Does anyone here buy fake DVDs? Does anyone agree that (real) DVDs are WAY too overpriced?

Definitely over priced, I think fake DVDs are appropriate for these times.

This is due to my lack of respect for English spoken movies.

Though real ones are over-priced, I wouldn’t buy pirated DVDs. It’s stealing, plain and simple.

Go out and produce a movie yourself. Then you can decide how much to charge for it. Until then, shut the hell up, pay the money that is being charged, or just do without the friggin movie.

UGH. I hate that logic. “It cost too much, so I’ll just steal it”.

I too think saying that being overpriced is an excuse to steal it is a big fucking cop out, designed to make yourself feel less guilty about something that you should know is W-R-O-N-G, period, end of discussion.

Ever heard of a fucking PAWN SHOP? DVDs, all you can eat, 3 or 4 bucks where I live, usually great selection. Or used book/record/CD/DVD stores, all have them for $10 or less. Target and Wal-Mart have a huge selection of $5 DVDs every week. There are sales, too, where more popular ones are on sale for $10. I have several hundred DVDS, and I’ve NEVER paid more than 8 bucks for one (not counting DVD box sets). Go to garage sales.

You wouldn’t walk into Best Buy and put a DVD in your coat and walk out the door, why is it any different to buy a DVD which was essentially stolen? Look at Ebay or Amazon or deepdiscount.com…used DVDs are cheap and easy to obtain, and they were legally produced and it’s legal to buy them. Buying one that someone copied to make a profit on while having no hand in the production of the content is just rationalization.

@MrItty @dalepetrie: That may be the best logic in the world in terms of philosophy, may humanity forgive your sins.

I don’t even think it should be considered piracy.

I’ll admit it, I torrent, a lot. But I build my DVD collection by buying the movies that are good and do still go to the movie theaters. There are also just a lot of very old movies and tv shows that are incredibly hard to find for a one time watch.

I do think the film industry puts a lot out, so if I’ve watched a movie and loved it, I buy it. But there is a lot of terrible stuff being produced now, so I consider it a screening process. Same with books. I borrow from library, read. If it’s great, I’ll buy it to add to my library. If it’s terrible, well I’m glad I didn’t waste money on it.

Dvd is sub par tech IMO. Even blue ray is riding horse and carriage. Soon we will be streaming all we want, hopefully for a reasonable price.

The problem has been more than overpricing. It is that piracy not only offer better price, but better, more effective distribution. The industry has been ignorant of this from the get go. Streaming and and cheap flash will change the media. Piracy will never go away, but it will most likely be less rampant.

Having said that, it is interesting to note that even with all the “theft” around the world, the american movie and music industry increases profit from one year to the next.

I always found it funny when people bought pirated DVDs. I mean come on its PIRATED…download it yourself if your going to go through the trouble lol. But yes, i pirates.

@Iclamae Well said. While I don’t necessarily agree with torrenting movies, I can certainly see your logic behind it.

I think DVD’s are horribly overpriced because movie stars get paid an amazing amount of money to do what they do.

But I don’t pirate, I think that is stealing. I do however rip dvd’s that I purchase onto my laptop so I can put them onto my iPod or just watch on the computer. I think that is illegal as well but crazy!

@oratio – very well said ga

Considering I can download it for free the fake DVDs are overpriced, too.

I admit that if you like something, you should pay whoever produced it for their hard work. If you don’t like something, and don’t know what it is, you should still be allowed to try it out like borrowing a toy that you may or may not buy. Knowing most people, they probably wouldn’t even buy the movie anyways, if anything they’d watch it at a movie theater or rent it at a store.

Fake dvds? Like, pirated dvds? I know a lot of people who purchase those, the bootlegs. I don’t know how I feel about it. I personally don’t buy anything like that. It’s not something I care enough about to have it right now I can always wait.

I have purchased a few. Most are such shitty quality that I get too frustrated to even finish watching the whole movie. Then I end up going out and buying a “real” one anyways. So in the end, I spent more. Pretty stupid.

@ItalianPrincess1217 It’s probably how the fake DVD producers burn the movie to disk, if they take a few hours they can burn it in super high quality just like on the original, or they can take half an hour and burn it with crappy quality.

@Samurai – ever hear of a video store? A redbox? A fucking LIBRARY? All places where for little to no money you can try it out before you buy it. In what world is taking a something for which you do not own the copyright or a license to copy and making a copy of it, to be sold for profit, NOT piracy. In what world is that NOT stealing. Explain to me YOUR logic of how it’s any different than walking into a store and putting a copy in your coat and wlaking out?

@dalepetrie My logic is unexplainable, one of the few good things about it.

