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Bootleg Star Wars AotC Debuts on Internet
Arctic Fox writes "Matt Drudge is reporting that bootleg copies of the new Star Wars movie have been appearing on the internet one week before the movie's big screeen debut. The article says that they have used a tripod mounted camera at a pre-screening to tape it. Not known is if anyone is seen walking in front of the camera."
I gotta admit, I find this amusing, although I'd never bother downloading it:
I've had 12:01 tickets ready to go and there is no way I'm gonna spoil it watching
a low quality divx.
no way I'd ever get a copy on my l33t dialup connection anyway, but the quality is supposedly not even up to "crap" standards.
Maybes it George wanting to get some more publicity ?
This is one case where I wish the DMCA WOULD swing into action...
Yeah but to watch it now and then go to the first screening and ruin all the good parts for those sitting near you might be a kick.
befre anyone says "we don't need no stinking movie news! i'm here for /computer/ stuff!", we should suggest a movie box?
what's next? "new movie, blah is to be released in 8 weeks. the first copies of it on divx are already appearing on the internet. this release beats the old record by 3 and a half hours."?
moox. for a new generation.
ARG...Taco, you keep bragging about that damn ticket, I am gonna have to drive over to the west side of the state and take it just so you won't brag any more.
:-) have fun.
you still suck though for having it
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
For those who haven't caught on yet, this is why the MPAA and RIAA dislike technology so strongly.
--
Damn the Emperor!
I downloaded a bootleg version of LOTR when it came out. It realy spoils the awe that accompanies seeing the film on the big screen for the first time. Having made the mistake once, I won't do it again. After all, the wait is just like waiting for Christmas as a little kid.
Thats what I think, anyway.
I saw the files on kazaa lite, they are only 140-170 meg in size...its horribly low quality. I may get it just to resist the temptation of watching it beforehand. :)
I must resist the darkside of the force!
SPOILER WARNING FOLLOWS
I just downloaded it off Napster, and it is not that great. Jar-Jar gets trained in the ways of the Jedi, which is cool, but then he gets killed by Yoda.
:(
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
They need some copies of the movie floating around to push their propaganda. Don't expect them to swoop down very soon. They will only lightly go after the perps, loudly whining about piracy. They need piracy like some software companies need piracy to get a hook into a market.
that watching it on a monitor, no mattr how big, or with what speakers, it still can't compare to a giant movie screen with speakers and volume pumped up to the max. DVD Home theaters come close, but the sheer size of the screen should be reason enough to venture out to the theater. This is one that needs to truly be seen on the big screen, because the special effects will be worth it.
....bootleg Divx movies are for watching bullshit like RollerBall or Death To Smoochy, not quality films like Star Wars.
I bought some 00.01 tickets for me and my friends, and I'm not willing to destroy all the tension and curiousity about it by such a f****** divx.
Tend to post comments only when drunk
I gave up on downloading cams when someone promised "Spider-Man - 1 of 2 - Real!!" And it was ACTUALLY Part 2 of Changing Lanes. Man, KaZaa is a mixed blessing.
:(
On the other hand, I am fortunate enough to live within close proximity to one of the "sacred places" specified by Wired that have digital projection. Cinemark started selling tickets Monday morning, but didn't advertise them until Tuesday. By then, word of mouth had already sold out the 12:01am show online, and I had stopped down Monday afternoon to the kiosk in the Valley View Cinemark lobby to claim my tickets.:)
Next thing you know, I'm EVERYONE's best friend. I ordered 12 tickets (the most I wanted to spend on tickets on my credit card wa $100) and they were gone to friends and co-workers in 2 hours. The next day and a half, I got 4 calls from people BEGGING me to bump other confirmed viewers!
I just told them to pre-order for Thursday or Friday night. In the mean time, I'm taking a Jedi Holiday on Thursday, with my boss'es blessing, because Wednesday night I'm lining up! I may not own any Star Wars costumes or merchandise, but the movie is going to rock, and the cultural experience of being there opening night with the HARD CORE SW folks is too unique to miss.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Now, I forget exactly which slashdot editor it was that posted "the lone gunmen are dead" several hours early...
... but whoever they are they should be forced to watch the divx BEFORE being allowed to see the movie.
And the divx should be as grainy, low quality, and stuttery as possible.
Poetic justice.
DivX is not low quality!
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
The scene where they show Princess Leia's buns is good though. The same with the scene where it is shown that Boba Fett is a clone of Watto.
If the previous poster is correct, and this Telesync doesn't even come up to 'crap' standard, what are the chances that it's someone posing as a journalist who sat in the front row with his laptop with built in camera.
Just for clerification, it is a VCD not DivX, therefore it is MPEG1. It is also 2 CD's in size and was released by FTF. You can see the .nfo of the release from www.isonews.com
All my life as a geek and "hacker" (not a bad term!), I have believed that "information wants to be free." But now this principle has turned around and stabbed our own George Lucas in the face.
After all he's done for geeks, for space enthusiasts, for scientists, for toy companies, I think it's disgusting that the very Open Source zealots who I respect and idolize turn around and boast--that's right, boast--about how they don't have to pay for tickets.
CmdrTaco: I hope you're happy in 10 years when George Lucas is out of business and Skywalker Ranch is purchased by Microsoft-Linux-Time-Warner-Toyota.
:(
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Having lived in Asia for 15+ years, I can say that this is the way that almost all new movies makes if over there.
Somebody sneaks into a screaning with a camcorder and films the movie. It's always fun to see whether the guy will use a tripod (most don't for fear of getting caught), who's going to stand up during the movie, whether the dude will be eating popcorn (always a little hard to hear the dialogue), and what the audience finds funny.
These bootlegs are almost always sold as VCDs instead of DVDs and they are so low quality that if you have a prayer of seeing the movie at the theater, you don't touch them. Sometimes you get the ultimate surprise of watching "It's a Bug's Life" instead of "Jurrasic Park III", but it's all part of the experience.
P.S. to the MPAA - if you actually sold movies in China that were legal, this sort of thing would never fly with the public.
$45 per U Colocation Special
After impregnating Natalie Portman, he goes an kills the Lone Gunmen! You dirty SOB, Anakin! Get you Damn Hands off of her!
The movie is completed already. The MPAA refuses to sell you a CD copy of it, so they are leaving it up to the pirates to fill a market demand that they don't want to bother to satisfy.
A large percentage of the piracy situation involves just this exact sort of situation: the material is out there, and the company won't sell it, so piracy flourishes. This has nothing to do with denying profits to creators, since they have decided that they don't want the profits by not selling it.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-051002starwars. story?null
which is rather extensive, but is somewhat of a showcase of antipriracy arguments.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So someone took a camcorder and filmed AOTC. They did it before, and they'll do it again. When TPM came out, I managed to get an early camcorder VCD copy and sat and watched it at home and was totally thrilled - not by the film itself, but by the fact that I was able to watch this film early, and that finally a new Star Wars film came out.
When it was released, I went and saw it at our local cinema, and it was obvious that a huge number of the people queuing to get in had also seen the film early, and yet we were all still lining up to pay money to see it again (I copied the AVIs from the CDs to my laptop and had watched it lots of times.) Sure, it made the cinema trip less of an occasion, I pretty much knew the film line for line, but the bootleg film, for me, was a huge part of the whole Phantom Menace experience, and I'd do it again (and probably will as soon as I find a copy online.)
