and that a lawsuit was pending.

As for your thing above with Tiger. Apology? Sheyit...Tiger get your checkbook out cause you are going to need it. I dont show my receipts either and as of now havent had anyone flipping out. I would have called the media first and then 911. Most TV stations have *_ numbers. I have all five in my phone. Once the media shows up the following applies.

They es mortuus , theca propinquus

So Charles, what specifics are you speaking of. You and Revere and many others know the process. That process in general is a charge being made to an appropriate law enforcement or regulatory group or official of a crime. When said group or official determines that in their opinion a crime has been commited they will present the evidence to a grand jury via the prosecutor for rendering of indictment. Said indictment having been handed down, persons or corporations shall be subject to bonding and release until a trial date. Date set and entered into the trial shall consist of judiciary, judiciary tribunal, or trial by judiciary and jury. They are then acquitted or convicted of the crime and released or adjudicated as criminals.

You have something? Present your case to a prosecutor who has jurisdiction. I mean we are now a second chance society. Oh, I didnt mean it! I wont do it again. Sometimes that works, most of the time not.

I am not attacking anyone, just leveling the playing field a bit. I have seen no defense of our laws here Charles and that in particular bothers me. The kid said she just forgot she couldnt do that. What if she had forgotten for say 1.5 hours? Its like Clinton saying it all depends on what is, IS? Is as I have stated before is when its non-consensual in all 50, sex. No delineation of what a sex act is kind of thing. Then thinking that you can lie in front of a Grand Jury. Thats what is, IS.

The Simpson movie was pirated inside of one day in Australia.... I can hear it now in some frat house...."Hey dumbass, you forgot to steal the popcorn too!"

I do agree though Charles that some corporations get a pass and well, you have to start somewhere. That generally means the individuals in the country. Maybe she should have waited for the next plane to Chiapas or spit on the sidewalk while she was there buying the 2.50 copy. If you have never sat on a jury then I can tell you without a doubt she would have been convicted because those that are chosen take the law very seriously. They are the true custodians of the law, the others just administrate it.

Be advised, next year they will be able to electronically tag each and ever music/dvd out there. You carry it on a plane internationally and they will check. You could be detained for buying one from a street vendor in Paris and bringing it home.

Vos have ut satus alicubi. parum guy usquequaque takes is in brevis

As the now foreign speaking MRK eluded to the girl said, "I totally forgot that I was not allowed to do that," Sejas said Wednesday. "I did it without thinking clearly".

So, no one here has ever been 19 years old right? Without being able to "prove" the following opinion in a snap I will say hogwash! liar! BS!
She got caught and had to come up with a good "excuse". She got off easy IMO and it won't even be on her record if she keeps her nose clean.

It's her karma, she created it, now let her live with the mistake.

This is a great thread in which I have great interest in trying to understand. I write white papers related to medical and information technology and would of course hate to see the content used in another publication without my consent. However, someone that I have read a great deal of their work is Dr. Lawrence Lessig from Stanford University. Dr. Lessig presents both sides of these subjects in great detail and I highly recommend his work.
Check out Code 2.O which you can download for free from the Drs. website (www.lessig.org), or pay ~ $11.00 for the book at Amazon or else where.

Great topics I look forward to reading more on this subject from all of you, thanks again!

Our (US, Australian) governments can enact any law that they like. Some laws are impossible (Policemen must grow wings and fly whilst on duty), some were shown to be economically unenforceable (nobody is allowed to use recreational drugs e.g. alcohol) and some will be found invalid by the court system. The remaining laws are enforceable with varying severity penalties which seem to reflect the economic and social damage to society.

Once upon a time, before computer technology intervened, the laws on patent & copyright provided protection to creators and producers for their delivery of novel work. Now copyright and patent law as a whole have moved to "economically unenforceable".

Of course the production companies are upset. Without copyright laws they will lose their Palm Beach weekenders. The existing penalties are not providing sufficient disincentive. The only solution for the production companies is to increase the penalty (e.g. make a breach of copyright into a capital offense).

The performing artists would be less concerned at the loss of copyright protection. They could live from "live". Maybe they won't make quite as much money, but surely that is not the raison d'etre for creative & performing artists?

