A Few Words About A few words about...™ Vendors, film piracy and national security (1 Viewer)

[MichaelEl]

We seem to have gotten to a point where people become unhappy because various movies aren't available on DVD or online platforms and they're understandably frustrated. But the solution isn't to find an illegal copy and distribute it. There are simpler and more legal solutions. One is to buy a previously made videotape of the movie, usually in a collection of such things. Another is to see it on TCM or a channel like that - and I don't see a problem with someone taping a program airing on television. The problem comes when someone tries to distribute that tape, say by making 100 copies, or by making a digital copy and then putting it up on the internet.

Suppose someone has a long OOP DVD of a film and this DVD is only available on eBay for hundreds of dollars. Would you think it wrong for that person to make a copy of the DVD and give it to an elderly friend who really loved that film? This is all that a lot of these "bootleggers" are doing, except that they're charging a few bucks for the trouble of making a copy. While what they're doing may technically be illegal, they're not really making any money from these "bootlegs" and are making fans of these old films happy. I think at some point you have to stop being Inspector Javert and just allow yourself to be a human being.

With the advent of DVD and HD media, we've gotten to a point where if you make a copy of say, a Blu-ray of Star Wars, you've got something that's practically broadcast quality. Making copies of that item and putting it up for sale or sharing on the internet means that the studio is trying to sell a product while someone else is offering the identical thing for free. And yes, that's stealing.

Can people even make a copy of a Blu-Ray at this point? Even if they can, the cost of a recordable Blu-Ray disk is probably higher than what a bootlegger could reasonably charge for their "product.".

The bootleg outfits that put out these DVDs from Korea and elsewhere are getting their material from a variety of sources. Sometimes they're just taking old laserdisc or videotape copies and transferring them over - either by using a machine or by simply camcording the movie. Sometimes they're taking a camcorder into a movie theater. Sometimes they're getting access to digital files of a movie before it's released. Sometimes they're copying a screener DVD of a movie.

They're doing this with films that are literally taking in BILLIONS of dollars of revenue. Should we really be losing sleep over a tiny number of people who download a poor quality camcorder recording of a summer blockbuster? It's really not costing anyone anything, unless you consider it a major disaster that an expected BILLION dollars of revenue came up short a few hundred bucks. Of course I can see where new artists would have a complaint about copying, but it seems to me that people like George Lucas and Paul McCartney ought to be giving their works away for free at this point. (They're not.)

 

[Persianimmortal]

Once again the justifications are woefully inadequate. This whole "but it's just a few people making some copies, what harm can it do?" claim holds no water. Without exaggeration, piracy of multimedia is at epidemic levels now. I can only quantify it for PC gaming, as that's where I did the research, and where it's easier to track piracy, but for most PC games roughly 80- 90% of the people playing a game are using pirated copies. Sometimes even higher. For example, for one game called Demigod, there were 140,000 connections to the games central server, of which only 18,000 were verified as being from legitimate copies. As a result of so many pirated copies trying to connect, legitimate purchasers couldnt play the game. That's insane, and shows just what happens when individuals blindly pirating something collectively screw things up for everyone. I can give you literally dozens more examples of games, often from small companies, with no DRM, and at low retail prices, experiencing similar piracy rates.
The point is that people pirate regardless of the consequences. It's a selfish act, and no thought is given to the harm it can cause. This isn't a Robin Hood scenario, it's people just grabbing everything they can, because they can, so let's stop with the justifications.
The problem with piracy is that it grows over time. If I can sneak into a theatre to see a film without paying, and others notice, then they too will start sneaking in without paying, until eventually the cinema either has to jack up the prices or go out of business. This phenomenon is recognized in economics as the Free Rider Problem.
Unlike games, movies can actually be sold through multiple channels, starting off with theatrical sales, then home media, as well as TV and cable. This means they can still make plenty of money. But quite aside from the fact that it's difficult to quantify just how much more they could have made in the absence of piracy, the real concern is that studios will only finance mega blockbusters, and take as few risks as possible in such an environment. Hardly conducive to artistic growth.
Not to mention that all this piracy results in the implementation of even more annoying forms of DRM to try to stem the leakage of revenue.
But in plain English, it comes down to this: why should I pay if you don't - and if eventually most people catch on and don't pay, how do expensive and resource intensive products get made? Would you invest any of your money into making a film, if you knew it would be subject to heavy piracy, or would you invest it elsewhere and get a better return?

