DVD Pirate Co-Workers

[Andara Bledin]

I am biting my tongue soooo hard right now.

One of my co-irkers is discussing with another about how she's buying pirated DVDs of movies that aren't even out of theaters, yet, from some retired army guy she knows.

And not a one of them understands that what they're doing is actually wrong. Well, I suspect the retired guy that's selling them to her knows he's committing a crime, but the rest of them are so fucking stupidly clueless. >_<

And if I tried to explain it to them, they'd just blow me off. Because all three of them are stupid in their own special ways. You know, like discussing the trade of pirated DVDs of current movies in the middle of the office.

^-.-^

[Ginger Tea]

I thought torrenting killed of pirate DVD's
Once upon a time people would buy bootleg VHS tapes with shitty quality than go to the cinema to see it*, then the same for cam to DVD cinema releases, but now with r5/TS being the worst of the not a cam bunch, buying a fake DVD ???

*Although we in the UK might get the odd better quality NTSC home video transfer and only have to worry about what generation or quality tape was used.

[crashhelmet]

There are some people that torrent the movies, burn them to DVD, and then sell them. Their buyers are those that either don't know how to torrent, don't have a fast enough internet connection, if one at all, or for some reason think they're safer this way.

If you go to high tourist areas, you'll often find someone brazen enough to sell them on the street. A lot of people in the Military bring them back their deployments, I remember seeing them everywhere in Beijing, and even ran across a few guys in the LA Fashion District.

I bought a copy of Matrix Revolutions in Beijing because I couldn't stop laughing at the text on the cover art. Imagine seeing a picture of Neo and Trinity with text describing the movie Roots.

[mikoyan29]

A friend of mine got me a pirated copy of Revenge of the Sith but that was the only one. I was pretty amazed at the quality of it.

[telecom_goddess]

Do they actually say they are pirated DVDs or are they under the illusion that they are ok to have because they bought dvds and didn't realize they were pirates?

[crashhelmet]

Do they actually say they are pirated DVDs or are they under the illusion that they are ok to have because they bought dvds and didn't realize they were pirates?

The people I know are usually offering the movies that are still in the theatres. Some will do special requests for older movies, typically sets like say say all 8 Harry Potter movies.

The street vendors usually have the ones still in theatres too, but more often than not, they're shot with a camera and not clean recordings.

[Nekojin]

Do they actually say they are pirated DVDs or are they under the illusion that they are ok to have because they bought dvds and didn't realize they were pirates?

The coworker Andara is talking about is very much aware that they're not legitimate DVDs - she was talking about one of the DVDs she was getting not being available in stores yet.

[Andara Bledin]

These are movies that are still in or just out of theaters. The ones mentioned included Django Unchained and Argo. She is absolutely aware that the DVDs are not legitimate in any way, shape, or form, as do the other two who she was either loaning or reselling to.

^-.-^

[telecom_goddess]

I see. *sigh*.

[Andara Bledin]

If she weren't paying for them, I'd have less of an issue.

I'd still have an issue because I think that releasing movies on DVD before they're available from the legitimate source (is 3-4 months really too long to wait?) is skeevy on it's own, but the fact that she's giving money to the pirate means that when the legitimate copy comes out, the actual producers will not be getting that money that is rightfully theirs.

This is distinct from digital copyright infringement due to the money changing hands, which pushes the seller, at least, into actual piracy, which is legally a crime, whereas copyright infringement without other gain is a civil matter.

It's worth noting that I have reported pirates trying to move pirated DVDs out of backpacks or trunks to whoever was nearby. The one inside the bank branch I was in was particularly brazen.

^-.-^

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

From my blog and yes I asked myself for and received permission to repost this in its entirety.

How to watch a movie for free over the internet.

Since this question comes up a hell of a lot on Yahoo Answers, I decided that I would post this nice and handy DIY guide for downloading a movie for free over the internet.

1. Find a site that has it for free

2. Click on said link

3. Download the file

4. Wait forever for it do download since the site is swamped by every other cheapskate who wants to see it for free

5. Download a good antivirus/anti-malware program to clean the crap that the file infected your computer with since it wasn't really the movie

6. Either bribe a friend or pay Geeksquad to clean your computer since the virus is too cagey to be caught by the cheapass freebie virus program you downloaded.