In any case, as a consumer, I much prefer to attend a movie theatre or live performance. Recordings sux.

As a society we should recognize that economic damage by copyright breach is limited to a single group of people. Social damage is virtually nonexistent because creative artists will continue to create. The parasitic producers of those works, like the vermiform appendix, need excision.

The only solution for the production companies is to increase the penalty (e.g. make a breach of copyright into a capital offense).

No.

Because you actually mentioned the most effective, not to mention simple, form of redress later on ...

In any case, as a consumer, I much prefer to attend a movie theatre or live performance. Recordings sux.

I can assure you that pirated recording sux even worse. You have to jump through hoops to do it, and then what you get for your pains has neither the quality, features, nor the longevity of a legitimate recording.

Quality: Most of the pirate recordings on the Internet are DVD "rips" with maybe a sixth to a tenth of the bandwidth of a legitimate DVD. If you doubt this, simply go to one of the more prolific bit torrent trackers (btjunkie.org is perfect for this) and investigate the Internet-available pirated bit torrent copies of just about any movie you care to name.

If you like your movies played back looking like they were filmed underwater, by all means go ahead.

If you want to do an hour's digging to find a proper DVD image to download, you're going to just love the time it will take you to D/L 4+ GB of data. Even over a cable modem line that will handle 950 kBytes/second - I can assure you that most bit torrent connections will only give yo a tenth of that, at best. Even if the torrent in question has 150+ seeders, like the last Knoppix image I downloaded did.

Features: DVD rips do NOT contain details like scene-by scene indices. A legitimate studio DVD of a movie will have an index of between 20 to 40 scenes, and you can navigate between as you choose.

Longevity: Burned CDs and DVDs are not going to have the longevity of pressed ones unless you take extraordinary pains to use archival quality media and use burn engines which do the job properly. I spent some quality time researching this because I archive things like operating systems and userland data, and I want those archives to be available a decade from now.

Hint: The number one paydirt link here is How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media. Spend some quality time with the comments, too. Media are not created equal. Neither are burners.

Bottom line: If you're going to jump through a dozen hoops in order to get a shitty quality recording when you can buy the legitimate studio DVD for $10 to $20, or rent it for half that, you're nuts.

The MPAA and the RIAA aren't fighting piracy. They're giving away free money to Lawyer Welfare. At the expense of every scrap of good will their customer base possesses.

They're nuts, too.

Randy wrote ...

I mean we are now a second chance society.

No, we are not. But I won't try to argue this with you, since you have yet to directly respond to any argument I've presented you in the last year and a half.

I have seen no defense of our laws here Charles and that in particular bothers me.

That is the job of the prosecutors and the court in this case. It is also completely orthogonal to my point, as I am sure you understood when you wrote that.

My point is that this is stupid. Because ...

1) It's out of proportion.

2) The people who are most ardent in their defense of draconian enforcement of copyrights on behalf of the studios are completely absent from the discussion when the legality of the studio's actions itself is in far graver question.

3) The offense of copyright violation tends to be self-punishing. See the above analysis. Especially in this country, where a technical cost-benefit analysis of piracy, which absolutely never is mentioned by MPAA partisans, works so strongly to the benefit of the MPAA.

Thanks Charles, your historical perspectives re: tech manifestations of media pretty much shows this issue for what it is -- stupid! Yes, gathering dust in the basements and attics of American suburbia are WalMart purchased or pirated VHS copies of Steven Spielberg's (Transformers exec producer) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)... Millions of miles of rotting magnetic tape overfilled with audio-visual dropouts -- 80s consumer technology destined for the tip! And now, in a brand new century with cell phone video cameras!?! Even if these pathetic ego machines were capable of recording vast megabytes in low light (an eventuality), it aint a longlasting "studio mix" of the movie and most folk would, over time, ditch the low quality pirate -- the C21 version of shoving VHS tapes into delete.

Charles & Jon,

Perhaps age has caught up with me, or perhaps your analysis of pirated quality is too severe. Sure,a video taken with a handheld in a theatre might be crap, but music & vid pirated from quality recordings with average equipment can be acceptable quality on the street for 10% of retail.

Rotting in the attic? Lets face it. One or two views is all most people would want, and all the extras? Who cares?

