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Miramax C&Ds Kung Fu Movie Reviewer
Mirkon writes "When a movie distributor attains rights to a film, it's rather predictable that they go after individuals offering the movie for sale or free. But Miramax took it a step further - as reported by Wired and on the site itself, Mark Pollard of Kung Fu Cinema received a Cease & Desist letter from Miramax concerning a link on Kung Fu Cinema to a movie purchasing site for the Jet Li movie Hero (set to be officially released in North America in April 2004). Fearing Miramax (and thus Disney) and their army of lawyers, Pollard deleted the link, as well as another for Shaolin Soccer, also unreleased in North America. Pollard criticized the studio for not permitting the original version of such films to hit the states, saying "If they own the rights to this film, then this film is not available to U.S. consumers -- period." The EFF also has some comments regarding the fact that Pollard has done nothing wrong in the first place."
Slashdot links to a story that links to Kung Fu Cinema that links to a movie purchasing site.
Beware the wrath of Miramax lawyers!
fp?But it seems like this is somewhere along the lines of telling someone where the nearest drug dealer ir (not comparing the two crimes). Isn't/shouldn't that be illegal?
Hello McFly!
You sell something in one country, other people in other countries are going to want it!
How exactly does this make marketing sense?
I'd be fairly To'd. links should not be illeagal under any circumstances. I really think that this is a freedom of speech issue which should be tried. We need a lager group to support him, or for Miramax to attack someone who already has support.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
at my local Chinatown. They're both pretty easy to find.
I was in San Francisco in September and I bought the Hero DVD in Chinatown !
(I also got a French subtitled version of Shaolin Soccer one year and a half ago !?)
How can Miramax be *that* late and how can they ignore that one may find these DVDs in Chinese shops ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The movie realy is good. A simple story told from several view points using a diferrent color scheme for each one. If you can, watch the original and do not go to the US release.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yeah, I believe that one. Shaolin Soccer was supposed to have come out this past summer... saw trailers for it during Bend It Like Beckham and saw movie posters for it hanging in theaters. Has it been released theatrically here? No. Even if it had been, it was going to be a highly-edited version.
That's why people end up having to buy things like Hero "illegally." In fact, I think I'll go order a copy right now... before Miramax tells eBay to cease and desist...
"This? I can make a hat, I can make a brooch, I can make a pterodactyl..."
The EFF also has some comments regarding the fact that Pollard has done nothing wrong in the first place.
Whether or not he did something wrong is irrelevent. It's whether or not he did something unprofitable. Some corporations these days seem to believe they have a god-given right to profit, and that censorship and lawsuit chill is an acceptable tool to that end.
Until the average freedom-loving American starts to wake up to this and works to get the courts to adjust, it's probably only going to get worse. What happens when they realize that not talking about it on a website doesn't curb the problem? Tinfoil hats, people, they'll be after your thoughts next.
I'm sort of kidding, but not really. They're already blaming text messaging for ruining movie profits.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The "Region system" for CD's makes no sense, as all it does is hinder sales.
If I am in Region 1 and want one of the many Region 2 DVD's (that will never come out in Region 1), I have to get a hacked DVD player, or get a pirated/cracked version of the CD.
Next time you see those "Movies: They're worth it" anti-piracy ads about lost revenues, remember that the movie industry is throwing roadblocks in the way of those who want to legally purchase AND view legitimately-pressed DVD's. If they wanted money, they'd make the DVD's available to those who want to buy them.
And here is Miramax proclaiming it a grand victory. It is such a victory that they just forced hundreds of formerly potential customers into p2p file sharers. Miramax must love how they're encouraging the illegal file sharing that their other movie studio bretheren have damned as dangerous. Give a hand for Miramax, another promoter of P2P technology.
A file swapper is not born, he is created when something desired is not availible at the price desired. When that something is not availible at all, that turns all of those that wish it into p2p file junkies.
