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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."
Nice to see the studios have been keeping up with the times.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Are they talkies at least?
That is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sending a bunch of crappy bootleg cams to the troops should be considered a war crime.
Get this geezer a copy of vlc and some Matroskas stat.
Hell yes! This guy is my fucking hero of the day...
Howard Gantman, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said he did not believe its member studios were aware of Mr. Strachman’s operation. His sole comment dripped with the difficulty of going after a 92-year-old widower supporting the troops. “We are grateful that the entertainment we produce can bring some enjoyment to them while they are away from home,” Mr. Gantman said.
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
“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law. “If I were younger,” he added, “maybe I’d be spending time in the hoosegow.”
The guy spent $30,000 of his own money to do it. Maybe the MPAA could sue him for a portion of the 'profits'. The best part is he was continuing to make copies, right there, while they were interviewing him. It's brought joy back to his life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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...
Which, of course, is why they won't go after him. But I wonder if inaction in this case would work against them in future cases?
It is unwise to ascribe motive
The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops.
Did you send them vinyl records too?
Maybe a few laserdiscs?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
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.
I just got back from a deployment to Afghanistan, and I can tell you that sometimes the only way to get to sleep is by watching something that will get your mind off of what's really going on. My favorite was light comedies and sitcoms.
I didn't know about this guy. We got most of our movies over there from local vendors who would sell pirated copies (that's legal in Afghanistan). The MPAA is getting the Customs Service and DoD to crack down, though. We used to be able to buy whatever we wanted from the locals and bring them home. Then when I came home from Iraq in 2008, we were allowed to bring one copy of each movie/TV show, and that was fine as well. This time when we were coming home we were told that we could only bring one item, period. Which was fine, again, because now we're ripping the movies to our hard-drives, anyway. I wonder how long it'll be until the MPAA gets the Customs Service to look at all of the content of our laptop hard drives on re-deploying back to the U.S....
If you were lucky enough to be stationed at Bagram Air Field, then you had a PX where you could by legit movies for full price, but for most of us stuck out at various FOBs scattered across the country, the local guy was all we had. Hopefully the Pentagon Pukes don't listen to the MPAA and take that away from us, or we'll be in a world of hurt over there. This deployment sucked pretty bad. Not sure what'll happen if the next one is even worse due to those greedy MoFo's in the MPAA...
"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.
I know what you are saying, however from a practical aspect film is an awful choice for any war environment since it degrades so easily... Hell film gets scratched and fades in air-conditioned theaters with a trained projectionist running them. I wonder how long reel to reel film lasts in a tent in the desert (dust, sand, heat)?
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
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; }
You mean outside of the $30,000 he estimates he's spent on blank discs and mailing the fucking things over there?
And while Mr. Strachmans movies were given to soldiers as a form of charity, studios do send military bases reel-to-reel films, which are much harder to copy, and projectors for the troops overseas.
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!
So, based on the MPAA model for determining damages, doesn't 300K bootleg DVDs represent something approaching the GDP of many small nations? I mean, I haven't done the math, but 300K, times $10 on the shelf at Walmart, means that these companies lost somewhere over $200B.
Considering he received flags, which have a monetary value, he was getting revenue from this operation. This is a criminal enterprise of epic proportions.
This 92 year old man, a patriot, who supported hundreds of thousands of troops who were serving their country...must be the absolute scum of the earth.
But seriously - as long as I can make it patriotic and for a great cause, I can get away with something that has quite clearly crossed the line into "This has got to be illegal, no matter how you cut it"? Doesn't that suggest something is wrong with the law in the first place? What if I was making bootlegs for crippled orphans?
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
They'll probably try to write off all those "lost sales" as "donations" on their taxes and get a nice fat donation themselves from the taxpayers.
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"?
and send them to my son when he was in Iraq. He said they got passed around a lot. They liked the latest TV stuff even more than movies.
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.
I think it was more to the point going after him would be a huge PR Issue.
1. Sue a 92 year old man
2. Sue a World War II vet.
3. Sue someone giving something to the troops that their own personal expense.
4. Do this during an election year.
Being Old, people can assume you just out of touch, at best, or that you just don't quite know what is going on. (Old people know this and play the act to get what they want)
Being a WWII vet, Society owes you for your help to save the world from Nazi and the Javanese war machine.