Bottom Line. Quality, features and longevity are more than acceptable for the pirated price. And even if it took a few hours to download, it's downloads in the background, so who cares.

As for time to find...my kids are internet era, they can find that sorta stuff so quickly that I am boggled.

So Charles & Jon, I reckon those recording industry people can kiss their cheques goodbye. I estimate maybe a decade more of failing revenues until everyone in the recording industry gives up, or maybe see the light and just drop their exorbitant prices.

They aren't totally stupid, I would bet the smartest ones are already bailing.

I never did cite "time to find" as a drawback of pirated material, bar.

In fact, "time to find" is the very least of the problems. I mentioned btjunkie.org. There are other aggregation sites, but that one is the most comprehensive that I am aware of, and from that vantage, "time to find" is only a few seconds. A minute or two if the page loads slowly. More if you're choosy and inspect the file content of the torrent behind each link, as btjunkie.org's interface allows you to do.

But I still maintain that D/L time and copy quality are serious issues.

Now, an OSS operating system like OpenSuSE has no stigma of piracy attached to its downloading at all. But longevity and copy quality are enough of an issue that I used to purchase DVDs of OpenSuSE, which is my Linux distro of choice, when the marketing savvy of the vendors was not so poor that ship delay cost was piled upon the money cost.

My calculation? Time cost of bit torrent D/L of 8 gigabytes of data plus the risk of losing the D/L to poor quality media plus burner engine issues outweighs the money cost of the DVD alone.

These days, I am pretty much forced to D/L OpenSuSE because Novell has allowed their marketing people to fall asleep at the switch. Making the DVDs Unobtainium without an unacceptably high time cost associated with purchase over the Internet. Alas, Novell isn't as astute about that piece as some of the 'net hardware vendors like Lagoom or Tiger Direct or ZipZoomFly. Those outfits will drop-ship orders so fast that you can order a pair of memory sticks at 9 PM Thursday and have them show up by the evening of the following Monday.

SO I download that content rather than purchasing. But I can tell you that the multiple days it takes me to download an 8 gigabyte ISO image via bit torrent are not appreciated.

IMHO, if you want to see what savvy publishers do, look at book vendors like Baen. This publisher has a couple of hundred titles just sitting on his Internet-visible server, with permission to download explicitly and publicly granted. Apparently, the loss of royalty monies does not seem to have broken his sleep at night. Nor that of the authors who publish through that company and have chosen to make parts of their body of work downloadable.

If you think that's strange, it gets better. Because Jim Baen, who founded both that company and that policy, was a wingnut to end all wingnuts. Evidently, an outspoken political conservative can be quite comfortable with lockdown of copyrighted content which is .. ahem .. "less-than-total". LOL.

Baen Books, last I heard, was doing quite well for itself indeed. Not even close to bankruptcy. LOL.

The same logic carries over into the music market. The RIAA would have us believe that market would be wrecked by anything less than a zero-tolerance policy towards unauthorized and unremunerated content distribution. This is bullshit.

Why? Really simple. There is too much music out there, and a shortage of ways to explore it. Which is bad news for the newer artists who are trying to make a living. Nobody's going to buy your stuff if they have no idea that they're going to like it. Or even that you exist.

Radio has been dead and stinking for decades. In the 60s and 70s, it was possible to learn of new popular music worth the bother by this means, but that hasn't been true for a quarter century.

I have personally spent, at a horseback guess, upwards of several hundred dollars over the last half dozen years on music CDs by outfits I would never have even heard about, were it not for file sharing over the Internet.

There are quite a few artists out there that seem to regard file sharing as advertising. While they aren't getting remunerated for the pirated content, their audiences are growing, without any corresponding outlay for publicists or adverts.

I'll start worrying about the threat posed by Internet "file sharing" or "piracy" or whatever you wish to call it, when artists as sharp as science fiction writer David Drake start worrying. Right now, that's not happening.

Charles with all due respect. Our whole electronics age of DVD's, recordings of all kinds, software, etc. are all based on the premise that the creator of the media owns it. Bill Gates sure as hell got rich off of Windows and extravagantly so.

