Posts by SteveH
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to David MacGregor,
The mainstream TV reality is that most people who want a ‘lean back’ experience – what ever is on their flatscreen when they get home at night are quite happy with it.
If that's true then the "high-brow" stuff should rate just as well as the reality TV shows, shouldn't it?
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to BenWilson,
Population wise, it’s only smaller than New York, though, and Auckland is big enough to be one of the top 8 largest US cities, pipping San Diego at the post.
Only if you use the US city definitions which are particularly narrow. Much as ours where when Auckland's population was listed as 350k. If you use the more relevant metropolitan area populations NZ would rank 13th between Detroit and Seattle. Auckland would rank about 39th with 1.5 million people in the metropolitan area.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to bmk,
Not sure – working off the premise that the 40k worker has a 35k job. I didn’t come up with the example but odds are they would get another job.
Following the assumption there would be lower imports and exports but shouldn’t be slightly increased unemployment.
The film/TV jobs are (partly) funded by overseas investment. You're suggesting it won't hurt balance of payments if it's replaced by import-substitution work, but if that's funded by local investment then it must be at cost of that money going to other local workers. That's where the increase in unemployment would occur.
Coming back to the main point in the post, I just can’t see it as good policy to prop up the industry. If we do it’ll only need another prop in awhile and as others have mentioned it will just be a race to the bottom with every country out-bidding each other and the film studios winning.
Having to prop up the industry periodically isn't necessarily a bad thing if the overall benefit outweighs the cost of doing so.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to bmk,
What about if the $35k is producing an income-substitution good/service?
What would the import-substitution good be for a set builder? Assuming there is one, the net result would be a slightly smaller economy with lower imports and exports, and slightly increased unemployment right?
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Say a set builder makes $40 grand a year on the Hobbit (ha ha), and could have made $35 a year on a building site. Then that’s an economic input of $5k, not $40k. Multiply that out, and you get the real number.
That's only true if the $35k per year job is also paid by foreign investment.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to ScottY,
I haven’t got time to even attempt to answer your questions. Copyright’s complicated. And sometimes it doesn’t provide clear or sensible answers.
Fair enough. The point I'm trying to make is that talking in terms of what the law actually allows might be pointless because there is a very good chance that the law does not in fact permit enough copying to use even legitimately obtained content. Copying is an intrinsic requirement of using every sort of digital media and to try to restrict copying in arbitrary ways in likely to been seen as ridiculous by anyone with a sufficient technical background to see how arbitrary it is. From a moral or ethical point of view there is no difference between backing up my legal content on a harddrive, on a CD, on a USB stick, or in a cloud service. If one is allowed they all should be allowed (and IMHO they must all be allowed unless the publisher is willing to replace lost copies). The intent of copyright law is to prevent distribution and that is where the focus should be. This particular case does not appear to involve distribution at all, and I bet similarly technically illegal but harmless non-distributing copying occurs hundreds of thousands of times each day in this country alone.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to ScottY,
If you copy a file onto a USB stick then you may well be infringing copyright unless the terms of your licence permit that copying, or an exception applies under the Copyright Act. (e.g. there is a format-shifting exception for sound recordings, but I can’t see how it would apply to a USB stick)
And if I copy the file from the directory I downloaded it to onto another harddrive is that also infringement? How about if I copy it to another directory on the same drive? What about copying it to a portable harddrive? If the law does not treat these cases identically to the USB stick case then the law is unworkable, IMO. There may be an argument from the cloud storage case being different, but it's a tenuous argument at best.
Also is it infringement when I copy it from the harddrive into RAM? What about a copy that gets stored in an ISP's proxy server as I download it?
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I have content in my Mega (and Dropbox, and Google Drive) account that is absolutely copyright protected. I can’t see how that’s any different to storing same files on a USB stick. As long as I don’t share the link (or give the USB stick) to anyone else I’m not infringing any copyright as far as I can see.
I wouldn't assume that the law makes logical sense in this regard. It is entirely likely that law draws distinctions between USB sticks and cloud services even though technically there is no difference.
But as you point out there is no difference between Mega and Dropbox and Google in this regard. So why aren't we seeing press releases decrying those other services?
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Russell Brown,
But it keeps being singled out in press statements from local rights owners.
At least that seems to be a legitimate case. I think clearly Mega is getting attention because Kim Dotcom is newsworthy in NZ. And "NZ textbook found on The Pirate Bay" doesn't seem likely to get much of a response beyond "duh".
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
Okay then, so Mega has asserted that the files in question were only ever downloaded by the same person that uploaded them, and you’ve acknowledged you downloaded them…
What conclusion should we draw? What conclusion would you draw? Are Mega lying? Are you?
There's one remaining possibility: Slater's source uploaded the file and then Slater downloaded the file independently but using the same computer and/or account. But it doesn't really matter if Slater did it all himself or if he had an accomplice do the uploading. Either way would mean it was a story he manufactured.