88-Year Old Man Caught Taping Avatar With A Camcorder
from the at-least-they-let-him-go dept
There's this impression out there, among some, that copyright infringement is just something that the young do. The truth is, of course, that plenty of people infringe on copyrights all the time, for perfectly natural reasons (even some of the strongest copyright supporters do it as well). And the reasons they do it is because they don't even realize they're infringing. Our natural inclination to share something we like outweighs an arcane set of laws that still haven't been shown to actually encourage greater creation of quality content. Case in point: an 88-year-old man in Australia wanted to go see the movie Avatar with his wife -- but she was unable to make it to the theater. So the guy brought along his camcorder (and his walking stick) to record the movie and share it with his wife, so they could experience it together. Now, for any compassionate human being, this is a tale of sweetness. What a thoughtful thing this guy wanted to do for his wife.But the industry doesn't see it that way. To them, it's still "piracy" and a problem. To be honest, if the movie industry stopped with its silly "windowing" concept, this wouldn't have been a problem at all. The studio easily could have released Avatar on DVD at the same time as the movie came out. Tons of people would have still gone to see it in the theater (it's the type of movie that many people very much wanted to see in the theater -- especially where there were 3D or IMAX options). Hell, if they had made it an option to buy the DVD on the way out (perhaps giving a discount if you had a ticket stub), I'm sure plenty more people would have shelled out for the DVD, as well. And, the 88-year-old man in Australia could have simply bought or rented the DVD and shared the whole experience with his wife.
Instead, the studio forbids that sort of thing, and so the thoughtful husband becomes a criminal. Thankfully, while the police were called, it appears they chose not to arrest the man. They just deleted the film from his video camera, and then let him stay for the rest of the film.
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Seriously, this kind of story makes me wonder how movie companies are going to cater first-run films to people who can't make it out to the theater. Obviously, accosting octogenarians is bad for business, so I'm sure sooner or later someone is gonna go around the Theater Gestapo.
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LOL. The entertainment industries are bringing themselves doooown.
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No, they're not. As long as consumers continue falling over to their will and buy their products, these actions will continue long after we're all gone.
I mean, as touching as this story is, the couple could have easily waited until the DVD was out, which will be rather quickly given the cash it's already earned.
It's the consumer mentality of wanting it yesterday which will never bring these industries down.
Ironically, I made a post on forum regarding the Matrix DVD menu horror, and the response I got wasn't "I totally agree!" but "OMG! What, you don't buy because it takes a whopping few minutes out of your time?"
Those responses, for the record, is damn good proof people just don't give a damn so long as they can view/listen/read whatever they want.
Screw 'em all. Consumers and the entertainment industry both.
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Can ppl stop using priuses (or any battery based products) since it indirectly results in conflicts? most brand chocolates? bananas? cheap t-shirts? 3 per dollar tube socks? .................
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The guy is 88, I'm sure he appreciates your optimism, but maybe he didn't want to take that risk!
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If only people were patient and waited until the release of the DVD, which is whenever someone else wants it, they would be able to convince the studios that they'll wait all the time necessary to buy the DVDs and that the studios can release them whenever they want!
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Monetizing
At least the outcome for the old man was reasonable unlike the jail time that has happened here in the states during birthday partys and such.
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What has this country come to...
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Re: What has this country come to...
That's not saying much.
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Re: What has this country come to...
I say what has this country come to when cops blindly follow the law with disregard to circumstances or appropriate levels of force.
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Re: Re: What has this country come to...
You mean like the drug laws that cops blindly enforce? (Well, not exactly blindly. More like with zeal and glee.) Well then, go ahead and say it: what has this country come to?
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i'm as surprised as you are. i though for sure this story was going end with a tasing.
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perfectly reasonable
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Re: perfectly reasonable
Yeah, happens every day.
The industry does lots of bad things, and is easy enough to put in a bad light without resorting to stories like this one.
Please Mike, don't run stories like this. The copyright industry looks bad enough already. You're just making it worse.
/s
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http://boingboing.net/2009/12/04/woman-jailed-charged.html
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The article doesn't mention this, but did the guy purchase a ticket for his wife? I would feel much more compassion for the situation if the man bought TWO tickets for the movie, one for him and one for his wife who would be watching the recorded version remotely later.
