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Pirates Promise Improved Version of DaVinci Code
Y'arr, Matey writes "CD Freaks is reporting that pirates are not happy with the quality of the DaVinci Code. According to the article, "A sales assistant at one Shanghai DVD shop said the initial copies were 'pirated overseas' and that 'better quality' versions would probably be available early next month.""
That the new version will be 0 minutes long.
Isn't it normal that the first pirated copies aren't top quality? I'm not sure how this is news.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
What, so they're re-filming it, this time with a better story???
People cam/telesync/telecine the movie, and finally a dvd ripped version comes along later. This happens to every movie, why is this news. Even if this was unique to DaVinci Code, this doesn't belong on the front page of /.
because pirates are renowned for the quality control.
serenity now!
That they're this blatant about their piracy...
Or that their customer service is better than most "official" DVD publishers.
Agreed.
I don't know if the news source can be trusted. And how come a few words that this average salesman said suddenly become news?
Pirates won't stop pirating movies and their quality always increases. They'll try getting the actual film from the theatres and rip it. Or even yet, get an "internal agent" which would work closely with the movie to leak a copy. Ah, so many possibilities!
As for the movie itself, I still have to force myself to read the book before watching it.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
Was hoping it would say they were editing Da Vinci Code to make it more entertaining.
Alright, considering that what they're doing is illegal in the first place I don't think they have any right to complain.
This is like stealing a car and then complaining to the owner that it doesn't have air conditioning.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
If the Pirates aren't happy then the Ninjas must be pissed.
This Slashdot "news item" was formulated overseas, and we anticipate a more newsworthy post within the next month.
The only way this story would be newsworthy would be if pirates saw the movie, were unhappy with what they saw, and decided to improve it by reshuffling the scenes around (sort of a Pirate's cut).
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Arrrr, the post-production value of the film wasn't up to the same quality as other blockbustarrrr book to movie productions; here on the ship we're still parrrrtial to Mastarrrr and Comandarrrr!
...and a duplicate post within a day.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
When did people start "pirating" movies? And they started with DaVinci Code? Are these pirates anti-christian missionaries?
the guy with the camera is not going to sit behind some chick with a Marj Simpson hair do!
Heh, The Pirate Bay has you covered...
Link
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
...but it does illustrate a point about the protection of content and the unauthorized distribution of said content. Look, these "pirates" have a copy - crappy though it may be - shortly after the first screening. And they're, apparently, selling (though no number figures are given for volume).
What is interesting is that the unauthorized distribution chain is well organized enough that a typical time frame can be placed on the "next" release of the film. It speaks volumes about the actual control content producers have on their material.
In this day of first weekend hits which fizzle or stay on the charts for such a short time, and the inevitable surfacing of the video in the "pirate" channels - both physical and online - is it really advantageous to the bottom line to spread (a) the theatrical release from the home video release by several months and (b) the theatrical release across continents by several months. In an age of essentially world wide communications and market size, and with the ability to distribute and screen content digitally, why not release the films one weekend, and the home version the following Tuesday? Have a blockbuster you think will have staying power and want to try and get a repeat audience? Delay the DVD 2-3 weeks. Get your hype budget right up front, and make sure the patrons who liked the theatrical screening can pick up their own copy before they forget about it.
All the laws and controls the studios have bought from the various governing bodies in the world won't stop the people who make a living doing this kind of stuff. And, unlike drugs or arms traffiking, we're not talking about societal crimes and social unrest. It's a God damned entertainment flick. Quit trying to constrain these "pirates" with rules they won't abide - beat them at their own game. Get the real discs into stores and into consumers hands before the "pirates" do. Crappy copies are no fun to watch. And I don't know about you folks, but if you've ever tried to get a movie of any decent quality off of the usenet you know it can be a royal pain. Quite honestly, it's not worth my time to futz with it if I can have Amazon deliver it to my door for $15. And I pay for good usenet access, so my dowloads are easy and fast. Provide the goods and take away their business and reason for being. Sure, you'll still have to deal with the snot-nosed teens who pirate stuff for the thrill, but those folks aren't going to be buyers (by and large). Write them off.
