MPAA Chases Uploads, Ignores Open Sales of DVD-Rs?

rbrander writes "Go to TVBoxSet.com and find a remarkable sales site for box sets of TV shows, including not only surprisingly cheap deals, but offerings not found elsewhere. For example, they have a set with all ten seasons of 'JAG'. The problem is that the production company is only up to season 4 so far. Google "tvboxset" and find every link below the first is to a complaint or news website complaining of the scam. Those who do shop at the site get a product that appears to be a DVD-R recorded off of cable. The really odd thing? They're still in business! A story at the Montreal Gazette about the scam is six weeks old. Now what's in it for the content industry to beat up private citizens with $220,000 judgements or scrambling to get DeCSS sites shut down within hours, while corporate scammers openly sell pirate DVDs for months on end, unopposed?"

Comments

They are just selling instant DVDs

[Zarhan]

"There's been a new venture in home video market - instant DVDs. They are out in stores before the movie is finished!"

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[trickyrickb]

What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen
in the movie?

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Merls the Sneaky]

You're looking at now, now.

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[RasputinAXP]

But when will then be NOW?

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[ThePengwin]

Soon!

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Dark_Lord_Prime]

Um.. yeah. That was the point of this series of posts/replies.

Not the brightest color in the Spaceballs: The Crayons® box, are ya?

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Captain Autism completely misses the point!

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[MayorDefacto]

Jackie Harvey, is that you?

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit Sherlock. YHBT.

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Nar Matteru]

Crayons aren't a brand name.

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[Oktober Sunset]

that's what they want you to think, then when you least expect it... Bang! Lawsuit.

Re:They are just selling instant DVDs

[genaldar]

No but Spaceballs the Crayons are copyright (or would be if it was a real product).

What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused about the redundant word usage: "corporate" and "scammer".

Re:What's the difference?

[StormyWeather]

Why in the world is this insightful? I own my own small business that is incorporated even though I'm a 1 man show, and I try to uphold the greatest ethical standards possible. I truly believe that the vast majority of rich people become rich through ethical means, and a horrid amount of hard work. All you hear about are the greed is good crowd just like all you hear about with professional athletes are the ones who are arrested and who do stupid things. I incorporated because I didn't want someone to slip on the curb outside, crack their skull open, and sue me for everything I own. The most they can get from me is the business, but not my kids college funds. Does that make me an evil person?

Most companies are full of good people, run by good people who try to do the right thing. Just because publicly traded companies are sometimes forced by the shareholders to do things that aren't cool it doesn't mean business is bad, or even that big business is bad.

Re:What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

I own my own small business that is incorporated even though I'm a 1 man show, and I try to uphold the greatest ethical standards possible.

Just wait until you go public, and you have to try to uphold the ethical standards of daytraders instead.

Re:What's the difference?

[causality]

Just because publicly traded companies are sometimes forced by the shareholders to do things that aren't cool it doesn't mean business is bad, or even that big business is bad.

Most of the time, it's not that they are run by evil people, it's really just what happens when a (very) large group tries to think. It all becomes reduced to the lowest common denominator, causing the decision-making to be more selfish and more short-term, and replaces the ethics of an individual with a poor substitute, which is a need to follow any regulations and avoid legal liability. If there is to be a coherent organization, then there is simply no other mentality that a 10,000 person team could share other than "is this in the interests of the company?" with good employees separated from mediocre employees based on how much they care about that question. It's the effect that this singular focus has on any group consensus reached (either by being a decision-maker or by losing your job if you don't play along) that can be perceived as evil, although really it's amoral.

Most companies are full of good people, run by good people who try to do the right thing.

If you really look around you'll notice that most of the harm done in this world is not done by deliberate malice; it's done by people who have good intentions and fail to consider the full repercussions of their actions. No totalitarian government ever arose because "Do you want to live in a fascist police state?" was put to a vote. Even when this is the intention of a leader, it's always sold as a way to protect public safety, stop terrorists, etc. so that naive people can support feel-good measures with foreseeable negative side-effects while patting themselves on the back for how good their intent was.

The GP painted with a broad brush but your attempt to defend the good name of giant multinationals (the main cause of that perception) in terms of your personal, ethical, hard-working, money-for-kid's-college-funds-and-grandma-and-apple-pie one-man operation is not a valid comparison.

Re:What's the difference?

[Dun Malg]

The GP painted with a broad brush but your attempt to defend the good name of giant multinationals (the main cause of that perception) in terms of your personal, ethical, hard-working, money-for-kid's-college-funds-and-grandma-and-apple-pie one-man operation is not a valid comparison. He didn't try to defend giant multinationals, he defended "most companies". Most companies are not giant, ethically impaired multinationals. Giant multinationals are the abberation that make the rest look bad.

Re:What's the difference?

[confused_demon]

That's not really the problem with the RIAA, copyright laws or even counterfeiting laws.

IMO the problem is that copyright and counterfeiting laws were written when it was difficult to catch people that were producing forged goods or currency on a huge scale. For example, the minimum penalty for counterfeiting is a $250,000 fine, 5 years in prison, and the confiscation of all equipment used in the counterfeiting. That law makes a lot of sense when you're after someone that's made a printing press and is producing sheets of 100's. It's not so appropriate when you're going after a teenager that produced some shitty copies of a 20$ with an inkjet.

Similarly, RIAA is using laws designed to go after people selling pirated material on a massive scale to persecute people who aren't financially benefiting from copyright infringement. E.g. rather than reforming their distribution network, they're using copyright law as a club to try and fend off change and a new reality about how the world works.

If RIAA, the MPAA, and whomever else wants to make their customers happy and keep their businesses working properly, they need to switch to simultaneously release everything worldwide in pretty much every langauge. There's no reason I should have to wait 4 months to buy a DVD of a JP TV show for 30$, when someone in Japan adds subtitles and posts it on the internet the day after it airs in Japan.

Re:What's the difference?

[causality]

He didn't try to defend giant multinationals, he defended "most companies". Most companies are not giant, ethically impaired multinationals.

Giant multinationals are the same idea taken to its logical conclusion by those relative few who proved themselves to be better players of the same game. Therefore they take a subtle flaw that does not usually reveal itself at a small-and-local level and make it scale until it is large and pronounced and no longer deniable.

Giant multinationals are the abberation that make the rest look bad.

Any way you look at it, the "ethnically impaired" perception is valid and did not originate in a vacuum, since the system as we know it is set up to reward and reinforce the behavior of those multinationals, otherwise they would be forced to declare bankruptcy. There is nothing aberrant about maintaining an environment that is well-suited for a particular type of entity and then having noteworthy manifestations of that type of entity; this is simple cause-and-effect. My previous comment had more to do with our misplaced trust in large organizations and their PR and their agendas and less to do with undesirable business practices, since without the former the latter could not be so widespread.

Re:What's the difference?

[metallic]

"ethnically impaired"

Is that anything like being white? Sorry, couldn't resist :)

Re:What's the difference?

[FreakWent]

You're still wrong; the original target was not 'companies', but 'corporates'.

The fact that a Corporation can exist in an ostensible democracy is a scam; it allows behaviour by an entity with little or no restraint or punishment.

Re:What's the difference?

