My favorite is the "Regional Sports Fee." I was getting this small fee (about $5 years ago) on my bill and when I finally noticed, I called to ask what it was since I didn't subscribe to any special sports bundles or anything. I was told that if any one of my channel lineups has sports programming, then I would have to pay the fee. It ended up being one of the basic sports channels or something. So I asked what the fee was for and they told me that it was used to subsidize the extra costs that the major leagues were charging for broadcast rights! I explained that I never watch sports, but the only fix was to remove the plan that had sports channels in it. So I cancelled the whole thing and never looked back.
They tried to save me as a customer, but I explained that I didn't feel like subsidizing the cost of sports programming when I never watched any of it. I'll admit there was a brief time when I missed cable tv, but it only took a couple months before I was finding other things to occupy my time.
This was happening to me until I finally went to their website and opted out of all marketing material and phone calls. The process wasn't instant though...after submitting the form, I got another 3 months or so of advertising and a few phone calls. Now I get nothing.
I've watched pirated movies before...either through an illegal stream online, a friend who downloaded a torrent or someone in the industry who has acquired a screener DVD from an award show committee.
If the MPAA could count exactly how many times I've done this, they would put that number in their spreadsheet that eventually totals up the amount of money "lost to piracy" based on various values such as theatre ticket prices and/or home video sales.
The problem is that my numbers shouldn't count in that column because I've never once said, "Well now that I've seen it, I don't have to buy it." I also tend to avoid theatres for a number of reasons and the film playing isn't at the top of that list.
Alternatively, if I rented a specific movie from RedBox, then I've still basically saw the movie "for free." Granted, I pay a one-time fee to RedBox for every disc I rent, BUT that money just goes to RedBox. After they've purchased the disc, they turn it over many times and not only get their money back for the original purchase price, but also make a nice profit. And I'm assuming as movies get older, they sell used discs back to their customer gaining them even more money.
So how do you really define "piracy"? If someone downloads a free movie after it's left the theatres just to "see if it's any good," then who's being harmed here? A lot of us don't drop down $15 to $20 on a Blu-ray disc to see if a movie is any good and even more of us choose to skip the theatres do to high prices or bad film reviews. But let's say I did buy a movie and invited 20 friends over to watch it with me, then are those other 19 people considered pirates because they didn't pay to see it?
If I downloaded a crappy movie for free and watched it, then deleted it and never bought the Blu-ray because the movie was terrible, am I still a pirate?
The MPAA is making everyone believe that real money is being lost do to piracy, but the real problem is you can't speculate how much that actually is. I'm sure there are a handful of people out there that do download movies as opposed to buying them, but in order to say that they effectively stole the dollar equivalent of movies they would have bought retail means you would have to know for sure whether they would have actually ever bought those movies! On the same token, what's stopping people from just signing up to Netflix, renting all the discs they can get a hold of and burning copies at home?
The proof is in the pudding. The most pirated material (be it film, music or software) is generally the most profitable. My theory is that if your content isn't turning a profit, it's not piracy that caused it...it probably just isn't very good.
I think the point of the article was more about the fact that you could sell a Big Mac simply by making it the same way. The difference is that you couldn't call it a Big Mac because the name is trademarked. Nobody could stop you from making a hamburger exactly the same way, but you might be hardpressed to do so in cases where "secret" ingredients are used.
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Re:
My favorite is the "Regional Sports Fee." I was getting this small fee (about $5 years ago) on my bill and when I finally noticed, I called to ask what it was since I didn't subscribe to any special sports bundles or anything. I was told that if any one of my channel lineups has sports programming, then I would have to pay the fee. It ended up being one of the basic sports channels or something. So I asked what the fee was for and they told me that it was used to subsidize the extra costs that the major leagues were charging for broadcast rights! I explained that I never watch sports, but the only fix was to remove the plan that had sports channels in it. So I cancelled the whole thing and never looked back.
They tried to save me as a customer, but I explained that I didn't feel like subsidizing the cost of sports programming when I never watched any of it. I'll admit there was a brief time when I missed cable tv, but it only took a couple months before I was finding other things to occupy my time.
Re: Re: ....
This was happening to me until I finally went to their website and opted out of all marketing material and phone calls. The process wasn't instant though...after submitting the form, I got another 3 months or so of advertising and a few phone calls. Now I get nothing.
My two cents
I've watched pirated movies before...either through an illegal stream online, a friend who downloaded a torrent or someone in the industry who has acquired a screener DVD from an award show committee.
If the MPAA could count exactly how many times I've done this, they would put that number in their spreadsheet that eventually totals up the amount of money "lost to piracy" based on various values such as theatre ticket prices and/or home video sales.
The problem is that my numbers shouldn't count in that column because I've never once said, "Well now that I've seen it, I don't have to buy it." I also tend to avoid theatres for a number of reasons and the film playing isn't at the top of that list.
Alternatively, if I rented a specific movie from RedBox, then I've still basically saw the movie "for free." Granted, I pay a one-time fee to RedBox for every disc I rent, BUT that money just goes to RedBox. After they've purchased the disc, they turn it over many times and not only get their money back for the original purchase price, but also make a nice profit. And I'm assuming as movies get older, they sell used discs back to their customer gaining them even more money.
So how do you really define "piracy"? If someone downloads a free movie after it's left the theatres just to "see if it's any good," then who's being harmed here? A lot of us don't drop down $15 to $20 on a Blu-ray disc to see if a movie is any good and even more of us choose to skip the theatres do to high prices or bad film reviews. But let's say I did buy a movie and invited 20 friends over to watch it with me, then are those other 19 people considered pirates because they didn't pay to see it?
If I downloaded a crappy movie for free and watched it, then deleted it and never bought the Blu-ray because the movie was terrible, am I still a pirate?
The MPAA is making everyone believe that real money is being lost do to piracy, but the real problem is you can't speculate how much that actually is. I'm sure there are a handful of people out there that do download movies as opposed to buying them, but in order to say that they effectively stole the dollar equivalent of movies they would have bought retail means you would have to know for sure whether they would have actually ever bought those movies! On the same token, what's stopping people from just signing up to Netflix, renting all the discs they can get a hold of and burning copies at home?
The proof is in the pudding. The most pirated material (be it film, music or software) is generally the most profitable. My theory is that if your content isn't turning a profit, it's not piracy that caused it...it probably just isn't very good.
Re:
I think the point of the article was more about the fact that you could sell a Big Mac simply by making it the same way. The difference is that you couldn't call it a Big Mac because the name is trademarked. Nobody could stop you from making a hamburger exactly the same way, but you might be hardpressed to do so in cases where "secret" ingredients are used.