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

craddster

Everyone in the industry claims that billions are lost to piracy every year, but only when it suits them do they acknowledge that an instance if piracy in NO WAY constitutes a lost sale. I have never bought music or films, making do with TV and radio. In the last 5 years i have been a heavy downloader of media and especially enjoy American TV shows which you cannot legally see in this country anyway. However, if i suddenly lost the ability to freely download what i wanted, I would go back to watching tv, listening to radio and reading books. As far as I am concerned, I am making no money from my activities and nobody is any the worse off.

The anti coryright lobbying in america and europe have crazy amounts of power and are turning to more and more draconian methods of 'preventing piracy'. The latest example of the industry 'preventing piracy' is the Digital Rights Managment they have put on the game Spore, the measures they have gone to have CAUSED the game to be the most pirated game in history (Google 'spore drm') becuase a pirated version is a far better product than the paid for version.

On a final note, I find it utterly backwards that the anti-piracy message you connot skip on DVDs is only EVER forced upon people who have already PAID for the DVD. It is like a store owner giving a customer a stiff talking to about shoplifting after they have just paid for something.

GingerStokie

I've got to confess, I download quite a bit, but all for some reason or another:
Superbad - downloaded because didn't know if I'd like it. Liked it and bought it legitimately
Prison Break/Heroes (last series) - (I know series and not film, but want to get this point across) downloaded from American TV and watched WAY before it came to UK shores. In this day-and-age, why should we be denied - sometimes even months?
Prison Break/Heroes/Little Britain USA (current series) - download from US TV. Same as before. I know UK is slightly behind, but behind we are ... well not I!
Hairspray, The School Musical - Sky One. Don't have Sky One, so downloading this weekly.

I also download if I've missed BBC programmes: iPlayer has to be watched on the computer and this is not convenient.

Finally, I'm big into Aspect Ratios. I've noticed that region 2 releases of certain films are lowered to 4:3 from widescreen (16:9). Across Europe, widescreen is extremely common. In America however, not so. So why give 16:9 ratio films to Americans who can't watch it properly, and demote Europeans?

As with Superbad, if I like it, I'll buy it (Region 1 though - better features, often cheaper and in anomorphic widescreen).

Why should we be left to suffer inferior quality productions?

Tip: Ensure your TV is NTSC compatible and your DVD player can play Region 1 DVDs.

GS

PrinceGaz

Rabiddog wrote: »

24 hour rule ? I only RENT the pints I drink! come on .. A lot of people are pirates but seem to have a blind spot on free films. Get real, lay off the excuses.. I don't have much respect for the people trying to side-step the issue.
No grey area.. Admit or Deny .. I do watch others cheapo DVd's, but wouldn't buy myself, (too much of a skinflint) becoz it'll be on Telly soon enough.

Okay, yes I'm well aware the 24-hour rule isn't actually recognised by law, but it should be as it does make sense.

Try before you buy. Most car dealerships offer a test-drive of any car they are selling, and some even offer a free 24-hour test drive to potential customers with satisfactory insurance. Given that music, movies, and games (or any other software) has a negligible per item cost, it should be made available to try to anyone interested to try for 24 hours. It would be rather like shareware, but with just a 1-day free usage window.

If you like what you've seen, you can then buy it (possibly a code to unlock a downloaded version for indefinite use) otherwise it will fail to play after it expires. The one slight downside is possibly that some people would only want to watch a movie once (within the 24 hour period), but apart from that, a legal 24-hour rule would make good sense.

Nigella_2

I don't like the idea of pirate DVD's.

I often get approached but decline their merchandise.

Often see them at Car Boot Sales etc.

ryouga

The only bootleg dvds i buy are like other people things that were never released out of their home country, say Japanese anime which was never licenced out of Japan and has to be fansubbed so I buy the factory badly subtitled bootlegs.

But then if there was an official release with subtitles id buy it so they arent losing out

That and Mp3's since it takes hours to rip the files from original disc, wears down laser and have to find the disc.

Or some rare games that are like £80 to buy due to rarity, the companys making no more money from them since the game is used anyway.

PrinceGaz

ryouga wrote: »

The only bootleg dvds i buy are like other people things that were never released out of their home country, say Japanese anime which was never licenced out of Japan and has to be fansubbed so I buy the factory badly subtitled bootlegs.

But then if there was an official release with subtitles id buy it so they arent losing out

That and Mp3's since it takes hours to rip the files from original disc, wears down laser and have to find the disc.

Or some rare games that are like £80 to buy due to rarity, the companys making no more money from them since the game is used anyway.

Eh? If you have a decent optical-drive in your computer, ripping CDs takes no longer than reading them at quite a high speed-- maybe not the full 52x maximum speed most modern drives are capable of, but certainly 8x or more. Ripping CDs very much depends on your drive's ability to read the disc correctly in the first place and not rely on error-correction instead (as audio CDs have very little error-correction data included on the disc). Ensuring your music CDs are spotless before ripping them is pretty much a given requirement. Specialised ripping software can generally do a full 70+ minute music CD in less than 20 minutes provided you have a decent optical-drive, which means it is actually less demanding than playing the whole disc normally.

As for games that are no longer sold by the copyright owner and hard to find, to coin a phrase from those companies which promote IVAs-- there is a little known piece of legislation made up by abandonware websites which allows you to download that software free of charge. Look up "abandonware" and you'll find plenty of sites which (ahem) "legally" allow you to download games and other software that can't otherwise be bought. These sites only let you download software which is not available to be bought from the copyright owner, which means anything you download from them is... well, it's probably best not to worry about that.

loftyman

im not sure of my answer to this as i buy all the latest movies from a legit shop openly displaying them.in fact apart from a few games and cds it is all they sell.the quality is usualy first class and on the 2 occasions ive had bad copies they were exchanged without any problems.so far ive bought about 50 or 60 over a 3 year period.the shop i refer to is in turkey,kusadasi to be precise,where i am told there are no copyright laws,or if there are they are not enforced by either council or police.not sure what would happen if we were caught with them at uk customs upon our return.

0fullmetalalchemist

i dont think ide trust the person enough to actually buy them off him/her because itd prolly be really crap quality or even just a blank disk... ide rather wait untill theyre incredibley cheap and buy them at asda

[Deleted User]

I download BBC Iplayer shows with a tool that lets me bypass the rights and play it on my Ipod (although, it does not manipulate the files, it uses the legal Iphone files). I'm confused, am I knock-off Nigel or a consumer downloading stuff that I help pay for through the license fee?

I'd never pay a bloke in the street for a dodgy DVD.. you never know what quality you're getting. You also don't know where the money is being funneled.

Paul_Herring

I download BBC Iplayer shows with a tool that lets me bypass the rights [...] am I knock-off Nigel or a consumer downloading stuff that I help pay for through the license fee?

You're breaking the terms and conditions for viewing iPlayer stuff by circumventing the DRM. What you're doing is technically illegal, and there's now nothing stopping you from making more copies of it and selling them on, at which point you become a knock-off Nigel.