IOW, many people “buy” the movie for free and you wonder why rental places that charge money are hard to find? BTW, rental places charging $1 or less are common where I live … though what you rent is typically an illegal copy!
I tended to such moral perversion for several decades, but (though I’m very far from a criminal character) have changed my views. Some incidents that changed my mind:
[ul][li] Clinton had trouble finding Cabinet Secretaries because so many upstanding elite Americans otherwise qualified to serve in his Cabinet had knowingly violated tax laws simply because they knew they wouldn’t be prosecuted.[/li][li] We had a major disappointment w/r U.S. immigration by following law’s letter, which could have been avoided easily by bending the law. (In hindsight I think a consul tried to hint us in right direction but couldn’t be explicit.)[/li][li] To remain in Thailand, many foreigners waste considerable time dealing with inane regulations and corrupt bureaucrats, easily bypassed with simple “white” half-truths.[/li][/ul]
I hope I won’t encourage any young Dopers toward a life of hard crime when I say that something I gradually learned over the decades is that obeying “trivial” laws just because they’re the law is for suckers.
So … although OP has probably found his movie by now, 12 months later, if he hasn’t, just give up and try Pirate Bay or Dare Wall or such.
Fundamentally, you’re arguing that doing the wrong thing is okay because it’s cheaper, easier and nobody gets caught. Also, everybody else is doing it.
Look. It’s the wrong thing. You know it. I know it. Pretty it up as much as you want, but it’s wrong.
That bothers some people like me. It doesn’t bother you. I guess that’s life.
Maybe everyone else here already knows about it, but since it hasn’t been explicitly mentioned yet, I thought I’d point out the site www.Canistream.it. You search it for a movie (or TV show) and it tells you which services have it available for streaming, online rental, online purchase, or DVD rental or purchase. If a title you’re looking for isn’t available anywhere, you can put it on a reminder list, and if it becomes available, they’ll send you an e-mail.
It was very helpful when my wife was planning a film festival for her school and wanted to preview candidate films before selecting them. We have a Netflix account and Amazon Prime and were able to find most of the titles she was looking for, even some relatively obscure ones (although many were only available on Netflix DVDs).
I find it hard to make a moral distinction between downloading a movie for free, watching it once and deleting it versus getting that same movie for free at the library, watching it once and returning it the next day.
It’s very easy. The library purchased the movie. The library is permitted to loan it for free over and over again. That is not piracy.
Paying to download a movie is not piracy.
Downloading a movie for free that you did not pay for is piracy.
The studio technicians and performers make nothing.
I have been a professional cinematographer for 33 years. As far as I’m concerned if you download a movie for free you’re stealing from me, And all of my colleagues in the industry.
Well, if it helps, I wouldn’t download a film which is currently in display or making them money. Something starring Meg Ryan, sure.
Nor PC games — although that’s maybe more to do with with the fact I use linux.
Actually though, my main downloading concentrates on ( mainly Clinton-era ) American sitcoms. Even if I desperately wanted to pay sums of money to to impoverished distributing studios, it would be difficult since generally these are not made available, and certainly not to foreign markets. Plus I really shouldn’t want to collect 500 DVDs and get one out each time I wanted to watched something when I can play anything I have on SMPlayer2 with 3 clicks of the mouse.
Let’s assume the movie OP is looking for is one of yours, and that he is finally able to rent it for, say $2. How much of that $2 will you receive? The answer is zero obviously, but I do understand the concepts of averaging, amortization and long term and realize that zero is not a fair estimate of the rental’s theoretical value to you. A fairer estimate might be 3 or 4 millipennies. … Compared against OP’s inconvenience at least a million times larger.
My post wasn’t intended as a wholesale defense of theft, but rather of practicality and a realization that the same elite pushing copyright laws are themselves hypocrites on the subject of law-breaking.
Specific examples of the latter point: Once upon a time I was a sort of software cracker (though doing nothing illegal) before that term even came into use. I found that at least two companies, as part of their own copy-protection method, illegally incorporated copyrighted software for which had they no license. :smack:
My kids like to watch movies on the weekend, so they rent them from a VCD rental shop 2 miles from our house. Those VCD’s are obviously illegal copies.
There are no other nearby video rental shops where I live (in rural Thailand). There are shops about 25 miles away – I don’t even know if theirs are legit or copies; sometimes it’s not easy to tell. (There may be a shop in a town 13 miles away, again likely illegal copies.)
What do those taking the side of Honesty recommend I do?
