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Bootleg Movies for Download
Druppy writes
"I just got an email about this article in our local paper here in Santa Cruz. It's basically about illegal copies of movies like The Matrix being moved over campus lines. Needless to say since my school was mentioned 4-5 times in the article the administration is starting to crack down. "
So are people sneaking cam corders in to movie theaters now?
I get nervous just trying to sneak in a candy bar.
I would then think that the quality would be absolute crap.
That's a copy of a movie that I would not waste the space for.
Think of it as a 2-hour trailer for a two-hour movie.
I'm suprised this didn't happen sooner (or maybe it did, and I missed it?) with videos being compressed and put up for download (bypass the rental store).
The size of these things would have to be pretty huge, even with good compression like MPEG-2 or QuickTime - we use a fractional T1 here at my work, and a 50MB file takes about 15 min (thereabout) - I can only imagine how long it would take for a movie - it would be cheaper just to wait and buy the damn thing.
While viewing the movie on the dorm PC would seem "cool" - these people have to be pretty damn cheap not to go see a matinee ($3-$5). Sneak in your own drinks or something.
What I would rather see is more "homemade" low budget (very low budget) digital videos. I could see something like MP3.COM springing up allowing a publishing space for up-and-coming would-be directors and producers, etc...
Well, being in the UK, I hope that sneak previews of StarWars will be coming over here... I want to watch it sooner rather than later ;)
Just burned a few copies of the matrix on CD. It is only 373 megs.
The image quality isn't bad. Even at full screen - but this isn't a threat to anyone's bottom line. I'll still be buying a copy of this on DVD when they release it.
For now the value is in the Novelty of being able to watch it at home on my PC.
Eviliso? ;)
Video CDs pack about 65 minutes of video per CD. Video is compressed using the MPEG1 format at 352x240 (for NTSC). I forget the compressed data rate of the stereo audio track. Total throughput is limited to 1.1MBit/sec. The format is popular in SE Asia and VCDs play on most DVD players. Some will even play VCD CDRs. All can be played on a PC with ActiveMovie, although the dedicated players usually have nice hardware smoothing so that movies look less pixelated. You can still readily see the MPEG artifacts, though and overall quality is slightly less than VHS. On the plus side, VCD don't wear out like tape, and animation seems to compress better than live action by nature of having larger single color areas.
No more paying $19.99 for a whole movie when all you care about are 10 minutes of action and sex. Once this catches on with individual film makers they'll be able sell snippets of their movies direct over the web. It'll be great. We won't have to pay for the stuff we don't like any more. Hate that stupid Ewok scene in Return of the Jedi? Just buy all the scenes but that!!
heheh
Did you know that #matrixvcd got to 478 users at its peak when the matrix was released?
Press (1) if you downloaded the matrix.
Pesss (alt-F4) if you have less than 60gb of space.
Everything digital can be copied some way or another. People have been copying videos for years via VHS tape, why then is DVD or VCD any different?
rather than dealing with the crap associated with IRC, where would someone find the .rm or .mpg version?
They used to use the Vivo format, but since thats sucks as bad as Real Player 5.0, and the Audio gets out of sync ALOT they use the Netshow player. It uses a mpeg-4 codec for streaming, yet they bump up the bitrate and what would be a 1.2 gig vcd is now a 400 meg .asf file which kicks vivo's ass.
I have aDSL, not a problem at 64k a second. Of course dont expect any award winning movies to be traded, expect all the teeny flics and other crap movies like Armageddon.
I myself prefer to download Futurama, Pj's, Familyguy, Red Dwarf8 and other cool TV stuff (with commercials edited OUT!)
What's alt-F4 supposed to do?
Uhm, VHS is analog. That's why copies degrade.
With 100Mbps LANs, you could download it faster than you could watch it, even with DVD quality.
Yah, for all of us with a 100Base-T connection directly to the internet.
Maybe if you had an OC-12 all to yourself...
T1 ~80 minutes, T3 ~3.5 minutes.
>> - these people have to be pretty damn cheap not to go see a matinee ($3-$5).
Heeelllo, they_are_College_Students
I've seen the Cruel Intentions mpg. its over a gig in size. Looks great in Linux. I also looked at it in full-screen mode on a Windows box - and quality was excellent - it was obviously not a camcorder, but a video cassette or vcd that got converted to mpg format.
Of late, try alt.binaries.multimedia
.rm/.asf, to the full 1.2gig mpegs
Assuming you've got a fast connection.
Lots of movies posted there of late, although the current 'regulars' of that newsgroup aren't all that pleased of the flood of binaries pushing everything else off the servers.
Sizes tend to range from a 200-400 meg medium quality
Actually, the quality was very high. It was slanted just slightly, and had a Z in the top left corner, and was a little dark during the dark scenes. But it was still a very high quality rip, the sound was almost excellent except for one minor 3 second screw up at the very beginning.
The matrix that I downloaded was 1.3 gigs. It was a 600MB and 700MB file, i had to split the second into a 600 and 100 for a total of 3 CDs. The sound quality is excellent, however. You probably have lower resolution sound and/or video.
Hey,
A singapore vcd dealer is supposed to have Starwars Phantom Menace telesync in on April 28-30, maybe earlier.
I think you're missing one of the key points.
:)
Downloading these movies, burning them, and watching them on your home theatre system is more convenient that going out to the movies.
* no noisy people
* no over priced snacks
* perfect seating
* you don't have to meet someone else's schedule
* you don't have to get dressed
I pirate audio CDs for a similar reason - convenience. CDs are a pain in the ass.
All that said, bootlegging movies is still illegal, but it happens.
All you need is a CD-Recordable drive and VCD Creation software to make your own VideoCDs. Adaptec Easy CD Deluxe comes with VideoCD Creator,
and WinOnCd has VideoCD burning capabilities built
right in. Both of these programs let you put more than 1 MPEG file to be recorded onto your CD.
You can even arrange in what order the the MPEGs
will be played back with most VCD Burning programs.
These are promotional copies of the movies sent out to reviewers. The quality is only fair; they are being converted into mpeg format. 1.2 gigs. Takes hours to download. But it's free.
No, it wasn't a camcorder. Someone had a hard copy of it, and actually ripped it to their hard drive in video cd format. 1.2 gigs. Decent quality too. But oh, I haven't seen it yet. ;)
The mpeg copys going around are close too 1.2 gig broken into 2 peices of aprox 600 megs each. The color is messed up (very dark) and the songs from the soundtrack aren't there as it is from a copy that was sent around before the contracts were all signed with the record labels the other audio is direct from the projector so it was good quality. However, I enjoyed it in the theatre much much more - twice. When it comes to software I am pro-open source but when they spend millions on a movie that helps drive the software industry to make better special effect software I am more than willing to spend 4.75 at AMC for a student ticket (this is a Phoenix AZ price for any AMC - any show).
I think there were two versions of the Matrix VCD
floating around... a screener and a telesync. You
probably saw the screener, since it had a Z in top
corner and the quality of audio and sound was good. When VCDGroups release a screener they usually slap their group logo right in the MPEG, just to let everyone know it was their release. I watched the MPEG of the Matrix and the sound was horrible, almost unaudible. Pluse the screen was slightly slanted and the image was overall dark. Definately something you would only get with a Telesync. The video quality was ok, but nothing spectacular... at least nothing I would waste two blank CD's on.
His point is the same as with MP3.. the theft will continue until the studios offer a legitimate instant distro in the home venue, law or no law.
If any of you out there have a Goldstar 3DO (and how many there are!) you can purchase the Digital Video Module that plugs in the side of the unit and plays back any MPEG1 VCDs. I don't know if it plays back VCDR's, but I'm assuming it can since the Goldstar can play copied CDR games. There was
also a DV Cart released for the Panasonic FZ-10 3DO however it was only available in Japan for a short time and therefore is nearly impossible to obtain. You can buy the Goldstar DV Module for 75$
at http://www.unitedgame.com OR for $50 at http://www.flashbackinc.com
These things were literally impossible to find just up until now... somebody most of discovered a
abandoned warehouse full of them!
-DaveDemon
(Ha-hA! Not so anonymous am I now, eh!?)
I heard that this guy named durin 0wnz the vcd scene - that mofo got mad props
It sucks to be an artist in Taiwan, because you're competing with the pirate movies, comics, etc., all of which have NO operating expenses apart from the actual cost of duplication. If you're covering the cost of producing the original content, your legitimate movie, comic, or whatever costs way more than the pirates, and people just buy the pirates instead.
In the club scene it was prodigy not rob zombie.
Some movie, like the matrix, were badly done. The copy I saw missed the music. Seing people dancing in the disco, with complete silence is kinda weird. Then, they are screaming at one other to be heard over the absent music. 1 feet from one another, and screeming. Weird! ;-)
However, Something About Mary, was a 1 gig MPEG, and the quality was excellent. You couldn't tell it was taken in a theater. Sound is perfect too.
Those of you saying it takes hours are severly mistaken.
/site/requests/The.MOD.Squad.TeleSync-EViLISO/CD1
Lets take a look at this site:
Files Size Speed
2,563 51,951MB 99K/s
This person downloaded 50gb over some time period.
Surely this person wouldn't download 50gb if it tooks "hours and hours"...
Let us look at the following:
cd
(usually files are broken up into rars)
eviltms1.rar: eviltms1.rar: 15000000 bytes received in 38.43 seconds, 381.13 kB/s.
Do the math? How long is it gonna take for you to get the movie? About as long as it takes to watch the Simpsons.
Learn!
Movie and game companies get 0% of profit from each rental. How is this considered acceptable and making copies of games/movies isn't?
is their similar software out there for the Mac? Easy CD is windows based.
or another question:
is it possible to grab frames, audio or decode footage off DVDs at this point? I have access to a DVD player on a G3, but no idea how to get stuff off a disk.
what is involved with doing a DVD Rip?
>I put an audio CDR in the dvd player, and it didn't recognize it at all.
In general, the Sony's and Pioneer's will (Pioneer DV-414 does CDRWs too!). RCA's and Panasonic's never do. Best way to know is to burn a VCD and take it to your local video store and try it in the various players. Of the players that will play them, some smooth the pixels over, while other players make VCDs look more pixelated. Try and see!
yep, it is a remix of Rob Zombie's "Dragula" it sure as hell isn't prodigy..get the facts straight. :)
Also, if I'm downloading something that's 1.5gig, I better be able to run a web server off of it
Can't wait to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen... And I'm buying a DVD player as soon as it comes out.
* Or not...
>I suppose that you think Blockbuster pays $15 bucks for a movie that
>they rent too, right? try $90 or more each. Rental shops pay to play.
I lost a rental movie once. Bought a $15 replacement. The store was happy. It looked exactly the same as the rental one.
I've seen it. It is a -good- copy of the movie, highly illegal. This was no camcorder job.
Unfortunately it was in MS Video 6's new streaming format. The whole movie was 380mb and had wonderful quality (very few artifacts).
You get a cookie! =)
Sometimes you can't tell it's been filmed with a camcorder until you hear someone in the audience laugh, other times the quality is very poor. I guess it all depends on the quality of the camcorder and the person filming it.
Those promo copies often have Promo Titles superimposed during parts of the movie. A friend of mine who works for Amazon.com gets em, what a joy it was to see "Fear and loathing in las vegas" MONTHS before it hit Video, yet there were dozens of text imformation scrolling the sreen every 15-20 minutes stating that it was only a promo copy and not for rental/re-sale.
Your argument assumes that if you watch a movie or download an mp3 you would have otherwise watched the movie or bought the mp3. This is not the case. If I am not going to pay seven dollars to see a certain film, it does not matter to anyone other than me whether I actually see the film. Stealing is only wrong if it inflicts a loss on the person who is being stolen from -- this loss could be an actual loss or a lack of a gain (i.e. you don't buy the cd because you have the mp3's).
So.... how much longer until each theater gets shipped a _slightly_ different :-) If I were
copy of the movie with a secret artifacting effect in it?
a studio, I'de want to catch the Telesyncs/Workprints/Screeners.
> assuming it can since the Goldstar can play copied CDR games.
Is THAT why there wasn't any real major game support for 3DO (at least in the U.S.A., as far as I know)?
I read these posters on Slashdot and these editorials on the Free Software Foundation web site that say putting GPLed code in proprietary, closed-source products is bad. How lame! If there are x versions of a piece of code before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?
So when Microsoft releases Lindows 2001, based on a highly-modified version of the Linux kernel, I expect you to cheer them on and buy five copies. They may be violating copyright laws by not obeying the GPL, but that's not immoral.
around 100 schools already hooked up with internet 2. i think i get something like 298bps at one time, transfering big files from cmu to purdue. (i am not sure if we have OCR9 or something like that.)
Now, i really think that bandwidth can be used to do something else. like teleconferencing. distributed computing.
EXACTLY!
I may have used and posessed unauthorized copyrighted material. But if the product is good enough to warrent purchasing (Enya). I'll buy it.
Do not forget that not everyone who posessed unauthorized copyrighted material will necessarily purchase it. If you take away XYZ, that doesn't mean that I will automatically purchase it. We have 1 million copies of our program running on peoples computers, it costs $500, therefore we are losing 500 million! WRONG! What percentage of those copies would have been purchased.
If someone offered Titantic for free, would it depress video sales? I say very little. People who liked the movie would purchase it anyways, people who didn't know about it may see the free copy and then purchase it.
Do not forget about the Supreme Court case about VCR's and broadcast TV. They wanted it to be illegal to time shift programs! OF course that turned out to be extremely favorable to them, for it literally CREATED the prerecorded video tape industry. Had they gotten their way, broadcast TV would be like the audio industry treated DAT a decade ago.
Those industries want stability, they want to preserve 300-400 year old ideas into the digital age because those are what they are most confortable with. Look at VCR's, here they thought and focused on the 1 million loss without realizing the billion dollar gain.
Same thing here... Those who cannot adapt should be allowed to die.
Scott Crosby
It's not yours, and you haven't PAID for it. I don't care HOW convenient it is - you're STEALING it. To hell with everyone else, so long as you don't have to get dressed to exert any effort to watch or listen to what you want.
eh?
I wasn't trying to justify it -- to come up with some kind of argument that makes it 'ok' to steal someone's work. Far from it.
I was simply explaining why I would (had I the bandwidth and if it was simpler and the quality didn't suck) priate movies.
9 bucks? That's rather expensive.
Not everyone has your morales. Many people, the masses if you will, little care about whether the author of a program, or a movie, lives or dies, they just want the stuff. Maybe I'm a pessimist and your an optimist, but I do not think people will pay for something when there is little impetus too and free copies right beside it.
what?
You fool -- It's called efficient usage of resources. If I can get access to something more efficiently -- I'll do it.
