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Gantman
The entertainment industry is getting nervous about efforts like Google’s 1Gbps fiber network that will deliver blazing fast broadband connections to American consumers. Why? Because they will use those networks to steal movies, of course.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) devotes a lot of its day fretting about copyright infringement issues, so the thought of a broadband network capable of moving the contents of a DVD in less than one minute has them worried.
Howard Gantman, an MPAA spokesman, warned South Korea’s super speed networks “decimated” the home entertainment marketplace thanks to widespread piracy.
Gantman, speaking to Bloomberg News, believes faster speeds make content theft easier, creating an almost on-demand experience that slower file swapping networks never delivered.
But there is no evidence the handful of gigabit broadband networks now operating in the United States are hotbeds of copyright theft. Google itself stresses they are not getting into the triple-play broadband, phone, and cable TV business in Kansas City to embolden movie thieves.
In fact, Google thinks faster broadband speeds will only fuel growth in the authorized content business, where consumers can get access to higher quality movies and TV shows without buffering or reducing video quality to stream effectively on slower networks.
Other stories of interest:
- Google Launches ‘Google Fiber for Communities’ Website to Advocate for Fiber Broadband
- Google Broadband: Topeka Renames Itself Google, Kansas to Attract Fiber Experiment
- If Your Provider Won’t Give You Real Fiber Optic Service, Google Might – Think Big With a Gig – Nominate Your Community
- Back to Kansas City: Google Fiber Now Going in the Ground; TV Service Also Announced
- Breaking News: Google Selects Kansas City, Kansas for 1Gbps Fiber to the Home Service
They. Just. Don’t. Get. It. Ugh.
No they don’t, and what they seem to be forgetting is they are only a small group and “we” are the one’s who put money in their pockets. And if they keep trying to screw with the internet and our rights, we can boycott them. Rather than adapt their business to the technology, they keep trying to control something none of them understand. And the end result is going to be a complete loss of control altogether.
Control seems to be part of human nature, which is why the concept of Internet openness is like “chaos” that the Net Neutrality opponents always seem to want to control to “enhance my online experience.”
They aren’t kidding me. They are only out to enhance their bottom line, as we can see from the current frenzy to erect content paywalls. Because ad-supported Hulu just doesn’t make them enough money.
Hollywood to Google: Fiber Fast Broadband Only Encourages Cord Cutting to Inexpensive Legal On-demand Online Streaming…
^ fixed that for you MPAA & Cable Co’s..
It’s pointless complaining about 1gbps access when 10mbps is already fast enough for “on-demand” piracy — at that rate, you can easily download a 480p episode of CSI in less than 10 minutes. In fact, with the right (free) video player, you can stream most content the moment you start downloading it, so you only need the download speed to be enough to download a 42 minute episode in less than 42 minutes — only about 3mbps.
Hi,
The MPAA has done this for awhile. They did this kind of thing when the VCR was out in the 80′s. It was overturned, thank you Supreme Court. I see 1 gbps symmetric or faster as America’s future. For those who can get it, enjoy it. I just hope all of us in the US no matter how rural, can get it soon. Its not only used for piracy. It can be used to hold multiuser video conferences at 720 or 1080p if wanted, online backups, Linux distro mirrors, legal game servers, etc. The MPAA doesn’t want this because it will get users away from cable tv and on Netflix youtube etc. I don’t include Hulu in this discussion anymore because of their decision.
If the MPAA treats its customers like criminals….then were going to act like criminals. The simple fact is that I dont like DRM…If I could buy a season of a show in HD from amazon, download it in a multitude of different formats to put on my PVR with no DRM for a REASONABLE PRICE then I would. You didnt have to press the blu-ray, or print a cover, or even buy a case so why the hell does it cost the same or more?!?!?!
And finally…if a customer comes into my job (retail) and has figured out a way to pick an item up off the shelf, make an exact duplicate of it, put the original back and leaves and I happen to call the police claiming theft…they are gonna laugh at me.
Just read the most insightful posts of the week over on Techdirt and this one stood out, and since it is in context here also I thought it should be shared.
Quote:
“Michael Becker responding the MPAA’s continued failure to actually adapt:
Dude, they’ve been voicing their concerns about Piracy for 100 years, and they’ve been proven wrong EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Hard to look at a track record like that and join their side. Especially when they make the simplest of things difficult.
For example, I wanted to watch X-Men First Class this weekend. Did you know I couldn’t legally purchase or rent it from ANY online service? You know who had it? Torrents.
There is a fundamental failure in the MPAA to understand that you can’t live in the past, things change, and you Adapt or Die. People aren’t gonna turn off their internet connection just cause Warner or Paramount might not make quite as many millions this year.
These studios are perfectly capable of providing awesome services we’d gladly pay for, but first they have to actually offer them. We’ve shown them how many many times, but they keep sticking their heads in the sand. You can only try and help someone so many times before you have to acknowledge that they must be willfully choosing to destroy themselves.”