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MPAA Finds First Actual DVD Copiers in U.S.
MattW writes: "Yahoo! is reporting that the first pirate DVD bust has occurred. Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?"
now the MPAA will have extra justification for any suits against DVD copying. Takes a greedy pirate to ruin it for the rest of us :-(
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
Could someone please explain to me how a digital copy could be "wholly inferior" to the original media?
Not that I condone the actions of these people, but honestly...it's not like we're talking (S|X)VCDs...
I mean I know it's technically a "bust" but come on. We're talking about two tower computers full of DVD-R burners from the story details. This sounds more like Uncle Joe's moonshine stand than the serious copy operations I saw overseas. I'd put this one on the same level as Johnny downloading music and burning all his friends a copy. Admittedly the amount of cash on hand leads one to beleive that it was a commercial venture, but the lack of "we've been investigating these fellas for quite a while" also makes me wonder if they didn't have a nice snortable sideline business as well and it was THAT business that got the whole shebang busted. When meth labs get busted locally there's usually a whole storm of other sideline illegal activities that also crop up... just my thoughts. .
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"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
Hm... This is an interesting statement. I wonder if the people who they busted were actualy copying existing DVDs, or whether they were instead videotaping movies in theaters (or from other sources) and burning them onto DVDs. In the latter case, I don't think that CSS would be involved at all.
Just last week I commented to my dad about how there must have been a major bust of pirated DVDs in the Bronx.
Being that I'm a traveling salesman, and everyday I'm traveling from one side of the Bronx to the other, I noticed that the DVD hawkers don't "carry" them in stock any more. From Fordham Road, East Tremont Ave, Jerome Ave, Kingsbridge Ave, Southern Blvd, Westchester Ave and a few other hotspots they just blinked out of site. One day I went to meet a couple of distributors in the commercial neighborhood-less area called Hunts Point, and there they were, the piraters themselves, with cajas y cajas del los DVDs.
Of course I stocked up, but that was 3 weeks ago. I havent seen them since.
I sig, therefore I was.
Bull pucky. You can PLAY the DVD, record the analog signal, and encode that for VCD, and the quality will still be perfectly good, for VCD.
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It's a little hard to pay $35 (in an extreme case, RoboCop Director's cut was about that much...) for a DVD when you know they cost pennies to make.
Okay, CDs and DVDs are not cheap to produce. Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs. Think about all the extra things that go into a DVD. And the insane amount of money it costs to have a top-quality video and sound studio. Also, the packaging, printing and advertising costs. And the retail markup, which usually doubles the cost (it does with CDs, anyway). Then think about how the people who would watch Robocop is a niche, and the people who would buy the director's cut on DVD is a niche of that niche; and you'll have some idea of where the $35 comes from. I'm not saying they're not making a lot of profit, or they wouldn't make more if they halved their prices, but movie and music studios aren't price-gouging as much as everyone thinks (I do think they're price gouging, for the record, but not as much as everyone thinks.)
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Hey, maybe some of us like spending two hours having our seat kicked, eating $10 popcorn, listening to cellphones going off, and enjoying the rich gossip and giggles of eleven year old girls in an R rated movie. And I'll tell you what, I'd like to shake the hand of the guy that thought up the idea of monthly/annual tickets. No, not the hand, what's the word? ... throat.
Every wonder at what point the question became "What's the better experience?" to "What's the least shitty experience?"
Before anyone starts on the "why do you put up with it?", I'll mention that I've seen exactly three movies in theatres in the past three years, one of which was made in Hollywood. The other two were subtitled, which meant I saw them in nearly empty theatres, except for the guy who exclaimed "Is it all in Japanese?" two minutes into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is really very little reason to cut Hollywood any slack at all any more. Cutting the bullshit out, their argument is this: if we can't control every aspect of your life, we won't keep making content.
Two points. First, that's not true. Greed and coke habits will take care of that. Second, would it really be such a great loss? I don't agree with commercial piracy, but I'm rather at a loss to understand why there's such a market for it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Please, young people, stop trying to treat dictionaries as manuals that legislate the rules of a language, when what they in fact do is describe (and sometimes misdescribe) common usage.
well i logged out for this one because well... anyway i DO have a bootleg copy of one of the movies listed at the bottom of the article and i will say that it ISN'T a camcorder copy. they DO have an internal problem. I understand that this IS indeed illegal but i wanted to say that there are far larger operations using NON "wholly inferior products".
