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MPAA Finds First Actual DVD Copiers in U.S. 418

Posted by michael from the wascally-wabbits dept.
MattW writes: "Yahoo! is reporting that the first pirate DVD bust has occurred. Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?"
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MPAA Finds First Actual DVD Copiers in U.S. More

MPAA Finds First Actual DVD Copiers in U.S.

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  • 1 down, 39,000 more illegal DVD burning rings to go. Aw, well, it was worth the effort. Face it, trying to shut down these things is as pointless as trying to stop music piraters.
    • It is also slower. In one well known 3rd world country, I saw a DVD and VCDs of the Phantom Menace 2 weeks after it was on screen (before it even came to Europe).

      It took just one week after one of the reels got stolen in the US for the first copies to appear ;-)

      If they are starting to bust pirate DVDs now this means that the pirates have been printing for two years with no control. Unfortunately in order to tell somene that he/she is a laughing stock in the modern world you need to own the media. Hence, you cannot tell the ones that own the media that they are laughing stock.

  • There it goes. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by opermonkey ( 315499 )
    now the MPAA will have extra justification for any suits against DVD copying. Takes a greedy pirate to ruin it for the rest of us :-(

  • Question: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Emugamer ( 143719 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @12:58PM (#3216387) Homepage Journal
    Anyone out there know anything about movie-> DVD schedules? They mentioned in hte article that there were 3 movies yet to be released on dvd and that these were "wholly inferior products"... Its my guess that unless they were burning these dvd's onto cheese wedges(mmm edible DVDS) that thses were just high quality rips burned onto a dvdr... which would explain the inferior product. Again this article is lacking in details ...

    • Re:Question: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Magila ( 138485 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:09PM (#3216451) Homepage
      Actauly it is quite likely they were in fact DVD quality. Screeners (promotional copies sent to people like movie critics) are now often distributed on DVD, and these inevitably end up in pirates' hands.

      • Re:Question: (Score:2, Informative)

        by rde ( 17364 )
        I used to get quite a few of these on video, and they were always indivdually coded, so that they could be identified in the event of duplication. They also had a monstrously annoying tendency to put a big "this is a sampler" message all over the screen every fifteen minutes.

        Course, if you're getting to see the movie/tv series/whatever months ahead of everyone else, you tend not to complain too much.
        • Heck.. Now they all seem to have 'Call 1-888.... if you received this video illegally'. I've always wondered how many phone calls they get. Afterall, anyone legit enough to make the report probably doesn't realize they received an illegal copy to start with.
          • The only bootleg I have (FotR -- and I think that everyone has that) has a message stating that "Sale or Rental of this movie is ILLEGAL". Since we neither purchased nor rented the discs we received (they were gifted to us), I guess it's legal.

            • Re:Question: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Coward, Anonymous ( 55185 )
              a message stating that "Sale or Rental of this movie is ILLEGAL". Since we neither purchased nor rented the discs we received (they were gifted to us), I guess it's legal.

              I was in a shop and they had a sign stating that shoplifting was a crime, I guess murder is legal. Stating that something is illegal does not automatically make everything else legal.

    • Re:Question: (Score:2, Informative)

      by mrAgreeable ( 47829 )
      I've bought a few pirated VHS tapes while in NYC, mostly out of curiosity if they can actually get stuff that far before it gets released, and it was always some guy in a theater with a camcorder.

      "Wholly inferior" is a pretty fair statement.

  • Digital copies. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by buzzbomb ( 46085 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @12:59PM (#3216389)
    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.

    Could someone please explain to me how a digital copy could be "wholly inferior" to the original media?

    Not that I condone the actions of these people, but honestly...it's not like we're talking (S|X)VCDs...
    • Nah, that was a typo. It should've read "holy".

    • DVD to VCD maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DABANSHEE ( 154661 )
      I somehow doubt that straight DVD piracy is truelly viable because of the current cost of blank DVD media, especially once all the other costs are added up.

      Give it a year or 2 though & it definitly will be.

      • Re:DVD to VCD maybe? (Score:2, Informative)

        by mrscorpio ( 265337 )
        I posted this in a previous DVD thread:

        www.cdrecordable.com

        $2 blank DVD's.

        Once again, not affiliated with them at all. Just a business I have had good luck with.

        $2 for a blank DVD, vs. anywhere from $10 - $30 for a store-bought one. I'd say there's a market, sadly.

        Chris

      • economies of scale of pirating DVDs. (Score:5, Informative)

        by jonbrewer ( 11894 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @02:51PM (#3216789) Homepage
        (not that I recommend going in to this business...)

        In traditional Slashdot fashion, I will now pull some prices out of my ass (sorry, that would be the Internet) and will "do the math."

        The entry cost is not high. Less than $7k to profit.

        Here's a DVD dupe machine with a 100-disc hopper: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=3 26050 [cdw.com] for $4k. Buy one.

