Don’t Steal this Movie!
June 5, 2006
Just a random thought.
I rented some movies this weekend, put them on, and while I'm waiting through the 10-15 minutes of commercials, er, um, movie trailers, that I paid for the privilege to watch, one of those "piracy is bad" commercials produced by the MPAA played. And, I can't help thinking, everytime I am forced to watch one of those propaganda filled, half-truth ridden attacks on privacy and fair-use laws, that if I had just stolen this movie, I wouldn't have to watch this propaganda piece right now.
For anyone that's interested in the status of Canada's copyright and privacy laws, check out Michael Geist's website. He's a Law professor at the University of Ottawa, one of North America's leading experts on both issues, and one of the most active people out there fighting to get rational Copyright laws passed that don't violate Canadian charter rights.
Entry Filed under: Movies, Politics/Current Events. .
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1.
Rich | June 6, 2006 at 3:20 pm
thats why you have to purchase the special edition for extra money to get less trailers and advertising when it comes out 6 months after the first version that you purcased, and 12 months before the super, duper SE edition that you know your going to buy.
2.
Rich | June 6, 2006 at 3:21 pm
or you can just pirate it and save the headaches.
3.
Paul Pimentel | June 7, 2006 at 2:46 am
I wonder if there are not a few ramifications to your view that you have not thoroughly considered. First, I submit that it is increasingly likely that your future, should you opt to remain in academics, will almost certainly include writing books, journal and/or scholarly magazine articles. If so, I would think you will favor the widest possible disseminaiton of the MPAA warnings. For example, consider, for a moment, that you have just poured countless hours of effort into creating a unique work of original thought; with the happy result that it is published far and wide. Under such circumstances, I imagine that you will want to retain, as much as possible, all your rights to that original work and you will assiduously work to ensure that you do so. Now, what happens when you learn of an unauthorized duplication of your work. Will you serenely take that in stride as part of the great public discourse of your work? Or will you seek to retain the best attorney you can find to protect and vindicate the work that you so carefully and patiently crafted? So while we may bemoan the MPAA material as repetitive and “over the top, ” I daresay it won’t be long before you reveal in its broad protections as you reap the statutory damages available under the various copyright laws. The more you put in the “public domain” the more you will have to lose, and the more the shotgun approach of the MPAA will benefit widely published authors such as yourself. So maybe the MPAA drivel ain’t so bad afterall.
4.
Tortured_Artist | June 7, 2006 at 8:08 am
You raise some great points Paul.
For what it’s worth, Im just questioning the rationale behind putting “Don’t Steal Movies” commercials on right before a movie that someone obviously paid to watch. I guess, it would be even more ironic if they were playing at the beginning of stolen movies though, so point taken.
I’m not sure how I feel about copyright protection, actually. I know that you know this issue is much more complicated than either of us have let on. There probably is no area of the law that is more in flux than copyright/privacy laws, right now. I think we need to fundamentally rethink the concept of copyright, and probably our approach to the dissemination of information as well. And I really have no idea where I’d come down on either of those issues.
Of course, in regards to any academic works that I do publish, I would relish the free spread of my ideas across the world. That would get me invited to speak at all the good conferences and I could always off-set any financial loss by jacking up the book’s cover price, and forcing my students to buy my texts and articles which should easily help me compensate for any losses.