BT & Talk Talk lose Appeal

[Nexus]

And the fact that it's not a legal service is the only difference

If there was a legal service which provided the same content for a comparable cost, which service do you think people would prefer to use?

The only reason many people pay for an illegal service to provide the content they want is because the legal option doesn't exist.

There never will be a service that offers all that latest releases and a huge catalogue of older releases from every content producer. To reference LoveFilm, with the Universal dispute, there are large number of their films I missed in the cinema which aren't available to rent. I've missed out on that from the service I use, but there are other ways I can still seem them legally without turning to piracy.

You repeatedly state that they pay for it, therefore it is by its very nature not "free".

I'm "hanging up" on them paying for it, because you keep stating that people would rather get something for free than pay for it, and then in the same breath state that they are paying for it. Either it's free or they are paying for it, like I said before, it cannot be both.

Of course the content is advertised as part of the service - do you really think people would pay for nothing?

With regards to "they are not paying for the content" well, this is the same as with any rental service, you don't pay for the media/content you consume you are paying for the service. In the same way that when I pay my Lovefilm subscription, I'm not paying for the blu-rays, games and films I rent, I'm paying for the LoveFilm service.

Are you deliberately trying to be annoying now?
I just can't understand what it is that you don't get about what I'm saying.

There are two things here:

There exist loads of ways of downloading content without paying anything other than your broadband fee, such as P2P torrents.

Then there exist places which charge a subscription fee to access illegally hosted, or shared copyrighted material with no licence to do so from the copyright holder. As a number of users have already pointed out in this very thread, they are considered superior because you can download material without being caught in the same way as with torrents, the main threat is them being shut down or blocked, like a number of the recent high profile cases. I doubt they are offering anything you couldn't find elsewhere, people are paying it so they can get away with it.

With LoveFilm I'm paying to use a service which has a legal right to operate, providing content that is being sanctioned and compensated to the copyright holder.

It's black and white.

And with a LoveFilm subscription, I could arguably keep the discs for as a long as I wanted also.

Keep three discs and have them forever of course you can, but you can never rent anything else while you have them. Where as a person downloading pirated material can take everything and keep it forever.

The HD selection on Netflix is minimal, and while LoveFilm may offer HD in the future, until they do, people who wish to watch HD content on demand will be forced to use illegal services, no matter how much they wish to pay for or use legal services.

Oh I see, a minute ago you didn't know about any service offering HD streaming services, but you know that Neflix don't offer much.

You aren't being forced to use illegal services at all... again, it's this sense of entitlement culture that you think you are allowed to take something, just because it's not available to you in the way you want it right now. You then attempt to justify this by blaming it on the media providers for not having it the way you want.

There's nothing wrong with attempts to stop piracy, it's just that the majority of attempts are all stick and no carrot.

So this is likely to massively cut back on torrents, it therefore helps kerb some piracy. Yourself, as somebody who admits to using pirate material, I can understand why you are against it though.

Because no one's ever been falsely or mistakenly accused of something they haven't done before?

Which is why we have courts and a justice system, you can appeal against any conviction.

 

[Haggisman]

Loss of ability to generate income should be seen as *the same* as loss of property.

And indeed should be punished in the same way. After all, if you had more money, you could buy more stuff.

Which is total rubbish. People have demonstrated they are willing to part with money in exchange for a good quality service that provides what they want. If media companies are unable to provide this service, someone else will.

If you want to take the wildly inaccurate house-burgling analogy further and make it more comparable, it would be like me having an beautiful painting in my house.

People have offered to pay me to come in and take photos of it so they could have their own copy on the wall in their own house, however I refuse this.

Since I'm not co-operating these people instead then buy a zoom lens and simply take a picture of the painting through the window.

 

[FoxEye]

People have offered to pay me to come in and take photos of it so they could have their own copy on the wall in their own house, however I refuse this.

Since I'm not co-operating these people instead then buy a zoom lens and simply take a picture of the painting through the window.

