I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm just trying to get people to think. Yanks and Brits together... like bangers and mash;-)
A simple question, how can saving something that would otherwise be lost, by committing an act of piracy be 'bad'. There are different forms of piracy and not all of them are bad. (that was short, for a change!)
That's not quite what I'm saying - Major studios are bound by law to go after pirates - they don't have a choice, they must protect their IP. My point is that piracy isn't the thing that's hurting them, so they don't really bother - As far as movies go it's taken a lot longer for the film industry to catch up with technology (basically, digital downloads). People are downloading movies from the web because they don't really have a choice. Give them a choice and they'll take the legal option. iTunes, anyone? Do you distribute your films via the web (digital downloads) - if not, why not? If you do - how does it compare to sales of physical discs? (I'm very curious to hear about this.) It's not that the movie/video industry don't care - it's just taking them longer to get their shit together and prosecuting a grandmother for downloading a movie isn't really worth the time and legal fees. Mostly they use scare tactics - arguably the most effective anti-piracy tool around. Once again, it's not as black and white as you seem to be putting it. Is piracy bad? It depends on what you steal, what you do with it, and how it affects the owner. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
Arnold, you have been hitting the nail on the head constantly! I think Piracy is a wonderful thing, for everybody! The sharing of knowledge and entertainment, especially things such as the Italian subbed movies you talked about being lost. Its true, without torrents many things could have disappeared with time. Think of a rich wealthy man getting to purchase CD after CD to search for his ultimate favorite genre when a poor man would be limited in the library of culture that he doesn't get to take part of, but with torrenting, he can enjoy many of the things he had always wanted to while still putting food on the table for him and his family. (just a small example. Don't reply saying he could use Pandora or Youtube to search for music, you would be missing the point) & my favorite counter-argument at a personal level is always "Well if you made a profit driven product wouldn't you fight to get all the torrents taken down and get lawyers on people's asses, have a whole different view on it?" My answer is, No. I would embrace the fact that my creation was getting used by so many, especially to the many people who are unfortunate enough to not be able to afford the vast arrays of content available today. Would I rather have people buying it? Of course. Could the possibility of someone downloading my product and showing a friend & then that friend going home and purchasing it happen? Of course. Only reason I bought a few games myself! I understand that pirating will be around for awhile as it has been, and we can never really measure the benefits/losses either way, so just let it be. Plus, if you make a truly good product then it will be purchased no matter what. I am all for Piracy, Preservation, and Potatoes, preferably mashed. Oh, and it's not stealing. ;-)
I have a question for HCK. Some tv shows have never been released on VHS or DVD or even digital download/streaming. Do you object to piracy then?
To take that even further what about media that banned by a government and the only option is piracy?
The owner of a show has the right to release it or to NOT release it. Just because something has been created or just because you like or want something doesn't give you the right to have it.
So again, you believe that just because something was created, and just because you might want to see it... you should be able to have it regardless of what anyone says or does, even if it's your countries' government because you know best.
So let's just throw them in the garbage can? Is that what you are saying? To take a rather obvious example - How many games companies that produced games for the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 are still around? Are you honestly saying that nobody should play those games again and they should be wiped off the face of the earth (which is what will eventually happen if we follow your logic) It's been fun discussing this but I do not share your views (even remotely) on this issue. I'm out of this - and will happily agree to disagree.
In the instance I cited you are right. I have no problem with piracy because there was never a chance to lose profit in the first place due to government repression. And yes, I do know what is best for myself better than the government does.