This time though, I won't follow it up by going to the cinema as well. I felt that the fact that the sound was kind of ropey for the first half hour or so, and the picture was washed out and less than perfect added to the story - it was supposed to be set decades before ANH and the copy I had actually looked like some kind of archive footage.
Now wash your hands.
The AP is also running a story.
--
silence is poetry.
Just watched it last night. Killer flick, great quality!
Will definitely check it out in the cinema at the first opportunity, now...
Does the average Star Wars geek care about the idea of Lucas being out of business in 10 years? By 10 years from now, the Star Wars series would have been completed for years, leaving Lucas nothing left to do but license Jar Jar tv cartoons and make really bad movies like Willow and Howard the Duck.
Seems like all we have to lose is Jar Jar toons and really bad non-Star Wars movies?
Will this have any impact on ticket sales? Obviously not! I would dare anyone who would trade a grainy 320x200 shot of the movie for the real thing in the movie theaters.
LOTRs was out on Morpheus before the movie came it, and it still had amazing revenues.
...that nowhere in any of the existing StarWars movies (don't know about Episode II yet) does there appear a "marketing droid". I mean, how could George Lucas do without such a potentially important character! "Marketing droids" would be crutial to the development of the plot line... perhaps they would be responsible for funding the Evil Empire...
Why bother.
Each and every time I see something like this I want to say, "Show me the money."
How do we know this isn't disinformation from the MPAA?
I have looked on all the normal underground channels for it, but haven't seen it. There have been filenames that would make you think it is it, but it's a bogus file.
Has anyone actually seen this?
I wouldn't waste my time if I were you. The ending doesn't make any sense, it's just some crazy lady dancing.
The movie tickets I've got say that the session starts at 11:59PM on Wednesday night? I suppose this is cool because they show trailers and advertisments and so on and don't start the movie till later perhaps?
Shit, I just don't understand you people. Whocares if you see it at 12:01 or even the first few weeks. I might go see it after the lines have died down and it is been out for weeks or months. I guess i'm just the only geek who isn't obsessed with star wars or could even give a shit that they are making ep 1-3, when i'm sure they won't ever be as good as the originals.
I'm not sure when they will release it in Europe. But last time it was more than half a year later then in the USA.
However the advertising didn't wait at all.
If they build up the hype but let you wait half a year, they should not be suprised if this angers fans in Europe so much that they download the bootlegs.
It's 2002 and there IS such a thing as the internet. A release in Europe and other parts of the world should be at least within a month.
It's there own fault for being cheap. Watching it full screen in a cinema is worth it. But not if you have to wait half a year.
---
So, to see these you need to incur a gig of download and all you get to see is two crappy VCD's of a movie that's coming out next week.
These are obsessed people, my friends. Nobody is doing this to avoid paying $8 at the box office. The people who download this will probably be first in line, dressed up as their favorite StarWars character. And they'll probably see it 6 times, even if it sucks.
Noone is loosing money here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Those guys who have been waiting outside since february?
Are they still there?
Maybe we could give them a laptop and a DivX...
As with Lord of The Rings, this film is also coming out in many parts of Europe on the same day as in the States. I know here in Dublin there is a local cinema showiong it at midnight.
I've had 12:01 tickets ready to go and there is no way I'm gonna spoil it watching a low quality divx.
I've had my $12 USD ready to go since payday, and I'm not going to spoil it watching a lame movie like ATOC...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
To drive people insane at the film, go to the first night, and 'count' the cue dots.
For those who don't know, they're the little black dots in the top right hand side, that tell the projectionist when to change reels.
The first cuedot is to 'start the other projector' the second is when to actually change scenes. They're 6 seconds apart and so you can count 7 seconds down from the first one (7..6..5..4..3..2..1..cuedot..scenechange) and it'll drive anyone sitting next to you absolutely insane.
Great!
Is there anybody who will go to the trouble of downloading this who is NOT planning to view it at the cinema as soon as reasonable?
I don't see how this will reduce revenue in any way!
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Have you actually downloaded it and watched it?
Has anyone?
In looking around I have seen files with the name, but they are always bogus. Big time bogus. Different movie, not large enough, etc.
Has anyone for a single second considered that this could be a disinformation campaign created by the MPAA?
We might get to see that head-butt scene now.
I never cease to be amazed by people who worry about the "blockbuster" being bootlegged. I mean, if the film doesn't suffer so horribly from not being on a HUGE screen with the full ambient sound method of your choice, then it is hardly worth seeing at all :-) And certainly isn't worth seeing for X$ more than the video/cable/dvd version.
:-)
Don't misunderstand, I think that there are great films that do not require the cinematic experience, but others _demand_ it. AotC had better be one of the latter
As a side note, I think that the shared experience that is going to see afilm with a friend is really important as well.
It is always difficult for a screenwriter to put dead information into a screenplay since the 120mins (yeah I know give or TAKE) doesn't leave too much time for superfluous material, but that is kinda sad, it would be nice to be able to (both as audience and maker I suspect although I am not the latter) meandre through episodes rather than rush. Some of the more intriguing films of the last 10 years do meandre more and I love them for it, but still there is not so much that gets to screen that is unimportant or even misleading. To this end, I had an idea for a new kind of shared experience cinema. You go in pairs and start by each sitting in different theatres watching different aspects of the same film and then an interval and you join up to watch the remainder of the film together at which point talking is encouraged so that you might build apon each others missing facts.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Sounds like a plant by the MPAA (especially if they used a tripod). Maybe they're using it as an example, to show congress (and the public) that copy protection, and the DMCA is needed after all.
Other news, more digital theaters, unfortunately shy on details, but there's a listing of some on DLP.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seems it's an early revision of the script, as some scenes from the trailers don't appear or an elaborate fanscript simulation: who would print some 100 pages, then scan them back in, them run them thru OCR.
This is the "real" release. It's 2 CDs in size, with the complete movie (full runlength) in VCD format, distributed as .bin/.cue.
The quality is fair, picture a bit blurry and sound is clipping on a few occations, but I would describe it as "watchable".
The things on KaZaa are prolly just fakes or ripoffs. Real things come from FTP servers.
I'd drop an extra $20 on a DVD if I could get it within, say, two weeks of the premier - even if there were no extras to speak of. I'd much prefer to stay at home rather than go to the theater. Why? For the price of a good HDTV, I put in a 1366x768 HiDef Projector and 120" 16:9 screen. Hooked up to my audio system, it's every bit as good as the movie houses, and quite better in most cases. Plus, I never have to deal with the hour spent in the car, uncomfortable seats, sticky floors, $5 drinks, and the kid behind me who likes kicking my seat!
They still get the first couple of weeks for the hard core viewers, and they get my money directly (rather than filtering it through the traditional disto channel). Are they worried about pirates or "personal" showings which they won't get a cut of the profits? Well, piracy obviously exists despite their best efforts and public showings of the discs are already illegal.
As an added bonus, the hard core DVD watchers will purchase the later-released, Special, Collectors, and Mutli-disc Ultimate editions when they come out.
*poof*
Oh forget about all that, I just woke up. Nice dream, though...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Weird, whenever I try to download it, my kazaa client just dies after about 20k, restart client, get another 20k, restart another.
