Film Chiefs Meet To Tackle Piracy

[VCDHunter]

Film chiefs meet to tackle piracy

Leaders of the movie industry in Cannes have appealed to directors and actors to sign up to their anti-piracy message before piracy wrecks the film business.

Executives from Hollywood, France, India, China, and Russia held an "unprecedented" meeting on Sunday.

They said directors should be involved in the campaign because "they are the major victims" of piracy.

Director Quentin Tarantino has said he approves of piracy in countries where his films are not released in cinemas.

The meeting involved criticism of "members of the showbusiness community who profess to be pirates and seem proud of it", according to delegate Peter Bart, editor-in-chief of US film magazine Variety.

Experiments

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) told BBC News Online action needed to be taken.

"I don't think there's a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that, if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future," he said.

Experiments were being carried out to allow DVD-quality movies to be downloaded from the internet in five seconds, Mr Valenti said.

The process currently takes between one and 12 hours.

Mr Valenti said: "Suppose you can bring down a movie in five minutes, piracy will explode like a pandemic. Every creative community in the world understands that."

He said Tarantino did not want his films to be "stolen" in countries where they were shown in cinemas.

"If you can't retrieve your investment, you're out of the movie business," Mr Valenti said.

He did not rule out suing "pirates", but had "no plans" to do so at the moment.

Mr Valenti said copyright laws were needed that were "stern, with penalties that are severe and certain".

French President Jacques Chirac sent a message to the meeting, describing piracy as "a scourge we need to combat with determination."

Full article with picture of a smiling Jack Valenti here -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3719091.stm

Please feel free to post comments about the utter insanity of some of the views expressed by Jack.

[gitreel]

Why do people keep confusing murder and looting on the high seas with music and movies when they are not even in the same ballpark?

[awlchu]

Piracy is wrong. I say go after those that rip and sell (or give away) copyrighted material and sue the sheet out of them. The movie studios have the cash to do it!

Leave Mr and Ms. and Jr alone that simply want to keep their $16US DVD safe while Jr uses the backup for a freesbie in the car.

Why is it that I can legally record Harry Potter from the TV and watch it later but I can not backup the same movie from DVD. Anyone else see a contradiction here? Has this ever been addressed by anyone?

[VCDHunter]

Experiments were being carried out to allow DVD-quality movies to be downloaded from the internet in five seconds, Mr Valenti said.

This has been discussed in a previous thread, but does anyone know anything about this ? I mean a "DVD Quality" movie - a bit ambiguous ain't it ? What exactly does any of this mean ? HOW do you get DVD Quality downloads from the net in 5 secs ? I can't see this being viable, certainly not here in the UK, in the next 10 years.

Is this just a load of bollocks ?

[gitreel]

Yes, but to the movie industry, the dvd is different because it's digital.

[Capmaster]

Just the fact that Jacques Chirac is in favor of anything is reason enough to dismiss it as pap.

[Nilfennasion]

France has enough of a robust economy to stand up to the likes of Dubya, so Jacques can't be doing all that bad. However, this whole piracy nonsense is out of hand. While I despise the mass-piracy industry of South-East Asia, throwing mom-and-pop (or single unemployed miscreant in my case) disc copiers such as ourselves in with them is beyond the pale. Like the IRS, the MPAA and RIAA have thrown up the white flag to the real threat and decided to go after those who pose little, if any threat.

[housepig]

Why is it that I can legally record Harry Potter from the TV and watch it later but I can not backup the same movie from DVD. Anyone else see a contradiction here? Has this ever been addressed by anyone?

yes, it's been addressed - it's apples and oranges.

recording Harry Potter from tv to watch later is timeshifting, and is okay... but under the law, once you watch it, you're supposed to erase the tape, not create a library of recorded tapes.

this wouldn't apply to dvd - there is no need to time-shift, you have total control over when you'd like to watch it.

[Capmaster]

[housepig]

[quote="VCDHunter"]

HOW do you get DVD Quality downloads from the net in 5 secs ?

you do it over an experimental research network (ie many years from the real [consumer] world)....

[VCDHunter]

this wouldn't apply to dvd - there is no need to time-shift, you have total control over when you'd like to watch it.

fair enough, but if I was involved in the DVD business I'd be more concerned with DVD Writers than I would with P2P. I can create a fantastic backup of a commercial DVD in about 2hrs tops with my DVD writer.

as opposed to P2P which mainly deals with piss poor cam videos over a huge amount of time. I really don't think P2P poses that much of a problem when compared with DVD Burners.

[flaninacupboard]

Then why doesn't he offer an alternative? given the choice with a new film i want to see would i

a) pay £5 to see it 15 miles away at my "local" multiplex, with broken surround, an out of focus screen, chewing gum and popcorn on the seats and teenagers smirking and texting each other

b) pay £5 the day of release, set the movie downloading before i go to work. when i get home load up my 1.5Gb Xvid with AC3, kick back in the armchair and enjoy? use DRM if you like, i don't have a problem with that. with a HTPC it doesn't matter.

but maybe that's just too sensible an option....

[flaninacupboard]

actually, thinking about it, why not use a DRM protected P2P system? you pay your money to download and it connects to other users as well as the master server, they don't even have to pay for all the bandwidth!