When I can watch new movies on my home theatre system on demand -- I'll pay for it. If it isn't available that way -- I'll steal it.
That simple.
In Some ways better software..
You've got adptec toast for mastering the CD but you don't really need to make a VCD to have movies on CD. VCD files are essentaially MPEG1 files.
with an AV mac like a 7600, 8500, 8600 G3 with AV or firwire it's easy to capture the quarter screen movies that make VCD then with Media Cleaner Pro Rip fome fat looking Multiplexed Mpeg files (MPEG 1 with audio and video 2X looks best but has a larger files size)
I've Ripped a lot of MTV and VH1 made MPEGs and then made refrence movies of those Mpegs that play at double size (this does not work on windows) but every platform can play the MPEG files.
Mostly for my personal use, these are really fun. I'm not distributing them on the internet and thinking fair use on them as you would on a VHS tape.
Flying away with Lenny Kravits right now!
MPEG 1 played double sized is not bad looking for music videos;)
My friend down at IU downloaded that Matrix video..he had to d/l it twice, the first time he was experiencing serious packet loss.
I would do it, because I would still want to see it in the theater..wouldn't you?
I don't exactly have a $10,000 sound system and a monster screen.
The guy didn't actually take any stance on whether or not copyright law is right or wrong from a moral standpoint. All he said was that it is wrong to invoke legal considerations in a morality argument, since legality and morality are independent issues.
You buy a movie ticket for $20+ dollars, you walk in the theater where they check you for recording devices, you watch the movie, when the movie is over you step into a cleaning room where they clear your mind of most of the movie leaving you only the few scenes you really enjoyed, giving you the opinion that it was a good movie.
At least that is the future the theater money men want. Notice the high price even though piracy is impossible, that is because the price never went down, due to all all the technology involved in countering piracy.
I think thats a crap future, but with electronics pushing things down to small sizes, and technological advances making computers into human like robots, a machine could record what is being shown on a big screen. How do you stop man and his computer from breaking over fake protections such as copyrights and patents? The answer is simple, you can not, with out some over restrictive anti-freedom control, and if we allow that kind of control what is to stop them from abusing that control? Nothing.
The world of computers would not exist with out sharing, or the way to force sharing, stealing (Micros~1). Stealing is thought of as wrong in general, and that is why many feel better about using GNU software like Linux. None of this would have ever been considered stealing if it wasn't for a false/unnatural law protection of the abstract. For example taking someones TV is stealing, but it is worse then piracy because you cannot duplicate/copy a TV out of thin air, where as it takes no effort what so ever to do so with software and digital data (or an idea for that matter). Making money in this world is going to have to change, and I can think of a number of ways to make money with out fake protection, but if it doesn't change because of those who want to apply the old age ways on the new (gnu) age ways, then things will start getting rediculous and the first statements are more realistic, instead of a joke.
First of all, there is no screener of The Matrix yet. Screeners come on VHS tapes and are VERY high quality. And there are two versions floating around. One version was released by the ISO group known as EViLiSO. The little white Z is just a mark of whoever taped it. This version was set up on a tripod in the projector room of an empty theater, prolly by someone who owns a theater and is in the VCD scene. The sound quality is excellent because the camcorder audio was hooked up to the projector. Next, you can have a billion gig mpeg file and still burn it to a standard disc as long as it is under 74 mins. VCD's burn in Mode 2, kinda like CD audio and wav files, so they are limited by length not size. Learn how to use your burners, queers. The crappy version is what we call a Cam. Cams are when people smuggle in a camcorder into a theater, usually during sneak previews of the movies.
Some people here seem to be missing the point. Who cares how long it takes to download it, the point is you CAN. But, as usual, I think the 'industry' is makeing a big deal out of nothing. I doubt they are loseing any money over this. If they are, they are losing very little.
If a movie is REALLY good, I will go watch it at the movies just like everyone else. I downloaded Matrix mpeg, but it was such horrible quality, and such a good movie, that I didn't even bother watching it. Instead I seen it at the movies. Any other movies I may have watched on mpeg, I would not have watched in the movies regardless of downloading it or not.
In other words, the availabilty of mpeg movies has not influenced my movie-going habits in any way. Therefore, they have not gained/or lost money that they would have gotten from me anyway.
The movie industry makes more than enough money to "put up" with this, and they are not the poor little victims they make themselves out to be.
- AC (too lazy to reg an account)
No. Think about it. The 3DO's lifespan came to a hault around end of '95 or the beginning of '96. At that time, buying a entry level CDR Recorder would've cost you a pretty penny. I know, I payed $450 for my 2x recorder.. and I bought mine in '98! Consumer level CD Recorders weren't even out around '95-early '96, if somebody did own one they sure weren't going to bother copying games for a system that was on it's way out. Better game consoles had showed up (Playstation... *COUGH* Saturn) and for the few individuals that did own a CD recordable drive, they were probably more interested in finding ways to copy games for their brand new playstations...
and perhaps even *COUGH* *COUGH* saturns. In with the new, out with the old... or so to speak.
-Dave
EMAIL: wdemont1@rochester.rr.com
These "vcds" sound neat. Where can I buy one?
Any one make it its so easy, im starting it my self.
All you need is at least 8gigs HD. You DO NOT need real time MPEG compression, you can use XINGtechs mpeg1 encoder
Record using a $200 capture card to HD at 352x288 to HD at raw, no compression. You can record ~45 mins to an 8gig, then compress that 45 mins. and Do it again for the second 45min block, bingo.
YOu might have to do 3 passes, but there you GO, you can do it with $500 worth of hardware.
352x288 is only ~3.5 to 4meg/sec which all HDs do now any way.
EASY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WE ALL CAN DO IT, if your smart.
Or you can buy realtime mpeg1 encoder via USB for $500, its called MPegator
-Cheekyboy
well id rathoer not download em, but still id like to copy them.
1) countries out side USA have to wait months and sometimes 1 year+ to get the movies
2) cinemas outside usa are not $4.50, more like $12
3) id rather safely watch it at home with ability to rewind for the cool shots
In australia we are allowed to carry in bags/backpacks etc...
So if you wanna video tape it, go extra early, 9am? or like 2am to do it
http://www.bart.simplenet.com/futurama
very slow site though
i must say that was a surpisingly humorous and sarcastic comment. first time today i cracked a smirk. I have one thing to say to that. AMEN.
you are talking shit. Stores dont get the vids untill a couple of days before it is released.
Dick
Heh...the reason copyrights didn't exist hundreds of years ago is because there was no NEED for them to exist. There was no way to copy a book except to HAND WRITE another copy, and this task was mainly carried out by monks, who had nothing better to do (
Let's start off by pinting out the fact that the first "copyrights" were not laws, they were non-compete agreements among the small cartel of publishers. The state did not get involved until much later. Even then, in a world without such copyrights Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci (the first hacker) still produced some great art. How can this be?
I guess there are two sides to every argument, but you are not making a very strong case that the current copyright system is the only method which could support the arts and creators of entertainment. The patronage system has a long history as well, and with the low transaction cost which the internet makes possible we could easily return to such a system. When technology finishes making your version of copyright irrelevant it will also make it possible for "loyal fans" to easly reward the cretor with a small token. If anyone could easily pay Illiad a nickle every time a UserFriendly comic made you laugh (even if they downloaded a "bootlegged" copy) how long before Illiad could retire?
The internet makes it easy for the content to get to the users at no unit cost no matter what fancy scheme the original provider tries to wrap around it, it can also make it possible for large groups of supporters to act as a patron to the artist with very small costs to each supporter. Bounties and outright patronage are two alternatives to the current system which don't completely fall apart in the face of the inevitable path of technology.
The abolition of copyright laws would mean that no one would want to make movies or books or software any more.
This is so obviously incorrect that I cannot let it pass. People have wanted to create art and share it with others throughout human history. It is this desire to create art in their own fashion which drives most of the truly great coders in the Open Source movement. The creative act is not simply motivated by a desire for profit or power, to suggest that this is the case is to turn the artist into nothing more than a whore.
How would you like it if you spent a couple years of your life working on something, only to have people pirate it because they're too lazy to go out and see it/but it/whatever. Then maybe you'll realize why it's wrong to pirate IP. Then again, I doubt someone as lazy as you will ever make anything of worth to the rest of society.
Also, they have these things called "VCR's", which play "video cassetes." This may be a foreign concept to you, but they have stores filled with "video cassetes" which you can't rent for a couple dollars. Then you can take them home and watch them without all the problem you mention above.
And if you're too lazy to get off you're ass and go to the video rental store, get digital cable, or a mini-dish, and you can watch movies on demand.
And if you don't feel like doing any of the above, well fuck you, you cheap bastard.
It makes sense that the majority of people here are probably students and have nothing better to do than pirate videos all day. As a working person I have no problem even plopping down $7 to go see a decent movie.. it's pocket change. Get a life lusers.
"...you give up a certain amount of personal freedom for protection from yourself."
Please tell me you meant "_for_ yourself."
IP is shortsighted in a lots of areas. Consider copyrights and photography. It's not impossible for multiple people to create identical photos and with oft-photographed items like important public buildings or David it's probably happened. Code is copyright for expression, not for function. Icons? There are patents for icons. Why? There's only so many ways to express an idea in 32x32x16 (for example).
There are patents for skins (Apple ones anyway) see D392,963 (scrollbars for crying out loud); D402,284 and many others.
There's also the affordablity angle. Shareware, freeware authors can't afford patents like MS can. They probably can't afford to license them either it's not likely cross-licensing would happen. This blocks out paths of exploration OSS, etc. can freely follow even after a company may have shelved the projects the patents are related to. These are the same companies overcharging for products when that money goes into uselss features like the Office paperclip instead of the more critical bug-killing or performance. I'm all for fair pricing, we just don't see enough of it.
On this movie issue, there's little out there worth seeing so why waste your time, money or bandwidth on this crap? If you're in the states save your money at the box office, rent the vid and buy a used copy. If it's something great get it new on DVD or laserdisc. If it comes to charging per-viewing (DIVX?) I'll probably skip it altogether. Charging for newspapers, etc. on-line is obsurd as the content is 90% not unique, obvious, just stupid, etc.
When MS goes to charge-per use of Word, per boot...then what? Will the consumer market care?
Another rant in search of an idea.
you a tard. The point is not making any old shiat, its making something that is high quality.
Your not supposed to encode at 352x288 thats non-standard to the NTSC and VCD spec. You can do this stuff with a ati all in wonder pro, but those who do are sad saps that create under-par videos.
Okay, think about how many movie rental stores there out there. Now let's say they buy an average of four copies each (blockbuster buys close to twenty, while smaller stores might only buy a couple). Factoring in the inflated price video rental stores pay for these movies (I've heard it's around 100 dollars), you've got an obscene amount of money going to the company which produced the movie. Believe me, if movie companies weren't making a small fortune off of video rentals, they wouldn't let it happen.
ummm....no. The last thing we need is Congress or anyone else in government telling us what movies are good enough to make. Remember the whole thing with pornographic and obscene art and how it should not be sponsored by the government? What about violent media? There are many who would not condone its production. Movies like the Matrix would not get made because a majority of the people in government don't like those kind of movies.
How many people pay for Winamp?
How easy is it to pay for anything online? Not as easy as you would think when you look at the entire transaction chain and micro-payments are non-existent. To give the WinAmp folks a dollar (not what they are asking but perhaps what I feel lik granting to them) would cost almost as much in transaction fees. The system I was suggesting runs on large quantities of little payments, not infrequent large payments.
This would make copyleft (GPL) also communism. The software is free (not property) and though you can sell it it's as free as free beer. You can't earn a living this way therefore the state has to take care of that.
OCR9 ? hahaha
what is that new scanner software ?
learn f00l
Wow! These CRIMINALS have stolen the PROPERTY of a corporation. What a world we live in.. Seriously, why should you care about this? Theft? Property is theft anyway. Whiners.. you have the money, Lucas has the money. As long as we keep sucking dry the 3rd world everything will be fine... and ofcourse, we should fend off evil communists who defying the American Dream of economic inequality.
Get real, who made you the king of deciding what having a life is. Its stupid comments like "get a life", that makes some people think "why don't I take yours instead".
maybe you should hang out on the linuxnet irc
network more often, then you could see the
same people who work on the linux kernel
sitting around going 'ftp my site for the matrix'
power corrupts, elitist snobs have no morals, the companies
these people work for routinely put people in jail for doing this sort
of thing, and the workers probably support that, but they
will trade shit on their own anyways. its like pro life people who get abortions,
or conservative politicians who visit hookers... same ol' shit that life has always been about... power.
on the linuxnet irc network, where alotta
linux-kernel types hang out, they were trading the matrix...
not that this is anything new. corporations, expensive schools, and their denizens have always been
centers of warez. i got doom2 2 weeks before it came out at my old engineering school.
funny thing is alot of these people go on to support
companies who put people in jail for doing the same
thing that they used to do. life is all about
power, right and wrong have nothing to do with anything
anymore.
Property is theft anyway.
Yeah, and if I take away your food, I'm not stealing it, the fact your not giving it to me is theft.
You have to draw the line some where, and/or some time, things don't fit perfectly into your idea. Things work better in balance, the results of inbalance are inhumane. Balance being having somethings be property and other things not be property, or else where is human rights. What was that, did I hear you say only the government has rights. Russias government is definetly not communism, just a government monopoly.
These movies are being distributed in vcd format (which when you get down to it is just mpeg compressed video slapped onto a cd). Vcds are huge in Hong Kong and China (more people have vcd players than vcrs by a huge margin). The format has been around a while and delivers relitivly good picture (sometimes a little pixelated) on two cds for your average movie. Movies like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan take three.
Movies are most often traded over a combination of IRC and ftp sites (much like the warez freaks do, or used to at least). Releasing brand new movies or good quality movies gets you access to even more stuff.
As for quality it varies. The lowest quality is telesynced movies. These are made with a guy, a camcorder, and a tripod. Picture is usually bad, but sometimes the camcorder's sound input is pluged directly into the movie's output so the sound quality is pretty good. The next lowest quality are work prints. These are working copies of movies that have yet to be released. Sometimes they have scenes that aren't included in the released film, sometimes vice versa. The best and most highly valued movie type are the screeners. These are just direct rips off a vhs tape (or more recently dvd). The orginal copy was distributed by the film company that is releasing the movie to film critics, academy members, etc. These are very high quality--only slightly worse than a vhs tape.
To answer those people who say the size is too big, your right. Even with 10+GB drives all over the place, at a gig a pop movies tend to gobble up space quick. Thats why most people just burn the movie onto cd (or cdrw if it is a crappy telesyc that they won't watch again). All the movies are distributed either as two cd-sized mpeg files or as two iso images.
