Does Faster Internet Access Lure Piracy?

[nsane.forums]

Google is laying down fiber in Kansas City, and Hollywood is worried about one thing only: movie piracy.

Hollywood's piracy schtick might be getting a little old. Not only does the movie industry continue to create less-than-impressive relationships with its audience by suing the pants off alleged file-sharers, now it's worried that faster Internet download speeds will enable piracy.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)'s concern is Google Fiber, Google's high-speed fiber-optic broadband that the company is currently deploying in Kansas City.

Google has already laid down more than 100 miles of Fiber in Kansas City, which was chosen last year as the first city to house Google's experimental 1-gigabit-per-second network. Google plans to connect the first homes to its Fiber network in the next few months, Google Fiber spokesperson Jenna Wandres told Bloomberg Businessweek.

According to Google, its Fiber test network of approximately 850 homes in Palo Alto already offers download speeds of 922 megabits per second, so Kansas City residents should be really, really excited. The average Internet speed in the United States hovers around 5 mbps. Google plans to offer its Fiber network at competitive prices, as well.

So why is Hollywood concerned? Well, because faster download speeds can only mean one thing -- pirates will be able to download content even faster. With Google Fiber's purported download speeds, pirates will be able to download an entire DVD's worth of content in less than one minute.

MPAA spokesperson Howard Gantman told Bloomberg that although Google Fiber "could be a great opportunity for consumers whose access to creative content is often hampered by slow speeds," we should look to the example of South Korea, in which "the home entertainment marketplace was decimated by digital piracy," which was enabled by speedy Internet.

Of course, TechDirt points out that South Korea is a bad example -- because the Korean music industry "thrives on high-speed Internet," and it "grew into an economic powerhouse while the country had some of the highest and earliest broadband penetration rates (and digital piracy rates) in the world."

Gantman also spoke to Ars Technica, saying, "We want to reinforce that higher speeds could be a great opportunity for consumers, and that's the bottom line." But it's not really the bottom line, because Gantman went on to say that "There are problems that can, in terms of [an] increase of digital piracy, come with that, but we are hopeful that efforts can be made…to address digital piracy."

Don't get me wrong -- faster Internet download speeds could enable piracy. But with that logic we may as well just shut down the Internet -- because, hey, no Internet, no online piracy! Er…yeah.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the movie industry should instead think about how faster Internet will positively affect its creative abilities. For example, with faster download speeds, the industry will be able to create better content, and will be able to get that content -- that legitimate, non-pirated content -- to people quickly.

Of course, if the movie industry doesn't step up and create some sort of cool, speedy online content distribution to go with Google Fiber, then someone else will. And when someone else does, the MPAA will cry "Piracy!"

View: Original Article

[LeetPirate]

Driving cars can cause accidents too, best we all walk from now on. :D Stupid Hollywood retards.

[khashim]

I kinda agree that they should just go along with the flow, instead of slowing down tech progress...

Movie industry simply needs to keep up so they dont get left behind.

I wish them well since i like movies in general. i just hope they wont die like what happened here in PH.

i do not opposed piracy however, i believe everyone should get the chance on watching what they want even to those who can't afford.

[LeetPirate]

Hollywood is filled with idiots. There are Billions of people willing to pay them for legitimate video on demand services but they refuse to open up the market to the international community. That's the thing that gets me, it defies logic. You want to combat piracy but refuse to make the movies available for legal purchase on the open market? They are full of shit if you ask me. If they license Amazon and Netflix to stream the North American feed to the world they would make so much money that piracy would be irrelevant.

Hollywood makes no effort to actually solve the problem and this is why I could care less about them, so yes I will pirate their movies because they refuse to let me buy it, Hollywood could suck it.

[khashim]

Hollywood is filled with idiots. There are Billions of people willing to pay them for legitimate video on demand services but they refuse to open up the market to the international community. That's the thing that gets me, it defies logic. You want to combat piracy but refuse to make the movies available for legal purchase on the open market? They are full of shit if you ask me. If they license Amazon and Netflix to stream the North American feed to the world they would make so much money that piracy would be irrelevant.

Hollywood makes no effort to actually solve the problem and this is why I could care less about them, so yes I will pirate their movies because they refuse to let me buy it, Hollywood could suck it.

hence.. we both agree on one thing...they should really keep up with tech means and stop all the bullshit talks about piracy

[dcs18]

Referring to only the technical aspect here. Apart from the connection speed, I think there's one more important factor to be considered. The cost of the high-speed data transfer which is also important vis-a-vis the pricing of the movie.

Thinking of this as I'm into Blu-Ray downloads (6-8 GBs per movie download.) :think: