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The Movie Pirates

November 1, 2009 5:00 PM

They are the bane of Hollywood: criminals who copy films and distribute them illegally on the Internet, costing Hollywood billions in lost revenue. Lesley Stahl reports.

Video Pirates: The Bane of Hollywood
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by sn0wf1ake1 January 21, 2013 5:12 AM EST
MTV Cribs is a perfect example of the greed of the music and movie industry. Piracy can never be stopped and using watermarks, DVD encoding, and especially Internet prevention have all been proved as failures. If you can code an anti-piracy code, somebody can break it. If you make an Internet check, not enough people buy the product.
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by dennyhayes May 22, 2012 11:49 PM EDT
I hear this piracy complaints over and over, but every complaint I have seen is based on ignorance and greed. As your show stated, they make good money, and yes recently movie profits have gone down. But because of the economy most businesses are bringing in less profit, and piracy was just as heavy even when movie and recording studios were making record profits. There are many ways to look at piracy, but to reach a fair judgment it is necessary to know how many of the people who pirate media would have paid for access. Studios were complaining about piracy when they were making record profits. Many people, like myself have found that they purchase more because of piracy than I would without the piracy. Invariably I will pirate a CD, like what I hear and then go out and purchase the rest of the artists creations. Another thing is that there are bzillions of compositions which are owned by corporations, which no longer sell them, but you can find them on the internet. To not allow the piracy means not allowing anyone access to the great works. Another issue is that there are many good works from other countries, which typically US retailers don't or won't have access, Again, that is depriving the public of great works, because of the games to control what people have access to, strictly for more profit. I have many friends who download thousands of movies and CDs, but still go to theaters every weekend. Even your show mentioned how a movie was pirated before the movie release, but still made record profits. The copyright laws were created according to many legal cases to provide the artist fair compensation for his hard work, and the the financial reward was to be only n incidence of the copyright. The legal decisions also stated that it was not intended to encourage a monopoly. At that time, the copyright protection lasted 7 years, which is the same as patent protection. But the laws have been changed to allow protection to 50 years beyond the life of the copyright holder. These days copyrights are mostly held by corporations who gave peanuts for the right to hold them, because the artist did not have the finances to push his work, and situations have been set up to prevent the artist from getting fair reward for his work. One last situation that I have seen is typified by a guy who has downloaded 10000 movies, as a form of a collection, which he could never even watch. So unless you are being paid by the greedy protectionist, you should do your research and report all sides to the issue.
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by BlogShag August 17, 2011 3:55 PM EDT
The fact that he brought a child with him is supposed to be shocking? Whoa! Imagine the horror. LOL! Stupid...

The extremely annoying thing, but not shocking is having to listen to that kid wail or complain and listen to the rude people talk on their cell phones when the movie is playing. And the industry wonders why they are losing money?
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by BlogShag August 17, 2011 3:23 PM EDT
Excuse me, but why would I want to go to the theater to pay too much see a movie, and on top of that having to deal with ridiculously overpriced junk food, uncomfortable cramped seats, someone kicking the back of my seat, popping gum in my ear, or listening to someone sitting behind me translate in Spanish 'cause they can't understand the English dialogue. And let's not forget the brazen and rude sales pitch by the theater clerks before the start of the movie for some god knows what charity. No thanks. I prefer my 50 inch HDTV screen and NetFlix, my comfortable couch and friends. And gee, if I don't want to pee in my pants, I can actually pause the movie if I need to go to the rest room.
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by MovieFan1814 July 21, 2011 1:53 AM EDT
There is no justification for illegally downloading movies, music or any other form of entertainment. If individuals are so concerned about the cost of seeing a film or buying a CD go during the day when the prices of movies are cheaper, wait until it comes out on video, hell rent a video or listen to the radio.

The MPAA should come up with a device that blocks the video signal from a phone or camera. I am pretty sure that this can be done. As you've seen in the report you are stealing from people that are trying to make a living by working on these projects and it not the movie star that's losing out.
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by annerbananer0X September 27, 2010 1:45 PM EDT
i think if they didnt charge an arm and a leg to go to the movies they wouldnt be having this problem. for a family of four like mine it would cost us over $50 for tickets and it we wanted popcorn and a drink it would be more!!!! its rediculous if they raise the prices no ones going to even bother
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by BearMeatSlayer April 11, 2010 6:02 PM EDT
If the ***** movie companies would release the DVD the same day the movie opens in theatres this might solve the problem.
People are sick of the filthy over priced movie theatres, cramped conditions, noise, sticky floors, dirty seats, ect.
I would gladly buy the DVD that I can watch in peace, but I refuse to sit inside the movie theatre with all the issues I have listed above.

