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Post by Ginnie on Dec 29, 2007 1:25:47 GMT -4
"Property of Thinkfilm For screening purposes only" text appears on screen near the end of the first episode.
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Post by laurel on Dec 29, 2007 13:26:57 GMT -4
Actually, it says it several times throughout the program. I do mean to buy the dvd when it's released though.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Dec 29, 2007 21:55:37 GMT -4
If my son ends up going to McMaster instead of UofT you'll have to point out to me the places to avoid in Hamilton. That would be a pretty long list. Nah, I kid. Hamilton isn't so bad. The downtown core is kinda scary, but there aren't many reasons to go downtown anyway. West Hamilton (where McMaster is) is really quite nice. If your son can afford to rent a place in the west end or in Dundas he should be fine. It was supposed to ease traffic congestion, but I don't think it helped. A lot of them were turned back into two-way streets a couple of years ago. I think King and Main are the only two major one-way streets left.
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Post by JayUtah on Dec 30, 2007 16:55:31 GMT -4
Actually, it says it several times throughout the program.
You've hit upon the MPAA's dirty little secret: most of the piracy against which they rail is actually something of an inside job.
The stereotypical movie pirate is Comic Book Guy smuggling some recording device into a public screening of the film. Not so. Most piracy is taken from pre-release DVDs sent out by the studios to critics, distributors, and media outlets for review. Although under non-disclosure agreements, those pre-release copies find their way into the pirate market because DVDs are so easy to duplicate and often aren't well guarded by the recipient. And yes, several times through the program a pre-release DVD will flash a title identifying it as a review copy only, not for display or distribution.
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Post by gillianren on Dec 30, 2007 21:01:54 GMT -4
Actually, I own a movie (VHS, in fact; I've had it for about 15 years) that's a screener's copy. Even though it was awfully illegal (it says so, right on the box!), a friend of my neighbour's was selling her screener's copies of things at a yard sale once. (She was a blurb-writer.) Both of the movies I bought from her (I've since replaced Much Ado About Nothing on DVD) had already come out on VHS by then, but I know that, when she got them, they hadn't; in theory, she could've sold a movie for $5 that hadn't cost her a thing and that wouldn't have been in stores for six months or more.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Dec 30, 2007 21:38:29 GMT -4
I've had quite a few screener movies over the years, but then I work at a video store (which is why I have to laugh whenever a HB calls me a government agent). Screeners are sometimes given to video retailers to promote upcoming releases, but the quality is pretty poor (they fade between color and black & white intermittently and have text scrolling across the picture) so I always buy legit copies if the movie is worth having and I would never think of "sharing" it with others.
We get very few screeners now though, mostly because of piracy concerns. Major releases (like Harry Potter for example) never show up as screeners, it's mostly just low budget horror movies now.
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Post by JayUtah on Dec 30, 2007 21:52:26 GMT -4
The legality in that case centers around the deprivation of profit. Screening copies are sent out free of charge, and their production costs are written off as a promotional expense. Theroetically the people who receive them aren't supposed to enjoy them. That is, viewing them is considered a business activity and not entertainment. When the film is released to the video market, the costs of production are expected to be offset by sales. If the studio didn't receive payment for a copy intended for entertainment, that's the basis of the infringement. A purchase of a screening copy displaces the purchase of an entertainment copy.
Yeah, big deal. As a matter of history, studios never much cared what happened to the screening copies after the entertainment copies were made because the screening volume was under the radar -- mostly individuals selling or giving them to other individuals. Studios only went after the sales of screening copies when they occurred before the general entertainment video release.
Lately they're trying to exercise closer control over the screening copies because the technology allows one pre-release DVD to be replicated zillions of times with no loss of quality and then distributed at practically no cost worldwide, seriously undermining the theatrical and home video markets. But it's impractical and expensive to do things like "mark" each copy in a way that survives transcoding (e.g., to Flash video or Quicktime) and can be traced back to an individual infringer. And so the industry has tried instead to go after the market for pirated films.
