Grandfather sued by MPAA for $600,000!!!

[Legend]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: bob4432

exactly, if hollywood would put out some good movies, i would go see them. i don't d/l illegally, i just don't go pay ~$20 for my wife and i to watch sh!t. is the mpaa/riaa going to start coming for people that just don't go to movies anymore next? give me a good movie and i will go see it, give me sh!t and i won't give you my $20.

This argument I don't get... if they're not making good movies, why are people downloading them? 😕

They are still making good movies. Many movies suck, many do not... that's the way it's always been.

If you could go see all the movies you wanted for free, you would be more inclined to watch more movies than you would if you had to pay $10/ticket, and the hassle of driving to the theatre (gas, mileage, and time).

 

[Legend]

Originally posted by: LordSegan

Originally posted by: purbeast0

Originally posted by: LordSegan
Look, I am NOT defending the RIAA. But its not unreasonable to say that world wide they are losing billions to pirates. I know a lot of people who don't buy any movies anymore because they pirate everything they want to watch. Those people probably cost them $100 a year easily. On average, it doesn't seem totally insane that they lose 5 bil a year.

so you are saying your friends would go buy the movies?

if ANYONE is losing any money, it is the rental stores. i think people who bootleg movies are the types of people who would watch it once and never again. people who bootleg movies aren't dvd collectors, who want all the extras and crap to watch em all over again. atleast thats what it seems like to me.

but screw it ... i see probably 30 movies or so a year, in the theatre only.

I'm saying yes, I personally know a lot of people who are costing the industry money. People who I know used to spend $30+ a month on videos and CDs and now just download 95% of what they want to consume.

I have friends like this too. But they were frugal to begin with. They only went to see movies like LOTR, and they still do because they didn't want to see a crappy pirated copy.

The movies they download, they wouldn't go see in theaters, but maybe some rentals.

The industry is not losing billions to pirates. This argument assumes that every movie they download is worth paying $10 for, and it assumes that consumers have an infinite amount of money. It's not like money is being lost in the economy.

 

[0roo0roo]

1. I blame the crap releases of recent years for the MPAA losing money, moreso than piracy

naw, they are just quoting numbers full of sh*t. they are making money hand over fist now that they have dvd revenue. dvd's are a market that didn't exist before, they destroy vhs in sales. heck they've been making assloads of money from their back library of films from people rebuilding their collection in dvd. also they've been raking it in with massive tv dvd sales of current and past shows which basically might as well not have existed back in the vhs days when they sold basically nothin.

and of course theaters are seeing slightly less film goers, its the stupid film companies own doing. well not exactly stupid since they are making money while complaining. dvd's and improved cheaper home theater equipment/wide large tv's have made going to the theater less of an attraction. especially for older people who are easily put off by inconvenience and other horrors one has to face at the theater. older people are patient and will wait for dvd releases. and the movie companies have been pushing up dvd release dates so people know they won't have to wait long at all now. so really...why bother going to the theater. its mostly young kids that just have to see it now that go these days. its why many films are targeted at them. its amazing the media lets the companies get away with the bullsh*t. making record money while complaining. penn and teller need to do a thing on them.

oh fox trot took a dig at em😉
http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2005/10/31/

 

[FFactory0x]

WHO THE HELL USES IMESH ANYMORE?

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: FFactory0x
WHO THE HELL USES IMESH ANYMORE?

Apparently 12 yr-olds use it. 😀

 

[AMCRambler]

I think when they say piracy costs them 5.4billion, they are including the bootleggers who actually duplicate the movies and sell them on the streets. Think about your average coomputer user and how many could actually have figured out bit torrent. That number is a lot smaller than the number of people who buy boot leg copies of movies on the street. Bootlegging is where the MPAA should be focusing their efforts. I understand that the source for the bootleggers is of course the peer to peer networks, but I doubt this kids grandfather was running a bootlegging operation with only four movies downloaded. To sue this fellow instead of actually tracking down the ones downloading hundreds of movies is a ridiculous waste of time and resources. The only logical reason I can see for making an example of this fella is publicity. Most people are going to see a big organization going after a grandfather as negative though, so even that makes no sense. Can anyone tell me what the MPAA hopes to accomplish by going after this guy?

 

[Scarpozzi]

I agree with the 5.4Billion on the shens. People wouldn't buy those movies 95% of the time....well...let's say 90% of the time... They would rent them or watch something else. I wish the government would start standing up for people on the media suits. The movie corporations are already making too much money on that form of entertainment anyhow. The people that should be making the money are the artists (because of their talent and hard work) and those who work in movie theaters and rental shops. They're the ones that need more money.

 

[Cooler]

So basicly If you break in to someones house and dowload a movie and MPAA finds out owner will get sued.

