NJgr8ful

Audiofn

Come on man are you serious? The problem is there is free off the internet and there is cost from the store. They could sell cd's for 2 bucks and people would still rather rip them for free off the net. Have you noticed that as of late the cost of CD's and DVD's has actually gone UP!!! Why do you think that is? I am willing to bet it is due to most of the ripping. It is steeling no matter how you cut it. Petty theft of a artists property. People work hard to get recognition, finally make it, then they get hosed because people download their stuff instead of buying it. Hell even as they are a price of a CD is only about 14 bucks. So about the cost of 7 gallons of gas. Is that really over priced? What about the millions of dollars that are spent to make a movie then we are all just going to ripo them for free? Don't they deserve to make some money? Then there is the issue of due to all the steeling of music those of us that want to buy it have to pay more. You know just like the people making false insurance claims driving up insurance for our cars, health and everything else.

I have a DVD hard drive storage unit that will rip DVD's and it is the ONLY legal unit available. Any other way is NOT LEGAL no matter what they tell you. This unit is http://www.kaleidescape.com It comes at a price of course. It costs 28,000 bucks for a base system. Part of what you are paying for is the license agreement and the ability to copy YOUR OWN CD's. Part of that agreement is that you DO NOT alter the cd at all You have to record all trailers and every chapter of the DVD. DVD's fall under a different catagoy then CD's do. CD's are not copy protected like DVD's are. The breaking of the DVD code means you have broken the law. There is a new law on the books in fact that will make illegal to fast forward through the trailers of a DVD. I think that is totally bogus but I bet it is going to be hear before you know it.

Jon

NJgr8ful

Audio, Why do you think they use the term 'ripping' the files?? I buy subscription to NetFlix .. pay for the movie to be at the house, the kids watch it .. if they request a back-up of the movie, I try and find the time

NetFlix is way cool BTW for those that have not looked into. 3 out plan. Any 3 DVDs at the house, any length of time, no late fees ... ever. All the new releases. $17.95/mo

TopSpin80

I'm with netflix also... and I think of it like this..... I paid for the right to view the movie as many times as I please.. and if I like it I can "rip" it and view it again.. I'm not copying all the moves and giving them to friends, so who cares.

plus it is legal to copy a movie that you own as a back-up for your DVD collection. My collection just includes everything I get from netflix

I think actors are overpaid for their 'talents' as well as sports players... I think most would agree that if you walked through some of the homes that these people own as just their weekend retreats that they can afford us ripping their DVD's... most of us are going to the theatre and watching the movies also.

the small people in the industry that this hurts... need to gang up on the actors and the actors need to cut their big ticket salaries and let the little guys make some money... when that happens.. I'll buy the DVD

Ernie


by the way I don't believe in downloading DVD's off the internet, I'll atleast rent them... the internet move download quality is way too low

mcollinstn

I offer no argument that downloading (other than iMusic or something) is stealing. Never intended to condone it.

But YES I DO think that $16 music CD's caused the downloading craze. CD's came to us in the early 80's as a format that would LOWER the cost of purchased music and RAISE the sound quality (although the first batch was crappy due to the original mastering being done for vinyl). It was billed by the mfrs as the medium that was going to lower the cost from like $6.99 for vinyl, and $5.99 cassette, TO appx $4 for a high quality compact disc that would not lose sound quality with time or replaying over and over. Guess what? The discs came out at $7.99 and never looked back. After all, the consumer was getting a BETTER product so why give them a break, even though the mfg cost was less than either vinyl or mag tape.

Well, time passes and the cost of producing CD's drops to less than a penny apiece. nowhere was even a fraction of this cost savings passed back to the consumers. Some (not I, but some) guys decided that since you could do an image dump of a CD, tht you might as well rip them to disc. MP3 compression came about, and all of a sudden music became extremely compact and manageable.

Instead of the commercial marketers of music capitalizing on the technology, they left it to the fringe element (pirates) to perfect the system. And that they did.

My kids download illegal music. Most of it is of very questionable quality. Bad compression, crappy source hardware, compression of a pre compressed copy, etc. They make their little mixes. They splice pieces of it together in freeware music editing programs. They add little stuff like DJ talk and such. I did worse when I was in middle school.

They also own a lot of purchased CDs.

Do I feel sorry for the record industry? Sure I do. But I think they brought it on themselves. Not that they did anything illegal, they played very fair. But they were selling something VERY EASILY copied and distributed. More reasonable pricing would have minimized the upside to illegal distribution.

Did Metallica have a valid argument? You Betcha.

But the record companies were too greedy. And when sales dropped, they raised their prices in an attempt to keep the profits up. Sure they are cheaper now. Have to be.

Movies? Best I understand it, is that they have gone to great lengths to make it difficult to copy a movie. But some group of hacks is always going to figure out a way around it. All you can do is feel confident that the main slice of the general public won't be interested in an involved collection of decrypting software and a stack of hardware to circumvent the system. Cause there's always gonna be an element that will copy your work.

If it's data, the hacks will copy it.
If it's technology, the Japanese will copy it.
If it's commodities, the Chinese will copy it.

Rules, Trademarks, Copyrights, etc. They are all there to discourage copying. But somebody will always continue to do it.