[Arterion]

Most poor people become poor through ethical means, and horrid amounts of hard work. What's funny is that I find the harder someone works, the less money they make. In fact, the people with the most money in our society don't work at all! How's that for backwards?

Re:What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

If shareholders had their way, Apple would be selling OS X for commodity pc's and the iPhone would be unlockable and unbrickable. I really think you give them too much credit.

Re:What's the difference?

[justinlee37]

I own my own small business ... and I try to uphold the greatest ethical standards possible

You aren't doing it right.

Re:What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

Re:What's the difference?

[dualityshift]

Your beliefs are skewed. Greed fuels people to succeed. More money equates to happier life. People will inherently rip others off to make a quick buck. People rape the land and environment to get rich.

Wow!

[Perseid]

A season of X-Files, presumably bootleg, is $56. I think I'm in the wrong line of work. Anyway, perhaps the reason they aren't being pursued is that they may not be in the US. If they are in, for example, Russia, allofmp3 has shown how much fun suing them can be. Single mothers with Kazaa, on the other hand, tend to be easy to pick off.

Re:Wow!

[ShaunC]

Anyway, perhaps the reason they aren't being pursued is that they may not be in the US. If they are in, for example, Russia, allofmp3 has shown how much fun suing them can be.

TFA makes it fairly clear that this operatiion is based in Canada.

Re:Wow!

[neoform]

The article says they're based out of Montreal..

Re:Wow!

[12ahead]

Well..as always: Blame Canada! :)

Re:Wow!

[irc(addict)]

Ah. THAT's why they are still going then.

We all know Quebec isnt subject to Canada's laws.

Re:Wow!

[ShaunC]

A season of X-Files, presumably bootleg, is $56. I think I'm in the wrong line of work.

Oh, and that reminds me. The X-Files is my absolute favorite television series of all time. Through Blockbuster Online or Netflix, you can rent all nine seasons on DVD for far less than $56. They appear in your mailbox on DVD, one right after the other. IMO, it's better to go the legit route. You get a real, honest-to-gosh DVD to hold in your hands, and watch, and do whatever else you might do with it.

There's really no sense buying the junky bootlegs on a street corner. I honestly don't understand how any for-profit duplicators make it these days. It was one thing in the age of VHS tapes, but in our current environment, it's far easier for the average consumer to get his hands on a legitimate, high quality copy (and "back it up") than it's worth attempting to purchase a counterfeit copy.

Alas, the penalties for downloading (or uploading) a movie via, say, BitTorrent are tens of times more harsh than the penalties for buying or selling a counterfeit DVD on the street, or for just shoplifting the damned thing. So I guess I don't understand why these guys get into the business. They'd face less potential jail time if they set up a rape/murder cartel.

Re:Wow!

[speaker of the truth]

IMO, it's better to go the legit route. The problem is people think TVBoxSet is a legit route.

Re:Wow!

[Bob54321]

TFA makes it fairly clear that this operatiion is based in Canada.

You read TFA? Wow... just wow

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

You see that's in US. In UK you just need to go to the nearest pub at almost any evening and you can buy whatever film you want.
Sure there're tons on CAMs and shit, but for average Joe Sixpack it doesn't matter. And for people who are computer savvy (most kids from better homes older than 12) there's bittorrent as nobody's trying to prosecute them.

Re:Wow!

[speaker of the truth]

I have no idea how you're post is relevant to mine. I say that people think an illegitimate route is legal, you go on about a whole bunch of other quite clearly illegitimate routes (for anyone with even half a brain).

Re:Wow!

[Duncan Blackthorne]

I wouldn't at all be surprised if they're just going to these pirate operations, threatening them with criminal and legal action, then quietly making a deal with them to cut them in for a share of the profits.

Re:Wow!

[bruins01]

I think it has more to do with the public's perception of legality. What I mean to say is that the public, in general, knows that what this website is doing is illegal, so all of its customers will be people who know they are breaking the law and don't care. People who engage in the petty downloading and "making available" or songs, such as the defendant in the Duluth case, are choosing sides in a battle in which neither side has a great moral advantage over the other. It is well-publicized that many filesharers believe they are acting with moral superiority, and they make a pretty good point. As a result of this, the RIAA files lawsuits demanding ridiculous sums for damages in an effort to scare the hell out of filesharers. The RIAA and the MPAA are trying to win on two fronts, the moral front and the scare-the-hell-out-of-everybody front. They run commercials before movies explaining how you downloading Independence Day ruins the lives of the people in charge of applying Will Smith's makeup, and then they scare the hell out of the people who share files anyway with lawsuits.

In other words, there's no one to scare when you go after the website in Canada except other people who are running websites like that, and how many of those are there? I can't think of any.

It's very disconcerting that the **AAs care so little about winning the morality battle. They technically had the law on their side, even before the laws were changed to their current, even more Draconian form. But they chose instead to squander all their moral capital for dumb lawsuits and extortion schemes that couldn't possibly be worth the attorney's fees. Now they are alienating an entire young generation (I'm 22 and I don't know a single person who doesn't hate the them), who are eventually going to have kids who are going to be told all about the assholes that make up the **AAs.

They could have parlayed their moral capital into genuine concern from the public, but decided to go over their heads to their congresspeople and their courthouses and they are going to pay the price.

Re:Wow!

[xwizbt]

Oh, and that reminds me. The X-Files is my absolute favorite television series of all time. Through Blockbuster Online or Netflix, you can rent all nine seasons on DVD for far less than $56. They appear in your mailbox on DVD, one right after the other. IMO, it's better to go the legit route. You get a real, honest-to-gosh DVD to hold in your hands, and watch, and do whatever else you might do with it.

Do whatever else you might do with it? Sure... except watch it again and again. To do that you have to re-rent. Slight problem there...

Re:Wow!

[The Dobber]

Stop and think about that word - Rent.

Re:Wow!

[GnomeChompsky]

That's more true than your 'funny' moderation would imply. Quebec is subject to the Civil Code of Quebec whereas the rest of Canada is subject to Common Law. Unfortunately, since I'm not a lawyer I don't know if that has any bearing on the case at hand.

Re:Wow!

[1u3hr]

Do whatever else you might do with it? Sure... except watch it again and again. To do that you have to re-rent. Slight problem there...

Problem? Solution.

Re:Wow!

[Volante3192]

Why get a bootleg season of X-Files for $56 when you can get a legit season for $45?

Re:Wow!

[s4m7]

In UK [..] but for average Joe Sixpack it doesn't matter. When did Joe move to the UK?

Re:Wow!

[ILuvRamen]

I think logically it's actually the MPAA running the site to fund their law suits. You know the famous quote: "If you ignore it that means you're in on it."

Re:Wow!

[Solandri]

There's really no sense buying the junky bootlegs on a street corner. I honestly don't understand how any for-profit duplicators make it these days. It was one thing in the age of VHS tapes, but in our current environment, it's far easier for the average consumer to get his hands on a legitimate, high quality copy (and "back it up") than it's worth attempting to purchase a counterfeit copy.

The MPAA has been busy trying to destroy or make illegal people's access to DeCSS, which is what you need to "back it up". On the other hand, buying a counterfeit copy from TVBoxSet.com is no more difficult than buying from a legitimate retailer (in fact most would probably mistake it for a legitimate retailer at first and second glance). So I would disagree with your conclusion that renting and copying is easier than buying counterfeit copies.

