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Bootleg Movies for Download 279

Posted by CmdrTaco from the here-comes-the-man dept.
Druppy writes "I just got an email about this article in our local paper here in Santa Cruz. It's basically about illegal copies of movies like The Matrix being moved over campus lines. Needless to say since my school was mentioned 4-5 times in the article the administration is starting to crack down. " So are people sneaking cam corders in to movie theaters now? I get nervous just trying to sneak in a candy bar.
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Bootleg Movies for Download

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  • fyi (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These movies are being distributed in vcd format (which when you get down to it is just mpeg compressed video slapped onto a cd). Vcds are huge in Hong Kong and China (more people have vcd players than vcrs by a huge margin). The format has been around a while and delivers relitivly good picture (sometimes a little pixelated) on two cds for your average movie. Movies like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan take three.

    Movies are most often traded over a combination of IRC and ftp sites (much like the warez freaks do, or used to at least). Releasing brand new movies or good quality movies gets you access to even more stuff.

    As for quality it varies. The lowest quality is telesynced movies. These are made with a guy, a camcorder, and a tripod. Picture is usually bad, but sometimes the camcorder's sound input is pluged directly into the movie's output so the sound quality is pretty good. The next lowest quality are work prints. These are working copies of movies that have yet to be released. Sometimes they have scenes that aren't included in the released film, sometimes vice versa. The best and most highly valued movie type are the screeners. These are just direct rips off a vhs tape (or more recently dvd). The orginal copy was distributed by the film company that is releasing the movie to film critics, academy members, etc. These are very high quality--only slightly worse than a vhs tape.

    To answer those people who say the size is too big, your right. Even with 10+GB drives all over the place, at a gig a pop movies tend to gobble up space quick. Thats why most people just burn the movie onto cd (or cdrw if it is a crappy telesyc that they won't watch again). All the movies are distributed either as two cd-sized mpeg files or as two iso images.

    Personally I don't think the movie industry has anything to worry about. Most of the time people can't justify spending money to go see a particular movie because it sucks/appears to suck (eg Urban Ledgens, lost in space, orgasmo) or because the movie didn't play anywhere near them (eg Life is beautiful). Many times me or my friends have seen a movie on burned vcd and then had to go to the theater to see it on the big screen. Not only that, but pretty much everyone I know that is into vcds refused to watch a bad telesync of matrix until they had seen it in the theaters. Even if it was a screener I doubt anyone would watch even that before seeing it on the big screen.

    It's more of a brag factor among geeks than anything elese ("Hey I just got the newest released movie on my computer. Beat that!"). All in all I don't think that the movie industry has anything to really wory about.


    Anonymous because copying movies is bad, bad, bad.

  • Legitimate fear? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The RIAA has every right to hop in on this argument. They know it well. Every issue that can be applied to MP3's are, for the most part, just as applicable to digital movie formats. The main difference is probably the difference in file sizes.

    Having said that, I think the whole discussion of piracy has missed a very subtle point. What about the legitimate use of these formats? Consider the last quote in that article:

    The RIAA's anti-piracy chief, Frank Creighton, said movie studios should be very concerned.

    "This could easily explode," he said. "Anyone with a computer now is a movie distributor. With a click of a mouse button these things are flying around the Internet."

    What does it take to produce music? How about movies? Are we about to see another established media industry begin to wonder about their future?
  • Here in Taiwan, there's no such thing as intellectual property and it is 100% legal to copy. Many legal, licensed industries have sprouted up to sell more affordable movies and CDs such as Son May Records. And to sell in VCD format, because VHS player is hard to find here, but VCD is much more common. So why don't you stop trying to declare your morals as universally right and impose them on us. There is no such thing as intellectual property. Just repeat until you understand.

  • It's not 'theft' if nothing is 'missing'! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hear these ads on ZDTV and on the Kim Kommando radio show by the SPA or whatever that say copying software is exactly like walking into a store, sticking the software in your jacket, and walking out of the store. How lame. If I steal something from someplace, there's a space where the stolen item was and someone else is deprived of using it. If I copy, no one is missing anything.

    If there are x items before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?
  • First of all, it's not pirating, it must be known as "unauthorised copying." How did making copies suddenly get confused with treachery and killing on the high seas?

    It's the copyright holder's sole responsibility to make sure their copyrights are observed. Intellectual property isn't a right, it's an artificially created set of laws designed to protect proprietary information.

    And violation of copyright is not "theft," either. You're not stealing any material goods, and theft is purely defined as the taking of material goods illegally.