Personally I don't think the movie industry has anything to worry about. Most of the time people can't justify spending money to go see a particular movie because it sucks/appears to suck (eg Urban Ledgens, lost in space, orgasmo) or because the movie didn't play anywhere near them (eg Life is beautiful). Many times me or my friends have seen a movie on burned vcd and then had to go to the theater to see it on the big screen. Not only that, but pretty much everyone I know that is into vcds refused to watch a bad telesync of matrix until they had seen it in the theaters. Even if it was a screener I doubt anyone would watch even that before seeing it on the big screen.
It's more of a brag factor among geeks than anything elese ("Hey I just got the newest released movie on my computer. Beat that!"). All in all I don't think that the movie industry has anything to really wory about.
Anonymous because copying movies is bad, bad, bad.
Having said that, I think the whole discussion of piracy has missed a very subtle point. What about the legitimate use of these formats? Consider the last quote in that article:
What does it take to produce music? How about movies? Are we about to see another established media industry begin to wonder about their future?Here in Taiwan, there's no such thing as intellectual property and it is 100% legal to copy. Many legal, licensed industries have sprouted up to sell more affordable movies and CDs such as Son May Records. And to sell in VCD format, because VHS player is hard to find here, but VCD is much more common. So why don't you stop trying to declare your morals as universally right and impose them on us. There is no such thing as intellectual property. Just repeat until you understand.
I hear these ads on ZDTV and on the Kim Kommando radio show by the SPA or whatever that say copying software is exactly like walking into a store, sticking the software in your jacket, and walking out of the store. How lame. If I steal something from someplace, there's a space where the stolen item was and someone else is deprived of using it. If I copy, no one is missing anything.
If there are x items before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?
First of all, it's not pirating, it must be known as "unauthorised copying." How did making copies suddenly get confused with treachery and killing on the high seas?
It's the copyright holder's sole responsibility to make sure their copyrights are observed. Intellectual property isn't a right, it's an artificially created set of laws designed to protect proprietary information.
And violation of copyright is not "theft," either. You're not stealing any material goods, and theft is purely defined as the taking of material goods illegally.
If unauthorised copying is to stop, it's the copyright holder's responsibility. After all, they're getting a free ride by holding a virtual monopoly on an idea. They should at least have the responsibility to protect their "property," and someone copies it in violation of copyright, it's entirely the fault of the copyright holder for not foreseeing that eventuality.
If CD's and DVD's actually stuck to realistic prices then none of this would happen, because it wouldn't be economically feasible to download MP3's and VCD's if CD's and DVD's were cheap. I can't believe DVD's cost so much even though the media costs less than a dollar to make. Who are they kidding? By charging these prices, they are almost guaranteed of unauthorised copying.
Blame the copyright holders. By law, they are responsible for the violation of their copyright. Don't get mad at the "pirates." Arrgh. Polly want a cracker? Sheesh.
Is it just that some DVDs won't play with CDRs? I considered making some VCDs with CDR discs, but I wondered about this. I put an audio CDR in the dvd player, and it didn't recognize it at all. Am I hopeless that, short of buying another DVD player? And this was with a tv type dvd player, not a dvd-rom.
Aww, not worth it to convert VHS tapes to VCD? This thread got me to thinking about that. What about live broadcast recording, then, to bypass VHS's problems?
Do VCD recorders let you have multiple files (perhaps on multiple tracks, or have it combine them all on the fly), or do you have to compile the mpeg as one huge file beforehand?
My advice to anyone wishing to save 8 bucks: suck it up and go see it in a theater. For those that have and still want a copy of it, consider that it takes about 3 hours to download the whole thing on a *fast* connection. A cablemodem (which can really vary wildly from "fast" to "horridly slow" in my experience) would probably take longer. Anything slower than that and you'd have to be seriously messed up to want to download 1.2 gigs of data.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P. (that's a terrible saying btw)
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You raise some good points about the ethics of pirating, but I don't see how any of your examples are related. The connection between video piracy and Free Software is a somewhat tenuous one. Also, I don't see how a script kiddie (person who uses rootshell.com-type scripts to circumvent security) has anything to do with movie piracy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Umm, that argument makes no sense. I'm not in favor of abolishing intellectual property, but I still don't understand your argument. How would getting rid of intellectual property somehow also force us to get rid of physical property and become communists?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Speaking of mp3s:
Well, what happens if I was not going to buy the CD to begin with? I only have so much money I can spend on CDs, so I buy the ones I like the most. The bands whose CDs fall in the upper end of the "mediocre" catagory I listen to on mp3. Basically, my choices are:
1) Download the mp3. The record company gets no money.
2) Do not download the mp3. The record company gets no money.
Either way, I have no interest in purchasing the CD.
In addition, I have actually purchased several CDs as a direct result of mp3s. Several bands I'd never even heard of before, or had only vaguely heard of before, turned out to be quite good when I heard their mp3s.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, I listen to music for 6+ hours a day. I cannot afford to buy that much music on CD, so I buy the best of it on CD, and the rest, which is still good, but not the best, I download. It's not that it's not worth me owning it, it's just that there is other stuff that is *more* worth me owning, and I can't own it all.
There's also the stuff that is entertaining to me the first 3 or 4 times listening to it, but gets old really fast. That stuff I also download on mp3. I only buy CDs of stuff that I can listen to many times and still like it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by infect:
Video Cds own:
Heres a good list of stuff I've archived
(1) Lock Stock and Two smoking Barrels
(2) Orgazmo
(3) True Crimes
(4) Sneakers (DISC 1 BAD)
(5) Cruel Intentions
(6) Life Is beautiful
(7) Waking Ned Devine
(8) The Mod Squad
(9) Ever After
(10) 12 Monkeys
(11) Return To Paradise
(12) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(13) Basict Instinct
(14) The Curropter
(15) Pi
(16) Hackers
(17) Simple Plan
(18) Blade (bad?)
(19) The Truman Show
(20) The Faculty
(21) Saving Private Ryan
(22) Jackie Cahn movie unknown
(23) Rush hour
(24) 6 Days 7 nights
(25) Antz
(26) Good Will Hunting
(27) ThunderBolt
(28) I still know what you did last summer
(29) Avengers
(30) Enemy Of the State
(31) Akira
(32) 8mm
(33) American history X
(34) Armaggedon
(35) The Big Lebowski
(36) Chasing Amy
(37) Goonies
(38) Kiss the girls
(39) Hurly Burly
(40) Patch Adams
(41) Payback
(42) Prince of Egypt
(43) Ronin
(44) Replacement Killers
(45) Seven
(46) Something about mary
(47) Slums of Beverly hills
(48) Thin Red Line (3)
(49) Top Gun
(50) Varsity Blues
(51) Waterboy
(52) Wrongfully accused
.....
The list goes on even more. Why pay to watch this shit? -- Download my friends. Download.
#vcd2k will live forever!
Posted by craig55:
That camcorder business is not new. I remember back in 1989 or 1990 going to a comic book convention and purchasing a Chinese bootleg of the yet-to-be-released in the US sequel to Highlander ("The Quickening"). And in addition to being one of the worst movies I've ever seen , the quality of the recording was horrible. You could see people's heads pop up as they got up to use the john and people walking up and down the isles. Hilarious.
The new thing is taking such a recording and making a VCD - basically a highly compressed MPEG version of the camcorder footage burned onto CD. ISO's (disk images) of these are traffic'd on "warez sites" pretty frequently. If you have a T1 at your disposal and time to down 650+ MB's, you can get the latest releases - Office Space, The Matrix etc. Word has it that some of these movie pirates have access to the projector via movie theater employees and can sometimes jack right into the projector for a direct dub to VHS.
The new thing is taking such a recording and making a VCD - basically a highly compressed MPEG version of the movie. These are traffic'd on "warez sites" pretty frequently. If you have a T1 at your disposal and time to down 650+ MB's, you can get the latest releases - Office Space, The Matrix etc.
Posted by Roland the Gunslinger:
Of course it's wonderfully cool that you can have a movie play on your computer, downloaded from the internet. So cool, in fact, that no one cares it's illegal, or immoral. Some probably would even say it's not immoral, but I'd dare say none of them would ever produce anything worth selling, and thus don't care much about intellectual property.
Posted by Roland the Gunslinger:
Theft is no longer immoral. Wonderful.
What a load of intellectually bankrupt bullshit.
Posted by infect:
I'm an avid user of these movies.
There are several types of VCDS (video cds) that get released:
Camcorder: Usually very low quality
Telecine: Professional camera in booth, usually offers much higher audio quality as it has seperate audio source. Video quality a little higher than cam, but often also slanted.
Workprint: A unfinished version of the full movie, usually high quality in both video and audio but you may be missing soundtrack of special effects.
Screener: Usually a direct rip from tape, high quality in both audio and video.
DVD Rip: Very high quality rip, but not much different from a screener in my opinion.
Recent releases include:
04091999 - La Vita é bella (Life is Beautiful) - Screener
04111999 - Analyze This - Telesync
04191999 - 10 Things I Hate About You - Telesync
04201999 - Velvet Goldmine - Screener
04201999 - A Walk On The Moon - Screener
04211999 - She's All That - Screener
04211999 - Edtv - Telesync
04221999 - Forces Of Nature - Telesync
04221999 - Election - Workprint
Some more famous than others, but you get the idea. At 1.1 GB a piece (~), you need some space to hold them though. This concept of "anyone can make one" is BS. You need real time MPEG hardware, fairly decent hard drive speed and capacity, and the know-how. The Broadway Pro is the card of choice, as is the snazzi or dazzle - but the high quality only comes from the Broadyway or similarly high end cards. CNN always likes to exaggerate things.
But I do agree with you that you shouldn't think that just because something's legal means it's moral. Of course, just because something's illegal doesn't mean it's immoral.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Pirating/bootleging isn't really comparable to using GPL'd code in proprietary software. Pirating is illegal sharing -- it makes some copyrighted work available to people who don't have the copyright owners permission to have access to the work. Refusing to distribute GPL'd code (remember: modifications to GPL'd code are GPL'd too) means not allowing people who have the right to access the code (everyone), to access the code.
Oh . . . and pirating != stealing.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Looked at college costs lately?
College costs most of use more than a house.
100,000 dollar debts are COMMON where I go to school.
so where you say, "you selfish bastards", I gotta say, fuck you.
> If there are x items before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?
What has been stolen is the *right* to create that +1. The creators/producers of the content have that right, and have granted it or licensed it to the distributors; you do not have that right.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
> If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok...
No it isn't ok. It's not your right to decide whether it should be available for free, it's the creator's.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
Why are you assuming they did it in real time? Real Producer can convert AVIs to G2 format too. All you need is huge hard drive.
Whereas it is criminal to violate copyright laws, it is not immoral. There is a big difference between the two concepts. Its wrong IMHO, but its being illegal does not automatically make it immoral (some laws are immoral!).
--
Python
Python
Don't kid yourself. There still would be very little real interest in this kind of nonsense. The price of admission (bad pun I know) is still far,far too high.
It's worse than that. Why go through all this hassle to see a movie which isn't really that good when you'll be able to rent it from BlockBuster on video tape for about 3 bucks within 2 or three months after it's released?
By that business model, the theatres in the town I go to college in are operating at a loss-$4.00 for children, $4.50 for students, and $6.00 for adults.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I suppose that's why thousands of dollars of MY MONEY go to my university so I can go here. And why my university will start hounding me for money as soon as I leave (also known as an "alumni association.")
And, what about privately funded colleges?
Grow up. Fuck off.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Well, yes they did lose money (no repeat ticket sales), but that sounds cool. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
If anyone feels like mirroring this machine... :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
This is about the 250th comment on this subject, so most people probably won't even read it. But there's something missing...
Here's all these geeks - hardcore geeks, defending the distribution of movies - hundreds of megabytes of movies - over the internet and internal university networks.
Well guess what you selfish bastards: I pay for that network. Not you the student - you'll pay later - right now it's the working people paying for your fun through our taxes.
And here's these hardcore geeks, that complain about any extra bandwidth, like HTML email, or spam. And yet they don't even blink about clogging up the network with the equivalent of a million spams. A MILLION SPAMS is what your movie costs the rest of your country. Thank you very much - whoever you are - you're the lowest of the low.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Those networks are put there for academia you lowlife. I suppose you think it's really "cool" to do what you do. Wise up and grow up.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
asinus sum et eo superbio
asinus sum et eo superbio
in omnibus veritas
I don't like paying $7 for a movie either, but piracy is a contributing factor to high theater prices anyway - I wonder how this is going to affect us in the long run? Anyone worry about the gov't restricting digital video formats? I sure do now...
Posted by the Proteus
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
What you really want is MPEG2. This is the format used for DVD and DTV (aka DVB in Europe), so it's broadcast quality, waaay superior to VHS. But it's 4GB per movie.
I predict we will see that being traded on the net. Within no more than 2 years.
Now they didn`t like MP3, but they will *hate* MPEG2.
This is very similar to MP3. MP3 = Audio. Video = MPG (or other formats).
In this particular case (bootlegging movies) it's the use of a valid format (e.g. MPG) for illegal reasons.
Similar to sneaking a cassette recorder into a musical or concert. You get a copy but it's bad quality. So if you like what you got, there's enough motivation to get an original.
If the copy you have is an unaltered original (i.e. digitally copied) that motivation is limited. You still might want to get an original so you can show it off, have a nice box, or additional goodies. Or just to honor the creators by paying for something you enjoy.
If you don't pay, I'd not consider it stealing, you're not physically taking something away. You just make a copy. The original is left in place and unaltered.
If that's theft or not is up to yourself. So I leave it at that. As you ought to leave that decision for others to decide on their own as well.
Just like owning an original. Do you own the original? Some say you only got it licensed! Not your property.
Well, I think this issue will work out just like MP3: A lot of warez and a lot of legal uses. The movie industry will be changed by this like the music industry is being changed by MP3. And our Intellectual Property definitions and laws will be reconsidered and adapted.
Always remember: There's no such thing like a free lunch. And digital data isn't food. It's information which is a totally different thing, don't mix it up, please...
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
Oh Yeah? I finished DLing the matrix from my 2 meg cable modem a day ago, and while it wasn't by any means perfect, it was still good quality and the soundtrack was PERFECT..
oh, and the RIAA and any other crap-asses like the can KISS MY BUTT!
Yes, those were the days, sitting by my computer watching the bytes trickle by for some grainy .au files that hogged my precious disk space...now if I had a cable internet connection.. :)
jwb, your rant gives only one justification for equating copyright violations with stealing: a legal justification. However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing. Just because the law says something doesn't mean the law is right. For example, in the United States, for many years the law decreed that whites were superior to blacks from a legal standpoint. Was the law morally correct? Few people today would argue that the law then was morally correct. It is perfectly possible to judge some violations of copyright law immoral and other violations morally acceptable. Now I'm not saying I would judge in this manner. I'm just saying that there is no inherent contradiction in judging in this manner. Moral issues are completely independent of legal issues. Your post does not even acknowledge the possibility that the legal view could be different from the moral view. Indeed, your post puts forth the legal view as completely equal to the moral view. Therein lies your fallacy.
jwb, your rant gives only one justification for equating copyright violations with stealing: a legal justification. However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing. Just because the law says something doesn't mean the law is right.
