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A Los Angeles Times story reports on an NBCUniversal study, "Sizing the Piracy Universe," which states that "327 million unique users illegally sought copyrighted content, generating 14 billion page views on websites focusing on piracy." Piracy is now 24% of total bandwidth. Another reason for more obscure films NOT to come out on DVD, because studios can't make the money back from illegal downloads.
http://eedition2.latimes.com/Olive/ODE/ ... w=ZW50aXR5" target="_blank

Sometimes these downloads are the only way we can see an obscure film, as the studios deem many of them as "unsalable" in today's shrinking DVD market. I would guess that more than 50% of the people who post here are over 50 years old. We are considered "niche" market purchasers. Even with Warner Archive and Olive Films offering many welcome obscurities, there will always be some that will slip through the cracks. There is the same problem with classic TV shows. People on those websites complain that the entire season-by-season run of My Little Margie or I Married Joan is not offered, even though there would be a miniscule market of potential buyers for such a product. Everyone has their own peculiar taste in things sometimes obscure. I may choose to watch something like Paramount's 1928 Interference on YouTube just to see it from an historical perspective. I didn't particularly like it, but the film has an importance as Paramount's first full talkie, and I doubt if this will ever see a legit release. I've seen films like Viennese Nights and The Lights Of New York in a similar way. Maybe the only way I'll ever get to see them.

I don't buy the "it's the only way I can see it" excuse. It's still stealing. I guess if you bust out the window of a classic car and hot wire it, it's ok because that's the only way you'll ever get to drive it. Who says you have a right to any movie you want? If you support illegal copies, you lessen the chance that it will get a legit release. Warner appears to be releasing everything they own sooner or later, but with the other studios this is especially true. You'll deny it of course, because "I WANT IT!" appears to trump everything else, including common decency.

Not looking to make waves but topics such as this one seriously fall into the catagory of "looking for trouble". Does a political subject such as this even belong in the "Talkie news" sub forum? Look at some of the posts already including the one right above this one the content of which is certain to be ire inspiring.

To the original poster please request the whole topic be deleted, this forum really does not need something that will certainly disturb the peace before long. Or at the very least have it moved to another sub-forum.

You jump to conclusions very quickly. A couple of comments:
- How do they measure this?
- 24%, assuming that is reliable and not an exageration, can also be because people are compressing less and downloading more bluray and hd.
- In either case, I would very much doubt it if even 1% of that are silent or prewar movies (the stuff that this board is mostly concerned with). Most downloads will be the latest blockbusters and pointless TV series.
- SOPA and PIPA were highly dubious ideas

So does this really keep some films unreleased? It's hard to tell. I can't deny that a small percentage will download vintage films who will never buy a legal copy.
But there are plenty of other cases where obscure films have not been released because of a total lack of interest. I have a dozen titles that I needed for research (I can prove it) that I couldn't have gotten in any other way but as home made copies. They are so unknown most will never ever be released because they're too obscure.
In other cases the owners don't care at all, or want far too much money thus preventing anyone from releasing a title. In an earlier (and vibrant) thread it was pointed out to me that in some cases old films survive not because of their studios or archives, but because of private collectors, whom the copyright owners treat like dirt.

Secondly, we can all make assumptions but is there any evidence that the drain is so high that it will really prevent releases? Today it may be different but not too long ago prices for DVDs and CDs were artificially high and little of that money ever reached the artists involved. And now we've got to buy them all again, on bluray. The industry helped create its own problems that way, by not meeting the demand and artificially keeping prices high even for age old titles. In absolute terms it's theft, but the lack of legal alternatives has been a real consideration with lawmakers. And didn't they say similar things before of copied VHS tapes, and people taping over LP records on audio cassettes?

Jim Reid wrote:I don't buy the "it's the only way I can see it" excuse. It's still stealing. I guess if you bust out the window of a classic car and hot wire it, it's ok because that's the only way you'll ever get to drive it. Who says you have a right to any movie you want? If you support illegal copies, you lessen the chance that it will get a legit release. Warner appears to be releasing everything they own sooner or later, but with the other studios this is especially true. You'll deny it of course, because "I WANT IT!" appears to trump everything else, including common decency.

