Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Piracy Paranoia in the UK

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-13-2004, 02:04 AM:

quote: BBC News Online
The UK Film Council is urging a change in the law to tackle the problem of film piracy and illegal DVD sales.

The organisation has recommended new powers to crack down on car boot sales, a major source of counterfeit films. They are also suggesting that the use of camcorders to record films in cinemas is made a criminal offence.

The UK has one of the highest levels of film piracy in western Europe, with a DVD black market estimated to have a value of up to £500m.

"The pirating of films is not a victimless crime - counterfeiting threatens future film production," said John Woodward, chief executive of the UK Film Council. "It is important that the film industry learns the lessons of music piracy."

The music industry in the US and Europe has already started taking legal action against computer users who share files. Another suggestion put forward is that the film industry devises a way for films to be legally delivered to consumers via the internet.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) seized three million pirate film DVDs this year - but this is only 5% of the number thought to be in circulation. A crackdown on the practice of illegal traders registering children's details at car boot sales to avoid detection is also being urged.

Rewards for people who give information leading to pirates being convicted is also in the proposals, and educating young people about the damage it can cause. The organisation also says there should be a more unified international law of intellectual property rights, while countries with relaxed piracy laws should be pressured into cleaning up their act.

The main sources of imported pirate film DVDs in the UK are Pakistan, Malaysia and China, while Russia has a thriving counterfeit market.

Pirated DVDs can be identified by the use of 'all' on the regional code section, and the lack of a British Board of Film Classification mark. Other pointers are misspelled film credits and poor quality labels, while films that are still being shown in cinemas are generally not available on DVD.

The UK Film Council's proposals will now be submitted to the Creative Industries Forum on Intellectual Property, which was created by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Hollywood film studios have already made moves to combat the practice of piracy.

Woodward was on this morning's Today Programme just now spouting the usual cliched BS: that pirate DVDs are all camcordered from cinemas, not-very-subtle hints that the proceeds support drugs production and Islamic terrorism, that the lack of a censor certificate means that you could unwittingly be buying hard core porn or extreme violence for your kids to watch, blah blah blah.

Up to a point I can see the rationale for putting that message across in public (if they knew that many bootleg DVDs are produced either by copying published ones or from an illegally copied broadcast standard source then they'd probably buy more of them), but I still fail to understand why they don't go after the source of the problem, i.e. the illegal pressing factories in the Middle East and China.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-13-2004, 11:50 AM:

The assertion that a pirated DVD can be identified by its use of the "All" or "0" region ID flag is ridiculous. Use of region encoding is voluntary on the part of the copyright holder. Many distributors (none in the US that I'm aware of) choose to code their releases as region 0 to foster the widest possible sales. A few examples:

In the UK, Tartan's NTSC release of Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale
In Korea, the director's cut of Battle Royale
In Hong Kong, most of Jackie Chan's films
In Japan, Bandai's release of The Wings of Honneamise

All of them are region 0 on the disc, though the packaging may state otherwise. They're all legit releases.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-13-2004, 02:18 PM:

They might like to take a look at street markets and computer/camera fairs as well.

I have a number of all region DVDs, most of them are not feature films, but documentaty material etc., but Derek Jarman's 'The Tempest', is all region.