        Here's a spindle of 100 DVDs http://shop.store.yahoo.com/spectraimpex1/100pacdv 47gb.html [yahoo.com] for $250. Buy ten of them.

        Now load your dupe machine once a day for ten days.

        Pick up the DVDs when finished and sell them to your dealers for $700/spindle. (they will then be resold at $10-$15/each, a very healthy profit for a street vendor.)

        You have just paid for the DVD dupe machine and have made $500. You probably invested twenty hours in buying the hardware, setting it up, testing, and smoking pot with your dealers.

        From now on, for every 5 hours you invest in buying and burning another 100 copies, you'll make $450. Not bad, eh?

        The getting busted and going to jail part might suck, but you can get around this by doing the duping in a friendly environment. Of course friendly environments sometimes take a little away from the bottom line, but booze is cheaper in those places anyway.

        Cheers,

        JB
    • Because they were probably filmed by someone sitting in a theater with a camcorder.

      • Re:Digital copies. (Score:4, Informative)

        by HeUnique ( 187 ) <hetz-home AT cobol2java DOT com> on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:15PM (#3216483) Homepage
        No - you're talking about CD-R copies which someone could come with a cam and records the film straight from the screen - in those cases the movie will be spread either in VCD or DivX format...

        In this case it looks like it's a byte-by-byte copy, which means of-course a full digital copy including the CSS copy protection info.

    • A garage DVD burner possibly has lower reliability and/or life than a professionally manufactured DVD. Note also that he says "inferior product", not "inferior picture". It also probably has a cheaper case and badly copied inserts.

      • Re:Digital copies. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JohnyDog ( 129809 )
        It's the movie i'm paying for. Not the cover, not the case, not the DVD-R. It could be (legally) purchased and downloaded over internet without medium, without case and it would be the same movie, the same thing i'm paying for.

    • Re:Digital copies. (Score:2, Informative)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 )
      While I don't know the specifics of it, if they were burning these DVDs using computer equipment, it is likely that they were burning single layer DVDs, which would mean, given that almost every commercial DVD produced is dual-layer, that they must have pulled the original media, compressed it further to fit in 1/2 the space, and then burned that. If that is the case then it is an inferior copy. The other option is that they either used a two-sided disc, or put the movie on two discs, but either of those options is inferior from a convenience perspective (i.e. having to flip/swap the disc like old sk00l laser discs).

      I could be wrong though. Is there such a thing as a dual-layer burner?

      • Re:Digital copies. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Sancho ( 17056 )
        I could be wrong though. Is there such a thing as a dual-layer burner?

        To my knowledge, such a beast should not be possible.

        Commercial dual-layer discs are made by "burning" (actually pressing) two separate layers and then glueing them together with a special adhesive that will allow the light through. One layer clearly has to be semitransparent (no pun intended) so that the laser can read the second layer.

        In order to "burn" a dual-layer disc, you'd need to have a laser that would puncture the lower layer during the burning process, but leave the top layer intact. Then a second pass would be required to burn the top layer without damaging the lower layer. I can't believe that would be stable, if such a thing is even possible.
        The other option would be to burn two layers and then glue them together. Right. That's gonna work ;)

        Sancho

    • Re:Digital copies. (Score:2, Informative)

      by jrp2 ( 458093 )
      Could someone please explain to me how a digital copy could be "wholly inferior" to the original media?

      Two issues I can think of, these commonets particularly apply to the unreleased movies:

      - They were probably filmed with a camera in a theatre, possibly with a few heads of other viewers in the picture, plus some coughing and random cell-phones ringing, audience reactions, etc. So, it may be a "digital recording" but it is digital to analog to analog to digital.

      - Doing a good master of a DVD is an art-form in itself. I am pretty sure these pirate films do not have 5.1 sound, anamorphic video, or any of the other things that make a good mastering really look and sound awesome. That takes access to the digital source, some really nice gear, alot of time and some very skilled engineers. This is probably not as noticeable on a $100 player and 10 year old TV, but VERY noticeable on a nice player, 5.1 sound, and digital 16:9 TV. Heck, even some commercial releases get re-released with new mastering done as the original was weak and the movie is popular. (Note: and they feel they can get diehards to buy a second copy).

      This is one of the reasons they are so freaked out about DECSS, as it allows for a pure copy with all the original quality included (a bit for bit digital copy). Now don't mistake my comments as backing up the MPAA, they could greatly reduce the pirate market by dropping prices and eliminating region codes.....but this is why they freak out about it.

      So, yes, I would agree, the pirate copies are almost certainly WAY inferior to a commercial DVD release of a movie. Not even comparable even.

      There is a third reason: That is what the MPAA PR guys are supposed to say. ;)
    • ...again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product


      This is the same "person" who (can anybody find the link)) whined that protection is necessary because with DVDs the pirates can make perfect copies for the first time.