Re:Wow!

[Tweekster]

I find bootlegs to be of higher quality than the original. No FBI warnings, no user prohibitions on skipping more warnings etc.

Re:Wow!

[torkus]

[quote] for just shoplifting the damned thing[/quote]

And this is my problem. You potentially face a worse 'punishment' by downloading dookie (knee-slap greenday) than you do if you went into wal-mart picked up the CD and walked straight out the door.

Shoplifting is what, a class C misdemeanor? Potentially 30 days in county jail ... varies by state/jurisdiction. That assumes the judge throws the book at you. Without a substantial prior record you're probably looking at 40-100 horus of community service, maybe 6 months probation if the judge feels the need to keep an eye on you, possibly a 'don't steal shit' class.

So let's compare to the $9250 PER SONG that was recently awarded (yes, i know civil vs. criminal but we're comparing the impact to someone's life). Dookie has 14 tracks * $9250 = $129,500. Now, unless you make > $1,295.00 per hour i'd take 100 hours of community service. That's enough to bankrupt a large portion of adults and at a minimum totally ruin them financially. You don't want to even thing about the numbers for WILLFUL copyright infringement. I mean, stealing IS willful if you want to compare evenly.

So let's compare worst case:

misdemeanor conviction (not a felony, you don't report it on job apps)
30 days in couty jail (with prior record and a PMSing judge)
6 months probation
100hrs community service
'don't steal' class, maybe 40 hours...probably way less

vs.

no criminal conviction (ok, nifty)
$9,250 per song via recent case, $220,000 per song if judged WILLFUL theft
bankruptcy
potential loss of house, car(s), possessions, bank accounts, inventments, etc.
Financial ruin for most adults - especially @ $220,000/song.
Unless you have gobs of spare case, you're fucked financially for life

I'm gunna start stealing CDs like my friends did in high school.

Re:Wow!

[Bobartig]

Not only is there less risk, but 1) Most retail outlets don't press charges, and 2) the RIAA has already made its cut, so they're already sated.

Re:Wow!

[miskatonic alumnus]

How difficult can it be? There are several ripping applications (some of them free of charge) that effortlessly back up the DVD and strip out all CSS, copy protection, UOPs, etc.

Re:Wow!

[leenks]

(for anyone with even half a brain).

You clearly don't spend much time in the UK... The country where bettering oneself is a negative, and sitting around on your arse all day while racking up benefit credits is the life goal of a large portion of the population.

(btw, I'm British, and live in the UK next to the fruits of this mentality)

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I do believe that the gentleman in question is Joe Pintglass, Joe Sixpack's cousin. Better taste in beer, for sure, but just as braindead.

Re:Wow!

[houstonbofh]

Don't forget "Less Rootkits" and "Actually follow the DVD spec..."

Re:Wow!

[Blkdeath]

There's really no sense buying the junky bootlegs on a street corner. I honestly don't understand how any for-profit duplicators make it these days. It was one thing in the age of VHS tapes, but in our current environment, it's far easier for the average consumer to get his hands on a legitimate, high quality copy (and "back it up") than it's worth attempting to purchase a counterfeit copy.

There are actually some very high quality bootleg copies of movies and television shows out there. Search a torrent site for dvdrip, hd, xvid, ac3, h.264/x264 or a plethora of others and you'll find 5.1 surround sound, high definition copies of all sorts of things. Fire them onto a DVD-R, mock up some packaging, set up a website and bang! Profit! (Now if website is a synonym for "street corner" you get the same result).

You are right; in some cases it's just not worth while to get counterfeit or bootleg copies; if they're not available in HD with 5.1 sound quite frankly I'm not interested. I didn't spend this much money on a home theatre system to watch grainy video with 2 channel audio. On the other hand a compromise must be made; I didn't build my theatre setup to spend $60CDN on a high definition video disc either.

Re:Wow!

[nobaloney]

Doing an nslookup on their name gives an IP#. Doing a whois on the IP# shows the IP# is owned by a company in Florida.

So should the studios involved use the DMCA to force the site to be shut down?

Wrong purpose

[speaker of the truth]

If the purpose was to go after infringers in order to recuperate lost sales, they wouldn't be going after housewives or children who pirate for personal use, they'd be going after commercial pirates. Y'know, the people that the ridiculously high penalties were created for?

Instead the MPAA's purpose is to create an environment of fear. This is presumably so people will forget their fair use rights and give them up so the MPAA studios can put even more DRM on their products.

Re:Wrong purpose

[eggman9713]

Well given that Sony thinks everything (including remembering a song) is piracy, perhaps the MPAA wants DRM all the way into your occipital lobe (Vision center of the brain for your non-anatomy savvy people)

Re:Wrong purpose

[ShaunC]

If the purpose was to go after infringers in order to recuperate lost sales, they wouldn't be going after housewives or children who pirate for personal use, they'd be going after commercial pirates.

Take two minutes to read the article; these are for-profit commercial pirates. They're selling shit-quality DVD compilations of classic TV shows, often ripped directly from TVLand and other cable channels. This is very much a for-profit copyright infringement ring.

Re:Wrong purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now, remember that in newspeak there is no such thing as fair use, it's merely a modifier once the legal process has begun - it's not a cus... I mean consumer right, it's a producer right only.

Re:Wrong purpose

[renbear]

Take two minutes to read the article; these are for-profit commercial pirates. They're selling shit-quality DVD compilations of classic TV shows, often ripped directly from TVLand and other cable channels. This is very much a for-profit copyright infringement ring. You misread his post. What you stated above is his POINT. They aren't going after the commercial pirates like these. Instead, they are choosing to go after housewives, but pursue penalties determined by laws that were created with commercial pirates in mind.

Obviously, they aren't THAT concerned with recouping lost sales. They'd much rather intimidate their customers.

Re:Wrong purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead the MPAA's purpose is to create an environment of fear. This is presumably so people will forget their fair use rights and give them up so the MPAA studios can put even more DRM on their products. So, what you're saying is the MPAA's goal is to induce terror. Therefore, the MPAA are terrorists.

Hmm, someone should start a marketing campaign about how supporting the MPAA is supporting terrorism...

microsoft too

[ClippySay]

/ This is a home pirated version of       \
| Clippy. Please turn to your local       |
| Clippy retailer or a professional Jolly |
\ Roger-compliant pirate.                 /
       \     ____
        \   / __ \
         \  O|  |O|
            ||  | |
            ||  | |
            ||    |
             |___/

Re:microsoft too

[boarder8925]

Yeah, well I've got a pirated version of a shotgun, and it's dying to have a chat with any and all Clippies.