FWIW, I have unauthorized copies of Star Wars (IV), The Little Mermaid, and (on VHS) Song of the South. I have since purchased Ep. IV, though it had been out for a while (heck, I already "bought" a copy, right?). TLM is "in the vault". I couldn't purchase one from Disney if I wanted to, so some Malaysian pirate got my $20 - I'm claiming fair use since I own the VHS (with the phallic cover, no less). SotS will "never be released", though having watched it I can't quite figure out why. The NAACP has nothing to worry about in the portrayal of of the slaves, but caucasians should be appalled at the portrayal of the plantation owners in the film.
IMHO, the movie cartel actually keeps these shady shops in business. That's what the story really is.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A few years back, someone re-edited "The Phantom Menace", and called it The Phantom Edit. Some people thought it was an improvement over the original. About 20 minutes of Jar-Jar was cut, which didn't hurt.
Judging from the e-mail address on the submitter's name, I'm guessing the point of the article is actually a political statement meant to make the RIAA/MPAA look stupid for (a) their obsession with DRM and (b) suing file sharers when actual for-profit pirates are so brazen.
You are sad because the movie has been pirated, or because the movie exists in the first place?
Using (pirated) PC-based video editing software, enterprising movies pirates have issued a new, improved version of the Da Vinci code. A plot summary follows:
Middle-aged Harvard professor Robert Langdon is giving a lecture in Paris when he is confronted by a police detective, who shows him a picture of a man who has been murdered in a gruesome fashion. Langdon, who has been living in an airport terminal, takes off in search of the holy grail, which has been stolen by a young Leo di Caprio. A gratuitous time warp takes him back to WWII to save Matt Damon from being killed by Nazis. Returning to the present, a slingshot around the moon reveals his presence to vengeful mobsters, who are unimpressed by his skill at ping-pong and shrimping. Escaping from them via Fed-Ex cargo plane only leads him to a close encounter with a volcano and a young Meg Ryan, with whom he has a cheesy and banal romance that only a woman could appreciate. With a newfound attitude towards the fairer sex he agrees to coach a group of weepy baseball players, but mysteriously, without even sleeping with any of them, he contracts AIDS and dies. But that doesn't stop our hero. He returns from the dead, bangs a mermaid, and brings joy to millions of kids before returning back to Paris where he started, which makes you wonder why the hell he left in the first place.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
I am truely sadened that this made it onto Slashdot. Are we openly praising these people? I have digitally edited your post for the better quality appreciation by the consumer market: ARR!1! Ye murderous pirating trolls would befoul the pristine intellectual spaceways of ye noble Dot, will ye?! Ye scoundrels deserve no less of an intergalactic keel haulin' than the scrofulous scallywags of the HMS Digital Millenium Falcon herself!! yar!
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Here in Beijing, there are CD/DVD shops pretty much on every block, and in none of then can you find "legal" products, at least not for non-Chinese stuff. In any place with lots of pedestrian traffic, you'll find "street merchants" with boxes full of DVDs. Stores that carry "legal" imported DVDs are quite hard to find, if you really want them.
Movies that are showing in the theatres will usually be in the stores a few days *earlier* than in the theatre; most often, they won't show in the theatres at all. And a few weeks later (about two weeks after the theatre premiere), you'll have the decent-quality DVDs, although those second-batch disks are typically either sans subtitles, with subtitles copied from some other random movie, or really bad "all your base" subtitles. The third batch are the actual DVD copies that come usually a few days before the "legal" DVDs are released in the rest of the world.
If you're a good customer, and the second batch is expected at some point in this same week, the clerk will sometimes even tell you, "no buy this, the better quality come tomorrow".
The Shanghai poster neglected to mention prices. A regular DVD costs an average 10 yuan, 15 or 20 if it comes in a box rather than envelope (not so much for the box, but because these are usually slightly better). A DVD9 ranges from 20 to 40 yuan. One USD = 8.14 yuan.
A good post, and all too accurate sadly. The post about DSL/Cable hogging is quite relevant too I thought (it certainly annoys me for many of the same reasons).
It seems it's always okay to use as much bandwidth as you possibly can or to copy media as you like, but it's not okay when it's your bandwidth or your software that's being abused.