Weird, but then I am using W2k.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
I hate to predict the future, but:
Metallica is to RIAA as George Lucas is to MPAA?
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Speaking of crap, one film I always wanted to see remade in the books original setting was War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. Seems our ol' buddy Tom Cruise is going to ruin that, too. Maybe he'll star, buddy Co$'er as one of the martians. Won't that be un-cool.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The impression I got from the reviews is that Lucas has lost his ability to interact with human beings. Like the light saber scene where Anakin and the Sith Lord are happily munching on candy bars and then drop them and begin fighting. And the scene where the Sith Lord leaps to the refreshment table and throws a handful of powdered doughnuts at Anakins face to blind him was classic.
And then there was the scene of George Lucas yelling at yoda about "technical realism" right after the epic batttle scene towards the end of the movie.
Why even call it a low-quality DIVX. I wouldn't even give it that much credit. Call it a tripod recording, not a divx.. ..it doesn't deserve the title.
I'd definitely not watch this crap. I've got tickets waiting on me at the box office and I would absolutely not want to spoil it by watching some sh*tty recording.
The real story hasn't come out just yet but ILM was the victim of a hack attack. Network security butted heads with free and easy artists and network security lost. Some passwords leaked out and the whole film and soundtrack was taken.
There have already been "resignations" and more may come. Lucas is livid - expect more security in the future
Does anybody know if NetBSD has been ported to this yet?
"Damn this digital copying technology!" cries the MPAA. "It makes it really easy for a single copy to be rapidly distributed to many sites!"
Which is true, but these early copies are all taken from pre-release showings of celluloid. Given that the studios clearly can't keep control of the celluloid, it's no longer giving them any benefit. In fact, they're a bloody liability, as it takes time to make many celluloid copies and to distribute them, worldwide in this case. Consider the problems of trying to make and ship thousands of celluloid copies all around the world, weeks before the first screenings, while trying to keep an eye on them and stop reviewers filming the showings (or people in the distribution chain just pocketing copies).
Hey, here's a solution that I can think of. Give up on it. Keep a single digital master, say "FUCK the reviewers" ('cause half of them don't watch the damn film anyway before writing their review, and some of those who do are filming it!), transmit digital copies the day before showing start, and only start your celluloid printing there and then. Digital copying technology makes it really easy for a single copy to be rapidly distributed to many sites, remember? Hey, we can figure that out.
George wants to encourage more digital screens, right? Great, do something about it. (Assuming Episode 2 doesn't suck), then consider if Episode 3 screen times were:
Get the point? The digital genie is out of the bottle, and it can't be put back. Celluloid is a security liability. Distributors might as well get with the 21st century and start using digital technology rather than weeping over how much it's costing them.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It seems to me most people download this stuff just for bragging rights. "Yeah, I've already seen it, got broadband ya know"..What's the fun of watching these movies if you've already watched it in crap-o-vision? These days, it seems that people who want to be part of the new 'elite nerds' (those who see movies before they even come out) don't really care about WHAT they're seeing, as long as they're the FIRST one of their friends to see it.
One day, the internet will be distributing films before they're even filmed! Someone should stop this rampant piracy before it ruins us all! Will somebody think of the children?!
http://danhon.com/
Anyone from NYC or have visited and seen the guys on the side of the road with a bunch of VHSs on a blanket? Most if not all are movies that either have not come out yet or are in theaters currently. My friend bought one and the quality wasn't bad.
This isn't a new thing and has nothing to do with the internet.
-- No Comment
What the hell is the point? Episode II is going to suck just as bad as Episode I did, therefore, it isn't even worth downloading.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
... want to watch a shitty copy made under shitty conditions? Just to tell one's friends one week in advance about it? Sheesh, the percentage of idiots out there is large indeed.
Isn't this pretty predictable? Heck, the official opening is less than a week away. In other news, spring flowers have reportedly started blooming, robins have returned, etc.
Being that Mr Lucas filmed the entire movie in a digital format, the preview showing (which this would be a copy of) almost certainly was in a digital projection theater. Perhaps the projectionist merely copied the files and downconverted them to VCD? :-)
Seriously, I wonder how big the digital projection files for this would be. Would they fit onto an iPod?
FTF are decent movies, I prefer SMR or [vV] recordings myself.
Someone on my dorm's network downloaded it last night. I didn't watch it (would rather see it on a real screen), but I watched the 1 minute 'preview' file, and its not really worth it. There are better shaky cam recordings of movies out there...
I guess it would be an understatement to say that Lucas is mad
Due to all the hype over ep 1 i decided that i won't watch any of these in a movie theater. Luckily, friends had gotten a pirated divx with incredibly crappy picture and estonian translated subtitles. I'm not sure in which language the translator had most defective skills - in english, in finnish or in starwars. There wasn't a single error-free sentence.
Anyway, lmao and don't regret it a bit.
Edonkey 2000, there is your fort knox.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Is this just a trick of the MPAA?
Think about it - make a honeypot and see how many people stick to it.
Star Wars : Episode II - Attack of the Clones could be the MPAA's poster child, just like Metalica was the RIAA's poster child.
I'm guessing this was all set up by the MPAA, and that they've figured out how to track who downloads it - just like the RIAA figured out how to track who downloaded Metalica.
Of course, I could just be paranoid...
Education is the silver bullet.
But from the reviews, it looks like this bootleg of ATOC isn't worth your download time. It's currently polling at 5.7 out of 10 for image quality, and 6.2 out of 10 for sound. Even for a VCD, that's pretty low. And of course, the JPG screen cap looks like a blurry mess. However bad the quality is, it is impressive that FTF was able to release SW Ep2 so early. Check out the comments forum to see what people (well, if you consider "5kR1p7 k1DDi3z" to be actual people) are saying about this bootleg.
you bastards, i was getting excellent transfer rates from gnutella until now.
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
This type of event was happening long before digital copies became the norm - how many of you older slashdotters remember watching a bootleg copy of a movie on a VHS tape?
Of course, Valenti was arguing that VHS was going to kill the movie industry then too...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
...that they're selling the movie theater experience as much as the actual movie? Like Taco said, even if somebody plunked a DIVX copy of AOTC in my hands right now, there's no way I'm gonna watch some shitty DIVX when I can pay 8 dollars for to watch it on a screen that's bigger than my apartment, in a comfy chair, with booming digital sound.
:) I'd pay a few extra dollars for a ticket to a more upscale theater.
In any business, you think about what you're offering that's UNIQUE, whether it be price, quality, features, or convenience. What do theaters have that's unique? Certainly not the movies, since they're freely available via the Internet, or cheaply available via rental several months later. It's the theaters themselves (and the associated trip-to-the-movies-with-friends experience) that are unique. Now, this experience SUCKS in some ways (lines, rude employees, partially-chewed Goobers under your feet in the theater) but that's all the more reason to improve it.
Theaters ARE starting to catch on, with features like comfy stadium seating. I'd like to see them take it a little further. A lot of art-house movie theaters have nice interiors and lounges, with food that's nicer than the usual horrid crap at large theaters, and it often costs less. It would be nice to see slightly more upscale mainstream theaters. Also, they should sell beer.
Sure, lots of people are gonna download this flick off the net, but I really don't think many of those people were gonna PAY to see the movie in the first place.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
So, ya, where can I find a link to this baby? Everything on Kazaa is a fake, so how about an FTP?
