'Are you a knock-off Nigel or Nigella?' poll discussion

robpw2

i think as long as dvds cost so much and there is no legal cheap way to buy films online sadly this business will survive

hefferwump

adouglasmhor wrote: »

:rotfl: If they are terrorists and criminals why isn't more police time spent cracking down on them? Because that's scaremongering bollox that's why. Most copiers are just neds and chavs trying to get a bit more income. they may even buy drugs with it but BREAKING HEADLINE, Some legitimate workers and bosses spend money on drugs as well, You never see ads saying don't get shares as stockbrokers stick it up their nose funding terrorsit criminal;s in Central and South America do you?

see reply below

Masonity

hefferwump wrote: »

you may notice that i come from high wycombe do you remember the recent court case about a terrorist plot to blow up aircraft well they all lived very near to me & before this all came out i had seen 1 of these selling both mainstream & porno films in local pubs on several occasions Ive seen him selling them @ 3 for £10 & taking anything up to £50 in about 10 Min's then going onto another pub Ive no idea how much he made but it must have been a small fortune so sorry to disappoint you but it does happen

The ones who attacked glasgow airport were Doctors and med students. Does that mean that being ill funds terrorism?

A single example doesn't make the claim true. Sure one small group of terrorists may have used this as a way of making money. They could have been Avon salesmen though, or telemarketed for a while, or stacked shelves at Tescos. All it was is an easy, okay paying job. It's not intrinsicly linked to terrorism.

hbl_2

adouglasmhor wrote: »

:rotfl: If they are terrorists and criminals why isn't more police time spent cracking down on them? Because that's scaremongering bollox that's why. Most copiers are just neds and chavs trying to get a bit more income.

This is not a dig at you, I'm just picking up your point about why the cops don't do anything about it! Also, it's one thing to give it too much creedence, like "all pirate DVDs = crime and horror" but another to give it too little, "all pirate DVDs are poor people trying to make ends meet". The truth will inevitably lie somewhere in the middle.

However, a recent news search reveals:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7632522.stm
- 17 Chinese Nationals - I'd like to see anything other than a criminal organisation spit out 8000 counterfeit DVDs...

Also, on the subject of criminal gangs, pirate DVDs, and Chinese people smuggling:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6975166.stm

So yes, people on low income can copy DVDs to sell on the street and make a lot of money doing so. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that all people who sell fake DVDs are just trying to make a little bit extra. If it's low risk and easy to do then it stands to reason that it can be used as a swift way of raising cash by anyone willing to take the risk, including but not limited to criminal gangs and terrorist cells.

I dislike terrorism scaremongering, I think it's pretty abhorrent. However, it's naive to disregard the possibility that terrorist cells operating in the UK use selling pirate DVDs as a way of raising money. It is very easy for money to be raised by fraud in the UK. The police are stretched as it is, so a lot of small scale fraud operating under the radar can raise a lot of money very quickly.

In fact, Jeffrey Robinson (you can google him), speculated in his book The Sink, about 4 years ago, that the reason why the UK didn't suffer a terrorist attack in the aftermath of September 11th was because the embedded cells operating in the UK were making too much money and siphoning it out of the country at such a rate that the heads of the organisation would never dare order an attack and "kill the cash cow".

So end of the day, if you have a beef with hollywood and the studio system, begrudge the money they make at your expense and the profits that retailers make by selling hollywood's product, don't buy it. Download it, borrow it from your friends, rent it, steal it from the shelf, or just live without it - whatever you have to do to make yourself feel better. But don't buy pirated DVDs in the street under the pretence that you're "sticking it to the man" because that kind of reasoning is sophomoric.

adouglasmhor wrote: »

they may even buy drugs with it but BREAKING HEADLINE, Some legitimate workers and bosses spend money on drugs as well, You never see ads saying don't get shares as stockbrokers stick it up their nose funding terrorsit criminal;s in Central and South America do you?

It's not so much terrorism in Central and South America as it is the most violent and oppressive criminal gangs the world has ever seen. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Mexico and Columbia are pretty much screwed by them. I have a really low opinion of people who use cocaine because it directly feeds into the black market peso-exchange. It's grim stuff.

cschneider

Im an A, possibly a B.