      Which one is it, Sony boy?

  • DeCSS *IS* used for lots of DVD pirating. Just not through garages full of burners. And the article says that lots of the DVDs weren't released on DVD yet anyway, which means they were just a bunch of guys using Cams or Screeners from the 'net and burning them onto DVD. Lets face it, DVDs are incredibly easy to rip, and movies are even easier to rip without ever even touching the DVD format, thanks to the internet. What the MPAA needs to do is... Well, I don't know. There aren't any simple answers!

    • Re:Why do we have to keep reminding you! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:10PM (#3216454) Homepage Journal
      "Well, I don't know. There aren't any simple answers!"

      I find it interesting they can claim losses to internet piracy when they don't even have an internet media. Because of that, they are saying that every single internet copy is a pirate copy and that they ose money to it.

      What they need to do, to stop piracy, is first lower prices. It's a little hard to pay $35 (in an extreme case, RoboCop Director's cut was about that much...) for a DVD when you know they cost pennies to make. $15 is far more reasonable, but they insist on gouging. No Duh are people going to pirate. The problem is, you just don't know what you are getting when you spend money on a DVD.

      Second, they need to provide an internet format. It is ridiculous that they look at how many people are trading movies on the web and then they say "we better stop them!". How come nobody in the industry saw this as a new market and leapt on it? That's a bit ignorant if you ask me, I'm not paying for their mistake. Seems like if 'billions of movies are flying around the web a year...' then somebody would be say 'we think we can make money from that new market.'

      The funny thing is, the people using DeCSS aren't typically making money from it. It makes you wonder if fair-use at least partially protects them. Oh well, they got their poorly written DMCA. Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to trap the MPAA or RIAA using the DMCA.

      • I would find it hard to download an entire DVD (what? several GB or so...) on even a cable connection. Consider the bandwidth required to serve up these movies too, even a 2.56 Tb/s line [slashdot.org] would end up being swamped should enough people try to use the service. Even if some sort of standard allowed better compression rates [ciol.com] than even DivX or MP3 could allow, the size of a DVD could still be more than half a GB. Besides the fact that when I watch a DVD, I want to see absolutely no evidence of any sort of compression... that's why I watch em (well at least nothing I am sohpistocated enough to notice). Even compressed DivX files don't look real great. I agree with you that $35 is highway robbery though - all of the DVDs should be kept under $20 (maybe, just maybe $25 - although I would prefer to not see that until a couple more years go by). New DVD releases would go for the usual $19.99 and not-so-new movies would go for $14.99.

        Implementing legit DVD distribution online would be difficult right now, hopefully new connection improvements in the future would allow such data transfer on an individual basis without loss of detail and value.
      • It's a little hard to pay $35 (in an extreme case, RoboCop Director's cut was about that much...) for a DVD when you know they cost pennies to make.

        Okay, CDs and DVDs are not cheap to produce. Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs. Think about all the extra things that go into a DVD. And the insane amount of money it costs to have a top-quality video and sound studio. Also, the packaging, printing and advertising costs. And the retail markup, which usually doubles the cost (it does with CDs, anyway). Then think about how the people who would watch Robocop is a niche, and the people who would buy the director's cut on DVD is a niche of that niche; and you'll have some idea of where the $35 comes from. I'm not saying they're not making a lot of profit, or they wouldn't make more if they halved their prices, but movie and music studios aren't price-gouging as much as everyone thinks (I do think they're price gouging, for the record, but not as much as everyone thinks.)

        • Wanna bet? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by NanoGator ( 522640 )
          "Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs."

          Um, no, I was including that. Check out this site: http://www.moviefxmag.com/ I bought one of their 'mags', it's really a DVD. They charge $10 per disc and it includes 60-90 mins (lost track of time) of behind the scenes footage of a few movies. I find it hard to believe these guys could be in business if it cost more than $1 per DVD to make.

          The simple fact of the matter is that the cost of making one DVD disperses across millions of copies being out there. It's a case of the DVD's costing pennies to make is a bigger issue than the cost of producing the content for the DVD.

          The MPAA would have little problem selling DVD's for $10 each. If that would prove inprofitable (yeah right), then they'd need to tighten their belts a bit. It is not that hard to make quality content. The reason that a DVD costs say $25 on average over the $17 VHS format (I'm pulling numbers out of my head, I bet I'm not that far off) is that the DVD has higher resolution than the VHS counterpart. Therefore, it's worth more money. They make no mention of the discs being far cheaper to make. Yet VHS stuff has gone down in price as of late.

          Trust me, the MPAA seriously inflated the price of their content.

