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Investigating Online Movie Piracy?
kewsh writes "There's an excellent piece from the LA Times via Yahoo! News which explains the interworkings of the movie, music, and software piracy scene, including quotes from former and current scene members: 'Common to most groups is a disdain for selling pirated goods in favor of giving free access to anything and everything'." The article also notes: "Not everyone in the scene is so pure. Some players... are suspected of selling pirated movies and music to commercial bootleggers."
is increasing (slowly but surely). what...10 mbits common place by 2007? say hello to zooming movie downloads :)
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about.
...an article that tells me that the Internet is used for distributing pirated warez and movies...
The phrase "No shit, Sherlock" springs rapidly to mind.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I suppose next we'll see some report from a country like Australia showing how sales of ripped media are not hurting the industry.
Or has that already happened?... I get a little confused as to which counter-argument is the most recent.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
The bootleggers (ie, the people who make and selling lots of unauthorised copies of movies) are paying "the players" (ie, people in the movie industry who can get their hands on screeners and other preview copies) for preview copies of movies.
In other words, some of the people who are opening the door to the bootleggers (or pirates) are charging them for the priviledge.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"The scene is closed to much of the world; would-be participants have to gain the trust of insiders and prove their worth before gaining entry. And the lifespan of groups tends to be short, at least on the Net, where players come and go."
It's only closed to those who don't know about P2P apps, IRC, FTP, WWW, E-mail, CDR/DVDR, and any other method of transferring data... and the easiest way to gain entry is to type something like "/join #warez950". As far as the players, they don't come and go, they just change their names and keep doing what they're doing. I'm sorry, but how silly is this article?
I've got Star Wars Ep. 4-6 as theatrical release ripped from Laserdisc in the best possible DiVX quality.
It's not my fault that I had to get a pirated version.
George Lucas with that "CG" labeled crackpipe in his hand is to blame.
Another point of disgust is MiramAXE with their sabotage of asian cinema. Has "Hero" (Jet Li) been released in the US already? I don't think so. MiramAXE likes to shelf things for a long time. After that they like to AXE movies into little ugly pieces, too.
Piracy is competition and the only chance to stop this re-release and censorship nightmare.
People who hate cinema may mod this down.
...the more they stay the same. I find it kind of funny that you can replace the word "Movie" with "Software" and voila! You have an article about the warez scene in the 80s.
Granted, we didn't have FTP sites or Broadband. You young punks don't know how lucky you have it! Why, back in my day we had to courier stuff at 24oo baud! (Ranting fades...)
Still, I miss those days. I'm glad I gave it up though. I'd hate to be caught now, in my 30s, and have my life ruined.
Anyone notice its all SVCD or VCD dvdrips? I know the ease of playing on the DVD player is attractive, but for the same size you can have a nice Divx release with AC3 sound. Or even a nice dual Divx CD set.
How many people here went and downloaded GordianKnot and tried to rip some DVDs? Takes dayd, hard as hell.
I'd rather download a rip off the net for a DVD I own that try to rip a DVD with the current set of utilities. SVCD is a different story, being mpeg2. (Sounds like fair use to me)
Bring out the stromtroopers!
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Sometimes group members will send files to other sites themselves, using a technique called File Transfer Protocol instead of e-mail.
Ah yes.. those sneaky hi-tech pirates thinking of a clever and novel way to avoid clogging up their inbox with 700 meg email attachments.
wholly god
"The scene is closed to much of the world; would-be participants have to gain the trust of insiders and prove their worth before gaining entry. And the lifespan of groups tends to be short, at least on the Net, where players come and go."
and here we see a "nerd" or "computer insider" as they perfer to be called. see how it looks at us with quiet distain.
do the people at this paper pick technical editors based on who can send a midi file in an email?
on the plus side, im a player in an international world of intrigue and mystery
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
This shit is way off base - Kazaa? That virus-laden piece of trash? "Topsites"? Aren't those the fake sites that promise me LORD OF THE RINGS NEW GREAT QUALITY - JUST VOTE FOR US IN ORDER 1 2 3! Please. Bit Torrent, Win MX, and DC++ are the future. The fact that these people still quote Kazaa as the file sharing service of choice when there is far more material on DC++ alone is very indicative of how little of a clue these so-called "experts" and "tech editors" really have.
This is one of the things that really annoys and gets my goat every time I see it.