7. Find another site that has it for free

8. Click on the link to that site

9. Download the file

10. Curse and download the Bit Torrent client since you either don't have one or have an older version that is not supported any more

11. Wait for another forever for the file since every one downloading it too much of a cheap prick to allow anyone else to tap their bandwidth and so are not actually seeding the file but is instead being a bunch of scrummy leeches

12. Click on the file downloaded

13. Curse because you don't have a compression utility that supports the .rar format

14. Download Winrar and uncompress it.

15. Click on the movie file

16. Go into a murderous rampage and kill a small animal because you don't have a compatible media player.

17. Download the media player suggested by the file’s information text file

18. Click on the movie file again

19. Curse the makers of the internet for a billion generations because while the player supports that format, the movie was encoded in a really obscure and rarely used (except by the prick who recorded the gorram thing) codec

20. Download the codec and install it

21. Click on the fucking movie once more

22. Watch the first 15 minutes of the film

23. Be really annoyed that since it is a geek attracting film that there is a theater of Wolverine wannabes waving their fake claws in front of the camera whooping and hollering in the throws of nerd-gasm.

24. Get pissed off that the quality is not unlike what you’d expect if you were to make a child drink a quad-damage espresso laced with a package of pixy-stixs and then hand them an iPhone to record the movie

25. Start making a vein in your forehead throb because every now and again the theater people who are looking for people recording the film, are causing said people to hide their cameras causing you to miss that scene where Mystique’s nipple slips out

26. Blow chunks when during #25 above, you get to see the state of the theater floor. Gum, half dried soda, soggy popcorn, and Ooh! Used condoms.

27. Give up and pay the Twenty Bucks to go and see the movie in the theaters and get the popcorn/soda combo.

[Canarr]

I very rarely go to the movies; one, because it's gotten damn expensive, and two, because they seem to insist that everything has to be frickin' 3D nowadays (which is an entirely different rant).

However, I do like watching movies - and shows - so I go and buy DVDs. But while I have enough disposable income to pick up any movie I want to watch on DVD, it galls me to pay 20 Euro or more for a single movie, or 40-50 Euro for a single season of a TV show. So, I wait, until the price level comes down to 10 Euro or below for the movies, and 15-20 Euro for the TV show, and buy it then. If I absolutely HAVE to see that movie before the price goes down, there's always Lovefilm (Netflix to the Americans, I think).

I have a limit what I'm willing to pay, and I have the patience to wait until the price for the product I want has fallen below that limit. But I'm afraid that quite a lot of people take the fact that movies are routinely released above their own personal limit as an excuse to pirate it. Which, of course, it isn't; but I also believe that the studios could eliminate quite a lot of piracy by offering the lower price - that the movie will eventually be sold for, anyway! - directly after the release.

Sorry, for the rant; couldn't help it...

[Nekojin]

I have a limit what I'm willing to pay, and I have the patience to wait until the price for the product I want has fallen below that limit. But I'm afraid that quite a lot of people take the fact that movies are routinely released above their own personal limit as an excuse to pirate it. Which, of course, it isn't; but I also believe that the studios could eliminate quite a lot of piracy by offering the lower price - that the movie will eventually be sold for, anyway! - directly after the release.

The reason that they don't do that is because doing so would be leaving money on the table. There are plenty of people out there who are willing to pay much more than your price-point in order to get the movie immediately when it's released, and the movie company is quite happy to take their money. Only once that tier of consumers is saturated will they drop the prices to a lower tier. And then again once that tier is saturated, and so on until it's not profitable to produce any more. If they simply drop the price to your price-point right off the bat, there are many, many consumers who would be paying far less than they're willing to, which means lower profits. Add in the weird psycho-dynamics of consumer pricing - namely, that if you start out at too low of a price, you can deter sales, by indirectly suggesting that your product is a lower-quality offering - and you've got the time-gated system we have now.

That's not likely to change any time soon. But Netflix alone is doing a great deal to curb casual infringement - why download a copy from some shady site that has a small-but-nonzero chance of having a viral payload, when you can just pay a trivial monthly fee to access that movie and so many more?

[Andara Bledin]

What Nekojin said.

Plus, just because something is out of someone's price range (either means or willingness) doesn't mean they get to pirate it, instead. They need to either go without or pony up for a legitimate copy.

If someone prices themselves out of the market, the market will let them know.

^-.-^

[crashhelmet]

I've saved my movie watching for Mondays and Tuesdays. I'm sure it's the same in other cities, but here in Vegas all movies at the Brendan's theatre inside the Palms are only $5 all day. Regal and Rave theatres have movies for $6 on Tuesdays. It doesn't matter how new the movie is or what time it starts. What really works for me is that Monday and Tuesday are my days off now.

No more trying to figure out if a movie is worth $11 before food and drinks. $5 or $6 is a lot easier to justify to a disappointing movie or seeing a movie I really liked a second or third time.