I have two nearby Movie Galleries. When a new movie is released to video in rated and unrated versions, they always buy the rated version and rarely buy the rated version
Odd, MovieGallery is my favorite place to buy used DVDs because, in the Northeast at least, they always get the unrated versions and rarely, if ever the rated ones. They run these quarterly "buy 2 get 2 free" sales, brings my average price under $7.50 per disc, sometimes way under (I picked up Queer as Folk Season 1 for about $20).
Recently I purchased these unrated versions at MovieGallery: Harold & Kumar go to White Castle Anchorman King Arthur Chronicles of Riddick Species III
Well the fact that I'm forced (they disable the menu button) to sit through 5 minutes of advertisements for other recent releases on a Blockbuster rental proves that they do some modification to the film and it is not the same as a purchased DVD.
You don't buy many DVDs do you? Forced previews have become all too common and it is not at all confined to rental DVDs - you get it on regular store-bought versions too - because they are THE SAME. Disney, especially, is notorious for doing it but they are far from alone in the practice.
So, once again, an anecdote plus zero research proves nothing. So far not one person has posted a link to any kind of verified report of this editing ever happening. And you know what? No one will because it does not happen. It's an urban legend. Go search the archives of alt.folklore.urban and alt.folklore.science - the topic comes up plenty and it is always resolved the same way as I stated in my original response.
It's mentally comfortable for slashdotters to believe that blockbuster makes their own edits, but it just is not true.
That's not true. Just proclaiming that don't doesn't make it so.
You do realize the irony in your statement, right? I spent 10 minutes in google and google grou[s looking for supporting evidence of your claim about "Black Sheep" and not find a single mention of it.
Did you compare the video of the Black Sheep you rented from Blockbuster with one from another source? Changes between the theaterical release to the official home video release happen all the time. For example, see Terminator 3 -- the widescreen DVD is missing boobies that were shown in the theater and are, oddly enough, on the fullscreen version (and it ain't open matte). But it doesn't matter if you got your DVD of T3 from BBV or Amazon, they are all the same content.
So far lots of hearsay, but zero supporting evidence for the "censorship happens" side. This is an old urban legend that most likely is the result of confusing Wal-Mart's getting specially edited versions of music CDs and using guilt by association to apply the same reasoning to BBV's DVDs (BTW, while Wally World may still do this with the occasionally ultra-popular but 'offensive' CD, they have never done it with DVDs.)
As I've purchased over 500 used DVDs from Blockbuster since 2000 I have just a little more knowledge of this topic than most.
If what you say is the case, you should be able to find some substantive supporting evidence on the net, something better than anecdotes from ACs. Go ahead and post it.
Meanwhile: There had been reports of Blockbuster doing its own internal censorship which are apparently false. http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Blockbu st er
"Blockbuster Video has no plans to carry these products," said Blockbuster spokesman Blake Lugash. "We don't edit or censor any of the films we carry in our store and we try to carry the theatrical versions." http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54759,00. ht ml
Question: Does BLOCKBUSTER censor its movies? Answer: We do not edit or otherwise alter movies ourselves. We leave the methodology as to how ratings are applied specifically and completely to the studios involved. We are retailers and not members of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), so we take no position on individual scenes or the overall artistic merits of a film. We are not in the content business. http://blockbuster.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/blockbus te r.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=239
Everybody brace yourselves, make for darker ground if you can. We should all know by now that a huge star quake will probably generate a huge lightwave tsunami.
You see, there are a number of titles in the BBV catalog with surprisingly good prices. I would like to purchase them at the surprisingly good price. I prepay up front for special orders of these titles. But more often than I would like, some manager takes it upon themselves to "renegotiate" the price once the special order actually arrives, this is despite already having taken my money.
I need a BBV manager who does not think it is his burden alone to save BBV a buck and screw over a smart shopper. Are you in the Northeast anywhere?
Just to prove I know what I'm talking about, next time you are at work, look up the BBV price for SCTV volume 1 and volume 2, then compare them with the BBV price for volume 3 and what dvdpricesearch.com has listed for all three titles.
I stopped going to Blockbuster and Rogers Video after I found out that they perform their own censoring and scene-removal on films.
Well, you are pretty stupid then because they don't do that.
