Not too long ago, we reported on how producers of the film “Hurt Locker” were saying that they would sue tens of thousands of file-sharers for downloading the movie. Apparently, a producer since sent a rather inpulsive (to put it lightly) response to someone who threatened to boycott their works over the litigation tactics.
The fiery exchange was posted on BoingBoing where someone from Toronto sent a letter to a producer of “Hurt Locker” as a result of the news that the producers would be suing tens of thousands of BitTorrent users.
“I wish to register my disagreement with these tactics,” the letter said, “and would like you to know that as a result of these actions I am boycotting your films. The majority of the people you are suing were not seeking to make money from their downloads, and will be financially devastated by a lawsuit or settlement. While it is completely understandable that Voltage Pictures wishes to defend its intellectual property, this is an inhumane way of doing so.”
Apparently, it sparked quite a fiery response.
“I’m glad you’re a moron who believes stealing is right.” Nicolas Chartier continued, “I hope your family and your kids end up in jail one day for stealing so maybe they can be taught the difference. Until then, keep being stupid, you’re doing that very well. And please do not download, rent, or pay for my movies, I actually like smart and more important HONEST people to watch my films.”
This is why it’s always been difficult to debate people like this who believe that copyright should be a tight as possible. Rather than responding with maybe some sort of logical reason, they’d rather hurl insults which suggest that they act like a 5 year old when their mother refuses to buy them candy. Copyright maximalists have been known to just employ non-productive responses in any kind of debate at times. There have been those in the past that at least respond with some reason (even if almost all of it is either misguided or misleading most of the time in our opinion), though such responses have been increasingly rare and going in favour to people like this. Some might even go so far as to say that people like Chartier is giving copyright maximalists a bad name over things like this.
If someone wants to be shown any form of respect, they need to give it first. Clearly, that’s not happening here. It’s extremely difficult to respect someone who calls his fans “morons”.
If Chartier wants to have any sort of debate degenerate in to nothing more than a shouting match, that’s clearly up to him, but many people will know about the exchange and quite easily boycotte his productions as well. I know I certainly won’t even consider seeing anything produced by him after all of this.
But really, can’t we at least grow up a little first?
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I tell u what if my ip add comes up on their list, Ill make sure they come up on my hit list and since this dirt bag mentioned kids ill terrorize his family too if he has one@!!!!!!.
The flaw of regulatory oversight is that numerous elite and self entitled and self indulgent persons take horrible risks with other people’s lives in order to get their way under a theory that toddler temper tantrums can or should be effectively carried into adulthood, and that it is acceptable.
It is not, never has been acceptable, and in theory,, could not be acceptable in a sufficiently educated society wary of being subject to such an unpredictable and harmful consequence.
Why do they then occur under a system of regulation designed to prevent such outcomes?
Perhaps because people are negligence, unable to forsee the harmful consequences of such grown toddlers holding the reins of power in society, and too willing to indulge temper tantrums of adults in as lenient a manner as possible – as accidental, or as trivial.
Temper tantrums in toddlers has never been trivial to parents, possibly for that reason. Childhood trantrums become business nightmares whether in medicine, law, business or entertainment – where they effectively harm the lives of others because of power and position used wrongfully for self indulgence, or to accumulate power, or for entertainment. There is nothing worse than infantile behavior in a serious context that arises from the narcissistic personality because society is not set up to tolerate the harm that comes to others from allowing narcissists control over society. That is the reason to stop the bully before he/she begins, and the reason not to tolerate bullying behavior in any setting or forum.
These social constraints must be seen as civil survival that doesn’t reward bad behavior, crime, or unjust enrichment at the expense of others, exploitive profits without the care that comes from what would otherwise be a human being with obligations to others in society, not a slasher with a sword or another weapon that may be considered little more than a grim reaper among us.
The purpose of education is for application of abstract thought where the rewards, benefits and destruction can be imagined, foreseen, and managed to prevent harm to society. If that doesn’t exist, society is little more than a toddler’s romper room where unpredictability is the social norm of the day. It arises from a society that may be knowledgeable, but ignorant in all other ways.
What a crappy film it was!
The guy is a hypocrite because wasn’t there some stink about someone’s life story being “stolen” to produce this film? I may be wrong.
Stealing = Take away
Copying = Make more
Heh. I hope to fuck someone kills that Nicolas dude. I hate shitty movies.
Easy buddy….
funny you should mention South Park, please look up Matt Stone & Trey Parker’s views of the subject matter.