Can you swear to me that you have never ever broken any law? Not even stupid laws?

I'm not saying go out and download - I'm merely saying that it still has to be proven that downloading really prevents releases for silents and early talkies, and that in a few cases I can quite understand why people would settle for a pirated copy instead of nothing at all.

moglia wrote:


Not looking to make waves but topics such as this one seriously fall into the catagory of "looking for trouble". Does a political subject such as this even belong in the "Talkie news" sub forum? Look at some of the posts already including the one right above this one the content of which is certain to be ire inspiring.

To the original poster please request the whole topic be deleted, this forum really does not need something that will certainly disturb the peace before long. Or at the very least have it moved to another sub-forum.

OK, Q.E.D., but I didn't expect it that quick!

I guess there's some potential value in discussing this, but I already pulled one post that was just an attack on another poster for his opinion and I ask that everyone aim to discuss this calmly, not self-righteously and personally. Or it will be pulled.

I think this is an important subject that should be discussed, even if it does upset some more sensitive folks. I don't want to escalate this. I just stated my opinion. I'd like to hear others.

Mike Gebert wrote:I guess there's some potential value in discussing this, but I already pulled one post that was just an attack on another poster for his opinion and I ask that everyone aim to discuss this calmly, not self-righteously and personally. Or it will be pulled.

The post of mine that you pulled was a response to a post which was an attack against me. If this is the type of activity that will be condoned here, then you can wipe my membership here. After all, it's natural when one is accused of not having common decency and insinuating that I would hot-wire an automobile to strike back. If that wasn't a personal attack than what would be? I have no desire to aggrevate myself by dealing with people of this sort.

earlytalkie wrote:

Mike Gebert wrote:I guess there's some potential value in discussing this, but I already pulled one post that was just an attack on another poster for his opinion and I ask that everyone aim to discuss this calmly, not self-righteously and personally. Or it will be pulled.

The post of mine that you pulled was a response to a post which was an attack against me. If this is the type of activity that will be condoned here, then you can wipe my membership here. After all, it's natural when one is accused of not having common decency and insinuating that I would hot-wire an automobile to strike back. If that wasn't a personal attack than what would be? I have no desire to aggrevate myself by dealing with people of this sort.

Well, I have to say, it was crass but I didn't identify it as a personal attack aimed directly at you. Somewhere on this board Mike asks people to "Accept a decision, however boneheaded, with good grace and move on." and there's some sense in that. His job is hard enough without having to scan for subtext and weigh every comment, even if that sometimes means badly disguised unfriendliness is allowed. While I sure can think of a few posts (or even people) that I'd have removed myself, I can understand that he wants to spend as little time as possible policing here. (By contrast, most forum moderators in other places pretend to be infallible! What rot.)

Jim Reid wrote:I think this is an important subject that should be discussed, even if it does upset some more sensitive folks. I don't want to escalate this. I just stated my opinion. I'd like to hear others.

Well, you did sound a bit high and mighty to be honest. I had a colleague once who had the same opinion as you. Supposing his all time favourite band had a song that was only available on bootleg, he would simply request their label to release it, and wouldn't touch the bootleg. Or so he claimed.
But, my question was, do you never break any law? He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone...

Let's not argue about what is crass or what is an insult. If some one feels insulted, then it's an insult.

This is a subject sure to raise peoples' hackles. Although of course no one on this board would ever commit a crime or urge the commission of a crime, we all feel frustrated that so much cinema is unavailable, in large part because the people who own it don't see any commercial value to it -- I agree with them. The audience for many of these films we would like to see is so small as to be non-existent, especially to a corporation trying to figure out the budget to a billion-dollar franchise. Nor does the law as written deal adequately with these issues; notice how Warners recently sued over the name of The Butler claiming as a basis a movie that probably hasn't existed in 70 years -- although I suspect that was intended as a publicity stunt.

I prefer to focus on the upside: the recent Hitchcock movies that turned up on TCM are stunning in their clarity, Warners is doing a heck of a job getting their stuff out and if we cannot see everything we wish to, consider the situation in the 1980s after the collapse of Blackhawk. Things are getting better folks, and if we can maintain a positive attitude, we can keep a steady stream of old movies.

