Badmovies.org Forum

In this day and age were nearly any cd or movie can be copied and placed over the internet or on cd and dvd,there is a increasing contraversy on the morals of bootleging.
The bad
I personally don't think that burning a cd or dvd, and downloading a entier cd or dvd from the internet is right.Ill admit im not innocent of bootleging for awhile I was burning games and music for friends, but then my morals kicked in and I wondered am I really supporting these game manufactures and bands that I have so enjoyed.The answer is no.When you bootleg you are no longer supporting the game manufacter,movie,or band.These businesses and bands are supported by are money and even though many are filthy rich the fact is that when you bootleg you steal and when you steal you no longer support company or band.
If you truly love a movie,game,or band then you should pay for there product and support them so they will continue to make quality products in the future.
The good
I'll say that when im looking to by a bands new cd I'll download a few songs to see if I like the new album or band,but I do buy the cd  if I like the music.There are also certin sercumstances that I would understand in bootleging something.A while back my car was broken into and my stereo and cds were stolen.Well seeing as how I had already payed for them once, I had no problem downloading the cds off the internet and burning them to cd.Cases like these I would find aceptable.
Finally I have to say again if you want to support your musicain,game maker,or favorite movie please buy them.You don't support through stealing, and can't be truly considered a fan because a fan would buy there stuff and support them.

I'm not a bootlegging supporter, but some of my reasons are selfish, rather than moral.

I like top quality and I MUST have the original packaging. So, if someone makes me a copy of ANYTHING, I will probably buy the factory release version anyway.

I'm not innocent either. I'm not a big music fan, but I have maybe 100mb of songs I've downloaded from the net. I don't have a fast enough connection for downloading DVD movies, but if I did, I probably would. My software collections for previous computers (C64, Amiga) are about 99% pirated and I have some pirated software on this system. Almost all the games I have now are originals though, since I'd rather have a complete copy rather than a CD-rip that leaves out the cut scenes and music. I bought most of them used or at a liquidator store though.

Having said that, I don't think copying something current is usually a good idea because it doesn't support the company. However, depending on the circumstances, I don't think that copying is ALWAYS wrong.

If a movie is out of print and the only way to get a copy is to bootleg it, then I say to go ahead. If the studio thought it could make money from it, they'd still be selling it. Most likely if they re-release it, people will buy the new copy because it will almost certainly have better picture quality.

Old software has no value 90% of the time, so copying it doesn't hurt the company. I mean how much money will Activision lose if you copy the original Mechwarrior?

As for music, people want it in a flexible format.If the music companies offered MP3 downloads for a small fee, people would probably download from them rather than use the various file sharing networks.

Finally, in the case of theft or your originals getting damaged, I don't see anything wrong with replacing them with copies.

I forgot to mention something.Im a big fan of video games,exspecially the old ones from like nintendo and super nintendo.Now seeing as how nintendo no longer recieves any profit from there old video games I have no problem downloading roms of classic videogames.I think in this case bootleging is not something bad but actually good.If these games were never converted into roms then some of the best games ever made would be lost.
I also think that bootleging something that is out of print like movies and music is ok.

Depends- bootlegs have their good and ugly side. I don't find anything wrong with taping concerts or distributing unreleased or rare out of print material but posting mp3's of official releases I don't really like music wise. Trading rare movies isn't really a big deal to me either but stuff thats easy to find I won't agree with trading most of the time.

With the amount of utter crap that the entertainment industry tries to pass off as "quality", NO, I HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH BOOTLEGGING.

Think of how many times you've been ripped off when you bought a crappy cd, watched a crappy movie, or experienced anything that couldn't be described as anything other than crap.

Consumers have been ripped off for years, and now the score is just being evened.  The world is not a fair place, for producers or consumers.  It's almost like a war or something, lol.

I agree 100% with StatCat and wyckednick.  Anything that's rare or out-of-print, I don't see the big deal about bootlegging, because how are you going to get the item otherwise?  But if it's in circulation, then bootlegging shouldn't happen.  

Nick

Hmmmm, I dont agree.

i think that Downloading is a way of expanding horizons and presenting new styles of music to people. I have many Pakistani, Israeli and African music I would NEVER have heard otherwise.

Train, System of A Down and Third Eye Blind have all gotten a CD purchase from me downloading them, soon Cold as well.

I also bought Donnie Darko because of downloading.

I think it is great.

Evan3 your saying you downloaded it first and then bought it.Ok thats fine seeing as how you bought it,I do this as well I look and then buy.But to download an entire album and burn it on a cd and never buy it is wrong.

I agree with JackFlack.

I myself have no problems taking anything and everything I can get my hands on whether it be movies or music.

The producers and actors/musicians are all rich or close to it.

I'm poor.

I'll take from the rich and give it to myself without hesitation any day of the week.
(yes I know that sounds selfish but oh well...I don't care)



Post Edited (07-02-03 13:13)

The producers and actors/musicians are all rich or close to it.

Prducers, yes.  Musicians, no.

Here's where the money goes.  (Note: 'recoupable' means it is the money that the label spends that the band owes back to the label)

========
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. f**k them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid.

-- Courtney Love
=========



Post Edited (07-02-03 13:23)

THANK YOU FREEP!  I'm glad someone else knows the musicians get f**ked on record deals.  Everyone always thinks they're being cool when they don't buy a record or go to a show to support their favorite artists (I'm lookin' at YOU, Ash ;), but they're just knocking a few bucks off that next tank of gas to make it to the next town.  Only those dumbass rappers and huge bands like Aerosmith make that much money.
But as far as movies go, especially for people like us who watch more strange, hard-to-find movies than most people, bootlegging is indeed, as Nick so grandly put it, god.

Brother R

Freep,

Is that why recording artists live like kings in their mansions on MTV Cribs?  Frankly, I have no problem with bootlegging when I notice that these musicians can go out and buy a Bently, Benz or Rolls with pocket change.

Bootlegging is what Robin Hood was for Sherwood Forest...

As someone who spent a couple grand producing an album a few years back...

If I was at your house and saw that you had ripped/downloaded/bootlegged the album I paid to produce, I WOULD BREAK YOUR GODDAMN LEGS.

Napster/Kazaa is theft.  You are a dirty f**kin' thief is you download.  

Kirk

I've said it before and I'll say it again; If songs were legally available to download for $0.50 apiece, in an unrestricted format, I think most people would buy them rather than pirate.

There's a local liquidator store that sells older computer games for $5 each. The local Staples has copies of Adobe Photoshop 7 for $600. I like games and I like graphics software. Out of the two, which do you think I'm more likely to pirate?

How about this idea: if you download a song that you really like through a P2P network, send a quarter directly to the artist. That's only $10 for every 40 songs. True, a quarter isn't much, but if one million people did this, the artist would make $250,000 of pure profit, which is a hell of a lot more than they'd get from the record companies. The only ones who would be losing money are the thieves at the record companies who give artists the shaft. Bypass them and send your money directly to the artist.

I recently checked out an artist who had his CD for sale online.  You could listen to a Real Audio clip for free, or download the mp3 for a dollar

The way I look at it is to imagine someone throwing loads of $100 dollar bills up into the air at a public place with alot of people.

Everyone would scramble to snatch up as many as they possibly could would they not?

Because it was free money and because they could.

I look at MP3's like that.  Because they're free and because I can.

Besides, the majority around the world loves free MP3's.  

I personally don't understand why a person would want to pay for something that they could get for free elsewhere!



Post Edited (07-05-03 18:15)

Until it's your money someone else is throwing  into the air for others to grab.



Call me a fool I guess for taking the CD to the cash register instead of slipping it under my jacket; why pay when I can get it for free



Post Edited (07-05-03 14:56)

Apple just opened its own music store.You can download songs for 99 cents each.Its pretty cool.I can download an enitier album for the same cost as if I bought it from some place like Best Buy.

>I personally believe that only a fool would pay for something that they could get
>for free elsewhere!

It depends how much trouble the free version is to get. There are a few songs I like and I've downloaded copies of them. One was a song that was used in an episode of Buffy. I had to download 4 copies before I got a flawless one. The first had static at a couple points, the second had a glitch in the middle, and the third sounded like it had been recorded by someone holding a mic up to the radio. Each was about 3.5mb, so I had to download 14mb for a single song.

I actually went back and re-worded (edited)that phrase that you quoted me on JohnL.

I didn't want to come across as a dick by saying that.

By saying it like I originally did I was basically calling all of you fools who are against bootlegging....which I know you are not.
Sorry about that.



Post Edited (07-05-03 18:51)

Freep.....I know that you & I disagree on this issue.....many others do as well.

But stealing from a store and downloading FREE MP3's online are two very different things.

Of course a person might argue that stealing is stealing.

I do not consider downloading MP3's online as stealing.

I would however regard it as stealing if there were a law against it....but alas there is not.

Until such a law is passed I will take and take and take to my heart's content!

Everyone that is against bootlegging is truthfully in the minority.

If you took a worldwide poll I'm sure that you would find that most people love it!

Am I wrong?



Post Edited (07-06-03 00:51)

If you took a worldwide poll I'm sure that you would find that most people love it!

Am I wrong?

Majority opinion does not make something right.  Look at history for a examples of behaviors where the majority at the time agreed with the behavior in question.. You have to either decide a) There are times where something is right or wrong, regardless of  what the majority of the time think or b)  I have no grounds on which to say something is wrong if the majority opinion of the time was that the issue in question was right.   Think slavery in the Roman empire or the early American history , or women's sufferage.  Issues in which the 'majority opinion' was not really the right opinon.  This is not to equate downloading MP3s with slavery, jutst to  point out the opinion polls don't create ethics.


If a musician puts up his music for download, then the artist has indicated that they are offering the song for download and I'll download it.   However, if the artist has not  put up his or her music for download, and the only way to get it is to download what someone else ripped from a CD, then I will honor the musicians wishes and not download the music. In my mind it's really up to the musician to say what they want done with their music and as a fellow musician also trying to make a living, I feel compelled to honor that.

It's awfully direspectful to say "hey, dude, I love your music, but I'm not going to pay for it since I can get it for free.  Sorry if you don't like it." I would say most musicians really don't need fans like that.  Like I said, when someone else grabs your money and starts throwing it around, you might object

That's just from an ethical perspective, from a legal persective it's hard to  see how ripping a CD so that a thousand other people can download it can be considered "fair use".       Downloading may not be illegal, but I would warrent ripping and uploading would be found to be so, and the only reason you don't see more prosecutions is the  the technology makes it difficult to track and single out versus the scale it's being done, not because it's legal.

To all you people who think that downloading songs and movies off the internet is good let me ask you this question.If some one stole the music from your car or home you would be mighty p**sed off wouldn't you.I mean thats your music,stuff you payed good money for,but the robber on the other hand feels that if he can get it free why should he buy it.You see what im saying here is that you are hypocrites.If some one stole something from you, you would be pist off.So why do you think its right to steal music from a musician or movie maker who has put in a lot of time and money to make.
And to say that you would have to be a moron to buy something when you could just get it free is stupid.I support my bands,game makers, and movie makers.I do not steal from them because I enjoy there products and want to keep them making more good stuff.But you people who steal from your favorite bands,game makers and movie makers are not support them.I wouldn't even call you a true fan because fans don't steal from there favorites stuff.
If you were a musician would you really want people to download your albums off the internet for free, when you need the money you get from those sales?

ASHTHECAT vomited electrons into:
>>But stealing from a store and downloading FREE MP3's online are two very different things.

Bulls**t.  The artist is getting screwed either way.

>>Of course a person might argue that stealing is stealing.

It is.  Who the f*ck are you, Bill Clinton?

>>I do not consider downloading MP3's online as stealing.

Then you are an idiot.

>>I would however regard it as stealing if there were a law against it....but alas there is not.

Unauthorized Distribution and Unauthorized Duplication of Copyrighted Materials.  You are in violation of the label/artist's copyright.

>>Until such a law is passed I will take and take and take to my heart's content!

Again, you are an idiot.

>>Everyone that is against bootlegging is truthfully in the minority.

