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> many people do indeed watch it illegally

If your wife cant make a living by making films, because people rather copy than pay for copies, she should change her job, because people obviously dont want to pay her for what shes doing. This applies to any other job that gets obsoleted by time and technological advances, there is no reason there should be an artificial exception for films by making laws that simulate the 1950's.

> it seems to me that reducing piracy makes sense as part of a larger strategy.

To me it seems accepting being bullied into obeying and doing exactly what they want. They want people to stop copying, if everybody stops copying, they won. It means that democracy is worthless and that Hollywood gets the final word of how laws are gonna look like, what will be accepted bahavior and what wont.

Hollywood (and you and your your wife) are pushing for keeping copying illegal because you make more money if it stays illegal, but we as a society at large have not yet agreed that copying indeed _should_ be illegal. Many people copy your wifes movies because they do not consider it morally wrong. Your argument to change their behaviour amounts no nothing more than "stop copying yourself, my wife tries to make money selling copies."

> Of course it is my experience that people who pirate content won't listen

I dont have to listen to you the same way you dont have to listen to me. The whole society has to agree whether copying is right or wrong, whether it is objectionable or not, and agreeing usually works through a majority vote. Your wife and Hollywood most certainly dont have the majority on their side, which is precisely why they resort to bribery like democracy never existed.

Although laws currently do exist making copying illegal, the society has not agreed that it is indeed wrong. The laws have been purchased and aggressively pushed from the top down, not decided and agreed upon democratically. It is not the behavior of the people that is wrong, it is the laws that are undemocratic, unjust and wrong, because they do not reflect the natural sense of right and wrong the people have, which should be the basis of any law.

The sole fact that your wife tries to make a living by relying on non-copying does not somehow automatically imply that copying should be wrong for the sole purpose that she can make a living. Maybe your wife simply made a bad career choice. Dont try to retrofit the society to your wifes career choices. Otherwise you also could push a car ban (obligatory car analogy) so your wife can make a living by making horse carriages.

For the sake of completeness: copying is not stealing. It is copying. I know it is hard to grasp for you (and Hollywood), because repeating "copying=stealing" makes your wife (and Hollywood) money.

> When people steal her movie instead of watching it on iTunes (...) it's not any different than taking money out of our pockets.

To anybody else not making money by relying on copying prohibition, this should read:

> When people copy her movie instead of watching it on iTunes (...) it's not any different than not putting money into our pockets.

The only reason why your above sentence sounds the way it sounds is because saying so makes your wife (and Hollywood) money. Otherwise it almost certainly wouldnt.

> If your wife cant make a living by making films, because people rather copy than pay for copies, she should change her job, because people obviously dont want to pay her for what shes doing.

Maybe people aren't aware of the consequences of their actions and have a notion that all filmmakers are swimming in money anyways. If they knew the truth, maybe they would buy rather than copy (see, I said copy).

> The only reason why your above sentence sounds the way it sounds is because saying so makes your wife (and Hollywood) money.

You are saying this as if there was something wrong with that.

> have a notion that all filmmakers are swimming in money anyways.

The question whether copying is right or wrong has nothing to do with the amount of money filmmakers are swimming in. Person A sending a file to person B against the wish of author C is either wrong in itself or not. The only way to find out is a vote. Lets vote on copyright.

> If they knew the truth, maybe they would buy rather than copy

Whether somebody buys a copy or makes it himself also isnt up to debate here. The question is whether copying itself against the wish of the author should be illegal or not. Copying can be legal and you'd still have people buying copies to support the author. I can copy but I still buy. The legality of copying doesnt exclude buying.

> You are saying this as if there was something wrong with that.

It is wrong that action X (people exchanging information) is artificially made illegal so somebody can make money by providing service X. It is basically outlawing DIY. I think that this is wrong, you maybe dont. The only way to find out whether this should be illegal or not is to collectively vote on it, not by bribery behind closed doors.

If the majority decides that it should be illegal because they value the influx Hollywood output more than personal freedoms, I'd accept that even though I personally think it shouldnt be so. But what I certainly wont accept as a behavioral guidance are "deals" made between a few influential stake holders and bribeable politicians who are essentially circumventing democracy. As long as I know that my fellow citizens, my friends and family dont consider copying wrong and objectionable, there is no reason for me and anybody else to blindly obey a purchased, undemocratic law like a serf and like feudalism never ended. The only outcome I'm personally willing to accept is a community vote. Lets vote on copyright.