For example, in the United States, for many years the law decreed that whites were superior to blacks from a legal standpoint. Was the law morally correct? Few people today would argue that the law then was morally correct.
It is perfectly possible to judge some violations of copyright law immoral and other violations morally acceptable. Now I'm not saying I would judge in this manner. I'm just saying that there is no inherent contradiction in judging in this manner. Moral issues are completely independent of legal issues.
Your post does not even acknowledge the possibility that the legal view could be different from the moral view. Indeed, your post puts forth the legal view as completely equal to the moral view. Therein lies your fallacy.
Get a trenchcoat. The pockets are very useful for sneaking in cans of Coke, and thus not having to rely on the overpriced, watered-down stuff sold at the cinema.
Here in NYC, you can buy those tapes in just about every other corner. It must be an insider's job, since some movies are on sale within a day or two after the sneak preview is shown in just a handful of theaters. They cost about 2 to 5 bucks (depending on you bargaining skills), but you get what you pay for. The few that I've seen where REALLY crappy.
Later.
What kind of encoding hardware are they using? Surely, you cannot encode a full speed movie through software. Must be some big bucks to get an array of DSP's to get all the frames down to a decent size. Where do you get this stuff and how much?
I shot 10 seconds through my video card at 30fps and the file was a whopping 46MB! Faster than the damn hard drive and put a load on the bus getting there. What can make an entire movie 400MB in real time?
Bootleg movies, campus based sites, warez and the like are nothing new at all...
Bootleg movies? Warez?
Back in the 70's, my hometown library had a large selection of super-8 movies and many racks of cassettes and albums we could check out. We would all get together in somebody's basement and have little block parties. Those were the days.
Television used to have good entertainment, too. Last year, I was paying $65 a month for some cable access. After a few months, I wised up to the fact I would be seeing repeats all year. Cable is the seat of greed.
Now it seems like the RIAA is trying to outlaw MP3's. The technology I looked forward to has been all but ruined due to coorporate greed and misinformation campaigns such as this: "Anyone with a computer is now a video pirate." What kind of shit is this? They are the greed that sets new technology back in the dark ages. Secure MP3? What kind of use is that for me? I cannot work with that. New technology now is a buzzword and filled with hype and misinformation due to firms like the RIAA. I wish they would go to hell. They can do without this government protection of IP that they enjoy. Programming content would be so much better if the masses are allowed to make media for free distribution.
Control the media, controll the world. Imagine a world where we do not have access to video compression and encryption to allow common people to freely distribute local news and entertainment. You have China and Russia where it is outlawed.
Greed kills.
exactly. it's illegal, it's a crime, period. you should see what's going on on THIS campus lan... I'm pretty sure that there's nobody here who doesn't have something illegal on his system. if "they" came they could probably book every single one of us and take our hardware. ofcourse if they come I could simply do rm -rf /dos/* to get rid of all the illegal stuff on my system, but my CDs would be gone.
:-)
:-)
and then some, if they come and take one, the message that they're here will spread around campus at the speed of light, and everybody will dump their burners and cds in the nearest ditch. I've seen one person get caught, but he was publicly advertising his MP3 site, which is ofcourse the dumbest thing you can do. as for the rest, we're well shielded. if you keep a low profile they won't come get you.
a close personal friend of mine is right in the center of the MP3, music video and movie "business". he'd just dump his CD collection and rip out his hard drive. sure, big loss, but it's less of a loss than being caught. two words: Shodan, VooDooMovie.
by the way, I'm damn sure Big Brother knows what's going on here. but they also know damn well that they'd only get one or two big fish and a few dozen small ones, and the other big fish would just ditch their equipment and help the smaller fish ditch theirs.
same thing happens when there's a road sign razzia. they empty one or two dorms, and immedeately all the other dorms know what's going on and they ditch their road signs on the roof. once they did manage to get a big catch by offering a cream pie for every road sign returned to the police. what they hadn't anticipated is that people didn't return previously stolen roadsigns but stole new ones to get more pies
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Don't worry, you didn't miss out on much. The quality was awful- sound was grainy, the screen was slightly cropped, just generally bad. Suffice to say, I watched a couple of minutes of it & decided I'd rather go see it in the theater and not miss out on the full experience :)
-mike kania
Hell no. I'm not paying $4.50 for a "big" box of say jujubees, just to open it and find a bag inside smaller than what i'd get on halloween.
Sorry, but they'll just have to make do with my stopping at CVS and loading up on goods before i show up.
While I agree that it is wrong to break copyright law, I think your rationale is ridiculous. You are assuming that those 1,000 people would have gone to see it in the theater, but now will not.
If I had the opportunity to view a stolen movie on a teeny computer screen, it would be instead of renting it, not instead of viewing it on the big screen. Why do you think Disney re-released The Little Mermaid to theaters? Because people want to see a good movie on screens more than 80", with surround sound!
Personally, I think that if the film makers would make their films distributable over the Internet, even at a fee, they would see huge increases in audience and revenue.
When I went on a trip to russia a few years ago,
the movie Waterworld with Kevin Costner had just
the weekend I had left the US been released in
theatres. However, in almost every kiosk around
the city (Magadan) there were VHS copies of the
movie for sale for the equivalent of $3-4 USD.
Almost every american movie ever made is converted
to the local format (not compatable w/ VHS) and
sold out in the open in their own black market.
The copies are occasionally videotaped copies,
but more often are leaked copies origionating
from the distribution house post production.
Some of the tapes are also converted back to VHS
format.
Hmmm, I bet the new Star Wars movie is out there
quicker-than-quick...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
You pirate CDs and movies for one reason only: you have no respect for the copyright of the owner, and your own convenience comes before their proprietary rights.
The proper thing to do, if you don't like the conditions of the agreement, is to find another producer, or cut back on your consumption.
I am really angry that none of you seem to have a problem with the distribution of these pirated films. Anyone who is involved in trading these wares is
The only thing that protects free software from being undermined by greedy proprietary software makers is the GPL and other licenses under which free software is released. These licenses protect the openness of our projects and also are the reason why we can claim the moral high ground. The open source revolution, part of a larger backlash against proprietary information, is founded in its software licenses.
Because of this, all of us would be justifiably tweaked if part of the Linux kernel was lifted and included in a proprietary software product. We would rant on about how they had violated our license. We would call for the offending company's figurative head, a revocation of their charter, monetary damages, criminal prosecution, and multiple types of medieval torture. And we would be right, because the copyright an open source product is sacred.
But many of those self-same potential indignant open software boosters are here bragging about the magnitude of their stolen film collection. Let me say for better effect.
Stolen
None of us has any justification for stealing these films from their owners: the studio which holds the copyright. They alone can, unilaterally and arbitrarily, set the conditions under which their product can be distributed and consumed. If we violate their copyright, we might as well discard the GPL, because it will be clear to everyone else that we don't really take the issue seriously.
Through my amazing future prediction ability, and a small Perl script, I can predict the rebuttals that will come from the skript kiddie crowd. I will now answer them.
skript kiddie: "But, the movie theaters are operated by The Man!"
jwb: Don't patronize them.
skript kiddie: "Most people go to movies after watching the pirated film."
jwb: Is this a reasonable statement: "While Microsoft acknowledges having stolen Linux kernel code, it pledges that most of the affected products will eventually be released under a similar license."? No, it clearly is not.
skript kiddie: "Movies are too expensive."
jwb: Don't attend them, and The Man will get the point. Better still, build your own studio, theater, and marketing machine and charge less for the movies you make.
First of all, it's not pirating, it must be known as "unauthorised copying." How did making copies suddenly get confused with treachery and killing on the high seas?
From Webster's 1828 dictionary, the second definition is The robbing of another by taking his writings. I suspect that it is this definition which is being extended to cover music, video, and computer programs.
If unauthorised copying is to stop, it's the copyright holder's responsibility. After all, they're getting a free ride by holding a virtual monopoly on an idea.
You're getting very confused here. The issue at hand is not the idea of a movie, but the movie itself. We're not debating whether it's ok for everyone to make, say, a movie featuring a giant lizard; rather, the question is, is it ok to copy Godzilla?
In the second case, some party has invested a large amount of money in producing a film. They aren't getting a free ride in any way; they produce the film, and then they sell, to you, the right to view the film. You're not purchasing the right to copy or to distribute the film.
If CD's and DVD's actually stuck to realistic prices then none of this would happen, because it wouldn't be economically feasible to download MP3's and VCD's if CD's and DVD's were cheap. I can't believe DVD's cost so much even though the media costs less than a dollar to make.
First of all, they're not selling the media to you, except as a means to an end. If you want to buy the media cheap, avoid getting a copy of "The Matrix" thrown in along with it. And in no way are they inviting piracy by charging so much. This argument is analagous to, say, "He was asking to be killed by being such a jerk!" It holds little water morally, and certainly none legally.
--
Ian Peters
Economic theory is a little bit more complicated, but what you're looking for is this -- in this case, the "risk" of pirating this movie carries a lower cost, in the consumer's eyes, than paying to see the movie in a theater. So they tend to evaluate pirating the movie as the cheaper alternative. This is why they'll pirate movies when it's this easy, but not everyone will rob a bank.
They're right, at this point. Nobody (well, pretty close) gets in trouble for stealing music and video. So of course they'll continue to do it. This doesn't justify it in any way, however.
So in a way you're right about the positive feedback loop, but another way of looking at it is we're failing to adequately inforce the current copyright laws. If the consumers viewed the associated "risk" higher, then they would be less inclined to pirate.
Bear in mind that this is just economic theory, the key word being `theory'.
--
Ian Peters
Bootlegged movies are pathetic. The movie industry should laugh at the idiots who try to smuggle low-quality camcorders into theaters and then make MPEG-2s of the results.
Once digital projection of movies becomes more common, though, movie piracy may become a big issue--if some 31337 haXor d00dZ crack a movie distributor's system and download the (hopefully higher-quality than MPEG-2) film, box-office revenues could plummet dramatically.
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
from what I've read, there are two versions of The Matrix out there.
... and missing.
the funky Z one (which I had) and the mystrious good one.
I just get these movies to see if its worth the 7 bux to me. The theater experience is infinatly better than anything I could ever download.
01 Just my 2 bits
---------------------------------------
The art of flying is throwing yourself at the ground...
I don't believe you understand your audience.
It appears that you consider your audience to be free software users, script kiddies, MP3 listeners, etc. However, your analogy of Linux kernel code to the movie will not work with that audience. The reason that the FS community would be so up in arms about the kernel code getting stolen would be because it was big corporate america trampling all over the little guys. Stealing from movie studios (or music studios) is not the same in most people's mind, because in that case it's the little guy getting back at big corporate america.
So I think you have a decent point, regarding taking copyright seriously, but the fact is that most readers of Slashdot (from other discussions I've read) appear to believe copyright is only good when it protects the little guy from The Man.
Later,
Zach
My
I live in a small country called Brunei in south-eastern asia. Copyright laws don't seem very clear over here, and many shops offer videos and video-cds for about $3US (B$5) that are very often bootlegged or have those classic "Please call 1800-NO-COPYS" message on them. It's pretty much "normal" over here. A pity really.
Hrm, last Friday it was floating around IRC, 2 CD :)
Matrix Video CD set. Here today gone yesterday,
good luck! Huh, too bad my friend never burned
it!
...they also have VCD player attachments for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn. Dunno about the Saturn version, but I know the Playstation version connects via the serial port in the back (where a Game Shark or Game Enhancer would go), with your standard red, white, and yellow RCA jacks on the back to hook up to your TV/receiver/computer. I would assume the Saturn's goes through a similar connector in the back (haven't looked at the back of my Saturn in ages)
Also, for a while, people were using the Vivo file format to compress the movies. I haven't seen a Vivo of any film, but I can't imaging that any 2 1/2 hour movie compressed down to under 300MB would look or sound all that good, regardless of the source material.
futurama? Where? Is it on IRC, usenet??? I want :)
No, I think that you both actually had the same version, unless yours really didn't have a Z in the top left corner. Both versions I saw had a white Z in the corner; mpeg and real video. The image quality was really good in the mpeg, but it was incredibly dark. To the point where you couldn't see what was going on in some parts. The sound was also really screwed up. You had to have an Awe64 or better soundcard, or you heard really crappy sound. I don't know what kind of encoding would only play well on the higher soundcards, but I know that's what happened with that release. They also did some weird stuff with the sizes. The first file was 603 megs, and the second was 683. You'd think they would split the difference and make it easier for us to burn onto cd's, but nooooooo. They had to do it the hard way. It was to dark to make it worth my burning onto cd, anyway. I got it, tried to watch it, and deleted it. I'm pretty sure the real audio was ripped from the mpeg cuz it had the same darkness problems and was released by the same group.
You got the real video version, not the mpeg. The mpeg is much better visual quality, tho still very dark.
I saw The Matrix in the movie theater, and was quite impressed. When someone downloaded the movie in MPEG format, I thought it was pretty cool, so we got a LCD projector and hooked it up to a Windows box, and played it on a big screen. Needless to say, it was awesome to watch on our setup. About 6 people attended our "private showing", and only 2 of those people hadn't already seen it. And 2 of the people who had seen it, saw it more than 1 time. So, in reality, the theaters didn't lose any money. I don't feel bad about it being bootleg, because of that fact.
I'll probably go watch the movie in the theater with those same people we watched the bootleg with!
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Instead, somebody got ahold of "screener" VHS copies of the movies - pre-releases that get shown to test audiences or sent to video stores - then they digitized and MPEG-encoded them. In The Matrix, the only thing wrong was that the "club" scene didn't have the techno background music that appeared in the final version of the movie, and the whole picture was a little too dark. Cruel Intentions looked MUCH better, and since there isn't any fast-moving action or editing, the overall effect was great.
Here's the really cool part - a friend of mine burned Cruel Intentions onto a CD-R, and can now play it on his DVD player because it's technically a VCD. The picture and sound are very good, he saved about 1.2 gigs of hard drive space, and he doesn't have to look at a puny box on his monitor.
The industry shouldn't be worried about this - yet. I think that in about 2 or 3 years, if everybody gets fat pipes, movies that look nearly as good as the theater versions will be readily available on the Net. The industry knows from the MP3 experience that they have something to fear, especially if movies start getting created in an all-digital format. Any sound or video editor (or intern, for that matter) could snag the digital version, take it home, encode it, and post it. Instead of "Star Wars" text spoilers, we'll see actual pre-release footage in all stages of development! Within 5-8 years, all the high-quality codecs and bandwidth could be in place to make this situation very real.