I also find that figure for online bandwidth piracy potentially misleading. Yes, a growth rate of 60% annually sounds bad, but what is the growth rate of all movie downloads in the last couple of years?

Bob

To answer your question, yes, I've bought pirated video, but not for a long time. I gave it some thought and came to the realization that I was hurting the chances for an official release by going for the immediate gratification. Plus there's the whole "it's wrong" thing. There's a big list of films I would like to have copies of, that are available only from private sellers. I'd rather wait for an official release, and spend my money going to festivals where I get to see rare films and talk movies with like minded people.

Ditto Bob's point.

I could watch silents of dubious legality on YouTube all day, but jeez, why when I have a box of Ivan Mozhukhin silents i need to keep working through and so on? A little downloading strikes me as a tolerable sin, and the argument that I'm really taking anything from Parumbia or MKO is pretty hypothetical; but what matters to me strongly is that people properly support the good guys who put real money, sweat and blood into bringing us great things. I buy movies I don't really want that badly to vote for the next thing Kino or David Shepard or Milestone will release which I might be thrilled by. Seems the least I can do (and you can always be surprised by how much better a movie got in its latest restoration). Otherwise, copyright law is a whole lot of angels on pin heads to me.

The more I think about this question, the more it takes on a "chicken or the egg" quality. Does the studios' closed-door policy on their older catalog titles inspire their piracy? Or does the greater number of pirated films inspire the studios' closed-door policy? In other words, which comes first? Does Gresham's law apply here, that bootleg videos drive out good ones? Or do the studios exacerbate the problem by not making more of their catalog titles available?

Back in my college film programming days, I didn't know of a single non-theatrical film distributor that didn't want to keep as many titles "working" as possible. Rentals mean revenue, and some distributors bent over backwards to keep us college film programmers coming back for more.

I'll bet that happened at Time Warner more than four years ago. Somebody was probably inspecting the film vaults one day and said to himself, "Man, look at all these titles not making any money for us. How can we put them back to work again, while avoiding the crippling expense of maintaining inventory?" And thus the Warner Archive was born, making good and cheap copies of their classic films and TV series available to us again. In fact, it's been so successful, that just about all of the major studios have been copying the Warner Archive's business model to put their respective catalogs back to work.

I too will admit that I have bought bootleg copies of the films I have wanted, but at the same time, if a film studio or archive makes a legitimate copy available, I will throw away my bootleg or put it in the shredder. (Note I did not say "resell.") And I'm probably not the only collector that does this.

Again, I'm not sure whether to blame the business or the consumer in this matter -- it's probably fair to say that they're both to blame. But consumers have to realize that the studios want to release good copies of their films, and the studios have to realize that consumers want to buy good copies of their films, and support each other in their endeavors.

It's very nice, Mr. Gebert, that you have all those silent films to go through rather than watch a download of questionable quality if not legitimacy. It's equally nice that Mr. Reid can attend festivals to be with his own kind and discuss his passions. Not all of us are as fortunate. I'll refrain from saying what I think of purchasing films you don't want in the hopes that these companies might issue something better. The films I downloaded on YouTube, not to mention the dreaded bootlegs that I've purchased will have very little bearing on companies releasing these titles, some of which are tied up in legal gumbos which means they have very little chance of being released. It seems to me that there is most definately a snobbish and self-serving sensibility pervading many of these posts. Therefore this will be my last one here. As Crystal Allen said in The Women: "I'm tickled to death to be rid of the lot of 'ya".

It is an important conversation, because it does affect the future of the industry. The excuse used to be that "piracy was the only way to see films because the greedy studios are stupid and keep everything hidden away by copyright extensions caused by their lackey Sonny Bono" (who actually was a music lackey -- have you seen his acting?) And frankly, only a few people on the listserv knows the exact statistics of how piracy is hurting distribution (Jeff Masino, David Shepard, etc.) And me, of course!

Now that the studios have found a model, it's that they are never going to bring out everything so it's still okay to download illegally. (Though between TCM and made to order, they seem to be getting to a whole lot more than I ever expected or far more than one can watch in a lifetime.)

