Hacker News Reader

Comment by rolph | Hacker News Reader

camming is a concretely tangible theft.

when a movie is being sold on disk after theatre showings close out, there is already a return for investments and disk sales are just gravy.

disks are played many times lent out to family and friends watched in recap after the theatre and donated to thrift shops. a large group of people can "steal" by watching for free multiple times, but millions have been made in theatre wages paid and investors pacified.

when a movie is cammed this cuts into the revenue.

i believe in a co-existence being possible however thats short circuited by the one "free" view == one lost/stolen sale mentality.

View on HN

They paid for the ticket didn't they? And even if it was a projection room cam they could have offered a seat there and yet they didn't so no material loss to claim. You can't claim that my tree falling on your grass did damage to your hypothetical Porsche and claim losses of it.

They still got their share of the fixed pie. Theft isn't infringement.

no theft isnt infringement, the infringement happens when you distribute your product. the viewing experience is what is paid for by ticket, camming subverts the sale of the experience. if someone went into a strip club with a camera and recorded the live show thats theft as well. When the dancer produces thier own disk and distributes it thats in the same boat as a DVD release and any number of eyes can experience that video when the producer gets [guess ~ 50$- 100$] for a disk sale.

Theft almost doesn't seem like the right word for it. I'd compare it more like when someone sneaks into a movie theater without paying. You could argue about whether or not the people stealing these films ever intended to pay money to see them in the first place. Studios should figure out how much money they actually lost on ticket sales to pirates who would have paid for a ticket if they had no access to a cam version and then compare that to how much they spend in lawyer fees and IP firms trying to combat it. Considering how easy it is to find a copy, watch it, and suffer no repercussions, I'd say they either are wasting their money or not spending enough.

I don't buy that any significant population watched extremely low quality cams vs paying $10-15 for a theater ticket. I think it was mostly a stupid risky prestige thing for sceners.

Theaters probably "lose" orders of magnitude more revenue to teenagers watching 2-3 films after only paying for the first ticket.

>when a movie is cammed this cuts into the revenue. //

Is there proof of this?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com