Fast and Furious 6 Gets UK Movie Pirate 33 Month Jail Term

[Strazdas]

According to FACT, Danks' piracy cost Universal "millions of pounds of loss,"

How on earth do they get those numbers?

Liek... How do they know that this amount of people would instead go to the cinema to watch it? Most of them would probably ignore it if there was no pirated version anyway since they have no intention of paying for it to begin with.

Simple - they dont. Every single download count (even if its same person reporting multiple downloads) * the most expensive ticket price they can legally get away with = lost profit

Thats how these groups think. There is no logic behind it, because their whole existence is illogical.

That's pretty much the universal reason as to why people pirate. The majority at least don't have the money to actually see it..same goes for video games.

They pay more for internet access. They have the money for a movie ticket, they just don't care enough about the movie.

You are assuming people pirate 1 movie per month. this assumtion is wrong.
You are also assuming that internet is always more expensive than a movie ticket. This assumtion is also wrong.

A company uploaded a super HD version of a film 1 week after film realease? To people who want it, that is unacceptable.

This has never happened. In fact, there is absolutely no way to buy a SHD copy of a movie (though to be honest almost no way to pirate it either).
As far as people waiting, people wait. a lot. I visit a piracy site for its forum, because its the best forum in my local language, however that also means i get exposed to a lot of piracy discussion. and what i see is almos unanimous demand to flat out ban camrips from the site as too low quality and acceptance to wait for DVD/BR. The demand for quality is shifting fast to the point where camrips are simply not acceptable anymore. Also looking at download statistics site report 720p and 1080p rips have more downloads than the earlier showing DVD rips.

What IS unacceptable is waiting half a year to release a DVD/BR, and it has nothing to do with piracy.

I mean, for example: In Australia, it costs roughly $20+ for an adult ticket. $15-$20 more for a popcorn and drink. If I have to pay $35-$40 for the 'cinema experience' I'm simply not going to go. Hell, if they charged me the same amount but let me stream it in the comfort of my own home, I'd actually pay to see more movies in a given year. At least I know I'll be able to enjoy the film in the comfort and quiet of my own home and pay $5 for my own snacks.

I have been lobbying for Good quality video downloads for years (because lets face it netflix stream quality is horrible and i dont want horrible quality, not that netflix is even available outside of a few priviledged countries). yet there is NO legal way to buy movie downloads. How can you complain about people priating if there is no legal alternative to begin with?

This is the correct way piracy should be handled. It's like drugs, go after the distributors.

This is the only way piracy can be handled currently. Almost all countries have laws set in such a way that its only possible to sentence distributors and not the users. in some countries (switzerland for example) its not even a crime to download pirated material, only to distribute it.

What fascinates me about this is, if Danks is to be believed, FACT sat in on his official interrogation and basically told the police how to investigate the case. I can't think of any other pressure group with that kind of authority.

LANVA, the local Antipiracy group here, has went so far as to do their own investigation that they then gave to police. However the case was thrown out of court the moment defendants lawyer mentioned that there is no way to verify that what LANVA claims is actually true, because anyone can type your IP on a piece of paper and claim its proof.

Pretty much all Anti-Piracy groups try to tell police how to do their job, and usually fail spectacullary. Ironic perhaps, but the leader of our LANVA was arrested a year later for distributing weed. This was quite a spectacle to watch in the pirates world.

Thats a very optimistic way to look at it. Assuming that everybody is downloading purely because of a lack of digital access really isnt true. The simple answer is people are lazy and greedy, a torrent is easy to get, and its free. There are still tons of shows out there that are being pirated that are on Netflix and on other services.. people still torrent them because its free. Yes the Entertainment industry being stupid and not updated their business model is certainly not helping, but it isnt the main reason.

It worked for videogames. Look at steam and the profits it made for gamin industry.

Also netflix is not equivalent service to piracy. Netflix stream quality is very poor compared to pirated downloads. People also torrent netflix shows because There is no Netflix shows. Netflix outside of US is utter shit where it exists, and thats only in a few selected countries. Thats not fault of Netflix though but of movie industry trying to fuck over anyone outside of US with its licensing.

Also if they actually did a full HD movie download service id be thier top costumer!

Its almost impossible for companies to appease the masses. Without a huge cultural shift, or vastly improved servies, right now the main way you stop piracy is by viciously targeting the distributes to dissuade more and more people from sharing. It certainly isnt the best option, but right now its what works until we get a better system in place everywhere.

Its true that a large investment of effort is needed to change the tactics from 19th century to 21st century. You are wrong about a way to stop piracy though. right now - there is none. piracy is unstoppable, you can only compete with it. jailing the most stupid member of a group does not really damage the group. Right now... it just doesnt work.

No, I'm afraid that is a particularly antiquated view of ownership which, like most countries' laws, hasn't taken account of technology and is what copyright law attempts to rectify (badly). That view simply doesn't work in a world where electronic copies of data are so easy to copy/steal/distribute. There has to be some protection for the producer of said data, be they a multinational corporation raking in billions from the sweat of slave labour or a single person working every minute of their free time to scrape a living together. Their work is theirs and they have a right to seek compensation whenever anyone else uses/watches/whatever their work. The view that you have to deprive someone of an item for it to be theft belongs squarely in the last century (where it was out of date even then).

No, these views are not antequated. Information is not an item you can steal. you can illegal copy it, which we call copyright infringement which is not theft in any sense of the word.

Except your own reasoning falls down here. If someone has illegally obtained a copy of (in this case) a movie, there is no reason to assume they will seek to pay the producer for a legal copy. In other words, by taking a copy, they are depriving the producer of a sale. The notion that they will pay for a legal copy later, is irrelevant as it is functionally the same as "it's not theft if I intend to return it later". Similarly, the notion that they wouldn't have bought one anyway is, as I explained in the post you quoted, also nonsense.

Wrong again. The most common finding in piracy studies is that people who pirate - buy more legal copies to support authors they end up liking. Also piracy is not equal to depriving of costumer because there is aboslutely no way to quantify how many people would have bought a cat in a bag had they not be able to pirate it. The only nonesense here is your post.