          BTW, if you are interested in movie making at all, go to Barnes and Noble or Borders and get this mag, it's called MovieFX I think. Here is the URL, you can find out more there:

          http://www.moviefxmag.com/

          I was totally shocked when i got one of these guys, gonna subscribe to them.
    • Maybe DeCSS is being used for lots of pirating -- but so are ReplayTVs, VCRs hooked up to each other, photocopy machines, etc. The fact is, you don't ban photocopiers because they can infringe on a book copyright, and you shouldn't ban DeCSS because it can infringe on a DVD copyright, because it has a legitimate use. And again, DeCSS doesn't enable any real pirating you can't do anyhow. bit-by-bit rips of DVDS, still encoded, can be transferred and burned out, and digital copies can be ripped after decoding by reading the video output.

      What does the MPAA need to do? Obviously, they need to donate a lot of money to Senator Fritz Hollings, so he'll try to make american consumers pay for extra technology to police us. After all, it's worth assuming that every American is just a criminal waiting to commit so we can get more content online and encourage broadband adoption, right?

  • glad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ricOS/2 ( 23121 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:01PM (#3216405)
    I'm actually glad they caught this guy. I agree with the MPAA and RIAA that piracy is bad (although I don't agree with their digital piracy campaigns), and the more actual pirates that can be shut down, the better. If they actually start going after the pirates rather than the consumers, it would be a nice start.

  • Is it really a bust? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AlaskanUnderachiever ( 561294 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:02PM (#3216409) Homepage
    I mean I know it's technically a "bust" but come on. We're talking about two tower computers full of DVD-R burners from the story details. This sounds more like Uncle Joe's moonshine stand than the serious copy operations I saw overseas. I'd put this one on the same level as Johnny downloading music and burning all his friends a copy. Admittedly the amount of cash on hand leads one to beleive that it was a commercial venture, but the lack of "we've been investigating these fellas for quite a while" also makes me wonder if they didn't have a nice snortable sideline business as well and it was THAT business that got the whole shebang busted. When meth labs get busted locally there's usually a whole storm of other sideline illegal activities that also crop up... just my thoughts. .

  • A wholly inferior product? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tom Rothamel ( 16 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:02PM (#3216413) Homepage
    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.

    Hm... This is an interesting statement. I wonder if the people who they busted were actualy copying existing DVDs, or whether they were instead videotaping movies in theaters (or from other sources) and burning them onto DVDs. In the latter case, I don't think that CSS would be involved at all.

  • Funny? (Score:2, Funny)

    by aozilla ( 133143 )

    Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?

    No, not really.

  • It's almost strange to see the MPAA going after actual pirates instead of just complaining about hypothetical ones.

  • DCMA is old news; SSSCA isn't. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:03PM (#3216421)
    Politicians have forgotten about DCMA. They're thinking about SSSCA right now. Knowing that DVD copy labs exist isn't going to make them repeal the DCMA, it's just going to make them want to pass the SSSCA more.

  • Excellent point. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaedalusLogic ( 449896 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:03PM (#3216422)
    Excellent point that copying the disc encrypted isn't a problem. Its like a cabinet we all have a key to. Any DVD player can just unlock it. Which raises the question is it possible to ever secure mass media from reproduction? Any schemes or ideas I've heard of ruin the ability to play the media in computers. Like the audio CD's that started popping up last summer. Look at the standards battle that unleashed with phillips saying they couldn't use the compact disc logo on those...
    • You make it impossible to play on a computer, all you have to do is have a "legitimate" player convert the signal to analog for viewing, and put the analog output in to a computer input, and voila, any protection scheme has just been cracked. They just think we're too stupid to realize this...

      BlackGriffen

      • Watermark detected. Recording denied. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:56PM (#3216620) Homepage Journal

        You make it impossible to play on a computer, all you have to do is have a "legitimate" player convert the signal to analog for viewing, and put the analog output in to a computer input, and voila, any protection scheme has just been cracked.

        Fast forward three years into the future. CBDTPA-compliant hardware says: "Watermark detected. Recording denied." And your pre-CBDTPA hardware has worn out after years of use. Now what do you do?

        • Fast forward three years into the future. CBDTPA-compliant hardware says: "Watermark detected. Recording denied." And your pre-CBDTPA hardware has worn out after years of use. Now what do you do?

          Take a trip to Canada, and pick up some Cuban cigars while I'm at it.

    • Any DVD player can just unlock it.

      The devil they say is in the details. DeCSS is a very weak encryption scheme, but even as such it wasn't cracked until a Finnish teenager found that a DVD player that had unprotected keys stored in it's firmware. If those keys had been protected according to CSS standards, DeCSS would probably not exist today.

      It is quite plausible that an encryptioon scheme could be embedded in something like a DVD player that would be much stronger than DeCSS; a scheme that would effectively be unbreakable for the life of the format, say 20 years. Thinks like DVD Audio and SACD have much stronger encryption than DVD does. Whether or not the execution of these schemes will turn out to be good enough to resist cracking is a much more debatable point. This is where attacks are most likely to succeed.