[Ryantje]

Experiments were being carried out to allow DVD-quality movies to be downloaded from the internet in five seconds, Mr Valenti said.

This has been discussed in a previous thread, but does anyone know anything about this ? I mean a "DVD Quality" movie - a bit ambiguous ain't it ? What exactly does any of this mean ? HOW do you get DVD Quality downloads from the net in 5 secs ? I can't see this being viable, certainly not here in the UK, in the next 10 years.

Is this just a load of bollocks ?

they were doing an experiment in some research lab (cant remember which one) and they tested bandwidth and measured it with the size of a dvd..thats about it

big network backbones already have this speed so its nothing new
this speed wont be available for the consumer for some time

valenti needs to get his head out of his wrinkly arse

[jaxxboss]

The problem with paying to sit back at home and watch these movies is that there would be no profit to be had from over priced poppcorn and drinks.

[hhhhbk]

HOW do you get DVD Quality downloads from the net in 5 secs ?

thats faster than copying a 700mb file from one 10,000 rpm disk to another along an ide cable

download of a 700mb file in 5 minutes is conceivable on a 100mbit line which i expect to be readily and cheaply available to the public in 10 years

when 2mbit lines are standard and lots of people have 10mbit both up and down then full dvd downloads off the web may be a real problem for film studios
but at present even full dvds are out there very few people will tie their line up for days to just get 1 dvd

[hhhhbk]

The problem with paying to sit back at home and watch these movies is that there would be no profit to be had from over priced poppcorn and drinks.

guess that is part of the reason that dvds are so expensive when they first come out
cinemas must get the same amount in from popcorn/sweet/drink sales as they do from ticket sales

how does the deal between film studios and cinemas work?
i reckon cinemas would be making a hell of a lot of money just from refreshments even if all ticket sales go to film studio

[pyrohydra]

The problem with paying to sit back
guess that is part of the reason that dvds are so expensive when they first come out
cinemas must get the same amount in from popcorn/sweet/drink sales as they do from ticket sales

how does the deal between film studios and cinemas work?
i reckon cinemas would be making a hell of a lot of money just from refreshments even if all ticket sales go to film studio

I believe the cinemas actually make the vast majority of their profits from the concessions rather than ticket sales. I'd find exact figures if I felt like it. Which I don't.

[gitreel]

That is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Capmaster, you should have been a comedian.

[pacmania_2001]

Generally the film profits are shared between the cinema owners and the studio in a deal that sees the studio get say 75% in the first week and slowly reduces as the weeks go by.

[mujahid7ia]

actually, thinking about it, why not use a DRM protected P2P system? you pay your money to download and it connects to other users as well as the master server, they don't even have to pay for all the bandwidth!

Pay them to use my upload? No, thank you.

[flaninacupboard]

fair enough, it's not for everyone. i'd be quite happy with that, as while i am watching a film or reading these forums my upload speed is on nil.

[Capmaster]

That is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Capmaster, you should have been a comedian.

Thanks Gitreel
I tried to get into an honorable profession like being a comedian, but my life took a tragic turn. I ended up studying electrical engineering in college and now I spend my days at a national nuclear weapons lab and on Videohelp.com. Ahhh, but for the want of one good break, I coulda been on Carson. I coulda been another Seinfeld

Now my audience is limited to my poor wife who has heard so many bad puns over the years, she's developed an immunity. I tell a joke ...she shakes her head and ignores me Not her fault ...it's the mind's defensive mechanism. What's especially bad is when I tell her a joke and she ignores me. Then we're watching a movie or something and she hears the exact same joke and laughs her ass off

When we were dating, she used to howl with laughter at every joke I told. Maybe it's all part of the dating/married Jekyl and Hyde transfiguration each and every married man experiences with their wives Or maybe I'm just not funny anymore

[Mr anderson]

ok first thing, that you can download a dvd quality movie in five seconds, yeah maybe with goverment Tech man ( we live in the REAL WORLD ). Second:- they give people all this knowedlge & hardware etc, then once you start to use the kick your butts? ok as i can see something really wrong here, because we pay for the hardware/software/boardband etc, where does the fat cat stop & when do they start thinking about us! never? if they want to try and keep it to a level for sub normal ( what in gods name that would be ) why don't they offer a boardband service that would allow the public to download films & keep them on your HDD for 48hrs then they must be deleted off your pc, i remember before you had to do something like that when you downloaded roms! JUST a little idea i had the other day, but i think they are just gone a little to greedy, like the cat that got all the milk they want more! well sorry i think they need a major RE-THINK of what they are doing to the public pockets, not what they are doing to the film companies!

[gitreel]

They already do. It is called movielink.

[mujahid7ia]

fair enough, it's not for everyone. i'd be quite happy with that, as while i am watching a film or reading these forums my upload speed is on nil.

True. But I do some filesharing, so I don't waste my precious upstream bandwidth

Although making it a p2p system will lower the service's cost (or it should, but you never know with these corporate fat-cats).

[DigitalProduct]

[quote="VCDHunter"]

Director Quentin Tarantino has said he approves of piracy in countries where his films are not released in cinemas.

thats the fuckin homie right there