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Attack of the $1 DVDs
fm6 writes "The NY Times has an interesting piece on DVDs that sell for one or two bucks. Not all of them are crap -- apparently a lot of good movies never got copyrighted properly. But there's no silent movies ('not mass market'), or movies that aren't 'family friendly.' Here's what I find really interesting: none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online -- it's all through discount bins in supermarkets and drug stores."
Yet, I believe you'd find half of Slashdot gripe, and ask for the bittorent...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well, at $1 per DVD, it beats even free downloading in terms of time and space costs... plus, you get a free DVD to have a backup on. I have been noticing a lot of relatively cheap DVDs ($4-5 range) lately actually. Perhaps part of a parallel-running strategy against ripping?
see a Text Widget
I've seen some of those DVDs at a local Half Price Books for around $9. If I was at all interested in any of them, I would be getting robbed! Oh, the scandal!
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online -- it's all though discount bins
There's a simple reason for this. Most people will think, "Gee, I'd like to buy that for $1 online but I won't pay $2 for shipping and handling on something that only costs $1"
To sell online they need to bump the price up to $3 online to subsidize the shipping and nominally charge 50 cents to ship.
Yet, I believe you'd find half of Slashdot gripe, and ask for the bittorent...
The only reason these can be sold at a 1.00 USD price point is because the movies in question are public domain. They were first published in the United States on or before 1963, and their copyrights were never renewed. Sending a DVD-Rip to a stranger through BitTorrent in this case would not be an infringement of copyright as long as you don't copy anything introduced in the new edition (primarily the menus and other things that don't make it into a DVD-RIP).
The reason you don't see these online is because the wal-marts and the likes order millions at a time and that's why the price is so low. I work at one of the companies that produces these, there's not much of a profit to be made.
But there's no silent movies ("not mass market"), or movies that aren't "family friendly".
Playback of silent movies on a DVD player needs a soundtrack. All sound recordings published from the invention of the phonograph until February 15, 1972, are restricted under state law copyright until December 31, 2067 (second source), and a bargain-basement DVD distributor such as DigiView doesn't have the resources to do its own dub job.
Try a flea market. I've been to many a flea market and most of them have 5 porn DVD's for $4. But who needs that when you can download?
It's so True! Bruce Li could kick some serious ass! And Bruce J Lee? He was a MACHINE. Then there's Bruce Lei, that guy knew his way around a pair of nunchucks I tell you.
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Okay, show of hands...
/starts/)
who thinks movies from 60 years ago should still have copyright protection?
I see.. the frozen hand of Walt Disney..
anyone else?
(please note I would be in favor of laws which change when the term of copyright
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I picked up a handfull of cartoons for my grandson and a handful of old B movies for myself at the local grocery store for a $1 each.
They sold out quickly. I hope they will get some more in and some new titles.
A $1 is a bargin and really what most of them are really worth.
When I was a kid, the ticket at the theater was about $1.50, that was in the 60's...
I've recently seen mention that the ticket to see a new movie is around $9.00 BS on that!
The only movies that have come out in the past 30+ years that were actually worth the trouble and expense to go and see were the LOTR movies and those didn't come out of Hollyweird, which explains why they were of good quality and good content.
No matter though, all the theaters in this area have gone out of business anyway. The nearest one is a 35 mile drive. With $9 to get in, $5 for a heatlamp special and $4 for a cup of ice with a splash of soda water, I can tell you this, I will never again go to a movie theater. Oh yeah, and of course there's the gas to drive there. At $2.5+ a gallon, I only drive when it's a life and death emergency..
IF, and that's a BIG IF, a decent movie ever comes out, I just wait for it to hit DVD and buy it then. I would rather spend $14-16 on it and have it to do with as I please than to spend $40+ to see it once in a room full of crying babies, kids acting up, people chatting on cell phones, etc...
Hollywood needs to get real. With the raping they keep putting on people at the ticket booth it's little wonder people pirate the movies. If they would cut the salaries of the fat cats at the top of the food chain in half and the self-important actors and actresses, that would be a step in the right direction.
But for now, $1 is more than a fair price..
Sometimes folks poke fun at the NYTimes because, on technology, they sometimes seem so far behind the times it's snickerable (not quite laughable).
I think this article is such an example. Extremely low-cost movies in grocery stores and bargain bins have been around for YEARS. Perhaps the only difference today -- and I think we can quibble on what 'today' means -- is that instead of Betty Boop on VHS, she's on a DVD.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
And the rest of us geniuses pay about $14 more to NOT have this?! Man, I bet these DVDs don't even have that annoying FBI warning since some of them are in the public domain. These cheap DVDs already have the top 2 out of 3 items on my wish list for DVDs. Now, they just need to have a good movie to go along with the DVD. ;-)
EvilCON - Made Famous by
- Popeye Cartoons (there is a series of four discs, very good qulaity
- Santa Claus vs. the Martians (a true classic!)
- Off the wall and calssic horror movies - Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla and other obvious 60s/70s schlock
- classics like Road to Bali and the Inspector General
- Some Little Rascals Episodes
- Three stooges cartoons (I haven't had the guts to grab those, they are pretty lame)
Everytime I see such a display I find it worth my tme."Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I have watched "Young Van Helsing" which had nothing but a title including Van Helsing going for it. The plot was weak, the dialogue was weak, and the acting was... (take a wild guess)
:o)
And this differed from the Hugh Jackman movie how?