So if they want to samp out the REAL problem they need to work it out themselves. There will be no police to the rescue here.
This just proves that they arent interested in stamping out copies they are interest in getting some excuse for the SSSCA or whatever it is now.
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"Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs."
Um, no, I was including that. Check out this site: http://www.moviefxmag.com/ I bought one of their 'mags', it's really a DVD. They charge $10 per disc and it includes 60-90 mins (lost track of time) of behind the scenes footage of a few movies. I find it hard to believe these guys could be in business if it cost more than $1 per DVD to make.
The simple fact of the matter is that the cost of making one DVD disperses across millions of copies being out there. It's a case of the DVD's costing pennies to make is a bigger issue than the cost of producing the content for the DVD.
The MPAA would have little problem selling DVD's for $10 each. If that would prove inprofitable (yeah right), then they'd need to tighten their belts a bit. It is not that hard to make quality content. The reason that a DVD costs say $25 on average over the $17 VHS format (I'm pulling numbers out of my head, I bet I'm not that far off) is that the DVD has higher resolution than the VHS counterpart. Therefore, it's worth more money. They make no mention of the discs being far cheaper to make. Yet VHS stuff has gone down in price as of late.
Trust me, the MPAA seriously inflated the price of their content.
BTW, if you are interested in movie making at all, go to Barnes and Noble or Borders and get this mag, it's called MovieFX I think. Here is the URL, you can find out more there:
http://www.moviefxmag.com/
I was totally shocked when i got one of these guys, gonna subscribe to them.
"Derp de derp."
I can't help but think of the difference between Martin Luther King and Malcom X: one an advocate of civil disobedience and peaceful protest (now an act of terrorism in some places, like Utah), and the other far more radical (the thought of 50 black men armed with automatic weapons providing protection for a peaceful assembly in a bigoted white town boggles the mind - the whole purpose of the Second Amendment, IMHO).
Imagine the police being ordered to arrest someone for the "terrorist act" of using DeCSS... to view DVDs he's payed for... on his computer... under Linux. Imagine the accused fighing back. Think automatic weapon's fire, with kevlar-peircing hollow-point rounds: a dozen cops dead in the first skirmish. As they retreat to regroup, the N2 UV lasers are deployed on the roof, powered by a couple of twin-Diesels in the garage: instant sunburn, while 20 KV fry the remaining cops one by one. A bunch of wireless MAN feeds as well as DSL and cable modem offer live, uncut video of the whole scene.
It's likely that someone mounting such a defence will eventually die in the process (proudly, on their feet). Maybe the message will get out: "I killed the 200 cops who wanted to arrest me for watching a movie I paid for." Maybe other cops would think twice when asked to enforce that kind of ludicruous law. But, if nothing is done, things will get worse.
Some of us object by wringing our hands, some by writing letters, some by peaceful (and perhaps not so peaceful) demonstrations, and some with violent retaliatory force. One can't ask anyone to endanger themselves in a manner they're not comfortable with in fighting this war, and I'm certainly not advocating enacting out the scenario above, but it is a war, and it will be fought -- human nature makes me certain of that.
You could've hired me.
Somewhat OT...
<suspicious look> Is this a troll, or just an honest (mis)understanding? As far as I know, fair use does apply to the software industry. And yes you can take a GPL'd piece of software and use it any way you wish. This is probably the most misunderstood / overlooked clause in the GPL:
Does that settle the matter? Copyright law treats use (or fair use) much differently from duplication, aka redistribution.
Don't be fooled by commercial EULAs, or "click-thru" licenses. They do not fall under copyright law at all - they fall under contract law, and as such, it is unknown if they are actually valid or enforceable, since you never actually signed them. Of course the software industry will say they are legal, but think about it - that's what they would say.
Actually, the GPL is also a contract, but note that in that case it doesn't matter if you sign it or not, since it adds to the rights you already have (fair use) by giving you certain rights of redistribution. If you disagree with it, you haven't lost anything - you just don't get those additional rights. By contrast most EULAs take away rights you should have - the right to use the software in any way you see fit, on as many computers (that you own) as you wish. So the question of whether you enter the contract or not is important in that case.
(Go ahead, mod me offtopic, you know you want to. (: )
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