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Much of the way the movie industry looks to combat film piracy will seem familiar to readers of this site. It typically involves shakedown threat letters, games of DMCA whac-a-mole, and a paint-by-numbers approach that mostly amounts to film studios shaking their lawyers' fists at the sky. All that produces the status quo, where piracy is still a thing, films still make gobs of money, and regular observers of it all are left scratching our heads wondering how so much noise could be made over it all.
But I will give credit where credit is due as Costa Rican film distributor Romaly deserves some style and creativity points for its new anti-piracy tactic.
Romaly has employed an extremely creative tactic to reach out to would-be pirates. Their work can be seen over at LegalTorrents.net, a site that has clearly been modeled on one of the most famous torrent indexes ever. As the screenshot below shows, it is a semi-convincing KickassTorrents clone with a similar logo, color scheme, and word cloud.
[...] The torrents on the site are actually real, except they aren't torrents for the actual movies in question. Instead, the downloads play trailers for those movies along with messaging about how piracy has a negative impact on the film industry. But the coup de grace is the inclusion of an email address where the downloader can request two free movie tickets for the film they attempted to pirate.
[...] Attempting to build up some goodwill in the form of getting downloaders to the theaters is actually pretty smart.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:43PM (6 children)
"... where the downloader can request two free movie tickets for the film they attempted to pirate."
I assume this only works for new movies. So if or I would "pirate" some old movie from the 80's, like if I wanted to re-watch Aliens, they are not going to do a special cinema screening just for me + 1, if I was in Costa Rica that is. So there is probably limitations and not to mention you have to give them your email and claim the tickets so they have you buy the balls for whey change their minds. Sounds a bit like this is some kind of honeypot sting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:01PM (3 children)
New word! "Whey" a conjunction of when and they. I like it.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:12PM (1 child)
I really should pay more attention to when I write these things. I didn't even notice that one - the first thing I noticed after having clicked submit was that I had written 'buy' instead of 'by" in one sentence. But since there is no editing I have just learned to live with my horrible spelling and my fast submit-click-reflexes. Glad you enjoyed my new word!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:13PM
I quite often mix words together when typing, I just found this one kinda fun.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:14PM
so they have you buy the balls for whey change their minds.
"No whey, José!"
New word! "Whey" a conjunction of when and they.
Old word for what is left over when you buy the balls and separate the curds, but only get a link to a free ticket instead of the cheese you were expecting. Who torrented my cheese!
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:37PM
According to the article, it doesn't actually work at all, because nobody's seeding the torrents.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 17 2017, @04:00AM
Keeping my name and address off the lists that are sure to be shared with people conducting fishing expeditions is worth a helluva lot more to me than two theater tickets!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]