American Voice
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by orubin December 22, 2009 1:30 PM EST
I am disgusted every time a supposed news outlet spreads the same exaggerations and lies about digital piracy. This one must have been written by the MPAA for you. Or did you steal this story from Fox News, because this surely was not up to your quality standards.

I am not defending piracy, but it is NOT responsible for the loss numbers the MPAA and studios claim. The studios calculate that every single download or purchased bootleg DVD is a full ticket-priced loss, and that is how they get to 60 Billion or more in losses. That is a false number. Research has shown that the majority of people who obtained an illegal copy of a movie would NOT pay to see the movie if they could not obtain it otherwise, so in effect, it is not a true loss of sale.

In addition, piracy is not the reason for box office drop off. How about $12 - $15 per ticket, $7 cokes, and $9 buckets of popcorn, all in a cramped, hot, stinky theatre with crying babies and cell phone users, and managers afraid to confront people making noise. How about movies shown on a theatre that has been cut into 15 small pieces with screens smaller than my set at home! Add in sound problems and scratchy films because they are too cheap to swap out warn copies, and why bother? It cost on average $100 or more to take a family of 4 to see a film these days with tickets, drinks, popcorn, and candy (because you cannot bring in your own food either!) Because of this, I have seen just one movie in the last six months. I used to see several a month. But now we pay $8/month for Netflix, we watch 4 or 5 movies at home each month, and spend $10 on snacks for the entire family. It is total nonsense to blame piracy for the loss of movie box office revenue. And in these tough economic times, I am sure I am not alone.

I went to OPENING DAY of Michael Jackson's "This Is It", an early showing, and the theatre was mostly empty. This was not a movie that had been pirated (yet), and still the theatre was mostly empty. Tickets were $13 each for mid-week. Piracy cannot be blamed for the empty theatre here!

Add to this that many new movies are just utter crap, and you see what is happening here.

And please, no "speed bumps in technology?" Really? What would you call Macrvision, region codes, watermarks, disc encryption, no-copy bit DVD technology, and the outrageous DMCA just to name a few? These studios cannot take responsibility for the over priced pieces of crap they produce, still paying themselves outrageous salaries, and then sticking it to hourly workers when they start to loose money! They are stuck with an old model in their head, and have been too slow to embrace new technologies to supplement theatre income loss. That is solely their own fault.

So please, do some background fact checking and research before simply repeating the exaggerations and lies of an industry trade group like the MPAA. They just need someone to blame for their problems. Maybe they should blame themselves for a change!
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by davewrite1 December 21, 2009 3:35 PM EST
Best I can figure, we Americans are spoiled. Too many of us had it too good for too long (many still do). Our greed and materialism have us corrupted at our core. We've lost the values that made America great, like honesty, empathy, sacrifice, gratitude, and a strong sense of responsibility to one another.

How else could we ignore the cries of sick children while vengefully going to war with two countries, one of which had nothing to do with the crime? How could we turn our heads while America's financiers played casino with America's treasure? How could we permit a tiny sliver of Americans to corner almost all our wealth?

Drugs, vulgarity, cynicism, violence, piracy,the turning away from reason and science, and the prostituting of children and irresponsible behavior in general are just symptoms of America's increasing decadence.
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by ekm3e December 21, 2009 11:51 AM EST
Some of these movie stars are making ten million dollars or more per movie? Cut their paychecks in half. Stop some of the extravagant spending on movie stars and start making better movies instead of movies that aren't even worth the bootleg. Get real artists into the industry and better writers. Besides the movie industry has a lot more to worry about than pirating. Since computers have come out with technology that has the ability to download and copy DVDs, anyone can buy a DVD and then copy it. And just in case you needed reminding the US is experiencing a deep recession. So people aren?t buying DVD?s anyway. If I buy a DVD I wait until it?s a few years old and buy it at Walmart or Target for $5.00. Or if my friends and I are going to have a movie night we rent at Red box for a dollar. At that point admission is only .25 per person a big difference from AMC's 10.50. Who needs the bootleg? I think most bootlegs are more expensive then $1.00. What kills me is that most of these movies are so terrible that you could wait until they?re on Cable or not see them at all. The movie industry needs to wake up.
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