They're safe because they are identifiable

[tech10171968]

Personally, I believe they're getting off scott-free because TVBoxSet.com is a company, but P2P networks and their filesharers are not. It's easy to compete against another company (like TVBoxSet.com), especially one which allegedly offers questionable content; on the other hand, with P2P, how in the world does a company compete against free? I may be wrong but I can't think of a business has yet figured a way to do that (Microsoft is presently trying to answer that question as it pertains to GNU/Linux and FOSS). Seems to me that , correctly or not, they don't percieve a much of a threat to their bottom line coming from TVBoxSet.com as they do from some kid with a torrent client.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[stranger_to_himself]

I suppose it depends on where they think TVBoxSet's customers will go if they manage to shut it down. Or maybe they think if it's a scam then it'll blow itself out when word gets around.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[TubeSteak]

Personally, I believe they're getting off scott-free because TVBoxSet.com is a company That's a pretty dumb line of thought.
If anything, they're easier to go after since they have a business address & a bank account.

As a side note: Why would anyone contact the MPAA and not the CRIA about a situation with a Canadian company?

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[Harold Halloway]

I think you are right. eBay has probably hundreds or thousands of bootlegs for sale at any one time. Does the RIAA/MPAA does anything? Nope. The Federation Against Copyright Theft in the UK are similarly not interested in going after eBay. The reason is obvious - companies have huge legal budgets to throw at any lawsuits coming from RIAA/MPAA and there is no certainty that the latter would win. It's bizarre: distribute songs for nothing and get a $200,000 fine. Sell them and get away scot-free.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[squiggleslash]

That's simply not true. My wife bought a DVD box set from eBay recently that turned out to be bootlag. In the process of trying to get a refund, the seller was shut down by eBay due to piracy complaints. The whole thing made matters worse for my wife, who was accused of turning the seller in and who generally went from "slightly nuts" to full-on "Maybe we should get a restraining order".

Generally bootleg sellers on eBay don't last long. The issue right now is that policing them is a little more difficult. Unless the eBayer is selling something that's never been on the media offered, or is stupid enough to directly admit the item is bootleg in the description, the copyright holder actually has to buy a sample before he or she can be certain that copyright violations are going on. This is in contrast to someone redistributing a studio's movie via BitTorrent, where the movie has never been released in a form that would allow for that redistribution legally. It's immediately obvious a violation of copyright is occurring and the studio can immediately start legal action.

Even then, the number of BitTorrent movie redistribution copyright violation cases is tiny. A lot of people here seem to be conflating the movie industry's efforts with the music industry's, but these are two entirely seperate actions, and the music industry isn't exactly reknowned for sitting on its hands when it comes to commercial piracy either.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[loganrapp]

No kidding, the CRIA just forced a favorite torrent of mine to shut off all Canadian bandwidth. Those guys are tough.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless the eBayer is selling something that's never been on the media offered, or is stupid enough to directly admit the item is bootleg in the description, the copyright holder actually has to buy a sample before he or she can be certain that copyright violations are going on.

So I'm guessing you've missed all the Slashdot stories about people who were selling single, legitimate copies of software they did not need or no longer needed getting their auctions quickly shut down by eBay for copyright infringement, just on the say-so of companies like Autodesk and Microsoft?

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[noidentity]

Perhaps eBay shuts down the auctions of pirated items due to buyer complaints, not MAFIAA legal threats?

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[ezzthetic]

Personally, I just want to know who this Scott guy is, and how he keeps getting away with stuff.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[LWATCDR]

I wonder if they are legal because of the the DVD-R media tax in Canada.
If I remember correctly in Canada media is taxed to pay for piracy. If you are selling DVD-r and have paid the copy fee then maybe it is legal?

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[Anaerin]

Actually, IIRC (IAAC, but not a legal one yet), the "Media Tax" is only on (blank) CD-R(W?)s, not DVD([\+-]+)R(W?)s.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[squiggleslash]

No, I haven't. The fact that Microsoft is making bogus copyright complaints and clearly abusing the law does not mean the movie industry has some obligation to do likewise.

Re:They're safe because they are identifiable

[Anonymous Coward]

> how in the world does a company compete against free?

Have a better product.

Ask bottled water companies, private schools and Opera. All of them compete against free products every day.

Waiting

[Sarten-X]

I'd like to see if more public attention makes them go after the site. I doubt it, but maybe... Hah.

Related Story

[rchh]

Why is the related story to this story is the story itself? How is related stories added? What/who determines related stories?

Re:Related Story

[totally bogus dude]

I've wondered that myself. Every story seems to have a "Firehose" duplicate of itself in the Related Stories section. It does seem a little redundant. Based on that, I'm assuming the "related stories" thing is generated automagically.

Re:Related Story

[bentcd]

Why is the related story to this story is the story itself? It appears to me that the Firehose story is this story before it got edited. This is presumably useful in that you get to review the efficiency of our highly dedicated and professional editors.

In the case of this story, note that the capitalisation in the story title differs between the Firehose and the actual story. I haven't examined the text to see if that was changed in any way.

Re:Related Story

[SEWilco]

So you're saying that the most visible version of this Slashdot story is actually a cheap inaccurate copy of the original and legitimately produced version? Why haven't the [redacted - ed.] /. editors cracked down on this shoddy duplication, and instead made available the higher quality Firehose material, in the form which it was originally conceived by its producer?

Double standards!

[Hal_Porter]

Now what's in it for the content industry to beat up private citizens with $220,000 judgements or scrambling to get DeCSS sites shut down within hours, while corporate scammers openly sell pirate DVDs for months on end, unopposed?" I got arrested and sent to prison for vehicular manslaughter. I run over some kid but she was really young - it was more like a late term abortion really. And yet in Wisconsin there's a serial killer who has murdered ten adults and not been caught. By the principle of double standards raised in this article I should therefore be released.

Re:Double standards!

[marcello_dl]

As much as I'm against RIAA, see comment history, I agree that being blamed for not suing these ones is an exaggeration.

And RIAA can shut us up by simply suing them too.

Re:Double standards!

[laughingcoyote]

If we really must use your poor analogy, it would be more like:

"I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once, and got 15 years in jail for it. In the meantime, there's a guy who's running around hitting pedestrians all over the city. They know exactly who he is and where to find him, but they haven't even given him a ticket yet."

Re:Double standards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, talk about having no sense of perspective at all.

Re:Double standards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wah wah wah, stop making pathetic excuses, speeding is wrong and you know it, if you can't do the time don't do the crime. Moron. And stop making stupid arguments like "speeding isn't theft", you didn't PAY for the right to drive 10 mph over the limit so you STOLE it, that's what STEALING is. Thief.

Oops, sorry, my slashbot implant seems to be malfunctioning slightly today...

Re:Double standards!

[Hal_Porter]

I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once

I.e. you broke the law. Prepare to pay the price.

there's a guy who's running around hitting pedestrians all over the city. They know exactly who he is and where to find him, but they haven't even given him a ticket yet.

They fact that they haven't caught him doesn't give you a license to break the law. Neither does excessive penalties, the fact that enforcing the law is advocated by rich or nasty people, "information wants to be free", vague arguments that the people you're stealing from should change business models or any of the other pro piracy arguments that get moderated up here. Seriously, all this stuff is irrelevant.

If you break the law despite knowing the penalties for doing so are severe, you know what to expect.

Re:Double standards!

[Hal_Porter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Re:Double standards!

[Mathinker]

> They fact that they haven't caught him doesn't give you a license to break the law.

