Pirating Movies - Do You Do It?

[mrbasehart]

I just want to add that my friend also has TWO rental accounts, and has had them for about 5 years.  He really watches too many movies.

[RVR II]

I just want to add that my friend also has TWO rental accounts, and has had them for about 5 years.  He really watches too many movies.

I (theoretically) have 2 rental accounts as well (Netflix & RedBox) but mostly they're for the next RiffTrax release(s)

[MSTJedi]

I have to say I am in the group of people who doesn't understand why in these days of HDTVs anyone would want to watch a blury version of a movie shot from the back of a theater with people talking over it just to save a few bucks.

I'll admit that since I'm cheap (did I mention that?), I don't bother with the double-layer discs that most movies are put on, so most of my "backup" DVDs aren't the same quality of the original. The reason I don't care so much about the quality is because I have yet to invest in an HDTV. Most of the time, I can't tell much of a difference on a standard def TV, so I have no reason to care what it looks like. Unless it's a movie I really love. Then I'll go and get a used copy from Blockbuster.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I can only speak from my experiences back in the early 80's - when you swapped bootlegs for blank tapes (which is why the current law was changed to read "gain, even if not monetary").  More than seven years ago.

Back when - if you knew the right people - you could get a copy of Empire Strikes Back that had been copied on a telecine without a widescreen lens so that everyone looked tall and squashed - unless you had a TV like my General Electric that allowed you to adjust the size of the picture on the screen from the back so that you could make the vertical smaller until that picture looked normal.   Letterboxed Empire Strikes Back in my own home in 1984...sweet.   

While I had the bootleg did I go to the theater everytime they re-released it?  Yes. Would I have gone to the theater if I could have bought it legally at the time?  Yes (until the "Special Editions" came out).

And would I have bought a legal copy if it were available at the time?  Damn right I would have - and was in line the day that Lucas finally got his head out of his butt to do just that....on tape, 12" laser and now DVD.

I'd pirate things if you refuse to sell them.  You want my money for your stuff, sell them to me.  Until then, don't bitch.

[MontyServo]

If it wasn't for the internet, I would never be able to see a lot of my favorite shows that air in the UK but not in the US.  X Factor and Big Brother UK are guilty pleasures of mine.  Also stuff like Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, which does air here on BBC America but they mute the swear words.  The versions I grab are unedited. 

I don't download movies since I don't really have enough time to watch them.

I think that we are headed for a day where movies will be available for in home viewing the same day that they are released in theaters.  I would probably watch more movies if that were the case.  For example, if that were available now, I would probably watch Max Payne and W. this weekend.  If I could pay $4.99 for a pay per view showing of either movie right at this moment.  But I'm not gonna drag my butt to a theater to see either of them.  And by the time they are available on PPV, I wouldn't care anymore and would just have them on my Netflix queue.

[AmandaGal]

Also stuff like Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, which does air here on BBC America but they mute the swear words.  The versions I grab are unedited. 

The show is basically just a whole series of bleeps then.  Do you even know what Ramsey sounds like?

[MSTJedi]

If we could download movies (legally) as soon as they were released in theaters, maybe I would have seen Dark Knight by now . . .

[mrbasehart]

Also stuff like Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, which does air here on BBC America but they mute the swear words.  The versions I grab are unedited. 

The show is basically just a whole series of bleeps then.  Do you even know what Ramsey sounds like?

Gordon Ramsey: Half man, half morse code.

[Tripe]

I ####ing love #####y Gordon ****ing Ramsey.

[ScottotD]

Pirate movies fall into 3 catagories for me:

1) Movies I just can't wait for.  I'll probably see them in the cinema when they get a local release or at the very least I'll buy the legit DVD release.

2) Crap I'm cuirious about but have no desire to support.  The same as my downloading U2 albums, occasioally I want to watch Transformers but not enough to actually cough up the cash.

3) Stuff I feel is hugely overpriced.  This is the most morally iffy, usually TV series that cost $60-$80, have no extras and litte re-watch value.

