Hollywood Exec Ignites BitTorrent Piracy Controversy

[HardOCP News]

Breaking news! Hollywood hates BitTorrent!

Describing entirely legitimate, tax-paying technology pioneers as “the devil” is not something you hear happening every day, especially at the highest levels of business. However, that’s how a Hollywood studio exec has labeled BitTorrent Inc, the software and solutions company utilizing the world’s most efficient data shifting protocol. While the company is understandably annoyed, one has to question just how hard it’s going to be to change perceptions about what BitTorrent Inc. is all about.

 

[Spidey329]

More and more companies are offering BitTorrent downloads for large files (software trials, etc). So it does have a legitimate place. This guys just crying because his bonus shrunk.

 

[Advil]

In reality calling BitTorrent "the devil" has nothing to do with piracy itself.

The distributed transfer protocols themselves put the entire industry at risk.

Remember... Hollywood STILL *HATES!!!* the entire concept of streaming or near real-time video.

As technology makes their content delivery look more and more stone age of course they will think it's "the devil."

The last thing they want to do right now is be pulled by ordinary market forces into having to make their content more available, for less money, to more people. The transition is just too scary for them to contemplate.

Hollywood exec: "CHARGE LESS PER VIEW? STREAM CONTENT EQUAL TO THE BLUE RAY RELEAS?!? USE DISTRIBUTED TRANSFER TO LOWER BANDWIDTH COSTS AND BE ABLE TO CHARGE LESS? PUT IT ON NETFLIX? HERESY! AND WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR PROJECTIONS AS TO HOW MANY 'MORE' PEOPLE WILL BUY! IT'S STILL HERESY!"

 

[Godmachine]

Lol Hollywood posted earnings of $10.8 Billion dollars last year , the most profitable year in their history.

Piracy is hurting them SO BAD. Poor multi-millionaire celebs

 

[Spidey329]

Lol Hollywood posted earnings of $10.8 Billion dollars last year , the most profitable year in their history.

Piracy is hurting them SO BAD. Poor multi-millionaire celebs

Amazing how greed works, it's never enough. They could have a $1 trillion year and if one person's grandmother accidentally downloaded a cam copy of a film, they're going to be super sad at the year-end Christmas party. So sad, they'll destroy her life over it with a $400k judgement.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Piracy is hurting them SO BAD. Poor multi-millionaire celebs

Shitty movies are hurting them worse. If I pirate a good movie, I might feel guilty. If I pirate a shitty movie, I feel really bad... that I wasted my time and bandwidth on something so horrible.

I'll watch or buy good movies. When I watch a crap movie, I'm left with a bad taste. I won't go see that type of movie, or I get really reserved for what movies I will watch in theater. At $10 a ticket, and with movies like Skyline, I'm getting really picky.

 

[prndll]

More and more companies are offering BitTorrent downloads for large files (software trials, etc). So it does have a legitimate place. This guys just crying because his bonus shrunk.

My bonus shrunk too....it has for alot of people
not happy about it, but in these trying economic times, what are ya going to do? quit? I don't blame torrents.

Hollywood execs can kiss my <b>yangyang</b>

 

[sfsuphysics]

Remember... Hollywood STILL *HATES!!!* the entire concept of streaming or near real-time video.

As technology makes their content delivery look more and more stone age of course they will think it's "the devil."

Yup, and the moral of the story (article) is that people are releasing movies without using Hollywood studios, so they're not getting a cut of the action. Of course they're going to be pissed off!

 

[harbingerofdoom]

reviewing their past history in the realm of creative financials, this is decidedly ironic.

 

[westrock2000]

Because every packet has the potential to carry copyrighted intellectual property, the RIAA is looking to extend the definition of 17 USC § 1004 to include the royalty levy on all packets sent over a network. Initialy, due to technical restrictions, this will only apply to packets sent over infrastructure deemed to be part of the Internet. However the RIAA and MPAA are already in talks to require "smart routers" to be federally required in all private networks by 2020. These common sense laws will allow the content providers to accuratly levy each content consumer's fair share of tax.