      There is, of course, another issue - making a direct bit-for-bit copy of encrypted media. This is a problem of controlling the duplication hardware which will be very difficult to do world-wide.

      The CD player is a different issue altogether - the hardware does not support encyrption, and the schemes being tried now to protect ordinary music CD's are weak hacks being done on an ad-hoc basis.

  • Digital Video Discs? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theCoder ( 23772 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:05PM (#3216435) Homepage Journal
    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
    [emphasis mine]

    Funny... I thought the whole reason the MPAA was scared of digital data was because it could be copied perfectly and not create a wholly inferior product. Or maybe it's inferior because Jack doesn't make lots of money off of it.

    (not that I support this sort of copying -- this guy was obviously a parasite, trying to live off the work of others)

    • Re:Digital Video Discs? (Score:5, Funny)

      by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:14PM (#3216479) Homepage Journal
      No, the difference is that the pirates use the latest in technology to dupe consumers into buying a wholly inferior product, whereas Hollywood just uses fame and fortune... to dupe consumers into buying a wholly inferior product.

      :)

    • Re:Digital Video Discs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:25PM (#3216523) Homepage
      It's wholly inferior because the bootleg "masters" were videotaped with a camcorder in the movie theater.

      If the master was not videotaped in the theater, the the MPAA member companies must have an internal piracy problem. Their own employees are bootlegging stuff off the production line before it is released. If the bootlegs were not made from videotaped masters, then internal piracy is the only explanation for how this busted operation could have been copying movies to DVD that haven't yet been released to video.

      In other words, we can add to their "sins" the fact that consumers are being punished for piracy committed by MPAA members themselves.
      • It's wholly inferior because the bootleg "masters" were videotaped with a camcorder in the movie theater
        Not true, I have seen an illegal DVD of Lord of the Rings with my own eyes, and this was not a camcorder job. Some text scrolled across the bottom of the screen every once in a while warning us not to buy or rent this "screener version". I guess this was what got sent out to the academy members for the oscars?
      • A good "wholly inferior product" is going to be made by digitizing from a copy of the actual film reel. -- I mean why not.... during the 8-12 hours that a movie theatre is closed, hook up a nice film digitizer and let the bastard run to your heart's content until it's time for the morning showing... At the very least, display it on the full screen and use a nice, high-quality DV camera to digitize each frame (synched, appropriately, to the projector). with the sound input jacked direct into the theatre sound system. (and nobody else in the theatre while you're doing it). For the purposes of image quality, this should be indistinguisable from a 'studio' DVD (minus the commentary track, etc.).

        In any case.. once the studio comes out with a good 'added features' DVD, there's nothing to stop the pirates from bit-coppying the DVD.

        I'm pretty sure that the existance of commercial DVD pirates sans-DECSS should be usable in those cases, though... Shows how CSS does bugger-all to prevent commercial pirating, while DECSS is mostly intended to simply allow people to legally view their DVD on an otherwise non(or ill-) supported OS.

        • Re:Digital Video Discs? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jedrek ( 79264 )
          For the purposes of image quality, this should be indistinguisable from a 'studio' DVD (minus the commentary track, etc.).

          Which is, of course, complete and utter bullshit.

          You can not just sync frames - if only because NTSC's 30fps and PAL's 25fps are not film's 24fps. Transfering film to either of these formats is an art upon itself.

          A high quality DV is nowhere near the quality of a half-descent telesync setup. DV CCD's (at least what they have right now) is not up to snuff, especially insofar as color reproduction goes. If it wasn't, and the quality was so high, why bother shooting on film at all?

          The image quality may be indistinguishable in a 1/4sized window on a cheap monitor, but you're not fooling anyone.

          Besides, transfering film to a digital format, either by telesync or film scanner, is a costly process - both time and equipment wise. Not to mention the post-transfer work done on DVD material. It's much, much easier to steal a preview DVD or rip a laserdisc than to create a DVD-quality DVD yourself.

      • Anonymous For Obvios Reasons (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        well i logged out for this one because well... anyway i DO have a bootleg copy of one of the movies listed at the bottom of the article and i will say that it ISN'T a camcorder copy. they DO have an internal problem. I understand that this IS indeed illegal but i wanted to say that there are far larger operations using NON "wholly inferior products".

        So if they want to samp out the REAL problem they need to work it out themselves. There will be no police to the rescue here.

        This just proves that they arent interested in stamping out copies they are interest in getting some excuse for the SSSCA or whatever it is now.

        -Coward, Anonymous

    • Re:Digital Video Discs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Sunday March 24, 2002 @02:56PM (#3216801) Homepage
      Of course Valenti wants people to think that these DVD pirates are "duping" consumers, but I doubt it in most cases. When you buy a LOTR DVD for $10 from some guy on the street in New York, almost anyone would assume it's not legit. But people still knowingly buy illegal DVDs because they the legal ones aren't released yet.

    • Re:Digital Video Discs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @05:24PM (#3217334)
      Ironically enough, this is the answer to their "problem" even though they'll likely never see it.

      "Pirated" "bootleg" "warezed" copies (whatever the term of the day is) will always be an inferior product even though they may be a perfect copy.

      There's a fundamental difference between product and copy. Businesses have an incentive to produce good products which customers are willing to pay for. w4r3z d00dz have no incentive other than if they happen to feel like it to make copies available.

      Like it or not, profit motivates people to work hard. Hard work is what is being paid for, not the bits themselves. Fortunately, it isn't possible to yet copy hard work. If it were, then I doubt so many businesses would fail.

      Agriculture is another fine example (from the last time this was discussed). With one bag of oranges, it is possible to grow enough oranges to last an average family for decades, at a cost of near zero (water, 10 square yards of dirt, plant food?). Yet, we pay $4 for a carton of orange juice once a week. Why? Because that carton of orange juice is a better product, even though one can have unlimited w4r3z3d oranges. The convenience of not having to tend an orchard is more valuable than $16/month.

  • In related news slashdot tries to break the world record for the number of acronyms in one headline.

  • Perfect Banner ad (Score:3, Funny)

    by bluntmanspam ( 186509 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:07PM (#3216447)

    When I went to this article, I got a flashing red banner ad with the words "COPY DVD'S!!!!" in big white letters.

    Now that's what I call targeted advertising. Did anybody else get this, or was it a fluke?

  • Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?

    It doesn't state any such thing in the story. Where are you getting your details?

    • Very simply, They had DVD-RW (or some other competing format) type of burners. All of these sorts of devices just make a copy of the cd. So there is no reason to decode the movie, you just copy it with all of its protections enabled. Why would you spend the hours needed to decode it and copy it to an unencrypted mpeg-1 file when you can just leave it there for cheaper and do it faster?

    • Re:Wild Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Colol ( 35104 )

      As has been brought up over and over from the beginning of DeCSS time, CSS does not prevent bit-by-bit copying. CSS prevents playback on unlicensed (in theory) players. The point there, of course, is to drag in more profits by charging consumer electronics manufacturers to license the CSS decryption.

      It's like a password-protected PKZIP file -- I don't need to know what's in it to be able to copy it, I just copy it to another disk.

  • .. that if they are busting guys with only 15 DVD burners, then they really aren't reclaiming much money. They must be making ridiculous amounts of money on DVD's to want to shut down somebody so small. Maybe they need to lower their prices some?

    As for the 'wholly inferior' comment, is it possible that the DVD's he was talking about had no special features? Granted, I know he's trying to make it sound like pirated DVD's are ripping people off (they arent if they're getting movies out faster...) but it's difficult to imagine that they were able to also get the extra footage that often accompanies DVD's.

  • Once again, attributions are wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:18PM (#3216492) Homepage
    The proper attribution is clearly written at the top of the article as seen on Yahoo. The story originated from John Borland at CNET News.com. That is who should be given credit for the story, not Yahoo. And you might have actually linked to the original article so that the originating site - a source of many /. discussions - could have realized a little revenue from the referrals. Nothing wrong with Yahoo, it's a very convenient place to find stuff from all over, but very little of the written content there is original to them.

    Here is the article [com.com] at the original publisher's site. Ironically, as I am looking at it right now, the accompanying advertisement is about a CD Burner sale at Gateway.

    And of course, the article fails to mention that the LOTR and Ali bootlegs were videotaped in the theater, and that is why they were available before the movies were released on video or DVD. It always amazes me that the MPAA chicken-littles allow us to assume that most of the piracy problem is due to their own insiders bootlegging stuff before it is released. You'd think they'd want to make sure we all knew that this stuff was bootlegged with a camcorder in the movie theatre, not ripped off the production line by one of their own.
    • I agree that it's best to cite the original source, but when CNET licensed their content to yahoo, they could only assume that people would see it there.

      It's not as if people are copying the whole article and posting it in the comments here....

      Oh wait. :)
    • And of course, the article fails to mention that the LOTR and Ali bootlegs were videotaped in the theater, and that is why they were available before the movies were released on video or DVD.

      I've seen a LOTR bootleg DVD (probably not the produced by the guys busted in this article), and it wasn't from a camcorder in a theatre. See this post [slashdot.org] for the details.

  • Anyone notice - (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:23PM (#3216511)
    The popup Ad that launches from Yahoo! when you read this article?

    http://www.spicycomet.com/offers/dvd/yahoo.html

    Look at this - a product that allows you to make "backups" of your DVD's and VHS tapes in DVD format...

    HMMM....'
  • Sounds suspicious to me...

    This very small fish just happens to get busted when the --AAs are trying to brand us all as thieves.

    How much was his gear worth? Maybe a tax-deductible hour or tow of Valenti's pay?

    I smell a rat.