Sorry state of affairs, honestly.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
As it turns out, no. The DVD I got is 100% real, multi region NTSC. The original company knew there was a US market for the movie and released several versions of the DVD that work fine in the US and UK.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It appears that Miramax is stating that their exclusive rights to movie distribution include the purchase of IMPORTS. Since when is it illegal to import a legal copy of a video from another country? There are import CD and movies available at video and music stores all the time.
a lager group? hooray!
Whatever happened to the concept of a free market economy? Shouldn't people be able to purchase this film, and tell others where to do the same, without fear of being sued for it? What law(s) would this even violate?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
A whois of kungfucinema.com shows it's registered to a person in Seattle Washington. I think that's how they can bully the guy. I'm sure if there was a HK based movie selling site, there wouldn't be much that Miramax could do, unless they also owned the HK rights to the movie as well.
This is a classic example where even when a big corp. is wrong, making them do the right thing would cost too much time and money with almost no return.
if you delay distribution for more than 1 year. Some companies seem to buy up exclusive distribution rights for asian movies just to prevent them from competing with their own products. Like Disney did with Studio Gibli and Miramax with Hero, Shaolin Soccer or others. (Just try to get a DVD of Drunken Master 2).
These tactics are in total contrast to the purpose of granting distribution or copyrights. Which should promote the arts and encourage artists to publish their work.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Hey, am I breaking the law by linking to places where you can buy this DVD??
Please C&D this post.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
He did the movie a disservice by writing something about it.
All we need to know about Shaolin Soccer and Hero can be accessed using AOL keywords SHAOLIN SOCCER and HERO.
Move along citizen, the computer is your friend.
The trick is, if we allow consumers to decide what they want for themselves, they will find and come to expect GOOD movies, which are much more difficult to make than "Gili". It's easier to ensure that you have a good return on your investment in a movie when you can totally control what it's competing with. Additionally, it's easier to milk each region for what it's worth, rather than having one price.
In short, they don't care about hypothetical sales for "hero." They want kung fu fans to shut up, get out there, and start paying up for whatever they have decided is the kung fu movie for december 2003 is. Stop telling them what you want. The movie / music industries will tell you what you want, and when you can have it.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
This reminds me of anime fansubs you can get from newsgroups or bit torrent. While the anime isn't licensed in the US all is good and download all you want. But as soon as its licensed, the links go down (for torrent at least) and you're out of luck if you didn't get all the episodes.
On a side note, there is a "Shaolin Martial Arts Studio" that I often pass by, and I can't help but think of that movie and laugh (and picture kids kicking flaming soccer balls) whenever I see that sign.
Fuck the Mouse that Whined. Nobody has the right to interfere with free trade of lawfully obtained property between consenting adults.
Fuck Slashdot
Hong Kong is NTSC. It is also very cheap, even for legitimate discs (as this site sells). After all, if it's legal there, it's usually legal for you to import it, although not to sell. You might need an all-region player (HK being in region 3), but a lot of legit HK discs - like Shaolin Soccer - are code 0 anyway.
Over in the UK, all of our our DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC, almost all of the cheap supermarket ones are already or can be made multiregion by remote, and certain high-street hi-fi chains sell modded MR product (I have a MR Pioneer 360 from them). Even our version of Amazon sells modded multiregion kit - the current top spot is a modded Sony DVP-NS330. Multiregion is much more widespread here, and that's a good thing for British consumers (even though most of them don't know about it). I try to let my friends know.
Man, this is absolutely incredible. There was a theatrical release for both movies (which both TOTALLY ROCK!... I can only hope that Miramax & Co. don't butcher them!) here in my country a long time ago! Hero was released here late last year, and Shaolin Soccer not long after if I recall correctly. Now, Shaolin Soccer, and maybe even Hero, have actually even been popping up on the Chinese cable channels (with English subtitles, thank goodness) occasionally. Does a whole lot of good for them to be closing the barn door after the horse has already run around more than half the world for about a year ongoing, don't ya think?