Also Recording Industries pretending to defend Artist rights, that does not make sense in my book lol, and i’m talking way before the internet got commercial.
What do they think?
Good job guys..
Hey Drew, what an appropriate picture! I laughed my ass off!
Here is your Official 2010 Nicolas Chartier Boycott List:
( Please feel free to copy and share my hard work on the internets. )
( Really, I don’t mind at all. Help yourselves and everybody else too. ) ;]
In Development:
By Virtue Fall
The Company You Keep
In Production:
The Whistleblower (2010) (post-production) (executive producer)
Previous releases:
The Keeper (2009/I) (executive producer)
The Hurt Locker (2008) (producer) … aka “Hurt Locker” – Japan (English title)
Tangled (2001) (associate producer)
Pretty short list, isn’t it? He really shot himself in the foot by turning against his audience in such
an overly dramatic way before giving them enough time to build up some loyalty or respect for him. >D
Aside from The Hurt Locker the rest were real stinkers.
Guess he didn’t get enough money after bribing the conservative Oscar jury.
We don’t need any movie that tries to justify the war in Iraq in any way,
Compare Enron with Iraq and you would get somewhere.
Where was the image of the enemy btw, only suicide bombers or invisible,
guess they allready got the cloacking technology.
I still have no interest in seeing the movie. Most of America wasn’t interested. What does that tell you…
Congratulations, Nicholas. Here’s one smart and honest person who won’t be seeing anything else with your name attached, either.
This is great Fox News type journalism; just focus on the bits that favor your agenda or ideology and pretend the rest never happened. This ZeroPaid article deliberately omitted the first half of the producer’s reply where he does respond with “a logical reason” by making analogous comparisons. You might not agree with the soundness of the analogies, but the fact is he did give “logical reasons.”
“But really, can’t we at least grow up a little first?”
This made me laugh coming from the side that condones piracy and has a sense of entitlement to get content for free that every other honest person rightfully pays for.
Comparing physical to digital piracy is not the same nor even logical.
If you think it’s normal they take my work for free, I’m sure you will give away all your furniture and possessions and your family will do the same. I can also send you my bank account information since apparently you work for free and your family too so since you have so much money you should give it away…
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18/voltage-pictures-pre.html
I never defended his “logical reasons” as sound, but he did provide reasons, which this article omitted.
Simply saying it’s “not logical” doesn’t make it so. Demonstrate it. Start with a valid premise, and derive a conclusion from that.
The only thing either of you have demonstrated is that you can cherry pick your own definitions of theft or stealing to suit your ideology. IP law is a bit more complicated than selective dictionary laymen definitions.
Okay the gist of both arguments is “Physical is finite. Digital is not, there supply is infinite.”
IMO you’re using bad rationalizations to justify taking another’s work without consent. Physical and digital products make have a different form, but that doesn’t in of itself justify having the digital product for free. When content in digital form is taken without permission, there isn’t one less copy of the content as there would be if it was physical, but there is still one less potential sale of the author’s work, as there would be if it was physical.
If I am a writer who mainly publishes to digital form and everyone who intended to read my content chose to pirate it I would have to find a new profession to make money, and consumers would have one less author publishing digital books. Multiply that to a large scale and creating content for digital form only to be leeched for free cannot sustain itself.
The original email from the Torontonian said: “The majority of the people you are suing were /not seeking to make money/ from their downloads.” Not profiting from taking his work for free was the crux of his argument. By that logic, it would be acceptable to go to a movie theater with vacant seats and refuse to purchase a ticket (as long as I’m not profiting off it). Go to a book store, photocopy every page, then walk out (as long as I’m not profiting from it). Purchase Ebooks from Amazon or iTunes, then “call the credit card company and place a fraud purchase report to get my money back.” (as long as I don’t make a profit off it).
“but there is still one less potential sale of the author’s work, as there would be if it was physical.”
That’s not always the case. There’s no evidence to support one way or another whether or not a sale would have occurred otherwise, and in fact, numerous studies have shown illegal file-sharing to have a positive effect on overall media consumption.
Consider the recent questioning by none other than the Government Accountability Office over claimed piracy losses: “The GAO says the MPAA relies on consumer surveys to determine piracy losses, yet was unable to figure out either its substitution rate nor how the survey was extrapolated to the rest of the population.