 

[0roo0roo]

meh, numbers in newsweek article on the new sex and the city dvd box release were interesting.
tv dvd sales in 2000 = $132 Million
tv dvd sales in 2005 = $2.7 Billion

losing money? who the f*ck are they kidding.

 

[n7]

MPAA & RIAA are organizations i would actually like to destroy in a violent & sadistic way :|:|:|:|:|:|

 

[whistleclient]

Originally posted by: Legend

Originally posted by: LordSegan

Originally posted by: purbeast0

Originally posted by: LordSegan
Look, I am NOT defending the RIAA. But its not unreasonable to say that world wide they are losing billions to pirates. I know a lot of people who don't buy any movies anymore because they pirate everything they want to watch. Those people probably cost them $100 a year easily. On average, it doesn't seem totally insane that they lose 5 bil a year.

so you are saying your friends would go buy the movies?

if ANYONE is losing any money, it is the rental stores. i think people who bootleg movies are the types of people who would watch it once and never again. people who bootleg movies aren't dvd collectors, who want all the extras and crap to watch em all over again. atleast thats what it seems like to me.

but screw it ... i see probably 30 movies or so a year, in the theatre only.

I'm saying yes, I personally know a lot of people who are costing the industry money. People who I know used to spend $30+ a month on videos and CDs and now just download 95% of what they want to consume.

I have friends like this too. But they were frugal to begin with. They only went to see movies like LOTR, and they still do because they didn't want to see a crappy pirated copy.

The movies they download, they wouldn't go see in theaters, but maybe some rentals.

The industry is not losing billions to pirates. This argument assumes that every movie they download is worth paying $10 for, and it assumes that consumers have an infinite amount of money. It's not like money is being lost in the economy.

i hate sloppy thinking like this. "oh, it's crappy and i totally wouldn't pay money for it... but i'll spend a couple hours downloading it, encoding it to dvd, burning and then watch it. but it's not like i want to see it."

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
meh, numbers in newsweek article on the new sex and the city dvd box release were interesting.
tv dvd sales in 2000 = $132 Million
tv dvd sales in 2005 = $2.7 Billion

losing money? who the f*ck are they kidding.

How many people had converted to DVD from VHS in those five years? Most of the people I knew still bought movies as VHS's in 2000.

 

[Ricemarine]

It's best to find the original person that created the movie and then sue em...
Not take everyone else around them.
For then we'd have a huge national government surplus.

and we'd be poor.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
meh, numbers in newsweek article on the new sex and the city dvd box release were interesting.
tv dvd sales in 2000 = $132 Million
tv dvd sales in 2005 = $2.7 Billion

losing money? who the f*ck are they kidding.

How many people had converted to DVD from VHS in those five years? Most of the people I knew still bought movies as VHS's in 2000.

yea but sales of tv vhs was never high at all. i don't remember the number but it was pitiful. for many reasons of course. one tv series with 24 episodes would take 12 tapes😛 a huge block of retail shelf space wasted and a lot of cost in tapes(back then)... sometimes series would have so little demand that they would be canceled before release, such as babylon five. its out on dvd now of course. and really what is important is that its a revenue stream that is new.

i did a quick google and didn't find much on vhs tv sales.. well probably because they weren't important. i did find this. ""DVD is doing for television content what VHS did for movies, which is creating a high-profit margin aftermarket," Adams says. "And some of the biggest beneficiaries have been cable networks.""

According to Adams' numbers, sales of HBO's Band of Brothers miniseries reached nearly $100 million. That's in line with top theatrical films. And top HBO series such as The Sopranos and Sex and the City routinely top the video sales charts when released. Season 1 of The Sopranos alone brought HBO more than $50 million in net revenue, he says."http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2004-07-19-dvd-cable-shows_x.htm

and i did find this "?In the heyday of VHS, the average consumer bought five tapes a year,? she said. ?Now, consumers are buying 15 titles a year, and that?s opened the door for product that had no life before DVD.?"http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Stage/6325/pages/main/dvdcampaign.html

"Even at the height of the videocassette's popularity, buyers purchased on average no more than six movies a year. The average DVD owner buys 17."http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techi...ns/2004-01-08-dvd-mainstream-yes_x.htm

my personal experience bears it out. family purchased maybe 1 vhs per year while vhs was hot. we now already have over 110 dvds...and 2 tv series on dvd... if you pretend they are about 13 bucks each(they weren't all), then its almost $1500. almost 1700 with tv series. my friends also have decent collections where as they had very few vhs too. its another reason why all this complaining by the mpaa bugs me. i'd have far more than 110 if i had not stopped almost 2 years ago because of the mpaa's practices/impending arrival of hddvd/blueray.

and really as impressive as the new tv dvd series sales are, they pale next to normal dvd sales still... 20 Billion in 2004 alone.

 

[timosyy]

Yeesh....

