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2007-08-20 -Short Attention Span Theater-

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Posted by Anonymoose 2007-08-20 17:20|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 At some point htey'll put powerful electromagnets on the theater exits to screw with DV storage.

The movie companies seem as clueless as the music industry when it comes to protecting their stuff. Here are a few truisims I've noticed during my life:

(1) Before the days of online music and napster kids in college would copy each others music tapes. This led to greater exposure to bands and the number of legal tapes I purchased increased ten or twenty fold when I finally had the cash. Think of the swapping as an investment and keep the actual cost low enough not to scare people out of going legit. (2) MOvies prior to Batman often cost $80. They were copied and copyprotection was put on a number of tapes. Then Batman came out at $20 and sold through the roof. Nobody was gonna risk buying or making a half-arse copy when going legit was so cheap and the quality of a legit is generally considered to be superior. (3) A friend of mine bought me a chinese bootleg of BATTLEFIELD EARTH. This is not a lost sale to the movie industry because I never in my right mind would have paid for such a movie and I love bad movies. Not every pirated move or music means a lost sale, sometimes your products are simply a good joke. (4) My mom bought SATANIC VERSUS because the Iranians tried to keep it out of peoples hands. If you get all totolitarian in the way you do things people will do the illegal deeds as an act or rebellion. (5) For a long time the Star Wars movies were the top pirated movie on DVD because they were not available legally on DVD. As soon as they came out I'm pretty sure the pirated copies dried up.

So the lessons. Make the products available at a reasonable price and people will buy them. Jerk people around and they will intentionally stick a thumb in your eye. And a certain amount of illegal activity can often gin up legal sales assuming you don't tick people off.

Posted by rjschwarz 2007-08-20 18:06|| 2007-08-20 18:06|| Front Page Top

#2 rjschwarz: I've long proposed that copyright and perhaps patent law should be much more like the original 19th Century US mining law.

In short, it said that you could stake a claim about anywhere, but you had to either improve the claim or make a profit each year amounting to $500, one way or the other, or you would lose the claim.

Translated to copyright, this would extend valuable copyrights for many years, as companies could either attribute profits to them in particular, or retail them to the public in fair sale for at least a nominal amount, say $500, even in the 21st Century.

However, the vast libraries of copyrighted material that are neither retailed no allowed to go public domain, would *have* to be retailed or lose their copyright protection.

For example, Disney refuses to re-release "Song of the South", because it just doesn't want to, thinking it racist. But they should not have the right of government protection in *not* selling something *and* not letting anyone else sell it.

But at the same time, Disney's very profitable Mickey Mouse character makes them countless millions of dollars every year, so it should continue to get protection.

When you think of the enormous libraries of recorded music, books, TV and movies, and other things that are now unfairly receiving government copyright protection, even though they are not for sale by anyone, you can see this would apply to mountains of content.

The purpose of copyright and patent law is *not* to protect ideas forever. It is to stimulate business and foster innovation by giving a small amount of protection to new ideas. It should be returned to that idea.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-08-20 19:13|| 2007-08-20 19:13|| Front Page Top

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