boomhower, if the FBI was actually involved, it be the fastest response in its history, not counting a waste of resources. As B_JM pointed out, the information is out.

Now that all those people have downloaded Star Wars Episode III, I sure hope it will be able to make it's money back.......

Did the article include the fact that shutting dow nthe site will just make people more cautious next time? There obiviously was a leak in handeling the movie & THAT needs to be plugged or it will happen again.

Yes the FBI really was involved. They did say the main objective of the investigation was determining who provided the films. There were other recent films being downloaded as well but they didn't mention them by name (only Star Wars).

Big leaks in the movie industry.....

one story here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050526/ap_on_hi_te/movie_downloading

From the above mentioned site: "President Bush signed a new law last month setting tough penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release".

Boy, I wonder how much the movie industry gave Bush in bribes...oops, "campaign" contributions for that one.

I don't know... seems odd to me we can use the FBI to "crack down" on movie priates but we don't use the FBI to round up Al-Quita cells probably already in the country. Maybe someone should tell little Georgie to start watching the hit Fox TV show "24" and find somebody like Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) to go after the bad guys. You know... the guys that want for real to get their hands on nukes or other weapons of mass destruction. Protecting the fat cats in Hollywood making sure they get more tens of millions somehow seems a more important priority to right wingers.

I've never understood the real difference between campaign contributions and bribes. I think it has something to do with how open it is. If you take money in a backroom for a favor and get caught, it's considered a bribe. If you take money for the same favors in public and openly raise obscene amounts of money this way, it's just politics as usual!

The government can (unlike some here) think about and "do" about more than one thing at a time. Putting a fine point on establishing punishment equal to intellectual property crime is one thing they are getting right.

I'm no fan of W - in fact I'm sick and tired of having to live out the legacy of them stealing the White House and then buying the second election, only to spend nearly every waking moment since the second innauguration trying to dictate their right-wing agenda to us through laws the contravert fundamental tenets of the Constitution along with conservative activist judicial appointees that will influence our country for the next two generations.

But - even a broken clock is right twice per day (at least the old analog type).

"Putting a fine point on establishing punishment equal to intellectual property crime is one thing they are getting right."

10 years is the typical maximum sentence for second degree murder.

I guess this means that a life is now worth as much as a copyright.

Finally my life has meaning again. I have a value!

I am now worth as much as a feature film.

:O]

"The government can (unlike some here) think about and "do" about more than one thing at a time."

You mean like... collecting taxes and waging war? Cuz they're not good at much else.

"Putting a fine point on establishing punishment equal to intellectual property crime is one thing they are getting right."

Personally, I'm far more concerned with rape, child molesting, murder, and theft of actual (not virtual) property. You know what Hollywood thinks our lives are worth when we get worse punishments for video taping Star Wars than beating someone senseless and taking their wallet.

We can all sleep better knowing fat cats like George Lucas (Star Wars creator) and Bill Gates are having their intellectual rights protected by the FBI. What a country... we look after our royalty.

Meanwhile two of the country's largest airlines are on the brink of going under (high fuel costs) and both Ford and GM recently had their bond ratings reduced to "junk" status. Congress sure knows how to priortize.

BTW, the cost of Georgie's Iraq war is approaching the third of a trillion mark. Don't worry, he's working on "saving" social securtity. Just work to 67 or 70 or longer, that way more people will die before collecting a penny.

It REALLY winds me up when people think that George Lucas etc are pocketing loads of money and therefore in some peoples minds that makes it okay to pirate films.

Do you all break into a rich persons house to steal their property because you reason that they have enough money to replace the stuff you stole?

People here, OF ALL PEOPLE, should know how hard it is to make a film, even a simple one. But even considering that fact there is something else that always gets forgotten, and is one of the main reasons I get so wound up when people go on about George Lucas being a non-important fat cat.

Have any of you people actually bothered to consider how much employment a feature film gives? Have any of you actually bothered to consider that most of the people who work on feature films are everyday Joes who do a high risk skilled job with long hours. Those peoples livelyhoods depend on the featurefilm business continuously employing them. Feature films such as Star Wars don't cost all those millions to make because of waste you know. They cost that much because thats what it costs when all the wages of everybody on the film, the insurance costs, the location costs and God knows what else is all added together. If the film doesn't make its money back then it can be curtains for some peoples careers.

If you think piracy doesn't hurt anybody, then go and take a look at what happened to the Chinese film industry. It was literally crippled at the end of the nineties because of piracy. Nobody wanted to pay for films and instead just copied them. The result is that even now there is a huge production gap. There is either really low budget tripe, or really big budget stuff supplemented by money coming from the likes of Columbia Tristar. You'd be hard pressed to find a quality Hong Kong production being made now without foreign money unless its a Jackie Chan production.

What's rather amusing about the piracy thing is how it is not enforced in Eastern Europe, India Pakistan, Homg Kong etc. Friend of mine went back to Pakistan a few months ago and came back with every high end Microsoft product imaganinable, each CD bought for about a buck or so. I am an honest Canadian who paid 270 CAD for OEM XP Pro SP2 as part of a system (ncix.com); my fllow Canadian paid a dollar. Both CDs do the same thing but he does not have to go throught the registration hassles. My brother was stationed in Taiwan until recently. He never paid more than about 5$ for any fully functional hig end software. Apparently any Sonic Foundry/Sony product can be had for a couple of bucks. But we still give some of these countries hand outs in the form of Foreign Aid.

Kyoto accord is the same BS. Canadian businesses are going to pay mega bucks to comply; China, Russia, Romania, India etc. laugh at us as their coal fired genrating stations send tonnes of s**t into the atmosphere.

Simon,

You're making great points, and I didn't see anybody disagreeing with those points in this thread.

Living in Los Angeles, I see friends going through project employment followed by long bouts of no income..

I think everybody is entitled to suggest different ways to stop piracy, but certainly it seems a priority to stop the most blatant cases with great fanfare, setting some examples for others to tsee.

I find it hard to believe that anybody would skip going to see a major feature film in a theater, just because they saw a hypercompressed internet download that was shot with a handheld 1 CCD camera held up against the screen, with glorious camcorder audio including extra popcorn crunching and lip smacking sound effects interjected.

But that's not the point. The point is to stop commercial sclae bootleggers who can create real damage to DVD revenues, which nowadays are often worth more than the theater box office.

Analogously the feds, instead of spending a gazillion dollars on border patrol, could spend a small fraction of that on auditing the employment records of Walmart and other major employers of illegal immigrants to take care of the big problem, then take a chunk of the good money left over to focus on keeping serious bad guys out.

Btw, many years ago I enjoyed one of the funniest Donald Duck Magazine cartoons of all time: Donald as border guard in Arizona. Just wonderful, a real treasure! I think it was a 1960 issue or thereabouts. Between that and his trip to the Andes with nephews Huey, Dewey & Louie...

This is a surprising thread considering that many in here make their living based on their own original work. Stealing is not okay! Bit Torrent facilitates stealing--(and anyone who tells me that Bit Torrent isn't primarily about stealing is really blowing smoke) I dont care if its George Lucas, or some college kid making a video, copyright laws exist to protect us.

The point isn't that pirating a movie is OK, (its not) rather the attention such "crimes" receive from a agency of our government by wasting resources paid for by OUR taxes to help further enrich those that are ALREADY filthy rich. You'd never see the FBI get involved if some mom and pop company was pirated. But if some giant studio like Twentieth Century Fox whines, they immediately get the attention of the feds. Again we come full circle. Congress is for sale. Regardless of party or political leanings they cater to special interests and those that make political contributions do so because they expect something in return and they get it. Pick a industry, like big oil, prescription drugs or the entertainment industry, Congress looks out for the fat cats and helps them maximize profits while us little guys get the shaft over and over again. Copyright laws were orignally written to protect the indvidual, now they mostly serve to further enrich big business.