 

[TravisR]

I can't really fault someone who downloads a movie because they have a real passion and love for the artform and they have no other way to see the movie. Based on his years of posting here, I'd say that Michael Elliot has possibly seen more movies than anyone else on this board. He sees it all- whether it's a century old or brand new- and you can tell from his posts that he loves movies and just wants to see the work.

Unfortunately, we're not just talking about film lovers with no other recourse but downloading. There's also the person who downloads because they're either lazy, cheap, greedy or self-entitled. I don't care that someone steals, say, the new Star Trek movie and watches it on a 17 inch computer monitor but I hate the rationalization that it's not stealing because the studio makes a lot of money or that since The Beatles or Star Wars have made a lot of money, that they're owed something for free. I can't believe anyone could even think that let alone post it.

 

[Persianimmortal]

Just type "Lawrence of Arabia torrent" into google and behold the thousands of results, with all the various pirated releases at different qualities up to 1080p that are available. Then tell me what justification there could possibly be for anyone to pirate a movie that good, and available virtually anywhere on DVD or bluray for less than $10.

 

[Everett S.]

Suppose someone has a long OOP DVD of a film and this DVD is only available on eBay for hundreds of dollars. Would you think it wrong for that person to make a copy of the DVD and give it to an elderly friend who really loved that film? This is all that a lot of these "bootleggers" are doing, except that they're charging a few bucks for the trouble of making a copy. While what they're doing may technically be illegal, they're not really making any money from these "bootlegs" and are making fans of these old films happy. I think at some point you have to stop being Inspector Javert and just allow yourself to be a human being.


Can people even make a copy of a Blu-Ray at this point? Even if they can, the cost of a recordable Blu-Ray disk is probably higher than what a bootlegger could reasonably charge for their "product.".


They're doing this with films that are literally taking in BILLIONS of dollars of revenue. Should we really be losing sleep over a tiny number of people who download a poor quality camcorder recording of a summer blockbuster? It's really not costing anyone anything, unless you consider it a major disaster that an expected BILLION dollars of revenue came up short a few hundred bucks. Of course I can see where new artists would have a complaint about copying, but it seems to me that people like George Lucas and Paul McCartney ought to be giving their works away for free at this point. (They're not.)

I am one of these old guy's, I was asked if I wanted a free copy of the new Oz film. I said no for the 3rd time (other films)!

 

[ROclockCK]

That's at least in part why Lawrence dropped to under $10 so quickly. Traditionally, one way to stem DVD piracy was to price legit product at a "not-worth-it-to-download-and-burn" level. Problem is, the flood of bootleg product and easily accessible torrents has created the impression in too many minds that even $10 is too much to spend for the reel-deal...grossly undervaluing the years of expensive behind-the-scenes work required to restore and re-master a catalogue title to that level of quality.

 

[Douglas R]

Just type "Lawrence of Arabia torrent" into google and behold the thousands of results, with all the various pirated releases at different qualities up to 1080p that are available. Then tell me what justification there could possibly be for anyone to pirate a movie that good, and available virtually anywhere on DVD or bluray for less than $10.

You're conflating the issue because no one here has tried to justify any such thing but I make no apology for obtaining a bootleg DVD of an obscure British 1939 film such as ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE which has never been issued on any video format and which no distributor is ever likely to want to release. Produced by an equally obscure production company, Greenspan and Seligman Ltd, it's probably become an orphan film anyway. i don't accept, as some seem to be saying that because no rights holder has released it, the film should be left to rot with no one seeing it ever again.

 

[JohnMor]

You're conflating the issue because no one here has tried to justify any such thing...

Well, yes they did. Please see below.

They're doing this with films that are literally taking in BILLIONS of dollars of revenue. Should we really be losing sleep over a tiny number of people who download a poor quality camcorder recording of a summer blockbuster? It's really not costing anyone anything, unless you consider it a major disaster that an expected BILLION dollars of revenue came up short a few hundred bucks.

 

[Kevin EK]

Once again, we have some conflation of the issues going on here. The responses are a little staggered, so I guess we could think of it as...stagflation...

MIchael, your example of the elderly friend or relative Is obviously not the same thing as mass distribution, and I think you're aware of that. I don't think anyone would have a problem with you loaning or giving your purchased copy of this out-of-print DVD to your elderly friend. The problem is when you burn a bunch of copies of the movie, and/or put one online for everyone to download. That's when we enter the realm of distribution and it's not a matter of acting like a human being. That's acting like a distributor - of a product owned by someone else.