Correct, but unfortunately not connected with the point trying to be made (you missed it in your knee-jerk reaction against breaking copyright law), which is that the situation raised as an analogy in laughingcoyote's post would indicate that there is something wrong with the justice system (within his analogy). The justice system being analogous to "the content industry" in this case.

And before you lash out at me in similar fashion, note that I also have made no pro-piracy statements. The matter in question is whether the behavior of "the content industry" seems reasonable, not whether piracy is OK or justified or not.

In my eyes, the major problem with the argument in question is that the poster lumps a lot of relatively unrelated organizations (RIAA, MPAA, and all their respective "shadows" in non-US countries) into one cohesive "content industry", in order to criticize its behavior as being disjointed and arbitrary.

Re:Double standards!

[Hal_Porter]

Correct, but unfortunately not connected with the point trying to be made (you missed it in your knee-jerk reaction against breaking copyright law), which is that the situation raised as an analogy in laughingcoyote's post would indicate that there is something wrong with the justice system (within his analogy). The justice system being analogous to "the content industry" in this case. No it doesn't - maybe the more serious criminal is just harder to catch than amateur ones. In fact that's common sense. Serial killers and big time commercial pirates would know to take counter measures against being caught that people that kill by mistake or download movies at the weekend wouldn't.

Just pointing to uncaught serious criminals doesn't affect whether less serious criminals are guilty or not.

In my eyes, the major problem with the argument in question is that the poster lumps a lot of relatively unrelated organizations (RIAA, MPAA, and all their respective "shadows" in non-US countries) into one cohesive "content industry", in order to criticize its behavior as being disjointed and arbitrary. I believe the term is "The Man", consisting of law enforcement and The Corporations. If The Man doesn't prosecute some obscure and no doubt untraceable company selling a few pirate DVDs, he shouldn't be allowed to prosecute people uploading millions of songs to the internet who make no attempt to remain anonymous.

The only reason an argument this weak is so popular with the mods is because it justifies them getting free stuff.

Re:Double standards!

[totally bogus dude]

If you break the law despite knowing the penalties for doing so are severe, you know what to expect.

It's hard to know what to "expect" if the law is enforced haphazardly. For example, imagine you're waiting at a pedestrian crossing and there's no cars around (but the "Don't Walk" sign is still lit), and there's a cop standing near you. You decide not to jaywalk -- just in case you get pinged for it. The guy next to you on the sidewalk ignores the cop and crosses the road; the cop sees him, but does nothing. "Fair enough", you think, "obviously that cop isn't enforcing jaywalking laws." So you start to cross... and before you know it, the cop's all over you.

Oh yeah, and the other guy jaywalking somehow made some money off of it while the cops ignored him, but you got busted. What's with that?

Re:Double standards!

[theskunkmonkey]

You must have missed the other guy slipping a $50 into the cops hands.

Re:Double standards!

[Yaotzin]

Making money of jaywalking eh? I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Double standards!

[totally bogus dude]

some obscure and no doubt untraceable company selling a few pirate DVDs

I'm not sure how you figure they'd be "untraceable". I mean, they're selling stuff, ergo there's a money trail. It's pretty damned hard to be untraceable when you're receiving money, at least if you intend to be able to do anything with that money. The best you can hope for is to have the money trail go into a different & unfriendly jurisdiction (or several different jurisdictions) to hamper efforts to trace it to you.

people uploading millions of songs to the internet

I think it's highly unlikely that any individual on the P2P networks is uploading "millions of songs", and it's also highly unlikely the volume an individual on a P2P network uploads even approaches what a for-profit DVD pirateer would be doing. It's certainly not the case for any of the well-publicized cases of individuals being prosecuted for sharing stuff on P2P networks.

The only reason an argument this weak is so popular with the mods is because it justifies them getting free stuff.

I think it's also because it implies corruption, incompetence and/or misplaced priorities on the part of The Man, and everyone likes that.

Re:Double standards!

[Gen.Anti]

I had read three supposedly fact-packed paragraphs at the top and still didn't know what it is. For a useful down-to-the-point introduction, with the experience of three-minute googling I'd recommend those:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reductio+ad+absurdum
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=reductio%20ad%20absurdum

Re:Double standards!

[Anonymous Coward]

You really couldn't understand this:

"Reductio ad absurdum ... is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result."

Re:Double standards!

[th3rmite]

Don't assume my anger over the double standard means I'm in favor of file sharing. I don't think letting corporations go free means individuals should go free, I think punishing individuals means corporations should be punished too.

Um..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's one car analogy too far.

That leads to another question

[tmk]

Why is the production company only up to season 4 so far?

(Well, I would guess, they sell the seasons 5 to 10 still for broadcast in other countries, but six years delay is IMHO too much.)

Re:That leads to another question

[canuck57]

Why is the production company only up to season 4 so far?

Maybe the bit torrent servers they were using were shut down or didn't pay their cable bill?

Re:That leads to another question

[weirdcrashingnoises]

it's about money, i'm guessing that not many people want to just plop down 400-500$ for all 10 seasons, but if you release them over a long enough period of time, i'm guessing they make more money that way. i could be off though, i'm no market/business expert

Re:That leads to another question

[ivan256]

That's probably what they think. In reality, by the time that many years have gone by, people lose interest. I know many people, myself included, that have the first few seasons of a show on DVD, but by the time they got around to releasing the rest it just wasn't a priority anymore. They should get them all out there as quickly as possible at the peak of a show's popularity.

Re:That leads to another question

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the real problems for older shows like the X-files is that the lisences for things like music and actors contracts were written for broadcast only. They dont have the right to sell DVDs under current license structure. Which is why it takes time to release older shows on DVD. New shows like Lost, House, Heroes etc. already have licenses for DVD sales. Which is why they have the DVDs of the previous season come out before the next season begins.

Re:That leads to another question

[armareum]

(Well, I would guess, they sell the seasons 5 to 10 still for broadcast in other countries, but six years delay is IMHO too much.)

That's exactly the reason. They still need to sell the show for broadcast in other countries, but these won't be bought for as high as price if the residents of that country are able to buy the show on DVD.

The #1 reason

[jonwil]

The payouts they can get for one copy of a given film or TV show being shared over BitTorrent are higher than the payouts they can get for many illegal DVDs of the same film or TV show.

Re:The #1 reason

[Joe Jay Bee]

There is a valid reason why the studios go after BT users instead of commercial DVD pirates; your "one copy" can very rapidly become "many" copies over BitTorrent. As more people download and simultaneously upload, the growth in the number of copies floating around can get quite damn close to exponential, and certainly can quite quickly outstrip the number of copies a pirate DVD seller could sell in a day.

The end result for the movie studios is precisely the same; people get their work for free. With BitTorrent and other P2P networks, however, the number of people who get that same work for free is drastically increased. For example, for Ratatouille on Mininova there's around 2000 seeds *just for the most popular torrent*! No pirate DVD seller could match that volume.

If the payouts are higher for BT than street selling, it is for that simple reason; a pirate DVD seller couldn't match the amount of infringement committed by a few dedicated BT seeders, resulting in a theoretically higher loss for the studios. However, considering the (I think a bit bogus) argument that BT downloaders wouldn't have paid to see movies anyway, I'll leave that well alone. ;)

The other #1 reason - lawyers

[IBBoard]

The other reason is probably also that an individual is more likely to roll over and pay the extortion, sorry, "out of court settlement" money, where as a company is more likely to fight it (or call bankruptcy and try to vanish without a trace).

