California movie pirate sent to jail

[Chris Hurd]

See the story on CNN.

[Ken Tanaka]

Only in LA would a movie theater have "night vision goggles"!

[Joe Carney]

Good for them. Bust the jerks!!!

[Michael Ansbro]

They were going to make him watch "The Alamo" for the full 42 days,
but that was ruled "cruel and unusual".

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

It's obviously either some big misunderstanding or a classic "innocent by reason of insanity" plea case: no one in his right mind would be videotaping that movie. The appeal a pro bono for Paul Tauger?

[K. Forman]

When 'The Last Samurai' was released, Time or Newsweek ran an article about the new ways Hollywood was fighting Pirates.

'The Last Samurai' had some sort of encoding, so that if a copy surfaced, they would know which theater it was copied from. It even mentioned using the night vision goggles.

[Glenn Gipson]

Well, I’m glad to hear that. Movie theaters don’t do enough to stop piracy though, seems like they only care about selling their pricey concessions. January 1st? There should be a lot more caught since then.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

"The Last Samurai had some sort of encoding, so that if a copy surfaced, they would know which theater it was copied from."

Crap code was discussed here last October with reference to Kill Bill. I've noticed it on every studio release I've seen since, and it never stops being annoying.

[Josh Brusin]

you think they'd care about the print quality and projection... During the Matrix Rev-something and Cold Mountain the same high end theatre in Chicago cracked out with a neon green line 20% from the right... money back both times and talked to the manager who pretty much shrugged it off...

[Nick Hiltgen]

Josh what you saw was called an emulsion scratch when a prokectionist is threading up a movie and the film slides off a roller all the informations on that line is lost.

The manager probably shrigged it off because he is faced with two decisions he can pay to have the affected reels or prints replaced or he can refund the money of anyone who complains if it was a matrix he/she probably just fave out refunds and when it was time to cut down from 4 prints to 2 made sure that one of teh two prints leacing was the scratched one. that's my opinion.

It's not so much that they don't care about the quality and the projection it's more likely they just don't care about the customers as they're likely getting paid only slightly more then a typical college drop out. (and the projectionsists are getting paid just enough to stay above the poverty line.

The reason why movie theaters only care about selling their pricey consessions is because that's the only way a theater makes money, 95% of the ticket price goes right back to the production companies, which is why they're so motivated to keep people from bootlegging it, theaters are concerned about keeping people from sneaking in or bringinin food so that they can sell there food and pay the bills.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

"The reason why movie theaters only care about selling their pricey consessions is because that's the only way a theater makes money"

It's not the only way the theater makes money, though it is, as you say, the primary source of profit. Exhibitors take a portion of box office revenue called the house nut off the top, before any money goes back to the distributors. This keeps the rent paid and the ushers salaried, but, except in cases where films stay in theaters for months on end (e.g. Titanic), it is, as you say, quite difficult to break much more than even on ticket sales of any given film alone. Hence the several thousand percent markup on cola, popcorn, and Mike & Ike.

[Rick Bravo]

I say arrest any knucklehead who would even want to watch a movie that was videotaped off a movie screen!

RB

[Nick Hiltgen]

Robert's correct my assertion was a little bit of a generalization, but it does kind fo explain why we don't see a lot of movies out there that stay in theaters for a long time, because the longer a movie is in a theater the less the production company is making off of it.

Rick you'd be surprised at the quality of video some bootleggers have.

[Ken Tanaka]

<<<-- Originally posted by Nick Hiltgen :
Rick you'd be surprised at the quality of video some bootleggers have. -->>>

Indeed. In the past week or so a local fellow was busted for selling bootleg DVD copies of feature films, some of which are not yet released on DVD. The news camera shot a police monitor (at at the press conference) presumably playing what appeared to be Master and Commander and it looked pretty darn good. Of course I don't know the source of that footage (shot in theater, copied from another source, etc.) but it was a bit of a surprise to me.

This is a huge problem in parts of Asia and the Middle East.