CSE
619:
With all of the new technology
that is coming out it gets harder and harder to make it difficult for people to
pirate DVDs or sell books online, which are copied. I have said before that new
technology is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it is allowing
teachers to get more creative with their lessons. However, nothing is perfect
so the down side of the new technology is that it is getting easier to do
things like make pirated movies.
I remember when I was younger
and seeing the no pirating screens while watching a movie and wondering why
would people want to make a copy of a movie when they could just buy it. As I
got older I started hearing people talk about how they have a pirated version
of a movie or a CD. It always confused me why people would risk getting in
trouble for doing something that silly. I still think it is a stupid thing for
people to do. I saw a pirated movie once and it was not as good a picture as
the actual copy, so that even furthered my musings of making pirated movies.
It was
smart of people to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to make it even
more difficult for people to pirate DVDs. It was a little sad to see that a
fifteen year old was able to brake the encryption on DVDs and that he had the
time just to figure it out so people would be able to pirate DVDs. It is
situations like that that make me wondering about people and what are they
doing with their life if they have time to sit down and brake an encryption.
Reading
about piracy and how it is truly affecting Hollywood is eye opening. I knew
that the production companies can lose money from people making pirated copies
but I never saw how big of an impact it can truly make. On page 177 of Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are
Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back
gives a really good description and breaks it down so I was able to fully grasp
the impact.
On page
243, it states “Users complained it overcharged their credit cards, which just
goes to show there’s no honor among thieves” (Levine, 2011) . This statement was
talking about a Russian pirate site. People had to pay for a subscription in
order to use the site. I like that this was said because it is true. It went on
to talk about how if piracy kept getting worse than it, “…endangers free speech
by reducing the incentive of artists to create new work” (Levine, 2011) . Why would people want to create new
amazing things just to lose more money than what they put into their work? It
defeats the purpose of making a living.
I am a
coach for Girls on the Run and this week’s lesson was treating others the way
you would want to be treated. Going along the lines of this I would like to see
the people that are doing the piracy to switch places with the production
companies and see how much they like make amazing films and then getting their
income lowered just because others are taking in illegally.
Works Cited
Levine, R. (2011). Free Ride: How Digital
Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business
can Fight Back. Toronto: Doubleday.
Hi Diana,
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is certainly less motivation to pirate movies and music now that companies like Netflix and Spotify have made it so simple to subscribe to quality, affordable, and legal entertainment packages. And yes, the Korean bootleg with burned in subtitles isn’t always the best quality – although I might disagree that most “copies” are lower quality – they’re usually digital, so at least as good as their source. But when the source is sketchy, like “cam” footage from within a theater, then yes, I can wait and pay money for a better experience!
I have to disagree with your positive association with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, however; the DMCA actually removed existing “fair-use” policies – such as making personal “archive” copies of DVD’s. Legally, we can make copies of, say, a CD to a cassette tape for listening to the same album in the car, for example – I’m sure you wouldn’t call that piracy. In fact, “judges have said that consumers have a right to copy a DVD for their own use—say, for backing it up to another disk or perhaps watching it on another device, such as an iPod” (Lagesse, 1)
However, with the DMCA, the act of breaking the encryption on the DVD is illegal in itself – though the end result falls under fair use. CD’s don’t have that encryption technology built in – they’re pre-DMCA – so it’s legal to rip them to mp3 files for use on an mp3 player, for example. This article has more information if you’re interested:
http://money.usnews.com/money/business-economy/technology/articles/2009/09/30/is-it-legal-to-copy-a-dvd
Works Cited
Lagesse, David. "Is It Legal to Copy a DVD?" U.S. News 30 Sept. 2009 [New York] . Web. 13 Apr. 2013. .