The biggest question mark the GAO adds to the debate concerns positive effects, how “some experts and literature also identified some potential positive effects of counterfeiting and piracy.” It says that there needs to be a balance in consideration of both positive and negative effects if it is to determine a a true “net effect…with any certainty.” http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88641/govt-questions-riaa-mpaa-piracy-figures/
As for the “positive effects” it mentions, there’s:
1) the Canadian govt-commissioned study that found P2P actually increases music consumption http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9086/canadian_govt_study_p2p_increases_cd_sales/
2) Last year’s study by the BI Norwegian School of Management, the largest business school in Norway and the second largest in all of Europe, that concluded file-sharers actually buy 10 times as much music as they download for free.
3) Last year’s study by none other than Harvard Business School: “Consumer access to recordings has vastly improved since the advent of file-sharing,” it concludes. “Since 2000, the number of recordings produced has more than doubled. In our view, this makes it difficult to argue that weaker copyright protection (as a result from illegal file-sharing) has had a negative impact on artists’ incentives to be creative.”
They see a similar trend in the movie industry.
“The worldwide number of feature films produced each year has increased from 3,807 in 2003 to 4,989 in 2007 (Screen Digest, 2004 and 2008). Countries where film piracy is rampant have typically increased production. This is true in South Korea (80 to 124), India (877 to 1164), and China (140 to 402). During this period, U.S. feature film production has increased from 459 feature films in 2003 to 590 in 2007 (MPAA, 2007).” http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86468/harvard-study-weaker-copyright-protection-has-benefited-society/
Add to that the fact that the MPAA reported just a few months ago that global box office ticket sales reached an all time high of $29.9 billion last year, up 7.6% from 2008, and up an even more dramatic 30% since 2005! http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88338/p2p-threat-mpaa-global-tickets-sales-up-30-since-2005/
In case you’ve forgotten, I’d read the tale of “The Shawshank Redemption,” a movie reales 5 years before P2P, and yet despite critical acclaim did rather poorly at the box office.
As for the last claim, “I would have to find a new profession,” than that would sadly be the case. You’d have to change your business model and figure out how to thrive in the new paradigm, just as print media is having to do today. And I’d argue the opposite about the effect not being “sustainable.” You’re trying to take one fictitious outcome (that has not happened by the way) and trying to extrapolate it to a universal future. It’s just silly.
Companies like Apple have managed to make a profit from digital content, as have Amazon, etc..
The bottom line is that there will ALWAYS BE FILE-SHARING, and it’s sad that more like yourself don’t understand this cold fact. The people targeted by the producer of the “Hurt Locker” were obviously using public trackers or hell, even old school Direct Connect. Things have come along way. It’s the age of private trackers, VPNs, Usenet, and darknets of every imaginable shape and color.
“By that logic, it would be acceptable to go to a movie theater with vacant seats and refuse to purchase a ticket (as long as I’m not profiting off it). Go to a book store, photocopy every page, then walk out (as long as I’m not profiting from it). Purchase Ebooks from Amazon or iTunes, then “call the credit card company and place a fraud purchase report to get my money back.” (as long as I don’t make a profit off it).” –
NO…your using physical content examples for which there is a finite supply and actual costs incurred. There are costs involved for each of the transactions you mentioned, no to mention that each are downright poor arguments.
Photcopy an entire book? Come on now.
“I never defended his “logical reasons” as sound, but he did provide reasons, which this article omitted.”
Reasoning must be sound for it to be logical at all. The fact that you contend that they are “logical reasons” proves you defended them regardless of intent.
“Simply saying it’s “not logical” doesn’t make it so. Demonstrate it. Start with a valid premise, and derive a conclusion from that.”
Objection! It is illogical to directly prove the negative of anything. Evidence is always relevant to the non-negative, and the negative is proven only by having the non-negative contradict that evidence.
“The only thing either of you have demonstrated is that you can cherry pick your own definitions of theft or stealing to suit your ideology.”
The definitions of ‘theft’ and ‘stealing’ only differ by the way they are to be used in sentences. There is no ideology in any sense.
“IP law is a bit more complicated than selective dictionary laymen definitions.”
That is not very complicated.
” [...] IMO you’re using bad rationalizations to justify taking another’s work without consent.”
Now where have I heard ‘rationalize’ and ‘justification’ before? Oh, now I remember, from every measly pro-copyright commenter that I took liberty to knock down. The one thing that they all struggled to do is explain what those rationalizations and justifications are. All attempts were vain, because consumers are not identical and actual thieves do not rationalize in order to steal.
“Physical and digital products make have a different form, but that doesn’t in of itself justify having the digital product for free.”
This is due to nonexistence of justification.
