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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: 1) by anubi on Friday March 17 2017, @03:57AM
DRM sure broke me from buying licensed stuff.
I paid for the experience of being entertained, not the additional frustration of being compelled to someone else's business model.
In the case of movies, unskippable previews and ads ruin the mood of the moment, souring the whole presentation.
The theatrical experience to me is sorely lacking. For the price I pay for a typical movie run with friends, I expect a table and a catered meal with snacks. And privacy to enjoy most of the same things there as I would at home. Can I really "kick back" in a public place? The last experience I had at a theater is the guys on the row behind me "kicked back" and put their feet up between the seats, right close to my nose. They weren't directly adjacent to my seat, but I did not want to start an argument over it - more like a note to self regarding future attendance at theaters.
I also found the overpriced popcorn quite annoying. I make the stuff up in huge amounts at home. Same with soda-pop. I even have a CO2 tank for carbonating water and more flavors of syrups than one would find in any movie house.
In the case of software, it's gotten so I don't trust it. It may "upgrade" itself into another form I flat abhor - holding any work I did with it hostage to compel my acceptance of the new terms.
Best use my old stuff unless the new one has been vetted by trustworthy sources.
So, someone thought it was a great idea to make parts of DVD's unskippable, which leads to others to think its a great idea to just transcode the DVD content into another format where the user controls it. I have seen lots of DVD's at garage sales. Much rather have a .MP4 of the content. Very rarely will I even pay a buck for a DVD. If its just a trash DVD I never intend to see very often, ok... but I know its kinda "in the raw", and I will have to spend some time with a transcoder and editor if I intend to view the content more than once, or with friends. Best get one where someone has already prepared it for use.
Treating friends to raw DVD presentations is kinda like serving them unpitted olives, or sandwiches made with bony fish.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]