Bootleg Sites Take Note

[Guest]

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27103527

 

R,

 

[Alessandro Machi]

The silly aspect of this is a direct bootlegging of the live broadcast does not hurt anyone because all the commercials are piped through. This actually helps keep the advertising buys at a higher price which is essential with all the channel surfing that goes on when a commercial comes on.

 

What I think is the issue is these sites actually insert ADDITIONAL commercials on top of the image, including ads to adult sites, and someone is making some dough off of that, that is what is probably concerning the police.

[Keith Walters]

It's easy to understand why people would set up bootleg sites with the aim of making money from them. Unfortunately they're also the easiest to take action against.

What I find baffling is the sheer number of sites offering bootleg downloads, where there is no conceivable mechanism whereby they could gain anything from it.

The usual glib "explanations" about them really being set up as a means of slipping malware into your computers simply don't hold water. God knows how many zillions of Terabytes of bootleg material have been downloaded; credible reports of that actually happening are vanishingly rare.

 

Maybe they just do it to piss people like Mr Boddington off... :D

As they say, when all other possibilities have been eliminated, what is left has to be the explanation.

 

I'm sure mainstream Hollywood has eschewed Red cameras for much the same reason... :rolleyes:

[Guest]

 

What I find baffling is the sheer number of sites offering bootleg downloads, where there is no conceivable mechanism whereby they could gain anything from it.

 

 

Finally something you've said I can agree with Keith. I would like to know the answer to this question as well.

 

I'm especially baffled by the sites that offer knocked off packaging for DVDs so the DVD can be sold on ebay or other retail situations like a flea market. People go through great lengths to make professional looking, fake, packaging and then they just give it away.

 

This crap is all fake and it has one purpose only, bootlegging:

 

http://www.covershut.com/DVD-Covers/87827-Against-The-Wild-2014--Disc.html

 

R,

[Keith Walters]

 

I'm especially baffled by the sites that offer knocked off packaging for DVDs so the DVD can be sold on ebay or other retail situations like a flea market. People go through great lengths to make professional looking, fake, packaging and then they just give it away.

 

A lot of people seem to set great store by making an "authentic-looking" DVD. It's not hard to do with inkjet printable DVD blanks and an Inkjet printer that does DVD printing. The DVD disc and jewel-box label files are only small JPEGs that add nothing to the overall file size.

 

Maybe they do it so they can give the impression they've spent enormous amounts of money on their DVD collection, or maybe they just don't want to advertise the fact that their disc is a bootleg copy. (The Texta Pen title sort of gives the game away...)

 

Or maybe they just want to pretend that that they're movie producers too!

[George Ebersole]

It's a little more complicated than that. The issue gets down to exclusivity for the purpose of being the sole authorized "retailer" or "reseller" of the image to people who have paid for that content.

 

It's also a matter of a distribution model being out of date and updated a-la the Napster flap in the late 90s and early 2000s. There was no way to stop file sharing, and so a royalty charge or some fee was tacked onto the music.

 

I've unknowingly purchased a few bootlegs, even after investigating the seller, and the bootleg is always something done off of an over the countertop drive, and is not done by a "pro" burner with extra data.

 

The concept isn't hard. Someone made something for resale, and someone else wants to make money off of it without giving the creator his due share. Whether it's a feature illegally uploaded on Youtube (of which there are plenty), or someone hacking into a TV station server to show some sporting event. It's still piracy and theft.

[Freya Black]

The silly aspect of this is a direct bootlegging of the live broadcast does not hurt anyone because all the commercials are piped through. This actually helps keep the advertising buys at a higher price which is essential with all the channel surfing that goes on when a commercial comes on.

 

What I think is the issue is these sites actually insert ADDITIONAL commercials on top of the image, including ads to adult sites, and someone is making some dough off of that, that is what is probably concerning the police.

 

Actually commercials aren't that relevant in this case because sports rights in the UK are almost entirely controlled by subscription TV which gets most of its income from subscriptions. There's a lot of resentment about it as years ago sports stuff used to be broadcast for free on normal tv and paid for by ads as you suggest but those days are long since gone.

 

It's fascinating to notice how much the police seem to have gone after sports related stuff in fact.

 

It's also worth noting that Rupert Murdoch, who controls subscription TV in the UK, got where he is these days by operating pirate TV broadcasts from the mainland and basically put the legal sat TV operator out of business. The government did nothing to stop him as he owned all the UK's tabloid newspapers and they are mostly scared of him.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

I've unknowingly purchased a few bootlegs, even after investigating the seller, and the bootleg is always something done off of an over the countertop drive, and is not done by a "pro" burner with extra data.

 

 

The "pro" burners generally are just the same anyway only they can usually spit out lots more disks under automated control and can often print nice pictures on the top of the disc using an inkjet printer. There isn't any extra data!