    If unauthorised copying is to stop, it's the copyright holder's responsibility. After all, they're getting a free ride by holding a virtual monopoly on an idea. They should at least have the responsibility to protect their "property," and someone copies it in violation of copyright, it's entirely the fault of the copyright holder for not foreseeing that eventuality.

    If CD's and DVD's actually stuck to realistic prices then none of this would happen, because it wouldn't be economically feasible to download MP3's and VCD's if CD's and DVD's were cheap. I can't believe DVD's cost so much even though the media costs less than a dollar to make. Who are they kidding? By charging these prices, they are almost guaranteed of unauthorised copying.

    Blame the copyright holders. By law, they are responsible for the violation of their copyright. Don't get mad at the "pirates." Arrgh. Polly want a cracker? Sheesh.
  • Is it just that some DVDs won't play with CDRs? I considered making some VCDs with CDR discs, but I wondered about this. I put an audio CDR in the dvd player, and it didn't recognize it at all. Am I hopeless that, short of buying another DVD player? And this was with a tv type dvd player, not a dvd-rom.

  • Encoder? (Score:1)

    by whoop ( 194 )
    Aww, not worth it to convert VHS tapes to VCD? This thread got me to thinking about that. What about live broadcast recording, then, to bypass VHS's problems?

    Do VCD recorders let you have multiple files (perhaps on multiple tracks, or have it combine them all on the fly), or do you have to compile the mpeg as one huge file beforehand?
  • You can see the guy refocus the thing in the beginning, and at one point in the beginning the sound goes from "lousy" to "acceptable". There's a big, funky, capital "z" in the upper left corner of it too, which is visible throughout the movie.

    My advice to anyone wishing to save 8 bucks: suck it up and go see it in a theater. For those that have and still want a copy of it, consider that it takes about 3 hours to download the whole thing on a *fast* connection. A cablemodem (which can really vary wildly from "fast" to "horridly slow" in my experience) would probably take longer. Anything slower than that and you'd have to be seriously messed up to want to download 1.2 gigs of data.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • ...wear a big heavy coat with lots of pockets. It's annoying to have to spend $2.50 for a box of candy when you could get the same thing at 7-11 for $1 or so. I really hope nobody has a problem with *this* practice, though I imagine you could easily draw parallels to MP3.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • I'm glad you don't want to download it. Other people with faster connections don't mind the 3-hour wait though. Horses for courses, I guess.

    - A.P. (that's a terrible saying btw)
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • You raise some good points about the ethics of pirating, but I don't see how any of your examples are related. The connection between video piracy and Free Software is a somewhat tenuous one. Also, I don't see how a script kiddie (person who uses rootshell.com-type scripts to circumvent security) has anything to do with movie piracy.
  • Umm, that argument makes no sense. I'm not in favor of abolishing intellectual property, but I still don't understand your argument. How would getting rid of intellectual property somehow also force us to get rid of physical property and become communists?
  • Speaking of mp3s:
    Well, what happens if I was not going to buy the CD to begin with? I only have so much money I can spend on CDs, so I buy the ones I like the most. The bands whose CDs fall in the upper end of the "mediocre" catagory I listen to on mp3. Basically, my choices are:
    1) Download the mp3. The record company gets no money.
    2) Do not download the mp3. The record company gets no money.

    Either way, I have no interest in purchasing the CD.

    In addition, I have actually purchased several CDs as a direct result of mp3s. Several bands I'd never even heard of before, or had only vaguely heard of before, turned out to be quite good when I heard their mp3s.

  • MP3 (Score:1)

    by Trepidity ( 597 )
    Well, I listen to music for 6+ hours a day. I cannot afford to buy that much music on CD, so I buy the best of it on CD, and the rest, which is still good, but not the best, I download. It's not that it's not worth me owning it, it's just that there is other stuff that is *more* worth me owning, and I can't own it all.

    There's also the stuff that is entertaining to me the first 3 or 4 times listening to it, but gets old really fast. That stuff I also download on mp3. I only buy CDs of stuff that I can listen to many times and still like it.
  • Posted by craig55:

    That camcorder business is not new. I remember back in 1989 or 1990 going to a comic book convention and purchasing a Chinese bootleg of the yet-to-be-released in the US sequel to Highlander ("The Quickening"). And in addition to being one of the worst movies I've ever seen , the quality of the recording was horrible. You could see people's heads pop up as they got up to use the john and people walking up and down the isles. Hilarious.

    The new thing is taking such a recording and making a VCD - basically a highly compressed MPEG version of the camcorder footage burned onto CD. ISO's (disk images) of these are traffic'd on "warez sites" pretty frequently. If you have a T1 at your disposal and time to down 650+ MB's, you can get the latest releases - Office Space, The Matrix etc. Word has it that some of these movie pirates have access to the projector via movie theater employees and can sometimes jack right into the projector for a direct dub to VHS.