It doesn't matter how you spin it. Try arguing with a judge or MP over why you think piracy is OK; see how far that gets you.

The fact is, a number of people choose to live within the law and a number of people choose to break it. You can justify whichever course you take any way you like.

But don't expect those of us living within the law to have sympathy for you when you get done for breaking it.

 

[Vulcan]

I doubt they are offering anything you couldn't find elsewhere, people are paying it so they can get away with it.

You've already said yourself you don't know about this so I'm not sure why you keep thinking it's appropriate to just fill in the blanks with your misconceptions.

People pay for illegal content because the paid for providers usually offer a better service over the free versions.

 

[Haggisman]

There are two things here:

There exist loads of ways of downloading content without paying anything other than your broadband fee, such as P2P torrents.

Which aren't relevant to this part of the argument, then we get to:

Then there exist places which charge a subscription fee to access illegally hosted, or shared copyrighted material with no licence to do so from the copyright holder. As a number of users have already pointed out in this very thread, they are considered superior because you can download material without being caught in the same way as with torrents, the main threat is them being shut down or blocked, like a number of the recent high profile cases. I doubt they are offering anything you couldn't find elsewhere, people are paying it so they can get away with it.

And if they were paying for a legal service, they would be "paying it so they can get away with it."

Do you really think these people wouldn't use a legal service if it was available. They have already demonstrated that they are willing to pay, whether it's a legal service or not is irrelevant.

Oh I see, a minute ago you didn't know about any service offering HD streaming services, but you know that Neflix don't offer much.

Yes I just looked, and their offering is minimal.

So this is likely to massively cut back on torrents, it therefore helps kerb some piracy.
[/quote

Except it wont, it will simply force people to find another alternative.

Yourself, as somebody who admits to using pirate material, I can understand why you are against it though.

I have? Where? I haven't pirated anything since I was about 18

Which is why we have courts and a justice system, you can appeal against any conviction.

While you have to pay legal costs, suffer the inconvenience and have your reputation tarnished by being branded a criminal. If you're one of the many people who work from home, risk being unable to work for an indeterminate time due to having no internet connection. Sure, sounds like a perfect solution.

 

[Spenty]

What ***** me off is how is this just BT and TalkTalk, surely all ISP's now in this country should have to do this?

 

[Nexus]

I have? Where? I haven't pirated anything since I was about 18

On the basis that you said LoveFilm didn't offer what you wanted to stream in HD so you had to find pirated versions. Your awfully defensive of piracy otherwise.

While you have to pay legal costs, suffer the inconvenience and have your reputation tarnished by being branded a criminal. If you're one of the many people who work from home, risk being unable to work for an indeterminate time due to having no internet connection. Sure, sounds like a perfect solution.

As I've already said, there has been no provision as to how this will be enforced or monitored, so you can't make claims about people being wrongly accused as criminals until anyone even knows how it will work.

 

[fadetoblack]

so no more streaming from xbmc on appletv

which one better netflix or love4 to stream from?

 

[Lima]

Only an idiot would use Torrents.

Why is using torrents such a horrendously idiotic thing? What's the superior equivalent that's not for idiots?

 

[Spenty]

Why is using torrents such a horrendously idiotic thing? What's the superior equivalent that's not for idiots?

Newsgroups using SSL through a VPN.

 

[Haggisman]

On the basis that you said LoveFilm didn't offer what you wanted to stream in HD so you had to find pirated versions. Your awfully defensive of piracy otherwise.

I said if people wanted to download in hd they would have to do it illegally, never that I did. I'm not defensive of piracy, I'm just realistic. Instead of wasting millions on intrusive drm and stupid laws which will only punish legal users, I'd far rather they actually addressed the /cause/ of the issue rather than its symptoms.

 

[Macky]

This is the constant poor argument from people who pirate (I'm not suggesting you are).

Just because you don't like the price, doesn't mean you can therefore have it for free.

I could say that I've always wanted a Ferrari... I don't agree with the price for it though, so it's ok if I go and steal one right?