From the industry side, it really is true that illegal piracy is causing big hurt on their bottom line. It's definitely one of the reasons why they are so willing to bring out big-explosion films (better on the screen) than real dramas. The decline in income is pretty staggering.

And now for the small people like Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley, etc. It has always been a struggle to earn a living through art-film distribution since the beginning of cinema. It's always been the case and no one I know of who has gone into the film did it to make millions. However, the online bootlegging of films has caused the distribution financial model to collapse. Milestone exists because of our foreign bookings and sales, (we license a lot of our films for worldwide rights) and our consulting gig. If we depended on DVD and television like we used to, we would have closed years ago. And since silent films were always a lesser business overseas, we've done many more films from the 1960s. (And I have to admit, we really like the films we're doing, so it's not a big hardship.) So definitely, we're doing a lot less "small" titles because of the bootlegging. Even if it was only affecting 10% of our sales (and it's more than that), it turns a slightly profitable film we did just because we loved it -- to a money loser we just can't do anymore.

So a person might think that downloading a film for only a day or two (and then deleting) doesn't hurt anybody or that one film you download is never going to be distributed, but it actually does mean that the only way you'll see some films is in crappy copies on the computer and it might be worse in the future. My son is just learning about opportunity economics in high school which was explained to me that if you buy a DVD or video game, you will not be able to buy something else. And that can be a really tough decision for some people since paying for rent and food is kind of necessary I've discovered. Illegal anything is always morally questionable, but if it's "I can buy a BluRay of this if I illegally download a copy of that," it's a lot more questionable.

Just saying...

There's also the "been there, done that" effect. I am very fond of Andy Clyde and would be quite willing to buy a dvd of some of his Columbia short subjects. However, if such a dvd were issued, I would examine the titles and if it turned out I had seen all, or even most of them already, I likely would not buy that dvd.

I know there are a lot of collectors on this board and the essence of collecting is to look at them again and again. However, my world of time to spend on my hobbies has remained the same while my interests have grown. Do I want to spend time looking at an Andy Clyde movie again when I have almost four hundred pages of Michel de Montaigne to read and after that, the hoys of Kenneth Grahame? All free through Ibooks? Rather than spend $20 for a dvd? I'm already paying for TCM, which may give me a Charley Chase short for free at any moment... as well as my membership in MOMA where I just enjoyed five evenings of Cruel and Unusual Comedy.

These are legal alternatives. The items I feel a need to look at on my computer screen in a grainy print.... well, I don't need it. And that affects honest people like Dennis. Sorry, Dennis.

Bob

If you visit the "Laurel and Hardy Fan Club" on Facebook, you will find people gleefully sharing copyrighted videos of entire Laurel & Hardy films even though Richard Bann of the Hal Roach Studios has asked them repeatedly to stop. Bann has also had the videos pulled from YouTube, but they justify it by saying the nobody is making any money off them and the films are old and should be free.

What I can add is that many of the films I want to watch are not available in good versions and year after year they are kept being offered from the same lousy tapes from 40 or 30 years ago.

Yes, many publishers offer nice and high quality versions of films... but I really want to see something else. And those DVDs or eventually Blu-Rays or whatever they invent next are still going to be the same lousy videos I described.

You can download tons of videos and put them on DVDs... you'll have a big collection. But the collection occupies space, space that you may need for more important things. And the collection is so big that you end up not watching anything at all.

Ad to that the legal Free Internet Streams of non American television stations, where you can find tons of movies... Movies that I will only watch if they are worth watching. But I am usually tired to do it.

First off, my guess is American TV series like "Breaking Bad" account for from 90 to 95% of the unauthorized downloads on Internet sites. Any information provided by Comcast and its subsidiary NBCUniversal is suspect. The Los Angeles Times serves as a mouthpiece for the Hollywood entertainment conglomerates. The problem of online piracy pales in comparison to the real problem: most movies Hollywood studios release are garbage, PG-13 claptrap targeted to teenage girls. Anyone here see any of the "Twilight" movies?

