[Archived] What Grinds Your Gears ?

[BlueWhiteDynamite]

I'll tell you what grinds my gears.... Junk reports like this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8073068.stm

They state the economy is losing tens of billions of pounds on illegal downloads. Because thats the value of the amount of downloaded illegal music/video/games etc.

What utter junk. People who download these files wouldnt usually pay for them if they had to. People who download the top 40 every week are hardly going to buy every single CD/mp3, its the same for films. People who want to go to the cinema go and people who want to buy a CD do.

Also how can the economy be losing this money, yes the industry might be losing a small percentage of this, but if joe blogs decides to download the new black eyed peas album illegally, chances are he'd spend that money on something else within a few days anyway.

What grinds yours ?

Over to you Tom Tucker

[dave birch]

My only reply to this is:

If someone found a way to syphon off part of your pay each week, would you be ###### off?

[Flopsy]

1) The hypocritical morale outrage of the general public slating MP's for claiming expenses that they know damn well that if they had the chance they would do the exact same thing if they were in the same position;

2) The MP's expenses system which allows the MP's to claim all that they do;

3) The fact that the new B & I Lion's jersey is not made out of the previous material like the 2005 one, but instead some crappy nylon material but still charging the same price as the 2005 one;

4) The England Cricket team giving me false hope; and

5) An Ashes test being played in Cardif.

[Hughesy]

I agree with BWD - I download stuff I would never ever buy if it was involving cash. Most of the CD's (I used to buy) were junk and a waste of cash anyway, so downloading seems logical as shops like HMV dont allow you to take CD's back.

If they block these sharing sites then another way will be found to do it. Like you say If people want to go to the cinema or buy a CD, then they will, whether or not it can be downloaded for free.

[tcj_jones]

If CDs and downloads were made more affordable, maybe the problem wouldn'y be quite so bad? I don't know, I'm just curious to see what other people think?

Certainly, I wouldn't pay for 75% of what I download - I'd just go without. However, if songs were reduced from £0.80 each or £5 an album to, say, £0.40 a track or £2.50 an album, then I'd buy a whole lot more. As it is, when I might go through a download spree of 100 albums in a week, I just could not afford to buy all that!

[Hughesy]

Most of what I download is simply because of the ease of it.

95% of what I download, I would never ever buy. If I like something enough.. I usually buy an original copy later when it comes down in price.

[Clitherover]

I download the album first, if it's good and the band/artist deserve my money i'll buy it, if it's crap i won't.

I think this is only fair and everyone should do it in an effort to filter out crap music from the world.

[MagicOPromotion]

You know what really grinds my gears? Lawn maintenance outside my window at 7:30AM with a weed wacker.

I now come into work at 7, but it used to ###### me off - every Thursday on the dot.

_______

=== XRumer 5.0 Palladium RULEZ! ===

[Beta Ray Bill]

If CDs and downloads were made more affordable, maybe the problem wouldn'y be quite so bad? I don't know, I'm just curious to see what other people think?

Certainly, I wouldn't pay for 75% of what I download - I'd just go without. However, if songs were reduced from £0.80 each or £5 an album to, say, £0.40 a track or £2.50 an album, then I'd buy a whole lot more. As it is, when I might go through a download spree of 100 albums in a week, I just could not afford to buy all that!

Trouble is, a lot of people will say that and virtually no-one would do it.

"if songs weren't such a rip off at 80p and they only cost 60p of course I wouldn't illegally download."

[1864roverite]

My only reply to this is:

If someone found a way to syphon off part of your pay each week, would you be ###### off?

LABOUR HAVE DONE THIS SINCE THEY GOT IN NUMBER 10

[American]

People who try to justify stealing content grinds my gears.

Not that I'm innocent, but please, it's stealing.

If you want to check out artists, there are options out there, such as We7 and some of the Internet radio that lets you make a playlist, and still has to pay royalties to the artists.

[adopted scouser]

People who try to justify stealing content grinds my gears.

Not that I'm innocent, but please, it's stealing.

If you want to check out artists, there are options out there, such as We7 and some of the Internet radio that lets you make a playlist, and still has to pay royalties to the artists.

Agreed, they think they are ssoooooo clever with bit torrent.

Pay like normal people.

[roverseas]

I refrain from downloading music (by using spotify or buying the CD's) since it can be really hard for small bands/artists to get enough to be able to focus on their music. When it comes to films etc though I just couldn't care less.

Just look at Tom Cruise as an example (taken from IMDB);

War of the Worlds (2005) (20% profit participation)

The Last Samurai (2003) $25,000,000 + % of profits

Minority Report (2002) $25,000,000+

Vanilla Sky (2001) $20,000,000 + 30% of Profits

Mission: Impossible II (2000) $75,000,000 (gross participation)

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) $20,000,000

Jerry Maguire (1996) $20,000,000 against 15%

Mission: Impossible (1996) $70,000,000 (gross participation)

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) $15,000,000

A Few Good Men (1992) $12,500,000

Far and Away (1992) $13,000,000

Days of Thunder (1990) $7,000,000

Rain Man (1988) $3,000,000+% of gross

Cocktail (1988) $3,000,000

Top Gun (1986) $2,000,000

And that isn't even all of his films! It's absolutely shameful. If they can afford to pay him that much - then the whole system is corrupt and I can download the movies without a second's hesitation over "morals".

