Discussing pirated movies

Does the same go for music?

Honest question.

Too bad this thread didn't materialize after the endless discussions of the Wolverine leak. That movie received far too much attention.

Nice tag.

What if someone else pirated something and brought it over with a bunch of friends and beer and made you watch it with them?

Who the fuck does that??

People who don't hang out on movie message boards and don't care about piracy.

See post #1 regarding excuses.

Just don't bring your pirate bullshit here. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants this site to develop a reputation for condoning that stuff. The reasons why have already been explained in simple enough terms for a child to understand.

Pff. I know some people who believe piracy is their civic duty.



I'm actually in something of a flame-war with someone over Harry Potter - he hates the last three films, downloaded Order of the Phoenix, and says he'll do the same with Half-Blood Prince. I called him a thief and his excuses were "Warner Bros. should make better movies!" and "Welcome to the digital age; everyone does it." Blah.

Not to mention these boards are packed full of below the line people that aren't going to appreciate you casually spouting your douche-bag mouth off about how you steal shows. People aren't putting hours and hours of work into productions so you can fucking turn around and steal them you stupid, lazy, inconsiderate douche nozzles.

People posting on a fucking MOVIE MESSAGE BOARD have zero excuse.

Domingo, I'm gonna bit-torrent your funeral.

Unless his funeral is copyrighted by an MPAA signatory, this is probably OK.

*points*

Stop that.

I'm, obviously, with Devin on this. It was disgusting how those unscrupulous enough to watch the Wolverine leak had no problem with discussing that fact.

Totally agree with the sentiment behind the rant but have to raise an obvious point. Even if you ban people for talking about pirating they will still do it, they just won't say the version they saw is a pirate.

Edited to add: Also if you are going to come out against it then it should be ALL forms of piracy. This board has TV and music forums on it and people regulary talk about downloading the latest lost or whatever. People are going to cry foul if you frown upon one form of piracy but don't care about others.

I'm going to agree 100% with Devin on this as both a filmmaker and lover of film, it is completely wrong to pirate movies. And I would never do it. Period. To date, the only time I've used torrent for downloading has been to get a hold of some fanedit. I think that's acceptable, right? No harm no foul.

However... That being said, I have to raise an interesting point and I may not be the only one with this problem.

Here in Bolivia, original DVDs are very hard to come by. Piracy runs rampant and so all you can find are bootlegs. They sell these fuckers on street corners and even "official" video rental places offer dupes. It's gotten to the point where the concept of renting a video is pretty much obsolete. If Eufforia can sell you the dupe for 10 Bolivianos (about a buck fifty), why would you "rent" it for 4 Bolivianos?

Therefore, the only way I can watch DVDs at home is through pirated dupes. This is not by choice. And I don't keep them. I have an arrangement with my "dealer" I'll take a stack home, watch the films, then take them back to him and get another stack at a reduced rate. Kind of like my personal Netflix... If I ever want to actually buy a movie to own, I'll do it through an import house or Amazon. (Case in point: I'm having the DC of Watchmen Blu Ray brought over. I'm getting the Amazon.com exclusive. It will end up costing me over 100 dollars. But it's worth it. Regular DVDs and Blu Rays cost me about 15 - 20% more than their list price.)

My point is, 80% of the time, I watch pirated movies here because I have no choice. But I don't download them myself and I don't keep them.

In some cases, certain movies don't even make it down here (like The Wrestler) and I absolutely have no choice but to get a bootleg off my dealer if I want to see the film.

In any case, I hope my perfectly valid excuse means I'm off anyone's shit list.

For the record: I did NOT see the leaked Wolverine (paid money to see that shit in a theater, thank you very much) and - although I'm aware of a torrent available for the Watchmen DC (a friend offered it to me, in fact) I will wait patiently until the end of the month so I can screen my Blu Ray at the Cinematheque... I think that will be a much more worthwhile experience.

In some cases, when they talk about is a giveaway as to whether they watched a pirated version or not.

Lord knows I agree, but with all due respect, the whole sentiment is nothing more than internet masturbation when talking about a pirated movie isn't a bannable offense.

We all know that the whole point of bragging about having watched a torrent or bootleg basically boils down to this. We know these people are advocating piracy, and are everything wrong with the movie industry, etc, etc. Yet they're allowed to stay. If these people are symptoms of a raging sickness in this industry, not backing up the repeated vigorous butthurt with action is the equivalent of allowing the sick industry to sit outside naked with open wounds while getting a cheap lapdance from a hooker with uncontrollable horrifying dysentery. These people get off on having a voice for their crime. Have the good taste to take that voice away, or kindly quit your bitching.