    The new thing is taking such a recording and making a VCD - basically a highly compressed MPEG version of the movie. These are traffic'd on "warez sites" pretty frequently. If you have a T1 at your disposal and time to down 650+ MB's, you can get the latest releases - Office Space, The Matrix etc.
  • Posted by Roland the Gunslinger:

    Of course it's wonderfully cool that you can have a movie play on your computer, downloaded from the internet. So cool, in fact, that no one cares it's illegal, or immoral. Some probably would even say it's not immoral, but I'd dare say none of them would ever produce anything worth selling, and thus don't care much about intellectual property.
  • Posted by Roland the Gunslinger:

    Theft is no longer immoral. Wonderful.
    What a load of intellectually bankrupt bullshit.
  • Posted by infect:

    I'm an avid user of these movies.
    There are several types of VCDS (video cds) that get released:

    Camcorder: Usually very low quality
    Telecine: Professional camera in booth, usually offers much higher audio quality as it has seperate audio source. Video quality a little higher than cam, but often also slanted.
    Workprint: A unfinished version of the full movie, usually high quality in both video and audio but you may be missing soundtrack of special effects.
    Screener: Usually a direct rip from tape, high quality in both audio and video.
    DVD Rip: Very high quality rip, but not much different from a screener in my opinion.

    Recent releases include:
    04091999 - La Vita é bella (Life is Beautiful) - Screener
    04111999 - Analyze This - Telesync
    04191999 - 10 Things I Hate About You - Telesync
    04201999 - Velvet Goldmine - Screener
    04201999 - A Walk On The Moon - Screener
    04211999 - She's All That - Screener
    04211999 - Edtv - Telesync
    04221999 - Forces Of Nature - Telesync
    04221999 - Election - Workprint

    Some more famous than others, but you get the idea. At 1.1 GB a piece (~), you need some space to hold them though. This concept of "anyone can make one" is BS. You need real time MPEG hardware, fairly decent hard drive speed and capacity, and the know-how. The Broadway Pro is the card of choice, as is the snazzi or dazzle - but the high quality only comes from the Broadyway or similarly high end cards. CNN always likes to exaggerate things.



  • This has already been pointed out like a million times, and should be obvious, but stealing means taking something away from someone else. "Pirating"/bootleging isn't stealing -- it's illegal sharing.

    But I do agree with you that you shouldn't think that just because something's legal means it's moral. Of course, just because something's illegal doesn't mean it's immoral.

  • True, but it's important to remember that the GPL was created to make it possible to share software in this world, with the current copyright laws. In a world with no such thing as IP, the GPL wouldn't be necessary. The problem is of course that in that world it would be possible to distribute binaries and keep the source code secret.

    Pirating/bootleging isn't really comparable to using GPL'd code in proprietary software. Pirating is illegal sharing -- it makes some copyrighted work available to people who don't have the copyright owners permission to have access to the work. Refusing to distribute GPL'd code (remember: modifications to GPL'd code are GPL'd too) means not allowing people who have the right to access the code (everyone), to access the code.

    Oh . . . and pirating != stealing.

  • Looked at college costs lately?

    College costs most of use more than a house.

    100,000 dollar debts are COMMON where I go to school.

    so where you say, "you selfish bastards", I gotta say, fuck you.
  • > If there are x items before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?

    What has been stolen is the *right* to create that +1. The creators/producers of the content have that right, and have granted it or licensed it to the distributors; you do not have that right.
  • > If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok...

    No it isn't ok. It's not your right to decide whether it should be available for free, it's the creator's.
  • Why are you assuming they did it in real time? Real Producer can convert AVIs to G2 format too. All you need is huge hard drive.
  • Whereas it is criminal to violate copyright laws, it is not immoral. There is a big difference between the two concepts. Its wrong IMHO, but its being illegal does not automatically make it immoral (some laws are immoral!).
    --
    Python
  • Don't kid yourself. There still would be very little real interest in this kind of nonsense. The price of admission (bad pun I know) is still far,far too high.
  • It's worse than that. Why go through all this hassle to see a movie which isn't really that good when you'll be able to rent it from BlockBuster on video tape for about 3 bucks within 2 or three months after it's released?
  • By that business model, the theatres in the town I go to college in are operating at a loss-$4.00 for children, $4.50 for students, and $6.00 for adults.
  • I suppose that's why thousands of dollars of MY MONEY go to my university so I can go here. And why my university will start hounding me for money as soon as I leave (also known as an "alumni association.")