@Samurai No it isn’t…Netflix is so cheap it’s ridiculous to ever think of buying CRAP dvds.

I download tons of shit. And most of it is shit—>Looks at G.I Joe. I can walk into any theater with five people here and see any movie on the big screen. I know the district manager for Regal in the Norththwest.

But I prefer the the torrent.

What’s the difference in torrenting a movie then deleting it instead of renting it?

@Samurai One’s illegal one’s not.

@SpatzieLover What makes one illegal is the the movie supplier bought the movies to rent? I could care less about whatever a law is as long as it doesn’t have a good reason behind it.

One is a violation of copyright. You can not be put in jail for it. They can file a civil suit where you have to pay.

The odds of this are very slim. Like getting hit by lightning.

edit :: grammar.

@Samurai – there is no deterrent for you to delete the torrent or not burn a copy to DVD. When you rent a DVD, if you don’t return it they charge you full retail and fuck up your credit if you don’t pay them. Rental places don’t just buy DVDs like people do for $20 at Best Buy, they pay considerably more for them because they are paying for a license to the owner of the copyright to allow them to rent out the DVDs. And we’re not talking about torrents anyway, we’re talking about someone buying a single user copy of copyrighted content, and making a digital copy of it, without paying any distribution fee to the copyright owner, and turning 100% profit on the finished product. Are you telling me that you go to the Asian market, buy $4 knock off DVDs and then throw the DVDs away? If you did, then just like deleting a torrent, morally you’re not basically getting a copy to OWN without paying for the fee to own a copy of the content, you are just paying to watch it. But what incentive is there to go the route that’s illegal (and is illegal because no one’s going to force you to delete the torrent or throw away the disc), when you could rent the movie for a buck in the Redbox, $3 at the video store, get unlimited rentals for a few bucks a month at Netflix, or buy a used copy in a pawn shop for 3 or 4 bucks, borrow a buddy’s copy, go check it out at the library for free or maybe 50 cents a night depending on your library, or pay to see it int he theaters if what you’re interested in is seeing the movie one time and one time only, and WILL be happy to pay for it if you actually want to own it? All you’re doing is justifying unjustifiable behavior by trying to confuse the issue and compare apples to rutabegas. It’s stealing legally speaking…sure it’s only stealing morally speaking if you keep a copy, but copyright owners can control distribution better than usage, so they have ways to sell and rent movies where they do get paid for each copy that is in circulation. If someone distributes copies that the owner did not make or authorize and makes a profit doing so, they are pirates, if someone knowingly buys the illegal copy, they are stealing…it’s no different than if someone stole a million dollars worth of merchandise and put it up for sale on the street, if you bought that shirt for $5 that you know was stolen, because you know it would cost $50 at the store and you think $50 is too much money, you are knowingly receiving stolen property, you are breaking the law, and even if you are just going to wear the shirt once, you still received stolen property. So why do it when there’s a Ragstock down the street where you can get that shirt used for say $8 and you know it was bought and paid for…if you can’t afford new, don’t buy new, but don’t steal it, buy used, rent or borrow. Your attempts to justify any other behavior wouldn’t stand up in court and the sure as hell aren’t going to fly on Fluther, sorry.

Wow. Some people take this pretty seriously.

That took me a while to read, yet who are you to say it won’t fly on Fluther for what reason?

wait people buy pirated junk? Thats what we have the piratebay for!!! free pirated stuff! paying for pirated stuff is 100X worse then getting it free. But for me its more convinent to have netflix stream to my xbox for like 10$

I’m saying people here won’t let you get away with circular logic. Who am I to say…a seasoned veteran who has seen bullshit stronger than yours taken down a few thousand pegs by the many thoughtful and intelligent people on here who know that “because it’s too expensive to buy new” is nothing more than a cop out when asked why you buy bootlegged copies. Won’t fly here, we respect everyone’s right to their opinion, but you try to justify it by making up your own facts, you will get called on it. People here by and large deal in facts and reason, not conditional, situational logic that supports a person’s preconceived conclusions. Just mark my words, if it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, the logic sure won’t tread water here.

@dalepetrie I wasn’t making up reason for my argument, please make a better disagreement against mine if you wish to change my mind on anything I’ve said. I agree more with this little drawing than what you have to say in such large text. By me saying my logic was unexplainable doesn’t mean that there was nothing to explain, simply that it had been partially explained before, and I didn’t want to go to trouble of saying it again.

I don’t think DVDs are overpriced. HMV have some great films from £3. There’s also Amazon, their cheap. And as previously mentioned second-hand DVDs are a good option.

