Psst! Eight Bits Gets You "The Two Towers" In China 584
rocodipoco writes "CNN reports on this article about DVDs of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" were available in Shanghai two weeks ago for about $1 a pop, according to one Western film industry executive who visited that city. The film opens in North America on December 18. Interviewed at the CineAsia movie convention, the executive said as many as 40 street vendors were openly offering DVDs outside a Shanghai mall; he declined their offers, and thus can't verify the quality of the counterfeit copies. I personally want to wait for the movie to hit the big screen...it's all about the suspense. What do others think?"
suspence (Score:2, Interesting)
picture and sound quality are usually very bad (Score:2, Interesting)
believe me i still go to the movies to c the real thing! cause these DVDs suck big time.
baxter yazbek
http://www.baxter2.com
beirut - lebanon
No proof (Score:5, Interesting)
Talking about making a fool of himself...
Just say No! :) (Score:5, Interesting)
What interests me is that I've always thought this was quite a "western" mentality, grounded in materialism and greed. Are the Chinese just the same? Or do they have other motivations?
Re:A Letter to Mr. Jackson (Score:5, Interesting)
"Please Note: The Two Towers is the title of the JRR Tolkien book originally published in 1954, the second book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The title was thus established some 47 years prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and there is no evidence to suggest that Peter Jackson meant anything by continuing the same title other than faithfulness to the beloved Tolkien classics. Furthermore, the two distant, opposing towers in the Tolkien classic have very little if anything in common with the two matching towers of the World Trade Center. -- PetitionOnline.com"
After Sitting Through 10 Minutes Of Ads Today (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing that sucks is bar cover charge...I guess they're special but I'd like to see stores like Wal-Mart try to charge cover for the opportunity to shop there.
The only bad kind of piracy. (Score:3, Interesting)
But just in case...
This is the only kind of piracy that I actively and vocally oppose. Most of what's labeled as piracy nowadays is simply acting in accordance with the laws of information physics at possible detriment to the financial standing of companies that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regards to content-centric business models. I'm not saying it's good or bad. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite: when someone copies digital media, legally or illegally, they're simply doing what the laws of physics of information permit. "Piracy" of digital media after it has been sold or rented to the public is as natural and unstoppable as falling after jumping off a cliff. (I.e. It can be stopped, but only through extreme measures like stationing a police officer in every home, or bungeeing [is that a word?] yourself to a crane you've rented for the specific occasion. And even though it can be stopped, that does not take away from the fact that physics still works. Information is still copied in a free society. You still experience the force of gravity when you're hanging from a crane.)
However, just because information physics doesn't permit the kind of control over information that big media companies would like (i.e. the ability to sell information as a physical good) doesn't mean that they have no control. On the contrary. The one and only way information can be controlled is by keeping it a secret. The one and only way information can be kept secret is by assuring that all entities that have access to that information:
1. Agree to keep the information secret.
and
2. Are able to keep the information secret.
While DRM schemes like Palladium or SDMI aim to prevent the unstoppable variety of piracy, they cannot do so because they violate #2. DRM system designers may want to keep information a secret even after it enters a consumer's home, but no device is capable of that. (Yes, you could encase every computer in 10 meters of titanium, but if you're going to allow such extreme protection of content in a hypothetical situation, you also must allow extreme resources on the part of the consumer as well.)
On the other hand, movie companies are very capable (or should be very capable) of keeping a movie secret until its release. If the film didn't leave the care of responsible individuals who care about the profits to be had when it is finally released, bootleg preview copies like the ones mentioned in this article wouldn't exist. You can't sell copies of information you can't get at all.
It's because of this that I oppose this kind of copying and will never purchase or watch any kind of pre-release copy such as this. This kind of piracy is damaging to both consumers and producers of content, but most importantly it is preventable.