At a time when government hackers are breaking into bank records, using illegal and secret wiretap information to get people arrested and turning the USA into one vast electronic gulag, I think we have more important security problems than whether someone downloads a crummy Hollywood movie or TV series. A German study found that, except for first run movies, downloads have negligible effect on sales. Movie DVD and Blu-ray sales are way down because the economy got jammed by Wall Street banksters looting the world. The CEOs at Disney, Comcast and CBS all got raises to their 8 figure salaries. Why should they complain? I am the one who should complain, paying for Warner Archive DVD-Rs of old movies because Warner does not want to master as DVDs most of its old movies, complete with subtitles.

When I was working in Nigeria in 2009, there were street vendors selling bootleg DVDs of movies that were being released the same week in the USA. It was unbelievable.

silentfilm wrote:When I was working in Nigeria in 2009, there were street vendors selling bootleg DVDs of movies that were being released the same week in the USA. It was unbelievable.

I see the same thing on Canal Street here in Manhattan.

There's a vendor on Union Square who offers hundreds of home-burned DVDs at a dollar a pop.

Features are available on BitTorrent sites before they're released theatrically. Want a copy of Gravity?

I used to work in the trailer department for a major studio. A worker at a trailer post house was discovered making illegal dubs of features that people were selling on the street. He received a federal prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. At another trailer house, a person was caught handing over a rough copy of an unreleased feature for someone to review on a website. He got a state prison sentence and fine.

A point was made earlier about TV programmes being downloaded, and I think that it is valid - the vast majority of downloads (if you look around torrent sites) are for programmes that have just aired in the US. People in other countries don't want to wait till their own country schedules the programme and so they download them. The amount of new films being downloaded has probably reached its peak because the dvd release is available so soon after a film is at the cinema now.

As for the films this board is interested in, ie. classic silent and talkies. My own moral position is that, if the film is available through legal means then I will buy it. But if someone has uploaded to the web a barely passable print of a 1925 film that is never going to see the light of day officially do I feel guilty downloading it? No. First and foremost, we should fully support those labels that provide us with quality editions of these films by buying their product through legal means - and my guess is that virtually everyone here does.

But nothing is ever totally black and white, and even "buying" a film has its "moral" problems. How many of us buy every film we own by, say, Kino or Milestone brand new? I certainly don't because of financial restraints - and I can quite legally buy a used copy through amazon marketplace, ebay or wherever. But Kino or Milestone get no more money from me buying a used copy than they do from the man next door downloading the film! But the fact that a label gets no money from us buying a used copy of a dvd is something we never even think about.

One thing that contributes to piracy and always has done is delayed release dates and region codes. If a film came out at the same time everywhere then the film wouldn't make it to the web prior to the dvd release anyway and so more people would buy the dvd. The same can be said for the region code system. While studios obviously want to suppress piracy of (particularly) new films, you sometimes wonder if they are a little dopey in realising why they are downloaded in the first place. We live in a culture where people want everything as soon as they can, so of course they are going to download stuff if they live somewhere where they have to wait another six months for the film. I'm not saying it's right, but it's the way things work, and the studios and record labels seem unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

momsne wrote:First off, my guess is American TV series like "Breaking Bad" account for from 90 to 95% of the unauthorized downloads on Internet sites. Any information provided by Comcast and its subsidiary NBCUniversal is suspect. The Los Angeles Times serves as a mouthpiece for the Hollywood entertainment conglomerates. The problem of online piracy pales in comparison to the real problem: most movies Hollywood studios release are garbage, PG-13 claptrap targeted to teenage girls. Anyone here see any of the "Twilight" movies?

At a time when government hackers are breaking into bank records, using illegal and secret wiretap information to get people arrested and turning the USA into one vast electronic gulag, I think we have more important security problems than whether someone downloads a crummy Hollywood movie or TV series. A German study found that, except for first run movies, downloads have negligible effect on sales. Movie DVD and Blu-ray sales are way down because the economy got jammed by Wall Street banksters looting the world. The CEOs at Disney, Comcast and CBS all got raises to their 8 figure salaries. Why should they complain? I am the one who should complain, paying for Warner Archive DVD-Rs of old movies because Warner does not want to master as DVDs most of its old movies, complete with subtitles.