Bad argument. Copy me a Ferrari for free. Go on. Where as copying some lines of software is pretty easily achievable..

 

[Nexus]

Bad argument. Copy me a Ferrari for free. Go on. Where as copying some lines of software is pretty easily achievable..

We've already been over this.

It might not be a perfect example, but its still taking something without paying for it, which is what piracy is, know matter how hard anyone tries to dress it up otherwise.

 

[mufc802]

But how do I get my free photoshops now.

 

[V F]

There never will be a service that offers all that latest releases and a huge catalogue of older releases from every content producer.

While thats true, Sky Anytime Plus has quite a big catalogue. As well as the Pay Per View versions. Anything from 99p to £6.99. Back to the Future in HD. \o/ Though, I was the kind that always liked to have physical copies. Sometimes I'm starting to regret that with some of the games.

I've been downloading a ton of HD films through Anytime Plus until some of them expire in September. Usually start watching within minutes while it's still downloading or just let them download until you're ready to watch. Some don't have expiry dates until later on in the year. My god, how Blade Runner blew me away in HD and DD5.1.

I wish they had things like ALF. Fright Night 1985 was sweet in HD but sadly it's really lacking since Dolby Digital wasn't out back then. Only Dolby Stereo.

To reference LoveFilm, with the Universal dispute, there are large number of their films I missed in the cinema which aren't available to rent. I've missed out on that from the service I use, but there are other ways I can still seem them legally without turning to piracy.

I was the same. Most things I've seen from Sky from 1991 I've been hunting down (both DVD's and soundtracks) for the past 8 years on the black and orange logo website. Many sealed versions have always cropped up on the marketplace. As well as some really scarce early 90's double cd albums that was bought in great condition second hand. Even torrent sites never had those discs I was after many years ago as at one point I couldn't find them in any online shop. Until one time it showed up in 2009. \o/

 

[Tute]

They were never going to win, too many palms greased all the way up the legal chain.

 

[BlackDragon]

We've already been over this.

It might not be a perfect example, but its still taking something without paying for it, which is what piracy is, know matter how hard anyone tries to dress it up otherwise.

Whilst I hate having to bring up the same discussion that is regularly repeated, it is an important distinction to make. Piracy, is not the same as stealing. If someone steals, it implies that the victim has lost something (i.e. the item being stolen). Copyright infringement, is copying something, and you're not depriving anyone of anything. An infringement does not equal a lost sale, this is really quite obvious.

Many people defend copyright infringement with the claim that existing services are rubbish, not good value for money, or they can't afford it. No matter what you do, in either the physical world or cyber, people will always steal if they have no intention to pay for it.

The bigger problem is convenient and flexible access to content, and a good value proposition. This is key to reducing piracy. There have been numerous studies that show that people want to pay, but if you treat your customers like criminals or offer poor value for money, they aren't going to pay. Some problems that I have experienced lately when trying to pay for content:

• Global market, that isn't treated as a global market. Many services restrict content offered online to certain countries. When this happens, a potential customer has no way of accessing that content legitimately. Examples services include Hulu, 4OD, and Steam. Services like Netflix would have been out in the UK ages ago if the content licensing process wasn't so insanely complex and restrictive, and where a different one exists per country.
• New content is not released simultaneously across the world. A highly anticipated game, movie, or tv series is released somewhere in the world, while everyone else has to wait an indefinite period for the release, if ever. While people wait, they can stumble upon spoilers that ruin it for them. An example of this is the Dexter TV series, where the latest series of Dexter aired in the US in October last year, yet in the UK I have to wait till the end of March this year.
• Poor value for money. There are many movie rental services out there, with exception to LoveFilm and Netflix, many of them are forced to charge stupidly high amounts. I want to use the On Demand movie rental feature from Virgin Media, but the pricing is outrageous for a 24-48 hour rental. £3.99 SD movie, £4.99 for HD movie, and £8.99 for 3D. Why is the pricing so high for a severely limited rental, and why am I paying more for higher quality content when in reality it does not cost them any extra to deliver that content to me.
• Getting access to content in a form that is suitable to you. A few months back I wanted to buy the Star Wars boxset on DVD. The DVD versions were discontinued, even though DVD is still a popular format, because the BluRay version was out. If I wanted to watch it, I would be forced to pay for the expensive BluRay version, which was not what I wanted. That, or buy it at a high 2nd hand price.
• Restrictive DRM. Treating your customers like criminals is bad. I had bought the Star Wars BluRay boxset, and it was the first time I had used BluRay. I have a BluRay player on my laptop, and it has HDMI out so I thought it would be a piece of cake to hook it up to my TV and play it. Due to the totally unnecessary HDCP feature of HDMI and encryption of the content, I spent several hours trying to get it playing on my laptop without having to pay for additional software (bundled software with laptop did not work), and then trying to get it to play on my TV.