I'm not saying that I pirate (or support the piracy of) MP3s or rentable movies online; in fact, I'm of the opinion that there is an overall negative impact on the self caused by participating in the unstoppable variety of piracy in a legal system which doesn't allow it. Easy availability of content through illegal means anesthetizes potential activists and prevents them from acting towards greater good. It stops people not from understanding there is a problem with the legal system, but really feeling it to the point where they're willing to act. Want to hear a conspiracy theory? Maybe the content industries are holding back on prosecuting file traders so that they can get more anti-consumer legislation passed before people really start to pay attention.
Ugh. It's way too late to be evangelizing on slashdot. I'm going to bed.
</soapbox>
Some insight into chinese culture (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a copy and paste of a response made to a comment I made a while back, it really opened my eyes as to *why* chinese are so into open source. I believe that Chinese frugalness (as explained by the below re-post) is to blame for the rampant piracy of The Two Towers.
Before I get to the repost i'd like to add in my own link and two cents from the SVCD Faq I read [uwasa.fi].
Cool huh? It's a part of their culture folks. How can Hollywood fight an entire culture of 4 billion people?
The only thing that strikes us Americans as odd is the communist goverment that is in power there. As geeks we are appalled that they would dare install a firewall to protect their people, which in our eyes is a violation of their free speech, but this is what their society just does. How do you convince this culture of 4 billion people that what they are doing is not being frugal but stealing
It would begin at a goverment level, and the police would have to crack down on the street vendors that bootleg it. Will it happen? I doubt it, from the above snippet of the SVCD faq I bet the goverment is celebrating yet another victory.
I am, for one. (Re: Are there any Chinese slash..) (Score:5, Informative)by DigitalHammer (581235) [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] <digitalhammer001&hotmail,com [mailto]> on Wednesday August 14, @02:49AM (#4068791 [slashdot.org]) Is there any Chinese Slashdotters...that can provide a cultural insight as to why china would be so open to open source?
First of all I would like to state that I am of pure Chinese descent.
To answer your question, I believe there are 3 factors that make China very open to open source: Confucianism, the WTO, and Microsoft licensing.
The centuries-old mentality of being extremly frugal with one's money or possesions. Though this idea is ancient, the Communist government began to encourage the use of this virtue in times of famine and hardship. This article from Time Magazine titled Overeating Dying in China further explains:
In the early 1980s when some nouveau rich squandered their money on restaurants delicacies and government officials took advantage of their jobs to attend luxurious feasts, a distorted concept was built up in most Chinese's minds: the wealthier one is, the more fatty foods are on your dinning table.
The grumbles about upstarts' arrogance and the government officials' corruption turned into general disapproval. People began to look favorably at the ancient Chinese maxim which praises abstinence in consumption....Considering the 30 million destitute Chinese struggling in remote mountainous areas and those laid-off work who are living a hard life, traditional virtues like fighting one's way up and building the country through hardship and thrift are still highly encouraged by the Chinese government.
This frugal ideal, reinvigorated in the minds of mainland Chinese, compounded with ancient Confucian values of filial piety encourage the development and acceptance of open source software over propeitery ones in China. The bit about filial piety applies to the corporate environment of Chinese businesses. Filial piety in Chinese families enforce the younger family members' respect of older ones. This encourages the younger members' to set priorities that value the importance of the older family member (typically the father, mother, and grandparents). Chinese children, raised under this mentality, carry these priorities over to their workplace where they place their upmost importance upon the boss and senior officials (formerly occupied by older family members).
In most, if not all jobs in China involving internal technology, the IT manager must find software that will create a stable infrastructure while saving as much money as possible. This is where the frugal mentality and the rigid set of priorities converge to brighten the appeal of open source software. Because China is attempting to gain full membership within the WTO, which requires its adherance to strict IP rules, the country began an enormous crackdown on the pirated software industry. Using pirated (MS) software no longer was an option, as it used to be 10 years ago. Another path would be to purchase MS software licenses. However, the thought of accepting the dinosauric financial demands of Microsoft licensing contracts clashed with the frugal mentality prolific with Chinese tech companies, and the set of priorities spawned by Confucian filial piety led them to consider the amount of funds that could be saved and allocated for other departments by not buying licenses. In turn, Chinese techs were left with another option: Open source software, more specifically Linuix. The legal and cost-free nature of the penguin OS became an appealing option to the Chinese techs, and in turn took the opportunity to develop and integrate it in to their corporate infrastructure.