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
This has often been the major factor in why I don't watch movies much at home. So many have been stunning on the big screen (e.g. Anna and the King, CTHD, SW:EPI, Oh Brother Where Art Thou) that $5 for a matinee ticket is a small price to pay for the view. Maybe after I fork over $5K for a Sony WEGA screen or such and have a decent total THX sound system at hom (assuming I live in a place where I could actually crank it up to theater levels) I'd feel differently (I've snuck^H^H^H^H^Hbeen to a couple CES and know what I want 8), but until I have all that, $5 is a pretty fair trade to sit in someone else's chair, watch someone elses big screen and hear sound over someone else's THX system and not have to clean up all the beer^H^H^H^H^pop and popcorn detritus afterwards.
Watching a panavision movie on anything less than a 40" monitor has got to be utterly sad, you're really not seeing the same thing theater-goers are.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think we all pretty much know how the story is going to end.
You, my friend, are an idiot.
There is a reason why movies are screened in big, dark rooms with a packed audience, a screen that makes a tear look like a waterfall, and the sound turned WAY up. The emotional experience of seeing a film in that setting, (I hate this line) as it was intended, is significant.
Watch your pirated copy on your laptop, I do not care that it is stolen. Heck, mail $5 to the Skywalker Ranch if you want to. But your attempt to legitimize crap presentation is offensive. Compared to the real thing, it is junk. If George Lucas wanted TPM to look like archival footage he would've dug up the camera from "American Graffitti" and done the developing in his bathtub.
Films are constructed. Every element is precisely inserted for greatest effect. Find out what it's like, drop the $9 and get your ass in line.
Palabra.
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
Here in the UK, we're getting it eight hours before our friends across the pond.. Hurrah!
I like to watch my tv on a fairly big screen while relaxing on the sofa. My flatmate likes to download lots of tv, and I've watched a few episodes of Futurama and the Simpsons that he's grabbed.
And you know what? There's no way I'd watch a downloaded film, because watched fullscreen, the quality is shit. It's bad enough with Futurama, which is nice and simple most of the time, without realy fast changes, but almost anything else tends to be blocky and pixellated and low res.
I think I'll stick to buying the DVDs
My Journal
Saw the LoTR one hour before the world premier started in New Zealand, that was fun =)
This silly little low-quality screener isn't what the MPAA/CBPTA are all about about, although it does give them more fule for the fire. What the entire media industry is terrified of is the ability to steal original quality digital copies and distribute them. All of these laws are being pushed so that the media industry secures their revenue stream.
Believe it or not, in the not too distant future, we will have broadband capable of transmitting DVD qualtiy video quite capably. When movies and television broadcasts are released completely in digital format, the thieves will have a field day. This is what the media people want you to believe.
Check out this story: Between 19 and 60 theaters could show ATTACK OF THE CLONES with digital projectors, but of them, none in Southern California had yet booked the movie. (We'll see if that stands. Remember the "no Sony theaters will show Episode I" rumor from three years ago?)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
You can make a lot of money downloading early movie releases, burn them on cd and sell them for 5$ in school.
Capitalist Pig.
Taco mentions that "there is no way I'm gonna spoil it watching a low quality divx."
:-( ). I wonder how he knew it was DivX'ed...
:-)
I just hit Gnutella. I'm seeing all DivX encoded rips of it (only part 1 of 2, though
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
In order to find the trailer you have to know that the letters are mixed to prevent easy sighting by the MPAA.
.rar, zip or other preferred archive format extension.
Instead of AoTc, it is TAco or coAT with the respective
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Or, how 'bout those poor folks that don't live in a prosperous country that will have cinemas showing AotC? For the Star Wars fans (which I'm sure exist) in those countries, this is kind of nice.
Like poor Junis? I bet he is downloading it on his c64 a this very moment.
Michael Loves Me!
Fodder to support their nefarious schemes.
Will this affect ticket sales? No.
Will this cost Lucas anything? No.
Will this in any way directly damage anyone? No.
Will the RIAA/MPAA use this as a scare tactic to ramrod any legislation they happen to want? You bet your bum.
Right or wrong, harmful or not, giving your enemy ammunition is a pretty stupid idea.
gm
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
Wouldnt that fall under 'public rebroadcast' and there for NOT be legal?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was foolish enough to watch Episode 1 on a 'look what I filmed in the cinema' video CD and never actually went to go see it on the big screen.. I am determined to actually see my very first Star Wars movie at the cinema this time around!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Or has it been too long since we've seen one of those "Natalie Portman naked and petrified" trolls? Anybody else miss them?
Ahhh, 1999. So long ago....
This tagline is umop apisdn.
'I hadn't even seen a Star Wars movie until I got the part,'' Portman says. ''I mean, come on. I'm a girl. But in this one, you've a hunky guy in Hayden. Even when he's not being lovey-dovey, the girls can focus on his muscles when he's fighting. There's always something for the girls to keep their eyes on.''
/., someone is bound to have told her. If Lucas were a cool guy, he would have included a scene where everyone is eating grits or something. It could have been done discretely enough so that only people "in the know" would have caught it.
I wonder if she ever thought about the "hot grits" thing during the filming of this Episode. I mean, even if she doesn't read
Or maybe when she gets angry with Darth Vadar she pous the grits down his pants, or maybe dumps water on him as a symbolic guesture to grits.
MPAA : But, but you don't get it! Those who would have watched twice will only watch *once*! And those that would have watched ten times will only watch *nine*! That's lost revenue! We're going down the drain!
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
..very bad!
So ha!
Let me begin by stating this is flamebait. I am being perfectly serious here...
Anyway, one of the comments (and probably others, as comments get repeated here an awful lot because Slashdot is so big) said that geeks watching it at home would not do the studios any harm. They would watch it 6 times in the theatre anyway!
Uh, no.
Piracy, at any level, is wrong. They would watch the movie in the theatre MORE if they didn't watch it at home, first. Watching it in the theatres: gives studios the money they have rightfully earned, allows broke movie-ticket rippers to earn extra money (possibly commission?) and keeps enterprising businesses going.
Now, I'm not trying to preach here. Well, maybe I am. But remember: just because most of the slashdotters here are involved with open source, doesn't mean that everything is! And that comment is NOT going out to everyone, just anyone who is defending piracy. I mean, geez. At least have the guts to admit you're wrong.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
The .nfo has plenty of information reguarding their release, if you desire to see how things are done among the warez groups. I find it interesting that even among warez groups theres a spirit of compitition, rather than a sort of unionized communism("Hey, releasing video's is Bob's job. YOU'RE TAKING RESPECT FROM HIM.")
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
... the more bootlegs will slip through their fingers.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
This is either a prerelease screener for review or for movie theater employees (I'm guessing the latter)... It's good quality, not fantastic, obviously made from a quick and dirty optical print dubbed to VHS... Not shot in a theater or with a camera...
If you look at the sample MPEG, you'll note a fuzzy edge to the bottom and right side of the video, which indicates masking that normally occurs in a film to video direct transfer- They usually invest more effort in making retail versions cleaner...
A camera captured version would usually be a little off kilter, chop off a significant portion of the screen, and as was mentioned, occasionally have another audience member either walking through a shot, or coughing, or their cel phone would be going off here and there...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"Films are constructed. Every element is precisely inserted for greatest effect. Find out what it's like, drop the $9 and get your ass in line."