  • "wholly inferior product" (Score:3, Funny)

    by fire-eyes ( 522894 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:33PM (#3216555) Homepage
    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.

    Well, when you copy a wholly inferior product, you get the same thing out, right?

    Jagoffs.

  • No, some actualy are inferior (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unformed ( 225214 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:38PM (#3216569)
    Look at the titles: "The Lord of the Rings," "Training Day" and "Ali."

    Most likely, these are screeners, or some sort of other illegitimate copies from either a promo video or the distributed film. The quality is --not-- the same as a truly produced DVD, (though it is pretty damn good.)

    Overall, I have no qualms about them arresting these people. This isn't just casual piracy. This is fairly serious bootlegging which, as much as I hate to say it, does impose an adverse effect on the studios' bottom line.

    Imagine, would you rather pay $10 for a pirated DVD or go pay $7/person to go see it in the theatre. For those people that have surround sound systems and large tvs, there's not really much argument.

    • Re:No, some actualy are inferior (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @03:18PM (#3216898) Homepage
      • would you rather pay $10 for a pirated DVD or go pay $7/person to go see it in the theatre. For those people that have surround sound systems and large tvs, there's not really much argument.

      Hey, maybe some of us like spending two hours having our seat kicked, eating $10 popcorn, listening to cellphones going off, and enjoying the rich gossip and giggles of eleven year old girls in an R rated movie. And I'll tell you what, I'd like to shake the hand of the guy that thought up the idea of monthly/annual tickets. No, not the hand, what's the word? ... throat.

      Every wonder at what point the question became "What's the better experience?" to "What's the least shitty experience?"

      Before anyone starts on the "why do you put up with it?", I'll mention that I've seen exactly three movies in theatres in the past three years, one of which was made in Hollywood. The other two were subtitled, which meant I saw them in nearly empty theatres, except for the guy who exclaimed "Is it all in Japanese?" two minutes into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

      I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is really very little reason to cut Hollywood any slack at all any more. Cutting the bullshit out, their argument is this: if we can't control every aspect of your life, we won't keep making content.

      Two points. First, that's not true. Greed and coke habits will take care of that. Second, would it really be such a great loss? I don't agree with commercial piracy, but I'm rather at a loss to understand why there's such a market for it.

  • This is kinda funny.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Linuxthess ( 529239 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @01:38PM (#3216572) Journal
    Just last week I commented to my dad about how there must have been a major bust of pirated DVDs in the Bronx.
    Being that I'm a traveling salesman, and everyday I'm traveling from one side of the Bronx to the other, I noticed that the DVD hawkers don't "carry" them in stock any more. From Fordham Road, East Tremont Ave, Jerome Ave, Kingsbridge Ave, Southern Blvd, Westchester Ave and a few other hotspots they just blinked out of site. One day I went to meet a couple of distributors in the commercial neighborhood-less area called Hunts Point, and there they were, the piraters themselves, with cajas y cajas del los DVDs.
    Of course I stocked up, but that was 3 weeks ago. I havent seen them since.
  • Quote, J. Valenti MPAA Chief Executive:

    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product,"

    How is it wholly inferior? Are they skipping every 64th bit? Are they failing to copy the FBI warning at the beginning of it? Maybe they're disabling the commercials that you can't fast forward past.

    See, I've ALWAYS been against people making copies, and selling them. But damned if this asshole doesn't make it impossible for me to have any sympathy.
  • "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.

    Valenti then considered for a moment. "That's our job."

  • ...because if CBDTPA passes I will seek out DVD bootleggers to obtain my movies. I'm even willing to pay more on a bootleg than on a "legit" disc just on principle.

    Of course, I'm sure that the regulations imposed by the CBDTPA will insure that no more illegal DVD copying ever happens.

  • Let's see... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @02:16PM (#3216684)
    "Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested" Yea...I'd say he's capable of producing at least 1 billion out of the 3 they claim to lose each year. The movie industry sure needs Congress and a Gestapo to protect themselves from this guy, don't they? Ironically, the 2001 Oscars are on tonight...and it's been the most profitable year in movie history...

  • Lucky bastard (Score:3, Funny)

    by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @02:16PM (#3216686) Homepage
    The New York raid caught a relatively small fish in its net. Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested.

    Boy... some people just have it all, don't they.

  • Making assumptions (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cruciform ( 42896 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @02:33PM (#3216738) Homepage
    The blurb linking to the article makes a reference to DeCSS and how it didn't have to be cracked to copy the movies... says who?
    There's nothing in the article about HOW the movies were ripped. If you visit a site like vcdHelp [vcdhelp.com] you can get all the information and software you need to blow past DeCSS and make VCDs, SVCDS, and DVDs at all kinds of quality levels. As long as you have the media to burn to, you can rip and convert those movies easily (but you're still breaking through DeCSS).