Chinese cultural traditions of filial piety and frugality are further explained in this excerpt of the site Paul Herbig's Working Papers:
Chinese Network
The Chinese commonwealth is a group of small Chinese companies from all over the world affiliated with each other, protecting and taking care of each others businesses. They are also referred to as 'Greater China', or the 'Chinese Network'.
The survival mentality and the Confucian tradition of patriarchal authority, form the values of a typical Chinese entrepreneur - one who seeks to control his own small dynasty. These so call life raft values are:
l.Thrift ensures survival.
2.A high, even irrational, level of savings is desirable, regardless of immediate needs.
3.Hard work to the point of exhaustion is necessary to ward off the many hazards present in an unpredictable world.
4.The only people you can trust are family-- and a business enterprise is created as a familial life raft.
5.The judgment of an incompetent relative in the family business is more reliable than that of a competent stranger.
6.Obedience to patriarchal authority is essential to maintaining coherence and direction for the enterprise;
7.Investment must be based on kinship or clan affiliations
8.Tangible goods, like real estate
9.Keep your bags packed at all times,day or night (Kao,p.25).
Unlike the Japanese Keiretsu, the Chinese network is an open system for all Chinese entrepreneurs all over the world. They watch for each others businesses and help those who are in need. These Chinese entrepreneurs have a give - and - take relationship. The network is usually formed by joint ventures, weddings, political opportunities and common cultures. Ownership of the company are usually passed to relatives, regardless of their educational background or competency (the classic example is An Wang's passing of his company, Wang Computers, to his mediocre son instead of professional managers--which ended in failure). Generation after generation, no matter in what culture they were brought up, every Chinese seeks control and security of their businesses.
The first Chinese generation has a survival and Confucius mentality. Every business decision is made for the future of the family. Unlike the old generation, the younger generation are born in other countries outside of mainland China. They do not only carry the Chinese culture, but the one they were born in as well. This generation, especially if born in a western country, has a sense of individualism. Companies like Winbond,a high-tech company in Taiwan, which considers themselves to be a Chinese company , believes that you should respect your family and love ones but you have to set your mind on what is right for the company. D.Y. Yang,owner of Winbond, says, A Chinese company depends less on data and more on intuition,feelings,and people. But on the other hand, he also mentions, Of course you have to respect the family business structure, but since this is a high tech company,individual contributions are important (Kao,p31).
---snip
I have heard about the open markets in china where you can purchase bootlegs of any software for near the cost of the CD. If the choice is between M$ at
On a side note, frugality, combined with Communist ideals and Confucian values led to the explosive growth of the pirated software and media industry in China, as this essay written by Rutgers Univesity student Sheng Ding explains:
Confucius's concept of the transmission of culture and Marx's views on the social nature of language and invention arose from very different ideological foundations. Nonetheless, because each school of thought in its own way saw intellectual creation as fundamentally a product of the larger society from which it emerged, neither elaborated a strong rationale for treating it as establishing private ownership interests.[15] Deeply influenced by these two ideologies, China falls behind all developed countries and many developing countries in the field of intellectual property protection. It is also not difficult to understand why most of Chinese did not know what were IPRs in 1980s.
Well, I am confident that this reply answers your question. More information about Chinese philosophies and other ideals that are involved in China's flourishing open source movement can be found below:
Paul Herbig's Working Papers [google.com] [google.com]
A Paper on IP Rights in China, by Sheng Ding [rutgers.edu] [rutgers.edu]
The Chinese Way with Money, an article from the Shanghai Star [chinadaily.com.cn] [chinadaily.com.cn]
Re:A Letter to Mr. Jackson (Score:3, Interesting)
We was right (Score:4, Interesting)
I somehow got a bootleg copy of Matrix before it was released on the big screen, and watched that very ugly VCD rip. I was blown away by the plot since I didn't know anything about the film beforehand, however since that day I've always regretted not to have seen it in a proper theatre to begin with.