And by the way, it's supposedly off-topic, and Devin wants no parts of it, but it seems to be my prime domain on the boards these days, so, I'll gladly take up the flag on this one: I'm more than willing to extend that policy to any cuntrag in the Video Game forum who brags about playing a pirated copy of an upcoming game.

Someone needs to correct the spelling of "hypocrits" in their tag in the name of optimal search results.

What I don't get is how dense you have to be to openly talk about it and draw attention to themselves. People will pirate movies, thats a given, but they can't just sit on their hands until post-release date before talking about it?

That's what I'm doing right now with Avatar.

Oops.

I dead serious with this question:
How morally outraging is my personal torrent practice? In the last year or so I've torrented 3 movies: Night of the Demon (killer bigfoot movie), The Gestapo's Last Orgy, and Absurd. I pirated them because they aren't available on DVD in ANY country (so far as I can find), and in all my years of scrounging video stores across the country I haven't even been able to find them on VHS. I really wanted to see them as a horror movie fanatic.

This am serious question!

This is why most criminals and rulebreakers get caught, they're too goddamn stupid to keep their mouths shut. You can't justify piracy, either legally or by the ethics of this community, so if you do it don't talk about it. Fucking amateurs.

I don't think it matters. Think about it, who are you worried about offending? Unless you have some sort of urge to "get right" with Devin, I would just not talk about how you got those movies on the boards. At the end of the day, the website as a company wants to stay as far away as they can from condoning illegal downloads. If you found a suitcase of money and kept it, would you go on the irs website and ask if they thought you were still cool?

I still haven't seen Wolverine.

Who wants to touch me?

*raises hand*

At least I didn't refer to myself in the third person, right?

"Gabe watch bad horror movies without permission, am Gabe bad man?"

I should of worded it more like this:

The act of fanatical collectors bootlegging rare horror 'gems' predates internet forums, torrents, and DVD. It's kind of a 'grand tradition' for horror fandom to share these things. There were proto-message forums in the backs of magazines like Fangoria. At the time this was the only way to 'enjoy' such rarities. I'd argue that the passing of VHS boots insured the resurgence of interest that eventually led companies like Anchor Bay and Synapse Films to put effort into digitally remastering and releasing special edition DVDs of stuff like The Beyond, Phenomena, and The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue.

Do these rules still apply to horror fans, or does the digital age make them obsolete? Were we assholes in the first place, and I'm full of shit for having such fond memories?

I think it's safe to say that when it comes to films, no grey area of any kind is tolerated here.

I'm probably going to be proven horribly wrong with this, but in my opinion there's a pretty big difference between some impatient ass downloading a crappy R5 screener (or a DVD-rip) of a movie because they want to be first in line to talk about it like they're part of the Kool Kids Klub and someone downloading something that's damn near impossible to find short of seeking out the masters of the film like in Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns".

EDIT: I know that the MPAA doesn't give a shit whether it's rare or not, in their eyes it's still illegal, but I also doubt that there are MPAA employees that are being assigned to track people seeding something like Titicut Follies.

Funny Gabe, was coming in here to reply to your first post with exactly that. Back in the day when horror cons still mattered it was the best thing in the world to go there and pick up a boot of say, Argento's cut of Dawn of the Dead, or Necromantik.

I don't think there is a true film fan alive who hasn't watched a bootleg at some point. It's unavoidable sometimes, especially when you're young and don't have the money (or yes, patience) to get it through legal means. Now of course that most everything is available fast and cheap, it's a different matter.

But anyway this is all a discussion for another thread.

I buy bootlegs of unavailable shit all the time at cons. That's archaeology. When and if they become available legitimately, I upgrade, but I've been waiting 20 years for some stuff.

I did the foot work on Necromantik, Alex. I remember driving 45 minutes to the south Phoenix suburbs just to rent it. And now I own the DVD. I never watch it, but it's there, just in case I need to clear out a house party fast.

I actually first saw it a midnight screening in a packed theater. Quite the experience. But I could never find that movie on VHS! Friend grabbed boots of it and the sequel... that made for a fun night.

Er, but yeah, bootlegs.

Stuff like that (i.e. things that you couldn't pay for even if you wanted to) are about the only things I've ever really downloaded/pirated/bootlegged.

Case in point... I torrented "Living with Michael Jackson" the other day. Didn't want it... just NEEDED it.

I still remember the joy of finding a Japanese VHS dupe of the El Topo laserdisc in high school. I miss Blackest Heart Media, but there are still plenty of sites devoted to these "grey market" films. A buddy recently sent me Demon Lover Diary. May give it a spin tonight.

And yeah, stealing legit releases sucks and you suck when you do it. Especially if its a smaller company's release or a cult item that genuinely needs the support your cash provides.

Erix I'm sad to hear about the situation in your country but nevertheless I would say that supporting bootleggers with actual money is even worse than downloading the movies.

Most of the people who sell the DVDs aren't the actual bootleggers. They get their copies from Peru and so forth... and if you were to trace it back to the source you would probably find that the original DVD it was ripped from came from some dickwad who works at Warner Brothers or whatever. The proof is in the pudding: at the end of the year, many of the DVDs you find are copies of Academy screeners.

So, by giving my dealer 20 Bolivianos every couple of weeks, I'm helping him feed his family. It's not his fault this is the only merchandise available to him.

Yes, it's a vicious circle. And yes, by actually consuming the product in any form, I am inadvertently supporting it. But the fact is, if I didn't get my movies from a street dealer I'd never watch movies here. (What. Wait for them to show up on cable in full screen? Why?) As I said, I treat it like a rental. I certainly don't stock up on pirate DVDs. And I never get a bootleg DVD of a movie that is in current release. The stack next to my TV at the moment is as such: Push, REC, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, Knowing and Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth (which I have to take back anyway because this copy only has a Spanish language track).

You can judge me for doing this. But think about what I said - Back when Video Rental houses existed, they also rented you dupes. (Before DVD... Back when it was still VHS) DVDs got so cheap and piracy got so widespread that it killed the video rental business in this country. Video renters realized it was better for them to just sell their shit.

(A couple of dealers buy originals themselves and sell you dupes of their own stuff. There are a few who actually download stuff from the internet and make DVDs of that - like the guy who offered me the Director's Cut of Watchmen - but that's kind of where I draw the line.)

When video download services start making their stuff more accessible outside the US (like Netflix or PSN or iTunes) things may change. But, for now, I really have no choice but to get whatever is available. If everywhere I go, all they have is dupes, what choice do I have?

I still purchase what I want to own online. I still go to the movies at least once a week if I can. I do what I can to support the industry. And it really needs it here.

Yes! This point can't be stressed enough. Especially since the smaller cult companies are folding left and right (or being bought out by Starz and refusing to release anything interesting any more). I wish there was a way to insure that the small guys would get a hair of profits every time I rented one of their movies on Netflix. Am I wrong in assuming Netflix just tosses them the cost of a disc and profits off the rest?

www.hulu.com
or
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

TV shows are online, streaming and free... Also, you can see movies on hulu... I fail to see the need to pirate when shit is free.

As to movies, I need that shit in 1080p or I'm just not happy and neither should anyone else! -- That being said... pirating may be a viable alternative once movies aren't available anymore. I think VHS has a shelf life on it and using devices like an Archos to transfer something digitally may be the only way to save these classics until the studios finally dust off a print and transfer to DVD\BR (maybe not even a good one, look at a lot of the transfers of movies that are shown little love)

Look back at some of the movies that were released on Beta\VHS that haven't been transferred to DVD yet and now with Blu-Ray... there's a vast quantity of great films that are slipping through the cracks. I can see it now, 5 years from now entire torrent sites devoted to Eddie Cantor!! God help us all when TCM becomes a sellout like AMC and predominantly airs movies that were made in the last 10-15 years.

Lest we forget

The first paragraph is ALL you need.

Yes. But not outside the US. Or at least, not around these parts.

You don't know how much I miss Conan... Can someone send me DVDs of The Tonight Show? I'll suck your dick.

iPlayer doesn't work in the US.

I don't think Devin's aim here is to state that he's above reproach on this topic. We've all done things that are illegal and stupid, from smoking pot to thinking you're okay to drive home when you're probably not, etc. I think his point is that while these activities may be going on, speaking about them on the boards is the pinnacle of lunacy. Especially on a site whose bread is buttered by the very people against whom this particular crime is being committed.

The bottom line is this: if you're illegally downloading things, you're a dick. If you're actually creating evidence of your idiocy (while also potentially implicating the site in the process) by posting about it, you are King Dick.

He didn't speak about it in the boards...

HE SPOKE OF WATCHING BOOTLEGS ON THE FRONT FUCKING PAGE!

Who are you, his shrink?

Devin's never said he's not a dick.

Like I said, there are few of us who are above reproach on this topic. This thread has just seen a lot of hemming and hawing over what types of bootlegging is okay and what isn't, which was probably the impetus for the origination of the thread in the first place (ironic, no?). For the sake of distancing themselves from anything that might appear to be condoning of piracy, the showrunners here need to make statements like Devin's to ensure the health of the site.

And no, I'm not Devin's shrink. I wouldn't wish that job on anyone.