Re: [dvd-discuss] Movie Downloads, automatically illegal?

[Glendon Gross <gross(at)xinetd.ath.cx>]

The market has repeatedly punished those who tried to curtail fair-use
rights.  So I wonder why these folks still don't get the message? The
DVDCA and the RIAA are their own worst enemy when they punish the very
zealots who would be zealously marketing the movies.  I wonder why
they want to shoot themselves in the foot this way?  It seems to me
as though their greed in some of these legislative initiatives may
result in the death of the industry.   

The discussion about MP3's is a good case in point.  None of the pay sites
have been able to turn a profit yet.  It seems as though a failure to
understand the potential benefit of Internet Marketing as well as the
nature of the Internet as a medium is really hurting the music industry 
as a whole.  With these new laws it is threatening to do great damage to
the consumer electronics industry as well.  What they are actually doing
when they "protect" their intellectual property rights is taking away the
freedoms of the society as a whole.  I think Orwell's "thought police" may
be a good prototype of the damage these folks are doing to free society.
If Marshall McLuhen was right and "the medium is the message" then 
the message would seem to include the fact that users want the capability
of sharing their favorite files.  Why not allow them and call it
free marketing of the product?  Then it translates into a cost savings
rather than a cost of "lost revenue".  Is it "lost revenue" when studios
give away demo copies of albums in order to get airplay? Recently I 
found a tape with some abridged demos of a popular artist. The tape
went straight to my trash can, and did not inspire me to purchase the
album it was promoting because I viewed it as a "defective" product.

I wonder why the RIAA and the DVDCA  think they are going to be able to
stop hardware innovation with these laws?  I would think that all that
they would accomplish with these restrictions is the creation of a
thriving black market that would drive them totally out of business.  Now
it could be a black market in recording devices with bidirectional
capability, since consumers traditionally want "the best" set of
features in any device they purchase.  These guys seem years behind the
times, it reminds me of the history of TV when the Radio industry failed
to see the writing on the wall.   The Internet is to TV what TV was to 
Radio, IMHO.  I think the RIAA and the DVDCA are vastly underestimating 
today's consumer and what he expects.   Who wants to purchase a product
when the act of purchasing the product involves surrendering otherwise
"inalienable" rights?  This is the single reason I can count the total
number of DVD's I have purchased to date on one hand.  So far I have
purchased two, and was unable to play either one on my P.C.

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002 PSYchiccr@aol.com wrote:

> It must be remembered that without the video pirates in the late seventies 
> the film companies would not have gone down the tape road... It is the same 
> with DVD  they did not ever want to go down that road either. They said that 
> good quality would mean more pirates.... Not so.... What happens is that 
> those film nuts who must have the film first,,,, as soon as it is released 
> are the same people who will buy the legal product as soon as it is available 
> and who also go to the cinema.
>