Slashdot Mirror
Eight Charged in Episode III Early Release
ewhac writes "Earlier this year, an advance copy of 'Star Wars: Episode III' was released to the Internet a day before the film's official worldwide opening. Yesterday, the US Attorney handed down charges to the eight people believed responsible. Using forensic markers embedded in the advance-release "screeners," law enforcement were able to track down the leaked copy and the people who came in contact with it. As a result of the early release, Episode III only managed to earn $380 million at the box office."
Wow, it couldn't be that people were sick and tired of the complete and utter crap that was Episodes One and Two, that they never bothered with Episode Three?
:(
I saw it because my ticket was cheap. I was just going to wait for DVD.
- oZ
// i am here.
I believe the submitter was being sarcastic as $380 million is a lot of money to make in spite of the losses suffered from piracy.
The poster was using sarcasm.
That $380 million means it made the top 7 highest grossing films ever:
7. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,176,196
Get it now?
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
No. Entrapment is the police repeatedly asking you to do something illegal. Putting tracking devices in movies does not ENCOURAGE you to break the law. A good example of entrapment would be something like sending you a copy of the DVD screener and then sending an undercover officer to your door telling you he'll give you $10,000 dollars to make him a copy.
If not, anyone know why they mostly go for the uploaders and not the downloaders?
I believe the reasoning is that the ones uploading are the ones copying and distributing said movie, and in turn the ones violating the copyright notice. The copyright notice says something like you can't copy and distribute this material, and downloading a copy isn't really violating that so it's probably easier to win the case against the uploaders.
Slackware
No. Entrapment involves an agent of the state soliciting that someone commit an illegal act. As an example, the following qualifies as entrapment.
UNDERCOVER COP: Hey man, you wanna buy some cocaine?
HAPLESS FOOL: Sure!
[FOOL gives COP money for cocaine, and COP gives FOOL cocoaine.]
COP: You're under arrest, fool!
The cop in the above example was the person who suggested breaking the law, so that qualifies as entrapment. The following, however, does not.
HAPLESS FOOL: Hey man, can I buy some coke off you?
UNDERCOVER COP: Sure!
[FOOL gives COP money for cocaine, and COP gives FOOL cocoaine.]
COP: You're under arrest, fool!
The above is not entrapment since it was not the cop who suggested breaking the law. This is how they bust child molesters and kiddie porn peddlers. A police officer can sign on to AOL with a screen name like "13NHORNY", go into a chat room and literally be bombarded with solicitations for kiddie porn and meeting proposals. So they say, "Sure I'll meet you" or "Yeah gimme some porn!", arrange to meet the guy and bust him right there. All while avoiding entrapment because the perverts are the ones approaching them.
Along with the submitter's quip:
As a result of the early release, Episode III only managed to earn $380 million at the box office."
Apparently Slashdot thinks because the movie earned $380 million, it's completely okay to illegally bootleg the movie early. What an stupid justification. It doesn't matter if you think the movie did well, the creator of the film still has rights.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Wikipedia has a list of the worldwide gross for each episode... Revenge of the Sith was the second highest grossing of all of them. So most statements about piracy or suckiness should be said in a sarcastic way, yes.
I did a little Googling and found this Stuff article which talks about these cases. And, it appears, the article we were reading omits one vital word: Promotional. It was a promotional copy that he gave away, and in violation of a contract he had signed.
So it's really nasty that they're going after him for this, since no one ever asks for promo copies back, but they're within their rights. And it's a totally different case than if he had just given away a copy of a retail DVD.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
"Does this mean I cant lend a DVD that I buy legally to my friend?"
The way the article was written, I can see why you'd ask, but this version of the article dropped an important word: screener. The AP version of the article is more accurate:
Your rights to loan or resell your regular old DVDs have not been trampled upon.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
You can buy vouchers for cinemas at a specially discounted rate at the university here, and a lot of businesses give them out as incentives to employees. Basically, the cinema sells a bunch at once and gives a slight discount on each ticket (a couple of dollars). The vouchers are good for one ticket to see anything (i.e. they're not the "no passes accepted" type of pass). When I go see a movie with my family, I usually just buy a set of vouchers, because the discount adds up when you've got 6+ people going at once. So, we head down to the cinema to get our tickets, and find they're not accepting these vouchers for Episode III. It was the first time they'd not accepted the vouchers for any movie they'd *ever* shown. Apparently good old George had a memo sent around saying if any cinema sold tickets for less than full price, he'd have the studio screw them over by cancelling their distribution contract. The general consensus was that he was afraid discounted tickets would affect the opening record he desperately wanted to set. Greedy bastard. We ponied up the cash to see that piece of trash at the regular price, though.
"My fellow Americans, these are not the droids the nation is looking for."