Call me cynical, but why else would they pick on the little guy other than they're the easier target? It's just standard predator practice. Lets hope someone patented it!

They don't Go After Them!!!

[1mck]

I actually received a pirated DVD from EBay, and I contacted all the right authorities such as EBay, Universal Pictures, the local Police, the Sheriff, and the FBI. Guess what happened??? Diddley squat!!! Months later they were still hawking their pirated DVD's with the soundtrack, and even added in more movie stills, and bigger banners to suck everyone into buying their crap! I can honestly say that I'll never use EBay ever again because of this, and as far as the warnings that everyone sees at the beginning of every movie...what a load of crap!!! Ooooohhh, they went after some woman, but these Assholes get to make money off of innocent people buying stuff in good faith, and all of the right people are contacted, and made aware of it....give me a break!!!!

Re:They don't Go After Them!!!

[bi_boy]

That is until they find someone doing this who is not an actual company and is unable to afford lawyers.

Re:They don't Go After Them!!!

[tompaulco]

Somehow I expect that these counterfeit organizations are not rolling in money to near the extent that the movie industry is. I would be very surprised if the average pirate company has much more than $10,000 leftover after expenses.

Re:They don't Go After Them!!!

[bi_boy]

Ah but you have got to consider what their expenses probably actually are. $2K for say some duplication equipment, including a PC for downloading/burning masters. Then $1 per DVD+-R, probably some very cheap, low-quality brand that will start exhibiting errors within a few years. Then ebay fees, and thats probably about it. Ok, so it's not like the copyright holders would be going after a mega-corp; but chances are it's a single guy working out of his basement making far more money than the fixed-income grandma, or college student, or single-mother living paycheck to paycheck. Ok really tired and rambling, I guess the point is that these DVD-R hockers have more income to put towards a competent defense than the vast majority of current **AA defendants.

Re:They don't Go After Them!!!

[tompaulco]

I agree they make more money than the single mothers the RIAA usually harasses, but as you mention yourself, it is likely a single person working out of their basement, and a single person is limited to how quickly they can get stuff listed, websites updated, kick off CD duplication tasks, deal with any support issues (ha!) and get the things shipped.
The one guy may be making even a million a year, but that wouldn't even scare the RIAA. I suspect there is some other reason that they are ignoring these corps. Maybe, as someone else posited, they are taking a cut of the profits. Perhaps that is the answer. Single mother should stop putting the stuff up for free, and should put it up for cheap, and then send a portion of the proceeds to the RIAA.

Re:They don't Go After Them!!!

[Grishnakh]

A friend of mine bought a bunch of DVDs off Ebay from a seller in Malaysia, and surprisingly (yeah right), they were all pirated. However, they were much better quality than the legitimate DVDs: the paper DVD case inserts were better quality, the discs were region 0, no FBI notices to wait through, etc. Of course, they were also much more reasonably priced.

I highly recommend buying DVDs from Malaysian sellers on Ebay.

No double standard -- Mail fraud proceedings

[Torodung]

From the article:

Canada Post - which is used to deliver the products - has an internal investigation under way, spokesperson Manon Clément confirmed.

"It seems like a pretty big dossier," she said, noting the company under investigation "is a client operating under a number of names."

The RCMP, Sûreté du Québec and Montreal police departments said they neither confirm nor deny that they are investigating individuals or firms.

If Garcia Media or anyone associated with it is dealing in bootlegs of copyrighted material, there are legal consequences. Multiple aliases? Looks to me like there's a well documented criminal mail fraud investigation underway. Sounds like the police are at least notified of the situation as well. Should the MPAA jump in with a potentially premature suit, prior to the completion of criminal evidence collection and the presentation of charges?

It seems that as far as the MPAA is concerned, this is a pending matter already referred to law enforcement. Whether criminal investigation bears fruit or not, I'm sure they'll sue. If there's a conviction, that's easy money. If there's no conviction, then they'll go to civil court to deter such activities.

But I'd guess "no comment" is the best comment on the part of the MPAA at this point. After all, even the police won't comment. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

--
Toro

Re:No double standard -- Mail fraud proceedings

[Antique Geekmeister]

There's nothing to investigate: send one check for a pirated version, trace the transaction, seize the bank records and assets. This is basic behavior for credit card fraud, so it's not like it's a new procedure.

No, the federal and local police usually can't be troubled to pursue such "minor" crimes. Sometimes it's for jurisdictional reasons: the local police want the FBI to do it, the FBI thiknks the Secret Service should do it, and the Secret Service thinks it's not worth their effort. I'm tired of it, too: I get pirate DVD salespeople harassing me in parking lots, and taking up useful booth space at swapfests and trunk sales, interfering with honest businesses selling real DVD's, used DVD's, or freeware DVD's.

Carol Burnett?

[spagetti_code]

From TFA:

Westmount resident Brian Wrench said he recently had a bad experience ordering programs through tvboxset.com.

At the end of June, Wrench bought what was advertised on the site as all 278 uncut episodes of the Carol Burnett Show, spanning 11 seasons on eight DVDs.

Holy cow - 278 episodes of Carol Burnett!!! This guy deserved to get ripped off.
In fact, shoot him. We'd be doing him a favor. The judge would surely accept this as a mercy killing.

MPAA?

[kju]

I wonder what the MPAA has to do with this case. Shouldn't the CMPDA be the more appropiate organisation to handle a scam-company in canada?

there's a simple explanation!

[martin-boundary]

Ok, the problem is, right, the RIAA are still using old SCO UNIX computers for all their accounting calculations, and, well, let's just say that for various reasons the software updates have been a bit slow coming in the last few years, so, right, the thing is there's this unfixed bug with negative wraparound when they're adding really really big numbers together on that machine and so when they realized about the DVD pirates the execs were all like "hey we're gonna make oodles of cash, man, at $20.95 per DVD, how much is that?" and so they did an allnighter adding up all the numbers to get an estimate, right, and the next morning the answer came back -$47,845,226.48 and the head guy of the RIAA said "WTF? My head hurts" and like the director of accounting said "Dude, the computer's never wrong! I want some fritos" and like they all decided FUCK THAT if they were gonna sue them the RIAA would actually have to PAY THEM and NO WAY!

And that was the end of that.

Motion Picture Association

[tepples]

As a side note: Why would anyone contact the MPAA and not the CRIA about a situation with a Canadian company? Because it's a movie, not a musical recording. Motion Picture Association represents the MPAA members' interests worldwide.

Re:Motion Picture Association

[nightgeometry]

Surely that's the point the MPA is what you linked to, but the MPAA is what he was asking about. The MPAA would have no jurisdiction in Canada (I assume) and so you would have to contact the CMPDA, though not the CRIA.

Yeah, I got bored of adding Wikipedia links by the time I got to the CRIA =)

Re:Motion Picture Association

[tepples]

Surely that's the point the MPA is what you linked to, but the MPAA is what he was asking about. If MPAA and MPA operations are so separate, then why is MPA Canada hosted on mpaa.org?