The real secret to cheap dvds is pawn shops. I've gotten most of the "classic" disney movies on dvd from a local pawn shop slowly over the past year - never paid more than $8 for one of 'em.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Seems like family standards are, um, 'evolving' at the Wart.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
He has nearly finished a first draft of "Killer Shrews II." The plot is fiendishly simple. "I return to Shrew Island to rescue a bunch of teenagers," he reported. "A new mad scientist has turned herself into a human shrew that not only chews, but swims."
And we're expected to pay a dollar for this masterpiece???
Uh, copyright is automatic.
Uh, copyright is automatic now. You used to have to register. Not only that, you had to put copyright notices on your stuff, and renew your copyright after a number of years if you wanted it to remain copyrighted. Some things are in the public domain by virtue of neglecting to put (c) on the title card.
Furthermore, stuff created for the government is (or at least was) automatically in the public domain.
-- This void intentionally left null.
You are absolutely correct. This is why George A. Romero had such trouble with his original 1968 "Night of the Living Dead." When someone found out in the mid-1980s that he had failed to properly register the copyright, they put out a colorized version of the film on VHS. When he tried to stop them, he discovered that his first feature film was now public domain and he no longer had any control over it. He didn't know any better back then, but all of his later films are properly registered (even the remake of Night of the Living Dead directed by his buddy Tom Savini).
The majority of these titles are available at http://www.archive.org/details/feature_films . Additionally I've been distributing the MPEG2 format via Bittorrent at http://torrents.pdmdb.org/
I'm not really sure if this issue has ever been decided regarding video, but it's quite possible that the MPEG-2 stream could be claimed as copyrighted. When Penguin Books goes through, say, Great Expectations, and does layout, changes punctuation to match the American rules, etc. their version is copyrighted.
Not necessarily. From Copyright Office circular 14, with my emphasis:
Parent, I wholeheartedly agree.
/. knows the kinds of things I'm talking about (like just queuing up multiple episodes, easy skipping, etc). Generally, I'm actually quite unimpressed with the lack of user-friendlyness of DVDs and whatnot; for CDs, it's just albums, but for DVDs I expect something less arcane. Oh, it's great for the average consumer, yada yada, but I've (yes, often illegally) seen it done in ways so much simpler for my needs (and since I have enough access to computers with s-video out, no advantage to having it on DVD players for me) I therefore can't quite abide by non-ripping ways.
Honestly, it's not like I don't own movies, music, etc . . . actually, I own a LOT. But I always rip the ones I have, if I haven't already downloaded them (and thus bought them because I liked them so much, and wanted to actually own them, for principle or posterity or 'cause they were on some crazy $1.50 sale or etc) simply because it's sooo much more convenient.
Comparing TV series saved on CD to DVD, if I'm watching on my computer, it's much easier to just pop in the disc and double-click on the episode, instead of having to actually navigate menus, wait while there's time delays, and so forth. And proper rips, I can just switch at a moments notice between normal audio and, say, a commentary track, so if I'm listening to the directors talking, and then I go "oh, yeah, I want to just re-watch that scene in normal right now" I can actually do that in seconds instead of the convoluted process in DVDs.
It's the difference that comes with having a format that's the raw media (relatively speaking) instead of it tucked away inside of virtual packaging. These points could go on and on, but I'm sure anyone reading
And so, yeah, for these movies it just makes sense for them, what with being in public domain and all, to be so easily available for download and distribution as rips.
Hey, even if the industry complains "free movies cut into our profit!", well them, you'll just have to make things that are new and interesting enough that people will want to buy the new ones even while they can get the classics for free. Hah, now that might make you get off your asses and do something worthwhile, now you have to compete with your own past!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Not even. It implies that the person didn't know how to spell "copyright" in the first place. "Copywritten" would be a derivative of "copywrite", which is just stupid.
Even cheaper is movies in cereal boxes I've seen the past few year. As opposed to toys, those crazy gewy things in captain crunk, and whatnot cheerios and others seem to include DVDs of Disney movies that are still great for kids.
Not quite what the article is talking about, but sure is cheaper than $1.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Mostly you are right. The difference is in recent movies.
A short copyright time, or even median one (say 10-20years like patents) enables the creators to recover things like the odzillion dollars spent on special effects, computer animation, Mr. Muslce's and Miss T.A.'s salary.
However once this money is recouped and a fair amount of time has passed to allow for some proffit, copyright should expire, to drop prices and enrich culture as intended.
So what makes them greedy is thier insistance on keeping thier monopoly long past the time necessary for them to recoup costs and make a fair (admitedly a subject measure) proffit. Especially when they keep something they have no intent of releasing 'just in case' they find a way to get rich off of it or at least to deny potential competitors somethinge they could make $$ off of.
Personally I think copyright should back to it's original (here in the US) time frame or somewhat shorter (especially where computer programs are concerned). I also think if something goese unpublished or the copyright holders cannot be found for ten years (five for software imho) it should be declared an abondoned copyright and moved into the public domain.
I've heard we have movies on old nitrate stock or simular falling apart to be forever lost because the proper holders of the copyright have died and the people who inherit them cannot be found to get permision to copy them into non-degrading formats. At the very least a law could be passed to permit preservative copying of originals that would otherwise be lost.
Mycroft
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As soon as I saw the headline for the article...the FIRST thing that popped into my mind was that stupid phrase from the First Robocop movie that I could'nt get out of my head....
Damn IT slashdot!
"I'll buy THAT for a dollar!"