Sep 30, 2014, 15:00 pm
One of the key points that many people have been making for decades is that copyright infringement likely wouldn't be such a big problem if they actually made works more available in convenient and reasonable ways. This was never an excuse for infringement, but an explanation and a suggestion on ways to minimize the amount of infringement happening. For the past few years, the big legacy copyright holders have been trying to spin things, claiming that they've made stuff "available," and since there's still "infringement" they obviously need new laws to better "protect" their works. They're basically claiming that because the works are now available in some format, the whole "availability" argument is debunked. Except, of course, they're ignoring the full equation. It's not just about making it available, but making it convenient and reasonably available. Instead, the MPAA frequently touts annoying and inconvenient offerings no one uses, claiming disingenuously that this proves the availability argument is untrue.
The latest is that NBC Universal (the driving force behind many MPAA efforts) has commissioned a study from KPMG on the availability of film and TV titles. The clever folks at KPMG have hidden the important factors in the aggregate stats, looking at a big list of 34 services, and saying that as long as a film or TV title are available on one of them, it's "available." But this conveniently buries the more important stat, dug out by TorrentFreak, that the study actually shows over 80% of top film titles are not available on Netflix, which is, by far, the most popular streaming movie service.
Rather than admit this, of course, the MPAA instead has decided to trumpet its friends' misleading coverage of the misleading report (pretty sure nearly everyone in its list has received money from the MPAA). Many of the MPAA's friends insist, incorrectly, that the report shows that these films are widely available, rather than admit the truth -- which is that they're narrowly available, often in inconvenient ways, separated from how people want to watch (and pay for!) those films.
It would be nice if the MPAA were legitimately interested in reducing infringement by improving innovation and allowing more services to flourish. But it has yet to show any honest intentions on that front, preferring bogus and misleading reports like this one.
Originally Published: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 18:05:00 GMT
source
The latest is that NBC Universal (the driving force behind many MPAA efforts) has commissioned a study from KPMG on the availability of film and TV titles. The clever folks at KPMG have hidden the important factors in the aggregate stats, looking at a big list of 34 services, and saying that as long as a film or TV title are available on one of them, it's "available." But this conveniently buries the more important stat, dug out by TorrentFreak, that the study actually shows over 80% of top film titles are not available on Netflix, which is, by far, the most popular streaming movie service.
Rather than admit this, of course, the MPAA instead has decided to trumpet its friends' misleading coverage of the misleading report (pretty sure nearly everyone in its list has received money from the MPAA). Many of the MPAA's friends insist, incorrectly, that the report shows that these films are widely available, rather than admit the truth -- which is that they're narrowly available, often in inconvenient ways, separated from how people want to watch (and pay for!) those films.
It would be nice if the MPAA were legitimately interested in reducing infringement by improving innovation and allowing more services to flourish. But it has yet to show any honest intentions on that front, preferring bogus and misleading reports like this one.
Originally Published: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 18:05:00 GMT
source