OT: SOPA Video
I shot this video today about why SOPA sucks. Please sign the petition if you haven't already:
January 19th, 2012 at 2:13 AM ^
I enjoyed it. Well done!
January 19th, 2012 at 2:15 AM ^
*Double post removed due to SOPA violation*
January 19th, 2012 at 2:28 AM ^
What a waste of time.
in all honesty good clip though, for a lot of the American public today is the first time they truly found out what SOPA/PIPA are and what they truly mean(although thats pretty much only because reddit/craigslist/wiki were down).
January 19th, 2012 at 5:18 AM ^
I was at the bar with this dude last night.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:13 AM ^
Last I checked, big time actors make 20 million + for doing one movie. According to some of the music I listen to, musicians use the ice in their teeth to keep the Cristal cold. Female actors and musicians carry purses over their shoulder that cost more than what I am driving. They made it so good for them. If you can afford it, do it because you can't take it with you. My only thing is don't bitch about stupid shit like this and expect the public to get behind it. If this even passes, the public should boycott buying CD's and going to the movies until it's lifted. Only problem is 85% of the public is ignorant and will never even know what happened.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:32 AM ^
SOPA is obviously horrible but the people you're describing are in the extreme minority. Most musicians and actors have to work their ass off for every thing they have. And yeah, it is annoying when you put your sweat and blood into something only to see it get jacked for free. Oh you can afford to go out to the bar every night or tip your waiter fairly at a restaurant or spend it on whatever but you can't spare a few bucks for a record I spent months making? it is pretty insulting.
With that said- I think the internet should be free and the governement shouldn't get involved with policing it and I even think there's a purpose to "pirating" if it allows you to get into bands or movies you may never have heard about-- However I think if you're going to pirate all that music you should try to support many of the artists that you enjoy voluntarily because they're working to make a living too and it's not nearly as glamorous as Beyonce might make it look. It's really fucking hard work. Of course, paying for all of the music you have would be tough, but if there's things you enjoy you should, not because you have to but because it's right to if you enjoy it and want more of it to be made. yes, im in the business.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:42 AM ^
I do purchase a lot of what I sample(like that word better) off of the internet. When I was a pup you would have to pay 20$ or more just to get maybe 3 decent songs on a CD. Maybe these industries need to think of a more cost effective way to deliver their product. Itunes is a start but still over priced. Maybe instead of 9 million different record labels a few consolidate. Seems to be what every other company in America is doing. God rest your soul Teddy Roosevelt. Point is there is a pricing point where consumers will buy instead of pirate, this may cause Clooney to take a 3mill. pay cut but the market do what it do.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:10 AM ^
If every artist just did what Louis CK did and produce and distribute their own crap, everything would be cheaper and the corporations would be gone. I know that most people can't finance their own productions at the start, but if more established artists start to do it, people wouldn't pirate.
For those of you who don't know, Louis produced his own comedy special for about 250k, offered it on his website for 5 bucks, wrote a note saying please don't steal this, its a fair price, and then he made a cool million in 10 days.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:33 AM ^
That's great if you're famous and have a built in fanbase to sell to. If you're just getting going it's much harder. Most people do in fact produce their own things now and people still pirate the shit out of it. One of my friends made a record similarly and had a decent following after playing for a few years. He sold the record for "pay what you want" and even said all the profit is just going to go to reinvesting in more music and all of that. Even after that, about 65% of people still just took it for free and 35% payed and many that payed, payed less than it was probably worth. Of course, there are some other factors like how much people are into it etc, but in my experience that sounds about right.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:06 AM ^
On second thought, and i have no idea about the quality of your friend's product, does quality of product correlate with piracy? i would guess at an inverse correlation, e.g. Lil Wayne is pirated more than Cecilia Bartoli. popularity is an obvious confounder in this hypothesis.
