Artists Against Piracy

When I see artists against piracy because they are starving, I have nothing against it. Also, when I see artists against piracy because the law should be the same for all, I have nothing against it, but when movie studios are going against piracy, there's always some dark side of the story. After all, we're still talking about artists against piracy, but this time is the art of making money versus what some people consider freedom - the freedom to share information. Unfortunately, that information happens not be free to share, so here's a new episode in the everlasting "get the pirates" war...

This time, it's all coming from Europe, and not the US. To be more accurate, we're going to talk about the recent claims of a French antipiracy association. How did they get their conclusions? Well, they monitored P2P traffic...and if you ask me, this seems "a bit illegal," just like downloading and watching pirated movies. Anyway, I think we should check their claims first, so let's see what has to say The Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA)...

Before moving on, let me say that I think "Is LimeWire illegal?"(you can replace LimeWire with eMule, BitTorrent or another similar program, the meaning of the question remains the same) is a question not as important as "Is traffic monitoring illegal?" or "Do they have the right to monitor my traffic?" but...that's life. They can do whatever they want, democracy is just a mask, but let's leave those conspiracy theories aside and see those claims I mentioned earlier, shall we?

After analyzing P2P traffic in France between November, 2007 and June, 2008, monitoring 100 of the most popular French and foreign films, ALPA concluded that these movies accounted for as much as 90 percent of all P2P downloads, with a daily average of 450,000. According to them, some of the movies in their list were downloaded so many times, that this method of obtaining them could endanger the entire industry. Come on, "the entire industry"!?! Let's see how this could happen...

To take just one example, ALPA said the French film "Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis" was downloaded 9,800 times per day after its box office release in March, for a total of 682,000 downloads so far.
If we look at the box office tickets sold in France for the movie, that number is...a bit higher, with "only" 20 million! That would mean loses of less than 15%, if I think well, and since the movie didn't cost 15 million to make... figure it out for yourselves!

Despite the above, ALPA still thinks the industry is endangered: "We are facing a major phenomenon that can endanger the film industry and audiovisual industries. We did not expect such figures."

OK, so do these artists against piracy have any solution?(spying on people is an art, no matter what one would say!) Sure, hunt'em all, that's the solution! All of a sudden, "The piracy of films requires urgent measures." Really?

ALPA director Frederic Delacroix even has a plan, backed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, requiring strict monitoring of networks by ISPs, leading to a complete loss of privacy for Internet users, as well as increased costs of the service. I am glad these "artists" from ALPA are not hanging around here, I really do!

Once this plan is being put into action, subscribers to an ISP who have been detected sharing or downloading copyrighted material will get warnings, then they will have their Internet connection cut. The ironic part is that, while the full report won't be made public until September, parts of it have been leaked already. So much for monitoring, security, and keeping data safe. I hope those guys at ALPA are feeling already a taste of their own medicine...

Just my five cents - let's gather a crowd of artists against piracy and ask them how far would they go to see everyone obey the copyright law! Piracy is just a stage in one's life, because sooner or later, they'll realize they're hurting things they love.

I have no idea about movie studios, but I can name a few applications I was proud to buy and that were discontinued because piracy. The one I regret most of not having bought before being discontinued, although I was amazed by the shareware version, is ArtGem. Take a look at it, and then think twice before downloading illegally a movie by your favorite director - it may be his last!