[ul][li] Drive my kids 20 miles for their rentals? We make that trip often anyway, so might be able to combine errands … but would usually end up making an extra trip for the returns, to avoid late charges.[/li][li] Deprive the kids of the VCD’s altogether, explaining it’s their government’s fault for allowing piracy.[/li][li] Cheat Cartooniverse and others out of their millipennies.[/li][/ul]
Two round trips to the legit(? - *) rental shop use about $7 of fuel. Even if I should be happy to make that financial sacrifice to ensure artists get their millipennies, CO2 emissions aren’t good, right?
(*) - And I’m not sure whether the 20-miles away shop has illegal copies or not. AsI say, it can be hard to tell.
Again, I’m not advocating general criminality. But real life involves compromises, and I’m not reluctant to deprive Cartooniverse of his millipennies in order to avoid a huge inconvenience to me.
Why would you blame the government for your choice to live in rural Thailand? Why not just explain to the children that their parents chose to live there, where Western movies are not easily and legally available and that therefore they can’t watch some stuff? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
(Another option would be to legally subscribe to a satellite TV service and watch the stuff you’ve paid for.)
It is fair to say that I rarely work for a percentage of profits. ( “Deferred Payment” is the term. I get paid when a film hits a certain profit number. They never do, of course… )
Also fair to say that piracy is so pandemic that its affects are both immediate and trickle-down. L.A. is largely feature-film free. Runaway productions flee because their return on invenstmen per picture is down. Yes, there are huge blockbusters. They are but a smidgen of total production work in the United States. ( Or anywhere else ).
That’s the economic hit of piracy. My hourly wages are indeed directly impacted because the overall economy of film production is hit by piracy. Are they impacted every day? No. But they are.
Then there is the moral issue. You want to steal, steal. You want to respect someone’s work? Pay to view it. It’s kind of simple.
Im not sure if this should be on its own or part of this thread. This is my first time posting on any forum sorry for the length. I understand most ppl in here agree that the system in place is much better than we had b4 for renting movies and this is how I have generally felt for the past few years as things have changed, but there is one point the poster made that is generally being ignored. Specifcally on the subject of streaming content wich seams like the more focused on, wanted and catered to medium for distribution of all art forms as of late and more than likely moving forward. so ussualy you rent a movie $1-3 for SD or around $3-6 for HD version. Then next to it you have the purchase option that on average(based on my personal use) is around $16 per title for unlimited streaming( this does not necessarily mean you own the movie). Now here is my question, why as of late have I noticed so many movies solely be placed for purchase on these virtual marketplaces and not for rent? Granted, in most cases these movies are available for rent months(or years) later on the same platforms but why not from the beginning? I could understand this issue if it were in the case of phisycal copys of a movie were a company might not want to exceed the demand for a certain title so they hold off on production slightly, maybe?( just my guess) but this is one of the biggest advantages of this new digital age, cost effective distribution. No phisical junk, dvds DVD cases manufacturing hardware DVD players. by removing this and going digital the industry is perfecting content accessibility, removing cost, and cleaning up landfills in one move(this coming from a person who took pride in his movie collection). So everyone wins, right? This leaves me with one conclusion, it is simply a business move to maximize profits. Get as many sales as you can at first then place for rent later on. In my opinion this big push for digital is bc there is a demand for it.These big companies are catching up to what consumers want but they can be a little slow about it. If customers are being turned down to a product bc of a companies greed then I see no moral wrong in seeking other means to that product, so long as the customer is of the mind set that they will either rent it or not watch it at all then the company never lost a sale just a rental and that is of there own choosing. I do however feel bad if this in any way effects individuals who work for these companies. But the truth is these companies are in the business of making money and that can make you greedy, it’s human nature. I some what see the pirating as a way of balancing out this greed until they remember who they are providing a product for. Keep your customers happy and in turn your stock holders and your bank accounts will be happy too. I don’t think it works the other way around. I would love to know everyones thoughts on my question and my OPINIONS. Again sorry for length.
I would have to think that the top rung of the sales ladder starts at the cinema, and then after its done its run, it drops down to other distribution methods. For purchase only, makes more money when the media in question is fresh, so to speak.
So age of ultron opens this weekend in NA, and in about 6 months I expect the Blu ray and DVD’s will hit walmart. Some time in between, the virtual market places will have their chance. Once the movie opens in Walmart, its done. All thats left is moving the movie to netflix and hulu.
What the movie people actually are thinking, I don’t know, but it appears there is a financial half life over the length of a film, when it goes from making real money to potential money.
BTW, rental places charging $1 or less are common where I live … though what you rent is typically an illegal copy!