It doesnt matter whether you think its bullshit or not. Our legislative branch has deemed it to be illegal, it has held in the courts and thus by default it makes you wrong. You might not agree with it, (to be honest I dont like it either) but it is illegal and you can be prosecuted for it.

It is also the intellectual property rights thing. I deal in aircraft operations and that includes the engineering. It takes years to develop something as simple as a doorway on the aircraft and millions of bucks of R&D. Put it on a disk and then what, just assume that its okay to copy it?

We minimize this to music and video's but its far reaching and more than the entertainment industry. If its unenforced then we lose our entertainment industry and very likely much more than that.

What are hackers after when they attack a computer? Generally not to screw up a computer. Nope, they are after moneyfiles or downloads of video's/music etc. But punch into an engineering computer and you have all sorts of things that are very sellable. If that data isnt copyrighted then its open game.

How about a day when to publish means that you perished both financially and personally? Someone steals your stuff ahead of your publication and you find your data is now already patented.

This is about more than a 20 second clip on a cell phone. What if she had access to the projection booth? Pretty easy to copy after that. With no penalties as some assert here whats the outcome?

Even the prosecutor didnt seem to get it. It ratchets the tolerance level up and then it slowly gets to be a non-crime with millions if not billions of overall losses. Those mill/bills keep an entire industry moving in California. Or is it okay to just throw up the hands and say I give and you there, you are now out of work because it was stolen before it even made it to the theaters/computer stores/Wal-Mart.

Oh Charles-about the Sony gig. They are paying dearly for that. The lawsuits are killing them already and yes that was patently illegal.

Microsoft was about to be sued as being complicity in the process so they changed their mind and put the patch out to remove it. Test case to see if anyone was watching.

Charles,

"If you want to do an hour's digging to find a proper DVD image to download," -v- "I never did cite "time to find" as a drawback of pirated material".

OK, but an hour of my time is worth something. Other than a disagreement about the likely course of future history, we seem to be in moral agreement.

MRK

I dont think your arguments pro copyright play out.

e.g.(1) Engineering plans are not so simply copied. You gotta have the materials tech, manufacturing process, (even down to forging -v- extrusion -v- machining) and each of those is a technology on it's own. Then you need a whole lot of talent to adapt it, and another whole lotta talent to make it. btw, doorways are a particularly difficult problem in monocoque frames, so $millions is quite reasonable, but you can't just steal the doorway, you gotta rip the whole shell, the same doorways don't go in different airframes. Then you find you are only selling a knockoff of an airbus or whatever. Even if it's legal, most airlines are more concerned about safety than to buy a clone that hasn't passed the government's safety tests.

As a clincher, think how long it's taking the Iranians to make a nuke working off plans given them by the Pakis.

e.g.(2) I already argued that our entertainers will still be around post no copyright. They will be giving away recordings via internet, and making $ from live performances. Charles also argued that point.

e.g.(3) Your point re someone stealing your stuff then patenting it does not compute. Surely that is an argument for security & against patent laws?

Hey, Randy, where I live breaching entertainment copyright already is a "non crime". Even in Virginia the entertainment publishing industry allegedly had to threaten the DA to get a prosecution.

You are of course correct. The law is ther law. However carrying unenforcable laws on the books will ultimately bring about a disrespect for the law. For the sake of our judicial systems, we should retract or decriminalize patent & copyright laws.

OK, bar, you have me on that one. My bad.

The way I should have put the "time to find" issue, is that it is a tradeoff. Because the quality of Internet-available pirate downloads resembles a Pareto distribution, with 90% - 95% of the available content in the "crap quality" category.

If you optimize "time to find", you are going to be downloading almost entirely crap.

If you optimize for higher quality, actual DVD images or equivalent, you're going to be spending some time at it.

I think time value, outside the workplace, cannot really be quantified. Nor can inconvenience cost. But the question does arise: "How much money is X amount of inconvenience worth?".

Try this out for yourself. Just select a movie title, then search for it on btjunkie.org.

1) Look only for torrents of over 2.5 GB in size.

2) Then check the contents.

3) Discard all those whose content is solely .AVI files or .WMV files or some other "ripped" and compressed content.

4) Consider also the number of seeders. The fewer seeders, the slower the D/L is going to be. With the bottom at 0 seeders. 0 seeders = dead torrent = total waste of time.