YES!!!

missdupont wrote:I used to work in the trailer department for a major studio. A worker at a trailer post house was discovered making illegal dubs of features that people were selling on the street. He received a federal prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. At another trailer house, a person was caught handing over a rough copy of an unreleased feature for someone to review on a website. He got a state prison sentence and fine.

Yet no one from Wall Street went to jail over 2008 and that was something that to a great degree cripple the US still today. [SARCASM] Glad the priorities are straight.


I will say that to a great degree most of the holier than thou attitude I expected has not materialized at least yet in this topic - not to mention no real whining. - yep not one post with someone stating something to the effect of wah wah wah " stealing is stealing". So kudos to most here!

There are issues that are not address by the industry itself. TCM is a fine cable channel, but in the United States. In Latin America the version of the channel is deplorable... Turner Entertainment bought a Argentine company called Imagen Satelital that operated in the whole region that had a channel called Retro which played, at first, classic television series and scheduled them with intelligence, devoting spots to pilots, final episodes, unusual guest stars, etc. Later, they added Movie Serials and eventually classic from Hollywood including sound and silents films. They later added classic Argentine films as well. Unfortunately, they dropped that channel and replaced it with the Latin American version of TCM, which is lousy (For instance, they play always the same 70 Three Stooges shorts and never the entire Columbia filmography as it was always available on broadcast television) and also pan & scan movies... all with TV commercials, never silents, never serials.

This created a lot of resentment in audiences that since then turn into their computers to get the contents of the US version of TCM, not the channel itself... and after a number of years there is no intention to correct this.

There is also a lot resentment towards an industry in general that took away content that used to be on broadcasting television and now can only be seen, if available, on pay per view systems that have proven so far to be unpopular.

And then you have the current situation of the broadcasting stations that are horrible. They schedule domestic versions of reality TV shows that overpopulate the signals to annoying extent. And these shows expand to other gossip shows that act as satellites and in the printed media to annoy fans of classic films even more.

The available pirate copies, however, are not classic but the latest movie releases that are such crap that they are actually big flops.

Not to mention the Cinemateca Argentina that for the last twenty years no longer screen classics in either 35mm, 16mm or even digital projection... they have being using VHS videos!

momsne wrote:First off, my guess is American TV series like "Breaking Bad" account for from 90 to 95% of the unauthorized downloads on Internet sites. Any information provided by Comcast and its subsidiary NBCUniversal is suspect. The Los Angeles Times serves as a mouthpiece for the Hollywood entertainment conglomerates. The problem of online piracy pales in comparison to the real problem: most movies Hollywood studios release are garbage, PG-13 claptrap targeted to teenage girls. Anyone here see any of the "Twilight" movies?

At a time when government hackers are breaking into bank records, using illegal and secret wiretap information to get people arrested and turning the USA into one vast electronic gulag, I think we have more important security problems than whether someone downloads a crummy Hollywood movie or TV series. A German study found that, except for first run movies, downloads have negligible effect on sales. Movie DVD and Blu-ray sales are way down because the economy got jammed by Wall Street banksters looting the world. The CEOs at Disney, Comcast and CBS all got raises to their 8 figure salaries. Why should they complain? I am the one who should complain, paying for Warner Archive DVD-Rs of old movies because Warner does not want to master as DVDs most of its old movies, complete with subtitles.

I don't think it matters what format we get the Warner Archive titles in. This is the only way that it can be done to make it financially viable. What we should be doing is singing the praises of Warner for making all these films available again (and pledging to make virtually all of their usuable films available within ten years), and for the remarkable preservation programme that they have carried out on their titles. To pick holes in the format is really quite selfish - especially when compared to what other studios are(n't) doing.

silentmovies742 wrote: I don't think it matters what format we get the Warner Archive titles in. This is the only way that it can be done to make it financially viable.

I think it DOES matter. DVD-r's are WAY more susceptible to scratches, and sometimes fail on their own because they're burned, not pressed. If you want to spend $20 on such a thing, be my guest, but I think it's absurd to call people "selfish" who only expect some real value (and a quality product) for their money.