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Comment by fsflover

1 day ago

EU paid for report that concluded piracy isn’t harmful, tried to hide findings (thenextweb.com)

280 points by tchalla on Sept 21, 2017 | 59 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305476

A few months ago there was a rather funny article in a French film magazine (cahier du cinéma). The director of a film school was complaining that his students obviously didn't know how to pirate films any more, so they couldn't get hold of classic films. So he found himself with a population of film students who had practically only seen blockbusters from the last ten years. They had tried to set up a media library with DVDs and Blu-ray discs, but with the disappearance of physical media and disc players, it was no longer working.

The director was quite bitter. The fight against piracy has therefore rendered auteur movies invisible and has only benefited Hollywood.

  • >The fight against piracy has[…] only benefited Hollywood.

    Has anyone believed otherwise?

    But I agree it’s tragic. One of the film sharing boards I was a part of for 20+ years just vanished overnight. The amount of niche stuff that was available there was/is unmatched (for the topic this board was about).

    The crackdown seems almost finished now- I reckon in 5-10 years piracy will be a thing of the past- and reborn in other forms after.

>EU paid for report that concluded piracy isn’t harmful, tried to hide findings

Intentionally hiding stuff the taxpayers paid for should be illegal and sanctioned with jail time. I'm tired by the lack of accountability our elected leaders have.

"Oh shucks, seems like I accidentally and irrecoverably deleted all these emails between me and a CEO about a multi billion taxpayer funded contract; I'm such a klutz, hihi."