Then, he would have paid the price of two tickets, and two people would have seen the movie, albeit one of them at a greatly reduced level of quality. And if the copy was destroyed after that viewing then there would have been no contribution to piracy and the theater & movie studios would have sold one more seat (in fact, they could have double sold it).
Now, if he had only bought one ticket, then it'd be harder to play the sympathy card.
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If she's that old and sick, there's a good possibility she's dying.
Other than she may not be alive when it reaches DVD?
Oh, I see you thought of that, you just didn't care.
And if the copy was destroyed after that viewing then there would have been no contribution to piracy and the theater & movie studios would have sold one more seat (in fact, they could have double sold it).
That's not the way the law works.
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Or have to sit beside some wheezing old geezer, eh? "Ewwww, gross!"
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You know, normally if I were to come across someone all alone and bleeding to death, I would probably try to help them. But in your case I just might say "That's not my problem." Maybe even with a smile on my face.
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Try closing the windows
I think the main point of the article is good. Media launch windows tend to be dumb. So what if the movie companies wouldn't be able to get the same rents from cable and On-Demand? I think it's possible that it could be quickly made up by DVD sales. I mean, while I'm not among the throngs of die-hard Avatar fans, if I could have gone from the theater to the store to buy a copy, I would have.
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Re: Try closing the windows
That probably wasn't the reason. I imagine the police would have been happy to arrest him if the theater had wanted to press charges. But the theater recognized what a public relations nightmare that would be and decided it would be better to just have him officially warned.
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TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
Some geezer stupidly tries to record a movie so the missus could see it without paying for a ticket and it's the MOVIE STUDIO'S FAULT for not having simultaneous DVD release?!?!?!? Are you daft?!?!?
I understand criticizing stupid corporate decisions like record labels forbidding embedding of their advertising videos for their artists or video game publishers imposing Draconian DRM restrictions on their paying customers, but what you're doing is slamming a studio for not catering to every foreseeable instance where someone could infringe.
If you can't afford concert tickets, why can't your friends take a Flip and record the show for you? If a book is too expensive in hardback, why not download an eBook copy since those greedy anti-consumer publishers didn't cater to the public by making a cheaper paperback immediately available. Why should anyone sell their goods in the manner they choose if it doesn't suit Mike?
Why isn't a DVD available at the popcorn stand? How about because it will be in stores in 4-6 months? Sure, this old guy and the wife may not live to see the home release at their ages, but so what? How are the theaters supposed to make money if a theater goer can buy a ticket, then buy the DVD, and then that DVD gets passed around to 20 friends of that purchaser? Money earned: One ticket and DVD sale. Money lost: The 20 tickets NOT sold because instead of saying, "You guys have got to go see [movie name]. It's awesome!", that one guy says, "I just saw this awesome movie! Check out the DVD!"
It is insipid twaddle like this that gives those who want REASONABLE copyright rules a bad name because of the snotty, entitled attitude expressed by the likes of Mike. No, Mike, the studios aren't wrong to put their movies in theaters exclusively before eventually selling DVDs of them. It's not silly; it's business, and business is not automatically evil.
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Re: TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
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Re: TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
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Re: TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
Not me, but the market. If you don't cater to what the market wants, you fail. That's basic business principles. Are you denying that?
And are you honestly suggesting that a flip cam video of a concert is a substitute for actually going? Have you ever been to a concert?
Why isn't a DVD available at the popcorn stand? How about because it will be in stores in 4-6 months? Sure, this old guy and the wife may not live to see the home release at their ages, but so what? How are the theaters supposed to make money if a theater goer can buy a ticket, then buy the DVD, and then that DVD gets passed around to 20 friends of that purchaser? Money earned: One ticket and DVD sale. Money lost: The 20 tickets NOT sold because instead of saying, "You guys have got to go see [movie name]. It's awesome!", that one guy says, "I just saw this awesome movie! Check out the DVD!"
Look! I can make up numbers too! Money earned: 20 extra tickets sold, 20 extra DVDs sold because people had a choice to view the movie how they wanted to and had extra incentives to go to the theater and to buy the DVD! Money lost: 1,000 tickets not sold because people don't want to deal with the theater hassle to see a movie that probably isn't any good anyway.