I'm going to assume that the question of whether someone could copy a Blu-ray is more of a humorous one. When the Star Wars Blu-rays were being discussed on this forum before their release less than 2 years ago, people were citing torrents and downloads of those Blu-rays from sites in China, etc. Copying and stealing of Blu-ray material is commonplace. It doesn't cost much of anything to do it, and when these guys put their stolen goodies on the internet, you see thousands upon thousands of downloads of the material.

As for the idea that it's okay to steal Star Trek or Wolverine or whatever because the studios are making lots of money, I'm frankly astounded. It's stealing. There's no two ways about it. The idea that the creators should just give their movies away for free once again puts us in the situation where people like me lose their jobs - because if those rich guys like George Lucas and Paul McCartney can only make their materials for free, then they won't do it. (Unless you're proposing a worldwide society where all art and entertainment are free to everyone, but where all the artisans and craftspeople who make that material are guaranteed an income to do so...)

And it's not just a few people and just a few hundred dollars we're talking about. It's not a situation where this doesn't cost anything, not by a long shot. Taylor Hackford has told the story many times of how he spent fifteen years getting the movie Ray produced. He had to through a heck of a lot, going through multiple backers and producers before he could finally make the movie, which included years of script revisions and multiple iterations of what the movie could have been. He finally got to direct the movie and they put something around 40 million dollars into the production. He spent months working in Louisiana with the cast and crew and months dealing with the post production before the movie was released in October 2004. On the day that the movie was released into theaters, Hackford noted that there were stolen copies of Ray available for download on the internet, primarily out of servers in China and I think Korea. On the day that the movie came out, there were somewhere around 40 thousand downloads of the stolen copies, and this trend continued over the rest of 2004. The movie itself wound up just about making its money back. (Following the 3x rule - the movie cost about 40 and made about 124, so they paid for the promotion, the production, the interest, and the split of revenues between the producers and the exhibitors.) I note that Ray also won two Academy Awards, including for Best Actor. (And I reviewed the Blu-ray on this forum a couple of years ago) The amount of lost revenue here, just for this movie, is incalculable. I grant that a fair amount of the stolen copies of the movie were taken by people who weren't really that interested in this particular movie and just liked being able to get a copy for themselves on general thinking. But there's also a large number of people who might well have gone to see the movie or purchased the DVD who instead took the bootleg download. Taylor Hackford has had a long career, and he's done pretty well in terms of some of his movies having strong successes. But he's not George Lucas or Paul McCartney or anything like that. He devoted years of his life to making this movie, and it took the pirates a matter of hours to steal it and distribute it around the world for themselves. In what world is this kind of thing to be considered acceptable?

Douglas, I ask that you read my comment at the top of this page of the thread. Nobody is advocating for movies to rot and never be seen again. (There's a great line in the pilot of The Newsroom about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill where the BP spokesperson tries to use the line of "Our thoughts are with the workers on the rig and their family" and the anchor responds "Uh, yes, I don't think anybody is on the side of the fire...") I don't know the specifics about the 1939 movie you mention, but you did say that you don't know that it even is an "orphan". There are plenty of older TV shows and movies I would love to get my hands on, but they're not available. So I live with what I currently have and I advocate for the preservation, restoration and release of the ones that aren't available yet. There's a big difference between that position and the one where someone doesn't care if a movie rots. Much as some people might want to conflate it, this is not an a/b choice between "let the movies rot" and "download illegal copies and don't worry about it".

 

[bigshot]

As far as I can see, other folks have not posted any "strong arguments", merely self-serving ones, like the one you just posted. Basically saying that you don't care about the impacts of piracy because you're a consumer. Which is a wonderful way of denying all responsibility for something that can, in the long term, cause just as many problems for consumers as producers.

Here is my choice...1) I can just shrug my shoulders and say the product serves my purposes and it's the rightholder's business to worry about things like that.or 2) I can take a guess that the box set I bought is a Chinese knock off and start accusing people on ebay of selling bootlegs.BUT... and this is a big but... Who am I to know whether this is a bootleg? It has a few printing errors. It could just be a defect. The contents were shuffled when I bought it. It could have been dropped on the floor in the factory and shoved back into the box without reorganizing the contents. Both of those are very logical assumptions.I am not going to accuse any ebay seller of committing a crime, even a relatively minor civil offense, if I am not 100% sure I am right. I don't know what is and isn't public domain and which countries it's legal to manufacture and which ones it isn't. Even if I did know all that, I would think twice about getting involved because I'm not a party to the offense and I have nothing to gain from being involved.Feel free to get on a high horse and lord your moral superiority over everyone else. Go ahead and jump to conclusions about legal issues you really don't know. Call everyone else a crook. But don't be surprised if folks form opinions and cast judgement on you too.