[Chaos]

In my experience, people on the outside always say that pirates either have no morals whatsoever, or we all think we are "sticking it to the man." Also in my experience, MOST of the other pirates I've had discussions with don't feel this way at all (and I certainly don't). We all will admit or at least know deep down at some level that what we are doing is wrong, but the reasons vary from "don't care," to "I know it's wrong, but it SHOULDN'T be wrong, so I'm going to act as though it wasn't."

This is not counting the teenagers and young adults who go off to college and steal everything just because they can, or because they hate "big business" and claim they want to bring them down (really, they're just cheap, and getting high on freedom for probably the first time in their lives). These people are the pirating world equivalent of Jeff K.

[ScottotD]

I take some solice in that my main reason isn't based on being a tightarse or thinking I'm starting a revolution.

[itsjuststeffnow]

I just figure why fight it.  Piracy is in my blood.  I come from a line of pirates on my fathers side. 

[stansimpson]

I didn't start d/l-ing movies until I had a medical emergency restricting me to my house for like 6 months (which was end of last year btw, which explains my presence here as well).  Anyway, I couldn't even go to the damn dollar theater, so I figured I'd just d/l the dollar theater movies.  Since then, here are the multiples reasons why I have pirated movies:

Friend forgot to bring his dvd to loan me.
My own dvd being lent out.
Misplaced dvd.
Ease of watchability for those that I own
Lack of availability during Oscar time (I'm in friggin Alabama... how am I going to see documentaries in theaters here?)
Lack of availability of dvds existence, like the 90's X-Men series, Rocko's Modern Life and UK's Kitchen Nightmares.  Holy crap have I been addicted to that!  I love the non-bleeping (although they did bleep out "cunt" once).  And it gives me a good idea of what Chef Ramsay is saying in the US version.  Btw, I say "f***ing hell" more often now.

And there have been the "immoral" downloads as well.  There's no excuse for me having "Escape From New York" other than to say I've heard I totally need to see it.  I've been trying to get back on my feet financially, so I can't even afford the $4 Netflix account (I use a Mac so their streaming isn't a big draw for me either).  But like CD's, there are certain movies I will put forward good money; but others I just want to see if I like it.  And by ratio, that's better for movie (and music) studios.  If I see 20 movies for free, I'm sure I'll find 1 I'll want to buy.  They're getting their $, but this time, the customer has a little bit more power.  Remember, these are the same people who are currently pushing for online movies where you pay for a movie EVERY time you watch it, AFTER you "own" it. 

And where does YouTube fit into this?  I think people are watching pirated stuff waaay more than they care to admit.

So, do I pirate movies?  Yes.  Is it legal?  Half the time.

[Chaos]

Of course, in a lot of other countries, pirating or bootlegging is pretty much its own industry. China and Brazil in particular have gargantuan industries built around bootleg movies and music. They sell TV episodes on the streets a day or so after they air in the US for usually $2 a disc. Those shows don't always air in a timely fashion (or at all) in certain countries in the world, so a market has grown up around meeting the demand that the networks and their partners won't.

Another big thing in Brazil is taking music other people have written, remixing it, and reselling it as your own. There's a whole culteral thing surrounding it. And techno is still really big there, too (which is sort of surreal). The most famous musicians in Brazil can't even pick up an instrument, they're just fat, smelly nerds who are good at editing things with their computers.

I guess the point of that is that the people go where the capabilities are. If companies want to really take a bite out of piracy, they need to offer their customers what they WANT instead of what they've been using to gouge everyone for the last 30 years when technology didn't allow any alternative. iTunes is a perfect example of how millions of people are perfectly willing to pay for something that was previously purely the realm of piracy. Eight years ago (thereabouts, don't quote me on the exact date), there was no such thing as an online music store and mp3s were basically all illegal, being traded on Napster and Kazaa. It still happens now of course, but legal mp3 sales are an absolutely booming business.

Corporations need to embrace current technological capabilities and stop using 30 year old business plans if they really want to minimize piracy. It will never go away, because some people simply will not pay for anything, but those people aren't really your customers anyway, and nothing you do is going to turn them into honest buyers (and using more and more strict methods to TRY to stop them only ends up hurting and turning away your REAL customers, while the pirates laugh at you and quickly sidestep all of your security measures).