Beware! Personal copies of games and movies are illegal

[evilstebunny]

The biggest mistake the media industry made was to ignore the internet as distribution medium. People want to see and hear (consume) stuff and are prepared to pay for it, but take the example in garp's post .. all the effort to drive to the shop, park, pay and rip to different formats vs. 3 minute search on the net, a little 'buffering' and voila. Can't beat that for convenience.

Meanwhile big media was obsessing over protecting the movement of their physical product (and profits) while the internet was bypassing them on both speed and convenience, hell right or wrong, it even beat them on price

So it became established that internet = free & easy, while the legal way was slow, expensive, and inconvenient .. sometimes even impossible. Plus in many cases they 'punished' the legitimate purchaser while the illegal user enjoyed a much better user experience. Anyone surprised that people began to take the easy way out?

There's a lot more I can say. Cost is one aspect. I fully recognise that artists need to be paid for their work but digital media has infinite supply & negligible duplication cost, in fact distribution cost has shifted from manufacturer to consumer now. Why, with the additional sales & exposure the internet brings, are prices still so high?

When I still tolerated Apple in my life I refused to buy vouchers on iTunes out of principle as I won't jump through hoops for something that's essentially broken. I also won't pay same price (or more) for the digital equivalent. I'm thinking ebooks here, I know it costs you less so I simply won't pay your ridiculous asking prices. I simply won't. Why, for example, don't you ask yourself why I've got such a huge (digital) game collection on Steam?

This article is a perfect example of this lunacy .. I paid for the content and just want to enjoy it on a different format but now I'm told it's illegal. WTF? Are you trying your best for me NOT to buy your product? Where will this madness end?

It's time the legal & especially copyright industry take a long hard look at themselves. They need to change to fit the times, else people will just continue to treat them with the contempt they deserve. Articles like this just pisses us off more.

And that's the honest truth.

[Nephew_]

Proof that no one (rights owners, SAFACT, police) is serious about illegally copied movies: The hawkers selling the camcorder copied movies are on the same street corner everyday without fail.

To me that is slightly more serious than me making mp3's of my owned CD (format shifting) for personal use.

The mind boggles as why they would want to shout at us for backing up movies or making mp3's while while others openly make money from bad quality copied movies. Seriously?