“When content in digital form is taken without permission, there isn’t one less copy of the content as there would be if it was physical, but there is still one less potential sale of the author’s work, as there would be if it was physical.”
I believe Drew Wilson has responded most appropriately to this.
‘Potential’, i.e. fictitious quantity for indicating existence of possiblity, is poorly defined by the pro-copyright side. By the way, there is no such thing as common sense (not intuition) when technology is involved, ergo it has no merit in determining potential.
“If [...]”
Worthless speculation. As for “I would have to find a new profession,” it is a necessary consequence of business failure, so it is nothing out of the ordinary.
“[...] By that logic, it would be acceptable to go to a movie theater with vacant seats and refuse to purchase a ticket (as long as I’m not profiting off it).”
A powerless worm can think more logically clear than you do. If you did not notice the remainder of the sentence which you had cutoff, and the sentence that follows, it basically asserts that the lawsuit has no grounds:
“[...], and will be financially devastated by a lawsuit or settlement. While it is completely understandable that Voltage Pictures wishes to defend its intellectual property, this is an inhumane way of doing so.”
“Go to a book store, photocopy every page, then walk out (as long as I’m not profiting from it).”
Oh, please. That is the most retarded thing I have read today (including the parentheses).
“Purchase Ebooks from Amazon or iTunes, then “call the credit card company and place a fraud purchase report to get my money back.” (as long as I don’t make a profit off it).”"
I have no idea why you are quoting yourself. By the way, it is called scamming, which is identically the same as actual theft, because ‘real’ money is stolen, hence profit is made.
File sharing is not stealing. The definition of steal is: to take the property of another wrongfully.
When i download a song, movie or program that i don’t have the money to spend on, what did i take from the copyright holder? Nothing. I used my resources (bandwidth, hard drive space) to make a copy, a replica of the original.
The copyright holder didn’t lose money, because i couldn’t buy it in the first place. They didn’t lose the original work or the ability to do what they want with it. They lost nothing.
Copying files for personal, non-profit use is not stealing.
Exactly. Physical is finite. Digital is not, there supply is infinite.
The trick is getting people to pay. Take a look at the “Shawshank Redemption.”
“The Shawshank Redemption,” also, if not more critically acclaimed, at least unofficially, than “The Hurt Locker” also suffered from poor box office ticket sales. The Best Picture-nominated film earned a paltry $28.3 million in domestic box office ticket sales and cost more than $25 million to make. This all happened way back in 1994, well before the advent of P2P let alone BitTorrent.
It’s stealing. First, if you can’t afford it, too bad. I can’t every season of South Park on DVD, that doesn’t justify downloading every disc for free since I’m not physically removing a copy off the shelves. I am removing potential sales, because one day I will be able to afford it.
Put yourself in the shoes of the content creators. You put your hard work and time into the creation of a book, album, or software. Because this content is in digital form and is in “infinite” volume, instead of buying it, people copy it freely on torrent sites. They’re not actually taking the original copy from you that you made and not depriving others of having copies, but for every unauthorized copy made of your work is one less sale for you. And it is irrelevant if you’re a millionaire artist/producer or middle class programmer working to put food on the table. Taking another’s work without authorization is stealing when its from the poor or from the rich.
No there is not one less sale. There’s data to suggest a purchase would have otherwise been made, and many studies have actually found illegal file-sharers to be some of the biggest consumers of PURCHASED MEDIA.
From the Canadian govt: “Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing,” says the study. “However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P file-sharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing.” http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9086/canadian_govt_study_p2p_increases_cd_sales/
If it an industry wants to increase sales then it has to find appropriate content delivery systems and pricing. Try living in Australia and watching the latest episode of “The Office.” Forget about it. A good buddy of mine recently moved there and had to start downloading TVs and movies because of “regional delay standards,” i.e. content is slowly rolled out across the globe.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the content creators.”
I have no problem with that. I’m a content creator myself.
“You put your hard work and time into the creation of a book, album, or software.”
That is always apparent for me.
“Because this content is in digital form and is in “infinite” volume,”
An amazing prospect.
A) It’s much more environmentally friendly.
B) It guts cost overhead by not producing a physical product.
Overall, hyper efficient compared to before.
“instead of buying it, people copy it freely on torrent sites.”
As with radio, it’s free advertising. I’d rather be pirated like crazy than be some obscure nobody.
“They’re not actually taking the original copy from you that you made and not depriving others of having copies, but for every unauthorized copy made of your work is one less sale for you.”