Video stores get copies of movies months before they are released to the public. My friend used to work for one. They aren't allowed to rent these videos, obviously, but the employees and friends get to watch them. Why use a camcorder?
cost of renting the film, paying for labor, rent for the building, cut of sales that goes back to the distributor et al.... The profit does come from concessions.
I totally agree that we'd have better art if the only concern were purely artistic and not monetary, but it takes time to make that art, and artists have to make a living, too. It's far too difficult to do significant amounts of artistic work while working a full-time job. So the upshot is, someone has to PAY these artists to keep them fed and clothed. How should we do that? I think that's a question we need to look into more. I don't know of any really good solution yet.
Btw, this is doubly true in the case of films, which are very expensive to make. There are indy films made on budgets of tens of thousands of dollars, but how could you have something like, say, Star Wars (Ep 1 is an independent film, actually), when they cost millions of dollars to make? You just can't expect people to sink millions of dollars regularly into their work without getting something for it.
Since the people who watch the movies are benefitting from them, it makes sense for these people to pay.
The problem is, I think we'll eventually reach the technological point where information will be so freely available that it becomes impractical (read: impossible) to charge for information. What then?
I don't know. We'll see, I guess.
If you would pay for it if you couldn't get it for free it's wrong.
If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok (illegal tho).
Basically, morals. I see it as stealing if I get a full version game off the internet or burned from a CD and then it's something I use all the time. So if I download something like that, and I use it a lot, I go out and buy the retail version.
If it's something that I wouldn't use if I didn't get it free, then it doesn't matter to me.
My rule is:
Ask yourself, "If I was forced to delete this and never be able to get it for free, would I go out and buy it?"
If the answer is "yes" then I go out and buy it.
*NOTE* I am not saying that this is the way anyone should act, this is just the way *I* see it.
~enucite~
That's what you think is morally correct.
I stated that it was "ok" but noted that it was illegal.
To me, it IS ok.
To you, it's not.
Simple as that.
~enucite~
Yeah. I guess you could say it that way.
I do it because I think it's right.
If they make a POS program that I just downloaded to try out, and I find it amusing, I keep it around to entertain me.
If it's something I actually care about and use (IE a good program) I buy it.
So, yeah, as long as it serves my own selfish interests it's ok.
~enucite~
I took a Lexus from the dealership last night. I couldn't really afford to buy it, but I'd like to see what it's like to drive one. I'll probably return it after a couple of weeks, so there's nothing wrong with that.
1: it IS ok, as long as you tell the dealer you are test driving it. (but he probably wouldn't let you keep it that long because someone else might want it)
2: if there was an infinite supply of Lexuses and you really did just want to try it out, why would the dealer have any problem as long as he's confident you'll like and use the car? (as I said, if I actually use I pay for it)
I wouldn't pay to watch HBO, but I have a converter box that gives it to me for free, so that's okay, too.
Yeah, it isn't taking anything away from them if you really weren't planning on watching it if you didn't have the box.
I didn't like your previous post, so I'm going to track you down and put a bullet through your head. I don't see it as murder if the person I kill annoyed me, so I'm sure you won't mind either.
I think this one kinda goes along with the same Lexus arguement. If there was an infinite supply of me, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But since there IS ONLY ONE of me, I would appreciate it if you just left that SINGLE COPY alone.
~enucite~
Yeah, it's fine - as long as the movie theaters don't follow our local high school's lead and ban the d*mn things! :)
Leilah
~ Leilah
It's going off the fact that statistically most IRC users are windows, using mIRC to boot. Alt-F4 is the standard windows hotkey to close the current application.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Of course they're concerned... why shouldn't they be? After all, as much as I love MP3s, they represent a significant loss of revenue to the people who make the things. As more and more people get on the net and bandwidth gets better, that will only get worse.
With all the babble about "software should be free!" around here, people seem to miss the concept that some things can't be. Any idiot with a computer can grab a copy of Linux and use gcc to make software and distribute it for free... but it takes MONEY to make music and movies. Even "low-budget" flicks anymore usually have multi-millions at their disposal. And the big ones... The Matrix - $63 million? Titanic - $200 million? You think that the studios can afford for piracy to become mainstream?
So, if pirated movies start becoming a big deal, then I think they have a lot to be worried about in terms of their future. Once again, people... if you like something, don't steal it, BUY IT.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Bootleg movies have been available for a long time on the net. I've seen available nearly anything that's new - Titanic, Godzilla, Armegeddon were the popular ones for a while. They had Starship Troopers bootlegged long before it was available in video stores.
Usually people were using the old Vivo format for compressing them. If you have it in like 150px by whatever the file size can be as low as 150MB. For anyone with a network connection to the net that is a fairly reasonable download. In an hour you could see the newest movies without paying a penny.
Why didn't he show off his amazing cheeks? Curse you, WB, for cancelling Freakazoid!
I can't really see the point of this. Yes, its free, but VCD is worse than VHS (at least it doesn't pixellate). Plus the cinema is a great social experience 8-).
"Now if the film is rated NC-17..."
To me, it IS ok.
Breaking the law is OK to you, so long as it serves your own selfish interests? This IS what you're trying to say, isn't it?
However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing.
Based on WHAT? You made a rediculous comparison to the laws governing the treatment of blacks. Guess what...these laws were reprehensible, and they were CHANGED. If you don't like the copyright laws, work to get them changed.
I vaguely remember a class I took in college that discussed Maslow's seven stages of moral development. You can't convince me for a minute that stealing copyrighted material puts you at level seven. I think it's much more likely a case of moral relativism.
What is it that separates the two, then? We are governed by laws, and in most cases, morality implies that these laws are obeyed. There are legitimate reasons for looking beyond the law, but I hardly think that the "convenience" associated with pirating copyrighted material qualifies.
The theater doesn't get to keep the $9. The distributor gets most of the money, leaving the theater with a few dollars.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It is still theft. What you are stealing is not something physically tangible, but it is still someone's intellectual property. If we don't respect intellectual property, we might as well abolish all private property and become communists. Many of us don't like this idea.
--------- Matt
I suppose that you think Blockbuster pays $15 bucks for a movie that they rent too, right? try $90 or more each. Rental shops pay to play.
--------- Matt
When they initially purchase them, they pay more than the initial price...sort of a licensing fee. The video store down the road here charges $CAD90 if you lose the video..they have special markings and stuff on the cassettes to know if you are ripping them off.
--------- Matt
Track 08 - Rob Zombie - Dragula (Hotrod Herman Remix) ;]
--------- Matt
Hmm...well, how do we make any money if anyone has the right to just take our stuff and use it? If everyone does this, then if we want to do things like eat...we would have to have a kind of gov't system which makes sure everyone has the necessities. I know...its a slippery slope argument, but our economy is based on trade secrets. M$, as evil as they are, did not become rich by sharing their work.
--------- Matt
Yeh I was thinking of cutting The Matrix and PM to DVD disks and sending them over to a friend in Asia who probably won't see them for a year after they are here.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Using an ATI input board, I can record over two hours of 352x240 video at 15 fps onto a blank 13 gig hd. I don't think that going faster than 15 fps does any good, the $80 board can't keep up.
The major pain in the ass is the 2 gig file limit of AVI.
I can then use an MPEG encoder and transfer the movie to VCD, which is viewable on my Sony DVD player.
BTW, I once downloaded 1/2 of a movie in VCD, supposedly a telesync. It was watchable, but only barely. It was only worth watching to see whether or not I wanted to see the movie in the theater.
The quality of VHS tapes is also not really good enough to warrant converting movies to VCD, the analog fuzziness combined with MPEG compression produces marginal results. Fun toy though.
Doesn't economic theory state that if the consumers feel the price for a commodity is too high, they tend to find an alternate, lower priced alternative? This is generally the argument against government regulation of gas/oil prices, etc. Does it apply here, as the prime theatres in a city tend to set rates which are all around the same level?
I don't condone theft, but I think this is a positive feedback loop: people steal movies because they're too expensive, then the movie/theatre industry passes these "losses" to the customer. Any thoughts?
æeee!
Wouldn't that just be artifically inflating the perceived value of the item by increasing the risk associated with pirating? My view of movies is that they're currently overpriced right now (probably shared with a lot of people). I've even heard rumours that the cost will go up during the star wars run too!
:)
I've only taken a single course on economics.
æeee!
The Matrix that is floating around is a pre-release version, raw edit. Unmixed audio, so on. But still cool.... :)
I was under the impression that the government was going to outlaw them.
If you would pay for it if you couldn't get it for free it's wrong.
If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok (illegal tho).
I took a Lexus from the dealership last night. I couldn't really afford to buy it, but I'd like to see what it's like to drive one. I'll probably return it after a couple of weeks, so there's nothing wrong with that.
I wouldn't pay to watch HBO, but I have a converter box that gives it to me for free, so that's okay, too.
This is moral?
I didn't like your previous post, so I'm going to track you down and put a bullet through your head. I don't see it as murder if the person I kill annoyed me, so I'm sure you won't mind either.
An awful lot of atrocities have been committed because certain people thought they were "ok" to do.
FYI, it's telecine, not telesync (at least that's what they're called in the industry). These can do what you say, but are VERY expensive. Not car expensive; try house expensive. These are used to go from film --> digital video for CG, DVD, HDTV, etc. Very cool devices. Also works for diferent film formats/emulsions/sizes depending on mdel/cusomizations.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
"look nearly as good as the theater versions"...
That could be a few years off. The mvoie industry hasn't yet figured out how to distributed movies digitally on a practical scale (first digitally distrbuted movie=the new star wars. only to two theaters). Film is very high quality. Think about how big the scan of a _single_ 35 mm picture is (assuming hi-rez, etc). Multiply that by a few hundred thousand, and you have a nearly theater-quality film, minus the sound. How much is a nice, hi-rez image? Let's say 75-100 mb. Even allowing for compression (but not too much; don;t want fossils/mosaics), your near theater quality film is going to be pretty giant. the best one can expect in the near future is "nasty TV quality," which is fine, i guess, if you just want to see the movie, but not so great if you REALLY want to see it (ie, a low-rez version on a computer monitor or TV isn't exactly the best way to watch any FILM, IMHO).
Watching a film this way (and in most "home theater" systems, which are, to be honest, coplete rip-offs that sacrifice audio quality for mediocre gimmicks, but that's another rant) doesn't convey the full effect. Films are meant to be watched in public (yes, the audience matters!), on a big screen, with a good print, and, ideally, with excellent cound/acoustics. If you can do this in your home (ie, you have an in-home screening room) you can come very close to watching a film properly (excepting the audience; but nothing's perfect).
If watching a poor quality movie on a computer screen with mediocre sound is your idea of a good time, don't bother. Go watch TV instead.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
I was selling official VCD's three and a half years ago with a Taiwanese computer company that I worked at part time. I also saw bootlegs around that time too and I wouldn't be surprised if they were around before then.
The only NEW thing is the increasing awareness of HollyWood (and the recording industry, as per the mp3) and the increase in high bandwith providers for the home. Not only do script kiddies hack, they can run files at 800 k/sec.
Combating this issue would have to be at the university end, because the size of the files alone is deterent for most people. However, that presents complications for linux geeks like me who run legitimate sites.
I tend to agree.... the existing infrastructure is the root of the problem, but it exists because these people want to make money, not because they care.
dubbing movies has been around for a long time, just never over the internet. besides, even with a T3 on your end, who's to say the guy's site who's hosting it doesn't have a whopping 128k ISDN? how long would that take at 15k/sec?
sheesh. besides- i understand the universities are having much more trouble with mp3's. maybe a couple dozen have a desire for a 1.2 gig movie, while thousands might be emailing each other a new 9 meg 256k mp3.
So how much space does that require?
What format is prevelant for movie downloads?
With 100Mbps LANs, you could download it faster than you could watch it, even with DVD quality.
I remember when some friends had a copy of The Empire Strikes Back (on Beta, no less) that appeared to be from a camcorder from a drive-in movie theater. That may have been before the word camcorder had even been coined!
It wasn't terrible. I mean, what do you expect from video tape, anyway? It's not even as good as broadcast TV! The only really bad part was when they apparently switched tapes (or had to hide the camera for a minute).
2 good reasons -
1. It costs nothing
2. It comes out way before you can get it on video/DVD
This is nothing new, it's a thriving scene. For example, current VCD releases -
g rey&what=vcd&uploads=last8&dupe=.
http://www.dupecheck.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?color=
(Sorry, I tried to make a link and the script wouldn't accept it without mangling it)
Here's a list of the ways people acquire movies, from an anonymous friend of mine...
(35mm) A transfer from a 35mm print of the film. Usually a digital camera is used. Quality is better than a TeleSync, but not as good as a
screener.
(Cam) Someone literally goes into the cinema with a camcorder and points it at the screen. often the quality is somewhat poor, but always watchable. Usually you can hear people coughing etc.
(Rental) These are videos that were released to the rental shops.
(Sceener) This refers to a promotional copy or work print from the studio. Almost always from VHS, the quality is very high.
(TeleSync) This refers to a professional camera set on a tripod in either an empty cinema or from the projection room. The quality is usually very good.
(Workprint) A workprint is similar to a screener in that it is an official copy from the studio, and the picture and sound is usually of the same high standard. The difference is that a workprint is an incomplete version of a movie, sometimes missing some special effects, the credits, or music, etc.
I get just as angry over people who pirate software, video games, and yes, VCDs.
However I myself have also been guilty of pirate software, and only once, a VCD of the Matrix.
I really hope this won't get me burned =)
I don't believe in pirating video games because I can and do rent them. I don't believe in pirating software, but I do *try* before I buy. It's taken a while, on a student's budget, but I own almost everything now except Adobe Photoshop, which is really expensive but definitely worth the price, and WinZIP, which I just keep forgetting to pay for. Everything else I use on a daily basis, I own. I usually borrow a game from a friend, though these friends seem to have less compunction about pirating vs intelligent consumerism. If a demo exists or it is a well known game, I don't have to borrow at all.
The Matrix seems to be the only real violation of my moral code. Why? Because it's not available yet. If a legal DVD, VCD, or VHS existed for it, I would have bought one the moment I stepped out of the theatre. Why don't I just go back in and watch it again? I would, just for sheer entertainment value, but I especially want to be able to re-watch specific scenes, specific lines, to see the special effects and the fight scenes, the choreography and the dialogue.
There is no spoon.