People selling pirated movies and music at car boot sales, markets, roadsides, ebay, etc. This is totally wrong and I think is what the RIAA/MPAA should target and not joe bloggs downloading britney spears from kazaa.
The people selling this stuff are not only tax dodgers, but are often taking the customers for a ride, some people often mistake these copies for the real thing and are buying in good faith, only to find out they have been ripped off by a shoddy inkjet printed jewelcase inner and an un-stickered cd-r costing next to nothing.
What irritates me further, is that some people are also under the impression that those who do download for their own PERSONAL use are looked upon in the same league as those who download, copy, and sell to people for huge profits.
I watched in wonder a few weeks ago as an aquaintance logged into an FTP site he owns with some friends, populated with something like a thousand ripped movies, and downloaded a movie, burnt it to CD, and handed it to me, saying 'try this'. (I did not like the movie).
We're only a year or two away from seeing *massive* movie trading on p2p networks.
Anyone who claims this is about fair use is obviously trolling. It's about cheating, getting something for nothing.
But that does not mean it's necessarily going to be bad for the movie business. There is still a world of difference between watching a movie on the big screen and watching a movie at home. The video/DVD rental industry, however, is definitely going to die, I think.
The key to "anti-piracy" is to understand that the warez kids never pay anyhow. Whatever they're ripping/cracking/hoarding, it's always stolen and it's always for kicks, not because they want a quiet evening at home with the wife.
The only significant market for media sales (music, movies, and probably software too) is the bulk of non-technical people who look for the easy solution, for decent quality, and are willing to pay for it.
The music industry lost this market when it dropped the Napster ball. The movie industry still has a chance...
The film industry has perhaps 2 years to make a paid service for downloading / burning movies to protected DVD, if they miss this window of opportunity, they will find that their main market is already getting their stuff for free.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I completely agree. I've seen some real fine work done in Ukraine. Some even go all the way and make a box. The problem is that the average user doesn't know what they're doing is actually illegal.
Talk to your average user, I doubt they even know that the Office they're running which they borrowed off the neighbour is actually breaching the EULA. Again, the average user doesn't understand because they see it as a victimless crime.
As I have said to people, there is VERY little money made by the software company off end users. 85% of the money made are off enterprise and public service sales. The end user *may* once it a blue moon purchase a cheap $50 card making kit, however, in terms of the Microsofts and Adobes, they make little money off these customers.
Here we are in 2004, and now these companies, and rightfully so, are now demanding that customers actually pay for the software. Activation is the first step and I am sure there will be more full proof protection mecanisms on their way. The fact is, unlike the end user, large commercial customers are kept in line via random BSA audits, with end users, there is no such safe guard.
As for the movie business, the problem is that again, the end customer see it as a victimless crime. They don't see the negative spin offs hence they have no way of knowing what they're doing.
If it were just Hollywood, then I think I wouldn't worry too much, however, small independent film units are the worst hit. These organisations are on razor thin margins. They live day to day on the sales of their movies. Sure, many of these independent films are sponsered by grants from governments, however, if the government see that the money is being put into a bottomless pit then they may pull the plug.
If the plug is pulled then diversity will cease to exist and as a result, we're all worse off.
There are always people who want something for nothing. There are also those who want to copy things for the thrill, or as a way to get friends, or for other reasons. These people won't go away - as long as the technical means exist (and in a free society, the means will always exist) people will copy works. I think that these people make up a small segment of the market - that doesn't mean copyright holders shouldn't protect their works, but this set of people is unlikely to destroy the business of selling recorded works.
DVD copying will run rampant if the MPAA decides to screw their customers. The music industry (the larger labels, anyway) raised the prices of CDs, homogenized much of the product, made CDs hard to use, and tried to extract money from customers for fair use rights that weren't theirs to sell. Record companies (RIAA labels) have a product that people want, but they decided that they could get more money from their customers than their customers wanted to pay. Once P2P apps came around, the large set of people the record companies angered had an alternative - copy the music and pay nothing. There would have always been copying at a low level, but the frustration of people with the record labels meant that as soon as a means to get records some other way came around, people would take it. Had there not been significant frustration with record companies in the first place, most of the people who get their music from file trading would not have gone through the trouble to do so.
The means to copy digital media is not going to go away. What will determine whether copying becomes rampant or not is the level of frustration of the customer base (and the cost of the product - e.g. high-end software). If it becomes very easy to obtain copied movies, more people will do it as well - but they probably won't try as hard if they aren't frustrated in the first place. At least, IMHO.