Another thread for talking about the morality of downloading films

EDIT: this thread was created from a discussion that branched off in Theater jumping. Onto the discussion:

I would say it's MORE wrong than internet DLs though, because here you're getting the exact same experience as people who paid to go see it and also you're sitting right next to the people who paid. With internet DLs, you're getting this ripped off, usually much lower quality version of the film.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

I mostly agree, but you can definitely make a bit of a case the other way. Specifically, that while the film you steal by sitting in the theater is one instance of theft, it doesn't enable anyone else to follow you, while downloading often does (if you're re-seeding a torrent with what you download, for example).

Here's the problem with your words here, man. "Steal" "theft". It's an inferior facsimile of the original. Remember that it's never the thing itself but a copy of that thing. It's like how reverse engineering is stealing. You're stealing the intangible concept of the thing. Not the thing itself. If internet DL is stealing then mirrors are cloning.

I don't wanna hijack this thread and turn it into another discussion about downloading, so if you'd like to continue beyond this reply, let me know and I'll move these posts somewhere more appropriate.

Except that this is the only plane of existence a movie exists on, anyway. The movie is the mere act of collecting the images, sounds, and ideas, so the fact that you're only stealing the right to see them together is irrelevant: that's the entirety of the thing.

There's nothing about words like "theft" that limits them to tangible things like bread. Ideas and art have value -- if they didn't, there'd be no reason to download them to begin with -- thus, they can be stolen. They exist through other people's hard work and ingenuity, almost invariably done with the specific expectation that they would be compensated for it after the fact. That's the totality of the issue; the rest is either semantics, or rationalizing.

Also, the "inferior facsimile" part isn't necessarily true. You can download DVD-quality movies online.

I can appreciate a good play on concepts as much as anyone, but I don't think this is even remotely true. A copy of a movie is not meaningfully distinct from the original, because you're not selling a physical thing, but the experience of watching it. A reflection of a person, on the other hand, is dramatically different from an actual person.

Appreciating value does not always have to be filtered through the master signifier of capital.

For example, I don't want any money from my blog. I just want people to read it. That makes me feel good. I don't need to profit from it. I don't want to. That cheapens it. Then I'm writing for money, not for the sake of writing something insightful.

Art especially is meant to be appreciated, not purchased. People who purchase art are millionaires and they only do so, because I valuable piece of art is like a valuable piece of real estate.

Do you think Warhol deserves to be worth as much as Picasso? No. It has nothing to do with ability, hard work, or genius. Unless you want to commoditize such things. Artists only want money so they can make more art. Grants for instance. These pay for living expenses so the artist can think about only art and not work ten part-time jobs to feed his talent. Capital is not the only way to repay someone for their work.

Think about it this way. I'd rather have someone write a detailed reply to my post than simply up-thumbing it.

That's why you do it, but obviously plenty of other people expect to be paid for their work. Or the people who paid to make the work possible expect to make money from it. Either way, the person putting their time or money on the line gets to decide if they want something for it. The fact that you write something you don't expect to get paid for obviously doesn't allow you to decide for others whether or not they should.

I also don't think I buy the idea that there's any mutual exclusivity between writing "for money" and writing "something insightful." Plenty of writers are paid to be insightful. But we're already going off topic.

People who purchase art that costs millions of dollars are millionaires, but luckily there are other ways of consuming art. Films are art, and millions upon millions of people pay to experience those.

But this is all far too abstract, and only addressing one part of my post, anyway. The point I was trying to make is that it doesn't matter if someone steals only a "copy" of a film, because the experience of watching it -- original or not -- is the entirety of the thing. Movies offer experiences we cannot create for ourselves, and thus comprise something of value that can be legitimately sold, and therefore stolen. The fact that they're not as zero-sum as something like food doesn't change that.

We need to continue this sometime later then somewhere somehow. I'm sure it'll come up again. I think this is probably the most obscene kind of capitalistic thinking there is. Insight is not something that is the result of capital. Abundant capital motivates only in freeing the mind from having to deal with capital. For example an artistic grant. It is really the opposite. Artists are paid well so they don't have to deal with accruing capital as if accruing capital is antithetical to making art, which it usually is unless you're a hack fictionalist who exploits proletariat sympathies by romanticizing them. Absolutely disagree that this is exists or makes any sort of sense. If it is true, humanity is then definitively a cesspool.

Don't forget that the "experience" also includes unwrapping the box, removing the plastic seals, opening the box, prying out the disc, putting the disc in the DVD player, going through the menus, and hitting play. These are the real things that cost money. I don't ask for them, don't pay for them, and don't get them. The only transaction is the "soul" of the DVD, the content. If you believe in the conception of the soul, you understand that it doesn't even weigh 21 grams.

I can't even recall what it (they) may be called, but there is at least one thread on this subject and probably many more which go into it in more than a little detail. It's probably one of the political threads. planet hasn't even seen those yet. Oy vey.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I'm not going to be the one to bring up some old thread just to rant in it.