 

Real DVD's are glass mastered in a factory and not burnt at all, same with CD's. You can often tell a glass mastered disc from a burnt one as the data side of the disc looks silver and not purple or blue etc like the burnt discs tend to be.

 

Take a look at the data side of your DVD's, they are all silver.

 

Freya

[Phil Rhodes]

 

What I find baffling is the sheer number of sites offering bootleg downloads, where there is no conceivable mechanism whereby they could gain anything from it.

Blindingly obvious, I'd have thought - the pages are usually strewn with advertising. What's slightly surprising is that some reasonably well-known companies seem happy to be associated with it.

P

[Keith Walters]

 

 

Blindingly obvious, I'd have thought - the pages are usually strewn with advertising.

P

 

Some of them aren't though. That's the mystery.

It also doesn't explain why so many people are prepared to rip and upload files, for no apparent benefit to themselves.

[Mark Dunn]

 

It's also worth noting that Rupert Murdoch, who controls subscription TV in the UK, got where he is these days by operating pirate TV broadcasts from the mainland and basically put the legal sat TV operator out of business. The government did nothing to stop him as he owned all the UK's tabloid newspapers and they are mostly scared of him.

 

Freya

Worth noting accurately, maybe. Murdoch is a favourite bête noire but the facts aren't with you.

Where's the mainland, exactly?

Sky played out from the UK, from Molinare, legitimately, to Europe for some years before it broadcast in the UK. It didn't have or need a licence here until it did.

BSB was bought by Sky before it had even started broadcasting. Both were losing a packet but no-one put anyone out of business. I still have a recruitment letter from BSB saying they would get back to me when they started hiring. They never did.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Mark Dunn

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

It also doesn't explain why so many people are prepared to rip and upload files, for no apparent benefit to themselves.

 

Public-spiritedness?

 

P

[George Ebersole]

 

The "pro" burners generally are just the same anyway only they can usually spit out lots more disks under automated control and can often print nice pictures on the top of the disc using an inkjet printer. There isn't any extra data!

 

Real DVD's are glass mastered in a factory and not burnt at all, same with CD's. You can often tell a glass mastered disc from a burnt one as the data side of the disc looks silver and not purple or blue etc like the burnt discs tend to be.

 

Take a look at the data side of your DVD's, they are all silver.

 

Freya

That's kind of what I meant. Sorry for not being clearer. Of the few pirated discs I've purchased over the years most of them have been burned on the "purple" over the counter media. There's been a few that have been encoded on standard DVDs though, and they are pirated discs, but those usually come from Hong Kong or Singapore, where piracy is a huge problem.

 

Back on topic; hackers need to obey the law too. If a station or network only wants to distribute a program through website-A, then you have to acknowledge that right. There is absolutely no moral reason to hijack or tap a companie's or other person's data, and put it up on your site so people will come to your site.

 

You ask permission first. If you don't get it, then that's too bad.

[Freya Black]

Worth noting accurately, maybe. Murdoch is a favourite bête noire but the facts aren't with you.

Where's the mainland, exactly?

Sky played out from the UK, from Molinare, legitimately, to Europe for some years before it broadcast in the UK. It didn't have or need a licence here until it did.

BSB was bought by Sky before it had even started broadcasting. Both were losing a packet but no-one put anyone out of business. I still have a recruitment letter from BSB saying they would get back to me when they started hiring. They never did.

 

I'm overegging the pudding a bit because Murdoch almost bankrupted himself in the battle as well apparently but he ended up with the upper hand when the two companies ended up forced to merge and BSB were the legal company who had the license to broadcast to the UK.

 

BSB was most definitely not bought by Sky before they started broadcasting however. If you keep your eye out while wandering around the UK you can still sometimes see the little BSB squarials on buildings. They are non-functional now as they communicated with the high power sats that BSB bought to broadcast from! (Ouch! Those sats were sold off for tiny silly money in the end to Scandinavian broadcasters) At one point BSB had 75,000 subscribers to its service.

 

Rupert Murdoch basically split the market. He also got in first too as the launch of the BSB service was delayed so he ended up with a lot more subscribers to Sky.

 

Sky was uplinked from Luxembourg (mainland Europe) to the Astra sats. You are right that as the signals came from outside the UK they circumvented UK law of the time, much like the pirate radio boats also did! However this didn't stop the UK government from storming radio boats and passing laws to make it illegal to advertise on such services. No such action was taken against Rupert Murdoch who did not have a license to broadcast to the UK. In fact he had bid for the license and lost out to the BSB consortium.

 

Of course these days everything is legal and above board and all of the Sky channels now have proper licenses from Ofcom to broadcast to the UK but this wasn't always the case.

