Poor content access blamed for piracy

An organisation that attempts to bludgeon its customers into sticking with an outdated sales model is on a slippery slope.

Those 50,000 Australian artists and industry members AFACT purports to be protecting should look seriously at alternative distribution. AFACT cannot claim to represent the 'workers' in the industry when it is blatantly attempting to prop up the studio monopolies.

Perhaps a Grass-Roots co-op artist-distribution model might be a better one, in combination with collaborative ISP's. If you want the REAL industry talent to get their money, this is the way to go.

AFACT's actions have merely highlighted the greed-mentality of the Studios which has enslaved good Aussie and International talent for far too long.

So AFACT is going to waste the Court's time while other urgent cases are put on hold. Meanwhile IINet's time & money is wasted too which inevitably means the consumer pays, even if it is only temporarily.
AFACT sure know how to generate public hatred.
I have never downloaded a movie but AFACT's idiotic behaviour motivates me, and I suspect many others, to now go out of my way to do so just to spite them.
AFACT should accept the umpire's decision, cough up the costs, stop wasting Australians' time and bugger off home.
Their actions contribute nothing to national productivity.

All this and you still can't legaly download movies? Makes me feel pretty good about pirating my media then. It's a shame these groups don't understand that fighting a negative with a negative only results in a double negative not a positive. If only they were as keen to fix the problem rather than fighting the result of the problem. I get the feeling these studios have more lawyers than sense and unless they change tack (ie fix the problem) nothing will change except the ever growing public resentment.

I hold up to you a brillant example of online content taking off, in the last 2 years I have not stepped foot into 1 single shop that sells software, do I pirate used to yes, but now I do everything via Steam.
Now Steam sell gaming software for download at a far cheaper rate than lets say EB Games, patches the games for you(keeps them up to date) not always as fast as you could do it yourself, but saves messing around yourself.
It took off in a big big way, the software(gaming) industry was in essence the same as the film industry, in fact a few movie studios still are behind making of games, now what I find amazing is those arms of the movie industry have embraced this sales method, but have not looked at the logical next step.

Every tie I hear about a new movie website with downloads (legal) I try to check it out... only to be told bya pop-up, the site is not available in my region... then I go looking for torrent sites!

Not just music and movies, but TV shows as well. Try watching the UK version of Big Brother - you have to download or you just go without. It's a show that you have to watch in realtime, it wouldn't work as well watching it months later, as you would lose the online foruming experience, which is a big part of the show. They can't put it on DVD because there are hundreds of hours of footage, and again, it would be too late. They don't make it available on their website to anyone outside the UK, and it isn't up for long anyway. You have to download or you go without.

The Movie Studios are trying to plug the leaks in the dike, not realising there is no dike, they are standing in the middle of a river, trying to use their fingers to stop the flow. Have they learned nothing from the music industry? Without ITunes there would be an amount of music piracy continuing that would be beyond belief. Times have changed, When 1.5tb Drives sell for AU $140, that could hold 150 1080p movies you have to realise that you need to find answers that allow end users a BETTER experience then forcing them to use outmoded forms of distribution. The attempts to maximise short term profits will delay, (and cost Billions in lost revenue) the OBVIOUS and inevitable move to online availability of Video media. It seems to me that no Movie studio Executive or TV Executive have seen Windows Media Canter with the Media Browser add on. It turn a clunky interface into something that is a generational improvement. All the work of fans, without any involvement by the studios or TV networks. Do you think people would pay 50c for a TV episode released a day early with no adds in decent quality? Or FREE with targeted location based adds? Mass take up will only occur if it was easy, and involves no effort, because, frankly, 80% of internet users currently can't do much more then search and click (which is all they need to do to download it atm...)
Want to bet that there will be interim products, that will charge so much that no one bothers with them? And their failure will be used as an excuse for more lawsuits, romancing of the politicians and Draconian measures. When will the studios realise they don't need TV broadcasters, video rental and sale stores? All the money currently supporting these dinosaur industries are inflating the costs of their products, and driving people to go free.
Don't get me started on how releasing TV locally, months after the US affects product value...
They can’t even claim that it costs to mush to upload it to the end user. Using distributed methods just makes too much sense to ignore. It might be a (slight) exaggeration to claim that one person could distribute every TV show and movie from their home, but you could come VERY CLOSE. Anyone on one of the 100mb fibre or even cable plans could probably upload every movie and the top 1000 TV shows to the world, with no additional cost, as they become available, in 1080p. Assume 4gig per hour for a 1080p Video, that’s 1890 hours of Video a week, assuming no losses. That’s the power of peer to peer, and why Bit Torrent is so successful.
Why do people like me spend minutes writing posts like these? We have great affection for TV and movies. Its amazing how all that potential good will is pissed away. I like quality programming, but I don’t like having to pay triple the price, (and 100 times the effort) because it’s only distributed via an outdated system. I’m already paying for the distribution (internet connection) and storage (on my PC).

The big companies want to suppress LEGAL downloaded content as well as ILLEGAL downloads. This is an issue of control - a small studio or production company can't produce 250,000 copies on DVD and distribute it to 50,000 music outlets - so they have to go to a major and sell it through them - and lose 75% of the proceeds in the process.

Once all content is sold online why would the smaller guys pay 75% to the major and be left with 25% when they can get close to 100% selling directly - and with their newly increased income their production capacity increases and the majors find themselves suddenly with 5,000 competitors instead of the oligopoly which currently describes the Australian content producer/distributor market.