Not wanting to stray from the original topic but what types of films do you subtitle arnoldlayne? Giallo, Peplum, Horror, Comedy, Sex Comedy, Polizia or just 'regular' movies? Back on track, I've been a fan of European - amongst others - trash cinema for years and lost count of the movies I've had to watch on multi-gen video tapes because there's apparently no interest and no financial gain in cleaning these things up for the few people who may want to watch them in their country of origin, never mind abroad, should these films be lost? There is a guy in Greece who runs a company called Onar Films. He sources and remasters 'lost' Turkish films, subtitles them and puts them out in hand-numbered editions of just 500 worldwide. For him it's a labour of love. Now for some of his releases the original source is lost, has been accidentally destroyed or been made irreparable due to the ravages of time, but enough elements have been located or exist in various forms to recreate a new 'whole', be it TV master or even a home recording, should these films be lost to time too? He is passionate about what he does and all his releases are official, all factory pressed with duties and taxes etc paid on them, but by HCK's logic they don't deserve to exist. There is a MASSIVE Dr Who following, the world over, but because of oversights and lack of forethought by the BBC back in the 1960's quite a number of the William Hartnell and especially the Patrick Troughton stories were wiped and the mastertapes recorded on again. It's only by a fluke that the audio and some photographic stills and a few seconds here and there of moving footage exist, and over the years the 'missing' stories have been recreated and released into the wild with the blessing of the aforementioned copyright holder the BBC, but by HCK's logic even these don't deserve to be saved for posterity. Other BBC shows like Dad's Army, Steptoe and Son and Hancock's Half Hour/The Tony Hancock Show suffered the same fate as Dr Who and had episodes or entire series' deleted or wiped only for trace elements to surface either in foreign TV vaults or in peoples home collections either on reel-to-reel audio or even Super 8 film. Should these then be gathered up and destroyed because they're not necessarily genuine or 100% legitimate or should they be preserved for posterity so that future generations can appreciate them too? There's also been made mention of things that have been banned by government that we shouldn't see or hear. You know, that's the most inane and ludicrous thing I've ever read. Here in the UK we have some of the most Draconian censorship laws in the Western world. During the early 1980's we had what's known as 'The Video Nasty' scare, where because home video was unregulated all manner of movies were entering the country and peoples homes that were of questionable content, these films were mainly of the horror and exploitation sub-genres and depicted scenes of extreme (though shoddily implemented) violence, sexual sadism, cannibalism and torture to name but a few and after a few years of media bullshit and Parliamentary interference these films were banned because they supposedly had the propensity to lower or undermine the moral fibre of society. It was the same with hardcore - and in a lot of cases even softcore - pornography. Banned outright because it wasn't what the moral guardians of our green and pleasant land thought was appropriate for us lowly plebs and proles. So began an underground scene of bootleggers who swapped and traded tapes of horror movies with other like minded collectors who also didn't like the state dictating what we could and couldn't watch. This form of piracy came not from thinking 'fuck it, I'm not paying xxxx for that' but was borne out of necessity as it was the only way to get to see these films. 30 years on in supposedly more enlightened times a lot of these films are still outlawed so the only way to get to see them is to import which, as has already been pointed out, still deprives the copyright holder. Now, this is where HCK's argument pretty much falls flat on its face, or part of it anyway. Any and all cinematographic works that are sold in the UK have to go in front of the British Board of Film Classification, or BBFC for short, for classification. It currently costs £75 to submit a work on DVD or Blu-ray to be seen and is then charged at £6 a minute for board members to view it and inform you of what cuts need to be made, if any, and determine what certificate it will be granted. If your work doesn't get through first time because of cuts that need to be made you hen have to pay a resubmission fee to have the appended work re-seen and again £6 a minute to view the resultant work. Now, some of the movies that HCK makes and distributes would have a pretty hard time getting past the UK censor, especially pinku bondage or rope movies and films of young looking models in school uniforms because of various sexualization depiction laws we have here, so would HCK be happy to never sell certain things in this country because our government outlaws it and therefore it would be fundamentally wrong or will he spout his financial deprivation bullshit and advise me to acquire his works 'by the back door' and stick it to the man for trying to deny both me and him of both entertainment and money? I wonder...
To be fair, I think HCK is talking about very specific cases of blatantly just copying something because you do not want to pay for it. Not all the "exceptions to the rule" you guys are coming up with.
We don't target markets where the films would get people into trouble. That means our company does not directly deal with any distribution to the UK or Australia.
But piracy is preserving the shows in this case! Some TV shows have a tonne of copyrighted music that make it difficult to license a DVD release. Over time they get less and less shown and eventually fade into obscurity. if it wasn't for the illegal downloads the show would be impossible to obtain aside from VHS/DVD recordings (Which as we all know the companies would also like to make illegal)
He's not talking about TV shows though. He's talking about his content. I doubt people who have their content on TV are as concerned as people who only sell on DVD about it being copied.
What kind of trouble would you get into? Is there some kind of laws that prohibit sale, or is it more of a public opinion kind of reason?
