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I put this on my blog, thought I could post it here too. So the MPAA is suing several popular Bittorrent sites. File sharing is the future! All hell can't stop us now! I personally can't afford to see movies at $12 a show. With a date, $24 gone. I will get around paying that much for a movie no matter what they do, whether I see it at the cheap theatre, rent it, watch it on TV, borrow it from a friend, or through file sharing. I also can't rent, I don't have a VCR or DVD player at university, but when I go home I always rent with friends, I don't need to fileshare. I have an entertainment budget, I was willing to spend money on movies, but only up to a point. I'd pick the best ones that I thought might deserve the $12 (or $5 to rent) and when I ran out of money I'd find other ways to see them. They're not going to make any more money off me if they cut off my access to filesharing. And now they'll make no money off me, and I'll work to destroy them with all the free time I have. What does it matter if BT sites make it easier for us to share movies and what not. I could record a movie from TV with a VCR. I can record new music from the radio onto mp3. I could lend someone I hardly know a copy of my favourite movie, in exchange for a movie they have. People share things all the time. We don't all have to buy our own cars, we ride the bus. We pay for eachothers healthcare and education, we share basketballs, parks and swimming pools. The internet just makes sharing easier. As for the MPAA this is their own fault, I could be watching movies right now, but my some of my filesharing sites are offline from the court order. Instead I'm writing this to encourage boycotting of their backing companies: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.; Paramount Pictures; Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal City Studios, LLP; and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Do not pay for hollywood movies! Watch them on TV, sneak into the theatre, download them, read the book, watch a play, watch independent films, get outside, fly a kite do anything except pay for a hollywood movie. What good will suing poor people do? The site getting sued aren't selling the movies for money, they're just search engines for filesharers. There's not much profit for theses sites except maybe the advertising traffic. And suing people who share files is silly, they're usually young people with no money on ignorant family computers. Here's some shit from their site: "Downloading a movie without paying for it is no different than walking into a store and stealing a DVD off the shelf." -Wrong! there is a huge difference, you are filesharing with people who did buy the DVD. It's like walking to your buddy's house and borrowing it. They have a ton of "facts" about how movies aren't profitable on their site but nothing to back it up. They just say 1 in 10 recoup the funds and then later on 6 in 10 do. They also say movies are fueling the economy, that "For the fourth straight year, domestic cumulative box office from all studios continues to hold near $9 billion." $23.24 billion in 2005 for worldwide box office sales. Pretty damned good for an industry making unprofitable products. Here's a great statistic that we all care about: "In 2005, PG and PG-13 films accounted for 85% of 2005’s top 20 films." "The average motion picture cost the MPAA member companies $98 million to make and market in 2004. Six out of ten movies never recoup their original investment. Fewer movies will be made and fewer creative risks will be taken if piracy is continues to rob those who invest in movies." I say, good riddance. It's survival of the fittest. We don't want to see bad movies anyway. And they should stop advertising so much for the damned movies, I'll bet a huge factor is over spending in marketing ("$36.2 million in marketing costs"). "In 2005, the total of new films released increased by 5.6% from 2004, with 549 new films versus 520 in 2004." So 549 films at 90 million per film. $49 billion dollars per year!? And they only get $23.24 billion from the box office... how the hell do they pay for these lawyers to sue filesharing sites? They're in the hole $26 billion dollars. I don't think they can sell $26 billion dollars worth of happy meal toys, even if MacDonalds has served over 99 billion meals. "It's every one of the 750,000 people who get up every day in the U.S. and go to work to bring you the magic of the movies. It's people like the stuntmen and women, the grips, the makeup artists and even the caterers who feed the crew." Good, I sympathize with them but they don't make much, and they get paid no matter what. It's not like they earn a share of the profits, they make minimum wage often. If we take that $60 million cost per movie (not including marketing), they may get paid $80 per movie on average. But the MPAA also says the box office totals come to $23.24 billion in 2005 a year if they shared all that revenue they should get $31,000 annually. And how much money do actors and producers make?! I'm not sure if that 750,000 includes the non-unionized teenaged jobs at all the local theatres or not. But you get the point, film industry workers of the world unite! http://mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_02_23.pdf www.mpaa.org We'll see how long I can stick to this, I really liked some movies out there. There are always independent movies and cheap theatres though. I went for about 5 years buying clothing with no logo's and only "made in Canada, US or europe" labels, hell, my shoes are made of wood. I still only shop at 2nd hand stores or Costco, so I still stick to this, but my mom keeps buying me clothing from the GAP and other members of the evil empire. Check this out, fun song about filesharing: