Badmovies.org Forum

Have you ever wondered why pirates exist?

Well may not have an answer to that but I have a theory about how gray market video is able to prosper.  I don't think everyone's going to like it, especially not retailers, because I believe they are directly to blame.

How?

Read my article here (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-qzcELew6frWBZspks_7SsnUuv9VNTUA-?cq=1&p=199) and decide for yourselves if my conclusions are right, sort of right, or totally off base.  And feel free to comment.

Any input would be welcome.

Pirates are to blame for piracy.

No matter what external factors exist to 'create markets,' each chooses to engage in illegal behavior.

We do have to be careful though.  Piracy of movies and music is not consistent with the original use of the term.  Piracy did not used to be about fulfilling gray or black markets.  It was warfare.  Pirates stole from their enemies for nationalistic reasons and personal gain.  The pirates of old did not steal because the items they stole were unfairly unavailable and they wanted to offer them to third parties.

Just another example of the dilution of language, I suppose.

The other point I wanted to make is that retail stores are under no obligation to offer a niche product - or ANY product, for that matter.  You make the point that Joe Consumer wants DVD X for years and finally succumbs to the pressure of seeing it available on a pirate site.  I offer that what you are discussing exemplifies a "me me me" consumerist generation and it smacks of "I WANT THIS NOW" in the form of a 2 year old having a tantrum.

You warned the retailers that they cannot sell an item they do not stock.  True.  But what has to be remembered is the cost of stocking an item.  This is HUGELY influenced by economies of scale.  Walmart can stock toilet paper for a fraction of other places because it buys so darn much of it - same with DVDs.  A niche market almost by definition cannot benefit by such scaling.  If I were a "appeal to the masses" store owner, I'd be nuts to pay the higher costs of stocking a niche item like some obscure DVD that might sit on my shelf for months before being sold.  That's the place of Mom n Pop or specialty collector shops, whose disappearance is a related, but separate discussion.

I am not condoning nor condemning piracy, but who to blame is the consumer thereof. It's supply and demand, and just as you mentioned that Wally World can sell sh!t paper for a fraction of most other retailers do to pricing the pirate does the same thing. Should one run out and buy all 5 seasons of say Babylon 5 and the  B5 Movies for $350+ or get it from a pirate for $50? It's economics 101 cheap wins most every time. One is forced to asked the question why can the pirate sell the same set of $50 and the studio for $350? After all the disc is ... what 25 cents each maybe? Studios price gouge and the consumer pays for it. Yes I know they need to money to make more movies ... pay actor less and you'll have more money. Nobody going to feel sorry some actor making $20,000,000.00+ per movie or George Lucas (the king of milk the public for every dime) making over $400,000,000.00 on Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (per IMDB) alone.

Frankly I prefer original R1 releases even if they cost more, but I can see how and why people buy pirated media, be it DVD's, Software, CD's etc.

You also have to look at availability too, movies that are OOP or never released and at the same time in demand, someone is going to fill the "want" ...  I waited and waited to get "Alias Smith and Jones", finally not seeing any release in sight I bought a bootleg of it a few years back, it wasn't the best quality, but it was ok. This past month the real deal (Season 1 only this far, Season 2 this month) was released on DVD  (finally) and I ordered one straight away, top notch better quality. So am I a bad guy because I bought a bootleg only to replace it with the real deal once released?

Another thing to factor is (mainly in software) would the consumer buy it otherwise? Would Joe Blow go out and drop $800 on Photoshop or Maya regardless of pirates? It's like illegal downloads, odds are someone who makes and illegal download is not going to buy a legit copy either way. If they can get it free, great if not oh well. So the company losses nothing either way. Remember old Napster and Kazaa? DId I download songs, sure I did ... would I go out and buy their CD if I couldn't ... NO ... so what did they lose? Nothing.

Au contraire Great Ulthar of the Long Winded Word :tongueout:. I beseech thee to hear my plea of a contrary discourse to one such as thou has cast upon our weary eyes. Thusly I present to thee a harmonious blending of previously discordian states into a unified understanding by which we shall all benefit vastly.

(http://wenpigsfly.org/ss2/links/474850001173327267.gif) (http://wenpigsfly.org/ss2)

Uh...yeah; I've been reading Scott's posts too much.