Oh boy, mob rule.  Where do you get this fact from?  Cites please.

>>If you took a worldwide poll I'm sure that you would find that most people love it!

Again, you got anything to back this up?  I bet the artists who are getting screwed aren't too fond of it.

>>Am I wrong?

YES.  And a complete gibbering moron.

Kirk

It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of bootlegging.....but by our skills with a lightsaber!

>But stealing from a store and downloading FREE MP3's online are two very
>different things.

True, one is physical property, the other is 'intellectual property'.

>I do not consider downloading MP3's online as stealing.

Technically, it's violating copyright.

>I would however regard it as stealing if there were a law against it....but alas there
>is not.

There is; Copyright law. The same law that says you can't make and give away copies of the latest movie on video, also say that you can't download music from the net if you don't have a legal right to it. If you already own a copy of the music in question, then you should be legally entitled to download a copy as all you're doing is shifting formats for your own personal use. Of course if you already had the music on CD, you could make your own MP3's.

>It's awfully direspectful to say "hey, dude, I love your music, but I'm not going to
>pay for it since I can get it for free. Sorry if you don't like it." I would say most

There will always be pirates and people who will take something for free, but, and I could be wrong about this, I think the problem is that the record companies aren't providing the music in the form the public wants. MP3 or other file formats are more versatile than a standard CD. Many of them can be stored on a HD or CD (as files) to create a huge jukebox. They can be burned to audio CD's to create mixes. They can downloaded to portable players etc. The music industry doesn't want any of this, they want to keep selling physical CD's for the same prices as they have been (and which they were accused of price-fixing for).

Let's say that I want a single song from an album. I go to the store and pay $15-20 for an entire CD full of music that I don't want, just to get that one song. I make an MP3 of it, then the CD sits there collecting dust. I can't legally re-sell it unless I give up the copy of the song that I made. On the other hand, if I could go to a single web site and download a copy for $0.50 I get just the song I want, there's no physical CD to hang around and I have it in the format I want in the first place.

Not to mention that the cost of delivering MP3 downloads has to be lower than creating physical packages and shipping them to stores.

>considered "fair use". Downloading may not be illegal, but I would warrent
>ripping and uploading would be found to be so, and the only reason you don't
>see more prosecutions is the the technology makes it difficult to track and single
>out versus the scale it's being done, not because it's legal.

I don't think the problem is singling out the users so much as what it would cost to take them all to court.

>To all you people who think that downloading songs and movies off the internet
>is good let me ask you this question.If some one stole the music from your car
>or home you would be mighty p**sed off wouldn't you.I mean thats your

Apples and oranges. To make this an accurate comparison you should say that someone made copies of all your music, so that you don't actually lose anything.

>why do you think its right to steal music from a musician or movie maker who has
>put in a lot of time and money to make.

It wouldn't be as widespread if the music and movie companies would start adapting to the current technology. Back when the tape recorder came out, the music companies tried to block it on the grounds that music piracy would put them all out of business. Instead it became a new source of income when they started selling music on tapes. When the VCR came out, the movie studios tried to get it outlawed on the grounds that if normal people had a device that could copy movies, the rampant piracy would put them out of business. Now a good portion, if not the majority of their profits come from movie rentals and sales.

My question is, if downloading is so bad,  then why does it persist? You have to think that most people are law abiding citizens who go to work, buy newspapers, dont shplift, pay 5 bucks for a subway sandwich, and come home and download music. Why not arrest everyone then.

Also, what is the difference between downloading shared music, or going up to your friend and saying, man, i want you to burn a copy or record that tape for me. I have been introduced to so many different bands.

Example, my friend bought a Train CD and burned me a copy as well as two others, so for one bought copy, three new CDs were given away.

I downloaded a lot of Third Eye Blind music and said, this is nice, this is good, and I want a perfect copy, so I bought the CD, 100 percent profit to company/artist.

Now, I also have Greek music, big band music, country pop music, etc. Plus why should I buy a one hit wonder's CD for one song. That is cheating me out. Why should I buy a CD that will only give me 10 tracks (although I did buy Nickleback) when I can fit 20 some odd songs onto one CD.

