Movies. They're worth it, Please don't steal.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/piracy.ap/index.html

Hollywood to pirates: Please don't steal
Movie studios launch piracy awareness campaign

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) --The movie industry is trying a new approach to stop people from downloading pirated copies of films over the Internet: It's asking them nicely.

Movie studios were launching a campaign Tuesday with television ads and in-theater spots featuring makeup artists, set painters and other crafts people saying that piracy robs them of a living.

The Motion Picture Association of America has also developed a curriculum on copyrights for use in classrooms by Junior Achievement. The "Digital Citizenship" program covers the history of copyright and culminates with a nationwide contest in which students suggest ways to persuade peers that swapping copies of music and movies is not only illegal, but unethical.

"What we are endeavoring to do is both communicate that it's wrong and also communicate that there are human stakes and that those stakes are not just millionaires making less millions," said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp., whose Twentieth Century Fox studio made the spots.

The film and music industries have recently become more aggressive in enforcing their copyrights in the courts as well as lobbying for tougher laws to punish violators.

While copies of popular blockbusters can be found on the Internet, sometimes days before the movie is released to theaters, computer copies of films are still too large to easily download and are often poor quality copies made using hand-held camcorders.

Music files, by contrast, are smaller and are CD quality, making them easy to share.

Movie studios believe they still have a few years before Internet connections become fast enough to threaten them in the same way. Studios are experimenting with new business models, including making films available legitimately online.

But studios will succeed only if they move quickly to offer legitimate alternatives that consumers want, analysts say.

"It may just be that consumers aren't quite ready yet to turn to the Internet for movies," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But when they are, the answer will be to offer them a compelling legitimate alternative, not telling them to behave themselves."

The industry's 30-second television ad will have its first run Thursday night on all the broadcast networks and most cable channels during their first prime time break, sometime after 8 p.m. The first of several trailers will begin running Friday in most major theater chains nationwide.

The first trailer features David Goldstein, a set painter. Each ad ends with the tag line, "Movies. They're worth it."

The campaign will also include a Web site that outlines the moral implications of illegal downloading as well as the legal and practical consequences.

 

Whoever downloads movies on a computer are insane.
A) who wants to sit at a cimputer and watch some crappy looking movie
B) They can't go to the movie theater see the movie
C) Rent the movie when it comes out on DVD.

And people that buy bootleg DVD's of current movies are insane. They just can't wait 3 months and buy the damn thing when it comes out on DVD?Who wants to see some shaky movie with people walking back and forth in front of the screen??

 

it's a mystery to me as well. I can wait the 3 months for a professional version, thank you.

 

Especially since they do it right by offering tons of bonus footage at a reasonable price.

 

When Phantom Menace came out, I remember a couple of diehard fans in the dorms downloading it just to be able to see it ad nauseum. But yeah, seriously, it's pathetic. I don't even like watching DVD's on a computer, why anyone would want to watch a cruddy copy on WMP is beyond me. Honestly, at least go out and pay the $2-3 to rent a movie and watch it on your TV.

 

This driver comes into my work every other day or so, with carpet. He tries to sell these lame SVCDs to me every week, because he knows how much I dig HT. It irritates me, but I have to keep it "professional". It's such crap! The sad thing is, he always comes to me with a movie, a week before it's even released in the theater!

I would pay $50 per DVD, than buy these pirated pieces of s*&t! Man, now you got me going

 

Ain't nothing like the real thing baby....

 

I agree, these pirated DVD's and download crap does suck. I feel like kicking over the collection of them on the street when I walk past these vendors. The only problem is they probably are very well-connected and I'd end up as a topping on a few dozen pizzas or in several cans of dog food....

 

I'd rather buy a DVD of a movie issued by a PD distributor over a pirate DVD of a current movie.

 

Personally, I prefer watching genuine DVD's on my computer. The dot pitch of a good monitor gives a far sharper picture than a NTSC Television. I'm not talking about SVCD's or whatever the pirating fools call them.

I also hate watching anything on NTSC Projection TV's. They're no sharper than a NTSC picture tube TV. The pixels are just spread out over a larger area. And if your sitting anywhere off axis the picture is even fuzzier yet.

I go to a gin mill somewhere with a buddy of mine and he says "whats the score of the ball game I can't see it 'cause I'm getting old." And I tell him "your not getting old its another fuzzy projection screen TV". Tell me that hasn't happened to anyone else?