point is, Hollywood produces a shoddy product that is designed to be, above all else, commercially viable. this has led to a race to the bottom, where would-be art is frequently stripped of transcendent value so as to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the population. are we surprised with what we get? a low quality product that exists solely to funnel as much money as possible out of our pockets, that is easily transferable to other media and replicated. why the hell would anyone pay for it?! give crap to the rabble, get crap thrown back at you.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:03 AM ^
You ever hear of the Indie Humble Bundle? It was 5 indie games made without DRM and offered up online. You could literally pay whatever you wanted, from .01 to 1,000,000, and all the proceeds went to charity. And yet over a quarter of their downloads were people stealing it. Even where you could only pay 1 penny people were still stealing it. Piracy will always exist.
Plus I agree with the person above me, it can be very hard for people without an established fanbase to survive without corporation's helping them
January 19th, 2012 at 8:27 AM ^
Again, I'm not talking about the George Clooney's of the world and that's a ridiculously short sighted way of looking at this. The majority of people in music and film are working people like everyone else. Gaffers, designers, writers etc. are not making George Clooney money. My argument has more to do with the music industry because it's more diverse and includes are broader group of people. The internet has driven the "pricing point" down to $0 because free is better than paying. If people started selling music for $5 instead of $15 dollars, most people would still choose free and in fact that's the case. Musicians are putting out records now where you can "name your own price" which includes "Free" if you so choose, and tons of people are still downloading for free. Some people pay, of course, because they see the value in it, but most people just want to take what they can get. Whether or not you're aware of it, there is a significant overhead that goes into making a record. Materials don't buy themselves- recording equipment or studio time isn't free etc etc and that's not even counting transportation, food, possibly paying musicians, possibly paying a producer, engineer, mastering producer, artist etc. And that's before you hit the road to promote it.
It drives me fucking nuts when people say "well George Clooney's just going to have to take a million dollars less now!!!" because the industry is so much more vast and complex than that and it's a legitimate struggle to make a living. It's also not like people don't value it. Sure, there's good and bad things, but most musicians take a significant hit in compensation just because they love doing it.
Again, SOPA is evil and I'm not advocating for it or anything like it. But the topic of "internet piracy" goes well beyond the Hollywood elite and is significantly effecting the average people just trying to make a living.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:38 AM ^
I can understand that. My industry isn't free but lowes and home depot as well as the liquidators of the world have made it hard to turn a profit.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:42 AM ^
or artists. You would think that with things being so tough, they would all be doctors and lawyers.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:47 AM ^
I mean, if you love to do something you're going to try to do it. Some people do make it so there's always a chance. Most musicians end up giving it up however because they find it's too hard to make a living, which is exactly what I was pointing out. There are lots but they turn over and most people are unsuccessful in even making enough money to support themselves.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:39 AM ^
it's not tough to make it in the entertainment industry because of piracy; it's tough because those who control the means to production are bastards
January 19th, 2012 at 9:52 AM ^
I didn't say it was BECAUSE of piracy-- i said piracy doesn't make it easier and definitely affects more people than just big wigs and famous people. Think if someone invented a way to duplicate, well, anything for that matter for free. If you sold a toothbrush, and all the sudden everyone else could get a free duplication of the toothbrush- itd be a lot harder to sell toothbrushes.
edit: And actually it's even worse for musicians because writing a "hit" song is hard to do. when you do hit with something, you need to maximize your profit because there's no guarantee you'll get another one.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:34 AM ^
I agree with this wholeheartedly. In the music world, prior to the internet, if you had a good product but no major label support, nobody was going to hear you. Various channels on the internet have changed this trend (YouTubes and such), and some significant indie labels have made an impact. However, lots of these breakout artists wind up being picked up by major labels anyway.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^
To add a personal anecdote for your point: My buddies and I were in a rock band most of high school and up to soph. year at Michigan. We eventually all "gave up the dream" in one way or another realizing how unlikely it would be to "make it" in that world.