I'm glad somebody else noticed that. I got about 40 pages into the "Code", then realized that I've already read this story before, only the last time it wasn't written by some Crichton-wanna-be hack. And then of course they had to get Ron Howard to direct...
Having just gotten back from China I can tell you that ANYTHING you want on DVD is available for a BUCK. High Quality packaging and everything with FBI warnings and disclaimers in place. They use to just make VCDs that everyone had players for, then they went to DVD-5 and compressed the quality of some movies a bit. Now they rip full DVD-9 and market it as DVD-9 or HDVD. The "Broke Back Mountain" rip I saw (my wife made me watch it with her, BTW BORING!) had the "For Academy Viewing Only" disclaimer scroll across the screen about 3 times, but he quality was great. In Guangzhou lot of people have 50+ inch plasma Hi-Def TVs. I'm sure they will pirate Blu-Ray when it comes out. I saw lots of PSPs in use while I was there.
I was sorely tempted to snap up DVDs for bootlegging before coming back home but resisted.
I'm not sure I have much of a point other than piracy is here to stay in China. Copy-protection won't matter one wit because it is done by professionals with the equipment to do it right, and it is so firmly a part of the society I don't know anyway you could stop it if you really tried. I for one like the fact that if things become too draconian here stateside I always have a source that can hook me up in the East.
Letter To Iran
If the reported paid only 5 yuan, he could only get a pirated CD with bad quality. For a better one, or some people say, "the copy of the legal copy", you need to pay 7 to 12 yuan, depending on your bargain skills.
It wasn't even a good movie, couldn't they at least wait for X-Men 3.
This does bring up an interesting point, RIAA and MPAA are so busy suing average folk in the US that they don't really make any serious efforts against the huge pirates in China. Chinese pirates will continue to go about ripping off movies and software because the Chinese government would rather side with its people than some evil foreign capitalist organization.
Why the fuck is slashdot giving these scumsucking leeches who illegally profit off the hard work of others recognition?
This sort of shit really pisses me off.. why the fuck did China gain admittance into the WTO with this appalling shit going on? They're not even hiding the fact that this is going on..
Sorry for the profanity, but this really makes me angry..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Yes. As long as the movie companies maintain a monopoly on the industry, and continue to set prices artificialy high, I'll give props to anyone who rips them off.
Having lived in SE Asia until quite recently, and having seen high quality copies of everything from the Incredibles to SW 3 weeks before they hit the cinema, I am certain that high quality boots are available of DvC.
My guess is that he choose the wrong vendor.
I've read all the dan brown books, but from what I've heard of the movie, it's quite tedious.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Reportedly, the new version will have more action in it. And more humor. And more romance. And more puzzles. And they are going to give the protagonist a sidekick for more comic relief. Oh, and the pursuit of our heroes by the bad guys won't mysteriously drop off in the third act.
In fact, the pirate update has already been available for a while.
Movie companies are the only people making movies? Who would have thought it...
A monopoly is ONE company, not an entire industry. Nobody has a monopoly on movies. You might complain that there's price fixing going on, but that has nothing to do with a monopoly.
I cannot read. Let me say that my attention span causes me to skim pages, skip words, go back and forth. Because of this, I end up reading with no comprehension if something goes more than a few pages. Character development is difficult for me to follow. Along comes Dan Brown with a writing style that has short chapters, little descriptive notation, etc. He has been criticized for his writing style, but I find it easy to follow. Admittedly, I listened to the 13-CD audio book for Da Vinci Code, but I read Angels and Demons and Point Deception (?) (the meteorite book). I can pretty much only read a Stephen King novel if I have seen the movie, but I can start and finish a Brown novel without difficulty. I did not finish Digital Fortress because I lost interest in the story.
Inaccurate information is what good stories are all about. I doubt there are many that bitched about the Indiana Jones trilogy for similar reasons. I enjoyed watching National Treasure, which was rife with errors. Any science fiction film -- don't get me started. For us computer nerds, I enjoyed many movies with tons of errors: Virus, Wargames, Sneakers, Lawnmower Man, etc. I think some people need to lighten up and enjoy a story every so often. Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, building on convenient coincidences and half-truths. That statement describes half the history books I have read in the past.
Can't we all just get along?!?!
Click here or here.