Hilarious! You believe that, and you call me an idiot! Rich!
Lucas makes it up as he goes along! He "inserts" things to appease his daughters and his bank balance, that's why every film after the first has been aimed at a younger and younger audience, and that's why his re-released versions took out the parts that made Han seem like a guy who sometimes did bad things.
After the nice lady at your Anger Management Therapy slips you the pink pills, get her to read my comment to you.
I said nothing that was an "attempt to legitimize crap presentation" I merely told how I enjoyed watching my crappy looking VCD copy, and explained how it, in TPM's case, looked appropriate, in my opinion.
If you find that "offensive", too bad. It's only a film, not a religion.
And try to chill out a bit, eh?
Now wash your hands.
How? Let's take a look at the comment;
The opener = an insult. An insightful insult? No, just a cheap shot.
The closing line was a sweeping statement.
His mother must have mod today...
I gotta admit, I find this amusing, although I'd never bother downloading it: I've had 12:01 tickets ready to go and there is no way I'm gonna spoil it watching a low quality divx.
So I take it you don't object to the bootleg on ethical grounds?
Definitely. After seeing the Attack of The Clones trailer in Grainyvision, then seeing the same trailer on TV, I realized that the whole grainy, washed out, 70's looking edition had a hell of a lot more atmosphere than its digital cousin. I don't know . . . I may just bring some friends over, burn it to a VCD, and see it that way. In my basement, because that's how God intended it.
Of course, even if it's the suckiest suck to ever suck a suck, I'm gonna go see it at the theatre. I saw Phantom Menace thrice, fer chrissakes.
I just saw it in the theaters it is a waste.
By the way frosty pist
"Man set to stay online with Kazaa for months to set new 'Waiting For Pirate Download' Record. More at 10:00...
While I don't care enough to download the centropy rip, i've always gotten a bit of a thrill when these types of things are reported on the mainstream news. The knowledge that I know about these things before CNN or even Matt Drudge always serves to boost that condescending, L33Ter-than-thou state of mind I can't seem to shake when confronting the general population.
:\
Of course, as a rule, this mentality is not recommended for use when dating outside the geek community.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
I'll just wait until it comes out. I bought 21 tickets for our office to go and see it friday with the Digital Projection and THX sound.
www.movietickets.com has advance ticket sales. Get them while their still hot.
(Somewhere on Sepulveda Drive in L.A.)
.02% of the American population, sir!"
RED ALERT! RED ALERT!
"Boss! We've got a problem! There is a crappy copy of the new Star Wars out a week early on the internet! And people who have cable modems or better, underground internet connections, an interest in seeing it, the understanding of what an alternative media player codec is, big enough hard drive space left, a file sharing app that still works, the knowhow to get it to run, and the interest of watching it early on a computer monitor are STEALING OUR MOVIE!"
"So how much of our movie audience is that?"
"Well, probably
"Oh. HEY! Look at this! We just made all the papers across the country. Man you just can't buy advertising this good! Get my clubs. We're going golfing lackey."
"Right on it, sir!"
Augh, attack of the clones?
Okay, that was a bad one...:)
Outstanding work for getting a rip up this early.
Image quality looks a little shonky, but I don't really care, in a few days time I'll be seeing it on a very very big screen, then a week after that I'm going to London to see it on a stupidly big Digital Projection screen.
LucasArts is going to get their pretty penny out of me on this movie, I will probably see it 3 or 4 times at the cinema and I'll be pre-ordering the DVD as soon as it shows up on http://play.com so I don't think they can begrudge me a quick sneak peek off usenet.
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
People who pirate movies like SpiderMan and Star Wars: Episode II (to name tow recent ones) only undermine the efforts of the EFF and groups like them to reign in copyright protection. Even if copyright were returned to 14/14 like the copyright act of 1902, these would still be gross violations of intellectual property rights. Think before you download this movie REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE GOING TO SEE IT IN THE THEATERS!!! By downloading this movie or engaging in file sharing of copyrighted material you are spitting in the face of those in the EFF who are trying to protect our rights.
...if they treat the bad guys the way they have in the previous movies:
jango fett: "hey george, can i have more that 5 minutes of total screentime in this trilogy?"
lucas: "no. you're going to be cut in half and thrown in the sarlac pit just like all the other cool enemies. it's better that way, else i'll have to take off your mask and show how much of a wuss you really are"
Some "Johnny come lately" who, like CmdrTaco, used his daddy's money to buy him fame on the Internet?
> Me too > > > Me too > >> Me too! >>> > >>> Me too!! > >>>> Me too! > >>> > > >>> > > Me too! > >>> >> >> >> > Me too! > >> > > > >> >> >> >> > >> >> > > > Me too!!
---- The one good thing about music: When it hits you, you feel no pain.
is that this was done by a theater employee with a camcorder, not some pimply faced Norwegian with a computer.
If the MPAA really wants to prevent piracy, they'd push for better pre-employment screening of cinema ushers, not try to totally cripple a whole industry that is already many times larger and more important to the economy than Hollywood. (Shit, just video/computer gaming is bigger than Hollywood now, let alone the whole digital industry!)
Silly asses.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Can someone tell me where I can get this? At $7.00 a ticket, we're getting ripped off.
Please don't take my comment to mean that real fans will be downloading the VCD. I agree with you completely - that would be ludicrous.
On the contrary, there appears to be a separate set of people who are simply obsessed with the movie, based on very little data, mostly all on the hype.
Based on your description, though, maybe there's a third group, the hype-driven fan, who is both a fan and taken up by the hype.
I ask this seriously: Why would you dress up as Darth Maul before you saw TPM? What if you found out that he was a kitten-eating child molester during the course of the movie? If you dressed up as Obi-Wan, that I could understand, we all knew Obi-Wan rules, but how can one be a Darth Maul fan before knowing who Darth Maul is?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I guess you ain't seen the quality of the output coming out of the digital cameras they used. Compression artifacts everywhere. You should try doing green screens when every character has ringing around him/her/it. No, I think I'll just watch the DivX.
The "Phantom Menace" bootleg I saw on a friend's computer at college had turkish(?) subtitles. It was so cool - to my admittedly western eyes it made the damn thing look really alien.
triv
The DMCA is not the solution here.
The DMCA is not the "DMCA".
There are two laws both called the DMCA. One DMCA consists of 17 USC chapter 12, which prohibits cracking 8-bit XOR encryption used as an access control device. The other DMCA consists of a takedown procedure (17 USC 512) that ISPs can follow to maintain a safe harbor. There are also several riders on the DMCA that reverse MAI v. Peak, protect vessel hulls, and affect some operations of the U.S. Copyright Office. See this PDF for more information.
It is simply copyright infringment. Plain, old fashioned copyright infringment. Its illegal, period.
I agree 100%.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I didn't have any desire to see Blow. Then I got a shitty bootleg from gnutella. It looked like a very good movie. So I paid the NYC theater mafia $9.50 to see it on the big screen. So they actually profitted from me downloading a bottleg. I may even buy the DVD one of these days.
But the MPAA doesn't want you to know about people like me.
FTF-SWEP2.nfo
FTF-SWEP2a.cue
FTF-SWEP2a.bin
FTF-SWEP2b.cue
FTF-SWEP2b.bin
There be gold in that there p2p network
there are so many comments here that make me laugh.. but anyway.. if you want AOTC and spiderman etc, get Edonkey2000 and goto sharereactor.com
you'll get the real deal.
oh.. spiderman is 3 cds, AOTC is 2 i think..
