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- Feb 8, 1999
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- Robert Harris
I would certainly hope not!bigshot said:I bet the vast majority of those "Ethiopians" who downloaded Lawrence of Arabia never even watched it.
I would certainly hope not!bigshot said:I bet the vast majority of those "Ethiopians" who downloaded Lawrence of Arabia never even watched it.
If piracy was to inhibit the release of new motion pictures by their rightful owners, there would be no need for production. If there were no new production, there would be no new piracy.Michael Elliott said:I'm sure THE EXORCIST is available to view for free all over the place and especially in 2013 but it doesn't seem like this is going to keep Warner from releasing it. They do continue to hold hostage an AIP flick where those filmmakers have yet to be able to profit because some judge said that the movie was "too close" to the Warner film. Surely Warner has made enough from this film to where they could let the smaller guy see the light of day. By Warner refusing to do so it's not only hurt the small guy but it's also hurt them because the lack of the film being available means that most people already bought the bootleg. Small guy loses again (although I'm sure the disc would sell well enough if it could get released).
We could spin this countless ways and I'm not sure there would be a winner. Stealing movies have been going on since the 1890s so it's not like this is a new event. Hell, these studios everyone is crying over were themselves funded by thieves who made a killing stealing from THE BIRTH OF A NATION back when it was released. That filmmaker certainly didn't see all the returns he was meant to since theater owners were changing numbers to put more money into their pockets.
Perhaps one day we'll get "A few words about....the various moral-less things Hollywood has done."
I don't think you could do that subject justice in just a few words.Michael Elliott said:Perhaps one day we'll get "A few words about....the various moral-less things Hollywood has done."
Logical Fallacy #464 of the piracy playbook: "We could tape songs off radios back in the 80's, and videotape movies off TV, so how does downloading a song or movie these days make any difference?". The fact is that it does make a difference, a huge one, due to differences in technology and the scale of the activity.Michael Elliott said:We could spin this countless ways and I'm not sure there would be a winner. Stealing movies have been going on since the 1890s so it's not like this is a new event.
The film is ABBY. The film was released in theaters a few weeks until Warner got it pulled. It was never shown again in theaters (although Louisville has played it twice since the director is from here), on television and it's never had an official release. I think big boy Warner protected their EXORCIST enough and have made enough off of it to allow the owners of ABBY to finally give it an official release so that fans won't have to keep supporting bootleggers in order to see it. Especially since every other wannabe EXORCIST is now out there in R1 in special editions.Robert Harris said:As to WB restraining an AIP film (I have no background info here), to do otherwise might well be to set precedent.
Not sure I understand what point you're attempting to make.
RAH
Persianimmortal said:Logical Fallacy #464 of the piracy playbook: "We could tape songs off radios back in the 80's, and videotape movies off TV, so how does downloading a song or movie these days make any difference?". The fact is that it does make a difference, a huge one, due to differences in technology and the scale of the activity.
Back in the 1980's when you taped a movie or song, or bought a bootleg, the quality wasn't necessarily very good. With songs, the radio DJ always continued his inane babble over the intro and tail end of a song. With movies on TV, there were ad breaks and station logos. You also needed to wait until you heard your favorite song on the radio, or your favorite movie was on TV, before pressing record - some songs and movies got very infrequent airplay.
The bottom line is that due to noticeable quality differences, the time and effort required, and lack of availability of some stuff, it was still much better to purchase a legitimate copy than to pirate it. Plus of course, home theater as we know it today simply didn't exist back then, so it really didn't bite into cinema sales in a major way anyway.
Fast forward to the 21st century and I can now find and download pretty much any song or movie whenever I want, in high quality (frequently 1:1) with no-one talking over the intro, no ad breaks to fast forward through or edit out, and no need to wait for it to show up on TV or play on the radio. I can view this pirated media on a variety of devices, like a home theater system, a tablet, or a PC. The quality difference is now negligible, the time and effort involved is also negligible, and availability is almost 100%. With millions upon millions of people undertaking this activity, the impact is now many orders of magnitude higher than what was occurring in the 1980s.