 

Most "High definition" super 2-DVD sets are $20 at most retailers. Makes pirating anything really stupid.

As long as they keep the prices down, people will buy them like nutty.

 

One of my neighbors who works in the city told me recently he had watched Finding Nemo on dvd. I said what? And he said he had gotten it off the street.

Now talk about a movie that MUST be seen in a good theater while you still have a chance.

Like others have said, I'm perfectly happy seeing a movie in the theater and then getting the DVD release properly.

 

Smart move Gary, do not support the pirates.

 

I don't like how the music and film industries presume everyone is guilty. In the United States, it should be the other way around. The copy protection schemes and red tape essentially punish everyone for a small minority's indescretion. EVERY SINGLE TIME a new format comes out (audio cassette/video cassette) the two industries think this will ruin them, and IT IS ALWAYS not the case. They make MORE money. When will the amount of money they spend to tell us we're all bad (or prevent us from being bad) be more than they would have lost in the first place? It seems like it can't be far off.

 

We know that MP3s for are not CD quality.

 

Yeah, but people do it anyway.

Seriously, I've seen tele-synchs of major motion pictures. The work that goes into them just to steal them and put them on the web is rediculous. They have to be encoded in 3 different ways, then uploaded. Then a bunch of people whine and cry for missing parts of the binary package.

Just a lot of people wasting money and time when they just should buck up and pay to see it on the big screen and shaddap.... or wait for the $20 DVD at BB.

The big screen is a big deal, and people need to be aware of that. Sure, the snacks are expensive along with the ticket prices but that is a part of the experience.

...Or I go to the drive inn with my girl and a six pack of Vanilla Coke and some smartfood. Cheaper, better, nostalgic. No one gets hurt, and it's very romantic

 

My greatest fear is that if I buy a pirated dvd of a movie in current release, it may contain sounds like the audience talking out loud as though they were in their own homes OR, even worse, some one's cell phone ringing. These sounds coming from my home theater system would send me on a uncontrollable rage-dance through the neighborhood.

 

Very true and people also enjoy the very nice packaging too.

 

It's paper, lots of it, with plastic trays for the discs more than not. But the production of the discs these days are done so brilliantly, few could ever complain.

Economical, great experience and the studios make a killing.

 

Sckott is right.

 

Movies that I REALLY want to see, do I buy the DVD, but movies I just want to look at, do I download and burn.

And I would be stupid, if I didn't. It does cost me less than 2$, to get an OK SVCD copy. If me and my wife would go to the theatre to see it, would it cost us 20$, and to rent it would I have to pay 3-4$, and then have to go back with it the next day.

Downloading takes me less than a minute to search for it, and then less than 10 minutes to burn it, including making the menues.

But I don't steal movies, the alternative would have been not to see it. And sometimes have I bought the DVD, after that I downloaded and looked at it. At least 5 movies is bought that way, and there will be more to come. So, in fact, do the movie industry earn more money on me this way.

 

Not to be a wet blanket, Kid, but downloading movies off the net is piracy: no one involved in the production of the film earns any money when you download something (unless you pay to download from a site approved by the studio, if there are any).

As for rental, why not set up an account with Netflix? For $20.00 bucks a month you can rent all the movies on dvd you want, they are sent right to your door, you watch them and return them in the prepaid mailer provided. No late fees either. (No I don't work for them, but it is a way better alternative to downloading, and if you rent 10 movies thats $2.00 apiece.)

 

I predict Netflix will be the ruin of many video rental stores. It's an amazing service, a business model where you go, "Why didn't I think of that?" Luckily, their East Coast warehouse is nearby, and my turnaround time is two days. I'm watching twenty movies a month for $1/apiece, with no postage, runs to the store, or lines. And I haven't thought of a DVD they don't have. Cripes, they had ATOMIC CAFE!

 

Well, duuuuuuh!

Hmmm...geee, maybe the brain dead music industry should take a hint and quit pricing what passes for popular music at $18.99 list, when you can buy DVDs (with *moving pictures* no less ) for the same or even less.

Make albums affordable again, bring back singles, and the kiddyz won't have to download everything they want. (Giving their parents a lesson that "piracy is wrong" wouldn't hurt either.) Instead, they get their political lobbyist bullies (read: RIAA) to harass the little people with lawsuits who they know can't afford to defend themselves.