The pirates of old were generally of two types: privateers and freebooters. Privateers were sponsored by countries to attack ships in time of warfare, though such acts were also committed in peacetime as well. Freebooters were simply what we would consider as pirates, as they simply captured and looted ships, among other acts. Though privateers would have considered it an affront to be called a pirate, the distinction between a freebooter and a privateer was simply whether one was sanctioned.

Piracy began in ancient times as a way for smaller nations, and tribal peoples, to deal with aggressions imposed by the larger, conquering city-states and nations. Of course, it became just as much of a way for these smaller groups to take from others just as well.

As any smaller, but well armed group, can move with greater efficiency, piracy was adopted as a way for countries to disrupt the fleet activities of an enemy and try to gain an advantage. Hence, piracy of old did not develop out of a desire to loot others, though that was certainly involved, but was encouraged and even implemented by governments as a means of advantage.

Moving into modern times, where the terms pirate and thief have become interchangeable, among other terms, the modern interpretation has sprung from the popular, albeit not entirely correct, folklore of a two century span of pirates mostly involved in activities in the Caribbean and the New World shipping lanes.

I don't disagree with you that the piracy of music, videos, etc., largely exists because someone wants it, and, as with retail, when there is a demand someone will have a supply.

Do retailers foster piracy?

Well, yes and no.

I can't say I agree with the article. Not due to any particular disagreement with the article; it is just so poorly written and structured that I would be wasting too much time tearing it apart to take a moment to consider a simple agreement or disagreement.

There is a new retail age today. An age in which the retailers are setting the bar for the customer, and not the reverse.

Go into a Circuit City store; any will do. You don't have a credit card? The money to pay for the item? They don't want you.

Layaway you ask? But they did away with that.

Unlike in times past, when stores would deal with most any customer to make an item available to them through different payment plans, more and more people have credit cards, and more stores are offering their own backed cards where they get interest kickbacks, that they don't want the customer who cannot pay for the item here and now.

Walmart is the same way.

What?!?

They have done away with layaway. They are in the process (if not completed already) of doing away with VHS. And, like other retailers, they are doing away with services and items they just don't want to fool with. They don't have anything to fear as they have put so many businesses out of business in smaller towns and are trying to over-saturate the cities to where you don't have a choice of where you go shopping; so you will have to buy from them anyway.

Retailers today are telling the customer what they will have available to buy, and, if they don't have it, tough; it is up to the customer to find it themselves.

A good place to find stuff is on the internet. Being that the internet is an open community, as such it should be always and forever, it is a place where anybody can set up shop to sell their wares, even pirated wares. If someone wants something and looks for it, they are very apt to find it, pirated or not.

The retailers won't offer it if they don't want to deal with it. If a customer wants it, they will look for it, and that creates demand; it may not be enough demand to interest a large retailer, but it can certainly interest a small time pirate.

Although people have pirated stuff because they wanted to, piracy is in good part a response to demand. Even withput the demand, there will be piracy, but it certainly has flourished well beyond the point of someone simply wanting to pirate something.


And in response to the...uhmm...article (I am being kind); the push for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is not dead, and is not because Hollywood wants it. Whether it is HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, or whatever the hell comes down the pike next, it is simply something to sell, again, to the customer offering more than what they could previously have. They don't care about Joe Shmoe watching VHS on his 20" TV in his trailer. The only ones they give a damn about are the ones who are buying plasma screen TVs, home theater systems, and all the accessories that go along with it. These are your suburbanites who have to have the latest of everything, no matter how much debt they are in, and their neighbors are the same way. 20 Joe Shmoes can come in and buy a 20" TV each, but that is not going to compare to the purchase of one plasma screen TV and all of the accessories, not to mention that the suburbanite is going to buy more compared to Joe Shmoe who is going to be satisfied with his 20" TV for the next ten years. It is a matter of marketing and selling to the customer who is more apt to buy, and pay now; they don't have to cater to anybody else and they will foster exactly the customers they want.



Oooooo....Ulthar; I trumped you on long-windedness. Nah Nah Na Nah Nah (http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Tongue/mockery-022.gif)

Menard,

It is with great anticipation and circumspection that I read your post.  I was eagerly seeking "correction" of my idea of the history (truncated as it was) of the term "piracy."

It seemed you said in more words the same thing I did.

??

I said: pirates were motivated by nationalism and greed.  That covers both true piracy and privateering; often, privateers carried a Letter of Marque, but were 'pirates' as well (say for example, after the terms of the contract expired).  The principle targets were enemies of state which then merged into greed.  Sorry if I did not clearly delineate the terms 'pirate' and 'privateer;' I WAS trying to be brief, after all.   :bouncegiggle:

You said: Piracy began as a way for smaller (militarily weaker) nations to fight back against larger states.  It became just a way for these smaller groups to take from others.

Sorry, but I fail to see a difference in our two BRIEF, oversimplisitc descriptions of a term with a rich and varied history.

As for the modern usage, my "dilution" comment was aimed at the fact that historically, piracy implied violence - it was, as you mentioned, a form of warfare.  Piracy, or theft, of movies/music is done without violence and it seems to me just a bit "wrong" to dilute the language this way.  A similar example is the extreme borderline case of "date rape" being called "rape" at all.  I think such 'equivalence' is done on purpose to elevate things folks don't take as seriously into something that sounds much more sinister.  This is yet another product of the 'victim mentality' that has gripped our culture.

(Edited for length.   :twirl:  )

You??? :buggedout:  :bouncegiggle:



Don't get me started. We would seriously take this thread off topic. :tongueout:


The use of the term piracy does come down to a victim mentality. Interesting correlation you bring up.

By plain and simple definition, the theft and selling of copyrighted content for one's own profit is simply theft. Those responsible for the theft, calling themselves pirates, romanticizes what is nothing more than theft into something that is supposedly David versus Goliath. It is simply theft, from either side (buyer or seller) and calling it piracy is only an excuse to justify it to themselves.

And who is to blame for the term's usage and perceived meaning?

Words like "bootleg" and "piracy" are used interchangeably by the industry, even when what they are really referring to is "unlicensed product" or "public domain" merchandise.  What they don't mention is many of these so-called "bootlegs" may actually be legitimate issue in the country of origin, it's the act of importing such goods which galls them.

Remember those stories about the MPAA/RIAA going after grandfathers and little girls?  That was strictly a PR campaign and did nothing to address actual piracy of goods, much less illicit re-burning of movies.  You can go to most any auction site right this minute and find DVDRs of movies.  Where's the industries concern?

In short, unless it's a studio movie or music file, they don't care.  Never have.  What they are about is maintaining monopoly control of their product, it's usage, and thus ensuring they alone collect fees for said goods and services.



Thanks honey bunches of oats.  The sheer verbosity of your unexpurgated word throttling has left me bewildered and bemused, much like watching Tom and Jerry cartoons used to reduce my younger self to fits of hysterical laughter.  Alas, and forsooth, tis but a meager and pithy draft sampling; the rant cum article which thy broadsides did leave listing.


Nor is anyone under any obligation to buy anything, that goes without saying.  However when corporate entities such as Wal*Mart apply tactics that effectively put independent stores out of business then proceed, once they have gained market dominance, to refuse to stock, or provide the option to special order, what consumers want then something is seriously wrong.


Hardly.  I've yet to see certain movies released in R1.  Movies like Twins of Evil, Vampire Circus, Sorceress (1984), Damnation Alley, Deathstalker III, and a laundry list of others.  Yet most can be found in the catalogs of gray market vendors.  Obviously they wouldn't be made available if their wasn't a market for them.  Yet, rather than release these to DVDs, studios, preferring to go with what they consider a sure thing, release and re-release the same titles.

How many times have the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings movies been released now?

Granted it probably doesn't help that these older movies probably have rights issues surrounding them.  Vampire Circus and Twins of Evil have R2 releases.  As do many other movies that have not been released to R1, AFAIK.  Movies like Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World AKA Mutant, SHE (the post-apoc flick), and many other similar obscurities from the 80s.

While I can understand why studios prefer to release current movies ad infinitum ad nauseam it does seem baffling that such "niche" movies as mentioned above, many of which I know many here wouldn't mind having, are readily available in other regions but not here.  Very strange.

Too, one does wonder how gray market vendors would be able to do buisness at all if the studios made these movies readily available.  Personally I'd much rather pick up a movie at Best Buy or Fye's than be gouged by a gray market vendor for a VHS dub transfered to cheap DVDr media, wouldn't you?


Exactly.  Retailers, being little more than extensions of mega-corporations, have reached the point where they have attained market supremacy.  They are like the company stores of old, right down to issuing their own store script in the form of gift cards.

In days past stores motto was "the customer is always right" while now, with the larger chain stores able to carry what they want and charge what they want  because they literally are the only game in town as they've run the mom and pop stores out of business, it's more like their motto is "a sucker is born every minute".

Although I am certain it was a simple mistake, could you kindly pay attention to whom you credit somebody else's words. I don't appreciate having my name attached to what someone else said. If you are going to attach my name to something Ulthar said, could you at least choose one of his computer diatribes? It would at least make me appear to be smarter. :tongueout:




You come off like a D&Der attempting to appear to be smart without any actual understanding of the words you are using. Words are not filler which you just throw into a sentence to make it appear to be...uh...nicer looking. As a writer, you need to communicate your idea, or feeling, to your reader. An exposition of distracting elements does not accomplish that.

If you are looking to appear smarter with smartass witticisms, you need to actually write them better and you need to choose your matches more wisely.



You originally presented it as an article, and that is what I expected, but did not find. I agree it is a rant, and you bring up an interesting topic for conversation. If you had said it was a rant, which you were perhaps considering smoothing out into an article.....oh hell....who am I kidding.....I would have probably still reamed you. :tongueout:

Is it time for a group hug yet? :question:

Fixed it.  I was doing a lot of copy-and-pasting and (obviously) didn't catch that.


Wow.  Guy, seriously, based on the length of your reply and self-deprecating remarks about how long winded you were being attached at the end of your post I assumed your banter was some running gag between you and Ulthar.  As such I took the post in the spirit of jest and responded in kind.  Granted if you don't know honey bunches of oats used to be (might still be) a cereal I guess that remark might not have been all that funny.  But, honestly, based on the above remarks I can only assume I was mistaken.

Your opinion.  Whatever.

But why do you hate people that play D&D?  More to the point, why do you feel that likening someone to a person into D&D qualifies as a loathsome insult?  What if the person you're trying to insult has no clue what D&D is, doesn't that sort of render the insult moot?

What is seriously wrong with that?  WHY is Walmart under an obligation to stock and item just because YOU and a few (very small number) of niche customers MIGHT want to buy it?  Because of the way economies of scale work, Walmart is not about to stock an item that they should only carry one of.  And be honest, just how big a market IS there for the titles you mention?

Aside: do you realize that shelf space at Walmart is something like $10,000 per FOOT?  It's that much because that is what they CAN charge.  Some relatively small operation putting out a few dozen DVD's with less than 100,000 circulation of each could NEVER afford to put their product on Walmart's shelves.  They just could not move the volume it would take to recover the cost of putting it IN Walmart to begin with.  I imagine the other big, evil corporate retailers you mean have similar financial requirements.


It takes a LOT less demand to create a black or grey market than a legit market.  And, grey/black markets can operate at MUCH lower overheads - in every respect.  Just because there is a grey market demand for something at grey market prices does not mean there is a legit market that can finance the overhead to meet it.

Let me rephrase this in another way.  IF there truly WAS a market, a means to make MONEY from these titles, and these corporations are so evil and greedy that they will do ANYTHING to turn a profit (as the tone of your posts suggest you believe), why on earth would they not TAP THAT MARKET????  Do you not think Walmart has the juice to get the license to sell these DVD's IF they thought they could make money from them?


"The customer is always right" is NOT the same thing as "stock every little thing any possible customer MIGHT want."  Sorry, man.  I just don't accept your premise - that the market is sufficient for brick-and-mortar retailers to stock items maybe 1 in 50,000 of their walk-in customers would even consider buying.  Business people look at data in the form of market research, not ideals.

Try harder next time. You may eventually succeed. :tongueout:

I for one never shop in Wal-Mart out of principle of supporting small business if it all possible and therefore I haven't been in one in years, my choice not preaching to no one.
However, with the invent of the Internet getting those titles that are in a niche market, OOP, limited, rare etc are easier to get, provided they have been released on DVD or your media of choice. So one is not limited to the places like Wal-Mart that cater to only the popular releases that have a high move rate. Unlikely you'll find "I Spit on your Grave" at Wal-Mart but a quick look online shows 9 vendors ready to fill the order.