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Post by JayUtah on Dec 30, 2007 22:11:26 GMT -4
...I have to laugh whenever a HB calls me a government agent.
Not even the right government.
Screeners are sometimes given to video retailers to promote upcoming releases...
Which doesn't really make sense for the films someone would want to pirate. As if you're really not going to stock the latest Harry Potter! It makes more sense for a straight-to-video production that you might not want to order before seeing. And people aren't necessarily Googling frantically for pirate copies of The Chipmunk That Ate Uranus.
We get very few screeners now though, mostly because of piracy concerns.
Yet the problem continues. You can cut out the retailers on sure-fire hits, but you can't cut Leonard Maltin out of the loop. And dollars to donuts he doesn't open his own mail or do his own filing. Fundamentally, as soon as that DVD leaves the studio building, they have very little practical control over what happens to it.
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Post by svector on Dec 31, 2007 3:18:42 GMT -4
It is testing my principles, that's for sure. I don't like piracy at all so I'm probably not going to watch the YouTube copy, but it is definitely tempting. I almost made the bus trip to Toronto to see it, but decided to wait for the DVD. Nothing like seeing it on the big screen. The detail in the faces of the astronauts was striking. Every subtle nuanced expression was there in Technicolor for the world to see. These men believe what they were saying. It was an honest account of memories from their past, and I challenge anyone to watch that documentary and come away with a sense that the interviewees were not being 100% truthful. Definitely one of the top 10 films on my long long list.
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Post by Czero 101 on Dec 31, 2007 4:28:44 GMT -4
I hope it comes out on HD-DVD. I might just buy a Dolby 5.1 system JUST to hear the Saturn V liftoff ;D
Cz
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Post by gillianren on Dec 31, 2007 5:26:25 GMT -4
Yet the problem continues. You can cut out the retailers on sure-fire hits, but you can't cut Leonard Maltin out of the loop. And dollars to donuts he doesn't open his own mail or do his own filing. Fundamentally, as soon as that DVD leaves the studio building, they have very little practical control over what happens to it. To be fair, though, I know that Richard Roeper, at least, sees his movies in a screening room with several other critics; he doesn't get a DVD copy at home. (Okay, I've read like four of his books and own one or two of them. I've got a thing for movies.) I know it's also the case for several other reviewers in the Chicago area, because he doesn't screen movies alone. Still, I'm pretty sure he gets screening copies of DVD releases in the hopes that he'll mention them on the now-inaccurately-named "Heads-Up Video" section of the show.
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Post by dwight on Dec 31, 2007 6:05:40 GMT -4
I like Charlie Duke's comments during the end credits. Why indeed fake going to the moon 9 times if they did fake it?
Apparently the YT user straydog is claiming that Neil Armstrong's absence from the interviews speaks volumes. I'd hate to think what he makes of one of the last interviews of Abba on TV without Agnetha suggests!
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Post by laurel on Dec 31, 2007 16:20:56 GMT -4
Some of those HBs are also calling all the astronauts Manchurian candidates. They stole that from Bill Kaysing, I believe. He once said Jim Lovell was a "comic Manchurian candidate." I wonder what sinister conspiracy ABBA was involved with. Should I be looking for hidden meanings in the Dancing Queen song or something?
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Post by laurel on Jan 3, 2008 1:37:31 GMT -4
...I have to laugh whenever a HB calls me a government agent.Not even the right government. I was thinking though, maybe the Canadian government WAS part of the hoax. The Apollo 11 crew had a Canadian Flight Surgeon in quarantine with them. If the Soviets were involved in the conspiracy, why not us?
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Post by Czero 101 on Jan 3, 2008 1:54:56 GMT -4
...I have to laugh whenever a HB calls me a government agent.Not even the right government. I was thinking though, maybe the Canadian government WAS part of the hoax. The Apollo 11 crew had a Canadian Flight Surgeon in quarantine with them. If the Soviets were involved in the conspiracy, why not us? SHHHhhhhhhhhhhh, eh? Cz
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