    And, what about privately funded colleges?

    Grow up. Fuck off.
  • Well, yes they did lose money (no repeat ticket sales), but that sounds cool. :^)
  • If anyone feels like mirroring this machine... :^)
  • This is about the 250th comment on this subject, so most people probably won't even read it. But there's something missing...

    Here's all these geeks - hardcore geeks, defending the distribution of movies - hundreds of megabytes of movies - over the internet and internal university networks.

    Well guess what you selfish bastards: I pay for that network. Not you the student - you'll pay later - right now it's the working people paying for your fun through our taxes.

    And here's these hardcore geeks, that complain about any extra bandwidth, like HTML email, or spam. And yet they don't even blink about clogging up the network with the equivalent of a million spams. A MILLION SPAMS is what your movie costs the rest of your country. Thank you very much - whoever you are - you're the lowest of the low.

    Matt.

  • Those networks are put there for academia you lowlife. I suppose you think it's really "cool" to do what you do. Wise up and grow up.
  • Matrix is a telesync rip, and pre-release one at that. Not many people may have noticed, but one of the scenes (the one in the night club near the beginning) is missing the rob zombie music track. It's funny seeing a night club with people dancing, lights flashing, and no zombie playing =)

    asinus sum et eo superbio

  • Yikes.

    I don't like paying $7 for a movie either, but piracy is a contributing factor to high theater prices anyway - I wonder how this is going to affect us in the long run? Anyone worry about the gov't restricting digital video formats? I sure do now...

    Posted by the Proteus

  • What you really want is MPEG2. This is the format used for DVD and DTV (aka DVB in Europe), so it's broadcast quality, waaay superior to VHS. But it's 4GB per movie.

    I predict we will see that being traded on the net. Within no more than 2 years.

    Now they didn`t like MP3, but they will *hate* MPEG2.
  • This is very similar to MP3. MP3 = Audio. Video = MPG (or other formats).
    In this particular case (bootlegging movies) it's the use of a valid format (e.g. MPG) for illegal reasons.
    Similar to sneaking a cassette recorder into a musical or concert. You get a copy but it's bad quality. So if you like what you got, there's enough motivation to get an original.
    If the copy you have is an unaltered original (i.e. digitally copied) that motivation is limited. You still might want to get an original so you can show it off, have a nice box, or additional goodies. Or just to honor the creators by paying for something you enjoy.
    If you don't pay, I'd not consider it stealing, you're not physically taking something away. You just make a copy. The original is left in place and unaltered.
    If that's theft or not is up to yourself. So I leave it at that. As you ought to leave that decision for others to decide on their own as well.
    Just like owning an original. Do you own the original? Some say you only got it licensed! Not your property.
    Well, I think this issue will work out just like MP3: A lot of warez and a lot of legal uses. The movie industry will be changed by this like the music industry is being changed by MP3. And our Intellectual Property definitions and laws will be reconsidered and adapted.
    Always remember: There's no such thing like a free lunch. And digital data isn't food. It's information which is a totally different thing, don't mix it up, please...
  • Yes, those were the days, sitting by my computer watching the bytes trickle by for some grainy .au files that hogged my precious disk space...now if I had a cable internet connection.. :)

  • jwb, your rant gives only one justification for equating copyright violations with stealing: a legal justification. However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing. Just because the law says something doesn't mean the law is right. For example, in the United States, for many years the law decreed that whites were superior to blacks from a legal standpoint. Was the law morally correct? Few people today would argue that the law then was morally correct. It is perfectly possible to judge some violations of copyright law immoral and other violations morally acceptable. Now I'm not saying I would judge in this manner. I'm just saying that there is no inherent contradiction in judging in this manner. Moral issues are completely independent of legal issues. Your post does not even acknowledge the possibility that the legal view could be different from the moral view. Indeed, your post puts forth the legal view as completely equal to the moral view. Therein lies your fallacy.
  • Sorry for the repost; first post got mangled.

    jwb, your rant gives only one justification for equating copyright violations with stealing: a legal justification. However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing. Just because the law says something doesn't mean the law is right.

    For example, in the United States, for many years the law decreed that whites were superior to blacks from a legal standpoint. Was the law morally correct? Few people today would argue that the law then was morally correct.

    It is perfectly possible to judge some violations of copyright law immoral and other violations morally acceptable. Now I'm not saying I would judge in this manner. I'm just saying that there is no inherent contradiction in judging in this manner. Moral issues are completely independent of legal issues.

    Your post does not even acknowledge the possibility that the legal view could be different from the moral view. Indeed, your post puts forth the legal view as completely equal to the moral view. Therein lies your fallacy.