I've stopped getting bootlegs ever since for this reason.
Re:LotR... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's take a long movie and break it into three parts so we can extract more money from idiots who think they have to watch every film made from a book.
If they had made it into just one move I wouldn't have bothered seeing it as they would have to cut out way too much of the detail from the book. I never felt i had to watch it, and if the first movie had been crap I wouldn't have bothered with the others
Blech. I can't believe how totally ape-shit people go over this crap. I know someone who actaully re-bought the DVD of the original because they release a "special edition".
Look up the word "collector". Making a long version isn't that unusual, it allows directors to make an extra cut without worrying about the running length of the move. Of course beeing able to sell the same movie twice doesn't hurt.
There's better things to do than listen to me rant and rave, and there's better things to do than waste your hard earned cash on a dead author's movie.
Fortunately you don't get to choose for me. There are "better things" to use money on for everything, depending on who you ask. If someone choses to buy both the short and long version let them, and shut up as long as it isn't your money they are using. Do you see me complaining about how you choose to spend your money?
like other have said, BS!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
My caucasian friend went to China last year. While there he picked up a bunch of DVDs. He was excited to see that they already had both Two Towers and Return of the King on DVD, as well as Spiderman, which had been out not long in the theaters. He eagerly bought them all at grossly inflated (for pirate dvds) prices, and when he brought him home we popped them in the dvd player together. The Two Towers turned out to be a video of what appeared to be maybe a SCA reunion or something. It was a bunch of guys riding around in goofy costumes on horses. I couldn't stop laughing. He then popped in Spiderman, and as the movie started, the dramatic title of Earth Vs. The Spider came up on the screen. He didn't even bother taking his dvds with him as he left.
Haha, they sure had nice cases though. That's the key for the pirates: nice, believable cases.
I'm sure the exec knew that it wasn't actually the TT too, he just wanted to spread some FUD about the evil pirates.
Man, I could have gotten my story posted on
Oh come on (Score:4, Interesting)
Say, in some ex-USSR states you can buy an upcoming blockbuster months before the official world premier. Often they are outright stolen from clipping board and lack some scenes and visual effects. I recall Casper the Firendly Ghost without the actual ghosts rendered, and Waterworld without the shark hunt scene being offered on street markets.
Quite possibly it can be the case with The Two Towers as well.
What happened to me... (Score:2, Interesting)
Piracy won't hurt the film industry if they release good material. I wouldn't pay $1 to have a cheap and maybe crappy copy of the new movie. But maybe that's just me.
Decameron
Re:Lies (Score:3, Interesting)
So much trouble for a buck!
Re:Some insight into chinese culture (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean the famine and hardship created by the Communist government, right?
Filial piety in Chinese families enforce the younger family members' respect of older ones. This encourages the younger members' to set priorities that value the importance of the older family member (typically the father, mother, and grandparents). Chinese children, raised under this mentality, carry these priorities over to their workplace where they place their upmost importance upon the boss and senior officials (formerly occupied by older family members).
In the West we have learnt that older does not necessarily mean wiser, and have created an economic and political system that values knowledge and ability rather than seniority. By your argument the janitor should be running the company if he simply stayed there for 50 years!
These so call life raft values are:
These values were obsolete in the West in mediaeval times. Incompetent relative over competent stranger? We call that "inbreeding". If China wants to compete, it's got a lot of catching up to do.
Re:Just say No! :) (Score:5, Interesting)
For movie execs to say they lose money in Asia is just a line of pure bullshit. They don't even have a market here! There's no way the vast majority of the people here can afford to pay western prices. It's laughable.
And Shenzhen has a much higher standard of living than the rest of China and even most of Asia, save perhaps HK, Shanghai and one or two other places.
Their own internal problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think this story is a lie. It sounds to me the movie studios have just as much problem protecting their copyrighted material inside their own organization. Why else would we get these movies released from illegitimate sources before the movie even comes out?
