WW2 Vet Sent 300,000 Pirated DVDs To Troops In Iraq, Afghanistan
nbauman writes "WW2 veteran 'Big Hy' Strachman, 92, pirated 300,000 DVD movies and sent them to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were widely distributed and deeply appreciated. Soldiers would gather around personal computers for movie nights, with mortars blasting in the background. 'It's reconnecting to everything you miss,' said one. Strachman received American flags, appreciative letters, and snapshots of soldiers holding up their DVDs. He spent about $30,000 of his own money. Strachman retired from his family's window and shade business in Manhattan in the 1990s. After his wife Harriet died in 2003, he spent sleepless nights on the Internet, and saw that soldiers were consistently asking for movie DVDs. He bought bootlegged disks for $5 in Penn Station, and then found a dealer at his local barbershop. He bought a $400 duplicater that made 7 copies at once, and mailed them 84 at a time, to Army Chaplains. The MPAA said they weren't aware of his operation. The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops."
Anything for the troops, of course.
That is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Given that they go after ISPs for downloading, should they not go after the post office to be consistently persistent?
Would be a lovely case to see go to court! They could sentence him to community service...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
This guy was doing it for free, the iraqi's sell *tons* of dvds to the troops, for a decent profit, if they didn't have it in stock, they'd have it the next day.
Why don't the MPAA go after these iraqi's selling movies and stop supporting terrorism... :)
did what corporations couldn't or wouldn't because of few measly lost dollars, which would have brought in millions worth of good will.
Here's an idea maybe we should have a send the troops a bootleg campaign. Imagine 1 million bootleg dvd's being sent out lol..... The MPAA cry would be heard in every corner of the world Khaaaaaaaaaaa....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
the place where a mother can go bankrupt in the trial for download a cartoon for their kids, and a man can make whatever he wants because he took a job when he was 16, 70 years ago... and we applauded... awesome...
If they seriously went after this guy it would be such an awful PR nightmare that even owning the media and news corporations wouldn't help them. Even the Republicans would turn on them.
Its probably so they can be paid anytime a soldier watches a film. If they sent them DVDs, they'd get distributed among the troops. The film snob in me wants to say film is a chemical process that even the best digital projection couldn't match and the MPAA wants our troops to have the best...but I know that has nothing to do with it.
"The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops"
As if this were not proof enough that the studios and the MPAA are out of touch with reality.
If they don't go after him doesn't it show some kind of prejudice? :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
The thing is, he didn't download anything! He actually bought street bootlegs (of cams and leaks) and copied those. While I am not happy about money being given to the bootleg scum, I think it's funny that CSS was completely useless here.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
They're not sending the films out with patrols. They're showing them at base theaters which have more technical support and equipment than anything Main St. can rustle up. Of course, DVDs can be used to entertain small groups or individuals but that would give people more options than what is good for them.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
thank you for what you have done, and I am glad you are safe enough to type this
This man is a hero.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
When old guys who tend to be "conservative" are doing things like this, the battle is over. I'm picturing an Iwo Jima like flag planted over the smoking, bombed-out corpse-strewn wastelands of the **AA orgs.
The old guys are relaxing and smoking a J when that flag is properly planted too. You google around, you see plenty of people with gray hair smoking pot. Same deal. The DEA and the **AAs just haven't got the memo yet, so watch out; but they are dead, Dead, DEAD. As soon as a Gen-Ys get into power, so fucking DEAD.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, it's a joke, but it's also awfully revealing about how behind-the-times Hollywood's business practices really are.
Hollywood distributes movies both digitally and on film. Not all theatres have converted - in fact only a small portion of them are fully digital. So this is a matter of Hollywood serving their customers - if they stopped film distribution, then most cinemas would close their doors.
Now that Kodak is bankrupt, and the future supply of film stock is uncertain, converting cinemas to digital may speed up - but it is still a very expensive process, and most local theatres don't have the cash to do it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And the US Military is guilty of receiving 300,000 counterfeit disks. It isn't as if the guy had an address book of a lot of soldiers to distribute disks to directly.
And if the military accepts reel-to-reels from Hollywood when DVDs or better-yet downloads will do, that's gotta be another crime right committed there. And thus a quandary to consider.
But if I was the judge, Mr. Strachman wouldn't even get a slap on the wrist from me because those soldiers deserve everything we can give them; while reel-to-reel is idiotic in 2012, in a war zone. But those chaplains, oh they'll have Hell to pay for distributing discs with IP far and wide.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
They're not sending the films out with patrols. They're showing them at base theaters
Well, that's great, then. Any of those troops out there at some God-forsaken FOB can just catch a ride back to the main base for their movie nights out. They don't need entertainment in their little tent camps. They have the Taliban for that.
BTW, I'm not picking on you. It's not your idea, and I'm sure you're right about how it really works. I'm a retired Air Force guy, and if I understand correctly, most of us in-country are still pretty much base-bound. If so, this cartoon characterizes the inequities of campaign life: The REMFs get all the good stuff, the guys at the pointy end pretty much get the shaft. And the guy who was the subject of TFA did what it takes to fix this one little inequity. I hope he doesn't catch the shaft himself, since 300,000 counts of willful copyright infringement probably exposes him to something like 300 death sentences.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"Digital distribution" from Hollywood to movie theaters isn't over the internet -- they're sent on hard drives. (Remember, the movies you see in theaters are much higher resolution than the ones you see at home.)
Not really. If the digital projector is only 2K, then it's basically the same as Blu-Ray (2048x1080 vs. 1920x1080). If the projector is 4K, then you can get more resolution on the screen. That said, the original (either film or digital) likely does have at least 4K resolution regardless of the projection system.
And, the reason the movies are shipped on hard drives is because they are just a series of JPEG 2000 images, one for each frame. This is essentially like using MPEG-4 and specifying that every frame is an I-frame, which bloats the file size for very little gain in quality.
The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice..
Indeed, I am quite confused too.
They didn't mind the bad press over suing a 12 year old child OR a 80 year old grandfather for only 'several' movies, so we know it's not the age part that did it.
(source)
They also don't mind sending threatening letters to the military asking them to crack down on their own troops for them, so it isn't the American troops away from home part that did it either.
(source)
They didn't mind suing people for downloading movies for personal use and no profits involved, so we know that isn't what did it either.
(source)
This is a complete reversal of past policy on all counts!
My personal guess is that the lawsuit is already in the works, and they requested the court seal the details so the press doesn't get word of it. Then they release this announcement to try and look like they are being good guys. There can't be any other possibility. The Grinchs heart growing 3 sizes only happens in the movies.
they served in fucking afghanistan!
the "got back from a deployment" part is the main thing. The details that occured are probably something that i dont agree with, but the signing up to serve the country, and do what your told by superiors during this deployment are things that, even if you or I dont see it directly, have an effect on our daily lives. The people that are out there doing this actually are doing a great thing for the rest of us that are sitting comfortably in our air conditioned cubes. Thanking someone for their service, regardless of their personal reasons for signing up, is just something that I do. I do this in airports, and I also do this for firemen and police officers who are directing traffic. Maybe it makes no difference, but maybe someone who is putting up with a lot of shit that is actually making my life easier can feel a bit better, or less shitty, about what they are having to put up with.
please, with all the heart felt sincerity that you dont believe possible from my first thanks to the soldier, take all of your judgement and cynicism, and shove them deep up your ass while shutting the fuck up! and have a nice day