Giving to the troops, Every honest american should support the troops, if you don't then you are a Hippy Communist.
Election year. Those senators who are rerunning will not offer you much support, for they don't want the opponent to show that you are against the Elderly, Vets who Support the Troops.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As to your wonderful Sig.
We have never had a Democracy.
You would not want one.
We have a democratically elected constitutional republic.
Which means that we democratically elect politicians to act and make laws withing the confines of power delegated to them by a constitution.
Capitalism was not the problem. The problem is that we continue to elect people who only make laws that empower themselves.
A business can attempt to buy a politician to represent them. That is fine. Businesses and Unions do it all the time. The problem comes when the politicians make laws that create a new power that they then use against the people for the benefit of those paying for their re-elections.
The bigger problem is that all the people voting in the election know that they are being fucked. They just do not care.
So public laziness and apathy is what is wrecking the country.
The problem is that puts all the blame on us. So instead of fixing the problem we create outside enemies to blame it on. That way we can do nothing about it and it is no longer our fault.
Sleep well.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Several hundred Trillion by MPAA math.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
JAVAnese? Shit, my understanding of WWII is totally off!
I noticed the same in 2005 and 2007 returning from Iraq... in 2005, a light, cursory search by a couple Marines. Nothing invasive. In 2007, we had to travel to Kuwait to have some pogue sea-bees strip search our shit, like we were criminals. We had to go through explosive detectors (we were in combat 2 weeks prior, carrying explosives) and empty out our pockets- as if one of us, after surviving Fallujah, would want to bring down a plane on our way home. That pissed me off. We couldn't bring any ripped movies back with us, and were threatened with laptop searches.
In the rest of the world outside of U.S., when you say "democracy", you mean a country where representatives are elected by the populace at large - kinda like U.S. Words like "republic" are largely orthogonal to that - not all representatives democracies are republics, and not all republics are democracies.
Those antiquated definitions that you use - dating back to, what, Plato? - are quaint, but pretty pointless, since no country in the world today matches your definition of "democracy" - all that do have non-sham elections, elect representatives, don't vote directly on each and every law.
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.
A business can attempt to buy a politician to represent them. That is fine. Businesses and Unions do it all the time.
No it isn't fine: The majority of the country does not control a business nor have a vote in a union, so this bribery ensures that some people are not represented in government.
I am officially gone from
Yeah, because that's our purpose — to "main and kill brown babies". They're perfectly fine, and will no doubt reach their fullest potential as humans, under the likes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. I hear that poisoned water goes well with Afghan schoolgirls' education. In fact, I hear there is no actual tyranny and oppression in the world — unless you count the US, of course.
Dipshit.
You mean the Saddam Hussein that the US installed and armed and only decided to kill when he wouldn't play ball with our oil companies? Were you referring to the Taliban that was headed by Bin Laden? Is that the same Bin Laden family the Bush's had ties to? http://www.denverpost.com/rodriguez/ci_4319898
Who's the "Dipshit"?
People like you, who spout mindless platitudes like "Support our Troops" have the blood of innocent men, women and children on your "Dipshit" hands.
"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.
I was a Comm troop deployed to an airbase in Pakistan in 2004. While there, the OIC for the Comm flight (Officer in Charge of all communications) thought it would be a brilliant idea to order the "morale" servers shut down. These were essentially just file servers that people had dumped music and movies to as they cycled through, and were pretty much the only access to entertainment we had at a rather isolated base. He was on a kick for going to JAG or IA, and figured shutting down some copyright infringement would be a good point for his transfer and for his oak leaves. What actually happened was even the base commander was pissed, and at a commander's call a couple days later, (aka an official, in uniform, at attention kind of meeting), when he got up to speak, he was booed. Thinking back on it still shocks me to this day. If a single airman ever booed an officer in a commanders call, there'd be UCMJ action, no question. But an entire base of airmen spontaneously and unanimously booed him. It would be akin to the CIO getting booed at a shareholder meeting or press conference, where the board can legally imprison any attendee they care to.
