Pirate DVDs and Torrent Downloads of Television Shows...

[Professor Zoom]

So it seems that the real question to ask is whether or not intellectual property (especially old intellectual property) is really property at all.

Eg. The Shoplifting analogy (burning a DVD = shoplifting)
I go back an forth on this one. Here is another analogy. --I am a great wood carver. I go to a store and purchase one kitchen chair. I take it apart in my garage and using my woodworking skills and tools, I make five more chairs that look similar.
Later that day, the store sues me for "shoplifting" because I theoretically could have bought more chairs from them.
I have taken nothing from them, but rather, they are estimating what I might have spent, had I paid retail for six chairs. Did I shoplift???--

No. You didn't shoplift. But you did steal the design of those chairs. The store, unless they were the ones that created the design of the chairs, wouldn't come after you, the manufacturer would. Especially if you tried to sell the chairs that you made from someone else's design.

I would bet however, that if you DIDN'T try to sell them, the company wouldn't know, and wouldn't come after you.

Not shoplifting. But intellectual property theft. It's just a question if one cares or not.

 

[TedShatner10]

Big business steals entertainment from us for BS reasons, so we steal it back through piracy, and hey the world goes round.

Wait. What? How does big business "steal" entertainment from you? Big Business didn't come to your house and steal music or videos out of your library.

They create material. It's their material. They can choose to put it on the market or not.

And yeah, sometimes the contracts they made with another party, to use music, binds them so they can't put it out on DVD without paying for it again. (Oh, Noes! Will we ever see Dark Skies on DVD? ) And paying for it again might just make it not cost effective to release as a product (again, how many millions are clamoring for Dark Skies on DVD? Not so many.)

Justify your stealing all you want, but it's YOUR choice, YOUR responsibility, and to say the Entertainment Industry is "stealing" from you is a ridiculous charge. They can't steal what is THEIRS.

It's the silly fanboy outrage..."They OWE me!"

It's a business. They spend money to create a product, you pay for it. If they don't want to spend the money, because there aren't enough fanboys to buy to cover the costs, then they aren't going to make the product.

So, again, steal, pirate all you want, but really, again, it's YOU making that choice.

I agree it's a total clusterfuck, I'm merely saying that selfishness is displayed by both the consumers and media corporations alike, exacebated by convoluted copyright laws at odds with technology and society. However I think in America the current situation over the availability of television shows on DVD seems more screwed up than in the UK - productions like Spaced, Ally McBeal, the 1996 Doctor Who movie, Life on Mars, and The Six Million Dollar Man have been available on UK VHS/DVD for ages, yet bizarrely not a squeak in America. Also weirdly Two and a Half Men and NuBSG have been published in the UK many months to a year or so before they were in the US.

And while the BBC makes many of it's shows available on DVD, it makes them available for free on I-Player online, which seems pretty generous, however back in the 1960s the then not so kind BBC were stupid and shortsighted enough to carry out the unforgivable act of destroying original prints of classic television shows (most of DW's epic "Evil of the Daleks" is lost forever, gross cultural vandalism of the worst kind). So while stealing products that were already made available is wrong, and that unfetted piracy can feasibly destroy an industry, at the same time the commercial owners should not be fully trusted either if they can abuse their products for no real reason either even if it is within the confines of the law.

Don't take the current copyright set up and the intentions of a amoral company for granted, otherwise your work could be forever deleted as well.

 

[bluethunder]

It's like you know -- 1999 ABC sitcom, "Seinfeld in LA", but it only really made sense if you live in or know a lot about LA to understand the satire

I've been looking for this forever. I would happily pay you or trade you for it. Please contact me ASAP at tigreblanco@shaw.ca

 

[trekkiedane]

It's like you know -- 1999 ABC sitcom, "Seinfeld in LA", but it only really made sense if you live in or know a lot about LA to understand the satire

I've been looking for this forever. I would happily pay you or trade you for it. Please contact me ASAP at tigreblanco@shaw.ca

Ooooh, I think ^that's (at least borderline) stuff we aren't supposed to do here! -Be careful no mod finds out what you are up to

 

[Michael]

It's like you know -- 1999 ABC sitcom, "Seinfeld in LA", but it only really made sense if you live in or know a lot about LA to understand the satire

I've been looking for this forever. I would happily pay you or trade you for it. Please contact me ASAP at tigreblanco@shaw.ca

Ooooh, I think ^that's (at least borderline) stuff we aren't supposed to do here! -Be careful no mod finds out what you are up to

I think he knows that. (Hint: His post count.)

