posted 05-06-2008 03:16 PM                       

quote: Chris Slycord

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Since when does saying that camcorders are involved in 90% of pirating mean that you and I are felons?

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Well, Chris, they are not saying that off-screen rips are off Hollywood private screening rooms, are they! They are saying they originate in MOVIE THEATRES where you and I are employed. That can only mean either we are doing it ourselves, or we are allowing crime to be committed in our places of business. And whether or not that is said directly, that's the impression the public has. Seinfeld couldn't have written an episode around it if it wasn't the general perception.

We used to have a saying in grade school, "Be careful, cause you never know which it is." Meaning, some nuns are mean and nasty and would wack you with a ruler as soon as look at you, and some nuns were gentle and kind. But when you are talking in the corridor and you saw a nun coming at you, having that foreknowledge -- be it right or wrong -- it always made you question, usually in panic, is this going to be one of the good nuns or one of the mean nuns?! Hence, "Be careful, cause you never know which it is."

I dislike the idea that the MPAA's two decade long anti-piracy campaign, starting with Valenti's assault on the pirating thieves who were using those new fangled VHS machines to record...er,"steal" movies off tv broadcasts and after loosing in court, then moving on to this constant single note tune about the theatres' role in Hollywood's multi-billion dollar losses....this has made it so that the general public looks at theatre personnel with that same kind of suspicion as we looked at that nun coming at us.

I don't like the idea that if I tell someone I run a theatre or am a projectionist, they're thinking, "Hmmmm, I wonder if this is one of those guys who makes bootleg copies of the movies in his theatre." Luckily I can tell them, "Not to worry, I only run OLD movies...they have already been pirated by the first run theatre projectionists."

posted 05-06-2008 09:59 PM                       

quote: Chris Slycord

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When someone says "Lots of piracy happens in theaters" you assume that this really is intended to be "Lots of piracy happens in theaters and the exhibitors are actively helping."

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posted 05-06-2008 11:57 PM                    

quote: David Stambaugh

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What would the MPAA gain by lying, i.e. the 90% camcorder statement? I mean I don't understand why they would grossly inflate that number.

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Why? Because they want to get the exhibitors and the public paranoid about piracy at the theater level (camcorder copies) and tone down the studio's own fault as much as they can. That's why. I don't buy 90% for a second because last summer I was introduced to someone through a friend of a friend and he was commenting on how he was able to get almost any movie in a perfect copy before the release date through his internet sources. He was very much against camcorder transfers because of the quality and said he never bothered downloading those. He even had a bunch of movies he had downloaded on his video ipod he showed me and indeed these were NOT camcorder jobs. They were clearly some kind of DVD rip with a professional transfer.

90% my ass! 50% is at least a believable number, although I would like to see some facts to back that up by someone other than the MPAA.

posted 05-07-2008 01:21 AM                    

quote: Frank Angel

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If theatres not actively helping, then if the MPAA numbers are even partially accurate and not just pulled out of it's collective arse, then theatres must be helping, at the very least, by culpable indifference to all these multitudes of off-screen rips.

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posted 05-07-2008 11:29 AM                   

quote: Frank Angel

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And it just so happens that this particular bootleg of IRON MAN which got Cuomo on is high horse in the first place was a satellite transmission capture, NOT an off-screen copy

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