MPAA's War of Words With GigaOm Editor Over "Promoting Piracy"

[admin]

Janko Roettgers, a writer and co-editor for news website GigaOM, has angered MPAA bosses by pointing out his observation that, in times of economic strife, families may turn to movie and TV show piracy to get their entertainment.

In an article titled 'Sorry, Hollywod: Piracy may make a comeback', Roettgers theorized that with families struggling to foot daily bills, non essentials such as movie purchases and cable TV subscriptions might have to make way for more pressing concerns, such as the rent, mortgage and bills. And Roettgers adds that if these families still needed entertainment, they may turn to online piracy. "With memories of the housing slump still fresh, many people could simply return to BitTorrent and download movies for free instead of going to the movies or paying for VOD," Roettgers wrote in the article.

However, the MPAA took offence at Roettgers' observations. The MPAA's Alex Swartsel attacked Roettgers for his "casual promotion" of piracy as an "acceptable way to save money". GigaOm then gave Swartsel space on their website to publish a guest opinion on the matter, which proved to a be controversial move as visitors of GigaOm complained about the website allowing the MPAA to publish their "propaganda".

Swartsel's article makes the comparison between online piracy and "shoplifting", saying that had Roettgers said that families could save money by stealing clothes from a department store, that no one would agree with Roettgers assertions. The main issue though, as a TorrentFreak article on this verval war pointed out, Roettegers did not condone or support piracy in his original article, merely pointing out a prediction of a very likely event.

What is more disturbing though is that the MPAA should find it necessary to attack an observer, someone that "dared" to suggest movie pirates are ordinary, (normally) law abiding citizens, families struggling to pay the bill, and not the hardened criminals, car thieves and shoplifters the industry wants people to believe they are.

(Story Source)

[rago88]

Let's call it what it really is:

digital file shoplifting

[admin]

It's not even that. When you shoplift something, the original is gone and the owner (the store) has a physical loss that needs to be replaced, and at the same time, that object is no longer available for sale and thus causing the store to lose profit in the meantime.

But this is not the case with web piracy.

With web piracy, it's as if you could go into a store, make a copy of an object (Star Trek style), and take away that copy. Has the store really lost anything? They might have lost something (your patronage) if your original intention was to buy that object, but if you never intended to buy or were unable to, then they, the rights holder, the manufacturer - everyone involved basically, have lost nothing. And the original object is still available for sale in the store and so they still have the ability to make a profit from that object.

So this is why the shoplifting, or car theft analogy doesn't really apply to web downloads.

[rago88]

A good description..
Wish the MPAA saw it that way... but never in our lifetime I suppose.

[admin]

If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem [piracy] much more serious than before

Guess who made the above quote? Some "piracy promoter" on GigaOM?

Nope, it's former MPAA boss Dan Glickman from a couple of years ago. Obviously, he's a "piracy promoter" too.

Credits to TorrentFreak for pointing out the hypocrisy.