I think you will find that the time it takes to locate downloads which are both highly available and of high quality will be quite significant. It isn't always even possible to achieve both of these goals.

MRK:

Charles with all due respect. Our whole electronics age of DVD's, recordings of all kinds, software, etc. are all based on the premise that the creator of the media owns it. Bill Gates sure as hell got rich off of Windows and extravagantly so.

It doesnt matter whether you think its bullshit or not. Our legislative branch has deemed it to be illegal, it has held in the courts and thus by default it makes you wrong.

No. NO. NO.

Please read before replying. You have just cast me as advocating illegal copyright violation, and that is as offensive as it is false.

Once again, you have misread my argument. And I could hardly have been more clear.

So.

One. More. Time.

I do NOT think copyright is bullshit.

I think the MPAA's little witch hunt is bullshit. Because they are, in effect, trying to set a screw with a sledgehammer.

Copyright violation is against the law and one option is to take matters to court. It isn't the BEST option. It has a number of ways that it turns around and bites the plaintiff right on the ass.

1) He WILL be perceived by much of the public as an offensive asshole. Because his response is out of proportion to the magnitude of damage the offender has committed.

2) The attendant publicity makes pirating of copyrighted content more, rather than less, likely to be committed.

The more logical means of recourse is to rely on the fact that copyright violation, particularly of motion pictures, is highly inconvenient and time consuming, and yields poor results more often than not.

Whereas the purchase of a legitimate recording, for which the artist and studio receive remuneration in the usual way, is simpler, easier, more convenient, and can be achieved at a money cost that is well within reason.

The pirate isn't just contravening the law. He is also acting like a fool.

BTW, as DVD gives way to HD/DVD and Blue Ray, this logic is only going to be strengthened. Now, instead of a mere 4 to 8 GB of content, the pirate is faced with the challenge of reeling in as much as 25 GB or more. His offense becomes self-punishing to a greater degree than previously.

I hope that this is clear enough to be understood.

I would appreciate it if you would read my arguments carefully before replying to them. I do not flatter myself that you are going to do this, since I have a couple of years of experience now with your standards of debate. But I can hope.

Charles-It doesnt matter whether you agree or not, or whether you believe that there is some open doorway and its just okay to do it. Its not your 20 seconds to make the determination about. Its the owner of the copyright. That also includes whether its an innocuous infringement. The law and courts dont make a distinction between the two.

I dont make personal attacks on people and sometimes its hard to make a point as one of the lone few right wingers here. If you were offended then I apologize. On the other hand I cant see what you are driving at. Is your argument that its a non loss? My counter to that would be that it doesnt matter because the law is squarely in the copyright holders court. The second its recorded its an infringement. Its like saying the car was unlocked, the kid stole the car. Is that the kind of defense you are suggesting? If not I am at a loss to understand what you are saying other than perhaps the kid shouldnt have gone as far as she did into the system. From what I understand she was pretty shitty about the whole thing until the prosecutors told her she was looking at some really harsh realities.

Is it your position that some 20 second filming is a non-loss to a company? Is that what you are saying. The Congress and the courts disagree. Every country on this planet have laws that are pretty much the same about the issue. Its not going to be done. But our catch me if you can society seems to ignore it. Its to the detriment of our country and our employment in an industry.

So if thats a mis-characterization of it I dont know what else to say except...dont get caught! Two years ago it was something like a 15 year old getting a fine and suspended sentence. And just because its on the books Bar. I can also assure you that there are many, many people out there trying to hack computers in engineering departments to get at information, same for biomedical. You minimize the risk and if I am wrong, then why are so many companies so anal about computer security now? Under the latest law you may or may not know about EVERY company has to provide copies of emails, communications, and data. Thus, its all now by law copyrighted but indirectly so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

This is a rather broad description of it. Its easy to read but you get the drift. So what do you do if you find that Carol the Copier downloaded an illegal music file onto a company computer to listen to at work? Guess what? You get sued and Carol goes to jail. Since she is your representative you are guilty. Harsh? Yep and going to get more so.

