J-Pop Expensive?

*waits*

 

*sits waiting patiently also*

How much longer, I am bosting for a piss.

 

We're back!

China only allows 6 non-Chinese made films to be shown theatrically inside the country every year. The only way for people to see new movies is to mass produce bootlegs.

 

Probably to help prevent the spread of ideas about freedom we Yanks love to stick in film (1776) and the prevention of a large corporation from polluting the hell out of our ground water (Erin Brockovich). Or maybe because RoboCop might make them rise up against a corrupt government! Crazier things have happened....

I'd imagine the lax copyright law, rampant corruption of government officials, lack of unbribable law enforce also play big roles as well as a perfectly good dolphin species go extinct.

 

I don't even think it's theatrical releases... I have a friend making a documentary. Pretty sure it's not going to the theaters and China accepted it preliminarily. I'm not going to Google, but I thought it was more than 6.

Anyway, if you want your movie to be shown in China, make sure it bashes Japan. It's a surefire ticket!

 

I agree that the copyright system is a joke, and in reference to games here - I got HL1 when it was released, new, and decided back in 2005 or so that I'd stick it into steam and get CS for it, but it wouldn't accept my serial saying it was in use, so I emailed steam, even took pictures of the CD case with the serial and they literally didn't give a toss that somehow the CD key was used by someone else.

So I got pacsteam and had a few hours fun with it.

Also I've got things like diablo 2 LOD, the cd is too messed to play but I've still got the CD key on the back, so I torrented the LOD expansion for it and used my CD key.

I think it's really daft how in the eyes of the law in both the UK and the US that it's illegal to do both the above. Well, not the pacsteam thing, that's just because they shafted me for actually being a genuine customer so I shafted them back. But yeah.

 

lol, that's what i'm sayin'. i haven't even really been posting much the last couple weeks but these threads have been thoroughly entertaining.

 

The only reason that cd's & dvd's are expensive in japan is because of the final finishing process.

In japan the disks are rinsed in unicorn tears to enhance image quality & those tears are not cheap. In the rest of the world we skip the unicorn tears as the image quality gain is minimal LOL

You think im kidding... :lol:

 

China has been bootlegging since day one - even when the industry wasn't in full tilt (as it appears to be now) they were still bootlegging anything and everything.

It's worth noting that the bootleg dvd's and cd's are taxed, just like anything else - It's similar to how they sell marijuana in Holland. Nobody will admit it IS taxed because on paper it's meant to be illegal, but those barcodes and receipts are all channeled through local government in one way or another.

Curiously (and thankfully) there is also no censorship when it comes to what they can sell (although you'd struggle to find hardcore porn over there... at least back in 2001/02) But films 'banned by the state' were freely available and nobody really gave a shit (or knew they were banned in the first place for that matter)

The government endorses piracy on a mass scale for one reason - If they didn't let it happen then there's no way the Chinese population could afford to see those movies. Plain and simple.

When the cost of living rises and salaries are in tune with the rest of the developed world - you'll start to see piracy decline in China. But not until then.

Of course, when that happens we'll all be lamenting the poor quality ps3 clones coming out of Nigeria or Zambia and praising the high quality Chinese originals!

 

Yes, that and they only let 2.5 foreignly filmed films into the country to be shown at their one theater every year.

 

Again, though, I do wonder if that has more to do with the economics of opening and running a cinema chain. Cinemas were pretty backwards over there (out of the five cinemas we visited in NE area, only one of them was an 'actual cinema' - the others were just cheap home projectors.

It costs a ton of money to open a cinema, get prints shipped over, etc... I suspect it's less about 'blocking outside competition' and more about the economic factors. A multiplex might work in Beijing (I'm sure they have a few of them...) but they wouldn't work in other cities. One or two, perhaps, but no more than that - and I doubt they'd be queuing round the block on opening night either...

Even in Europe, the average ticket price is about 10 > 20 euros. Most Chinese would be lucky to earn that in a week.

 

Ooops... I had a look at the thread title...

'J-Pop Expensive'.

This has NOTHING to do with the topic! (short of talking about midgets being fired out of cannons, could we have gone any more off-topic?!)

 

It wouldn't be a thread on a forum if it didn't stray off topic.

 

*wonders how long it is until this thread turns into another Aspergers one*