Your allowed to sell used movies as long as they were bought by someone, wouldn’t that be the same as putting a movie on a table in front of a thousand people for them to watch it for free? If you apply that logic into free file sharing wouldn’t that not be illegal?
Not a serious question.

If you don’t have the money to buy a DVD, get a cheap Netflix subscription and borrow it. Or borrow it for free from a library. If you want to buy it and think it’s too expensive, look for a legit second hand copy. Anything else is illegal and immoral – artists need to get paid for their work.

Wot?! I get many from my friends.

No one here buys anything if they can get it free. They don’t even go for purchasing fake ones. Someone downloads it free and circulates, and some come to me and I watch them if I have time.

Is it really a crime? I didn’t know that. Oh, @johnpowell said the answer.
I’ve seen not only DVDs but also everything else, OS, all softwares and all, pirate.

@SpatzieLover ohhh man netflix is great. I get movies from them, burn em and then send em back :P

@Samurai – that drawing may be cute, but if you’ve ever actually opened a dictionary, you’ll see that some times words have more than one definition. When you look up the word piracy, definition 1 is “Robbery committed at high sea, or a similar act of robbery such as the hijacking of a plane,” definition 2 is “The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patentented material,” and definition 3 is “The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.” You can oversimplify things wifh a flippant drawing but fact is CRYSTAL clear. If someone makes a copy of copyrighted material without the authorization to do so, they have committed piracy, and if someone knowingly uses an unauthorized copy of copyrighted material, that is also piracy. It is theft, which was my entire point in the first place. You are wrong, period.

I like Amazon unbox for movies. Half an hour- and I get the movie without all the extra junk I don’t need. The only DVD’s I buy are tv series and Wallace and Gromit. Oh and Pixar.

Honestly, how many times do you watch a DVD?
Most people only watch their average DVD purchase 5 times or less.
This situation is easily avoided by using something like Netflix. For $5 a month you can watch many movies.

Also for people who support DVD bootlegging, did you ever think that your support of illegal DVD distribution might be contributing to high DVD prices?

I think that most of people that would go and download a video for free would never bother to actually buy one anyways, they should know it’s a complete waste of money, and considering how difficult it actually is to torrent a DVD then burn it. It would be a lot of effort compared to just getting a Netflix subscription.

@dalepetrie: Yeah, definitions change all the time, would you be surprised if the word “terror” had an added definition that said “The war in Afghanistan”? I agree with you on this, it’s obviously considered theft. I don’t believe all theft is to be considered bad.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic: Did you ever consider to think that the reason DVDs are pirated is due to them being overpriced as well?

@Samurai If you can’t afford DVD’s, that doesn’t give you the right to steal them.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I can afford DVDs just fine, I don’t steal them. I simply spend my days watching streaming videos online instead.

@Samurai Illegally downloading dvd movies via bit torrent is stealing.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I don’t do that anymore due to the hassle and the amount of crappy movies there are.

It is a bit inaccurate to compare physical products to intellectual property, as digital media can have indefinite number of copies identical to the original. Being of this nature, it is not technically correct to call copy infringement stealing. To steal you have to take something of value from someone. What then might be argued is that what is taken is the income that would otherwise have come of that purchase, in that plainly assuming that the person otherwise would have bought or paid for the experience of it. Such an assumption can’t be made, and is most likely often wrong. This is however how the entertainment industry is calculating their “losses”. The only way to prove that would be to make it impossible to make copies, and watch the impact on the annual revenue.
They are most likely losing out some “would have been” income, but the easy accessability to free movies and music makes the consumption of digital entertainment multiplied, something it would not have been otherwise.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Did you ask for permission to use Fry from Futurama as an avatar or did you steal it? If you couldn’t have gotten it off the web for free, would you have gone out to pay for it?

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I don’t know, I like buying DVD’s for the sake of owning a well made movie. (Or incredibly stupid one that makes me laugh for hours)

@Samurai – fair enough, you realize it’s stealing but have no moral qualms about doing so if I understand your position correctly. I agree there are laws that are morally unjust and if you have no moral issue with disobeying that law, I can actually respect that. And to be honest, I don’t see streaming as quite as morally unsound as downloading, simply because you do not preserve a copy. In the creation of any art form, though I understand how it has to have a commercially viable component, but art should also be free to be enjoyed. Frankly, streaming to me is morally pure as borrowing from a library, I simply choose to find legal ways to enjoy art at little to no cost and as they are abundant, accepting the inherent illegality of downloading from someone who does not own the copyright, I see no reason to go to those measures when it does leave a record, it is clearly illegal for reasons which are ultimately fair and logical, and when other alternatives to see this content at little to no cost are available. But I still call it what it is.