Do you see how silly your argument is?
There is plenty of economic evidence that providing a reasonable number of choices for how people consumer your product can massively increase your bottom line. Why ignore that?
It's not silly; it's business, and business is not automatically evil.
Whoever said that business is automatically evil?!? We were talking about ways they could make more money. I don't see how that means we think they're evil.
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Re: Re: TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
Let's see if I can walk you through your cluelessness:
• You seem to simultaneously believe that if people could buy a DVD at the theater on release day, people would happily trek out to the show and buy a ticket so they could buy the DVD, yet they want the DVD so they can avoid the hassle of going to see the crappy movie in the first place. Huh? What?!?!? PICK ONE!!!
• You contend that studios are losing money because they aren't simultaneously selling DVDs and releasing to theaters, but you are pulling this assumption out of your nether regions as an excuse for some stupid old coot's stupid actions. "If only those mean, greedy, anti-customer studios would offer that kindly gentleman, who only sought to bring a bit of the movie-going experience to his wife, a DVD to purchase, he wouldn't be forced to take a camera." You really don't understand how addled you sound? Really?
Simultaneous releases of films to theaters, pay-per-view, and DVD have only been attempted a few times - Wikipedia lists three films, including Steven Soderbergh's craptastic Bubble - and been a miserable failure so there isn't enough track record to guesstimate future results. Considering that Avatar has of this posting grossed $2,464,237,048 worldwide, the idea that 20th Century Fox has foolishly left money on the table by not catering to your beloved old man with a camera is laughable. Seriously. We're laughing HARD at you because...
• The DVD is coming on April 22. All your grandpa needs to do is wait a couple of months and he can buy and enjoy Avatar with the missus all he wants. Is that so unreasonable to ask a little patience? Do you think that the DVD is likely to have it's sales impacted adversely because so many people went and saw it in the theater? (Considering the reality deficit of your post and follow-up reply, you may.)
• If you want to see a movie, consumers already have multiple choices as to when and how much they'll need to pay to see it. Seeing it opening night at the theater is the most expensive and inconvenient due to crowds. You can wait a couple of weeks for the crowds to die down and catch a matinee to save money. Maybe you'll wait a couple of months for the second-run "dollar show" to get it. You can always wait for the retail DVD and pay a lot the first week or rent it as a new release or wait a while and wait for the inevitable discounting or PPV copies at video stores. Have you never heard of The Long Tail? You think that unless the studios can Hoover up all the money in the opening frame, all is lost. Bub, cough syrup is not a food group.
• For the cheapest of cheap movie consumers (note that I didn't say "moviegoers") there are the myriad torrent sites offering up everything from crappy grandpa-taped camcorder copies to Blu-ray rips. The opening weekends of a new movie means cruddy cams and maybe iffy telesyncs will be available. When the home video release date nears, DVD/BD-sourced torrents appear allowing impatient, entitled, cheap, thieving twits to help themselves to even better quality copies. What do you think is going to happen when your desired candy stand DVDs provide clean source materials opening weekend? How in blue blazes can you seriously suggest that studios are losing money by not selling DVDs when by early Friday afternoon the Pirate Bay will be awash in "Shutter.Island[2010]DvDrip[Eng]-MAZ" torrents?
The bottom line is that you messed up royally this time, Mike. You are trying to hitch your hobby horse team to an uncontroversial story of a stupid man doing a stupid thing and getting busted. Trying to wrap a commie-hippie poncho of blather in the form of "our natural inclination to share something we like outweighs an arcane set of laws" is specious and stupid. (Kumbayah, my Gaea, Kumbayah...) At what point does "sharing" become "removing the need to go and buy it for themselves?" That you could type that and then try to attack my point about how a person buying a popcorn DVD would share it with all their friends and thus deprive the theater ticket and concession (where the real money is) sales makes me wonder if you're aware of what's happening in your own writing?
As I said before, drooling hippie articles like this do great damage to the cause of encouraging content distributors (note I didn't say "creators") to quit freaking out because their artists' videos are being embedded as free advertising because they seek to excuse the most clear-cut rule-breaking as being mere repression by "The Man."
