Your daily round-up of some of the other stories in the news
Hollywood entertainment group to fight piracy
A group of 30 entertainment companies, including major players like Netflix, HBO, Twentieth Century Fox and Amazon, have teamed up to take on piracy.
Uniting together as ACE, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the coalition of studios, networks, digital media players and distributors plans to combine resources and work alongside law enforcement to put an end to piracy.
Though the companies recognise the positive impact of digital innovations, with them comes an increase in piracy. It’s estimated that last year alone there were 5.4 billion illegally downloaded films and TV shows and piracy sites racked up a massive 21.4 billion visits. And, we’ve seen high-profile evidence of this just recently when a hacker held Netflix to ransom over the latest series of Orange is the New Black, Disney lost out when the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film was stolen and HBO took a hit when Game of Thrones season 5 was leaked.
Covfefe was not a typo
Many Twitter users heartily guffawed over this meme-able tweet from President Trump:
But now it turns out that COVFEFE is real.
Sky News reports that the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (COVFEFE) bill was written up to ensure that presidential tweets aren’t deleted.
Democratic congressman Mike Quigley who introduced the bill, and gave it the rather tongue-in-cheek title, said: “In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets.”
He added, “If the President is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference.”
Kim Dotcom loses another appeal
Megaupload creator and, as his Wikipedia page lists, ‘businessman, musician, and political party founder’ Kim Dotcom has lost another battle to reclaim $42 million seized by the US government, reports CNET.
Dotcom was arrested in 2012 in New Zealand on piracy-related charges but while on bail he continues to fight his extradition to the US.
A tweet from Dotcom earlier today reads:
According to the US Govt I’m a fugitive for using my treaty rights to defend against extradition to the US.
A country I’ve never been to. 🤔
While ill health and fugitive status are keeping him from being charged in the US, the Department of Justice argues that these are invalid reasons for returning the money and assets, including jet skis, luxury cars, a $10,000 watch and art worth more than $100,000.
BT
Type in last paragraph first sentence btw.
Will be interesting to see what Hollywood can actual do to fight piracy. Not sure what they really have the power to do. It would be interesting to see the distribution of consumers world wide for pirated material.
Paul Ducklin
Fixed the typo, thanks.
Bryan
As a musician I understand the desire to earn money from the work one does. As a *broke* musician I understand the desire to get entertainment without paying dearly for it.
Fortunately there are many legal try-before-you-buy resources (to wit: YouTube) which help us make wiser decisions on which entertainment is worth our hard-earned paycheck.
While it’s easy to dismiss an A-list actor’s multimillion-dollar payday, the film may not have been worth seeing without that person bringing a great character to life. It’s the executives who are more arguably overpaid; yes, you gave Stevie Ray Vaughan his first break and deserve compensation, but not millions and millions for it–his light would’ve shone no matter who “discovered” it.
Lastly, while I’m definitely opposed to rampant piracy, calling an DRM coalition the “Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment” is decidedly disingenuous. That doesn’t quack like a duck.
Max
I would like for someone to do some meaningful studies as to how much money the entertainment industry *really* loses through piracy. As it is now, they mostly seem to equate every illegal download with lost money in a somewhat 1:1 relation. But this falsely assumes that every one of those downloaders would have otherwise payed to access that content. In my opinion that is only the case for a minority. I would argue that most of those downloads either happen because the person could not afford to consume that content in another way, or does not have access to it in a legal way. And of those remaining that do translate to lost profit directly, there is still a “free” promotion aspect to consider. Wasn’t Game of Thrones the most pirated show ever or something along those lines? I’d say part of the reason why practically everyone who has any interest in entertainment knows about Game of Thrones is exactly that. And I doubt GoT/HBO is struggling financially.
Bryan
Yeah, those figures are just a touch generous.
Breaking news, Universal Pictures has filed chapter 11, declaring “we lost 29 billion dollars last week alone on illicit copies of Howard the Duck.”Hyperbole much?
Myself as an example: back when Napster was new, I splurged **. There were many songs which elicited responses from me like “eh, I kinda like that one too” [click]. The same titles browsing in a CD store would have found me glossing over them without a second glance. Morality of my younger, shortsighted actions aside, it decidedly did not represent a 1:1 anything. I never even listened to all the songs…but I did buy a few albums after hearing those that I otherwise wouldn’t have, which justified (in my mind) the theft.
** Older and wiser, I wouldn’t pirate creative works now. I had those songs for a couple years, but then a water pipe broke, killing the drive in question. Call it Karma, call it coincidence, I call it hereby relieving me of the conundrum. And simultaneously teaching me about backups.