 

[Robert Harris]

Here is my choice...1) I can just shrug my shoulders and say the product serves my purposes and it's the rightholder's business to worry about things like that.or 2) I can take a guess that the box set I bought is a Chinese knock off and start accusing people on ebay of selling bootlegs.BUT... and this is a big but... Who am I to know whether this is a bootleg? It has a few printing errors. It could just be a defect. The contents were shuffled when I bought it. It could have been dropped on the floor in the factory and shoved back into the box without reorganizing the contents. Both of those are very logical assumptions.I am not going to accuse any ebay seller of committing a crime, even a relatively minor civil offense, if I am not 100% sure I am right. I don't know what is and isn't public domain and which countries it's legal to manufacture and which ones it isn't. Even if I did know all that, I would think twice about getting involved because I'm not a party to the offense and I have nothing to gain from being involved.Feel free to get on a high horse and lord your moral superiority over everyone else. Go ahead and jump to conclusions about legal issues you really don't know. Call everyone else a crook. But don't be surprised if folks form opinions and cast judgement on you too.

It's interesting.

I've selected two bootlegging situation.

First, the UK produced Hitchcock productions, all of which, with the exception of a couple of early films, are copyright protected.

In the UK.

In the US.

And yet, Amazon and others are blithely selling them, possibly concerned to call anyone a thief.

Abel Gance's Napoleon, being sold by Amazon in a Korean bootleg form, derived most likely from the Universal VHS release. It may be stolen from the laserdisc, and I've not checked. I don't care.

But these are bootlegged, stolen goods being harbored, sold and shipped by vendors via Amazon's fulfillment program.

There are no questions here.

We're dealing with thieves. No gray areas. Absolute.

RAH

 

[Persianimmortal]

You're conflating the issue because no one here has tried to justify any such thing but I make no apology for obtaining a bootleg DVD of an obscure British 1939 film such as ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE which has never been issued on any video format and which no distributor is ever likely to want to release. Produced by an equally obscure production company, Greenspan and Seligman Ltd, it's probably become an orphan film anyway. i don't accept, as some seem to be saying that because no rights holder has released it, the film should be left to rot with no one seeing it ever again.

But the point is that they have made such justifications here, at least implicitly. The notion that copying intellectual property is not really stealing, because no physical property is involved; the concept that if it's a major movie by a large studio, they're already making "enough money" to be able to allow people to pirate it; the idea that the rights of copyright holders can and should be superseded because we're consumers, and hence should let companies worry about protecting their own rights....it's all a slippery slope.

All of these justifications and half-truths are designed to make piracy socially acceptable. And my argument has consistently been that once you make piracy acceptable - as it currently seems to be - then pretty much everything is up for grabs. Accordingly, I've posted several examples of people pirating things for which there is absolutely no possible justification (like LoA, or an indie game bundle where all the proceeds go to charity). Because that's what happens once the majority of people head down the path of blindly accepting these self-serving justifications. The bootlegging issue is a corollary of this attitude.

Feel free to get on a high horse and lord your moral superiority over everyone else. Go ahead and jump to conclusions about legal issues you really don't know. Call everyone else a crook. But don't be surprised if folks form opinions and cast judgement on you too.

Don't worry, I know full well that I'm a party pooper on this issue, and that most people reading what I write on this topic disagree with me. It has nothing to do with my "moral superiority", I consider piracy to be an extremely straightforward practical concern: don't bite the hand that feeds you. If you consider the fact that consumers and producers have a symbiotic relationship, then piracy on the scale we're experiencing now is equivalent to parasites overwhelming the host, in which case both parties suffer.

 

[Michael Elliott]

It's interesting.

I've selected two bootlegging situation.

First, the UK produced Hitchcock productions, all of which, with the exception of a couple of early films, are copyright protected.

In the UK.

In the US.

We're dealing with thieves. No gray areas. Absolute.

RAH

I apologize if you've gone over this somewhere else but why have these titles been on the PD market for all these years? I know I bought the Hitchcock titles on VHS back around 1990 or so. It seems that these Hitchcock titles are on more PD labels than anyone except for perhaps the Chaplin shorts.