Certainly the special effects will be lacking on the divx, but one has to ask the question: Are you paying $8 to see special effects, or are you paying $8 for a good story?
If the story is good on the divx, then it may be worth seeing again on the big screen with the good sound and great video.
Personally, I completely expect Lucas to do quite well with video and sound. But the story, is where he fell apart in Phantom.
My dumb. I mistakenly associated your post with a different thread. Retract retract retract...
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Truthfully, I don't see where there's any new information here. Jurrassic Park III was out as a bootleg a week before it was out in theaters, as were a lot of other movies. The only reason that I can see that this made all the headlines is because (despite what people say) everybody is anticipating this movie and they think it will actually be a good movie. I'm not a hard-core Star Wars fan by any means, but from what I've heard one of the big reasons people didn't like Episode I (aside from Jar Jar, whom I really didn't have a problem with :) ) was that it didn't have enough battling. That looks like it's solved in Episode II.
In the U.S. the DMCA is already stifling free speech, and possibly putting the country at risk because academics can't work in many areas to improve security (becasue they can't publish their results). The proposed SSSCA (recently renamed) is also awful; it tries to turn PCs into TVs that have no ability to process information. And all of this is worthless.
It's worthless because anyone can just use a camera and record a movie straight from the audiovisual output, and then distribute the results. That bypasses the "don't describe how to decrypt" provisions in the DMCA, and it bypasses the "require untamperable decryption" clauses in the SSSCA. As long as humans use ears and eyes for observing audio and video, movies have to come out of the machines sometime.
Many technology-based solutions are worse than the current problem. You could make cameras or distribution of videos illegal - but they have many legitimate uses, including recording family scenes, recording illegal/terrorist acts for later prosecution, and so on. The DVD cabal would like to make sure that only they can create video information, but that's also clearly not in society's best interest. We make sure that anyone can write a book; there is too much danger in trying to prevent that. Even if DVDs could only play them, someone can always write another program to display video data, and we WANT such programs to view material we create. Even if you could insert digital brain implants to watch movies, someone will just record the electrical signals from the brain implants. Besides, the risks of mandating brain implants if you want to watch movies (even if we HAD the technology) exceed any societal benefits for "unbreakable" security.
The act of distributing this copyrighted material is already illegal; there's no need for new laws. Just work to find and prosecute those who perform illegal acts. Perhaps watermarking would be appropriate, since that would aid in finding perpetrators without stomping on legitimate use. We already have forces that search for illegal material and go prosecute them; it doesn't stop it completely, but neither do the other laws, and at least that doesn't fundamentally interfere with the right to create and distribute other audiovisual material.
Yes, it's understandable why the movie industry is worried about digital technology. But so far, it looks like they're learning the wrong lesson. RIAA wants to turn back the clock on technology, and try to force users to accept absurd conditions ("you must pay whatever monthly fee we choose, forever, to hear music"). We can hope that the movie industry will start working on how to work with, not against, digital technology.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Though I agree with the point many people have made, that seeing it in low quality before hand can ruin it and is pointless, there is another thing to consider.
They are probably more concerned with the person who see it in the theater 3 times and now wants it on tape it DVD but doesn't want to spend the money on it, they can't see it in a theater by this time any way so the quality doesn't matter.
Were they *would* have purchased the DVD/Tape they are now just downloading a crappy version and watching it that way when the urge arises.
I think it's all BS either way, but that's probably where the real number loss is at.
mediadiva
No, they should be forced to watch red planet in german with korean subtitles @ 160x120@5fps with the sound turned all the way up.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I think you're talking about uniquely watermarking each individual film before they get transported to the theaters. I don't see why this couldn't be done, a handful of companies do audio watermarking that survive mp3 compression*. Making it work for video where the capture medium is a crappy VHS camera should be feasible.
The question is can Lucasfilm (or whoever) recover enough from the effort of adding watermarks to make it worth the effort. Let's assume they add put X dollars into making the technology possible and watermarking to copies of their next movie. Now they find someone pirating a movie, what do they do? File suit against the individual? The l33t h@x0r that uploaded the movie has $3.87 to his name. How about the movie theater? They could very well put the theater out of business, or at least not give them the next Star Wars movie. Now what theater will want to play hardball with a film producer that takes such tactics?
* Liquid Audio supposedly had an audio watermark where you could playback the source on a boombox, record it with a microphone, and still have the watermark intact. No, I never saw it done.
really, I want to see it on the big screen, and I may hold off. Im over abroad here for a while and I have to wait almost 3 months _after_ its release to see it in original language.. by then it will have already been seen by everyone and it will be all spoiled.. so instead ill get the crappy version off the net see it, then go see it again in the theaters when I can.. sorry but seeing one of the great movies in non english sucks..
;)
first and foremost, bootlegs of this film downloaded off p2p filesharing servies such as kazaa, morpheus, are not what the article is referring to.
the "low quality" argument flooding replies in this thread are dripping with ignorance. an entire underground piracy scene exists, in which movies, music, games, software, console games (even recently XBOX games). in this scene, movie "releases" go through a variety of stages, provided by numerous competing groups, the better of which are rewarded with greater levels of access to sites archiving this media.
first, a "cam" release can be expected, which is what this article is referring to, when some guy takes a PAL handycam into a cinema, sets it up on a tripod, and films the entire thing, before capturing and encoding to VCD (mpeg1). in this underground scene exists standards, for example, "CAM" releases not filmed from a tripod are unacceptable. the next step along the chain is the "TELESYNC", which differs from the "CAM" in that the sound is from a direct source, for example a headphone jack in the projection booth, or an input from a cinema providing hearing-disability servies. "SCREENER" tapes, distributed to reviewers, critics, distribution houses, retailers, the academy, etc are then later captured and released, under the same VCD format. finally, when the film's DVD is available, it is ripped digitally and encoded to SVCD (MPEG2 variable bitrate), and DIVX.
furthermore, groups in the "scene" compete. groups have reputations, alliances, and rivalries, FTF for example, the group responsible for the recent AotC TELESYNC release, has a notorious reputation for mislabelling CAM releases as TELESYNCs.
the 120mb RealMedia files or ASFs that you downloaded off KaZaA are not what the MPAA really needs to worry about.
visit isonews.com for an up-to-date list of underground releases
Congratulations you are now my first foe, auro -5 for you cockmonger.
much prefer to stay at home rather than go to the theater. Why? For the price of a good HDTV, I put in a 1366x768 HiDef Projector
You do realize that DVD resolution is quite a bit less than that, don't you? DVDs are not considered high definition (that is reserved for 720p and 1080i/1028p24) Granted, DVDs don't look like ass after 25 showings and having been handled by 18 year old "projectionists" at the local cineplex.
I enjoyed the first 3 star wars movies. Lame, goofy, immature, weak story, poor acting... they were excellent "B" movies. Some of the best of the genre. And, best of all, they were fun to watch.
The last one was so horrible, so poorly constructed, so poorly written, so self-important, Jar Jar so flabbergastingly offensive... I half expected that it would be the end of the series. But tell people "it's the biggest movie event of the decade" and they line up to see it. Fortunately for the economy, people are morons.