I've had the MPAA contact my ISP about downloading (uploading) a movie once, but that was over a year ago. My ISP shot me an email with a copy of the original email from the MPAA, told me to quit uploading, I replied saying I had, and nothing more came out of it. Havn't bothered downloading movies ever since cause its not really worth the hassle and you can rent em cheap enough if you're that interested. Wonder why they didn't hit me up with a crazy fine though.

 

[chowderhead]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm sure piracy hurts the market a little bit.

But come one, let's be realistic.
Most pirates are high school and college kids with little or no money.

How does pirating a movie that they weren't going to buy in the first place hurt anyone?
a lot of piracy is people just downloading crap because they can.

nope, most of the pirates are in FOREIGN COUNTRIES like Communist China. You had the head of the MPAA Dan Glickman on one of those news shows and they asked him specifically ... why are you going after grandma or some college kid in a dorm room when you can walk down any street in China and buy bootleg copies of any movie out in the theater. His reply was mentioning how important the Chinese market will be, how they were trying, how they need to strengthen the court system and how China just joined the WTO. In other words ... nothing. They are willing to tolerate bootlegging in China but can't wait to go after grandpa or some pimple-faced college kid here. Thugs they are!

 

[firewall]

Originally posted by: Aharami
down with the MPAA and the RIAA.

 

[Kenazo]

Although the MPAA is legally entitled to do this, it's sure pretty stupid.

 

[marvdmartian]

While I disagree with the over the top tactics of the mpaa & riaa, the problem they have isn't with the downloading of the copyrighted material (well, it is, but not as much as the next point I'm going to make).

The problem they have is with the SHARING of the copyrighted material. If you're on P2P, chances are you've got it set up to share partial &/or completed downloads with everyone else on that network. THAT'S where they're getting this guy, and others that they sue. It wasn't the fact that he downloaded (or his grandchild downloaded) the movies, it's the fact that while they were being downloaded, they were also being shared, which makes that person just as legally responsible as the original person who shared it on that p2p network.

On some p2p programs, you can elect not to share partial downloads. Chances are you won't download nearly as fast, possibly not at all, if you're not sharing. On some programs too, you select which folder(s) to save completed downloads to, and which folder(s) to share, and your best bet is to make certain to not share completed downloads either, or chances are these morons are going to eventually catch you. I have a buddy that got caught (and luckily got off with a warning) sharing a movie on bittorrent, and discovered that it was the studio that was sharing the file, but only at a 98% completion. That caused my friend to get stuck just short of completing the download, and share what he had with others, for days on end, hoping that he'd get that last little bit of the file.

Dirty pool? You betcha. To me, that's as bad as hunting a baited field. But expect this sort of thing to continue, and probably even get worse, before it gets better. As long as the bean counters at the mpaa and the riaa tell the suits that they're losing that kind of change due to sharing networks, the suits are going to keep their doberman lawyers on this campaign of terrorizing old men, widows and children. :|

And that's why I only share porn these days!! :laugh:

 

[FeuerFrei]

Originally posted by: Juice Box

Originally posted by: Umberger

"Basically what you are doing when you use peer-to-peer software is you are offering someone else's product that they own to thousands of other people for free, and it's not fair," Bernards said.

Illegal downloading costs the movie industry an estimated $5.4 billion a year, she said.

$5,400,000,000? I call Shens.

*** +/- $4 Million

They like to assume that consumers would have bought a copy of every movie they downloaded.
They are really losing very little and I don't feel sorry for them.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: marvdmartian
While I disagree with the over the top tactics of the mpaa & riaa, the problem they have isn't with the downloading of the copyrighted material (well, it is, but not as much as the next point I'm going to make).

The problem they have is with the SHARING of the copyrighted material. If you're on P2P, chances are you've got it set up to share partial &/or completed downloads with everyone else on that network. THAT'S where they're getting this guy, and others that they sue. It wasn't the fact that he downloaded (or his grandchild downloaded) the movies, it's the fact that while they were being downloaded, they were also being shared, which makes that person just as legally responsible as the original person who shared it on that p2p network.

On some p2p programs, you can elect not to share partial downloads. Chances are you won't download nearly as fast, possibly not at all, if you're not sharing. On some programs too, you select which folder(s) to save completed downloads to, and which folder(s) to share, and your best bet is to make certain to not share completed downloads either, or chances are these morons are going to eventually catch you. I have a buddy that got caught (and luckily got off with a warning) sharing a movie on bittorrent, and discovered that it was the studio that was sharing the file, but only at a 98% completion. That caused my friend to get stuck just short of completing the download, and share what he had with others, for days on end, hoping that he'd get that last little bit of the file.

