Why would people care about MPAA or the RIAA except for the passing glances of those acronyms while going through the morning paper or during a movie pre-commercial? It serves them no purpose to care about those organizations unless they're being sued.

Mommy dearest doesn't know what Pirate Bay is, much less torrent files. But if you tell her that she can get stuff for free, then by all means she'll jump on the deal. Getting her to think that this is some epic battle between good and evil is just Hollywood fantasy.

And quite frankly, this attitude of "oh, I'll just keep stealing until they get it" is just counter-productive.

Isn't it obvious that when you steal a piece of media, you're stealing from its creator, i.e. the good guy?

It's a lot more complicated than that. And steal is the wrong word. You mean when you violate someone's copyright.

You infringe upon someone's copyright, criminal piracy laws are what you can 'violate'.

IP lawyer Robert Platt Bell uses it: http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2008/09/copyright-primer...

Since most acts of infringement by Photocopier are de minimis and difficult to trace, we all have become comfortable making copies without thinking about whether our actions comprise a Copyright violation.

By posting these tracts on the web, the dissenter effectively made an infinite number of copies of the tracts, thus creating an egregious Copyright violation.

Similarly, uploading Copyrighted music to a website for redistribution, or operating a website where Copyrighted music is freely distributed (without permission) is an egregious violation of Copyright laws.

the idea of distributing music for free (as in the original Napster model) just wouldn't work; and is a clear violation of Copyright law.

You should edit your profile though, disparaging this community doesn't make you look very good.

How does the situation being more "complicated" nullify the fact that when you steal (or violate copyright, whatever) something that was crafted for profit (else the creator would've released it for free) you're doing a complete disservice to the author?

Obviously if you replace paying the artist money for music with an illegal download you are doing a disservice to the author and the author's distribution company. If you weren't going to pay the author anything though, you can only benefit him, assuming you like the author's work enough to tell friends and/or attend live performances. Sure, it's better for the artist to get paid, but there is a distinction between doing a disservice and being morally wrong and the use of the word steal is an attempt to equate copyright violation with being morally wrong.

In the end, illegal downloads are inevitable. It's impossible to entirely stop; all you can do is try and make the legal downloads as convenient and practical as possible (like Amazon's service). This is already changing the business model for artists. Live shows and packaging and merchandise become more important than ever.

There's an analogous situation with software: desktop software is easily crackable but SaaS is often impossible to copyright violate. Most of the developers here are doing SaaS and they will indeed get paid for their work.

Amazon won't win in the streaming / file space unless something changes.

Those eggheads over at YouTube/TiVo/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft surely must be working on something like this. I mean, how else do any of them justify their salaries?

Better to say that the physical medium is no longer the only existing medium. Where they once dominated, now they'll become niche like most mediums do once they're past cutting-edge. But antique suggests something that's over and done with, and incapable of advancing. On the contrary, I think that physical media will continue to innovate.

HD-DVD/DVD-Audio sound decidedly better than CD/vinyl assuming you have a sound system high end enough for it to matter. There's nothing inherently better about analog, unless you're talking about copies of the original analog master tapes. (There was a company selling a subscription to a service where you would get copies of analog reel-to-reel tapes)

On a side note I'm somewhat surprised to see gizmodo actually call the MPAA and RIAA "a bunch of pricks". Not that it isn't true.

Monty Python shows yet again that they're not just funny, they're very bright and very business-savvy.

Guido spent all of his money on DVD's until he was broke again, just to give himself a great reason to dedicate another 10 years to improving the language, as well as to build the world's greatest Monty Python DVD Rental Library, similar to how Netflix operates, but mailing discs out by hand.

This is mentioned in the newest Python 3.0 book.

/hobby horse

What is happening here seems pretty clear to me:

People are looking for entertainment, they are finding some on YouTube, they see an ad for more of the same enjoyment, they whip out their credit cards and pay for it.

If this story happened in a college dorm room and the entertainment-seeker's roommate had them all on DVD already, he would have said "Here, watch mine." If he had them all on his hard drive, he would have said "here, plug in my external".

It seems like people are simply following the path of least resistance.

I agree 100%, and any discussion of online piracy that does not include this concept is horribly, horribly incomplete.

People want media in easy-to-consume form. They want it easy to browse and get.

Most will pay a nominal sum for it. Some will not.

But, hey, Monty Python > Python.