Some movie that haven't been released and are in demand are do to licensing, who owns the rights, and various other things and therefore you find a booming black market for these films like Damnation Alley which has been reported it going to be released for years by various studios but somehow is never released. AS long as there is a demand there will be a supply, legal or not. Capitalism 101

Mon ami, I digress, but only in part.

In retail markets past, when mom and pop shops had a competing chance, stores would seek to fulfill a customer's desires to make and keep customers. They would not do this by carrying everything possible as nobody simply had enough room for that (as you pointed out). They would, however, special order what the customer wanted, providing they had access to it.

Even Walmart used to advertise in commercials, quite a few years ago when they were still competing, about how responsive they supposedly were to meeting customer requests for items; try asking your local Walmart to special order something for you today and see what kind of response you get.

Where the smaller retailers have been crippled, and many put out of business by the giant retailers (more specifically Walmart), the giant retailers (again, more specifically Walmart) have become less responsive, as they don't need to be in a market where the competition is little to none. With less responsive retailers in a low competition market, the options for a customer to get what they specifically want have dwindled, leaving the customer to accept what is available.

I agree with you that the big retailers are not going to carry something which does not have bulk selling power, hence can generate a profit, but a smaller store may carry that product, if they were still around.


*An example of a crippled market caused by a local government and a large retailer:

Lexington used to be filled with small craft shop which were very responsive in getting what a customer wanted. Michael's, a large chain craft store, wanted to bring a store to Lexington, but under their terms. The city government agreed to exempt them from payroll taxes for a period of seven years. Michael's is the only craft store in Lexington now, as all of the smaller shops could not afford to compete and pay taxes which the big store was not. A customer has an option of buying what Michael's stocks, or not buying anything; while there are many abandoned storefronts still littering the faces of many neighborhood shopping centers. Michael's does not have to carry anything they don't want to carry because there is no competition.


I had somewhere I was going with this; but I lost my way.


P.S. You have answered Kester's question about why certain titles are released in region 2 zones but not region 1; largely because there is not enough low end competition in our market to make it economically feasible for some companies, where in other countries small retailers and neighborhood stores are competitive enough to move those titles.



Kiss...kiss...slurp :tongueout:

Dear God, what a bloated big waste of words and electrons.

I would say a bunch of hot air, if people were actually talking.

Does the phrase "too long didn't read" ring any bells, fellahs?

Hi honey; your avatar excites me....mwha :tongueout:

When you write posts that concise, Menard, it makes my knees knock.

 :hot:

Menard is Mr. Bombastic

First off, let's keep the discussion to the topic at hand.  I see no reason for little digs at another poster's perceived shortcomings.  When I see that in a post, it usually makes me wonder why the poster wanted to try to undercut the opposing viewpoint by going after credibility.

I waited to post my thoughts on this, because I needed some time to put them all together and was otherwise occupied.

Copyrights (and patents, if you get down to it) are strange beasts.  The idea was put in place so that an individual who created something could profit from the fruits of their labor - thereby giving them a reason to create/invent more works to enrich society and/or make our lives better.  In the end, society benefits the most when the creation becomes public domain and anybody can use and copy it without restrictions.

My feeling is that copyright has been extended far too long.  Heck, I think it was too long before the Sonny "I hit a tree - please pass my law" Bono Copyright extension was passed.  How did that make society better?  I understand that someone makes a work and should be compensated for it.  I agree that is a good thing.  However, should it take one hundred years before that work becomes the property of humanity as a whole? (Patents have different terms, by the way, I have dropped them and am concentrating on copyrighted works like movies.)

The fact that copyright has been extended too long does not make the piracy of movies or music acceptable in any way.  I have never seen someone who uses a file sharing service that I would call an activist.  They simply pull down the songs because they want them and would prefer not to pay for them.  People who make illegal copies and sell them are a slightly different bunch.  They actually want to profit from someone else's work.