Fans have no rights, whatsoever, to own, sell, distribute or duplicate bootlegs.Let us neither return to discussions about the secession of all law, nor the fine art of murder. There must be some basic premise of law. Surely.RAHMichael Elliott said:The film is ABBY. The film was released in theaters a few weeks until Warner got it pulled. It was never shown again in theaters (although Louisville has played it twice since the director is from here), on television and it's never had an official release. I think big boy Warner protected their EXORCIST enough and have made enough off of it to allow the owners of ABBY to finally give it an official release so that fans won't have to keep supporting bootleggers in order to see it. Especially since every other wannabe EXORCIST is now out there in R1 in special editions. However, I guess this here is the perfect picture to use for the right for fans to be allowed to own a bootleg and especially if there's no other way to see it.
And a wonderful new book on the subject from David Morrell.Kevin EK said:Once we get into the bushes of whether laws should exist at all, we are truly lost.
This is not a discussion of anarchism or of the proper nature of society and the gatherings of mankind.
I think we can all agree that laws exist for a purpose, and that there are avenues to obtain those hard-to-find movies or TV shows that are completely legal. And if a movie is totally impossible to find, then it's something where we can always try to get the merchant to make it available. If not, then frankly, that's the breaks. I'm aware of hundreds of super-low-budget movies along the lines of The Terror of Tiny Town that may never become available again, and I really won't lose much sleep over that.
Now, a debate about the fine art of murder - on THAT issue I must respectfully disagree with RAH. If George Bernard Shaw was able to discuss this worthy matter, then who are we to dispute his august wisdom?
Me owning ABBY is about as bad as me speeding on the way home, having a beer before I turned 21, ripping the tag off the couch or staying in the local park past 9pm because our basketball game wasn't finished.Robert Harris said:Fans have no rights, whatsoever, to own, sell, distribute or duplicate bootlegs.Let us neither return to discussions about the secession of all law, nor the fine art of murder. There must be some basic premise of law. Surely.RAH
Persianimmortal said:Sorry, but it's ridiculous to use the population of the world, or all Internet users globally, as a reference point for the scale of piracy of one movie. Let's look at this in its proper perspective:
The single most downloaded film of 2012 was downloaded 8.7 million times between its release in March 2012 and the end of 2012, via a single source of piracy (torrents) - this doesn't include physical pirated copies, usenet, or private torrents, all of which are substantial.
It just means that in 9 month period for which the data was captured from just one piracy source, a single film was downloaded at least 8.7 million times.
Now, according to the same article above, that movie grossed $100m in the same period. With a movie ticket costing around $9 in the US, and DVDs and Blu-rays costing twice that or more, we can estimate that even at only $9 per pop, at the most 11 million people legitimately saw the movie; less if most people waited for the DVD or Blu-ray.
So let's look at our very rough numbers: up to 11 million saw the movie legitimately, and at least 8.7 million saw it illegitimately. Hard to suggest there's no real impact, isn't it.
And it's also the perfect example of a rich studio and a somewhat ignorant judge making a questionable ruling against a film when seen today shows it did very little to rip off THE EXORCIST. If ABBY was to be banned then the majority of Blaxploitation films should have been as well. BLACK GODFATHER, BLACULA, BLACK FRANKENSTEIN, DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE and countless others were just as guilty but these films didn't have to run up against a powerful studio and to some a questionable producer.ahollis said:ABBY is the perfect example of a company defending their IP rights.
Basically, given complete anonymity and little chance of being caught, most people can comfortably turn to piracy as their main source of media consumption, and pass it off as "trying before buying" if questioned about it....It’s clear that the [large] number of people illegally downloading is not balancing out with the few that have gone on to donate to them or buy the film outright. So it’s helping them in one way (exposure) and not helping them in another (money).