Movie security, is it lacking? (1 Viewer)

[Edwin-S]

I would never bother to download any pirated movie, but I also would not act as an unpaid police dog for the management of a movie theatre chain. They can police the problem themselves by hiring personnel or they can go to hell. What have movie theatre managers done lately for their customers? Absolutely nothing. They underpay and overwork their limited staff. They have eliminated qualified projectionists in almost every theatre but the very largest. They gouge on ticket and concession prices and do nothing to ensure any level of quality in presentation or venue; yet management expects paying patrons to act as security cameras and protect their interests. Not bloody likely.

It amazes me that anybody would want to spend hours downloading a shaky, grainy, dimly lighted, filmed-off-the-screen, copy of a movie. A person would have to be a dork to waste time and bandwidth securing bad copies of movies. A lot of these people would justify their actions by saying, "it's free" but it really isn't. They still have to pay for the connection they are using......unless they are using a university, work, or school connection; in which case, they still pay through higher taxes, tuition fees or consumer prices.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Another point that needs to be made is that a few of the new movies have turned up on the net before their release date, which shows that someone is watching the press screenings. I guess yelling out "Wake up people!" will just fall on deaf ears.

Glenn

 

[Nigel McN]

Don't forget that around the oscars pretty much everything ripped is from an academy screener, which says something about how the acadamy handles its property.

 

[ThomasC]

Don't forget that around the oscars pretty much everything ripped is from an academy screener, which says something about how the acadamy handles its property.

It's undoubtedly the easiest way for academy members to watch movies. I imagine that some academy members don't live in cities where independent films are distributed in the necessary timeframe, so other than buying a plane ticket to New York or Los Angeles, the screener is the easiest and (supposedly the) cheapest way.

 

[JonS]

I may be in the minority here, but I don't blame anyone who wants to download a movie off the internet. Ticket prices are sky rocketing, audio/video presentations are taking severe dips and the amounts of commercials shown before the films are getting to the point of lunacy. Some people can't even go to the movies anymore because it is such an expensive event with no guarantee of quality or presentation.

 

[Ryan FB]

Edwin-S got the closest...

It amazes me that anybody would want to spend hours downloading a shaky, grainy, dimly lighted, filmed-off-the-screen, copy of a movie.

Anyone willing to spend multiple hours downloading a movie that's been through multiple poor video encodes (and the source video is from a 12 year old kid holding an unsteady camcorder in a Malaysian theater) probably isn't going to be affected either way as to actual movie spending (i.e. either actually going to the movie or deciding not to go) by what they download. Essentially, increased security will only get rid of those cam and "telesync" releases which are absolute crap anyways. Get rid of these, and what happens? Nothing.

I think what Hollywood really needs to worry about are the guys good enough to get Telecine equipment and access to the reels, or people releasing Screener copies, both of which provide an illegal video which can somewhat approach the quality of the original. Hell, there's probably people who have purchased bootlegs of DVD screeners without even realizing what they were doing, or that what they got is a bootleg.