Whether somebody buys a copy or makes it himself also isnt up to debate here. The question is whether copying itself against the wish of the author should be illegal or not. Copying can be legal and you'd still have people buying copies to support the author. I can copy but I still buy. The legality of copying doesnt exclude buying.

What about someone decompiling someone else's app and putting it up for sale on the Android market. Is that wrong?

What about hacking into someone's server and copying their source code and design documents and using it to build a rival service?

What about selling software which contains GPL code and not acknowledging it or providing the source code?

Apples to oranges. These are all examples of commercial infringment, which is quite different from the standard Hollywood claim that "unauthorized viewing" of a movie is exactly equivalent to stealing.

So you're saying the difference is that the perpetrator intends to profit from copying? Surely by copying a movie for personal use you are still profiting, if not by much.

You're playing games with words now. If you're going to define "profit" so broadly that it covers benefit of any kind, then I fear we can't have a profitable discussion.

No, I do not typically profit from piracy. When I purchase a kids' movie on DVD, Hollywood says that I have only purchased a "licence" to use the movie. When I then rip the movie to avi's (no complex decoding required to view) and copy the files to two old laptops so that my kids can watch the movie in the car, Hollywood says that I am a pirate -- that I am stealing their movie.

Not only does this process cost me time (and thus money) and aggravation, I also get the benefit of being labelled a criminal. At least the kids are happy.

If we are talking about wealth in the broadest sense, as discussed by PG in the link below then I certainly class copying a DVD that you haven't purchased as profiting, yes.

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

I don't think anyone realistically considers format shifting as copyright infringement, other than opportunistic executives. I'm not aware of anyone being taken to court for format shifting.

Oh, and I'm not sure if your 'profitable discussion' pun was intentional or not, but I enjoyed it anyway.

In order to rip a DVD, you have to break the CSS encryption, which is illegal under the DMCA. Hollywood (the industry) has fought hard against allowing exceptions to the DMCA for fair use of any kind, and they terrorized the hackers who reverse-engineered CSS in the first place.

Hollywood has also fought to force other countries to outlaw fair use. Here's an example:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/us-in-2005-l...

So yes, it is quite clear that Hollywood considers ripping a DVD to be criminal activity.

Yes, I'm aware of this. But I don't think lumping fair use in with people downloading torrents makes a lot of sense. Hollywood want complete control over all access and distribution of their content, while the Pirate Party want copyright abolished. As usual the reasonable position will lie somewhere between these extremes.

> The only way to find out is a vote. Lets vote on copyright.

Voting on morality is not a good idea. I refer you the common persons understanding of morality in the past centuries.

The moral strides we have made in the past came from reasoning about morality and imagining ourselves in the position of somebody else.

Exploiting a minority to serve a majority is an expected outcome of collectivized morality, but not one that anybody should wish to gain.

> Voting on morality is not a good idea.

Who is then gonna decide what behavior is OK and whats not OK? Who is gonna decide if filesharing is OK or not OK?

The legal question will be answered by the courts.

You have to answer the moral question for yourself, and convince others of your position using rational arguments. The argument that it feels right to you and your peers isn't very strong, an argument derived from first principles or maybe utilitarian or consequentialist perspectives would me more convincing.

One of the first principle that I hold is that the products of an individuals labor should belong to the individual and she should have control over it, regardless if it is a wooden spoon or a work of art.

> One of the first principle that I hold is that the products of an individuals labor should belong to the individual and she should have control over it, regardless if it is a wooden spoon or a work of art.

In common law countries like the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, this has not historically been a principle of our societies, and has never been a part of our legal systems. Copyright is a purely statutory concept that does not relate to any moral law. That's one reason why, in the US, we have fair use exceptions for criticism, education, news reporting, and research.

Strangely, although civil law countries often declare a moral right of the individual to control the fruits of their labor, the law stomps all over that moral right with many exceptions to copyright: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/UrhG.htm#I6

> The legal question will be answered by the courts.

This is not a legal question of interpreting an existing law. The law itself should be rewritten in a way that makes the biggest possible number of people OK with it.

> One of the first principle that I hold is

I dont. Now what? We're back to deciding whose first principles should count. The only way to get a set of generally acceptable first principles is to vote on them. Again, you cant circumvent democracy.

> Again, you cant circumvent democracy.

You can, you should and we do. For example, the US is a republic and not a democracy. People have unalienable rights that cannot be voted on.

Even if 80% of Americans would like to re-institute slavery tomorrow, it would be wrong and illegal.

Why should we? We don't hold referendums on every other issue. I'm not sure you'd like a world where politics was entirely reduced to the lowest common denominator as much as you think you would.