 

[viscountalpha]

Hollywood is dumb. The sooner they start working advertisements into the torrents, the better. They have chose not to adapt, So they have instead chosen obsolescence and death.

Good riddance.

 

[WBurchnall]

Hollywood is dumb. The sooner they start working advertisements into the torrents, the better. They have chose not to adapt, So they have instead chosen obsolescence and death.

Good riddance.

Not so sure how well this would work.... advertisements into torrents? Considering all the AdBlocker web-browser addons/technology, those advertisements would be gone within days because of the community delivering 'work-arounds'.

 

[bigdogchris]

Cassettes were going to ruin the music industry, too.

 

[McFry]

Look at a company like netflix. They have basically become their own private TV channel like HBO now. They distribute their own content, but they also create it too. They rely on no one for material, except for the internet backbone to sell it. This is rather genius. They produce original TV series now which make them an actual content producer rather than just distributor of other peoples content. This means they reap 100% of the rewards for their work, and arent simply taking a cut. Because their model is 100% streaming they can be assured that the most efficient way for people to consume their material is to simply pay the fee.

The problem with old school hollywood is their business model relies on creating a product, then putting that product in its entirety on store shelves in the form of dvd's and getting people to buy it. This method is no longer viable. Look how much money they make from theater releases. They are still killing it, and if you think about it its obvious why. Because the movie theater is like a big screen netflix. There is no other way to view the content than to go to the theater, and shell out money. At least if you want to enjoy it in all its glory. Sure people can wait for netflix streams to be ripped, but netflix has ingeniously countered this by giving consumers exactly what they want, A FAIR PRICE.

Sorta like how well iTunes has done by finally bringing music down to honest prices. 99 cents for a song aint bad. We can live with that, and in all reality thats all a damn song is worth. People arent inherently thieves. People want to pay for goods and services. It's just we dont like being ripped off. For decades the **AA has been ripping us all off and we got fed up with it. You can cry about how it's not our right to change the rules, but guess what, we did. We started pirating because fuck them, thats why. However Netflix is $8/month and you get entire TV series, especially the new ones like House of Cards and Hemlock Grove, all delivered up front. An entire season instantly available to watch. No 1 week waiting period crap like with Game of Thrones or Walking Dead, which is only to keep people tied to an overpriced cable package. Netflix took a gamble and wanted to see how good people were. And it worked. Their stock is soaring, and this is only the beginning. It's profitable because people WILL pay.

I'm sure if you hired some douchbag comcast CEO to run Netflix he'd instantly try to charge people $40/month for the same content and then scratch his head and blame the pirate bay when all their subscribers drop and start stealing. The simple solution has always been the same:

QUIT FUCKING RIPPING US OFF

 

[wonderfield]

Sorta like how well iTunes has done by finally bringing music down to honest prices. 99 cents for a song aint bad.

Certainly true. Unfortunately, the music industry decided it wasn't enough a while ago: many tracks on iTunes are now $1.29. The increase came at a time when music industry profits were, not surprisingly, at an all-time high.

 

[viscountalpha]

Not so sure how well this would work.... advertisements into torrents? Considering all the AdBlocker web-browser addons/technology, those advertisements would be gone within days because of the community delivering 'work-arounds'.

My point was, they aren't even trying. That was off the top of my head. They don't want to adapt, So they deserve to die.

 

[nightfly]

Certainly true. Unfortunately, the music industry decided it wasn't enough a while ago: many tracks on iTunes are now $1.29. The increase came at a time when music industry profits were, not surprisingly, at an all-time high.

Case in point. Enough is never enough. When they get one amount, they simply want to push the envelope and find how how much they can charge before it starts to decrease sales to the point where their income is reversing. So if they iincreased their price by 30%, they'll find a decrease in sales of what, 30% acceptable. So if sales only decrease by 15%, they increase the price again, etc., until their profits go down. Then they complain about pirates again. Greed knows no bounds, but as long as they let the free market work, I have no problem with it. It's when they legislate that you have to buy things for the prices they want to sell it to you, that it pisses me off (Kind of like our mandatory automobile insurance).