    In fact by reading the article and seeing reference to movies that are stil in theatres or haven't been released, if we knew the source then it would be easier to divine the method of duplication.

    If it leaks from the studio pre-copy-protection, I guess copying would be a cinch. If they taped it at a theatre, then you go back to vcdhelp, and with Vdub, TMPGEnc, and other tools you could custom create the dvd easily. Same with if it was post-copy-protection.
    So unless they got it before protection was implemented, I think it would be safe to assume DeCSS bypass tools were used. But then again, assumption got us this story :) hehe.
  • Some of the most common piracy involves asia, where VCDs are popular. You can't dup a DVD onto a VCD. You have to decrypt the video stream first. Which DeCSS does very well.

    Is that a reason to ban DeCSS? Of course not. As we all keep saying, just 'cos you can kill someone with a baseball bat doesn't mean it should be banned.

  • Newspeak (Score:2, Funny)

    by winnetou ( 19042 )
    Merriam-Webster [m-w.com] gives the following meaning for pirate [m-w.com]:
    Entry Word:
    pirate
    Function: noun
    Text: a robber on the high seas <little boys dreaming of sailing as pirates>
    Synonyms buccaneer, corsair, freebooter, picaroon, rover, sea dog, sea robber, sea rover, sea wolf
    Related Word viking; privateer; looter, marauder, pillager, plunderer, raider

    A rather strong word to describe people who copy copyrighted works.

    • Re:Newspeak (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dr. Spork ( 142693 )
      If you are not a native speaker of English please ignore this comment. But if you are, I strongly urge you to stop quoting an English dictionary and think that by doing so, you are making an argument of some sort. Obviously, Websters hasn't yet caught up with modern usage of the word "pirate." Big deal. So you have an outdated/inaccurate dictionary.

      Please, young people, stop trying to treat dictionaries as manuals that legislate the rules of a language, when what they in fact do is describe (and sometimes misdescribe) common usage.

  • copy of the movies, but I bet they never paid the DVD licensing fees either. Oh dear, what about the children...

  • wholly inferior (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cedric C. Girouard ( 21203 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> ... +drauorigcirdec>> on Sunday March 24, 2002 @03:22PM (#3216922)

    "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.


    Wholly inferior in what way ? No spam insert ? No nice picture on the cover ?

    Someone please correct me, but isnt the whole point of copying a DVD not to lose quality in the process ? What ? Are counterfeit burners going to drop a few 1 ans 0's in the process ?

    I think the only thing inferior here is the money going into Valenti's pocket.

  • I'm Glad! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @04:37PM (#3217188)
    I am glad that they caught these guys. Pirating is stealing whether it's videos on DVDs or videos sent over the internet or music traded on-line.

    All of the excuses I've heard for doing so is bullshit. Is the entertainment industry gouging the consumer with high DVD prices? Yep. Does that justify stealing their intelecual property? Nope.

    Everytime we violate a copyright by illegal traiding we make the MPAA and RIAA arguments for built-in hardware copy protection more justifiable. It's going to be a hard enough fight without giving the corporations additonal ammunition.

  • They probably did use DeCSS, unfortunately. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MOSSey0T0 ( 412568 ) on Sunday March 24, 2002 @07:05PM (#3217793)
    The problem is that the pirates in question (and most of them) had a DVD burner or array of them, whereas overseas pirates have actual DVD manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, they must have used DeCSS or a modern equivalent.

    1:1 copying of course is what allows us to copy CD-ROMs whether they are encrypted or not because they simply copy all the data blindly. Right now it is impossible to copy a modern DVD using a 1:1 copy because most of them use a DVD-9, which has two layers and a maximum capacity of 8.5 Gb. If you do any DVD ripping at all you know that a typical 2 hour movie uses 6 Gb.

    How do you 1:1 copy a 6Gb movie on 4.7Gb CDR? You don't.

    So, you use one of Smartripper or one of the new DVD rippers (all of which are evolutions of DeCSS and break the DVD encryption) and copy the VOB's to your hard drive. You then transcode the DVD using Cinemacraft Encoder or a like industrial MPEG-2 encoding software to a smaller size. The picture quality hardly suffers at all because you use smart bitrate encoding.

    Voila, a 6gb movie on a 4.7gb DVD-R. But impossible if you didnt transcode the DVD in order to recompress the video. And how do you rip the encrypted video in order to transcode it? DeCSS.

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but THIS IS ILLEGAL. Not to say we shouldn't be doing it: we are being ripped off by the MPAA and RIAA. And those of us who do own the media should be entitled to replacement media. On the other hand, those companies do have a right to make a profit and the artists deserve to earn royalties for their work.

    The logic on both sides of the issue is equally irrational. My real point is the DeCSS is an integral part of a DVD burner based pirating system. Unless you possess actual DVD pressing/manufacturing capability, you have to break the DVD encryption to either recompress or split the video in order to fit the smaller capacity of a DVD-R.

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