> Why should we?

Because it yields a situation which the largest number of people is OK with. It maximizes the satisfaction of the people with the legal system.

> We don't hold referendums on every other issue.

We not doing something does not mean that we shouldnt. We absolutely should have more referendums.

> I'm not sure you'd like a world where politics was entirely reduced to the lowest common denominator

I'm sure I dont want to live in a world where laws directed against the population can be purchased by a few uberrich stake holders, where laws binding for everyone can be decided behind closed doors, without any legal way (other than useless protesting, campaigning, begging, etc) for the population way to get rid of unjust, bad laws and corrupt politicians.

> Because it yields a situation which the largest number of people is OK with. It maximizes the satisfaction of the people with the legal system.

It could maximize the number of people satisfied with the legal system, assuming they are rational. The gain of satisfaction for the may majority comes at a steep price on the satisfaction of the minority and has lead to much suffering in humanity.

The "first they came for"-quote is thrown around in this thread without much care. It should be noted that they came for the minorities.

Please stop getting hung up on the fact that your wife's movies are pirated. The fact of the matter is that your wife, more than ever, has access to such a large global scale audience that was never available in the past with the traditional movie studio system. Mind you, legal indie video distribution networks with millions of users.

You are basically focusing on the fact that there is a small minority of internet users who are downloading your wife's movie illegally. You are so fixated with pirating that that you are not completely focusing on efforts to make your wife's movie available to new mediums in the U.S. and around the world.

In fact you are so one sided you fail to explore the possibility that viral distribution might help you. Some indie directors are in fact trying to get their movie to spread via BitTorrent and other mediums to drive sales and gain more awareness. Wihtout the internet where would Trey Parker and Matt Stone be?

Either way, saying someone is pirating your movie as an excuse to burn down the internet is short sighted.

I don't think he is saying at all to burn down the internet, just that each person who would have watched his wife's film by paying for it, but didn't since a free copy was available instead online hurts their financial situation and also her 'popularity' since these views are never able to be tallied.

That is what I am saying. On the net, people will download the copy for free but it is a small minority. Make ipods, there will be knockoffs. Make hand bags, there will be knockoffs. Make cars, yes cars, there will be knockoffs. It is part of business. Make a unique site and get funded by VCs, there will be copycats funded by other VCs. Welcome to the world of business. But largely, if the movie is good there are soo many LEGAL distribution points. Focus your energy on those.

As much as I hate piracy, it really might have the opposite effect for indie artists. It might make her more popular since indie artists DO NOT have massive marketing budgets.

> In fact you are so one sided you fail to explore the possibility that viral distribution might help you. Some indie directors are in fact trying to get their movie to spread via BitTorrent and other mediums to drive sales and gain more awareness.

So you're saying that they should give in and accept that people are going to pirate and use it to their advantage? Does that not seem defeatist?

Defeatist implies that there is in fact a way to eliminate piracy. There isn't. "Giving in" is being realistic, not defeatist

It's the American way to wage war on things that are undestroyable.

The War on Terror.

The War on Drugs.

Now, the War on Piracy.

"""it's not any different than taking money (even if it's pennies per person) out of our pockets"""

I thought you had a good comment until you got to this part. This tripe, shoveled by the mouthful out of Hollywood, is way too simplified to be meaningful. I'm so sick of hearing this without any thought to the other side of the piracy coin: access and exposure; or the side of the coin (people who would not have paid you a penny under any circumstance).

I honestly don't know if piracy reduces or increases film revenue (it appears to have helped the game industry and put Windows on 90+% of desktop computers worldwide), but it is this mantra that has led to crap-feats like SOPA and PIPA. A balanced conversation about it (and not one saying "piracy is all gain thanks to exposure") would be refreshing.

EDIT: And for the record, I don't pirate. If I can watch it legally, I don't watch it.

EDIT2: I don't care about being downvoted, but I feel like there is an argument I'm missing. If you downvoted me (or feel like doing so), let me know why. I Prefer to have my worldview challenged so I can change or expand as needed.

I don't pirate and have no ties to anyone that produces content. With that said; what is the difference between doing free coding or consulting for exposure and access? I used to own a consulting company and people tried that line a lot, even when starting out I never consulted for free to get "exposure;" why should we expect any different from other industries?

I don't expect them to give anything away for free. I also don't think they should be granted laws to guarantee they receive income. What I want is a rational argument.

