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Pirates and Runaways spoof


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Oh, I like this....

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Anti-Piracy Campaign Gets a Laugh By Jason Silverman

 

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62197,00.html

02:00 AM Feb. 09, 2004 PT

 

Hollywood studios have a love-hate relationship with pirates.

 

Execs at Disney surely adore Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which raked in $300 million at the U.S. box office last year.

 

But what about those meddling kids grabbing bootlegged movies online? They are pirates too, as http://www.respectbootleggers.org, a new parody website, points out.

 

The site, created by Dan Mirvish and Mark Bell, is a kind of fun-house mirror of http://www.respectcopyrights.org, the anti-piracy site created by the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA.

 

Where the MPAA site advises parents to explain to kids that piracy is wrong, Respect Bootleggers suggests that parents ask tech-savvy teens how to download films. The MPAA site includes testimonials, in a series called Who Makes Movies?,, from blue-collar Hollywood workers, including a set painter and stuntman. The parody site features a bootlegger , in a film calledWho Steals Movies? worrying about how he'll make a buck once piracy enforcement kicks into gear.

 

Respect Bootleggers is more spoof than satire. Though there's plenty of funny stuff, the rabid anti-anti-piracy contingent likely will be disappointed by the scattershot political content.

 

Mirvish and Bell do poke fun at the holier-than-thou tone of the MPAA campaign, which encourages potential pirates to consider the economic impact bootlegging has on Hollywood's regular Joes, like the set painter and stuntman.

 

"Do you really want them to lose their jobs?" the MPAA site asks -- a message that's about as subtle as a Hollywood thriller.

 

Respect Bootleggers also scolds the Hollywood studios for the practice of "runaway production" -- the filming of studio productions in places like Canada and, in the case of Cold Mountain, Romania. Some claim that these un-American productions hurt Hollywood workers far more than piracy does.

 

Mirvish believes the MPAA ads are hypocritical -- the studios, he said, don't exactly have a great record of supporting the little guy.

 

"It?s disingenuous for the MPAA to use these (blue-collar) guys to sell their point when they will fight them tooth and nail over every union contract and ship their work overseas in a heartbeat," he said.

 

The MPAA's Matthew Grossman said he hadn't seen the Respect Bootleggers website and couldn't comment on its content. However, he suggested its existence was a sign of the wide reach of MPAA's Respect Copyrights campaign.

 

"Parody is the sincerest form of flattery, isn't it?" said Grossman, the MPAA's director of digital strategy and corporate communications.

 

The Respect Copyrights campaign has been highly visible, especially the public service announcements featuring the set painter and stuntman. They've been seen in 34,000 theaters and on 35 network and cable stations across the United States and Canada, with an estimated audience of more than 50 million people.

 

Mirvish, a filmmaker and founder of alternative film festival Slamdance, said he is not a film pirate. He isn't eager to have his films copied illegally (though as an independent director, piracy is a problem he'd like to have, he added). And he acknowledged the need for the studios to cope with bootleggers.

 

But he and Bell said Hollywood's problems with piracy are the fault of the industry itself, not the public. As they see it, filmgoers aren't getting their money's worth.

 

"People are forced to pay 12 bucks to see a movie," Bell said. "If you weren't paying $15 million to an actor and didn't make these hugely expensive movies with enormous overhead, you could drop the costs. If the tickets were $7, viewers would feel less likely to feel shafted when they see a $30 million crap movie."

 

Grossman, however, described the piracy problem as a real threat to the Hollywood studios.

 

He estimated that piracy cost the studios $3.5 billion in 2003, and he predicted that price tag will skyrocket as broadband and cheap storage and recording devices become readily available.

 

"Already, the day a movie comes out in the U.S. it is available on the Internet," Grossman said. "Within a week it is available as a hard good on the streets in Asia, New York and L.A. Some films are available illegally in Asia for six months before they open in theaters."

 

The Respect Copyrights campaign, which includes outreach into middle schools, is just one part of the MPAA's anti-piracy battle.

 

Grossman said the MPAA also has 600 employees and contractors working with law enforcement agencies to bust bootleggers, and confiscated 40 million discs and tapes last year

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this one was edited because the grimmett fells that u must shut up.....thanks a lot

 

anda la reconcha de tu madre reberendo hijo de una gran puta fracasado de mierda....si no entendes mi ingles es porque sos una mierda microsefala que piensa que el mundo termina en tejas chupa pija

y vos cornudo de mierda david allen grove si no trabajas esporque debes ser una mierda haciendo lo que haces sorete....nunca te pusiste a pensar eso

 

 

from now on my posts will be in spanish....thanks ...

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david i think must have a lot of time off .....

relax man its not gonna change the way u live ...

from the begining of time u can found crooks and thiefts

and sorry but big companies they dont have a contry to aswer cause the can buy any country .....

Do you have to answer every post?! I could understand if you had something worthwhile to say, but you just ramble about stuff I don't understand because you don't speak English, and it's getting a bit frustrating. I would be happy to fight through the spelling and grammar issues if when I finally deciphered what you were saying it had some meaning. But you just respond to see your words in writing. It's annoying. You don't have to post in every thread. You're even posting more than Phil and he's the one that will never shut up. Give us a break.

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david i think must have a lot of time off .....

relax man its not gonna change the way u live ...

from the begining of time u can found crooks and thiefts

and sorry but big companies they dont have a contry to aswer cause the can buy any country .....

Why would you think I had a lot of time off just because I post articles about runaway productions? I get these articles on Runaway productions automatically through google.

 

The amount of time it takes me to recieve the email, read and paste these articles is only matter of a couple of minutes.

 

As far as "it's not going to change the way I live" I beg to differ. The more informed we all are on this issue the better.

 

Sorry if talk about runawaya production offends you..

If you would prefer not to read these posts... do what I do... and skip them.

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