03.09
I like movies. I enjoy going to the cinema, paying an exorbitant amount of money for some rapidly aerated corn, a watery soft-drink and a seat that wouldn’t be out of place in a chiropractors practice (with the uncomfortableness and the way they twist your back and whatnot). There’s still something I find quite magical and special about seeing a big blockbuster film in a packed theatre. It’s an event. It’s something that I find enhances the movie watching experience and something that you can’t replicate at home – regardless of the size of your TV or how many subwoofers you’ve crammed into your lounge room. So, just use that to put what I’m about to say in perspective.
The movie industry is the single most insidious, frighteningly manipulative and plainly evil thing in the world today; it needs to be stopped.
I can’t remember a time, ever, when a commercial body has taken steps that are so detrimental to every single person on the planet in order to protect their dying business model. They are attempting to use the rule of law to protect their industry instead of looking to innovate in the way that they deliver their products to consumers. It’s shameful, it’s appalling and no one in their right mind should stand aside and just let them have the run of the world.
What AFACT, and their overseas counterparts, are seeking to do is fundamentally change the way the internet is delivered to us at home. They want to take control of something that should be inherently free and use it as a tool to help them continue their crusade against the technology and social change that is going to be the saviour of their business, rather than its destruction. They continue to not see the internet for what it could provide, instead choosing to see it as the root of all evil. They haven’t learned from the lessons of the last decade that the music industry has discovered. Hell, even television is starting to embrace the digital landscape. Yet, the movie industry continues to believe that a business model that worked in the 1950s is still current and still the best way of doing business some 60 years later. Now, I’m sorry but your inability to notice the changes in the world is your problem, not mine.
What AFACT and their mafia-like international colleagues would love nothing more than is to turn your ISP into their private police force, justice system and correctional officer. They want to act above any and all legal system as well as change the focus of the entire internet from the sharing of information to hunting for the small number of people that they deem to be doing them harm. It’s more than just them not understanding the consequences of what they’re proposing to do, it’s a deliberate and calculated attack to stem the flow of information so that they can continue to try and save their failing businesses.
The really sad thing is that the solution to their problems is so fucking simple. The problem that the movie industry is having with piracy basically stems from the fact that they make it so bloody hard to legitimately watch their content. If you were to pop a DVD into your player you have to deal with 5 to 10 minutes of un-skippable “don’t pirate this disk” warnings; whereas on a pirated disk you can jump straight into the movie without any stuffing around at all. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, really. Why punish your customers for actually buying your products. I can’t think of another industry anywhere where such a thing happens.
Then, of course, the way they offer films for viewing online is nothing short of joke. This is the sort of thing that drives piracy as an option for those people that would otherwise be more than willing to part with some money to watch a film. By severely limiting, and then crippling beyond belief, the available choices for consumers, AFACT and their cronies are basically creating the pirate movie industry themselves. Consumers would love to be able to enjoy movies when, where and how they want; and would be more than willing to pay for it. As it stands, however, that just isn’t possible. AFACT needs to understand that they stand to make more money by providing choice to consumers.
It’s straight forward. Provide me a way to buy a film online, then either watch it on my computer, or stream it to my TV, or put it on my phone so I can watch it while I’m travelling. What I don’t want is to be forced into paying for this multiple times because I can’t simply just copy and paste due to the horrible DRM systems that this sort of thing is coated in. So where does this leave me as a consumer?
Well it leaves me in a spot where I don’t want to commit to one content platform, nor do I wish to pay multiple times so that I have the flexibility to watch a film where, and on what device, I want. So naturally, the easiest way to solve this problem is to procure an illegal copy of whatever it is I want to watch.