The "every copy pirated is a penny out of my bank account" is too simplistic. Note that the argument wasn't even the more reasonable, but still too simplistic, "every copy pirated is a penny not put in my account".

I'm not asking anybody to give their creative works away for free. I love good content, and I'm willing to pay. I also am willing to not watch what I can't get legally and (by my consumer definition) reasonably. But framing this argument as "pirates are stealing out of my bank account" has allowed large media companies to shove insane, unconstitutional crap through congress.

As a result, when I see those simplistic arguments, I'm going to ask for a little more thought out of them. If a content creator is willing to at least talk through the complexities (better would be an honest analysis), I'm willing to listen. Anything else, IMO, is repeated propaganda from an evil source (the studios being the source, that is).

I do believe it is "wrong" to watch pirated content but like I said in another comment, the problem has two sides. People are doing things that "come naturally" to them on the internet and Hollywood is trying to map an old business model onto a distribution method that has so many different dimensions and norms that it's caused a schism between the (potential) consumers and themselves. People, then, resort to pirating a movie because it's cheaper or they want to be able to watch it multiple times.

I think Amazon's content delivery "system" as it stands, now, is a wonderful answer to this whole issue (you buy it, you can download it, and it also sits on your own S3 account accessible by all of your devices!).

Either way, Hollywood needs to innovate (or be disrupted) in order to turn all of those people pirating into monetizable consumers (I really do think that is possible, too).

I'm interested - what's the title of the film? When and where is it playing next in Tokyo? How can I get it without a credit card (Japanese banks refuse to give me one for some odd reason ..)?

Also, as a filmmaker, does your wife take more joy in having her product seen and appreciated by as many as possible, or by gaining as much profit as possible?

I'm sorry, but a lot of people are being really dense in their response to this post. They create a false dichotomy of piracy versus no piracy, as if the author's wife wouldn't make more money and stand a better chance of doing what she loves and might be great at, if the piracy were just decreased.

We can still make a difference, and a lot of people are fallaciously trying to rationalize a(n active) passivity in a discussion where the questions and answers aren't black and white.

Before Kickstarter, it was actually possible to support a person's work by buying their product. Still is.

Frequent arthouse cinema-goer here. Even though I love love love indie films, I can't help but pirate some of them out of several reasons:

- If I can choose between watching them now illegal and buying a DVD which will be released in half a year, guess which option I'll eventually choose? If the dvdrip is already going its rounds, why not release the movie online? If you are indie productions, you are not bound to all those country-releasing restrictions, are you?

- Say if I'm interested in a movie from Iceland. I am so not willing to pay 30-40€ for a single movie DVD just because of shipping/handling costs etc. I, however, would happily pay around 15 bucks for watching it online or dl it somewhere digitally but LEGAL. The motto should be if YOU want to watch it, no matter where, you can do it NOW, LEGALLY, for say 10 bucks. That I'd do without any second thought. But seems like the idea of that hasn't gripped on within the indie movie world. I don't want their DVDs no more, if I really would want that physical medium I could easily burn that disc myself (if the movie is available in high enough definition), I don't wanna pay 10+ more bucks for that. Plus, If I like a movie, I will most likely buy their poster or something, so they even get around 50 bucks more for that.

As for cinemas: I frequently (about 1x a week, depending on which movies are in cinemas) visit our local arthouse cinema, and while the selection here in Switzerland is incredibly good (yet sometimes about 2 years after the releases.. but better late than never I guess), the tickets costs about 10-15€ which is hell-a lot, especially comparing to Germany where I've been to cinemas for 3 bucks. I don't mind though, I like the cinema atmosphere with the comfy seats and the big screen.

This was party the reason for posting about it in the first place, but yes, I will be talking about what and why I'm doing this to my friends and peers. A recent study showed something like 70% of the Australian population have downloaded films and TV illegally, though I'd say that the majority of this is due to the fact that we get things, especially TV series, months after the US. So it's more from a lack of patience than not wanting to pay.

Based on how far SOPA/PIPA over-reached, I am no longer convince that even 100% eradication of piracy (not likely not practical) would alter these peoples' courses. The industry is dying on its own, this is just the scapegoat.

I don't equate your wife's efforts with Hollywood's. They are socially malignant incumbents. She is a creative entrepreneur. Similarly, you shouldn't equate your wife's struggles with these institutions'.

Hollywood already creates piracy where it doesn't exist to inflate the numbers. What makes you think they'd actually stop if piracy really did stop?

Netflix is not an option for me since it is not available in Germany, but I would like to check if can find one of your wifes movies in iTunes. Could you tell me a title of one of those?