The thought has crossed my mind a few times recently, well mainly when I go to the cinema or put a DVD in to watch, sit back in to relax and watch the movie I have either just rented out, purchased or paid an exorbitant ticket price for. Then you get the movie piracy message. Now personally I am just plain sick and tired of seeing this and I’m sure the rest of the 99% of the population who do the right thing are as well.

It really has become apparent to me that before you even consider illegally downloading a movie or song the Music & Movie industries already have you labeled as a thief and a criminal, otherwise why would they show the same rotten message at the beginning of every movie. In my opinion these industries are petrified of being left behind as new media overtakes them with more modern distribution methods leaving them with no means of income.

It is truly disgusting that after you go to the cinemas and pay anywhere between $15 to $30 dollars for a ticket and some overpriced food you then get accused of being a pirate with this message they continue to press on with. Does this seem a little wrong to anybody else? Shouldn’t these ignorant companies start moving forward with the rest of us in seeing that adding copy protection to absolutely everything isn’t actually helping any cause. Pirates know how to get around copy protection, and copy protection is only a major pain in the proverbial behind to all honest citizens of the world.

I say that its a pain for all honest citizens in that content we have legitimately purchased is so laden with copy protection that it is almost impossible without some level of technical knowledge to actually transfer a movie that you own from a DVD to your iPod to view on the go. These companies are actually game enough to expect us to go and purchase another electronic copy to achieve this same end result.

This plain insanity on the music & movie industries behalf became really apparent to me today when I came across this article Woman arrested for trying to record ‘Twilight’ on digital camera from American newspaper Chicago Sun Times. Essentially the gist of this story is that the Woman was holding a surprise birthday party in a Cinema, and legitimately enough was taking a video recording of the party on her camcorder. The insane theatre manager then decided to go on a rampage after seeing her video recording and call the police who proceeded to search the tape and arrest the woman because there happened to be footage of the Twilight movie ‘New Moon’. Which had been captured accidentally.

This is all a little over the top if you ask me and it might be about time for these industries to wake up to themselves and realise that trying to act like anti-piracy God’s isn’t going to get them anywhere fast. They need to accept that things change and innovate new ways of delivering their content while treating their paying customers like humans rather than assuming off the bat that they are criminals.

]]> http://lukeandmelissah.com/were-all-criminals-according-to-music-movie-industries/feed 0 http://lukeandmelissah.com/internet-addiction-or-utility http://lukeandmelissah.com/internet-addiction-or-utility#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:24:42 +0000 Luke http://lukeandmelissah.com/?p=83

It would seem sometimes that our lives are gradually becoming more and more reliant on the internet, as we tend towards mobile phones capable of browsing the web and becoming your mobile portal to the internet. With the internet always connected and piped into our homes in the form of DSL and internet plans constantly allowing us to download more and more. We have certainly come a long way from having to dial into our ISP’s simply to browse the most basic web pages and download our latest emails.

But has this easy ability to just ‘jump’ online whenever we feel like it turned into an addiction? Well I don’t believe so, actually I think that the internet could be the 21st century electricity. In the same way electricity was something that only few could access, it’s benefits soon became apparent to the world and before you know it every home in the country has a constant supply. I think we are starting to see this now with the internet, people are starting to turn to applications like twitter and online news feeds for their news, using online video streaming services such as youtube and iTunes to get our entertainment fix, and even by using online programs like the ones offered by Google in the form of Google Docs for our word processing needs.

With GenY slowly becoming more influential it will be important for traditional media to recognize the importance of providing content able to be accessed at leisure by consumers, generally speaking GenY is impatient and wants to be entertained when it suits them, if they want to watch an episode of their favorite show, they don’t want to have to wait until a certain time slot on a certain day. It will therefore be necessary for companies to integrate their content into the internet.

With a lot of our services and computer needs being managed ‘in the cloud’ I certainly think we are moving into a time where access to the internet access is something that we are going to need rather than want.