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
It is 100% legal for a US Citizen to purchase the film from an importer (or by importing it themselves) without going through Miramax. If Miramax doesn't like the fact that they don't really have exclusive control of the market, then they should sue the makers of the film for selling copies in the far east without somehow guaranteeing that none of those copies will get to America. This is ridiculously impossible to do, of course, but that's the just the nature of how impractical an exclusive distribution contract is. There's no such thing as geographical exclusive control anymore; this is a global economy.
Miramax's argument is deception, and the person to whom they wrote the C&D, was not violating their rights.
It's disappointing that this dude caved in. I can understand it; I might cave into bullies too, instead of paying a lot of money for defense. But there's no way he would have lost, had it gone to court.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Which I saw last night, since I still live in the Free World (aka Oceania).
The movie is a telling of an old Chinese story. If you ever read Chinese mythology, you will know that they are mixed from generous helpings of love, drama, treason, duty, battle, beauty and tragedy, set in landscapes of stunning mountains and gorges, and generally featuring the epic plotlines Tolkien was inspired by when he wrote LoTR and the Hobbit.
Hero is no different. The movie is visually stunning, a tapestry of color and force. It paints an overlapping series of stories, and the five main characters get more and more complex as the film progresses through intense red, blue, white, and green.
The Kung Fu scenes are dreamlike and truly beautiful. Only the slightest sense of repetition spoils a few of the scenes, but it is easily compensated for by the sensuality of the filming. Yes, it is ridiculous to see people running on water or across tree tops, but this is the story of a person recounting his version o a myth. Some poetry is in order, and Hero delivers.
The ending - which I won't divulge - is downbeat and not what I would have proposed, but this is true to the style of ancient Chinese stories, which do not - like many Western myths - celebrate the survival of the individual in the face of adversity. Rather, they tell stories of how intense personal tragedy and suffering can be placed into a greater context. A few dramatic deaths serve to highlight the lesson.
Don't go to Hero expecting to see amazing fight scenes. It's a movie to relax with, a film to see twice, one to take your girlfriend to and to hold her when the lovers die, in true Romeo and Juliet fashion, alone on a mountain top.
What I liked most about this film - apart from the visuals, the sound, the scenery, and the subtle plot - was its ability to portray all the characters as sympathetic, from the tyranical king, alone in his citadel of a palace, to the assassins and killers, each shown at the end to be Heroes. There are no villains in this film.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The difference is in fps. NTSC has 29.97 (or 23.976) fps, while PAL has 25 fps. If you speed-up/slow-down decoding, you will run into sound issues and you have to resample sound too.
In short, it is simpler to output NTSC signal for NTSC discs and PAL signal for PAL discs.
This is a good example of the censorship that copyright produces. Copyright was created to increase the amount of information available to everyone. Instead, it is being used to keep people from accessing information that they would legitimately pay for.
The movies studios want to coerce fans into seeing the movie when and where the studios choose. Rather than allowing true fans to appreciate these movies when and where the fans, the customers, might want, they block their distribution. The movie studios do this whether or not the expect to release this movie in a given market. In the end, this leaves a minority of fans who have the interest and the financial means to see a movie locked out of it.
Whether or not the copyright holders of these movies believe they can make money in a given market, they will refuse to let people watch it. If they cannot make money, there is no incentive. If the information is not distributed, the incentive is not working for society and should not be granted to the rights holders. Either way, the movie studios are blatantly misusing their legal rights. Their legal rights exist to give enough incentive to get information to be disseminated, not to stand as a barrier to the dissemination of that information.
An individual should be able to purchase any movie from any market that person might desire to purchase from. Just because the majority of people in one area like some given thing does not mean everybody has to. Even if the movie is released in the US market, and most Asian movies are not, it still forces the US version on people, which in many cases has parts cut out of it and may be dubbed. An individual may want to watch the movie with subtitles or in its original language or in its original state.
The practice of restricting people by region is racist. Regionalizing is saying that because you live in such and such a country, you will pay such and such a price or watch movies in such and such a language. Because you live in such and such a country, you will know such information. What is the difference between this and bathrooms marked Colored and White? I guess Jack Valenti is more of a good-'ol-boy than we thought.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Drunken Master 1 - horrible 1970s kung-fu flick except for the fighting techniques, which are brilliant.
DM II - The USian Legend of Drunken Master. Note if you get an Asian release of this film you will also get the end scene which was cut from the US release.
Needle Nardle Noo
Hmm.. I just screened my copy of Shaolin Soccer for a bunch of friends at a party this weekend. It must have played at least 4 times in a row. I invite you to ask anyone that was there exactly how many times they "break into song and dance periodically for reasons unknown". One of the lead characters sings a brief serenade, which would only classify this movie as "musical-like" as much as any other movie that has anyone singing for longer then 3 seconds. Also, it's not "about a bunch of losers who use magic powers to win local soccer matches". It's a group of brothers who studied kung-fu as children and now live in modern society, one brother having the dream of finding an effective way to teach other the wonders of kung-fu. Did you pay attention when you watched this movie? You sound like a highschool jock describing opera.
Hero is perhaps visually similar to Crouching Tiger becuase they share the same producer, Bill Kong. Tony Ching Siu Tung even directed the action, the same action director from Shaolin Soccer. And saying "the entire movie consists solely of amazing battle scenes" is crap. The action is incredible, but it stands second to the communication of personal relationships between the characters. It's a shame you weren't able to emotionaly relate to the characters at all, else it would have been an even better experience.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Great, now everybody is Kung Fu Fighting.
-rIf, on the other hand, that statement was meant to refer to languages on a disk, you are also wrong. Most DVDs can carry as many as five soundtracks in addition to subtitles for ten countries. In Region3: Southeast Asia, DVDs typcially have an English and two Chinese soundtracks and subtitles in Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Korean (North and South Korea use the same writing system even though they are in two different regions -- maybe Region5 is the Communist region), Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Malay, Vietnamese, and of course English. Sometimes these disks have other features like extra soundtracks. Really, though, the subtitles can be considered unlimited. Text storage for subtitles will never be a significant portion of 4.7GB even if they included Ancient Mayan. So, if that was your question, no, they do not have to choose a language.
There is only so much space on a disk for what? Segregation? There should not be any space on a disk for such a thing. People should be able to buy DVDs anywhere in the world and watch them anywhere else. When you buy something it is your possession. You own it (and before anyone considers it, I do not even want to hear the licensing argument -- it is pure BS). You should be able to access the information on it until you break it, throw it away, or sell it. No one should have the right to tell you what to do with your movie that you purchased.
Perhaps you missed my point. I am precisely against this. I want access to all DVDs in the world. I should be able to buy movies from India over the Internet if I like and watch them on a DVD player in Europe or on the freaking moon. My intellectual explorations should not be restricted by some fat, cigar smoking, Harvard graduated executive who thinks he is my father and knows whats best for me. I am spending my money, and I will not be told what to spend it on. Nice flamebait. This is not a "personal vendeta against an individual". Far from it. I am against all that would restrict my freedom to learn and think. As far as freedom goes, those are the two most fundamental freedoms of all. Jack Valenti is merely one of those who is working actively to keep the people of the US, if not the people of the world, ignorant for his own profit. I am not personally against him. If you had said I had a vendetta against copyright, you might have had a halfway reasonable argument. Quite the contrary, actually. Your post has proved to me how right I actually am.All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Shipping in single copies of copyrighted works from abroad for personal use is permitted. So is carrying them back in your luggage when you travel. See 17 USC 602 (a) (2), the text of which follows:
There's also exemptions for government use, scholarly, religion, and educational purposes, and for libraries. You should read all of 17 USC 602 (a) before jumping to conclusions about whether it's illegal to import videos.