Re:Motion Picture Association

[Dun Malg]

If MPAA and MPA operations are so separate, then why is MPA Canada hosted on mpaa.org? Same reason you don't call the FBI field office in Texas to report a kidnapping in Arizona, you call the Arizona field office. Same general organization, different area of responsibility.

Seriously, are you THAT dense?

Re:Motion Picture Association

[Raptoer]

But in this case the jurisdiction doesn't work that way. The copyright holders (no idea if its in fact the MPAA or whoever) have copyrights in America, however when they do sue they have to do so according to Canadian law. It's not that they cannot sue, it's that they have to do so in a different fashion.

The most likely reason nobody has gone after these guys is that the guy in charge of figuring out who to go after has never even heard of these guys or for that matter doesn't understand that its these kind of "pirates" (I hate that term) that are the real problem.

I have sympathy for those single mother/grandmother / dead people who get sued by the RI/MPAA. I have no sympathy for these guys what so ever, they are profiting off of someone else's work.

Re:Motion Picture Association

[totally bogus dude]

How is this flamebait? Inquiring minds seriously do want to know if the GP really is that dense!

Re:Motion Picture Association

[tepples]

Yes, I was dense enough to think that MPAA might not forward reports of illicit copying in Canada to MPA Canada.

Eighth Amendment

[tepples]

I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once I.e. you broke the law. Prepare to pay the price. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. And foreign counterparts where applicable.

RIAA-MPAA split is recent

[tepples]

In my eyes, the major problem with the argument in question is that the poster lumps a lot of relatively unrelated organizations (RIAA, MPAA, and all their respective "shadows" in non-US countries) into one cohesive "content industry" It is comparatively recent that these organizations are unrelated. Until Time Warner spun off WMG (late 2003) and Vivendi sold Universal Studios to NBC (2004), three out of the big four record labels were also MPAA movie studios.

The problem is....

[americanincanada]

They have been running them 'out of town' MP3Sparks was once AllOfMP3. TVBoxSet was formerly DVD-Series. Based out of: Strawinskylaan, Amsterdam 1143 XX Netherlands From they're own FAQ: "Is my order SECURE? You bet! When placing an order, Dvd-series.com uses..." It would appear someone forgot to update the page when they "moved"!

Borat

[Ratbert42]

Yeah, this is getting ridiculous. I bought Borat at Best Buy and even it was a DVD-R copy!

Re: Profits over Hypocrisy & hubris

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a conflict 'between' the MPAA and users.
As long as I feel it is worthwhile to download, for example, the entire X-Files, or Futurama, from BitTorrent, I will do it.
There is an entire worldwide population of people, to whom, the MPAA does not exist.
What I think is contemptible about the MPAA is that is victimizes individual uploaders. It does not have the guts to prosecute this entire class of people at the same time.

Citizens

[nurb432]

Are easier to sue.

They learned from the mistakes of the 'war on drugs', if you curtail the market, the sources dry up.

Not in Canada, in the...

[canuck57]

TFA makes it fairly clear that this operatiion is based in Canada.

But hosted in the USA. A lookup of tvboxset.com shows 72.52.7.20 listed whois says USA hosted.

It's all about the money.

[Jay L]

If you read the summary, you can see that TVBoxSet are up to season 10, while the production company has only produced up to season 4. I'll bet that the MPAA plans to ditch the production company, and source the episodes directly from TVBoxSet. Just think of the money they'll save: No scripts, no cameras, no sets, no production costs. This is the future - literally. Why should I (as a network) pay millions of dollars to Castle Rock or New Line for a new series when for $150 I can buy residual-free DVDs of the series before it's even written?

Re:It's all about the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

you misread - the production company has produced for seasons of DVDs. JAG Has a total of 10 seasons and has been cancelled.

My thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I don't care if something is "pirated" if it is otherwise unavailable. The only way to get DVD copies of things such as "Song Of The South" or early-80s Traci Lords movies is through so-called "piracy".
As for this TVBoxSet company, I'd be very leery of them.

Re:My thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

> The only way to get DVD copies of things such as "Song Of The South" or early-80s Traci Lords movies is through so-called "piracy".

You do realize that Traci Lords' movies are unavailable is because she was underage at the time? They're considered child porn. You shouldn't have them. You shouldn't want them.

Otherwise I agree with you about getting stuff that's otherwise unavailable. That's why the bootleg DVDs of the original cut of "Star Wars" were so popular - Lucas wouldn't sell it at any price, and even now you can't buy it separate from his other crap.

I also think it's okay to copy stuff that's available but artificially overpriced. I don't have any need to see Traci Lords getting buttfucked, but I *would* like the chance to buy "ST:TNG" on DVD without getting buttfucked myself.

There are deals there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are they? I wasn't planning on buying anything from them, but out of curiosity I decided to look and I couldn't find anything that was so great of a deal. In fact, I could go to the store I work at and get a non-pirated Stargate: SG-1 boxset (for example) for less than listed on this website. O_o

Oh ye untraveled masses..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Subic Bay, you can actually get pirated DVD's in the stores. Camcorder rips where you see shadows walking across the screens, 12 in 1 movie collections on 1 DVD, Screeners, etc. And the companies that are doing this have mailboxes, corporate offices, etc.
In Bahrain, you can get DVDs of hi-res screeners for about 1-2 Dinar (about US$6), professionally boxed with mailing addresses and a complaint line.
In Dubai, your 'reputable' pirate DVD's run you about 10-20 Dirham (err, about US$5?), are full resolution, have Arabic subtitle options.
In Singapore, just about any boot sale has high-quality "Real" DVDs for Sing$10 (about US$5) that are made in China on the same production lines as the real products. Look for one of the festival 'temporary malls' that pop up near the MRT stations every so often.
In Japan, just about any shop in the 'low-rent' district has them for about 500Yen (about US$4), but they are 'under the counter'.
Malaysia? Pick a street-seller.
Brunei? "Why you buy only one movie per disc?"
Oakland? At the top of the escalators coming out of the BART Station near the 'porn-store' district.

There is so much Movie/Music piracy out there by commercial enterprise, there is no money or impact in the MPAA/RIAA/etc pursuing it. They want the headlines, they want the court cases, but they want to target things that can lose instead of just fold and reappear.

Gundam

[SEWilco]

They're not carrying Gundam.
Tvboxset.com is not in charge of Gundam.

Payoff Involved

[Nom du Keyboard]

Now what's in it for the content industry to beat up private citizens with $220,000 judgements or scrambling to get DeCSS sites shut down within hours, while corporate scammers openly sell pirate DVDs for months on end, unopposed?

There's probably a payoff involved.

Or maybe now the world is so inverted that it's only a crime to share things for free. Making a profit off of selling copyrighted materials isn't such a high priority. Perhaps the MPAA feels that because actual money is involved, less people are likely to take advantage of it.

Or perhaps it's an MPAA-backed scam to punish people who actually send in money for this. After all, people are complaining and angry about what they received. Hey, it's enough to put you off purchasing dodgey material ever again. After all, they've given you just enough that you can't actually sue them for not delivering the goods.

The Media Defender e-mails have revealed just how low and illegal (DDoS attacks) the industry will go to fight "pirates". Why should this be any different. It just needs to be EXPOSED!