Dirty pool? You betcha. To me, that's as bad as hunting a baited field. But expect this sort of thing to continue, and probably even get worse, before it gets better. As long as the bean counters at the mpaa and the riaa tell the suits that they're losing that kind of change due to sharing networks, the suits are going to keep their doberman lawyers on this campaign of terrorizing old men, widows and children. :|

And that's why I only share porn these days!! :laugh:

I'm not doubting you at all, because I have heard of this happening before, but wouldn't this be dismissable in court? It's illegal to set somebody up, isn't it?

 

[Strk]

Spending $100+ million on crap like The Adventures of Pluto Nash cost them billions, not a bunch of people on p2p programs. Does p2p affect them? Sure, but $5.4 billion? I find that hard to believe when most movies suck.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Originally posted by: chowderhead

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm sure piracy hurts the market a little bit.

But come one, let's be realistic.
Most pirates are high school and college kids with little or no money.

How does pirating a movie that they weren't going to buy in the first place hurt anyone?
a lot of piracy is people just downloading crap because they can.

nope, most of the pirates are in FOREIGN COUNTRIES like Communist China. You had the head of the MPAA Dan Glickman on one of those news shows and they asked him specifically ... why are you going after grandma or some college kid in a dorm room when you can walk down any street in China and buy bootleg copies of any movie out in the theater. His reply was mentioning how important the Chinese market will be, how they were trying, how they need to strengthen the court system and how China just joined the WTO. In other words ... nothing. They are willing to tolerate bootlegging in China but can't wait to go after grandpa or some pimple-faced college kid here. Thugs they are!

Ahh yes ... I guess I was only thinking about domestic piracy.
I have heard tales from friends who would go to their country of origin be if, Pakistan, India, China, etc .... and they would talk of buying bootlegs of anything for like a buck fitty.

 

[marvdmartian]

Originally posted by: stonecold3169

Originally posted by: marvdmartian
While I disagree with the over the top tactics of the mpaa & riaa, the problem they have isn't with the downloading of the copyrighted material (well, it is, but not as much as the next point I'm going to make).

The problem they have is with the SHARING of the copyrighted material. If you're on P2P, chances are you've got it set up to share partial &/or completed downloads with everyone else on that network. THAT'S where they're getting this guy, and others that they sue. It wasn't the fact that he downloaded (or his grandchild downloaded) the movies, it's the fact that while they were being downloaded, they were also being shared, which makes that person just as legally responsible as the original person who shared it on that p2p network.

On some p2p programs, you can elect not to share partial downloads. Chances are you won't download nearly as fast, possibly not at all, if you're not sharing. On some programs too, you select which folder(s) to save completed downloads to, and which folder(s) to share, and your best bet is to make certain to not share completed downloads either, or chances are these morons are going to eventually catch you. I have a buddy that got caught (and luckily got off with a warning) sharing a movie on bittorrent, and discovered that it was the studio that was sharing the file, but only at a 98% completion. That caused my friend to get stuck just short of completing the download, and share what he had with others, for days on end, hoping that he'd get that last little bit of the file.

Dirty pool? You betcha. To me, that's as bad as hunting a baited field. But expect this sort of thing to continue, and probably even get worse, before it gets better. As long as the bean counters at the mpaa and the riaa tell the suits that they're losing that kind of change due to sharing networks, the suits are going to keep their doberman lawyers on this campaign of terrorizing old men, widows and children. :|

And that's why I only share porn these days!! :laugh:

I'm not doubting you at all, because I have heard of this happening before, but wouldn't this be dismissable in court? It's illegal to set somebody up, isn't it?

Ah, but is the average p2p downloader/sharer going to take that chance, and spend the $$$ to hire a lawyer, go thru all the preliminaries before it gets to court, etc, etc?? Doubtful. The stormtroopers at the recording and movie industries will use your own actions against you, and bully you into rolling over and begging for mercy, in the hope that they'll just give you a smack on the wrist.

My buddy basically put on his "oh gosh, I didn't know there was anything wrong with that" bumpkin persona, and they let him off with a warning. Luckily for him it was a torrent, so he was only sharing one file, not 4 or 40 or 400. They let him off with a warning, but if he gets caught again, I'm sure they'll throw the book at him. The funny thing is that the vast majority of the stuff he downloads he never watches! To him, it's a game, to see what he can get away with before he gets caught. :roll:

I guess that's like an "extreme sport" for a geek, eh?? :laugh:

 

[TrueBlueLS]

Originally posted by: Umberger

"Basically what you are doing when you use peer-to-peer software is you are offering someone else's product that they own to thousands of other people for free, and it's not fair," Bernards said.

Illegal downloading costs the movie industry an estimated $5.4 billion a year, she said.

$5,400,000,000? I call Shens.

They lose it because of the stupid movie theatres wanting $9 for movies. I'm about ready just to go see movies at the $2 show by me instead.