To the Piracy Victims: The Motion Picture Industry

I hear you've been losing too much money to online piracy, and would like the Government to control the only true medium of human expression to exist in the history of humanity a little tighter so you can have a few more dollars. Taking that as truth, I've decided to give you other ways that don't impede the internet revolution with this advice:   ADAPT OR DIE

1. Be my personal assistant.

I'm not positive how well I fit into your target demographic, but I know I have two traits you like: I like movies AND I don't mind paying to see them. That's right, I don't feel the need to steal from you. In fact, I wish I gave you money more often but I tend to forget.

I see a preview for a movie and decide I want to see it. Then I forget. I might not think the movie is worthy of the expense of seeing it in a theater, but I still want to see it and don't mind paying to see it. If you could fill the role of being my personal assistant with regard to your products and remind me when the ones I want to see become available, you'll get more of my money.

Why is it I can't hold up my phone while viewing a movie trailer and scan the QR code that displays in the bottom right corner during the course of the entire trailer?

 - why doesn't scanning that code add the movie to a 'notify of viewing availability' list on a website your industry sponsors (as I'm not interested at registering at separate sites for every studio).

- why is it that when I'm trying to decide what movie I want to watch, I can't go and see a list of movies that I've scanned to indicate I want to see?

2. Stop being control freaks.

Do you have ANY idea how ridiculously frustrating windows of availability are? All of us know there is nothing physically limiting you from making your products available on all mediums at the same time. We understand that back in the VHS days, it made sense to force us to go to the theater to see it first - then watch it through cable next - then be able to own it on video. Those days are gone though.

We know that you're lucky we're paying to watch your movie at all, quit making us wait for no reason. Your backwoods distribution policy is the catalyst for the piracy problems. Some things you should realize:

Not all movies are theater worthy. Get a computer guy to write a program that can make the call of whether one is or not, and don't send the rest to theaters. Make straight-to-DVD/stream not a derogatory concept.

Why SOPA has nothing to do with Online Piracy

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

They want you to think SOPA and the Protect-IP act are good things, about protecting intellectual property and stopping online piracy. That's complete bullshit. Here's why:

Google unveils "Find My Content" tool to fight Copyright Infringement

Just a few short weeks ago, Google (courtesy of a Google+ post by Matt Steiner) announced the 'Find My Face" tool utilizing facial recognition software to aid in tagging pictures of people on the fledgling social network, Google+.

Today*, Google announced the addition of it's "Find My Content" tool.

The tool's first incarnation is aimed at stopping the seemingly rampant theft of original photography taking place on Google+. Using modified facial recognition technology, Google+ will now compare uploaded images with those previously uploaded to Google+. If it finds a match, the uploader is notified prior to posting that the image has already been uploaded to Google+ and the original upload will be linked to if the uploader continues the post.

Here is an artists rendition of the new feature in action:

Some fictional Google spokesperson who doesn't really exist is hereby quoted as saying:
"Google+ is quickly establishing itself as THE social network for photographers and other artists to share their original work and build a following. Google highly approves of their social network being adopted in this manner and is taking the necessary steps to help these artists protect their copyrights"

The fictional spokesperson went on to say that they plan on expanding this feature to original artwork of all kinds, including the first person to share a link to a blog post or article.

When questioned about situations where a non-copyright owner is the first to share an image on Google+, the fictional spokesperson pointed out that this feature will aid the artist in finding the original violator of the copyright - a potentially impossible task when original art can be cut, pasted, and reposted at will.

He mentioned plans to allow the artist to file a claim over their copyrighted work, and should the claim be validated the name of the original poster will be replaced by the copyright holder.

100% of the people who have read this suggestion prior to publishing have fully endorsed this addition to the social network, saying that part of the reason they support Google+ is because of Google's reputation of  doing the right thing.

*DISCLAIMER:  By today, I mean some day in the future when the people at Google in charge of these sort of things sees this article, recognizes the value of the suggestion, and initial implementation is completed.


This article is an homage to the genius advertisers who like to make advertisement that look indistinguishable from actual articles other than the word 'advertisement' in tiny font at the top and bottom.

Suggestion to Improve Google+