So look I am sorry if anyone is offended. But they shouldnt be. REvere is right, I look only at that law and not at the person doing it. Ignorance of the law is not a defense, but in some cases age might be. She did a stupid thing. More stupid to get caught. It doesnt change the fact that she got a bust on her record. They tried to give her the out but she was not so polite and they let her have it. Neither judges or prosecutors can make up the remedy for a situation like this. Its prescribed. He gave her a suspended sentence and a little fine. Minimal in fact. But it doesnt change the fact that she broke the law.

Charles:

OKOK. I am generally disinterested in the quality of a recording, I am mostly interested in the concepts & ideas. OTOH for $7 I can attend the Theatre. I prefer to pay $7 for the shared human experience, rather than download it for free to the small screen (even with perfect quality).

mrk:

We are talking about breaches of copyright and patent, not data security. Microsoft has a copyright on their OS, but they haven't revealed the uncompiled code. I suspect that the only reason MS code is not on the net is because nobody has been able to deconstruct the compiled code, not because it would be illegal. MS doesn't even bother (to the best of my knowledge) to prosecute breaches of it's copyrighted OS, their latest tactic is to just render that OS inoperable after a month if it is not properly validated. Smart boy is your Bill Gates. He actually does not need the copyright laws.

I think you will find that the data being hacked is being hacked for strategic reasons, (date of product release, product design/appearance) not patent or copyright or engineering reasons. Pharmaceuticals patents are another issue, but I have discussed that problem previously.

btw, "ignorance of the law is not a defense" is not quite the law as I know it. If you have taken reasonable steps to ascertain the law, then ignorance could be a defense. For instance, if one of the US states had a law that a RH turn at a stop light was always illegal, then if you were from a place remote from that state, you could probably successfully plead ignorance as a defense.

Thus, its all now by law copyrighted but indirectly so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Randy, I am NO stranger to Sarbanes-Oxley.

1) I do information security work for a living. Not "in my spare time". For a living. For the last 9 years.

2) I have been working at a major bank for seven of those nine years.

So there is zero payoff in trying to scare me by bringing it up. I was grilled by a Federal auditor for an hour and a half within the first three months I worked for the bank. So I don't scare easily.

This is a rather broad description of it. Its easy to read but you get the drift. So what do you do if you find that Carol the Copier downloaded an illegal music file onto a company computer to listen to at work? Guess what? You get sued and Carol goes to jail. Since she is your representative you are guilty.

No.

I can speak from experience because, of course, we ran into precisely this scenario.

We did not get sued.

We got contacted and informed that Joe Schmuck was downloading copyrighted content using a peer-to-peer program.

We satisfied ourselves that there was excellent reason to believe this. Joe damned himself when the perimeter firewall logged the traffic.

So - well, Joe's work computer did not belong to him. It was bank property. And he had been informed every time he logged onto the bank intranet that his actions could and would be monitored, and if he strayed outside bank policy, it could result in his dismissal.

So Joe's hard drive was seized. Do you know how hard it is to conceal activity on a Windows system? Let's just say that there is really only one feasible way ...

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Needless to say, the forensic examination which followed cooked Joe's goose quite thoroughly.

Joe got fired very shortly thereafter.

What discussions Joe may have had with the other side's lawyers afterwards are something I was not a party to.

I'm waiting for no-copyright-societies/communities
being formed, where any copyrighted material is forbidden,
where officials filter all information coming in
for copyright and reject copyrighted material.
No Microsoft-software,only free newspapers,
only copyright-free books, only free radio/TV channels
are allowed of providers/stations
who declare it copyright free.
Every member of the community signs that he/she
won't _ever_ claim for copyright on anything.
The government pays producers for valuable ideas.

Wouldn't that be a better society ?

It is OK to claim for copyright on something, but it's
not OK IMO to hide it and mix it with the non-copyrighted
stuff. There should be a button on computers for:
"block any copyrighted material".

You could indoctrinate people with
your copyrighted material so much, that they can't
avoid reproducing it, even if they try.

and where are the search-engines which only show
non-copyrighted material ?
Which only show free articles from magazines,
news-services,libraries,databases ?
Which only list articles without advertisements,spams,popups ?

the main trick of the copyright-industry is to
mix with non-copyright-things. They don't say in advance
that something is copyright, only when you open it.
We have no option to efficiently filter out
copyrighted stuff.

Charles,

Nice hit! Out of the park! I had no idea how heavily regulated the banking/financial industry was until I had some experience with it. Many of you have had a similar experience....ever wonder why you have a stack of paperwork a mile high when you get a mortgage?? Thank your regulators for that!

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is bad enough. But GLB (Gramm-Leach-Bliley) is as bad or worse when it comes to compliance (or trying to figure out how to comply).

I think Randy is stepping into familiar water, but it has to be experienced to be understood.

Sorry, off topic a bit..

Charles I am interested. How did they find out to give you a call. Was Joe spamming the music or vids outbound?

Oh and you are absolutely correct. Windows integrated with a main frame is like screaming....."Over here, over here....Illegal activity underway", complete of course with a 30 x 20 billboard sign and hawker at the gate. The same scenario played out at a certain huge paper manufacturer here and they did get sued because the company didnt provide enough outbound security to reasonably assure that the activity wouldnt take place. They settled out of course. Why? Because of S/O. If they had gone thru with it they might have found more in the in basket, and a lot more in the out.

Wow, you'd think you guys had a vested interest in preserving property rights or something. I'm with Revere - a teenager copies 20 seconds of crap and the crap-owner wants a public admission of guilt? Why don't you just go ahead and debit my non-existent pension fund for your costs.

YAY, I hope I'm the 500000th commenter!

(Psst, ownership is overrated.)

Steph

I respect intellectual property rights, but the entertainment gurus don't care so much about the consumers rights.

For example, when I buy software, I only have to pay full price for the property once. When the product is upgraded, I pay a lower upgrade price, which covers the value of the upgrade (the part that is improved = value added to the product) as well as the packaging, distribution, material and production costs which are considered, so they say, to be minor costs, relative to the intellectual property value. I have no problem with them except when they limit the number of installs to 2, since if I own a product including upgrades for 5 years or more I am certainly going to burn through more than 2 computers.

Now with movies and music, there is basically little to no upgrade of the intellectual property when it is released in a different storage medium to play on the newer generation of video players (VHS, LD, VCD, DVD, etc). I have a number of movies where I own VHS-NTSC, VHS-PAL, VCD, LD, DVD region 1, DVD region 3). Same as with software, we are told the price we pay is mostly for the value of the IPR. Yet each time I am required to purchase the new medium, which has lower production and material costs, I have to pay the entire value of the intellectual property. Nice deal for these IPR owners, but the consumer gets ripped off. Not sure how they can rectify it, but it is an issue that may equal the illegal downloads and copying.

So until the entertainment gurus start addressing the double dipping issue, I have little sympathy for them. And by the way, the quality of music and movies over the past 10 years is as bad as I have ever seen it. Those lower sales have more to do with poor product quality than copyright infringement.

In this particular case, if she was trying to tape the entire movie in the theater, you could argue that she would not buy the DVD when it came out, or she might show that to her friends, which could impact theater revenues. But twenty seconds? Common sense please.

PTodd-Not really.. The law. If you dont care for the law thats one thing, but until its changed we all have to abide by it. I dont like it either and as I said before once the kid found out she was looking at hard time for something really not so big, she figured it out and started becoming contrite.

But its a far, far reaching problem. When Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was getting ready to be sold on DVD I had to ship them out with a guard standing next to me until it got onto the plane. I asked why and they said that the entire operation had to be monitored and that even a blank got destroyed or didnt make the quality test, they had to be accounted for. Result, it took almost two months before it was copied and sold. That 20 buck price tag almost surely includes the cost of lost revenues on their parts.

Kruger is right.
The assholes are not (only) the Regal Entertainment
Theaters but the lawmakers who make the laws as this.
Who fail to clarify and specify the copyright laws
because their job depends on uncertainety in law.

We owe thanks to Regal Entertainment that they
bring this to public attention and hopefully will
result in a change of law.

OK, Randolph, the law's the law. Then I take it you're in favor of impeaching Bush and Cheney post-haste and throwing the book at 'em? Life without parole? Possibly the firing squad for treason in wartime (outing Valerie Plame)?

Let's year a nice big loud YES from you, Randolph!