For those who 'legitamately' pirate, there is hope. There is less need to borrow or steal a copy when more and more online demos and trial versions for games and software exist. Most games are rentable at Blockbusters, so the need to try a console game illegally before buying it is also negligent. Anyone who actually pirates a game has a much different reason, most likely wrong. I think there is one game I'm willing to pirate, and that is an older PSX game that I haven't been able to find, and I've been looking all over the state of CA for the last 2 years. What choice do I have but to pirate at that point?
The problem of pirating video is not as bright. I'd imagine the turnaround time between release and DVD should be shortened as more film goes digital. Would it ruin the movie experience? I don't know, but I would definitely see good movies on a big screen several times, even if I owned it on DVD as well. I don't know that I can speak for anyone else however. I'd imagine the market for the Matrix VCDs is pretty good, and it would be interesting to see if the box office receipts for the Matrix suffer for it. I don't think so, personaly =)
Likewise for the upcoming Star Wars. The day of or after it's release, I'd imagine a VCD would get leaked. Probably a pre-release copy on VCD, from some crafty cinema student at USC or something, what with USC's ties to Lucas, and it's cinema school.
I don't condone pirating or stealing. If you like something, pay for it. If you don't like it, why would you waste the time and effort to download a 2 CD VCD? Same goes for software and games. If you don't like it, don't keep it; it just wastes HD space and CDs.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So here's a question for you, in response to your statement:
The bands whose CDs fall in the upper end of the "mediocre" catagory I listen to on mp3
Why would you spend your recreation time listening to music you wouldn't think worth owning?
For example, you could listen to music you do think is worth owning, right?
I agree with your habits, however; I grab an album or somes songs from an artist, find that I like it, and grab the CD, and proceed to make a better quality set of MP3s for myself. Perhaps different value of time? If it's worth my time to listen to, I usually qualify that as being worth my money to own, and to help encourage the artist/band/group to continue making more music I want to listen to in the future.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I get angry over people who pirate software, video games, and yes, VCDs.
However I myself have also been guilty of pirate oftware, and only once, a VCD of the Matrix. I really hope this won't get me burned =)
I don't believe in pirating video games because I can and do rent them. I don't believe in pirating software, but I do *try* before I buy. It's taken a while, on a student's budget, but I own almost everything now except Adobe Photoshop, which is really expensive but definitely worth the price, and WinZIP, which I just keep forgetting to pay for. Everything else I use on a daily basis, I own. I usually borrow a game from a friend, though these friends seem to have less compunction about pirating vs intelligent consumerism. If a demo exists or it is a well known game, I don't have to borrow at all.
The Matrix seems to be the only real violation of my moral code. Why? Because it's not available yet. If a legal DVD, VCD, or VHS existed for it, I would have bought one the moment I stepped out of the theatre. Why don't I just go back in and watch it again? I would, just for sheer entertainment value, but I especially want to be able to re-watch specific scenes, specific lines, to see the special effects and the fight scenes, the choreography and the dialogue.
There is no spoon.
For those who 'legitamately' pirate, there is hope. There is less need to borrow or steal a copy when more and more online demos and trial versions for games and software exist. Most games are rentable at Blockbusters, so the need to try a console game illegally before buying it is also negligent. Anyone who actually pirates a game has a much different reason, most likely wrong. I think there is one game I'm willing to pirate, and that is an older PSX game that I haven't been able to find, and I've been looking all over the state of CA for the last 2 years. What choice do I have but to pirate at that point?
The problem of pirating video is not as bright. I'd imagine the turnaround time between release and DVD should be shortened as more film goes digital. Would it ruin the movie experience? I don't know, but I would definitely see good movies on a big screen several times, even if I owned it on DVD as well. I don't know that I can speak for anyone else however. I'd imagine the market for the Matrix VCDs is pretty good, and it would be interesting to see if the box office receipts for the Matrix suffer for it. I don't think so, personaly =)
Likewise for the upcoming Star Wars. The day of or after it's release, I'd imagine a VCD would get leaked. Probably a pre-release copy on VCD, from some crafty cinema student at USC or something, what with USC's ties to Lucas, and it's cinema school.
I don't condone pirating or stealing. If you like something, pay for it. If you don't like it, why would you waste the time and effort to download a 2 CD VCD? Same goes for software and games. If you don't like it, don't keep it; it just wastes HD space and CDs.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
They have been sneaking in video cameras for years, it was even on Seinfeld. the only new aspect is the net and campus involvement.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
A friend of mine w/ a large hard drive and a cd burner spends a lot of his time downloading these movies. They're all in VCD format.. and they're not bad quality.. It doesn't seem to me like they were taken from a camcorder..
Oh, and for those wondering.. most movies are distributed on two cds... With the exception of Titanic which I believe was three...
And.. as for the version of the Matrix floating around... There's no soundtrack and a couple of scenes that were left out.. (The cat is never shown)...
There have been reports in various (non Hong Kong offcourse) media reports that the Chinese govt or a corrupt faction of it, is behind the illegal activity.
The piracy does not stop at what is referred to as "head shots" (movies made by hand held cameras), but there are a substantial number of illegal DVDs (duped from LD's) for about 4 to 5$, Audio CDs etc. Makes life bad for me as a collector since I do not know what I am buying, if I buy it in Hong Kong. I tend to order online.
*grin* Don't even attempt to e-mail me asking if I can send you a few samples! ;)
Been seeing them in the market here in Hong Kong since around '94 and '95. Their recent popularity has been due to the proliferation of cheap hardware decoders and encoders. Companies like C- CUBE and a couple of others have targetted chinese manufacturers to sell their chipsets to. You can buy a VCD player in HK for less than US$50 (good quality!). Infact in Shenzhen (across the border from Hong Kong), you can buy a no-brand player and the shopkeeper will be more than willing to stick the decal of any brand name you want on it!
The movie industry does have to worry about it. The distribution channel here in Hong Kong is seriously affected when people can buy the bootlegs for a couple of US$s and avoid the theaters completely. Bootlegs of movies like Titanic etc, have shown up on DVD!
The problem isnt a lot with "geeks with computers", but it is the organised crime factor. The local gangs have awesome production facilities and can dupe the software CD-ROMS, VCDs and DVDs to look exactly the same as the original packaging. These then get smuggled into various "western" markets, where they can sell them as originals..
Once again, the media has found out something the rest of us geeks have known for a long time.. Yes, most VCD's of a movie are a gig or more, but when you have a fat pipe in your dorm, what's the big deal?
:-)
Anyway, I've watched a couple of these.. The quality can be pretty bad at times, and seeing something like the Matrix would totally suck. I can imagine that Starwars will be out the day of, I can also imagine everyone who sees it still seeing the movie in the theatre a few times..
But when it comes to a movie that I really have no desire to see in the theater, I would have no problem watching these..
And most of them are not camcorder'ed versions. A lot of them are snagged by movie employees who have access to equipment that can copy it to a VHS tape in a much nicer way, then those are run thru an Mpeg2 encoder. The sound usually comes out excellent, but oftentimes a bit out of sync.
Is it wrong? Yep. Do the people who watch these movies often care? Nope. I've seen several to see the quality, and because I could. I don't do it all the time because you just can't beat the theater experience. I seriously doubt that the motion picture industry gives a flying crud about this type of piracy, as few currently have the bandwidth to spare.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Yeah, but you were on Disney property -- not having a camcorder is unusual. The pale weirdos from up North wouldn't be caught without one. Even seen them taping the Virgin Megastore there. Taping Bongos, the giant McDonald's, or the enormous world of Disney, OK. But the Virgin Megastore?!
Going off-topic: And please please please, don't say Orlando! I have some friends in Kissimmee, and they get upset when people confuse the area (it bothers me when people say Tampa instead of Tampa Bay -- the Devil Rays play in St Pete, not Tampa...listening, ABC?). All of Disney is technically in Lake Buena Vista, a town that Disney founded, and for which Disney provides fire, phone, and water services.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
People need to remember that the CEO of a media company doesn't "feel the pain" when a company loses money to piracy. Instead, its the administrative assistant at the low end of the totem pole whose job means they can finally afford a decent house in a good neighborhood.
Take a look at your own lives, people. You pour time, effort and, in many cases, money into your creations. Imagine if you had written a piece of software like The GiMP? Ok, it instantly becomes one of the more popular graphics programs. Adobe comes along and changes it into PhotoShop 8. You'd cry hell.
Why is that any different from thousands of people a month running off with a pirated copy of a movie? Looking at ticket prices alone, 1,000 stolen and, hence, unpurchased ticket viewings, priced at $5.50 apiece results in $5500 a month, or $66,000 a YEAR! That's someone (or two, maybe three someones) salary!
--Rant Mode OFF--
Something I did come across that was kind of cool were a bunch of episodes of South Park in real video. I'm no fan of real, but for free I'd be more inclined to watch anything. I mean, I've watched the stupid episode 1 trailer dozens of times, mostly because I want to see if it will ever play without being so choppy. In that sense, the terrible quality SP shows were nice... and I assume I would probably watch low quality movies as well. Of course, we don't have 100 mb Ethernet... Large files (>100mb) take a while over 10mb... well, at least mine, I don't know. I think people will probably watch them more for the novelty than because it's such a great cinematic event. And even though I'm planted in front of a computer for several hours every day, I don't really think people want to sitt on their butts for 2 hours watching some low quality movie (probably not even full screen); to just stare at the screen is torture, I need some kind of interaction. That's why I gave up on TV in the first place.
-----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
Evan
rooooar
Share the wealth... err. college tuition... movies should be a free form of art eventually.
So how much space does that require? What format is prevelant for movie downloads?
The version of the matrix that I watched was a mpeg file. It was about 1.4GB. Someone I knew was sharing it using windows sharing and I was able to watch it over the network. The quality was pretty good except for it was a little dark. There was no music however as the article said. It was definitely not something that someone captured using a camcorder since the movie filled the entire window and there wasn't any border or anything like that around it. I think that it was probably captured off a digital copy since there was a small white Z in the upper left corner and about half way through the movie someone fiddled around with the sound settings and sent all the sound to the left channel and then the right channel before restoring it to normal stereo mode.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Both (:
To start, it's Dragula. Then, when Neo and HotAss, er, Trinity are talking, it's Prodigy.
(:
Er, let me just point out that this kind of thing is by no means new. In fact it has been happening for years (particularly in Japan and surrounding areas, where, I understand that the law isn't quite ***so*** tight on these things!!!). I have a friend who tells me that when she goes back home (Japan), she can buy cheap (bootlegged) VCDs of Films (Titanic - before it came out over here for example). Not good quality so I hardly anticipate Hollywood caring much. If you wanna watch a cheap film, get cable and tune in to all the channels for free - they're ***all*** there - just inside very narrow frequency ranges, get an All in Wonder pro and GATOS and have fun. (Or so I'm told, anyway - he says hastilly :-)
periscope
http://www.jonmasters.org/
I remember seeing a version of Titanic floating around in vivo format. That was actually pretty damn funny because it was an obvious camcorder recording of the movie -- from China. The movie had chinese (I assume) subtitles..
vivo format had it down incredibly small, small enough to fit on a CD, although I can't remember the exact size.. but the vivo format was REALLY bad.
Come to think of it, I've seen the Jerry Springer too hot for TV videos in vivo format too..
Screw this shit, I've had it/I ain't no mister cool./I'm a pig, I'm a dog/Excuse me if I drool./stm
I think my time is worth more than the HUGE number of hours required to download one of these movies. $4.50 for an afternoon flick is a much better tradeoff in my mind. What a complete waste of bandwith and computer time.
> Beside that point, even on a T3, 1.1gig download (size of the Matrix files) is longer than an hour.
Actually, it would take less than 4 minutes, assuming that you didn't have to share the line.
My understanding of the movie theater business is that they break even on ticket sales, the theater's profits come from the concessions stand.
Simple. The cost of goods for a video is a small fraction of the purchase price, and an irrelevant fraction of the rate that the video store pays. What the video store paid $90 for is the license to rent a given videotape, including the cost of producing and distributing that individual hunk of plastic. When you lost the tape, the license didn't go down the toilet. The video store simply was out the plastic box full of magnetic tape that the movie is stored on. When you replaced that box (which you are NOT licensed to rent out, but the video store IS), they were happy. They could have probably gotten a replacement tape from the mfr for a relatively nominal sum, but rest assured that they'd have put the screws to you (and pocketed the difference) if you hadn't replaced the box yourself. Think about it...do you have to buy another copy of a game CD if yours is scratched or damaged? Most software companies will supply you with replacement media for a nominal fee and proof of purchase. You're not buying just software media (be they computer code or movies or CD's or whatever), you're buying the license to use them under certain specific circumstances. Why do you think you can get CD's from CheapBytes for two bucks?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
# So how much space does that require?
approx. 1.2GB - Like someone else said, a 2 CD set =)
# What format is prevelant for movie downloads?
The ones I've seen are mpegs.
Even with a megabit and a half of unshared residential bandwidth, I just can't see myself wanting to spend a couple of hours pulling down an MPEG VCD image of some Hong Kong ShoulderVision version of the latest flick.
Yes, $9 is a whole hell of a lot of dough to scrape up to go see the film in person, but given the difference between a half-decent theater experience (or even a half-decent home theater experience!) and some grainy VideoCD, I think it's worth it to scrape up the cash and risk the customary repeated chair-kickings from the incessantly babbling child behind me.
VideoCD does not have source material quality equivalent to something I would want to own, even for the ostensible free price of DCCing it from EFNet #vcd (never mind that the DCC fserves were amazingly slow when I tried it on a lark... they all seem to reside on home.com or some other poorly-peered network).
In fact, the fserve experience is such a pain the ass that I can't imagine anyone wanting to deal with queueing up 150 little rar'ed-up bits of a grainy SneakerCam VCD anyways! I'd rather just hold out for a few months and cop the LD, and have the flick in nice widescreen with AC-3.
Any theater which can only break even on selling housefuls of $9 tickets needs to seriously reconsider its business model.
Downloading these movies, burning them, and watching them on your home theatre system is more convenient that going out to the movies.
Downloading a couple of hundred little splitty RAR files from an IRC bot is how convenient, again?
Sure, you don't have the social disadvantages of actually going to the theater, but look at what you get:
* Grainy artifacty MPEG video
* not presented in theatrical aspect ratio
* No AC-3
* I'm sorry, but that TV of yours is not a 27' projection screen. Not even close.
I tried the VCD thing to see what all the hype was about, and so far, I've been unable to find a server that can come anywhere close to filling my 150K/sec pipe, and it's royally annoying to deal with all the pippy little split-files that pirates so dearly adore.
So far I've come nowhere close to actually finishing a VCD download, and even if I managed to do it -- which, honestly, if I can't sit through, it's very unlikely that Joe Sixpack will -- the VCDs I've seen out there (mostly HK bootlegs sold in the back of your shady corner VAR shops) are of amazingly poor quality.