  • Here in NYC, you can buy those tapes in just about every other corner. It must be an insider's job, since some movies are on sale within a day or two after the sneak preview is shown in just a handful of theaters. They cost about 2 to 5 bucks (depending on you bargaining skills), but you get what you pay for. The few that I've seen where REALLY crappy.

    Later.
  • What kind of encoding hardware are they using? Surely, you cannot encode a full speed movie through software. Must be some big bucks to get an array of DSP's to get all the frames down to a decent size. Where do you get this stuff and how much?

    I shot 10 seconds through my video card at 30fps and the file was a whopping 46MB! Faster than the damn hard drive and put a load on the bus getting there. What can make an entire movie 400MB in real time?

  • same old same old (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Friday April 23, 1999 @04:49PM (#1918669) Homepage Journal
    Bootleg movies, campus based sites, warez and the like are nothing new at all...

    Bootleg movies? Warez?

    Back in the 70's, my hometown library had a large selection of super-8 movies and many racks of cassettes and albums we could check out. We would all get together in somebody's basement and have little block parties. Those were the days.

    Television used to have good entertainment, too. Last year, I was paying $65 a month for some cable access. After a few months, I wised up to the fact I would be seeing repeats all year. Cable is the seat of greed.

    Now it seems like the RIAA is trying to outlaw MP3's. The technology I looked forward to has been all but ruined due to coorporate greed and misinformation campaigns such as this: "Anyone with a computer is now a video pirate." What kind of shit is this? They are the greed that sets new technology back in the dark ages. Secure MP3? What kind of use is that for me? I cannot work with that. New technology now is a buzzword and filled with hype and misinformation due to firms like the RIAA. I wish they would go to hell. They can do without this government protection of IP that they enjoy. Programming content would be so much better if the masses are allowed to make media for free distribution.

    Control the media, controll the world. Imagine a world where we do not have access to video compression and encryption to allow common people to freely distribute local news and entertainment. You have China and Russia where it is outlawed.

    Greed kills.
  • exactly. it's illegal, it's a crime, period. you should see what's going on on THIS campus lan... I'm pretty sure that there's nobody here who doesn't have something illegal on his system. if "they" came they could probably book every single one of us and take our hardware. ofcourse if they come I could simply do rm -rf /dos/* to get rid of all the illegal stuff on my system, but my CDs would be gone.

    and then some, if they come and take one, the message that they're here will spread around campus at the speed of light, and everybody will dump their burners and cds in the nearest ditch. I've seen one person get caught, but he was publicly advertising his MP3 site, which is ofcourse the dumbest thing you can do. as for the rest, we're well shielded. if you keep a low profile they won't come get you.

    a close personal friend of mine is right in the center of the MP3, music video and movie "business". he'd just dump his CD collection and rip out his hard drive. sure, big loss, but it's less of a loss than being caught. two words: Shodan, VooDooMovie. :-)

    by the way, I'm damn sure Big Brother knows what's going on here. but they also know damn well that they'd only get one or two big fish and a few dozen small ones, and the other big fish would just ditch their equipment and help the smaller fish ditch theirs.

    same thing happens when there's a road sign razzia. they empty one or two dorms, and immedeately all the other dorms know what's going on and they ditch their road signs on the roof. once they did manage to get a big catch by offering a cream pie for every road sign returned to the police. what they hadn't anticipated is that people didn't return previously stolen roadsigns but stole new ones to get more pies :-)


    )O(
    the Gods have a sense of humor,
  • Don't worry, you didn't miss out on much. The quality was awful- sound was grainy, the screen was slightly cropped, just generally bad. Suffice to say, I watched a couple of minutes of it & decided I'd rather go see it in the theater and not miss out on the full experience :)


    -mike kania
  • Hell no. I'm not paying $4.50 for a "big" box of say jujubees, just to open it and find a bag inside smaller than what i'd get on halloween.

    Sorry, but they'll just have to make do with my stopping at CVS and loading up on goods before i show up.

  • While I agree that it is wrong to break copyright law, I think your rationale is ridiculous. You are assuming that those 1,000 people would have gone to see it in the theater, but now will not.

    If I had the opportunity to view a stolen movie on a teeny computer screen, it would be instead of renting it, not instead of viewing it on the big screen. Why do you think Disney re-released The Little Mermaid to theaters? Because people want to see a good movie on screens more than 80", with surround sound!

  • I have taken a camcorder and tripod into a theatre before, had no problems. I only did this to get a copy for some friends back in Durham/Chapel Hill NC because it was an independent and limited release film that was out only in San Francicso, LA and New York.