...and they want a censorship and control system (aka DRM) placed on the general public? It sounds to me that won't solve their copyright infringement problems at all. More likely the "pirates" will steal the footage before any DRM control is placed on it. Moreover they will equally be able to steal or aquire all the software / equipment / DRM keys needed to make their content appear with valid watermarks. The only ones who won't be able to publish are the legitimate everyday person who has been making "intellectual property" since the beginning of history.
Maybe congress needs to pass a law to increase the "security" of movie studios. (and hopefully put them out of business in the process) ;-)
Re:After Sitting Through 10 Minutes Of Ads Today (Score:3, Interesting)
They recently changed how they were showing the ads though - instead of starting the ads at the listed showing time, they start them about 10 minutes before the movie... of course, you get the "privledge" of watching more ads, but it's better than the slideshow crap. Mostly.
Not that the movie started any closer to the actual listed time... they replaced the 5 minutes of ads with 5 more minutes of trailers (different ads). Sigh.
It's gotten ridiculous... you can tack on an extra half hour to any movie now just because of all the previews and junk.
The actual situation (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember I was over there when both AOTC and Spider-man came out and you could find videocammed copies of new releases and DVD quality copies (Oscar evaluation copies) of others. I had a sweet copy of LOTR on DVD in April. This piracy is allowed because the government doesn't want to actually refuse people the opportunity to watch the movies but they also don't want to allow them outright either. With this situation they can crack down on some store if they feel like it and say it is because of some 'piracy issues.'
I'm quite sure that there actually is a copy of the Two Towers out there though.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think they're really worried about damage to the industry. There'll always be huge demand for content. I think what they're really worried about is damage to their business model. They might have to *gasp* change it!
I was telling my gf a couple of days ago that I think Hollywood should release DVDs of movies the day they come out in theaters. That way, they can capitalize on a movie while it's at the peek of its hype. In the middle of the conversation, I realized why they'd never ever go for it: they can't charge people individually for watching a flick. Cute, eh?
The big threat to the Movie Industry is that when a movie launches, it'll have to simu-launch around the world on virtually the same day. For some reason, they're very afraid of this.
They think that the moment it hits the net, nobody'll pay for it, they'll instead opt for >24 hour downloads in order to save a couple of bucks. This says one of two things: 1.) They're unwilling to charge fairly for their offerings or 2.) They have no stinking clue how fair people really are. (I personally think it's a mix of both.) Funny thing is, there's all kinds of proof out there that people don't mind paying for content. Porn anybody?
To be honest, I'm amazed that the Movie Industry hasn't embraced the internet. It's a much deeper media for content. As for advertising capability, even today it still has the power to hold an audience. Imagine if Paramount hosted streaming versions of [INSERT FAVORITE TREK SERIES HERE (but if you're tasteful, you'll want DS9
I have to admit, I'm pretty disappointed with how everything's been handled. I'm genuinely surprised that a studio like Dreamworks hasn't picked up the ball and said "Huh... there's lots of cool technology here."
Re:Would they buy the real thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Legal DVD is about $2 in China, not the $17+ as in the US. The reasons I get pirated DVDs in China because of the following reasons:
difficult to verify (Score:2, Interesting)
Both DVDs were actually just copies of the last movie in the series (the Philosopher's Stone and Fellowship of the Rings) with fake cover cards. The quality of Harry Potter was fine, although it didn't have the DVD menus or bonus material. Just the movie. Fellowship of the Rings was a straight dupe of the 2-disk widescreen addition (not the newer platinum edition).
I paid 15 RMB ($2 USD) for Harry Potter and 20 RMB ($2.5 USD) for the Fellowship.
Since the "Industry Exec" didn't bother to check the contents. There's really know way of knowing what was on those disks.
Yeah, this would almost certainly be true (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, having lived there, I can assure you, it's real. I'm just surprised that there were only 40 vendors selling it.
(And besides, how did they expect us not to buy pirate copies there, since "Fellowship" took six months to come to a theatre near us?) Bought the pirate DVD, paid full theatre price to see it (twice), and bought the legit DVD. Don't see how it cut into their sales at all.....
-ex
Counterfeit (Score:2, Interesting)