While I have frequently found common ground with most of your articles, Mike, you are 110% WRONG on this one and the fact you can't man up and acknowledge that you can't honestly defend your point as valid is disappointing. There is no excuse for what Grandpa Cam did; it isn't the fault of the studios; the current distribution isn't broken. You're just wrong. Period. Nuff said!
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Re: Re: Re: TechDirt is getting dumb as dirt.
This is not the Mike fan club, everyone hear shares mostly the same opinion about you idiots and there is a lot more of us than there is of people like you!!
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88-Year Old Man Caught Taping Avatar
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from the who-gives-a-darn department
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Yeah, I don't know Mike....
Old folks gots to follow them laws too....
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@ 12 and 19
NOW an 88year old trying it wold actually be more fun then the movie
HAHA
@19 you don't seem to gt it, i am sure if they said hey you don't pay the extra he would have ponied up OR if he knew he could do this legally. I am betting of course he knows its wrong, but also is making a statement that everyone is pirating so you hollywood fuckers can piss off.
notice tam now posting under new nicks everyone....he gts paid to be a shill.
and so what he paid 15$ for a crappy movie over hyped and MY god id rather watch space:1999 ...
AND if by 88 he dont deserve to get it free then another screw you. the fact his wife cant come might be shes ill you ungrateful wretch.
this is how unsympathetic actors and musicians that work for hollywood are. WE should take health care away from them and get baseball bats and really show them who the bosses are.
FUCK YOU HOLLYWOD
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get a clue ant anti mike
But perhaps you think he should be able to walk into a market and just take some food. Or go get a little petrol without paying too. What a great world you must live in. What if this old guy walked up to your house and took all of your weed. Is he entitled to you whole stash, you slacker?!
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Re: get a clue ant anti mike
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Re: get a clue ant anti mike
LOL Man, you can't even spell your own name right: it's spelled "Shill Man".
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name me three people......
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Wearable Computers
I wonder what would happen if I were to go see a movie whilst donning a wearable computer that includes computer-mediated/augmented reality and the capability to record what I see with my own eyes? Such devices will become commonplace in the very near future (it's been a while since the last update, but check out the website eyetap.org or the relevant wikipedia entry). What if the person was using the device in place of corrective lenses, would they be forced to remove the device and not be allowed to experience the film? This is like asking an amputee to remove their prosthetic limbs simply because they have the potential of recording the sensations.
Copyright infringement, inappropriately labeled 'piracy,' is going to happen no matter what obstacles are put in place. There is no way to stop it unless you compete against it in the marketplace NOT THROUGH LAW. Those 'pirates' will always find a way to skirt the law.
How is it that capturing a film is punished more than shoplifting? With shoplifting, something was stolen; with 'piracy,' something was copied. Look up the definitions and you will notice that the two are not the same. Some lawyer came up with the phrase 'copyright infringement' to try and bridge that gap and turn copying into something it was not. Here, I could fall back into the argument of theft versus 'piracy,' but it has all been said. All I am getting at is that doing something that seems perfectly natural (i.e. taping your sister's birthday party, trying to share your experience with others, etc.) should not cause devastation so great that the person's civil life is revoked.
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Re: Wearable Computers
No, wait! I don't. Thank the gods that the public domain is the rule and that copyright is the exception.
The future will not be kind to the control freaks.
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Re: Wearable Computers
Well, that's what they do in airports.
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Oh come on, Tech Dirt
At some point you have to admit there is wrong-doing happening.
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i think
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This site amazes me
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Re: This site amazes me
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Re: Re: This site amazes me
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I disagree
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Re: I disagree
I'm not saying that what he did wasn't illegal. What I'm saying is that the laws are absurd. I find it appalling that so many people think that laws must be followed blindly and that laws, once created, are eternal. The reality is that all laws (and I'm not talking about the laws of physics here but about human laws) are just temporary constructs. Also, what the majority of people must understand is that when laws become obsolete or unjust or disconnected from reality in any other way, they should consider it their obligation to repel those laws.
There are some very interesting pieces of information on how and why so many people tend to follow laws blindly (and why that is a failing on their part as human beings): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development
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piracy?
Heck, I love pirates...I'm just not a big fan of killing, rapeing and some of the other requirements. If downloading Pirates of the Caribean ACTUALLY makes me as cool as Jack Sparrow, I'll be watching it with my wench by sundown!
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