It's Only Wrong When YOU Do It
Jack Valenti, former president of the Motion Picture Association of America, says you shouldn't copy movies because it's morally wrong.
Yet Paramount and other Hollywood studios cheat taxpayers by using loopholes in the tax laws.
I think the MPAA and RIAA should stop throwing stones.
Blog Tag: Opinion
Posted 5/21/2005 11:29:00 AM
L
On 5/21/2005 2:43 PM, 
Melissa said...
On 5/21/2005 3:48 PM, dkgoodman said...
On 5/21/2005 4:46 PM, Melissa said...
On 5/21/2005 6:27 PM, dkgoodman said...
4 Comments:
Dave, I'm not sure that I understand your opinion. Are you saying that it is okay to copy movies because the movie companies take unfair advantage of tax loopholes and cheat German and British taxpayers? I'm not on anyone's side. I'm just curious.
At one time, there were no copyright or patent protections. From what I've read, the patent and copyright system was originally designed to reward creators and inventors for their efforts while allowing the public to use their creations. They were not intended to protect those creations for excessive lenghts of time, nor to prevent the public from using them, simply to provide the creators a reasonable reward.
If I buy a CD or DVD, am I buying the piece of plastic? No, I'm buying the contents, the intellectual property. The plastic is just a medium. I should be able to play that CD or DVD on any player I have. If I want to play it on my Pocket PC, or my cellphone, then I have to convert it into a file I can use. It is fair use to put music or a movie on my Pocket PC or other device for my own use, and to make backups of it for when the plastic wears out.
If the industry can find a way to keep people from pirating their products, that's fine with me, as long as the products I purchase can be used on my devices and can be backed up.
The MPAA and RIAA don't care about my rights, they just want to maximise their profits at my expense. What irritates me is their holier-than-thou attitude, trying to convince the public that this is a moral issue, when morally and legally I have a right to use the products I've paid for, especially when the music and movie industries have been morally and legally wrong in many of their own actions, using materials without paying for them, selling movies on DVD without adequately compensating the actors who signed contracts before there were DVDs or videotape, and taking advantage legally and illegaly of shady tax loopholes, and using creative accounting to cheat the actors and producers of their profits.
The RIAA and MPAA are trying to prevent me from using the content I've paid for, and worse, they're trying to require manufacturers to add more protections to the devices they make, which costs the manufacturers more money, and costs the consumer more money, for providing equipment that has a legal use. To me, that's stealing, too.
I shouldn't have to pay more for a hammer because some people break windows with them, and I shouldn't have to pay more for a computer because some people pirate movies with them. If that happens, then I'll have no sympathy when those movies and music do get pirated.
If they want to impress me with moral imperatives, they can start paying for the quotes they use in their advertising ("Fair use!" they say), and stop misrepresenting movies as comedies when they're dramas, stop using loopholes to avoid paying taxes or profit shares, stop infringing on my rights, and stop making it harder to use my own computers.
End of rant. :)
Thank you for your logical and well written explanation. I understand now. You would have made a good lawyer, not that I'm recommending that as a profession. :)
Yeah, that's what my mother always told me as I was growing up. "You should be a lawyer!"
Of course, she always followed that with, "Because you argue so much!"
:)
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