 

Freya

Edited April 22, 2014 by Freya Black

[Freya Black]

Back on topic; hackers need to obey the law too. If a station or network only wants to distribute a program through website-A, then you have to acknowledge that right. There is absolutely no moral reason to hijack or tap a companie's or other person's data, and put it up on your site so people will come to your site.

 

You ask permission first. If you don't get it, then that's too bad.

 

Yup! Same with hacking into people phones and putting the data on your websites or newspapers either. Theres no morality behind it at all!

 

Freya

[Sean Cunningham]

Some of them aren't though. That's the mystery.

It also doesn't explain why so many people are prepared to rip and upload files, for no apparent benefit to themselves.

 

I've wondered about this myself. Within an hour, maybe two, of a popular show's new episode being aired the episode is ripped from someone's DVR (several), possibly re-compressed and then uploaded for either download through torrent sites or to be streamed in a browser. They're not being paid for it, not collecting any ad revenue but they perform this "service" every week and most likely on more than one show.

 

If I miss NBC's Hannibal this Friday night I know that on Saturday I can watch it on the licensed stream from HULU. If I don't want to wait until sometime on Saturday I know exactly where I can go to see a list of often two dozen streaming sites that will have the new episode up generally by Midnight that same Friday evening. The sites that host the streams, like putlocker or divxstage likely make money off ads but the folks supplying them with the content make nothing. It's conceivable some of them pay a subscription to the hosting sites for preferential bandwidth on all transactions.

 

Perhaps the ripper+uploader has some kind of "stick it to the man" agenda but I don't think that's the case here. I think this is a pathology closer to The Collector. There are scores of people who collect who's sole satisfaction comes from the collecting. They might rarely if ever consume or appreciate what it is they are collecting because that's a totally different activity with its own drive and/or potential for satisfaction or pleasure. This isn't unrelated to window shopping and other activities that stimulate the now mostly unused hunter-gatherer drive in us, or perhaps your cat killing a mouse but not eating it. It's evolutionary drives playing out in odd behaviors.

 

Perhaps their satisfaction comes from being quicker than the other guy getting it posted and knowing other people will be seeing and enjoying their efforts.

[Michael LaVoie]

I doubt anyone on this forum runs a bootlegging site.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Michael LaVoie

[Guest]

I doubt anyone on this forum runs a bootlegging operation.

 

I'm certain you are right. People that create content understand the time and pain that goes into making even the simplest and lowest budget project. Bootleggers feed at the bottom of the pond.

 

R,

[Michael LaVoie]

So then you'd want to post cautionary links of news articles related to bootlegging on their forums then right? It's more likely that they'd see those links there rather than in a creative forum. Kind of preaching to the choir here right?

[George Ebersole]

 

I've wondered about this myself. Within an hour, maybe two, of a popular show's new episode being aired the episode is ripped from someone's DVR (several), possibly re-compressed and then uploaded for either download through torrent sites or to be streamed in a browser. They're not being paid for it, not collecting any ad revenue but they perform this "service" every week and most likely on more than one show.

 

If I miss NBC's Hannibal this Friday night I know that on Saturday I can watch it on the licensed stream from HULU. If I don't want to wait until sometime on Saturday I know exactly where I can go to see a list of often two dozen streaming sites that will have the new episode up generally by Midnight that same Friday evening. The sites that host the streams, like putlocker or divxstage likely make money off ads but the folks supplying them with the content make nothing. It's conceivable some of them pay a subscription to the hosting sites for preferential bandwidth on all transactions.

 

Perhaps the ripper+uploader has some kind of "stick it to the man" agenda but I don't think that's the case here. I think this is a pathology closer to The Collector. There are scores of people who collect who's sole satisfaction comes from the collecting. They might rarely if ever consume or appreciate what it is they are collecting because that's a totally different activity with its own drive and/or potential for satisfaction or pleasure. This isn't unrelated to window shopping and other activities that stimulate the now mostly unused hunter-gatherer drive in us, or perhaps your cat killing a mouse but not eating it. It's evolutionary drives playing out in odd behaviors.

 

Perhaps their satisfaction comes from being quicker than the other guy getting it posted and knowing other people will be seeing and enjoying their efforts.

I wouldn't call it a pathology for any but the most crazed "hacker" who stays up late at night trying to crack into servers for the sake of it.

 

In the end it actually is all about money. Back in the 90s "spam" sites were in every facet of the net. If you were looking for MIDI files you'd come across someone who had a hub site linked to several dozen sites with lots of ads for all kinds of junk, not just so-called adult sites.

 

You get money when you put up ads from the advertiser. The more hits you get, the more money you're paid. Around 2001 the going rate for an ad was a couple cents a click. That pay rate may have changed, but regardless every time someone clicks that ad that's money in the bank.

 

And that's why people pirate data or do illegal uploads. The idea is to get the user to click on one of the ads, or for more malicious hosts, to invade the user's computer with a virus or trojan, and then just grab money from their account, and then shut down the site and repeat the whole process with another website and upload.