BillyBoy,

This may be off topic a bit more but would you give me your definition of "Big Oil"

Thanks

Of course pirating is wrong and needs to be curbed to avoid the entertainment industry from failing apart. With that said; all of this pop culture, in the form of movies, music, and other forms of media, is literally crammed down our throats (at least here in the US). I mean, there is just so much advertising in public schools, radio, TV, news, mass transit busses, subways, taxis, billboards, newspaper, internet, fast-food places, gas stations, convenience stores, soda cans, and soon even cell phones, that how can you NOT expect people to want and steal the very thing they are being force feed and being convinced is important. If Burger King is forcing me to look at Darth Vader in the drive thru while I wait to get my $5 lunch during my 60-minute lunch break from my ever-so-great job, how bad do I feel if “their” product gets “stolen.” The same goes for the Britney Spears tie-ins at 7-11, or the Madagascar signage at McDonalds. It’s virtually impossible to not get bombarded with advertising. Like how the morning news interviews stars from shows on its own network, (ABC-Lost, NBC-Friends, Fox-American Idol), and calls it “news.” It is crazy!

With all of the tie-ins and cross promotions it’s getting tough to figure out how people/companies earn money, anyway. But things are changing now and can’t be stemmed. At some point the industry might be giving away movies anyway because more and more product placement and creative advertising are bringing in money outside of movie sales.

Side note: I think pop songs on the radio are fair game for MP3 pirating – mean, they are used for advertising anyway, right? I hear the new Weezer track on KROC, and then listen to the Carl’s Jr. commercial… Then I buy the new Weezer album, which I did, and it sucks. Yeah, I like one song, the song they play for free on the radio anyway. I’ve purchased so many CDs that really are bad, minus the one or two good cuts on the radio. At least with music, a good performer can draw crowds and should be able to make money playing live. You know, earning their money, like I have to do every damn day.

With that being said, who in the hell wants to watch a movie on a 17” computer monitor, or listen to a compressed song on PC speakers anyway?

My .02

What is big oil? Maybe it is the connections - like bin Laden's bail out of Darth Doubyous failing oil company.....

I only posted this OT thread since copyright issues are popular in the forum. As pointed out earlier there is a good reason for that interest since Vegas helps us create works that we would want protected. How this ventured into big oil, airlines and other perceived or actual social issues......who knows.

I too am surprised that some here find it offensive that the FBI actually took time to enforce laws that protect not only Lucas but everyone on this forum. Lucas gets attention because he's Lucas. Regardless of how you feel about him or how much money he has, he is entitled to the same protection as the "mom and pop" folks brought up earlier. I would venture to say we don't hear about the mom and pop folks getting ripped off because they are generally not putting out high profile works so they are much less likely to be targeted than Lucas is. Come on, how much money can a pirate make on Star Wars III versus a production someone has never heard of. Yet both works have value and both have (and should have) the same right to protection.

Movies like Star Wars that depend heavly on special effects aren't harmed as much by "prirates" to begin with, since most people will go to some theater to see the special effects on the big screen as they were intended to be seen. No surprise, its about MONEY. The major studios now make more money selling DVD's. That's where the real money is. What we are really talking about is GREED. Every major release that apeals to a younger audience also makes damn sure they promote the crap out of it with fast food restaurant chains, toys, etc.. While pirating is illegal, I for one will never fell sorry for the big Hollywood companies that rake in billions. They have the resources to go after pirates with their own money. Using the FBI is a gross waste of taxpayer money that could be better spent tracking down REAL criminals doing real crimes. The Star Wars story is a little different in that unlike the typical pirated copy of some Hollywood movie where someone sneaks into a theater with his chessy little video camera and makes a dark grainy copy this time a actual copy (one version at least has the time codes still on top) suggesting someone on the inside swipped a pre-production copy. That suggests Fox should have spent more money on internal security rather than harassing teens downloading a copy on the Internet.

So if someone was to clone you, do they need the mechanical rights from your parent or are you in charge of that and what about the synch rights, and should you be able to collect perpetual residuals from any proceeds acquired by your clone?

OdieInAz "What is big oil? Maybe it is the connections - like bin Laden's bail out of Darth Doubyous failing oil company..... "


This forum needs little smilie faces. I almost thought you were serious. That was a good one.