[Shevchenko]

And that isn't even all of his films! It's absolutely shameful. If they can afford to pay him that much - then the whole system is corrupt and I can download the movies without a second's hesitation over "morals".

An actor or actress doesn´t make a movie a movie though. There are a bunch of people involved from the idea or story is conceived, to it being written, to the project being funded and going in to pre-production, the filming and post-production and promotion. And even screening the thing.

Think about all the people who have to come together in that chain of events to make a film a film - from the guy writing it to the storyboarders, the carpenters and the person making the tea. Or the guy in charge of the projector in the theater to the poor sap who has to clean up the mess left over after 200 people leave popcorn all over the place after each screening.

So yes, even though its crap that Tom Cruise gets paid 20 million a picture, a lot of people get their work from movies being made. Food is being put on tables because people go to the movies.

[roverseas]

I somehow doubt they'll suffer. If they can afford to pay Tom Cruise $75m for MI2 then they can probably afford quite a decent pay to everyone else involved with the movie, yeah? In any case, the responsibility in that case surely is with the makers of the film to ensure that everyone gets paid enough.

When it comes to people working in movie theaters it boils down to the same thing as everywhere else. Supply and demand. Are you saying people should buy 2 cars instead of one aswell to support workers from several companies? Because hundreds of people in that business have been let go over here during the last year in the local city alone. It's the same thing just in another scale.

And surely the poor sap who cleans up popcorn will have less popcorn to clean up if people download the film instead. Everybody wins.

EDIT in response to below: Just because people download doesn't mean they don't go to the movies. And movies do make money because everyone doesn't download. They still pay out insane money to the actors... and please don't give me the "but what if everyone downloaded" argument because that isn't the reality and will never be.

[Shevchenko]

They will suffer if movies aren´t getting made. If movies can´t make money because everyone downloads them without paying, then no one gets paid. By all means, cheat the superstars out of the cash if you want but other people´s livelihoods are also involved.

[roverseas]

(I've edited my previous post a bit since you posted I think)

If people stopped eating marmite then the marmite companies would suffer and people's livelihoods would be involved aswell. The world just doesn't work that way, we can't be expected to go around spending our money to do favours for others (unless we reel in excessive amounts ourselves of course). It's all about supply and demand. Markets change, jobs change, people move on.

In fact, due to all the talk about downloading recently over here (the pirate bay trials and all), companies have started to realize that downloading isn't the cause of the problems - it's the consequence of the problems. People obviously believe it's too expensive to go to the movies or buy DVD's or even buy CD's regularly. There are tons of surveys which prove this but I just can't be arsed to dig them up since they're in swedish newspapers.

People also don't want to be controlled by TV's programme listings when watching their favourite TV show, they want to watch it whenever it fits them. Most of the TV channels here have invested in finding other viable solutions - such as an online flash player where you can stream your TV shows for free, with commercials popping up every now and then. Spotify is another example of this train of thought and it's going down really well. Many torrent sites have shut down, pretty much all of them have suffered a dramatic decrease in active members.

And for the record, I don't download much anymore, I usually rent. That said, I wouldn't have any hesitations on moral grounds if I was to download a movie. I just don't do it because it's illegal and I wouldn't want to be caught having to pay a grand sum of money for a crappy film which I would never ever have seen in the theaters anyway.

[American]

(I've edited my previous post a bit since you posted I think)

If people stopped eating marmite then the marmite companies would suffer and people's livelihoods would be involved aswell. The world just doesn't work that way, we can't be expected to go around spending our money to do favours for others (unless we reel in excessive amounts ourselves of course). It's all about supply and demand. Markets change, jobs change, people move on.

It isn't about stopping eating marmite, it's about stealing marmite from the grocery stores because you think that the marmite companies make too much money.

[roverseas]

It isn't about stopping eating marmite, it's about stealing marmite from the grocery stores because you think that the marmite companies make too much money.

I wasn't talking about the actual downloading, I was talking about what Shevchenko said in the post above mine about people not going to the theaters as a consequence of downloading. Not that I think that it will ever be a consequence. People who want to go to the theaters do. People who don't want to go don't, no matter if they download the movies or rent the movies or don't watch them at all.

I don't disagree that downloading is stealing, because it clearly is. And I'm not saying it is right. What I'm saying is that I just couldn't care less about the movie industry where the money already is out of this world and needs to be brought back down to earth. It doesn't give me a moral headache. And the people in theaters who might get let go if it was as extreme as in Shevchenko's examples fall in every other category of the supply and demand-world we're living in (sorry for abusing the term by the way).

[broadsword]

Films are a product just like everything else.

[Mc Love]

Working...thats what grinds my gears!

Why cant the government just pay everyone to stay at home?!

[Alan75]

sand

[Sandiway Blue]

Working...thats what grinds my gears!

Why cant the government just pay everyone to stay at home?!

You want to live on my road,with the exception of a few this actually happens!

[roversmum]

Flies. The kind that go 'Buzzzzzzz' Are they really necessary?

[Mc Love]

You want to live on my road,with the exception of a few this actually happens!

Yeah same here, but our government actually pays you good money to stay at home!