I do not download content illegitimately, but I can certainly see why many would prefer that method over legitimate methods. The entertainment industry does not seem to have understood why their ancient business models do not work in the modern digital world, instead trying to tackle the symptom instead of the cause.

 

[Tediore]

I'm curious where people stand on downloading TV series through 'illegal' means when there is a paid for TV licence at the address. Music, movies and games are obviously illegal, but downloading a TV show is surely no more harmful than recording said show?

I have to agree with the people saying piracy would be less rife if the services were out there. There is currently no legal way (that I can think of) to download HD movies. Think about how many you could fit on a 2TB hard drive, and then consider how much shelf space that is. Some people simply do not have the space to physically store these discs. Love Film isn't bad, but not without its limitations.

The movie industry needs its iTunes or Steam. Piracy is still rampant within the music and games industry, but those willing to pay for their games and music are using those services, among others, instead of resorting to piracy to get what they want in a format that is suitable for their needs.

On the issue of copyright infringement versus theft, they're not the same thing, although I can sort of see where people are coming from. The key difference is that copyright infringement is potential loss of revenue, because that person might not have paid for it even if it wasn't available to them by other means. Theft is a quantifiable loss, because you cannot physically sell that item once it has been taken.

It's a shame this thread has descended into throwing toys out of the pram, because it had the potential to be an interesting read

 

[Nexus]

Whilst I hate having to bring up the same discussion that is regularly repeated, it is an important distinction to make. Piracy, is not the same as stealing. If someone steals, it implies that the victim has lost something (i.e. the item being stolen). Copyright infringement, is copying something, and you're not depriving anyone of anything. An infringement does not equal a lost sale, this is really quite obvious.

You are depriving the copyright holder of a sale of their content.
You can argue that the person who downloaded it was never intending to buy it, in some cases that may be true, but ultimately if you downloaded something and watched it (in the case of a film), or played it (game) or installed it (program) you clearly had enough interest to want to see the content, otherwise why would you have even bothered?

Many people defend copyright infringement with the claim that existing services are rubbish, not good value for money, or they can't afford it. No matter what you do, in either the physical world or cyber, people will always steal if they have no intention to pay for it.

I agree, there will always be those wanting a free lunch.
Even if content providers drop their prices, there will still be people wanting it for nothing.

[*]Global market, that isn't treated as a global market. Many services restrict content offered online to certain countries. When this happens, a potential customer has no way of accessing that content legitimately. Examples services include Hulu, 4OD, and Steam. Services like Netflix would have been out in the UK ages ago if the content licensing process wasn't so insanely complex and restrictive, and where a different one exists per country.

That's because if Channel 4 buys a TV series from a Studio, they only have the right to show it in the UK. The Studio has agreed a deal with another company to show it elsewhere, if 4OD had made it available worldwide, it would undermine that somebody else had paid to show it in their country.

[*]New content is not released simultaneously across the world. A highly anticipated game, movie, or tv series is released somewhere in the world, while everyone else has to wait an indefinite period for the release, if ever. While people wait, they can stumble upon spoilers that ruin it for them. An example of this is the Dexter TV series, where the latest series of Dexter aired in the US in October last year, yet in the UK I have to wait till the end of March this year.