The worst Blockbuster has done is refuse to carry NC-17/unrated versions and thus put pressure for the studios to release R-rated cuts. IN the last year or two, that policy seems to have ended as I've seen a number of NC-17 and unrated DVDs are corporate owned blockbusters, including "The Dreamers" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien" as well as more mainstream flicks like, "American Wedding Unrated," etc.
Having never heard of Rogers Video I'm sure their miniscule presence in the rental market means that they don't have the resources to make their own cuts and they aren't big enough to really put any pressure on the studios either.
> Disabled US vets 10 yrs after Viet Nam: 10% > 12 yrs after Gulf War: 89% > Stop uranium inhalation poisoning!
There is NO WAY that 89% of Gulf War vets are disabled. That would be about 650,000 people and so obvious that no matter how fascist this country has become it would still be all over the news.
According to this article the number is actually about 200,000. That's still very high at about 28% but nowhere near 89%.
but companies (including small-time operations) have done it in the past without the benefit of the monopoly power.
That is one unsupportable statement. Really, it is a BIG maybe. The other problem with it is that it does not take into account my original point in that there is not enough resources available - pole space is limited and getting easements is hard enough for a single company, no way 5-10 are going to be able to do that.
As for wireless, the bandwidth used for Wi-Fi is not regulated currently
Yes it is, maximum legal transmission power is very low. Nowhere near enough to run an ISP with any reasonable area of coverage or bandwidth.
You forget the reasons public utilities are monopolies today.
Limited amount of space on the poles and the difficulty in getting the necessary easements across private property. Wireless has similar problems in that available frequencies are limited by the FCC and without that regulation, there is nothing to prevent someone from stepping all over your traffic.
Plus, what do you purpose is done with the current infrastructure? ILECs like to act like they own it, and some have been able to get laws passed that say they own it, but for the most part the infrastructure is a public trust maintained by the ILECs.
Because, by virtue of their control and perceived ownership of the physical infrastructure they will have an inherent advantage over other ISPs. There are plenty of stories of local ILECs messing with the lines used by competing ISPs - switching their customers over to known bad pairs, and lots of opportunity to do "higher level" bad things like reduce the amount of equipment maintence to areas with a high percentage of competitor ISP subscribers. The kind of thing that regulation is the only way to enforce does not happen, and then you back with regulation again.
That's going to mean that the telco can't be an isp. Probably the same for the cableco. I think that ultimately, that would be the right thing to do too, neither industry is going to accept that without a huge fight.
Courts aren't going to help you with that at all. The copyright on information belongs to the writer, not the subject of the piece. Just think what your copyright concept would do to the news media...
It isn't nearly as simple as that.
Photographers require a release from models they shoot, similarly with tv shows (watch any of those reality shows and you'll occasionally see people who were filmed but would not sign a release, their faces and any other personally identifiable information is blurred out). So while copyright in the photo or film is owned by the shooter, I believe that it is considered a derivative of the subjects themselves. There could easily be a specific section of the copyright code that deals with this as a special case, I just don't recall any.
So, I think it is reasonable to consider personal records as a rough equivalent of a photograph of that person as they certainly are derived from the actual personal details that in part make up that person. (Then we get into the sticky territory of copyrighting facts.)
I am usually a staunch supporter of Vonage and other VOIP providers to run their business without federal regulation and I admire the business that they built, but they should not be given the benefit of FCC shilling on their behalf.
Ultimately this battle is not about the FCC sheltering Vonage's business model. It is about regulating the public utilities that have been given a monopoly market. Most people have a maximum of two or less choices for high-speed provider - telco or cableco.
As public utilities with monopoly market control granted to them by the local governments (two providers is an oligopoly which is for most intents and purposes just another kind of monopoly) they are not subject to normal "free market" forces. Thus regulation is necessary to ensure that the public is not suffer from abusive business practices that would never fly in a true free market.
Blocking Vonage's traffic is a perfect example of the ISP (ab)using their monopoly status in one market (high-speed access) to try to gain an advantage in another (voip). That is defintely anti-free market and if it isn't illegal, it really needs to be.
that Vonage et al don't want to be taxed like telephone companies, but want the same (FCC) protections as to access to the network?