(In the end he stood up and promised a "legal" solution to the problem would be deployed within 24 hours. Myself and my co-server types looked at each other, decided he was talking out of his ass, and just turned the regular servers back on at the appointed time).
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Not really. At $150,000 for willful infringement, and 330,000 copies, he's looking at $49,500,000,000, in damages. (SRC: 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2)).*
That's about 1/3 of Hollywood's combined gross for every movie released 1996 and 2012 (as of last weekend). (SRC: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/)
No due process problem with that.
--AC
*Actually, the statutory damages are per work, not per infringing act, so the real number would be reduced to reflect the number of titles he copied, not the number of copies he made).
He's going to find out he just doubled our national debt. Intentional copyright infringement = more than statutory damages.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I think it was more to the point going after him would be a huge PR Issue.
1. Sue a 92 year old man 2. Sue a World War II vet. 3. Sue someone giving something to the troops that their own personal expense. 4. Do this during an election year.
Being Old, people can assume you just out of touch, at best, or that you just don't quite know what is going on. (Old people know this and play the act to get what they want)
Being a WWII vet, Society owes you for your help to save the world from Nazi and the Javanese war machine.
Giving to the troops, Every honest american should support the troops, if you don't then you are a Hippy Communist.
Election year. Those senators who are rerunning will not offer you much support, for they don't want the opponent to show that you are against the Elderly, Vets who Support the Troops.
"The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything...that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about." -Noam Chomsky
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
I challenge the MPAA to file suit against him. He sent 300,000 DVDs which were probably watched by several times that many people, and it's all verifiable. Contrast that to file sharing suits where an individual user might be sued for making a few movies available to be downloaded a relatively few times from which MPAA has claimed huge losses from each individual user.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You don't answer the question.
It's a loaded question with false assumptions.
Is it OK? Is it justifiable?
Even if done intentionally, sometimes the answer is "yes." If the goal is justifiable and there are no practical alternatives in which one can avoid the act, then yes, the action is justifiable. Col. Paul Tibbetts flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. He killed a shitload of children that day. That said, his actions helped hasten the end of WWII, thus saving a lot more lives than were lost that day (an estimated five million). He slept like a baby from that day all the way until he died of old age. There were hundreds, if not thousands of GIs who shot and killed Hitler Youth (we're talking kids as young as 12 here), because the alternative was to be killed by them.
But then, that sort of shatters the whole sophomoric postulate in the first place, doesn't it?
Is it a decent price to pay for your own comfort?
Nice strawman, but it needs more stuffing to be believable. Maybe if the original question was along the lines of "Do our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan justify the intentional targeting and killing of children?" It would have been shown for the intellectually dishonest question it was, as it was exactly what you gents were asking in the first place. Funny thing is, the answer to that one is usually (depending on circumstance) "no" (now if the kid was walking towards me with explosives strapped to his chest, all bets are off).
Funny thing is, many people see the goals in Iraq and Afghanistan differently. Some see it as liberation from oppressors. Others see it as a grab for power/oil/whatever. The answer to the specific question of children (whether killed intentionally or incidentally) will either be written off as the cost of war, or as a horror to be stopped at all costs.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm an army guy, so I have a different perspective. EVERYONE needs some entertainment/escape, but nobody's catching a ride to somewhere else for a friggin movie. That's why reel to reel doesn't make sense. The soldiers most in need don't have access to it. Soldiers usually have laptops. In Afghanistan, there are no copyright laws anyway. You can buy pirated movies through local shops by the truckload. They'll even let you bring back your pirated movies through customs as long as they are for personal use. ie, you can't have a bunch of copies of the same movie.
If you really want make a soldier happy, you have remember that they might be at a tiny outpost with a platoon of young men all deployment. They might not have seen a female for months. Yes, send porn.
It isn't Vietnam. The culture is different. And you wouldn't want to touch a local if you had the chance. Most of locals don't exactly live up to our hygiene standards to say the least. Most prostitution is of our own soldiers. It depends on the level of discipline in the unit whether that will happen. But combat units usually don't have females. My company did have a few females that were medics and other odd jobs, but transferred them out to avoid problems. Definitely the right call.
base theaters which have more technical support and equipment than anything Main St. can rustle up.