That's because in most cases, there often isn't the budget to simultaneously launch the same product worldwide. With films, unless its a huge blockbuster, you have to launch it first (usually in the US) then you can use some of the box office takings to launch and market it elsewhere.

With made for television shows, they only exist because of the advertising slots that the television networks can sell based on the popularity of the show. Which is why if the viewing figures are poor, it's likely to get cancelled. With US shows, it's only after the success has been judged that other markets will consider buying it. Despite people watching online, television is still the main viewing medium and funding behind how these shows are made.

I do not download content illegitimately, but I can certainly see why many would prefer that method over legitimate methods. The entertainment industry does not seem to have understood why their ancient business models do not work in the modern digital world, instead trying to tackle the symptom instead of the cause.

I'd argue that things are slowly changing, at least with film.
In the past year we've had LoveFilm launch a streaming service, then at the end of the year Netflix, which brought HD and competition to the market. With Music there are now numerous services offering a monthly fee for access to streaming, even on the go.

Why shouldn't they also be going after a major source of piracy at the sametime?

 

[BlackDragon]

You are depriving the copyright holder of a sale of their content.
You can argue that the person who downloaded it was never intending to buy it, in some cases that may be true, but ultimately if you downloaded something and watched it (in the case of a film), or played it (game) or installed it (program) you clearly had enough interest to want to see the content, otherwise why would you have even bothered?

I don't want to go into discussing why a download does not equal a 'lost sale', as this has been covered on many other respectable sites such as TechDirt and Ars Technica.

That's the point, people want the content, but if there are unnecessary restrictions on content or poor value for money, then why should they put up with it?

That's because if Channel 4 buys a TV series from a Studio, they only have the right to show it in the UK. The Studio has agreed a deal with another company to show it elsewhere, if 4OD had made it available worldwide, it would undermine that somebody else had paid to show it in their country.

Some of the shows on 4OD are actually only available if you aren't in the UK, bizarrely. I understand that there are deals made, but the Internet/Web is a global entity and market. It is wrong to then try and constrain it to locations based on outdated business models.

That's because in most cases, there often isn't the budget to simultaneously launch the same product worldwide. With films, unless its a huge blockbuster, you have to launch it first (usually in the US) then you can use some of the box office takings to launch and market it elsewhere.

With made for television shows, they only exist because of the advertising slots that the television networks can sell based on the popularity of the show. Which is why if the viewing figures are poor, it's likely to get cancelled. With US shows, it's only after the success has been judged that other markets will consider buying it. Despite people watching online, television is still the main viewing medium and funding behind how these shows are made.

What are the costs of launching it worldwide? The two main costs I can see are distributing the film itself, and then the marketing. Marketing doesn't have to be hugely expensive, especially if they make use of advertising networks available on the Internet.

There's no reason why these shows couldn't have existed on a paid for service such as LoveFilm. If a channel doesn't like it, then tough, it is a competitive market and someone else will take up the offer of distributing the content.

I'd argue that things are slowly changing, at least with film.
In the past year we've had LoveFilm launch a streaming service, then at the end of the year Netflix, which brought HD and competition to the market. With Music there are now numerous services offering a monthly fee for access to streaming, even on the go.

Why shouldn't they also be going after a major source of piracy at the sametime?

I agree, things are slowly changing, but it is slow and belated. Services like Spotify, LoveFilm, and Netflix are great, but publishers are still very defensive of their content and either don't distribute it using these services, or take them down. The aggressive defense of content and restrictions seriously harms innovation.

They shouldn't be going after major sources of piracy because it is the symptom of a bigger problem, not the cause itself. It's a waste of money, as no matter what you do to censor things you don't like on the Internet, something else will always pop up to undo the work you've just done. The money could be better spent on delivering better services and value for money so that people do not download illegally.

There are many instances of content creators that are happy for people to download their content for free as it promotes innovation and is free marketing.