I'm pretty confident that Yahoo and Google would prefer not to be taxed like telcos, but if a bunch of ILECs started blocking all traffic from/to Yahoo and Google and the ILECs' customers they would raise holy hell about it too.
In other words, the content doesn't matter. This is the internet, bits are just bits.
That 90-days thing must be the difference, mine is still in place around 10 years later. 10 years ago they probably didn't even have the short-term version. Really kind of stupid to have a short-term one though, if your info was snatched, all the thief has to do is sit on it for 6 months...
See if you can get the police report documenting the theft. Once you have that in hand, you can contact the major credit reporting agencies (Experian, etc) and have them put a hold or fraud-alert on your records. The result will be that anytime anyone applies for credit in your name (or in this case, you parental unit's name) the creditor will get a message that says not to issue any credit until confirming with you directly at the phone number on the credit report. Not fool-proof, but orders of magnitude better than the default of not having any protection at all.
In my opinion, this is the way it should work all the time for everyone. But it doesn't -- you must have a police report (or probably some other similarly official document) to prove that you are now at risk of identity theft. Otherwise they won't do a thing for you.
I found out about this when my wife had her purse stolen. We lost about 50 dollars and the typical girl crap in a woman's purse, but we got to put holds on both of our credit reports at all the agencies. That was close to ten years ago, but the hold is still in place. I believe it was $50 well spent and I thank the thief for doing what he did.
Hey, someone almost asking for me to post my favorite quote:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
While the actual author of that quote is almost certainly Giovani Gentile (a political philosopher from whom Benito borrowed liberally), it's close enough for slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I have two nearby Movie Galleries. When a new movie is released to video in rated and unrated versions, they always buy the rated version and rarely buy the rated version
Odd, MovieGallery is my favorite place to buy used DVDs because, in the Northeast at least, they always get the unrated versions and rarely, if ever the rated ones. They run these quarterly "buy 2 get 2 free" sales, brings my average price under $7.50 per disc, sometimes way under (I picked up Queer as Folk Season 1 for about $20).
Recently I purchased these unrated versions at MovieGallery:
Harold & Kumar go to White Castle
Anchorman
King Arthur
Chronicles of Riddick
Species III
Well the fact that I'm forced (they disable the menu button) to sit through 5 minutes of advertisements for other recent releases on a Blockbuster rental proves that they do some modification to the film and it is not the same as a purchased DVD.
You don't buy many DVDs do you? Forced previews have become all too common and it is not at all confined to rental DVDs - you get it on regular store-bought versions too - because they are THE SAME. Disney, especially, is notorious for doing it but they are far from alone in the practice.
So, once again, an anecdote plus zero research proves nothing. So far not one person has posted a link to any kind of verified report of this editing ever happening. And you know what? No one will because it does not happen. It's an urban legend. Go search the archives of alt.folklore.urban and alt.folklore.science - the topic comes up plenty and it is always resolved the same way as I stated in my original response.
It's mentally comfortable for slashdotters to believe that blockbuster makes their own edits, but it just is not true.
That's not true. Just proclaiming that don't doesn't make it so.
You do realize the irony in your statement, right? I spent 10 minutes in google and google grou[s looking for supporting evidence of your claim about "Black Sheep" and not find a single mention of it.
Did you compare the video of the Black Sheep you rented from Blockbuster with one from another source? Changes between the theaterical release to the official home video release happen all the time. For example, see Terminator 3 -- the widescreen DVD is missing boobies that were shown in the theater and are, oddly enough, on the fullscreen version (and it ain't open matte). But it doesn't matter if you got your DVD of T3 from BBV or Amazon, they are all the same content.
So far lots of hearsay, but zero supporting evidence for the "censorship happens" side. This is an old urban legend that most likely is the result of confusing Wal-Mart's getting specially edited versions of music CDs and using guilt by association to apply the same reasoning to BBV's DVDs (BTW, while Wally World may still do this with the occasionally ultra-popular but 'offensive' CD, they have never done it with DVDs.)
As I've purchased over 500 used DVDs from Blockbuster since 2000 I have just a little more knowledge of this topic than most.