If you want to survive, then be a good artist. Not a one hit no one,

Plus, I have yet to hear of a strugling artist, even Sugar Ray, a lowly band, drives around in beautiful cars, lives in huge houses, tours the world on company dollar, gets endorsements, and goes to Playboy Mansion Parties.

fer shizzle

dude if you wanna see a good movie its called
skulhedface
its by gwar
also check out all there vids
there the greatest

So Ash where do you park your car?  I'm looking for a car for my friend and I could use a few more CD's

Poor, poor Ash,  Nothing personal but you are wrong again.  

It is a law that should be taken seriously,  However it is broken lots of time unknowingly. Take this as and example.  Legally I can copy an article out of a journal from the library.  I can even scan it into my computer. However I can not legally e.mail you a pdf of that article.  I can on the other had send you the citation information and then you can get a copy for your local library. (librarys pay copy right fees in addition to buying the journal).  

Individuals break this law all the time and no one really cares.  But if you are a company that does this you can get in significant trouble.

I always hate when someone goes and digs up an ancient long dead thread like this.

As soon as I saw this thread re-appear I thought, "Oh s**t, here we go."

I wrote those comments almost a YEAR ago.

I still download but not nearly as much as I used to...I used to be like a vacuum cleaner sucking up all the free music I could.

Now I download maybe 1 or 2 songs a month.



Post Edited (05-14-04 00:27)

Sorry Ash,  I t didn't notice the start date on this or I never would have commented.  Some else restarted the thread and I never looked.  Guess I skipped it the frist time around.

This really kills me,  the RIAA and the MPAA act like some college kid downloading music or movies is taking food out of someone's mouth.  This is a load of  bulls**t!  It just keeps them from having free food at the next board meeting.  These guys already get money from a surcharge on every  blank video and audio tape sold in the U.S.  and they are the reason we back up computers on digital audiol tape but can't listen to our music on them !

Some people in congress are already looking at  going back and amending the DMCA to allow purchasers to make copies of DVDs they have purchased.  They want to restore the idea  of  "fair use".

I think that  mass bootlegging of  movies and music  for profit is a bad thing,  but I don't believe copying something off the air or downloading a few songs from the internet is going to backrupt some big coporation .  The next thing you know they will be suing people for loaning books to one another.  

Sorry if  I am incoherent here, but this crap really p**ses me off.




http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2004/may/may4a_04.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15875

>The next thing you know they will be suing people for loaning books to one
>another.

Here's a short story and article that you might like to read;

The Right to Read (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)

If it weren't for music downloading, I'd be listening to nu-metal or bling-bling rap. downloading, for me, has broken the music monopoly. But I do buy an album to support my favorite bands, a crappy blank disc can never replace a real album.

Downloading becomes the only option though when I can't find the CD anywhere. For instance, I cannot find an Acid Death Cd or Absurd Existence CD. I doubt anyone has even heard of those bands. I wouldn't have either if I didn't download their stuff.

Bands that are confident about how good their music are support people downlaoding their music cause they know someone is goign to buy it. Unfortunatley, some people just settle with the burnt copy. So my feelings are really mixed about this.

For movies I have the same opinion. Except I don't download movies at all. I find joy in popping in the DVD, not knwoign what to expect.

Copying: I don't see a problem with it... as long as the record company or artist puts them out or gets the profits (i.e. the IMAC thing).  

Bootlegging/Copying and selling for your profit: WAY wrong. NO excuse, NO justification.

Taping Live Shows and trading them: AWESOME    This is music that may never be heard again.  With cookie-cutter shows like Brittany Spears, there's no need to tape- 1- it sucks   2- every show sounds the same.  With shows like Neil Young, REM, Tool, and other good bands, they don't play the same song the same way twice.  I can listen to a show from 1 night and have it sound awesome.  The next night is a totally different mix and play on it.  I think this forum - taping and trading LIVE shows - actually helps the bands.  My husband and I have been itroduced to, and have introduced several people to, all kinds of bands using this forum.  Once we/ they hear the show, we/they almost always end up buying studio releases and going to a LOT of concerts.