A review I read not too long ago gave the best praise possible to this movie "Spielberg is too good a director to release two horrible movies in a row."
Well, some reviewers disagree; I'll definitely be taking my time thanks to this review (reg. required, blah blah).
Of course if it was legal to check out a crappy preview on-line at some fan's expense and the review turned out to be wrong, I'd be in line on opening day. I guess that epitomizes the MPAA's fears: we might see the crap for the hype before they get their cash... better put those pirates in jail - they're threatening the whole economy!
To play hardball means to be tough and aggressive. Your sentence doesn't make sense. Perhaps you meant "Now what theater will want to play ball with a film producer..." To play ball means to work together.
Oh, that's smart: show it early to the one person in the country most likely to give it all away for the rest of us. :)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
And the divx should be as grainy, low quality, and stuttery as possible
Wow! They've translated it into Gungan already?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Won't give you any spoilers on the movie itself, but the version I got from the Net is pure crap. Lousy picture, hopeless sound, and CD2 is corrupt 7 minutes before the end.
:-)
At least there weren't anyone walking in front of the camera
Consider this for a second. Could it be possible that this was an insider job by the MPAA? I mean, they already know the Star Wars is going to get a huge amount of money anyways and that people are going to see it in the theatres regardless of whether they saw it before hand. Now, someone at the MPAA (someone at the top), decides to do this so that they can build a huge amount of publicity about movie piraters to the general public. Think about this, this has been the biggest thing in recent news about movie piraters and how it gets on the internet before a movie is released. All they have to do is take the numbers of estimated downloads to congress and show that ... they lost xx billions of dollars because of this thing called the In-ter-net. I mean, lots of movies have been released onto the internet before they come out in theatres, but none have received as much publicity as this...
Just a thought...
Also..to those who think that gnutella and kazaa and all the P2P services are the only way to get movies, you're an idiot!
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Better watch out, I smell a rat. Those who have run the VCD diagnostics on it have said that there was a direct line for the sound... doesn't that sound a little suspicious to you? What a better way to prompt for more legislation than getting a highly publicized case of bootlegging. CNN, Yahoo are all reporting. Don't think that your senator will hear about this? Lucas can now show how widely and how quickly his movie was pirated and then create an arbitrary loss of sales number. It's a trick, don't bite.
*hand gesture*
These are not the DivX you are looking for...
*/hand gesture*
Do you work at the BSA, or perhaps Microsoft? :)
--Bruce
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
But I'm on a 56k.
I never saw LotR in theatres. I'm glad, because it would've ruined it for me. Now, Star Wars could never hope to even hold a candle to LotR for me, but it's still no run of the mill MPAA's Own Dime a Dozen movie.
You see, I dislike idiocy during movies. You know, the hosers who will stand up and foam at the mouth while cheering, or screaming at bad guys.
Sometimes, I'm not sure if they know that it's a movie, and that Darth McEvil can't really hear them.
I dislike whiny little runts who feel the need to throw popcorn everywhere. While, at a Star Wars movie, one is expected to have one of those plastic lightsabers that can cause quite a sting, I'm unfortunately not a minor, and thus can't beat the living crap out of said popcorn throwers anymore.
There's also the people who talk loudly and ask stupid, in-depth questions. In the case of Lord of the Rings, I'm sure there were questions that could've been answered by looking at the damned screen. I'm certain that with AotC, there'll be hosers who didn't bother seeing Episode One, and will thus need to talk the whole movie through.
..Maybe it isn't theatres.
Maybe I just live in a city of morons.
and I don't even know how you got 3000 afghanistanis.
Do we want to throw everyone that has pirated a movie into prison?
Pirating will always happen. I'm not proud to be a pirate, but i'm not ashamed of it either. I go see about 20-30 movies a year, and I'll pirate any I don't think are worth seeing in the theater. I'm a huge movie fan, and I'm pissed at the way the studios have begun marketing movies any more. Just hype them up HUGE, make all your money the first week, then dump them. SCREW making a quality film that actually EARNS it's money.
The movie studios are just like any other business, they KNOW a certain percentage of viewers will sneak in, or pirate the movie, or watch it when it hits video.
It's like my phone company. I got my access numbers stolen once, and some guy made like $400 dollars worth of phone calls on my bill. I was soo pissed off, but was happy to see that the idiot called the same number a lot. It would be EASY to find out who this guy was. Did Sprint try to catch the guy? NO. They just wrote it off and refunded me.
This sort of thing is just the cost of business.
BTW, I've worked for years in the film industry, and found film employees pirate movies more than ANYONE!
You think Tom Cruise is gonna pay 9 bucks to see AOTC? No, he has someone send him a screener, and you can bet that screener gets passed around to half his friends. And it's not just Tom Cruise, it's every assistant editor, production assistant, yada yada yada.
I've also worked for many years in the software industry and found software developers to be THE WORST at pirating software.
All of you out their who are using a non-licensed version of Winzip, have no right to take the high road.
"I find your lack of faith in the DCMA....disturbing." quoth the MPAA lawyers
FreeBSD for the impatient.
there are no people walking by the screen. sound: OK Picture: Good...looks like vhs copy of a copy widescreen Even though I download it....I will still go see when it comes out and get the DVD when it's release.
Would somebody please explain to me what the hell movie dialogue has to do with people who walk around?
Sweet honey-roasted Jebus. If you mean "crap," then say "crap." Don't misuse big words in an attempt to look smart.
So if I tell you that Russ has got me a ticket for 12.01 Thursday morning, you won't be mad? ;-)
I didn't ask him to by the way.
If Taco can propose on here, I can damn well break *this* news here...
I'll still go see it again with you guys, though.
(also there's still tickets for UCI on Thursday morning, dood)
the mpaa is like any other large, influential entity in commerce: its value is derived from (among other things) the fact that it is representing a successful, profitable industry or market. while the mpaa may very well make obscene gobs of money from bedfellows in the entertainment industry, it can gain just as much money from the mere fact that people still attend movies, regardless of their hollywood affiliations. investors don't care if you're going to see a movie because its publisher doesn't do business with the mpaa ... they care that your ass is in the seat. if the theatres are full, the mpaa looks good no matter what. most people recognize the fact that the entertainment industry is a _very_ lucrative one. if we are to react, we should work hard to create a dramatic and widespread vacancies in theatres all over. naturally, this is an extremely difficult undertaking, but we should not second-guess the larger significance of our actions.
Bah! Just grabbed "(smr) Attack_of_the_clones (1of2).avi" (136,856k) from Grokster.. it's a fake, looks like "Showtime" with De Niro and Eddie Murphy. Which I kinda wanted to see, but y'know.
I do wonder about the mentality of people who keep these fakes shared out though. You want your bandwidth sucked up by people leeching them from you?
I watched Phantom Menace on VCD and, phew! Am I glad I didn't shell out $13.00 to see that clunker in the theatre! I'll probably do the same for episode 2... Lucas can't be trusted to put out a quality flick anymore and I won't risk my money on him. If it turns out to be really good, MAYBE I'll go see it in the cheap theatres.
It didn't even occur to me to go looking for AoTC on Gnutella until I read this story on Slashdot. 45 minutes later, I had both .AVIs. I'm not going to watch it (I'll be seeing it in theaters, thank you), but it IS there. And easy to get.