If what you say is the case, you should be able to find some substantive supporting evidence on the net, something better than anecdotes from ACs. Go ahead and post it.
u st er
. ht ml
s te r.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=239
Meanwhile:
There had been reports of Blockbuster doing its own internal censorship which are apparently false.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Blockb
"Blockbuster Video has no plans to carry these products," said Blockbuster spokesman Blake Lugash. "We don't edit or censor any of the films we carry in our store and we try to carry the theatrical versions."
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54759,00
Question: Does BLOCKBUSTER censor its movies?
Answer: We do not edit or otherwise alter movies ourselves. We leave the methodology as to how ratings are applied specifically and completely to the studios involved. We are retailers and not members of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), so we take no position on individual scenes or the overall artistic merits of a film. We are not in the content business.
http://blockbuster.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/blockbu
Rogers Video is the largest movie rental company in Canada
That still makes them teeny-tiny compared to the big boys, they have less than 300 stores - BBV has about 7500 and Hollywood Video has about 2000.
Even including their cable franchaise they have all the leverage of a spec of lint.
Huge Star Quake Rocks Milky Way
Everybody brace yourselves, make for darker ground if you can. We should all know by now that a huge star quake will probably generate a huge lightwave tsunami.
I need a disgruntled BBV manager.
You see, there are a number of titles in the BBV catalog with surprisingly good prices. I would like to purchase them at the surprisingly good price. I prepay up front for special orders of these titles. But more often than I would like, some manager takes it upon themselves to "renegotiate" the price once the special order actually arrives, this is despite already having taken my money.
I need a BBV manager who does not think it is his burden alone to save BBV a buck and screw over a smart shopper.
Are you in the Northeast anywhere?
Just to prove I know what I'm talking about, next time you are at work, look up the BBV price for SCTV volume 1 and volume 2, then compare them with the BBV price for volume 3 and what dvdpricesearch.com has listed for all three titles.
I stopped going to Blockbuster and Rogers Video after I found out that they perform their own censoring and scene-removal on films.
Well, you are pretty stupid then because they don't do that.
The worst Blockbuster has done is refuse to carry NC-17/unrated versions and thus put pressure for the studios to release R-rated cuts. IN the last year or two, that policy seems to have ended as I've seen a number of NC-17 and unrated DVDs are corporate owned blockbusters, including "The Dreamers" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien" as well as more mainstream flicks like, "American Wedding Unrated," etc.
Having never heard of Rogers Video I'm sure their miniscule presence in the rental market means that they don't have the resources to make their own cuts and they aren't big enough to really put any pressure on the studios either.
where is a reliable source of Daily Show torrents?
Did video recorders somehow pass you by?
The Internet is my TiVO.
when the press spouts statistics without any reference as to how the data was collected...
Doh! Where did you think they got it from?
They downloaded it, of course!
But apparently you didn't learn enough Latin to know the meaning of "etc." Hint it does not mean, "end of list."
> Disabled US vets 10 yrs after Viet Nam: 10%
> 12 yrs after Gulf War: 89%
> Stop uranium inhalation poisoning!
There is NO WAY that 89% of Gulf War vets are disabled. That would be about 650,000 people and so obvious that no matter how fascist this country has become it would still be all over the news.
According to this article the number is actually about 200,000. That's still very high at about 28% but nowhere near 89%.
but companies (including small-time operations) have done it in the past without the benefit of the monopoly power.
That is one unsupportable statement. Really, it is a BIG maybe. The other problem with it is that it does not take into account my original point in that there is not enough resources available - pole space is limited and getting easements is hard enough for a single company, no way 5-10 are going to be able to do that.
As for wireless, the bandwidth used for Wi-Fi is not regulated currently
Yes it is, maximum legal transmission power is very low. Nowhere near enough to run an ISP with any reasonable area of coverage or bandwidth.
You forget the reasons public utilities are monopolies today.
Limited amount of space on the poles and the difficulty in getting the necessary easements across private property. Wireless has similar problems in that available frequencies are limited by the FCC and without that regulation, there is nothing to prevent someone from stepping all over your traffic.
Plus, what do you purpose is done with the current infrastructure? ILECs like to act like they own it, and some have been able to get laws passed that say they own it, but for the most part the infrastructure is a public trust maintained by the ILECs.