I just cannot conceive in any way how it would be worth it to spend two hours fighting an IRC bot, getting piss-and transfer rates [I've *never* seen one of these servers get up above 50K/sec, and I spent a couple of nights hunting], and managing 50+ little fileparts, just to have an MPEG of a film that'll be on LD or DVD in a couple of months anyways. I don't get how people can find the hassle worth it.
Translation: I hated the amount of time and effort it consumed to get anywhere close to acquiring one of these things, and if the experience is generally like that, the payoff just isn't there. Nevermind the ethical concerns.
Because the servers are consistently mobbed and usually hosted on distant and cruddy networks like home.com. I have *never* seen a VCD server get up above 50K/sec, and rarely above 20K.
I've got 1.5 megabit DSL unshared. That means I can hit 150K/sec when the server is willing to get that kind of speed out (and isn't on the far side of alternet) But I spent a couple of bored evenings trying to get a VCD, any VCD, to see what the fuss was about. But ain't nobody serving them that can hit my kind of speed.
At one point I sat down and spent three late-night hours trying to parlay four or five different servers into sending me data fast enough to fill my pipe.
Be realistic, it just ain't all that easy.
And let's be honest, the piles of little RARs are incredibly mindbogglingly annoying.
And DCC offerbots are really irritating. Someone ought to think about using FTP for serious piracy.
Never mind the legal aspects of this, but the technical and practical barriers are high enough that it's a pretty rare person who is willing to put in the several hours of work it takes to gather up a bunch of little RARs from all around the net into a VCD.
The hassle:payoff ratio is far out of kilter here. For all that effort, what do you get? A big, grainy MPEG. I think I'll pass, thanks.
This has just what to do with what I was saying?
My point was that regardless of the legal and ethical concerns, I don't even see what the appeal is to begin with! Not only are you stealing intellectual property, but you are stealing crappy, artifacty, PostageStamp-O-Vision copies of intellectual property! With crummy audio!
{FLASHBACK TYPE=C64}
...oh, Punter protocol, how I miss you...
{/FLASHBACK}
you'd be able to take advantage of the superior TCP/IP stack linux has to offer.
.rar files I guess that answers why you can't handle linux :p
I do every day. I praise Allah for its existance regularly. Doesn't help in this case.
euro VCD site
Bully for you, sir. I'm so impressed with your trading prowess. =P
and if you can't handle
Cute. But it's the coralling of piles and piles of dinky files that I find annoying. Has nothing to do with the merits of RAR over something else. I'd be just as crabby about having to download little ZOO splitfiles, or 180 sharfiles.
Get out to the theaters some time. $9 is not unheard of, $8.50 is not really all that uncommon, and $7 is a rare deal.
No, I saw part of one that was from a camcorder and had all the sound, missing scenes that weren't in the pre-release, ..., ...
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
I don't know about that. On my ethernet here at college, I downloaded a 1.2 gig file in 15 minutes (not off the local subnet either), but I'm not sure what kind of connection we have to the outside world. Seems pretty fuckin' fast though.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
think you're missing one of the key points.
:)
... They claim that "It was more convenient for us to copy this code than to write it ourselves." Would you buy that argument? No. Chances are you'd be bitching about it for years to come. Unfortunately, it's the same thing. What they both boil down to is the theft of intellectual property. Nothing more, nothing less. Only when YOU do it to somebody ELSE, you can justify it to yourself. When somebody else does it to YOU, suddenly they're the most evil people in the world.
Downloading these movies, burning them, and watching them on your home theatre system is more convenient that going out to the movies.
* no noisy people
* no over priced snacks
* perfect seating
* you don't have to meet someone else's schedule
* you don't have to get dressed
I pirate audio CDs for a similar reason - convenience. CDs are a pain in the ass.
All that said, bootlegging movies is still illegal, but it happens.
Ok, assume for a minute that Micros~1 stole the linux kernel code and made it the kernel of Windows 2000. Suddenly Windows is all stable, runs much faster,
I saw a great quote here awhile back, forget who said it: "If you have to justify your actions to yourself, they're probably wrong." Take that advice.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
...and because Taiwan has weak enforcement of foreign intellectual property laws, that automatically makes the market orders of magnitude more unfriendly for small, indie, creators. Small, artists would find that piracy in the Taiwanese marketplace deprives them of their ability to make a living off their work.
Taiwan may be a small enough market that it may not cause a huge impact on foreign copyright holders, but the idea that intellectual property can be done away with is ludicrous, and simply not generalizable. Just as with computers, scalability is an issue for artists as well. A writer who wants to work full time on writing needs to make enough money to support herself. The same goes for a musician, a graphic designer, or any other field where people make their living off IP. If IP is taken away, creation becomes a privilege only for those who can convince large corporations to invest in them, with the hope that they'll make enough money through the sheer quantity of mass distribution; mere mortals generally couldn't independently scale from the amateur to the semi-pro / pro stage without needing to sell out. The Internet may revolutionize the means of mass distribution, but no magic bullet has yet been invented to so revolutionize means of support.
Something I've noticed: cheap cd's (the $1 guys you get at shows, etc) willl work fine in a normal cd and cd-rom drive, but dvd-rom drives don't like 'em. However, TDK's and other nicer cd's work fine..........
Bullshit. I used to think exactly like you--that stealing implied that I took a physical object from someone else. But it doesn't work like that in these cases.
Simply put, you are violating the software's copyright license by downloading it from the latest WaReZ sites. If you did not purchase the software, you do not have the right to run the program.
It's a fine point, but it is a valid one. Software is intellectual property, and by pirating software, you violate these intellectual property rights. Whether you WANT to follow the law or not is irrelevant. You must.
You can rationalize it any way you want ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so there is no lost sale", "It's not like I walked into a store and lifted a box with the CD in it", "I might buy it later if I like it", etc. etc.), but face it: you are committing a CRIME when you pirate software, and you should admit that to yourself.
I myself have my share of "borrowed" software from friends on my computer, as I'm sure a great deal of you do. But the difference is that I realize it's a crime. I'm not trying to fool myself into thinking that I'm not doing anything wrong. Just try to pull that "it's not theft if nothing is missing" crap in court and see how it flies with the judge. Copyright laws are there for a REASON: to protect the rights of software makers.
Hehe. You're missing the point. Intellectual property rights are not meant to restrict the flow of information -- they are meant to protect others from stealing your ideas and claiming them as their own.
Copyright and patent laws are there for a reason. If there were no copyright laws, how would movie companies make any money? Videos could be copied freely and sold on the street for the cost of the tape. Literally anything would be game. This may sound like a dream come true to you, but it's a nightmare that moviemakers live in. Other countries don't have copyright laws or don't enforce them, and you can purchase VCD's of movies on the streets for ridiculous prices. Who does this benefit?
We're lucky we have copyight laws. They make moviemakers want to make movies. Yay capitalism.
You may not agree with the laws, but you still have to follow them. That's how a democracy works. You may not vote for the president or others in office, but because the majority of others did, you must do what they tell you to. That's how ALL governments work -- you give up a certain amount of personal freedom for protection from yourself.
In short, it doesn't matter what you think. The law is the law, and regardless of whether you agree with it, you must obey it. Deal with it.
May be if we abolish the system you described, the only movies that WOULD get produced would be those made "for fun". Isn't that the best of all possible worlds? Imagine - no more movies about dinasaurs, earthquakes or Leonardo Dicaprio.
Do you really think that's the case? That's a bit naive. If you honestly believe that 99% of the movies out today are conceived of, written, and filmed with the sole purpose of making the most money possible, you're just plain dumb. Perhaps the marketers for the studio that released the film think that, but the filmakers, actors, directors, and screenwriters actually LIKE what they do. The vast majority of movies don't do very well. Only a handful every year get enough notice to make the big bucks. But literally thousands of movies are released every year. Why? Is each one of these an attempt to get rich? Moviemaking is not a very lucrative business for most.Real art doesn't require money - people do it simply because it's fun to do. Therefore, if we get commercialism (read copyright protection) out of entertainment, all that will remain is stuff created for fun. If you extend that argument to music, we'd get rid of Michael Bolton, but we'd still have Nirvana and REM. No one in their right mind would spend the time and resources it takes to record an nSync (sp?) album if it didn't pay huge amounts of money. And yet I'm sure that when the Rolling Stones were writing their songs, it was a fun experience for them - they'd probably be doing it even if they didn't have to.
Likewise, many more fail in the music industry than make it. Therefore, there must be some other reason so many try. You're letting your subjective biases get in the way of logic. Your REM is another's Nsync. I listen to a great deal of classical music. Why would anyone want to listen to anything else? Why would anyone waste money producing albums with nothing more than guitar noise? Because enough people like that stuff that it sells quite well. The same goes for Nsync...i don't think they have much trouble filling stadiums with fans to see their concerts. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it's crap. Deal with it.Through most of recorded history copyright didn't exist, so you couldn't really make money from entertainment.
Heh...the reason copyrights didn't exist hundreds of years ago is because there was no NEED for them to exist. There was no way to copy a book except to HAND WRITE another copy, and this task was mainly carried out by monks, who had nothing better to do ( :) ). It wasn't until the printing press was created that we saw the first copyright laws. Likewise with music, the only copies of music were the actual scores. Recordings didn't exist until the late 19th century, so the only way to copy the music was to painstakingly copy the score. When technology created the ability to make copies of books or musical works, copyright laws suddenly appeared. When the technology to make copies of videos appeared, the copyright law was extended to them as well. The latest change in copyright laws happened in 1976 when software piracy became a problem.
You couldn't make money from entertainment? This is basically true...composers had to teach music to make a living, since their works didn't turn much of a profit. But that was largely due to the fact that it was such a pain in the ass to perform a symphony or opera (the major forms of entertainment of the day) and even these were few and far between, not because people could freely copy other's work. Beethoven was the first composer to live off the revenues of his works, and he lived quite poorly a great deal of his life, as did many others who did not want to sacrifice their morals to work for a king (Mozart, for example).
That is why there was no artistic equivalent of the Spice Girls during the Renaissance. Makes you think, doesn't it?
But there did exist a "Spice Girls" in the Renaissance. Bards travelled all over Europe singing their songs in exchange for a nights' stay at an inn or for spare change. They were called troubadors in southern France, trouveres in northern France, Minnesingers in Germany.
The abolition of copyright laws would mean that no one would want to make movies or books or software any more.
If moviemakers knew that all money they spent making a movie would go to waste, who the hell in their right mind is going to spend 5 years and several million dollars to write The Matrix? The Wachowski brothers wrote that movie because they love anime and cyberpunk, not because they wanted to make tons of cash. It just turned out that their ideal vision of a movie appeals to a great many of us, and they are reaping the rewards for it. Good for them.
But your argument that everything released today is purely selfish and profit-oriented is ridiculous.
Once again, you are letting your personal biases get in the way of your logic. If all disaster movies are the same predictable, boring crap, then why does Hollywood create a new one every couple months? Better yet, if everyone thought the way you did, then WHY DO THE DO SO WELL? Obviously, there is a demand for these types of movies. People LIKE them.
So there's a problem. This means that in a world without copyright restrictions, only the intensely popular bands could make it. No more indie bands releasing homemade CD's recorded from their garage hoping to make enough money to support themselves enough to make more music -- only Nsync and the Spice Girls and all the other super popular crap would exist, because all of the other bands wouldn't be able to make enough money to support theirselves. Maybe you will donate to the lesser-known bands, but they will most likely have to go back to their day jobs.
So maybe the government would intervene, giving government subsidies to music makers. This system might work, but it would mean higher taxes, which no one wants. You don't want to pay to support crap bands, and neither do I.
So what we need is a way to force morality onto people. We need a way to make people pay the $15 for a CD, even if it's available for $1 on the street. How do you propose to do this? The only surefire way I can think of is to make those street copies illegal. In short, copyright laws.
What a poorly-written article. Not practical to download a movie on a modem as it would take from a "few hours to . . ." A few hours? Four hours, on a 56k modem getting an optimal 5k a second, gives you 72 megs. Enough for about ten minutes of film, and that's about it.
adum
Well, the file size kinda depends on the format. I found a copy of the Matrix in Real Video G2 format that was just under 400MB (384 if I remember right). I downloaded the first couple megs of it just to see what kinda of quality it was (no way in hell I'm gonna DL 384MB on my 56k dialup), and it seemed to be excellent quality (400k/s encoding I think). However, I don't understand why people would want to watch movies on their PCs. If they had a TV tuner card or something and were watching playback from a VCR, that's one thing, but encoded video that's not even full screen? That and I think that having to switch CDs in the middle of the movie would be a pain.
Down here in Orlando at Disney West Side (Pleasure Island) they have a huge 24 theater AMC joint, well anyways, while back I was chillin with friends and we had a camera with us, just filming craziness and what we did basically. We went to see a movie, and (with the camera around my neck) I bought the ticket, passed by the ticket taker, got food at the snack bar, passed the usher outside the doors to the theater, LEFT the theater to go to the restroom, AND RE-ENTERED with an usher walking NEXT to me! Crazy! I taped about 2 minutes of the movie (Truman Show at the time) but I really didn't have much tape left and the night was still young heh. --- Chad * How about never? Is never good for you?
only outlaws will have trenchcoats
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
nothing better than news created by news...and blaming the internet for sex and violence as well.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
uh huh...he said TARD.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Poorly written article. I think this is my favorite bogus claim:
"While a song in MP3 format can be downloaded in a few minutes, it would take hours or even days to download a movie using a typical telephone connection to the Web."
Yeah right. Who on a 56K d-up connection can download anything more than a brief Beavis & Butthead clip or the Looney Tunes intro song in "a few minutes?"
Beside that point, even on a T3, 1.1gig download (size of the Matrix files) is longer than an hour.
But something's missing here... I have not seen any comments to the tune of the mp3 argument... If a person did not have to plan on spending $20 to see a movie with a coke and some popcorn, perhaps this would not be so prevalent. We say CD prices are inflated... $3.00 for a MEDIUM coke!? I mean I know I can get a large for ONLY $.25 more, but come on. Is it any wonder people sneak in food of their own, or that there is a bootleg movie market and has been for a long time? Simple formula... if it's not free people will bootleg. If it's overpriced, people bootleg out of spite.
/Sig/
profits from the concession stands??? you've got to be shitting me!
And it does not suprise me that theaters break even on the tickets. When one considers how much is spent not in making the movie, but in inflating the actors' and actress' already overflowing pocketbooks and wallets! Is it just me, or does it seem hard to believe that these people get millions for working anywhere between a few months months and a year (only for the big epic films though)? Sorry about the ranting here, but it is the same problem that's happening with sports... the big names are getting paid too much to have fun and the fans take it in the rear. I want someone to try to convince me that Keannu is a good enough actor to be worth the money he makes.