 

[trekkiedane]

I noticed that. You recon he's an agent of the dvd-industry trying to get this board closed?

 

[Candlelight]

A couple years ago my dad bought a 'bootleg' DVD set of The Invaders (1967-68) on ebay, presumably made from VHS transfers. This series will be coming to DVD in the US later this year.

Season One has been out in New Zealand for about a year.

 

[bluethunder]

I've been looking for this forever. I would happily pay you or trade you for it. Please contact me ASAP at tigreblanco@shaw.ca

Ooooh, I think ^that's (at least borderline) stuff we aren't supposed to do here! -Be careful no mod finds out what you are up to

I think he knows that. (Hint: His post count.)

I didn't think it would be a big deal, seeing as the thread was already about pirating. Plus I have no private message options, otherwise I would have used that. At any rate, PLEASE contact me. I would kill for this show.

 

[trekkiedane]

Actually , I don't think anyone would mind if members exchanged old stuff with one another, but it coming as your VERY FIRST POST did seem a bit much

 

[PsychoPere]

Ooooh, I think ^that's (at least borderline) stuff we aren't supposed to do here! -Be careful no mod finds out what you are up to

I think he knows that. (Hint: His post count.)

I didn't think it would be a big deal, seeing as the thread was already about pirating.

However, this thread is not about where or how to obtain pirated material. The original post simply asked about what sorts of material other posters have in their possession, and from there it has become a topic about the ethics and legality of such material. At no point has this thread been about distributing material.

 

[Goji]

I don't download TV shows or movies. But there is a show I quite enjoy that isn't on DVD anywhere in the world. It was released on VHS though, and I had all those VHS tapes. I wanted them on DVD since my last VCR was on its last legs, so I used my computer to transfer them all to DVD-Rs. This is probably illegal, but it doesn't bother me (downloading torrents would). I paid for the VHS tapes and would pay for the DVDs if they existed, but they don't, so I made my own, and from official, legally-obtained sources. I still have all those VHS tapes in a box in my closet though. If anyone ever comes looking for me, I'll just pull out one of those tapes and pretend I was watching that.

 

[ToddPence]

Actually making DVD-ROM copies for your own use of commercial VHS tapes you are the owner of is perfectly legal. It's when you sell or distribute these copies that the legal trouble begins.

 

[trekkiedane]

Actually making DVD-ROM copies for your own use of commercial VHS tapes you are the owner of is perfectly legal. It's when you sell or distribute these copies that the legal trouble begins.

But if you make copies of your dvds it's illegal.




Afaik making digital copies of digital media is illegal in most of the world.

 

[Ghel]

This brings up another not-so-brilliant thought. . .

If the music/film industry is selling me (or leasing me) a copy of their intellectual property, then shouldn't that property be independant of its physical transfer method.

Eg. I bought a VHS film. It was re-released on DVD, then re-released AGAIN on Blu-Ray.

Since I already paid for the MOVIE and not necessarily the MEDIA, shouldn't the consumer be entitled to the updated MEDIA purchase at manufacturer cost. After all, the filmmakers already profited once on the sale of the intellectual property. By their own claims, they are not selling the disk but the film contained on that disk. I bought that film.

Now we see that by altering his content, George Lucas is the only one who sidesteps this argument entirely.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't see what's so complicated about any of this. If an owner of something wants to sell his/her property, he/she does it and sets the price. If you do not wish to meet that price, fine. Walk away, then. It doesn't give you the right to steal the property. It doesn't matter whether you think the owner is being "greedy." That's obviously an easy way to rationalize theft of anything and even if the owner is being greedy, so what? They have the right to be greedy, and if their greed costs them a sale, they are being punished for it.

And an owner of property does not have an obligation to make their property available for sale, now or ever. The fact they've not done that doesn't give you the right to steal the property.

I've never illegally downloaded a damn thing. I've watched a wide range of good TV shows and movies legally - and have more lined up, as many as I can make time for. I don't understand what excuse people think they have for theft, other than an immature notion that the world owes them something. The first step to adulthood is realizing and truly accepting that nobody owes you a damn thing.

 

[TedShatner10]

And an owner of property does not have an obligation to make their property available for sale, now or ever. The fact they've not done that doesn't give you the right to steal the property.