    Personally, I think that if the film makers would make their films distributable over the Internet, even at a fee, they would see huge increases in audience and revenue.

  • When I went on a trip to russia a few years ago,
    the movie Waterworld with Kevin Costner had just
    the weekend I had left the US been released in
    theatres. However, in almost every kiosk around
    the city (Magadan) there were VHS copies of the
    movie for sale for the equivalent of $3-4 USD.
    Almost every american movie ever made is converted
    to the local format (not compatable w/ VHS) and
    sold out in the open in their own black market.
    The copies are occasionally videotaped copies,
    but more often are leaked copies origionating
    from the distribution house post production.
    Some of the tapes are also converted back to VHS
    format.


    Hmmm, I bet the new Star Wars movie is out there
    quicker-than-quick...
  • I don't see what is so key about your point. Is it "I am a lazy fuck, so I will screw the other guy."?

    You pirate CDs and movies for one reason only: you have no respect for the copyright of the owner, and your own convenience comes before their proprietary rights.

  • The point is not about the law. The implicit agreement between a producer and a consumer is that the consumer can consume under certain conditions. If the consumer accepts the agreement (by consuming) and then proceeds to violate the agreement, the consumer is a backstabbing pig-dog.

    The proper thing to do, if you don't like the conditions of the agreement, is to find another producer, or cut back on your consumption.

  • Pirated movies, ethics, and Linux (Score:5)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Friday April 23, 1999 @04:19PM (#1918678)
    If i get flamed to death, so be it.

    I am really angry that none of you seem to have a problem with the distribution of these pirated films. Anyone who is involved in trading these wares is

    1. A criminal in most jurisdictions
    2. A threat to free software

    The only thing that protects free software from being undermined by greedy proprietary software makers is the GPL and other licenses under which free software is released. These licenses protect the openness of our projects and also are the reason why we can claim the moral high ground. The open source revolution, part of a larger backlash against proprietary information, is founded in its software licenses.

    Because of this, all of us would be justifiably tweaked if part of the Linux kernel was lifted and included in a proprietary software product. We would rant on about how they had violated our license. We would call for the offending company's figurative head, a revocation of their charter, monetary damages, criminal prosecution, and multiple types of medieval torture. And we would be right, because the copyright an open source product is sacred.

    But many of those self-same potential indignant open software boosters are here bragging about the magnitude of their stolen film collection. Let me say for better effect.

    Stolen

    None of us has any justification for stealing these films from their owners: the studio which holds the copyright. They alone can, unilaterally and arbitrarily, set the conditions under which their product can be distributed and consumed. If we violate their copyright, we might as well discard the GPL, because it will be clear to everyone else that we don't really take the issue seriously.

    Through my amazing future prediction ability, and a small Perl script, I can predict the rebuttals that will come from the skript kiddie crowd. I will now answer them.

    skript kiddie: "But, the movie theaters are operated by The Man!"

    jwb: Don't patronize them.

    skript kiddie: "Most people go to movies after watching the pirated film."

    jwb: Is this a reasonable statement: "While Microsoft acknowledges having stolen Linux kernel code, it pledges that most of the affected products will eventually be released under a similar license."? No, it clearly is not.

    skript kiddie: "Movies are too expensive."

    jwb: Don't attend them, and The Man will get the point. Better still, build your own studio, theater, and marketing machine and charge less for the movies you make.

  • First of all, it's not pirating, it must be known as "unauthorised copying." How did making copies suddenly get confused with treachery and killing on the high seas?

    From Webster's 1828 dictionary, the second definition is The robbing of another by taking his writings. I suspect that it is this definition which is being extended to cover music, video, and computer programs.

    If unauthorised copying is to stop, it's the copyright holder's responsibility. After all, they're getting a free ride by holding a virtual monopoly on an idea.

    You're getting very confused here. The issue at hand is not the idea of a movie, but the movie itself. We're not debating whether it's ok for everyone to make, say, a movie featuring a giant lizard; rather, the question is, is it ok to copy Godzilla?

    In the second case, some party has invested a large amount of money in producing a film. They aren't getting a free ride in any way; they produce the film, and then they sell, to you, the right to view the film. You're not purchasing the right to copy or to distribute the film.

    If CD's and DVD's actually stuck to realistic prices then none of this would happen, because it wouldn't be economically feasible to download MP3's and VCD's if CD's and DVD's were cheap. I can't believe DVD's cost so much even though the media costs less than a dollar to make.