I’ve had tonnes of conversations with people like you. I know what you think. Even if someone downloads the album, likes it and buys it, it’s still one less sale in your eyes. If that user buys two copies or a hundred copies, it’s still one less sale. Guess what, that lost sale is fictitious no matter which side of the debate you are on. If someone can’t make up that “lost sale”, then that sale cannot actually exist in the first place.
You know what I think? If someone downloads a whole album from me, then they pay for it, I’ve made a sale. Why is it so difficult to understand one made sale is one made sale?
“And it is irrelevant if you’re a millionaire artist/producer or middle class programmer working to put food on the table. Taking another’s work without authorization is stealing when its from the poor or from the rich.”
And I’m happy that people find enough value to “steal” my work. I still contend to this day that it’s the greatest insult of all if your work is so crappy, people wouldn’t even download it for free on you. As long as people are interested in my work, there will be some who are willing to pay for it. The more people interested in my work, the larger the potential pool of paying customers.
This is, as an artist, how I view things. I say stop pretending you lost something and start focusing on what is being gained here.
“It’s stealing.”
Heard for the umpteenth time. Prove it.
“First, if you can’t afford it, too bad. I can’t every season of South Park on DVD, that doesn’t justify downloading every disc for free since I’m not physically removing a copy off the shelves. I am removing potential sales, because one day I will be able to afford it.”
All heard for the umpteenth time. All fallacies.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the content creators. You put your hard work and time into the creation of a book, album, or software.”
I single-handedly completed a small four-month engineering project meant to be done in a team of three, so I know that kind of dedication for work. I also completed a three-week project in four days. And how I was able to willy-nilly do both is something you will never understand.
That is why you cannot “put yourself in the shoes of” without projecting yourself in the process.
“[...] but for every unauthorized copy made of your work is one less sale for you.”
There is no evidence whatsoever supporting the ‘lost sale’ assertion. Not only this, but there are no proper metrics and calculations to theorize that assertion.
“And it is irrelevant if you’re a millionaire artist/producer or middle class programmer working to put food on the table. Taking another’s work without authorization is stealing when its from the poor or from the rich.”
I sense several stereotypes when I read “millionaire artist/producer or middle class programmer working to put food on the table” and inconsistencies with the last sentence.
In any case, the flaw with your assertion is that with copyright authorization of works is commonly not to from creators. In other words, creators could be considered thieves of their own work.
“This is great Fox News type journalism; just focus on the bits that favor your agenda or ideology and pretend the rest never happened.”
I visit this site daily and I am wondering what sort of “agenda or ideology” you are even referring to, or at least any maliciousness which you seem to suggest. A flawed analogy nonetheless.
“This ZeroPaid article deliberately omitted the first half of the producer’s reply where he does respond with “a logical reason” by making analogous comparisons.”
It seems you regard the following as “a logical reason by making analogous comparisons”:
“Hi Nicholas, please feel free to leave your house open every time you go out and please tell your family to do so, please invite people in the streets to come in and take things from you, not to make money out of it by reselling it but just to use it for themselves and help themselves. If you think it’s normal they take my work for free, I’m sure you will give away all your furniture and possessions and your family will do the same. I can also send you my bank account information since apparently you work for free and your family too so since you have so much money you should give it away… I actually like to pay my employees, my family, my bank for their work and like to get paid for my work. [...]”
Let us just say that not only is most of it non sequitur, there is neither ‘reasoning’ in that reply nor any logic merited to those analogies whatsoever.
“You might not agree with the soundness of the analogies, but the fact is he did give “logical reasons.””
/facepalm.
““[...]” This made me laugh coming from the side that condones piracy …”
‘Piracy’ as you call it is nothing but a propagandist term in this context.
“… and has a sense of entitlement to get content for free that every other honest person rightfully pays for.”
I have previously disproven the very existence of “sense of entitlement”. Had you read the comments in past articles you would notice my logical deductions.
Some people should DL this movie, sell copies, and donate the money to a charity for a true ‘Fuck you’.
This asshole little Frenchie thinks he can extort all of America and abuse our legal system because his little war movie with no distribution didn’t make a lot of money. Duh!
Now I really want to pirate the movie just to piss the cry-baby off more. The stupid bastard is willing to ruin ten thousand families just because he didn’t make as much money as he wanted, or thinks he should have, and feels justified in doing so. Eye for an eye, right?
not only are you going to boycott but we are going to try to return all our dvds for refund and call the credit card co and place a fraud purchase report to get our money back.