Because, by virtue of their control and perceived ownership of the physical infrastructure they will have an inherent advantage over other ISPs. There are plenty of stories of local ILECs messing with the lines used by competing ISPs - switching their customers over to known bad pairs, and lots of opportunity to do "higher level" bad things like reduce the amount of equipment maintence to areas with a high percentage of competitor ISP subscribers. The kind of thing that regulation is the only way to enforce does not happen, and then you back with regulation again.
That's going to mean that the telco can't be an isp. Probably the same for the cableco. I think that ultimately, that would be the right thing to do too, neither industry is going to accept that without a huge fight.
Courts aren't going to help you with that at all. The copyright on information belongs to the writer, not the subject of the piece. Just think what your copyright concept would do to the news media...
It isn't nearly as simple as that.
Photographers require a release from models they shoot, similarly with tv shows (watch any of those reality shows and you'll occasionally see people who were filmed but would not sign a release, their faces and any other personally identifiable information is blurred out). So while copyright in the photo or film is owned by the shooter, I believe that it is considered a derivative of the subjects themselves. There could easily be a specific section of the copyright code that deals with this as a special case, I just don't recall any.
So, I think it is reasonable to consider personal records as a rough equivalent of a photograph of that person as they certainly are derived from the actual personal details that in part make up that person. (Then we get into the sticky territory of copyrighting facts.)
I am usually a staunch supporter of Vonage and other VOIP providers to run their business without federal regulation and I admire the business that they built, but they should not be given the benefit of FCC shilling on their behalf.
Ultimately this battle is not about the FCC sheltering Vonage's business model. It is about regulating the public utilities that have been given a monopoly market. Most people have a maximum of two or less choices for high-speed provider - telco or cableco.
As public utilities with monopoly market control granted to them by the local governments (two providers is an oligopoly which is for most intents and purposes just another kind of monopoly) they are not subject to normal "free market" forces. Thus regulation is necessary to ensure that the public is not suffer from abusive business practices that would never fly in a true free market.
Blocking Vonage's traffic is a perfect example of the ISP (ab)using their monopoly status in one market (high-speed access) to try to gain an advantage in another (voip). That is defintely anti-free market and if it isn't illegal, it really needs to be.
that Vonage et al don't want to be taxed like telephone companies, but want the same (FCC) protections as to access to the network?
I'm pretty confident that Yahoo and Google would prefer not to be taxed like telcos, but if a bunch of ILECs started blocking all traffic from/to Yahoo and Google and the ILECs' customers they would raise holy hell about it too.
In other words, the content doesn't matter. This is the internet, bits are just bits.
That 90-days thing must be the difference, mine is still in place around 10 years later. 10 years ago they probably didn't even have the short-term version. Really kind of stupid to have a short-term one though, if your info was snatched, all the thief has to do is sit on it for 6 months...
Umbongo -- You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac.
Next time someone posts this, make sure to correct the spelling of "GAP" - it should be "Benetton."
some of the scariest 1984ish stuff would be coming out of the fricking entertainment industry fer chrissakes.
When practically all hard news sources have been converted to info-tainment, it isn't that much of a surprise.
See if you can get the police report documenting the theft. Once you have that in hand, you can contact the major credit reporting agencies (Experian, etc) and have them put a hold or fraud-alert on your records. The result will be that anytime anyone applies for credit in your name (or in this case, you parental unit's name) the creditor will get a message that says not to issue any credit until confirming with you directly at the phone number on the credit report. Not fool-proof, but orders of magnitude better than the default of not having any protection at all.
In my opinion, this is the way it should work all the time for everyone. But it doesn't -- you must have a police report (or probably some other similarly official document) to prove that you are now at risk of identity theft. Otherwise they won't do a thing for you.
I found out about this when my wife had her purse stolen. We lost about 50 dollars and the typical girl crap in a woman's purse, but we got to put holds on both of our credit reports at all the agencies. That was close to ten years ago, but the hold is still in place. I believe it was $50 well spent and I thank the thief for doing what he did.
America has become a facist state?
Hey, someone almost asking for me to post my favorite quote:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
While the actual author of that quote is almost certainly Giovani Gentile (a political philosopher from whom Benito borrowed liberally), it's close enough for slashdot.