I love music, but I also like math and science (and fortunately, I'm quite good at them). So I figured a good consolation prize would be to become an engineer and have a much more stable, comfortable life.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:14 AM ^
As an entertainment industry lawyer who has worked for/represented ad agencies, social media sites, user generated content sites and internet companies and movie companies (I do something elsle now). I totally agree.
Yeah there's some abuse in foreign websites and domestic ones alike but the DMCA works pretty well. I don't agree with the censorship implications as much as a common sense approach to the use of content and compensation for content generators who highly overvalue their assets.
The total lack of thought on what the real imipact will be is pretty typical of these greedy bastards. They make the UAW seem rational. .
In my experience there are some good guys but in general the entertainment industry is incredibly greedy. SAG/AFTRA are a dinosaur organizations and a bunch of trolls.
When you think about how much of the general public's hard earned money already goes to fund ridiculous lifestyles, unecessary vacation homes, drug habits, and divorce settlements it kind of makes you sick.
.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:33 AM ^
I agree in principal but it doesn't seem like people often make the same argument for athletes. Most agree that they're overpaid but it's considered earned and usually not with the caveat that it's wasting the general publics hard earned money on vacation homes and drug habits. It's not like someone is forcing the public to pay for it. If you're really good at somethign you oughtta be able to make money doing it and as much as you can. Not referring to the unions etc because I'm sure you're right about that- but entertainers have as much right ot build wealth as anyone and if they blow it it's their fault.
January 19th, 2012 at 2:40 PM ^
"entertainers have as much right to build wealth as anyone"
Without getting too political, I think the appropriate response is definitely "yes and no". I don't think there are too many people who would dispute the idea that entertainers should benefit in rough proportion to their hard work and talent, and that the production of quality material should be rewarded.
But when talking about someone's right to build wealth, I think it's also the case that intellectual property law, and legal and policy frameworks generally, shouldn't be crafted with the main goal of allowing a handful of powerful interests to recoup enormous profits. The overarching goals of intellectual property laws, in my view, have to center on encouraging novel and enriching creative work. For example, extending copyright terms to a billion years, notwithstanding The Walt Disney Company's right to build wealth from Mickey Mouse, should not be on.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:26 AM ^
I dont have enough points to start a thread but it looks like Cato June is going to be Coaching high school football
January 19th, 2012 at 7:41 AM ^
to do with the artists, and almost everything to do with the multi-billion dollar industries that produce their work.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:50 AM ^
CNN's coverage on this has been about as biased as it gets. I would think that these people would be so rich by now that they wouldn't care but no, corporate greed knows no bounds. If I have say 3 billion dollars and you offer me 2 million to cut your grass for the summer. I am probably going to tell you to stick it up your ass and cut it yourself. What I am trying to say is that they are going to piss off a ton of people to gain very little kind of like airport security. You can put a lot of inconviences in place but in the end you are only keeping the honest man out. Those who steal will continue. These companies see maybe a 15% spike best case scenario, with the potential to piss off an entire public.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:10 AM ^
20 minutes for a full poop? Dude, your in serious trouble once you hit 40.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:19 AM ^
I don't like mainstream music so I never pirate any of the major label stuff. I do download underground artists to check out their music and if I like it, I will purchase it. Back in the 90's, I wasted so much money on garbage music, because there was no way of sampling the product before I purchased it, so I love the ability to download an album, really listen to it, and determine if it is worth my purchase. I can be extremely selective in what I spend my money on, and it is a benifit to my pocket book at the end of the day. I don't have any moral dilema in doing that either.
When it comes to movies, I never really download anything anyway, but tv shows are another story. There are some shows that I missed in December because the cable box was on the fritz, the shows were not on demand, so my only option was to download a couple episodes, and when I was done watching them, I deleted them. No moral dilema there either.
I try to purchase whenever I can, but the option to download allows me to make smart purchases now, and I didn't have that option growing up.