Private home owners are often turfed out the houses they lived in for decades by corporations, to make way for commercial interests, while corporations avoid paying taxes, offshore jobs and other wonderful things. Copyright in America has been fiddled way beyond sustainability and common sense, so in a sense companies are "stealing" from the public domain if copyright was only meant to last 14 years. If they loosened things up slightly, they would probably make more money in the long run and the piracy of unavailable shows would be much reduced.

I've never illegally downloaded a damn thing. I've watched a wide range of good TV shows and movies legally - and have more lined up, as many as I can make time for. I don't understand what excuse people think they have for theft, other than an immature notion that the world owes them something. The first step to adulthood is realizing and truly accepting that nobody owes you a damn thing.

The American mindset of not being owed a damn thing is why health insurance is such a fiasco, education is a clusterfuck, and why poor people in New Orleans were left to fend for themselves. Faceless institutions being too selfish leads nowhere and everbody loses out. Although I haven't stolen any intellectual property myself yet, since I'm perhaps too honest and compliant; I can also remember my late grandad giving me VHS bootlegs of Disney movies and they were of shit quality.

I also wonder if getting a out of print book from a library or making a replica of a vintage automobile is stealing.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Seriously? You're comparing the health care crisis to your need for Dark Skies? Really?

Also: if you check an out of print book at the library, you have to return it. Because it doesn't belong to you. It's the library's.

 

[zakkrusz]

I've never illegally downloaded a damn thing. I've watched a wide range of good TV shows and movies legally - and have more lined up, as many as I can make time for. I don't understand what excuse people think they have for theft, other than an immature notion that the world owes them something. The first step to adulthood is realizing and truly accepting that nobody owes you a damn thing.

I agree when it's regular media that's in your own language and if it's available for purchase in your own country/region coding. However, what would you do if you really wanted to see a film or series from Korea or Japan and don't speak the language and it isn't liscensed for distrobution in your country? You have 3 options really the first is to import it (plus buy a DVD player of the appropriate region and import that too) which is highly expensive, but you'll get to watch the movie you wanted sans being able to make sense of it since it won't be subtitled in English. Next you could sign up for college courses and learn the languge then go though that importing process (even more expensive and time consuming but worthwhile). Otherwise you have option c, the fansub, which you can probabally locate in the bowels of the internet. It's illegal, but you do get to watch it and it's subtitled in your own langage so you can make sense of it.

You could also wait indefinitely to see if sombody in your region picks it up but who knows now long that will be? Plus there's no real guarantee said film will ever be brought over. This is my dilema. I like to sample a lot of foreign stuff like Japanese animation and music only a fraction of which actually comes out here, the rest you'd never see unless you pirate it. I don't know about other people but I buy what I watch fansubed when a domestic version becomes available.

Take this series for example. It's a strange romantic comedy about about a guy who works for a confectionary company who's trying to keep the fact that the voice actor they just hired is his on-again-off-again girlfriend who lives with him (and idolizes Audrey Hepbun) in his small apartment a secret so that he doesn't get fired for recomending her above the other choices. It's quite hilarious and very sweet and romantic but it's been quite a while since it came out and most likely will not ever be liscensed.

 

[Daedalus12]

Now we see that by altering his content, George Lucas is the only one who sidesteps this argument entirely.

Lucas joke aside if you want to get technical the contents on each of those releases were changed. The blu-ray version of blade runner is certainly different from the DVD version. The resolution is different, the amount of grains is different, the color spectrum is slightly different, etc.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I've never illegally downloaded a damn thing. I've watched a wide range of good TV shows and movies legally - and have more lined up, as many as I can make time for. I don't understand what excuse people think they have for theft, other than an immature notion that the world owes them something. The first step to adulthood is realizing and truly accepting that nobody owes you a damn thing.

I agree when it's regular media that's in your own language and if it's available for purchase in your own country/region coding. However, what would you do if you really wanted to see a film or series from Korea or Japan and don't speak the language and it isn't liscensed for distrobution in your country? You have 3 options really the first is to import it (plus buy a DVD player of the appropriate region and import that too) which is highly expensive, but you'll get to watch the movie you wanted sans being able to make sense of it since it won't be subtitled in English. Next you could sign up for college courses and learn the languge then go though that importing process (even more expensive and time consuming but worthwhile). Otherwise you have option c, the fansub, which you can probabally locate in the bowels of the internet. It's illegal, but you do get to watch it and it's subtitled in your own langage so you can make sense of it.

So what you're saying is...it's ok to steal if it's expensive to buy?

Er. Ok.