If copyright is unfair then we need to get that word to our elected representatives and tell them to fix it.  If they do not listen, do not vote for them and vote for someone who will.  When was the last time you sent a letter to your representative about an issue that concerned you?  I probably do once or twice a year and I pay attention to what they do or how they vote.

I will keep this brief. 

I believe you should be able to purchase a CD or DVD and make a backup copy of it.  Not one to sell, not one to give away, but you have paid for the work - pretty much the right to play it at your leisure.  It makes sense to me that I should be allowed to put my original away in a safe place and tote the burned copy in my CD wallet.  Also, the cost of music and movies is out of whack.  It is a trickle down effect from how much actors want for salary, how much studios want to make, and so on.  (Professional sports suffer from this too.)  I do not purchase many mainstream movies because of this.  When I do buy mainstream movies, I try to get them secondhand (I mean a previously owned original).  I buy b-movies all the time, especially from smaller distributors like Synapse, ADV, Rhino, etc.

And if Walmart comes into town, drives the mom and pop stores out of business and suddenly there is not a place that will carry or order special items for a specific group/need, it is a bad thing.  Survival of the fittest is not always the best route for society.

This is the same group of iggets that passed the DCL (Digital Copyright Law) stating you can not make backup copies of movies you own! Whereas recording a VHS or a cassette is fine for some reason because it's analog and some vague language about quality. I asked my Representative why can't a make a back up copy of a movie my kids will use, because crazy me doesn't want to go out and drop another $20.00 on a copy they scratched on a sandstone coaster? (Actually they take very good care of them, but you get the point.) He spoke for about 20 minutes regarding this question and never answered the question, which I pointed out to him. So finally I said "Well, I guess if the voters your represent had lobbyist we wouldn't have all this special interest laws. It's a damn shame you can't screw the illegals the way you do the tax payer."

As for me I have copying software that pre-dates the law, therefore I'm not technically in violation based on the fact my software was legally registered prior to the DCL passage. However, I can't legally re-install it if I should have HDD failure or SW corruption.

Now heres what's odd, DVD's have put CSS coding in place to prevent copying unless you have a decoder, but most music CD's the very industry that started all this whining about illegal copies does not, go figure. I can do a VHS to VHS dub, CD to CD dub, Cassette to Cassette dub and it's all legal but if I want to do a DVD to DVD dub all the sudden I'm an outlaw.

Facts are 95% +/- (Some cNet study years ago I saw) of the people that obtain and illegal copy of a song, movie etc for free, are not going to go out and pay for it if it wasn't available for free. So what have they lost? I've downloaded songs for free back in the day of Napster and Kazaa and found an artist I'd never hear of otherwise and bought one of there CD's just because I heard a song of theirs I got off the internet, now that Napster and Kazaa are no longer free, I don't use them and I don't discover new artist as I have no new music radio around here and I don't have the stomach for MTV anymore. So I'm not buying new music blindly, I'll stick with what I have.

Representatives are not going to change copyright laws not matter what the consumer and voter says, there is to much special interest money at stake. Just like they won't close the boarder in spite of the fact that over 80% (according to some polls I've seen) of the voters want it done. There is to much political heat and lobbyist money there to keep it from getting done on both sides of the aisle.

Can you say Term Limits? Remember your representative doesn't represent you, they represent the biggest check. How deep is your pocket?

Again, I disagree with you on copyright, Andrew. Of course, everybody is going to look at it from different perspectives.

It is my feeling, though there is a point where, out of legacy, something should pass into the public domain essentially as an inherited part of our culture (talk about run-on sentences), that a creative work is as much a property of the creator of said work as is a business someone has built up. The difference being that the person who built up a business can pass that on to their children, who can pass it to their children, and so on. Why should a novelist or a musician not have the same right to do that as a business owner? Are we putting more value on tangible assets than on creativity?

That being said (of course I have to be agrumentative with myself :tongueout:) I would personally rather have my writings fall into the public domain after I have expired (most likely at the hands of deranged Zardoz fans).

If Sonny Bono wanted to make certain that his children, grandchildren (good luck with that), and great-grandchildren could reap the rewards of something he handed down to them, good for him.

I agree that there should be a point where writings, songs, etc. become a part of our cultural landscape and history, but not within the life of the person who created it. I don't think 100 years is too long, but 150 may be; that is just my opinion though.