My kid asked me about a mod chip for his consoles. I told him nope. He asked about a DVD burner. I told him nope. But he burns CDs like crazy. He makes some pretty good mixes.

Had CD's been introduced at the $4 price they were bragging about? I bet the copiers would have been far less inclined to create their own industry about it.

JLANE

DVD Xcopy Express. Works great for me.

NJgr8ful

JLane ... Loved XCOPY Express too .. but my serial code # expired

The legality issue shouldn't even be a topic of discussion here, IMO it's like politics and religion anyway ... ain't no winners

TopSpin it's funny, NetFlix has me and the kids racing to meet the mailman He's clueless lol

Audiofn

Mcollinst: Say what ya want about the cost but 13 bucks is still cheap. It is not so much the cost of the actuall cd that you are paying for, of course that is neglicable. It is the cost of copy write, legal fees with this entire illegal media swapping industry, and some were in there money for the artist (very little they make their money mostly on touring) and the recording company. Are they still priffitable ya I am sure they are. However there have been a LOT of smaller recording studios that have gone out of business due to the MP3 Industry. There have also been some artists that maybe made it a little farther then they would had they NOT had this part of the industry. However that is music and what we are talking about is DVD. As I said music does NOT have any copy protection on it other then it being illegal to make copy's and give them to your friends. DVD's have anti piracy software on them. Just the fact that you have bypast that software is a huge criminal offense IF you get caught. As of now the movie industry is not pursuing small guys like you and me but they will be soon I am sure as this software becomes more and more well known.

If ya do this and some one steels the drives off your boat I hope ya don't complain as it is NO different. After all the drives are expensive right and if I need one why buy one when I can just go and take it off my neighbors. Is this extream sure it is and I realize that in the case of ripping it your neighbor still has his music to listen to. However the legalities are still the same. You can justify it any way you want. Even with my license that I have purchased making it LEGAL for me to rip them to my Kalidescape I know full well that it is Illegal to rent a movie and rip it to my hard drive. The prices of movies has gone up quite a bit in the last year. Why? NOT because of artists making more money in fact there have not been the huge sallaries paid that they once did, not because the studio's want to make more money, but because of piracy. It is driving the prices up for those of us that want to play by the rules. Do I wish the stuff was cheaper? Sure I do, do I think that 13 bucks is outrageous for a disc, not really, 30 for a DVD movie not really. Hell it costs me over 30 to go to the movies with my wife...... They are working on new DVD software for anti piracy all the time. It costs millions of dollars. This all has to be added into the cost of the DVD's. They will get this so that they can not be cracked. No one has after all figured out the new cable and sat encryp. Then the costs will stay high and justafiably so.

mcollinstn

Oh, bite my butt, Jon. Of COURSE it's different. It's copy theft, not physical theft. That's why it's so prevalent. There's no MATERIAL loss. It's just like you luring my (male) dog into your garage and mating him with your (female) dog before letting him run back home. I still get my dog back, but you get a house full of puppies (to keep, sell, etc.)...

<< remember here that I am NOT attempting to minimize the illegality of it, but am only using illustrations to show WHY I think it's become such a big issue >>

Since the beginning of time, copy protection has been an issue. Patent law, Copyright law, Trademark law, Intelligent Property law. It is big business.

And copying a protected product is theft. No doubt about it. But it NOT physical theft.

So that makes it "feel" less wrong.
That's why the casual copier gets to "feel" like he isn't hurting anything.

Price of music includes the cost of legal fees for litigating against copiers and data streamers? Sure it does. But my stand says that if their pricing had been lower TO BEGIN WITH, that the data streaming issue would never have been so attractive to the pirates. It wouldn't have been as big a deal.

It's like cloning grass. Fescue, for example, isn't a creeping grass. It won't spread on its own. Could scientists actually CLONE fescue? Bet they could. It would be expensive and it would take a while to bring the cost down very much at all but they might eventually be able to get it done pretty cheaply after a few years of revising the process. BUT YOU CAN BUY FESCUE SEEDS FOR NEXT TO NOTHING. So why spend the effort on trying to make cloning it an economically viable process?

So since the music industry priced their CD's too high, it made copying an attractive idea. Much more so than if they had been priced more attractively to begin with.

Music Artists? You're right. Most don't make squat off the sale of the music in stores. That money goes to the Label, the writer, and the publisher. Artists get their bucks from live performances.

Has the downloading craze hurt music companies. No doubt. I hate it.

But I still contend that the cart didn't come before the horse. The music industry created the conditions that encouraged downloading.

I'm finished arguing this. I have no hat to throw into this argument. I have no plans to copy DVD's. I have no plans to copy video games. I have no plans to stop buying CD's. My kids download low quality music, but more times than not, they eventually add the "real" CDs to their "wish lists" and they get bought in the longrun anyway.

Jon, I'm proud that you're a hard-liner. It's a good stand to make. I don't necessarily agree that the industry is the lonely victim in the downloading war, cause I feel they encouraged it. But I'd rather see you stand firm against it, than to stand firm for it (copying).

And if you stop saying it's like stealing my outdrives, you don't have to bite my butt.

mc

robyw1

Actually it would be like someone copying the drives off his boat and doing so without having to pay a dime for them.

Roby