Not that this is very important to the topic at hand, but as a former member of our military that spent 5 years overseas, I can tell you that the base theaters pretty much all suck, the sound is awful and the projection is worse, and we went off-base wherever it was possible to watch movies instead. Of course, it's not possible to do that in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just don't tell me about "technical support and equipment" - even if we had it, it sure didn't go into making our base theater any better. Those places blow.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
No offense taken, it's a legitimate question. I was in Iraq for two tours. When we left the FOB (Forward Operating Base), we were in enemy territory. I could not imagine a Marine or Soldier going off to get his jollies in his down time. The chance of being abducted and getting your head cut off on video was too great, not to mention the inevitable IEDs. But all this aside, almost all the locals had exotic parasites. Our medical staff were constantly treating them. Again, I have known plenty of dumb Marines in my day, but I cannot imagine anyone dumb enough to go out, risk his life and come back with worms or worse. But I do remember in about 2008, they busted some female Sailors or Air Persons for running a brothel on the base. They got caught trying to take a seabag full of cash back home and couldn't explain where it came from.
I daresay I have a wider sample size than that, but it doesn't mean much since I'm a Norwegian politician, and those I've talked to are people I've come into contact with in that context. Maybe you too, presumably being American, have a sample bias? The plural of anecdote is not fact. In this case, it's probably best to google around for some polls. Much to my dismay, most polls returned by Google and Wikipedia deal with US popular opinion on the invasion rather than Iraqi popular opinion, but I did find one.
Overall, 59% of those questioned think Britain's role is negative, 22% positive; 64% say the US is negative, 18% positive; 68% view Iran negatively, 12% positively. Also, 56% think the 2003 invasion was wrong (up 6%), while 42% say it was right (down 7%).
Source: BBC
toresbe
If if if.... wars are fought for politicians careers, and contractors shareholders. All the lofty ideals are just the lies they use to dupe 18 year old poor kids into signing up to die.
and from that BS, I would be happy to have clean hands.
My Fucking grandfather fought in Korea. He sat in a half track with machine guns gunning down DPRK soldiers for the "lofty goals" of fighting communism and keeping "South Korea" free... in a conflict that officially has outlived him. To "keep free" a country which, still to this day, arrests political dissidents who insult the government.
Lofty ideals my ass. We are allied with the Saudis....the people who only decided, after very public international pressure was applies, that maybe they shouldn't stone a woman to death who was seen in public with a man who wasn't her husband...oh yah...and gang raped by the group of men who saw her in public without said man. Yah.... tell me more about your lofty ideals.
Given who we are really talking about being in charge, and what wars are really fought for...I will take clean hands any day of the fucking week.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
There are equally qualified historical references that strongly suggest that the military had spent a billion dollars (back when that meant something) and they were damned if they weren't going to see their new toy go BOOM!!! Moreover, we were already looking down the barrel of what we saw as Soviet competition/expansion, and we needed to scare the Schist out of them. There were a lot of politically expedient reasons to drop the bomb, on a friggin Catholic Church (near ground zero), but don't for a minute suggest it was to save American lives or hasten the end of WWII. That simply doesn't wash. In fact, in the early days of nukes there was talk of turning China and Russia into matching blue glass ashtrays, and the Army Corp of Engineers had grand plans for using nukes to build huge new canals all over the planet.
By the way, if the First bomb was necessary? Why the Second one? Why did we test the effects on nukes on our own soldiers? Why did we hide the fact that fall-out from nuke testing had seriously impacted people in eastern Nevada and south-western Utah? Why have we never talked about the mishandling of radioactive wastes from bombs or their transport through heavily populated towns and cities? The entire fiasco that has been the arms race from poison mine tailings killing innocent native Americans, to lack of a sane plan to decommission our weapons is incredibly well documented.
The whole MADD thing was mad from the start and has continued being mad to this very day. Vaporizing, incinerating and irradiating people was, is and forever will be an unconscionable act.