I know I'm fighting a losing battle here. As much as I try to wiggle free, I'm ultimately embedded in the system, and the system tells me that I'm doing wrong. This isn't some childish "me against the machine" either. I totally accept the system. I also totally accept what I'm doing. I embody the contradiction here is what I'm saying.

Ha. We gotta keep PN away from those threads, or he'll REALLY start pissing people off!

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"I want a film I watch to express either the joy of making cinema or the anguish of making cinema" -Francois Truffaut

The other board I post a lot on completely bans all political or meta-political discussion.

I'm surprised the same hasn't happened here.

Then again, they've had a lot fiercer flame-wars... maybe... I don't know what went on here in the dark ages before the shoutbox.

I've actually seen a few surprisingly politically driven threads here. I remember one in particular that asked if Darwin was a racist, and it turned into a whole debate over the definition of racism, its inception, its applications in society today and throughout history, etc...

I've also read many posts about things like gun rights. I'd say MoFo's aren't afraid of voicing their opinions and hearing others'.

I've seen the thread, but never read it. My psychotherapist told me to walk away.

Was your psychotherapist by any chance Sigmund Freud? Is that Freud in your avatar by the way? I've never really given it a close look. I just assume it is.

Yes. Yoda says it looks like George Bernard Shaw though. It does, I won't deny it.

But IMO, you can't understand Hitchcock without understanding Freud.

Freud's theories were so influential-or maybe just so vague-that you could pretty much apply his ideas to any great director who repeatedly reworks the same themes.

Well, heck, you could've saved me some time if you'd mentioned this before. I was pointing out that there was, in fact, a contradiction/lapse in logic/whatever. If you acknowledge it, I don't have much else to say.

I think this is a very good point.

Wow, Yoda. I wasn't conceding. I was only explaining where I was coming from. There's no lapse in logic in my argument. There's a lapse in logic in why I'm arguing, because there's a contradiction in my existence as a communist within a capitalist universe.

Now only you can possibly understand this, but some have argued that capitalism isn't just part of our Symbolic Order, but is actually part of The Real. Not only is capitalism everywhere, it takes on different forms wherever it goes and works the exact same way in any of the forms it takes. It's like capitalism is part of the invisible grooves of The Real itself. Quite a devastating idea, but you have to remember that The Real is a very indifferent place. Only in the Symbolic Order do our concepts of ethics and justice exist.

I will continue this argument anytime anywhere (doesn't have to be now or here). It's not like you've exactly beat me or anything.

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>influential

Yes.

>vague

No.

>any great director

Probably, but this only lends credence to his influence.

Also, Hitchcock fits so beautifully, the reinterpretation is almost a work of art in itself.

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Thanks for the move, Yoda.

My mistake, then. On we go:

That's awfully dramatic. Humanity is just motivated by comfort and wealth. How many of Shakespeare's works did he create specifically to make money? It's my understanding that some of his best work was written to appeal to a broad audience, to "sell."

Also, artistic grants are not always fundamentally different from art-for-hire. Instead of writing or painting to please buyers, you're probably just writing or painting to please the people who award the grants. We have to, one way or another, do something that the world values. The steps along the way can be more or less direct in this sense, but in the end, that's what it comes down to.

The idea that art is this separate thing completely compartmentalized from the concerns of the real world, like money or food, doesn't ring true to me. It's making art out to be some kind of idol. But people create great art on a deadline, or on commission, or to pay their bills, or even as a result of concerns about money. It's not this island of human experience that must be shielded from everything else.

And yet you download films that don't have any of this part of the "experience" (which is completely dwarfed by watching the film itself), so clearly they have value beyond this, or you wouldn't do it. That makes this yet another ancillary issue.

The ideas here are pretty straightforward, and we're dancing around them needlessly: films have value because we value watching them, and because not just anyone can make them. They constitute an experience that requires time, skill, and money to create. Watching a film without paying for it -- even if it's a "copy" -- is clearly theft because you're stealing the experience. which is the only thing really being sold. So the idea that you're only stealing a "copy" is a meaningless defense.

The fact that it's not physical or tangible is irrelevant, because the people who pay for it honestly aren't really getting anything physical or tangible, either, unless you actually want to try to tell me that opening a DVD or walking into a theater is on par with watching the movies themselves. But I don't think you believe that.

I don't have much to contribute to the Freudian theory talk, but on the morality of downloading I think I do.

The media industry has strengthened copy-right protection too much. In American is gives 95 years of protection, while patent protection is just 20 years. If the industry was fairer I would say downloading was bad, but the industry wants to force us to pay them to watch the same content over and over, and its usually the same content because why would they make new, if the old is still protected? This is why movie libraries like MGM are/were so sought after because they are suppose to provide reliable cash flows. The Economist wrote about it like this:

"Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of [copyright] protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.

The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one’s cake and eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the creator or publisher gives up any natural and perpetual claim in order to have the state protect an artificial and limited one. So it remains.

The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade favour publishers too much.[i]"


Even though I don't download, it's just a way around a unfair law anyway.

[i] Economist. “Protecting Creativity: Copyright and wrong” London: The Economist. April 8, 2010.