…you suck.

That’s right.

This rant has been in me forever. Others have already shared the sentiment. But you know what the most offensive “PSA” style campaign in recent memory is? Try the “don’t pirate” ads we get to enjoy before sucking down your $10 a head flicks. Is this only me? I doubt it. I just paid to watch your movie, and you are exploiting my captivity to remind me to keep behaving like a good boy. So here is some advice. The last thing you should be doing is reminding your paying customers that they may be engaging in criminal activity elsewhere. Well guess what, we paid for our tickets, so cut us some slack, mmm k?

Wouldn’t it be fun for other media industries to follow suit? We can then watch the hilarity ensue. Have the newspapers get a crack at it first. Here is my suggested warning: “Attention subscribers, sharing this paper with your neighbor hurts paperboys”. The warning should replace page one. Also, it would be good for the newspaper to somehow be sealed shut to force the consumer to consume the message longer.

If you want to bombard the public with your heavy handed tactics (”oh look, the best grip is crying because he can’t buy a thanksgiving turkey! I really should have paid for The Fast and The Furious 16“) then fork up the cash and pay from some more ads. But how about you leave them out of the places you know people have paid.

Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps college students across America are walking away from your lessons filled with doubt and conviction. Uh-oh, wakey-wakey time.

So here’s a novel (not actually) thought. Perhaps you should focus on developing incentives for people to buy your products. Let’s see, get it for free or pay for it. Why should we pay again? Oh that’s it, because it’s the right thing to do and it supports the industry. You know what, that’s fine with me. But guess what, most people don’t care. See your bed, Hollywood? That’s right, you’ve helped create an amoral vacuum of relativism in American society, and now you want people to do the right thing.

So here’s a suggestion. Go out and do some research on the rate of “piracy” of the Criterion Collection discs versus say, the best of Bruckheimer/Bay. I bet you’ll see a difference. Now why do you think that could be? Could it be you shape your audience? Could it be, people are less willing to buy cat food for dinner than say, a nice fresh albacore steak?

I’m out of sarcasm…

First asian album released using a creative commons license. It’s a Chinese language gospel album.

Engadget just ran an interview they did with on-his-way-out MPAA president Jack Valenti. In response to the question “What would you say to a mom who wants to make a backup of her kids’ DVD movies?”. Valenti offered the following, nonsensical analogy:

When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn’t give you two backup copies. Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever.

Complete nonsense, mostly brought on by the common industry practice of comparing digital information to physical property. If the store were to give you 2 additional Cognac glasses, they are now out of 2 physical pieces of merchandise they had intended to sell to another consumer. On the other hand, a mom who makes a copy of a dvd to protect it from the gooey-sticky fingers of toddlers doesn’t remove inventory from any stock. At the most, she is limiting the ability of a retailer from selling her a new copy of a movie she purchased but was damaged. Look at it this way, a more honest representation of Valenti’s analogy would be that, if the Cognac glass was to break in two in a repairable fashion, he’d rather you not be sold the glue to fix it. You should just go buy yourself a new glass.

Oh, and what exactly does “A digital thing lasts forever” mean? CDs and DVDs certainly don’t last forever, anybody with Netflix could tell you that. In fact, the only way I think an individual could make such a “digital thing” last forever (or at least, the duration of their lifespan) is if they were permitted to make non-degrading backup copies.

In answer to his silly question of “where did this backup copy thing come from?” the answer is really simple: because we can. You can’t make a backup copy of a glass, it’s physical. But data, in any format, can be copied by virtue of it’s nature. That’s what makes his comparison so ridiculous.

This Rueters story regarding the recent Grokster case decision has an interesting title: “Court Deals Blow to Anti-Piracy Efforts”. You know if you stop and think about that, it shows an awful lot of cynicism. How about “Court Protects Innovation”, “Court Upholds Sony Decision”, or “Court Sees Value in Peer-to-Peer Technology”. The negative headline, however, will always win out.

For those unfamiliar with the recent ruling, the summary is that the court found the network providers should be held in similiar esteem to Sony of the betamax case. That is, while their product (or in this case, service) has illegal and infringing uses, it also has substantial non-infringing uses.

Representative Rick Boucher is posting on the Lessig blog this week! Good to see a politician in favor of copyright balance.

The Washington Post article regarding TiVo asking the FCC for permission to add new content sharing functionality has been getting a lot of coverage lately. Most the criticism is levied at the sad notion that a company needs to ask permission in order to innovate. While this is true, I think there’s a far scarier element of the article that needs equal attention. Almost glossed over in the end, we have Fritz Attaway (MPAA executive vice president for government relations) saying the following regarding the presence of analog outputs on devices with HDTV modulators:

“We’ll probably have to go to Congress to enact legislation to deal with that”

People, I don’t think it get’s much more certain than that. I don’t read this as they “probably” want to do it, but rather they know the FCC won’t approve, so they’ll have to go to Congress.

I’m certainly glad I’m out of school. I can’t remember how many meaningful projects I had in different classes throughout my education that involved content taken from the television, but it sure was significant. But really, who should care about collateral damage anyway?