Several comments have been made about how expensive the cinema and legit DVDs are which is resulting in more people turning to the fake trade and buying more private DVDs and downloading illegally from the internet.
However, no has made this statement.
If Joe public stopped buying from the fake trade it would cease to exist therefore lowering the cost of the cinema and legal DVDs and downloads.

The fake trade does fund large criminal organisations/gangs/terrorists/etc... Has no one been paying attention to Dispatches and Ross Kemp over the past two years?!

Just because we feel exploited by the film industry prices doesn't mean our wrong makes a right.
If you want decent and fair prices, stop buying fake!

Lexis200

hefferwump wrote: »

you may notice that i come from high wycombe do you remember the recent court case about a terrorist plot to blow up aircraft well they all lived very near to me & before this all came out i had seen 1 of these selling both mainstream & porno films in local pubs on several occasions Ive seen him selling them @ 3 for £10 & taking anything up to £50 in about 10 Min's then going onto another pub Ive no idea how much he made but it must have been a small fortune so sorry to disappoint you but it does happen

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about this... if you saw one of them behaving illegally, why didn't you report him to the police?

Bear in mind that it's now much easier to download films, and there's no profit in that for anyone. The selling of physical discs for a few quid is probably only a small proportion of the pirating issue, which is in itself blown out of proportion anyway. Still doesn't make it right though.

At the end of the day, we all know it happens, the majority of us partake in this activity whether movies or music, but until there's a reasonably priced alternative it will always continue.

Ignatius_A

The thing in this survey I find most illuminating is that up to 30% (current figures) of people would either illegitimately purchase or download a film they really wanted

That's probably a somewhat distorted figure, in that the population of this forum will have a higher than average number of users with a good knowledge of computers.

Even so, for something that is unlawful to be countenanced by up to a third of the population, doesn't that demonstrate that there is a severe problem with the business model espoused by the distributors? or that the legal framework is out of step with the attitudes of a sizeable part of the population (just imagine how many people would be in favour of this if it were NOT for the fact that it's unlawful...)

I, for one, feel that the constant referral to copyright infringement as "theft" is counter-productive. When you steal someone's car, or even something less valuable like taking a can of coke out of the work fridge (that isn't yours), then you are leaving the rightful owner without that product. The car/coke is no longer available to the original owner - this is theft.

When copyright is infringed, the rights holder still has all the media and content they had originally. They still have the rights to distribute that material as and in whatever format they see fit and to make money from doing so. - I can't see how this equates to theft

I'm all for catching and prosecuting those who illegally distribute and profit from other people's intellectual property, but to criminalise those who make no profit from the transaction seems both petty and counter-productive.

In terms of downloading TV (which I WILL admit to) I'd encourage the distributors to legalise this form of distribution PROVIDING the advertisements were left in place. (after all, the turnover from the adverts goes towards the cost of financing the original distribution) - just like it would be if you lent a mate a program he missed off TV. The distributors could retain the right to distribute advert-free media at a premium.

After all, if mainstream TV channels can manage to support their infrastructure based mainly on advertising and corporate sponsorship (I'm thinking ITV, C4, C5) then why can't an Internet portal support the same model? - especially when audience participation figures would be so much easier to pin down.

XRAT

What happened to:
H: "I'm a money saving copper and an off duty knock off is worth a couple of hundred quid, I'd nick 'im."??

poppy_f1

i've came close to selling them, i have the means and knowledge to do so, im not part of any terrorist/criminal gang
only reason i dont is i cant be bothered, a guy in my work was selling them a while back and done quite well from it but was obv having to keep to timescales of getting the dvds to people when he said he would even when it wasnt the most convienent - hence why i cant be bothered getting into it all

foreversomeday

I wouldn't buy a pirate DVD. I have however quite happily watched downloaded or copied films in the past. If I like the film I will probably buy a proper copy at some point but most of the films we watch now are either on telly, at the cinema, or straight off DF's laptop which is plugged into the TV (therefore downloaded) - I can see there are issues there but we are running out of storage for DVDs!

I think the best way to see films is pay per view on sky, however we don't have sky, we sometimes watch them at a friend's house though.

I don't know why quality is an issue because I've never seen a bad copied disc - digital media copies much better than tapes, that is why cassettes never lasted very long! You can get bad downloads but if you wait until the film is out on DVD anyway that very rarely happens.

I thought it was against site rules to discuss illegal activity anyway?