 

[bigshot]

I have no way of knowing the copyright status of films. I have no idea where those DVDs are made and what the law is in that particular country. I have no idea if any sort of licensing arrangement is in place between the video company and the rights owner. Without that info, I won't speculate. I'll just shop and watch movies. I don't need to have a law degree for that thank God.If I was a copyright owner, I would have proof of ownership in hand, ready to present it wherever it was needed. It's up to them to file a complaint. Until that happens, nothing will happen.If the rights holder doesn't care enough to make one simple phone call to Amazon, why should I care?

 

[bigshot]

I consider piracy to be an extremely straightforward practical concern: don't bite the hand that feeds you.

That same argument could be directed to the RIAA.

 

[Michael Elliott]

RE: mass distribution

Which is what IRON MAN 3, THE HANGOVER III and other current movies are. I really don't think Bow, Young, Fonda or Griffith fall into this category because there simply aren't enough people going to buy them to make them something that is going to appeal to the masses. When you've got fairly known movies that can only get 3000 Blu-ray copies printed I have to wonder how many copies of title X, Y or Z would actually be sold. If anyone bothered to read that link I posted, it seems some of these really small titles don't sell over a hundred copies. If a studio had to actually put money into a title like that it certainly couldn't be much or else they would be out of business. At $20 and 100 copies sold you're looking at $2000. I'm not sure what it takes to create an actual pressed disc but subtract that, the artwork and everything else and there's not much breathing room there.

I'd also question what type of "fans" those who watch a camcorder version of IRON MAN 3 are. As Travis said, some people are lazy or whatever but I don't think "these" people are going to be interested in the type of movies that are held up in vaults.

 

[Robert Harris]

Anyone have a problem with a few local be-headings.Not a moral or (seemingly) a legal problem in certain areas of the world that may not be in sync with modern copyright issues.Doesn't seem to hurt anyone but the main participant. No funds taken from large corporations. How about tribal rape? Apparently the norm in certain areas.Illegal in the US?Generally.Copyright infringement. Bootlegs.Illegal.Hardly the same situation, but legal is legal.And murder, rape, theft...And copyright infringement, are all illegal.For those who find some illegal situations acceptable...What next?I'm appending to this post. It's a bit heavy handed.My perception is that those who support piracy should have no problem with a bit of bank robbery. Especially if performed with discretion and transparency.No weapons.Just theft of currency. And who is harmed, really?Banks have far more cash than they need.Take it.RAH

 

[Robert Crawford]

RAH,

I think many people who buy these bootlegs don't even know their bootlegs. I'm not talking about those that frequent our forum or other similar forums. I'm talking about some 60-70 year old for example that just wants to watch a movie from their youth on disc, but doesn't understand the rules regarding these bootlegs or the video industry. Frankly, many don't know the rules nor do they put too much effort in learning about the legalities of buying these bootlegs. It's simply not high on their priority list in things they should know, as they just want to be entertain even with the low PQ of these discs. There are more of these people than we think and the demographics has a wide age range so it's not just the elderly. Just average people with average incomes. Hell, they're more of them than us, consumers who know everything about piracy and public domain video products and are well verse on film and the video industry. We're a distinct minority.

 

[Robert Harris]

RAH, I think many people who buy these bootlegs don't even know their bootlegs. I'm not talking about those that frequent our forum or other similar forums. I'm talking about some 60-70 year old for example that just wants to watch a movie from their youth on disc, but doesn't understand the rules regarding these bootlegs or the video industry. Frankly, many don't know the rules nor do they put too much effort in learning about the legalities of buying these bootlegs. It's simply not high on their priority list in things they should know, as they just want to be entertain even with the low PQ of these discs. There are more of these people than we think and the demographics has a wide age range so it's not just the elderly. Just average people with average incomes. Hell, they're more of them than us, consumers who know everything about piracy and public domain video products and are well verse on film and the video industry. We're a distinct minority.

But the entities releasing them are aware. As are the companies selling them. I've told them. The single chain that seems genuinely surprised, and has averred that they are looking into it?Target.RAH

 

[Michael Elliott]

THE BIRTH OF A NATION and FRANKENSTEIN (1910) are both still on the books of certain states as being banned to show (on the books since its re-release). I do wonder if Kino and these other companies realize that they are breaking the law by selling these films to these states. I'm close to Ohio so perhaps I can find a politician not doing anything who could go after Kino since they obviously don't respect the law and are selling these to locations where they are banned.