Go Slashdot! =)
Every time something new is announced, news-reporting agencies are stunned about with what speed it is being available on the internet. It doesn't matter if it is music, a film or a game.
This is no news anymore... In the beginning of the 90s people where running their ass off to get the hottests games as fast as possible through their warez-group hierarchy (or if you want a more innocent example, the latest shareware updates through their distribution methods (fred fish, fidonet-a-like file transfer networks etc)).
I'm not going with this ratrace anymore. Downloading for three straight days because the servers are flooded, seeing the movie on a 320x200 window, getting irritated by external events in the house. No thanks, I'll go to the theatre and spend three hours happilly(*) off this world.
(*) As far as possible with these stupid parents which take their 5-6-7 year old kids to these movies. Even at the 21:00 session you still have them.
bash$
As the film has the same release date the world over, the UK is several hours ahead of the US and I have a 00:01AM ticket I will be seeing this before the US will!
(properly that is - I've seen the DIVX and the quality is atrocious - if you can afford the type of connection required to download it surely you can afford to watch it in the cinema)
I wasn't going to watch the movie. EpI pissed me off to much.
What I _will_ do now is download EpII off of IRC and fast forward through it.
I was planning on NOT going and seeing the movie, and now Lucas and the fucking MPAA are going to assume it was because I pirated the movie and have already seen it. It will never cross their minds that even if I didn't mind underwriting their increasingly aggressive assault on my rights, there's no way I would want to see this movie after the last one.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Now, there is of course a solution to the (legitimate) problem for the studios : reduce the number of pre-screenings. I mean, how many people do you need sucking-up to. Really? Journalists are a shame to their trade anyhow and just write what you tell them to write. celebrities last fifteen minutes or about as long as they keep their 'virginity'.The fat-walleted studio execs need some work-out and connection with REAL jerk off get jerked off PEOPLE too.
I say let the director, editor and effects teams keep their movie for their own instead of ripping their throats out with scheduling pre-screenings just for changing a sucking ending, or a main sucky movie. It's no big problem to wait for a sucky movie, which all in all it is most of the time. Atleast until Vader gets that whoosh-whoosh thingy going.
and why, just why do the press always point us to the SPY INFESTED crap programs outthere? Get the real big guns, they even come with porn.
And I for one am not gonna download this crappy release by FTF, I'm artsy and gonna wait for the DVDrip. Heard it's gonna be out on monday. Courtesy of the Motion Picture Ripping Association with Lots of Guns.
Of course it's the studio's themselves that leak the releses, it's fab advertising. especially internationally.
I can't blame them for wanting to curb piracy as much as possible. I think, however, it would be a real harm to the computing industry to let media moguls and megalomaniacs dicate hardware and software standards to ensure legal compliance on behalf of end users. Or maybe the level of pre-release piracy is equivalent to that for Episode I; I don't remember. Just an interesting thought to mull around.
-Bob
Get the HAFVCD internal release, it's better than the first FTF one (see screenshots at vcdquality.com). It's just about watchable quality although theres only sound on the left channel and there are some sound dropouts. I watched the 2 VCDs burnt to CD-RW on my TV with some friends and we enjoyed the novelty of seeing it a week in advance, we'll probably still go see it at the cinema though. It was definitely better than Episode One but not fantastic. Anakin's romantic utterances to Amidala are goofy and made us laugh. Jar Jar is still in it, thankfully not for long. There's some cool CGI and Bladerunner-like scenes. The filenames are hafvcdswep2-cd1.rar-r47, release name Star.Wars.Episode.2.TS.iNTERNAL-HafVCD
if you don't value the movie AOTC enough to wait to buy a ticket to see it, why do you value downloading a copy on your computer?
I have it on good word that the SVCD DVD Rip of AoTC will be out on 5/12/02... Now the real dilemna begins for everyone...
I say see it in the theater...
...you'll see it at least five hours before Hemos and his magic ticket toting friends .
Take a camcorder...
Now wash your hands.
i am sorry ... i cannot get enough of them.
... the trailers are better than the movies themselves it seems.
... and i will still get it if i cannot manage unil after the movie is out. frankly its pretty neat in some way especially to watch things until a dvd comes out.
... who is ripping all of the friends espisodes? that just freaks me out high quality... must be a tivo user with a few terabytes.
often these movies suck and i feel quite ripped off going to see them. all the hype on tv
i want this bootlet of starwars
more interesting is all the simpsons episodes out there, seinfelds, and god
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Sorry MPAA, I'm going to pay to see it... This really was shot off of a movie screen, but gave me enough incentive to pay to see it IN a movie theater, along with buying the DVD... Of course one could say that Lucasfilms deliberately leaked the video in order to get the geeks who hated Ep1 interested in Ep2, if I was a conspiracy nut...
It IS way better than expected, but then again, the folks who are reviewing it:
(a) Are avant garde movie buffs, who think that The Piano was the best movie released since Battleship Potemkin...
(b) Never saw the movie, and are basing their opinions on Episode 1...
(c) Have a policy of hating stuff the more they're told to love it, and vice versa, especially if they can justify it via mob rule...
That aside, however, there are a few things to keep in mind... It's FANTASY... Repeat after me, FAN-TAS-EEE... Got it? Good... It isn't supposed to be completely realistic or believable, it isn't always supposed to make sense (until a major physicist can explain to me how a roadrunner can run into a tunnel painted on a solid rock wall, and a coyote shortly thereafter slams into said painting, you should be willing to suspend belief and logic)...
As for the movie itself, it does a good job of inspiring the viewer to suspend belief... Almost continual action scenes in a mileau of exotic locations, a modicum of humor that doesn't go over the top, and Jar Jar is subdued whenever seen...
Hayden Christianson isn't as bad in his acting as he is unseasoned in his skill... Some of his scenes come across perfectly, others are like watching paint dry, but he shows promise as an actor... Unfortunately one review I've read hits it dead on, a human actor being upstaged by a CG Yoda...
As for the video, the sound was extremely choppy in spots, losing upwards of 5 seconds of audio, the video quality was adequate (watchable), but hey... It's free, (insert Eric Cartman voice here) so quitcher bitchin'!... Or better yet, pay the $8 to see it in a theater or buy the DVD...
Just like these directors and movie moguls figure out how much a product sucks by the money it doesn't make, they also figure out how good it is by how much money it DOES make...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
does anyone know where i can get the bootleg on line? I live hours from a theatre and it's near impossible for me to get out there. But I am so dying to see it
What website can I find the bootleg of AOTC?
I found one incredible difference between seeing the blurry VCD over the big screen. As a 3D animator myself I have a real hard time watching modern FX-laden movies without checking out every little detail in the background while missing the plot and acting. All I see is texture maps, particle systems and motion capture data! I was able to watch this film as a STORY, not a bunch of CGI strung together to be picked apart by my eyes that unfortunatly are trained to spot every little imperfection in the graphics. As a huge SW fan I can say I really enjoyed the story that was told with this movie.
Anyhow, I'm not going to watch it, but that's because I haven't watched the SE versions or EP 1, and I plan to stay a Han Solo Firstist and Jar-Jar free.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I don't understand this "mate" thing. If I call someone a mate, it's going to be a girl and there's going to be a lot of fucking going on.
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THX is a standard for all components in the theater. It's not a sound format. Check out www.thx.com
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