    First of all, they're not selling the media to you, except as a means to an end. If you want to buy the media cheap, avoid getting a copy of "The Matrix" thrown in along with it. And in no way are they inviting piracy by charging so much. This argument is analagous to, say, "He was asking to be killed by being such a jerk!" It holds little water morally, and certainly none legally.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • Economic theory is a little bit more complicated, but what you're looking for is this -- in this case, the "risk" of pirating this movie carries a lower cost, in the consumer's eyes, than paying to see the movie in a theater. So they tend to evaluate pirating the movie as the cheaper alternative. This is why they'll pirate movies when it's this easy, but not everyone will rob a bank.

    They're right, at this point. Nobody (well, pretty close) gets in trouble for stealing music and video. So of course they'll continue to do it. This doesn't justify it in any way, however.

    So in a way you're right about the positive feedback loop, but another way of looking at it is we're failing to adequately inforce the current copyright laws. If the consumers viewed the associated "risk" higher, then they would be less inclined to pirate.

    Bear in mind that this is just economic theory, the key word being `theory'.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • Bootlegged movies are pathetic. The movie industry should laugh at the idiots who try to smuggle low-quality camcorders into theaters and then make MPEG-2s of the results.

    Once digital projection of movies becomes more common, though, movie piracy may become a big issue--if some 31337 haXor d00dZ crack a movie distributor's system and download the (hopefully higher-quality than MPEG-2) film, box-office revenues could plummet dramatically.
  • from what I've read, there are two versions of The Matrix out there.

    the funky Z one (which I had) and the mystrious good one.

    I just get these movies to see if its worth the 7 bux to me. The theater experience is infinatly better than anything I could ever download.

    01 Just my 2 bits
    ---------------------------------------
    The art of flying is throwing yourself at the ground...
    ... and missing.
  • I live in a small country called Brunei in south-eastern asia. Copyright laws don't seem very clear over here, and many shops offer videos and video-cds for about $3US (B$5) that are very often bootlegged or have those classic "Please call 1800-NO-COPYS" message on them. It's pretty much "normal" over here. A pity really.
  • Hrm, last Friday it was floating around IRC, 2 CD
    Matrix Video CD set. Here today gone yesterday,
    good luck! Huh, too bad my friend never burned
    it! :)

  • ...they also have VCD player attachments for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn. Dunno about the Saturn version, but I know the Playstation version connects via the serial port in the back (where a Game Shark or Game Enhancer would go), with your standard red, white, and yellow RCA jacks on the back to hook up to your TV/receiver/computer. I would assume the Saturn's goes through a similar connector in the back (haven't looked at the back of my Saturn in ages)

    Also, for a while, people were using the Vivo file format to compress the movies. I haven't seen a Vivo of any film, but I can't imaging that any 2 1/2 hour movie compressed down to under 300MB would look or sound all that good, regardless of the source material.

  • Video CDs (Score:1)

    by Zen ( 8377 )
    No, I think that you both actually had the same version, unless yours really didn't have a Z in the top left corner. Both versions I saw had a white Z in the corner; mpeg and real video. The image quality was really good in the mpeg, but it was incredibly dark. To the point where you couldn't see what was going on in some parts. The sound was also really screwed up. You had to have an Awe64 or better soundcard, or you heard really crappy sound. I don't know what kind of encoding would only play well on the higher soundcards, but I know that's what happened with that release. They also did some weird stuff with the sizes. The first file was 603 megs, and the second was 683. You'd think they would split the difference and make it easier for us to burn onto cd's, but nooooooo. They had to do it the hard way. It was to dark to make it worth my burning onto cd, anyway. I got it, tried to watch it, and deleted it. I'm pretty sure the real audio was ripped from the mpeg cuz it had the same darkness problems and was released by the same group.
  • You got the real video version, not the mpeg. The mpeg is much better visual quality, tho still very dark.
  • I saw The Matrix in the movie theater, and was quite impressed. When someone downloaded the movie in MPEG format, I thought it was pretty cool, so we got a LCD projector and hooked it up to a Windows box, and played it on a big screen. Needless to say, it was awesome to watch on our setup. About 6 people attended our "private showing", and only 2 of those people hadn't already seen it. And 2 of the people who had seen it, saw it more than 1 time. So, in reality, the theaters didn't lose any money. I don't feel bad about it being bootleg, because of that fact.
    I'll probably go watch the movie in the theater with those same people we watched the bootleg with!
  • I've seen two movies that my friends have downloaded - The Matrix and Cruel Intentions. In both cases, they were not produced by sneaking in a video camera. You'd have a shaky picture, crappy sound, and random noises coming from the people in the theatre.