Its never been about bootleg DVDs, per se

[cutecub]

Its about controlling the distribution channels. That's why the MPAA doesn't freak out so much when people sell boot-leg DVDs. Its not a fundamental threat to their business model.

What the record and movie labels fear above all else is Disintermediation - the elmimination of the middle-man. Because THEY are the middle-man.
Internet distribution of media makes them totally irrelevent.

If DVDBOXSET.COM was selling downloadable AVI movies of complete TV series, you can bet they'd no longer be in business today.

-S

Think that's bad, get ripped off... put it on eBay

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that's bad, you have to wonder why the MPAA doesn't do anything about the boatloads of sites flogging region free dvd's from china. Idiots who buy this shit then post it on eBay and get their ass banned. Major Clue, if it can be found region free elsewhere, it's a bootleg.

oblig

[r_jensen11]

Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at?... When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now, You're looking at now sir...Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed it.
Dark Helmet:When.
Colonel Sandurz:Just now... We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then?
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz:I can't
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon!
Dark Helmet: How soon?
Technician: Sir!
Dark Helmet: What?
Technician: We've identified their location!
Dark Helmet: Where?
Technician: It's the moon of Vega
Colonel Sandurz: Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival
Dark Helmet: When?
Technician: Nineteen hundred hours, sir!
Colonel Sandurz: By high noon tomorrow they will be our prisoners!
Dark Helmet: WHO?!?!

Re:oblig

[AnalogDiehard]

Is this the right room for an argument?

Illegal success

[cdrguru]

If you set up a stand selling heroin on a busy street corner you will have a line of customers around the block - until you get busted. And you will, eventually, get busted.

Contrast this with a lemonade stand with no customers.

The difference in the US is that people will go out of their way to do something they believe (a) is illegal and (b) has a low risk of consequences. Movie and music pirating fall in this category. This company, doing business from a foreign country with several different names will eventually be shut down. But they will likely have made millions of dollars before that happens. They will lose whatever cash is lying around though. So stashing it all in the bank for retirement isn't really an option.

Same thing different industry

[tompaulco]

I have a Beauty Salon, and we decided we could make a little extra income selling products on the internet. We researched the legality of it and found nothing illegal about it, and even found that Amazon and some other big names were selling the exact same products. We also read our applications from our suppliers and found nothing preventing sale on the internet, and we talked to one of our suppliers and they had no problem with it.
Our other supplier through a fit when they found out, and demanded we stop advertising the products they sold us, or they would stop selling to us. So we stopped selling their products even though we didn't appreciate their attitude or heavyhanded threats.
Then we got a cease and desist letter from one of the manufacturers. Their position is that it is unfair competition for us to sell on the internet, and that it is against our reseller agreement. Well, we fired a letter right back saying that we don't consider it unfair competition that we happen to be enterprising enough to put together a website. And secondly, we had never signed, nor even seen a reseller agreement. Thirdly, what we DID consider unfair competition was the fact that they plainly allow Amazon.com and other sites to operate internet sales of the products with impunity, while demanding that actual brick and mortar stores not be allowed to sell on the internet.
The letter went unanswered, and we still have never seen a reseller agreement, nor could we find one on the internet. For the moment, we have taken down the products from that manufacturer, but we will probably put it back up, since they were not able to provide evidence that what we are doing is wrong, and their arguments for us not doing it are all anti-competitive, and thus illegal. However, they did threaten to stop selling to us if we persist in selling on the internet, which is also anti-competitive and thus illegal. If I was just an internet sales company, I wouldn't care, but we have a lot of stylists that use those products, and if the company stopped selling to us, we would probably lose those stylists and the business would end up folding.

DVDs from China

[KamuZ]

Well, it happened me once using Amazon. I love anime and there are several people/companies selling them cheaper, when i got my DVDs they look like the real deal but for example subtitles are weird or with mispelled words, after searching around the net i noticed they were chinese imports that doesn't pay license fees, in other words, pirated copies with an "original DVD" look and feel. It's really bad to see you originally purchased somethign and they find it's not the real deal.

You can argue "well look at the price, it's cheaper!" but thing is because you are buying in this case from Amazon and only saving around $10-20 dollars, you really believe it's a good deal.

there is a big difference, i guess

[AlgorithMan]

i think TVBoxSet.com might have some records about how many discs they have sold - therefore you can point out EXACTLY how big the loss is, that they have caused

going after children, cripples, deads, single mothers etc. is just more profitable, because you can just MAKE UP a loss that they've caused... 6500$ per song? yeah right, they surely uploaded every f***ing song to 6500 people on average...

this gives me an idea... you might get away cheaper, if your broadband connection wouldn't be fast enough to upload a song so often... IANAL though... the MAFIAA would surely make something up like second-level loss - because the people, that downloaded the file from me, upload it to others...

sounds good to me: legalize it

[m2943]

I don't know about the legality of it (maybe they found some loophole), but sounds like a good service to me. It is silly that it takes "production companies" often years to put a show on DVD, often adding bogus menus and "features" that make the DVDs less usable than a straight recording.

I think we should consider legalizing this kind of service by allowing them to record and redistribute recordings from on-the-air or on-cable broadcasts by paying a flat fee of, say, US$2/hour of video.

Why they are in business

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

It's really very easy to understand why TVBoxSet.com is in business and the MPAA seems to not care.
1) They operate out of the Philippines. I don't know how strong or weak copyright law is in the Philippines, but it could be that these boxed sets are legal there.
2) Not that many people know about them, so sales really aren't all that great.
3) From everything I've read about them (I knew about them a long time before this article on Slashdot), the quality is bad. The MPAA may know that and figure that the product is so bad that letting people buy crap teaches a better lesson than fighting it publicly and making sure that a lot more people know about the website than do right now. Right now not that many people know about the website and a lot of those who bought product from it aren't real happy. Unhappy customers work in favor of the MPAA.
4) Going after file sharers is low hanging fruit and doesn't involve the complications and risk and cost of dealing with foreign legal systems. I can't speak about the Philippines as I have never been there, but I can tell you from personal experience that if this was happening in certain parts of the ex-USSR that any court case would not at all be about laws but it would be all about the bribes and whoever paid the highest bribe would get the decision in their favor. The local guys would have huge advantages over the MPAA. The local guys would have access to the judge to pay him off, they would be able to hire hitmen to kill any attorneys working for the MPAA in the country, and so on. The MPAA might be afraid to try to bribe the judge or believe it or not, actually get outbribed by the locals. It happens. The locals could pay a big bribe to the judge and then get him to rat out the MPAA for trying to bribe him, even though he got bribed already by the local guys. Fighting such a court case in a place that has strong rule of law and low corruption is one thing. Fighting such a case in a country where justice goes to the highest bidder in something else.

Only place for Bionic Woman/Six Million $ Man DVDs

[elrous0]

They're the only place you can buy the original Bionic Woman or Six Million Dollar Man TV shows on DVD in the U.S. or Canada. Apparently, both shows are mired in so much legal red tape that they can never be released here legally (even in the wake of the new Bionic Woman TV series). It's sad that fans have to go to a bootleg site to get these shows. They hold up surprisingly well after all these years (they're not nearly as cheesy as you might imagine).