G510 -I believe if you check the record that no one was convicted or indicted for outing Valerie Plame. She wasnt an agent for starts G. Second is that Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying to a federal grand jury but not removed from office. He also went into Kosovo without even a resolution. Jimmy Carter invaded a sovereign nation without a resolution. At least GWB went to Congress for it.

As for impeaching Bush, they all got bad information from bad sources. ON the other hand Saddam's VX stil lies in wait for us somewhere. That was UN verified stuff. Perhaps you would like it in your backyard?

Man I hate to bring this one up again but the people and the law have spoken yet again about copywrite infringements. Tolerance levels are going down with the juries.

One of the 26,000 was tagged up here in Memphis. A very computer illiterate man. Apparently a certain type of file share software was on his computer that sounds a lot like slimewire. Thats a hint by the way. His kids got ahold of it and started downloading music and video's. The music people used tracking bots on the download and where it went tagged the guys computer. He got a bill for 5000 bucks this past week and told to pay it in 10 days or he would be facing the magistrate. He has never downloaded anything in his life. He doesnt even know how.

He is now faced with having his minor children hauled in front of a federal judge on a federal felony charge along with the civil penalties beyond that. They also went on to download it to Ipods I am told.

KIDS-Your college fund is in jeopardy if you download stuff illegally. The below was a fully grown 30 year old and she thought she would gut her way thru it. Having sat a jury or two you have to understand one thing... Jurors take their job dead serious. If the law has been violated having spent a week or two and making only 30 bucks a day when they should have been at work, their sense of humor, morality or just plain what is wrong takes a drop back position to the law. You will be found guilty and you will pay huge fines. You can also be jailed.

Dont even think for one minute that you will win one. Everyone of the cases to date as best I can tell has resulted in a guilty or liable verdict .
I wouldnt recomend that anyone test the system.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071004233021.itudt24b&show_arti…

I toss this one out only for the humor of the possibilities Revere. With the advent of the screen writers demanding a piece of the pie for royalties and residuals I get a mental picture of sitting in a theater in Los Angeles not far from Burbank waiting for the show to begin. A late comer say a 20ish year old girl sits down and the "Dont record this heah picture" warning comes on the screen. She of course is on her cell phone with her baby brother and we are all about to watch...."Insert cool movie name here".

The lights dim, the movie begins and looking right and left the girl fires up the Nokia and starts to record. A loud scream erupts. Its a member of the screen writers guild leaping across seat row, after seat row heading for the young woman. "Illegal recording, illegal recording. Gimme that phone you pubescent twat!" Suddenly, en masse as if a great upheaval or a quake had begun the room moves towards the offender. YES, YES they are ALL MEMBERS of the screen writers guild, the movie producers or the owners of the movie theater and they want blood or after a lengthy trial, 50,000 in damages, 5 years in jail or both for copyright infringement. No leniency in this town!

The child retreats towards the emergency exit but au contrare, a quick thinking lawyer in the crowd dives for the exit and handcuffs himself to her leg and says, "You are gonna pay now you bitch!" And then they fall upon her. They seize her phone as evidence, knock her senseless to the floor and one by one kick in the groin and say, "You are taking food from the mouths of my children-copyright whore!" One kind Samaritan stands and puts himself between the crowd and the girl who is prone on the floor. He picks her up, hands her a Scientology for Beginners book and she says, "Thanks Mr. Cruise."

Of course the police finally show up and remove the lawyer from her leg and put her into the back of the car. They drive slowly off and then once out of sight, they pull to an alley. The girl of course is frightened to death and thinking rape, waterboarding and the ever present possibility of a tasering. The back door opens and she is removed from the car and she is handcuffed to a door. A crowd begins to form. People start to cheer. Flashbulbs go off and one of the officers walks into a nearby Walgreens and makes a purchase. He returns moments later and removes the cuff and puts the young woman back into the car and says, "Okay Britney, enough is enough. Put those underwear on that I bought for you. I cant book you in without underwear on."

I just wish my life was so complicated.

How is this Regal's fault?

What this adult did was a blatant disregard for the law. You break the law, you get prosecuted.

If you really make Regal out to be the bad guy in this situation, you're going to hate the rest of the big companies.