 

So, a pathology? Maybe for like 5% of the people who do it, but more likely it's just to steal.

[Guest]

So then you'd want to post cautionary links of news articles related to bootlegging on their forums then right? It's more likely that they'd see those links there rather than in a creative forum. Kind of preaching to the choir here right?

 

I've "talked" to these guys in the forums on their sites. They all fit the same profile, single males between the ages of 16 and 29ish. They have all failed economically, most live with their parents or groups of other failed single men. They are all very anti-authority, anti-corporation, and of course anti-rules. Basically they are social outcasts, who find acceptance amongst other thieves.

 

What I don't understand is why the studios do not launch a covert operation, hire the best hackers they can find, and task them with taking down sites like Pirate Bay. It may be illegal sure, but it would also be the best example of giving people a taste of their own medicine! Every time Pirate Bay puts the site back up, the studio paid hackers, knock it back down. I can just hear the Pirate Bay guys complaining about how the hackers use the internet to hide their identity so they can commit cyber crime. Gee really?

 

The bootlegging will never stop until the authorities start taking down the sites and putting those behind the sites in jail. Once that happens a climate of fear will begin to spread. Also more can be done to track down and fine those that use these sites. A handful of downloaders have been slapped with fines but nothing significant.

 

R,

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Richard, this subject is frustrating, no doubt, but is a waste of your time. You will NEVER defeat piracy and you would be surprised how you can turn off legitimate paying consumers by trying too hard to. You should always focus on those decent people who want to pay you. You will never force those others to pay and you will never shut them all down. Why even worry about it?

[Matthew W. Phillips]

 

 

... a climate of fear will begin to spread.

 

Wow, someone needs to switch to decaf. :D

[Guest]

We need to worry about it Matthew. Especially for those of us that make and work on movies that do not get 2500 screen theatrical releases. And guess what, that is 98% of the members of this forum.

 

I can tell you for a fact that the indie scene has been crushed by piracy. Distributors are paying a lot less for product than they were before piracy became an issue. This means smaller budgets and fewer jobs for everyone.

 

Imagine you making your first indie feature, you go to AFM to sell it, over and over again you hear....sorry we can't buy it these low budget titles don't work in our territory anymore due to piracy. That's what indie filmmakers are hearing over and over again.

 

It could be stamped out if governments got serious enough about it. Right now they aren't serious enough about it. Case in point, the Pacific Mall in Toronto is notorious for selling thousands of bootlegged DVDs right out in the open on store shelves. I have talked to the RCMP personally about this issue, and they told me over the phone, they will not be enforcing Canada's copyright laws. I was shocked. Anyone can make a living selling bootlegged DVDs in Canada with no fear of prosecution whatsoever.

 

Step one would be for the MPAA to inform the Canadian government that US movies will not be distributed in Canada until the piracy problem is brought under control. People point the finger at China and Eastern Europe as being hotbeds for DVD piracy, HA! They should be pointing the finger at Canada! Anyone who does not believe me is free to call the RCMP and discuss this with them call 1-800-387-0020. I spoke with them on March 11th, they said they will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal DVDs being sold at the Pacific Mall or anyplace else in Canada.

 

Here is the Wiki article on the Pacific Mall,if anyone thinks I am exaggerating, pay the mall a visit and see for yourself;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Mall

 

Pirated merchandise[edit]

Pacific Mall and neighbouring Asian malls are known for their proliferation of pirated video games, movies, music and other entertainment media. In May 2005, over $800,000 worth of pirated DVDs were seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

On July 13, 2006, the RCMP raided a number of stores in the Pacific Mall and other locations associated to the manufacture of counterfeit video game software, seizing a large quantity of games and shutting down a major illicit software manufacturing facility.^[3]

In the week of August 8, 2008, thirty-three separate businesses were observed to be openly selling counterfeited merchandise in the mall, primarily counterfeit DVD movies.^{[original research?]}

On February 6–7, 2009, the RCMP raided a number of stores in the Pacific Mall and other locations within the mall being used for the manufacture of counterfeit movie DVDs, seizing over 49,000 DVD movies, 217 DVD burners and over 100,000 blank DVDs. Four subjects working within the mall were charged with multiple counts under the Copyright Act, also with Possession Of Property Obtained by Crime, and Fraud.^[4]

On March 16, 2009, the RCMP Federal Enforcement Section teamed with the York Regional Police Service and commenced uniformed foot patrols in the shopping malls located in south Markham - Pacific Mall among them, in an effort to combat the widespread sales of counterfeit items in the malls.^[5][6]

[George Ebersole]

Richard, I think part of the problem is that the legitimate industry has priced itself into this position.

 

Between a legit copy and a pirated copy, the pirated copy gets the nod if it's good enough and priced fairly enough.