And agents don't count. They're even worse than the talent they push. They are like remora... they would die but for others talents to feed off.
/Sig/
In this day and age why can't we watch new movies at home? I think the day of the theatre is about over. It started up when no one could fathom watching anything at home. Today, a lot of people have a home entertainment system that puts some theatres to shame.
I found myself searching the net for The Matrix because I really want to see it. I have no problem paying $5.50 (local theatre's cost) to do so, but I'm not interested in blowing an evening to get to the theatre. Besides, I hate the places. I want to make all the noise I want, put my feet up, eat food that doesn't cost half my pay check, etc.
Bottom line is, with all this technology, when can we start viewing new movies at home? Why wait until 3-6 months after the screening and another couple months if you want to own it. I want to download/buy/rent a movie the day it is released and I'm willing to pay for it.
As it stands now, they ain't getting my money for The Matrix. If they made it so that I can watch it at home, they would. I think it is up to the movie industry to recognize that they are missing the boat.
Intelectual property rights is totally bullshit! We all depend on knowledge invented centuries ago. IPR is preventing the continued natural evolution of mankind.
-- Tov Are Jacobsen
I watch movies for $3.75. I rarely pay more than $4.00. If I go to an evening show (which is rare, I prefer matinees on weekends), it's never over $6.50. You must live in an area which has only one or two theaters, owned by the same company, so they can charge whatever they want. We have dozens here in Miami, FL.
I saw this unfold on hotline this past week or so. I don't think people realize how big this has become. I have seen about 30 movies online including ones that haven't even been released yet like the mummy preview. At about 1.2 gigs per movie though, this is definately not a thing for the masses. I guess after mp3's, this was the next natural progression.
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
The bootlegging of movies while still in theaters is not at all a new practice. They have been selling such movies here on the streets of NYC for years. A a matter of fact, there was a Curtis comic strip about it nearly 8 years ago, if i remember properly.
.mpg or .dat ending. They can be viewed in some laserdisc players and some dvd players on regular tvs, or as mpeg files on a computer. I believe that they are done in 320x240, which is the standard for NTCS in the states. They aren't that bad wither ;) Just look around online for a bit, and you can find out tons of info on VCDs...
The VCD (Video CD) trade has been around for nearly as long, since the format's introduction (I believe it was by Philips.) Only since the recent proliferation of high bandwidth connections hs the trade moved from hardcopies of VCD bootlegs to transferring the files (always over 1gig) over the net. Just hop onto EFNet and search for rooms with VCD in the title, there must be at least 20 at any given time.
The VCD culture is actually quite diverse, as are the qualities of the films. Though many are poor quality recordings of theater releases, there are also:
telesyncs - supposedly a special rig set up by which one can transfer directly from 35mm to video
workprints - prints used by production companies to preview movies among prosucers, etc.
screeners - similar to workprints, but usually the finished film
They are recorded in mpeg format, and they usually have a
-- "the revolution will not be televised" -Gil Scott-Heron
Property in ideas is an insoluble contradiction. [He who complains of "theft" of his idea] complains that something has been stolen which he still possesses, and he wants back something which, if given to him a thousand times, would add nothing to his possession.
-- H. Rentzsch, Geistiges Eigenthum, 1866.
Isn't this nothing new, really? I've run into occasions where I've seen and heard that several bootleg movies are available for download. A widely publicized site running off a campus in Ohio had the japanese bootleg of Titanic last year (with English subtitles). Another site in the US also made Armageddon available this past summer.
I don't get it. Those files have to be huuuuuge. With a decent compression, maybe, what...1.5 gigs for an hour and a half, two hours?
Nutty...
What you are taking is the revenues to the company that produces it. Don't forget that they have to recover costs, and profits, if they are to keep making movies in the future (they aren't in the business for fun). Stealing copies increases the costs to the company, and they will certainly pass that along to the consumer (THAT'S YOU!!!).
May be if we abolish the system you described, the only movies that WOULD get produced would be those made "for fun". Isn't that the best of all possible worlds? Imagine - no more movies about dinasaurs, earthquakes or Leonardo Dicaprio.
Real art doesn't require money - people do it simply because it's fun to do. Therefore, if we get commercialism (read copyright protection) out of entertainment, all that will remain is stuff created for fun.
If you extend that argument to music, we'd get rid of Michael Bolton, but we'd still have Nirvana and REM. No one in their right mind would spend the time and resources it takes to record an nSync (sp?) album if it didn't pay huge amounts of money. And yet I'm sure that when the Rolling Stones were writing their songs, it was a fun experience for them - they'd probably be doing it even if they didn't have to.
Through most of recorded history copyright didn't exist, so you couldn't really make money from entertainment. That is why there was no artistic equivalent of the Spice Girls during the Renaissance. Makes you think, doesn't it?
The vast majority of movies don't do very well. Only a handful every year get enough notice to make the big bucks. But literally thousands of movies are released every year. Why? Is each one of these an attempt to get rich? Moviemaking is not a very lucrative business for most.
The reason most of them try is the same reason people play the lottery - they have a small chance to win big. This is not a good motivation to make art. This motivation wasn't available to artists through most of history, and art didn't seem to suffer for it.
If you honestly believe that 99% of the movies out today are conceived of, written, and filmed with the sole purpose of making the most money possible, you're just plain dumb. Perhaps the marketers for the studio that released the film think that, but the filmakers, actors, directors, and screenwriters actually LIKE what they do
I actually don't think so. How can you LIKE making another disaster movie? I mean, it's predictable and boring. In my opinion, for most people it's a job that they have to do rather than a way to express their thoughts.
The abolition of copyright laws would mean that no one would want to make movies or books or software any more.
You contradict yourself earler by saying that neither Mozart nor Beethoven were motivated by making money. And as anyone using Linux knows, software that can be copied freely can be better then software released under conventional licenses.
Your mistake is that you're confusing creative endeavors with boring ones. You DO have to pay people to work on an assembly line or in accounting offices because those lines of work just don't provide the kinds of mental stimulation that could make them fun. But as anyone who can play a guitar knows, making music IS fun. By paying millions for it you're just inviting people who would never have gone there in the first place (enter the Spice Girls, Nsync, etc.). By taking something that was fun (art), and turning it into a profession, you make Nsync possible, since they are a copy of a copy of a terrible boy band. Copying (just like working on an assembly line) isn't fun, so you have to conclude that the only reason such bands get formed is the possibility of making money from them.
As you rightly point out, movies are different, simply because it takes so much money to make them. My solution is something like the BBC, which has been making quality movies and television for decades with financing by the government. If I have a choice between them and what Hollywood produces, I'd choose a good British movie every time.
My solution is something like the BBC. It's a government financed institution that has been making great movies and television for many years. IMO, we need an organization like that in the US.
No one would be able to "make it" in the monetary sense, just like Mozart wasn't able to "make it" in his time. That would instantly eliminate most of the crap, since money is the only reason such groups exist. It's the indie bands who will stay, admittedly poor, but artists throughout history have prided themselves on being poor. That's the price you pay for not having a boring, repetitive job. And for many people that price is worth paying.
P.S. Is this a long thread or what?
Speaking as a former BB Video employee, Nearly 90% of movies bought by the chain run in excess of $100. This is how the Studios can make money. You pay $3.00 for the rental so 30 rentals before a copy actually turns a profit for BBV. Usually takes anywhere from 3 weeks to over 6 months for an invidual copy to return the investment. But, I am not figuring in cost of doing business or that.
Usually, they get marked down after a while to be sold as a "Previously viewed movie" If you buy one of these, BBV is happy. If you replace it, BBV is happy, if you do not, BBV sends the creditors out. Also send them out if you have more than $20 in late charges usually after 90 days. Just to let yall know.
RB
(52) Wrongfully accused
.....
The list goes on even more. Why pay to watch this shit? -- Download my friends. Download.
#vcd2k will live forever!
wow. you're stupid.
Uhm.. :P
;)
Speaking from actually seeing one of these files myself.. About that big for a 2 hour movie.
Thanks to the world of cablemodems, it only takes a few hours to download =)
Wait until we all have enough bw to stream these from sites
Hehe, the poor saps. I love my college Ethernet connection. Ive seen up to 4M/s.
-Sarkis-
"Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."
Actually, they won't pass the costs on to the consumer. Basic economics; Companies WILL charge as MUCH as they can get for something. Prices have nothing at all to do with actual production costs. We live in America, not Cuba.
If indeed, software is intellectual property, I want you to try a little experiment. Call up Microsoft telling them that you lost your Windows 98 CDROM and ask them to ship you a new one for only the costs of shipping the CD ($1.01) and the blank CD ($1.00). They'll laugh in your face. Try it with your favourite record company too, you'll get the same response.
If, indeed, we're purchasing the right to USE an item instead of the actual item, they should ship us another, but the fact of the matter is that copyright is bullshit.
The entire basis of Copyright laws is in the Constitution itself. Part of Article I, Section 8 says that "[Congress shall have the power] [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
I ask you, how are movies, computer games, and music either useful or Scientific?
Furthermore, to Milkman Ken who seems to think the entire basis for our actions should be based on what is legal or not legal, I ask, do you ever exceed the speed limit? Is your level of moral development so retarded that your morality is decided by the whims of an out-of-touch, philandering, and corrupt congress? It was a crime to harbor Jews in Nazi Germany, it was a crime for William Wallace to fight for Scottish freedom, it was a crime for the operators of the underground railroad to help escaped negroes, it was a crime to pour the Tea into Boston Harbour! True moral development can't be legislated.
Oh yeah, you said that "Whether you WANT to follow the law or not is irrelevant. You must."
Why must I?
Basic economics: Companies charge whatever people will pay, their is no relationship between prices and actual cost.
Fine, all sorts of people are skeptical of the impact of bootlegged movies.
But wait until Phantom Menace gets bootlegged. Then things will get insane...it can be dropped on two CDs and played on any updated computer...
It's funny to see this now; it occured to me given the influence of the download of the trailers has had, that the bootleg of star wars was even more likely.
Just wait until security camera footage from some national crime scene hits the net.
On the bright side, the pundits predicting the end of civilization due to the corrupting influence of the net would probably keel over and die of a stroke at the thought of thousands of high school and college students watching footage of mass murder that they downloaded from the net. It's almost a rumor worth starting just to see who's the most credulous.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
OOoookay, buddy. I'm sure it was simply peachy back in the "good ol' days." Welcome to the digital age. Though your basement super-8s were probably of better quality than what these goobers are watching, I don't believe the movie industry is about to let the whole MP3-recording industry fiasco happen to them.
"Secure MP3? What kind of use is that for me? I cannot work with that."
That's great. It's real tough to work with. Okay, I understand that want to trade illegal mp3s over the internet. Hell, I do it. But if it all comes crashing down, don't complain. This isn't your music to own.
jake
Hah! I've got it (The Matrix) on my website at www.ryans.dhs.org Don't bother trying it, I put it up for my friends only. It's a pretty common thing around here. Oh, and our local traffic won't ever make it off our ether segment, so who cares? A million spams indeed. BTW, I actually haven't watched the mpeg, just the Real Thing(tm)
I have fractional T3 during the school year and will use it all.
http://www.ryans.dhs.org
Academia in the dorms? Surely you jest! Only mp3s, movies, and porn.
:)
Anyway, I've decided to open up my site to anyone. http://www.ryans.dhs.org/matrix
Now I guess I am using everybody's bandwidth
Enjoy.
http://www.ryans.dhs.org
make that http://www.ryans.dhs.org/matrix.htmlr yans.dhs.org
http://www.
That still does not change the fact that you are stealing intellectual property
~ rt ~
Very simply. Just because there is no physical theft taking place, there is still loss to the company.
When the company produces the movie, they incur huge costs. They have the absolute right to distribute that movie in any way they want, and to charge however much they want. If they don't want to distribute it digitally, they have a reason.
That reason is as follows: they get different amounts of revenue (per viewer) at different times. The most profitable is the initial release in the theatres. Next is the pre-video sales (in hotels, on PPV cable, etc), and then comes the video release. Following that much later is the TV release. All this you may know already. What this does is gets the people who really want to see the movie, and are most willing and able to pay for it, to see the movie first.
When the population is able to view the movies before the above schedule, then the value of the schedule is diminished. Sure, perhaps you would never watch the movie anyhow, or you plan to rent it when it comes out on video.
What you are taking is the revenues to the company that produces it. Don't forget that they have to recover costs, and profits, if they are to keep making movies in the future (they aren't in the business for fun). Stealing copies increases the costs to the company, and they will certainly pass that along to the consumer (THAT'S YOU!!!).
Of course, all this applies to MP3's in a roundabout way.
~ rt ~
Just because it is illegal does not mean it is right. Theft is not just a legal consideration, instead it is taking something that does not belong to you without permission.
Just because the theft is not prosecuted in your jurisdiction (and I doubt that you are exempt from international laws), does not make it okay. It still does not take away from the fact that you are *STEALNG* when you watch a bootleged VCD or MP3.
~ rt ~
We have one of those $.99 stores right next to the main theater in town so we go load up or pockets with crap then walk in all the time. Great fun. You'd hafta have a big coat or a chick with a purse for a camcorder.
Right you are, movies have been bootlegged this way for almost forever.
:)
I hear Japan is extremely corrupt with respect to bootlegging. Same goes with the console games. I think Canada has similar problems (if you consider that a problem).
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Infect: Email me. Im curious to see for myself just how shitty or cool these are. I have a feeling they're crap. (Lets make that strong feeling) And besides, if I like the movie, I always buy the DVD.
A friend gave me the movie. 1.1 gigs in Mpeg over two files. Looks good in full-screen, although it's overly dark and the sound isn't the best. Nevertheless, I don't think it was recorded in a movie theatre - the aspect ration is 4:3 and there are no typical theatre sounds or anything else that would indicate that.
My best guess is that whoever uploaded it got it when the video release for the movie was being created.
If you'd stop using winblows to download then you'd be able to take advantage of the superior TCP/IP stack linux has to offer. Another option is to stop being so lame and get on a decent site. I'm on a euro VCD site and get 600 - 700k per second. I download a VCD in no time at all, and if you can't handle .rar files I guess that answers why you can't handle linux :p
-=Redir
I happen to have some interesting insight on the RIAA... Basically you have suits that have never been on the net, (unless they were at disney.com with their kid) and they don't understand that the people that presented them with "evidence" of piracy made those .mp3 files for them. They don't understand what they have to go through to get decent ones, and that it certainly isn't something mainstream or even close to it. They see the threat as some surreal royalty stealing cookie monster, not as a few people snagging a single from time to time. [hehe excuse my while I exagerate the downloading of mp3's to make my cause seem less blightful on the RIIA]
-=Redir