    Instead, somebody got ahold of "screener" VHS copies of the movies - pre-releases that get shown to test audiences or sent to video stores - then they digitized and MPEG-encoded them. In The Matrix, the only thing wrong was that the "club" scene didn't have the techno background music that appeared in the final version of the movie, and the whole picture was a little too dark. Cruel Intentions looked MUCH better, and since there isn't any fast-moving action or editing, the overall effect was great.

    Here's the really cool part - a friend of mine burned Cruel Intentions onto a CD-R, and can now play it on his DVD player because it's technically a VCD. The picture and sound are very good, he saved about 1.2 gigs of hard drive space, and he doesn't have to look at a puny box on his monitor.

    The industry shouldn't be worried about this - yet. I think that in about 2 or 3 years, if everybody gets fat pipes, movies that look nearly as good as the theater versions will be readily available on the Net. The industry knows from the MP3 experience that they have something to fear, especially if movies start getting created in an all-digital format. Any sound or video editor (or intern, for that matter) could snag the digital version, take it home, encode it, and post it. Instead of "Star Wars" text spoilers, we'll see actual pre-release footage in all stages of development! Within 5-8 years, all the high-quality codecs and bandwidth could be in place to make this situation very real.

  • Video stores get copies of movies months before they are released to the public. My friend used to work for one. They aren't allowed to rent these videos, obviously, but the employees and friends get to watch them. Why use a camcorder?
  • cost of renting the film, paying for labor, rent for the building, cut of sales that goes back to the distributor et al.... The profit does come from concessions.
  • I totally agree that we'd have better art if the only concern were purely artistic and not monetary, but it takes time to make that art, and artists have to make a living, too. It's far too difficult to do significant amounts of artistic work while working a full-time job. So the upshot is, someone has to PAY these artists to keep them fed and clothed. How should we do that? I think that's a question we need to look into more. I don't know of any really good solution yet.

    Btw, this is doubly true in the case of films, which are very expensive to make. There are indy films made on budgets of tens of thousands of dollars, but how could you have something like, say, Star Wars (Ep 1 is an independent film, actually), when they cost millions of dollars to make? You just can't expect people to sink millions of dollars regularly into their work without getting something for it.

    Since the people who watch the movies are benefitting from them, it makes sense for these people to pay.

    The problem is, I think we'll eventually reach the technological point where information will be so freely available that it becomes impractical (read: impossible) to charge for information. What then?
    I don't know. We'll see, I guess.
  • If you would pay for it if you couldn't get it for free it's wrong.

    If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok (illegal tho).

    Basically, morals. I see it as stealing if I get a full version game off the internet or burned from a CD and then it's something I use all the time. So if I download something like that, and I use it a lot, I go out and buy the retail version.

    If it's something that I wouldn't use if I didn't get it free, then it doesn't matter to me.

    My rule is:
    Ask yourself, "If I was forced to delete this and never be able to get it for free, would I go out and buy it?"
    If the answer is "yes" then I go out and buy it.

    *NOTE* I am not saying that this is the way anyone should act, this is just the way *I* see it.

    ~enucite~
  • That's what you think is morally correct.
    I stated that it was "ok" but noted that it was illegal.
    To me, it IS ok.
    To you, it's not.
    Simple as that.

    ~enucite~
  • Yeah. I guess you could say it that way.

    I do it because I think it's right.

    If they make a POS program that I just downloaded to try out, and I find it amusing, I keep it around to entertain me.

    If it's something I actually care about and use (IE a good program) I buy it.

    So, yeah, as long as it serves my own selfish interests it's ok.

    ~enucite~

  • I took a Lexus from the dealership last night. I couldn't really afford to buy it, but I'd like to see what it's like to drive one. I'll probably return it after a couple of weeks, so there's nothing wrong with that.

    1: it IS ok, as long as you tell the dealer you are test driving it. (but he probably wouldn't let you keep it that long because someone else might want it)

    2: if there was an infinite supply of Lexuses and you really did just want to try it out, why would the dealer have any problem as long as he's confident you'll like and use the car? (as I said, if I actually use I pay for it)

    I wouldn't pay to watch HBO, but I have a converter box that gives it to me for free, so that's okay, too.

    Yeah, it isn't taking anything away from them if you really weren't planning on watching it if you didn't have the box.

    I didn't like your previous post, so I'm going to track you down and put a bullet through your head. I don't see it as murder if the person I kill annoyed me, so I'm sure you won't mind either.

    I think this one kinda goes along with the same Lexus arguement. If there was an infinite supply of me, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
    But since there IS ONLY ONE of me, I would appreciate it if you just left that SINGLE COPY alone.

    ~enucite~
  • Yeah, it's fine - as long as the movie theaters don't follow our local high school's lead and ban the d*mn things! :)

    Leilah

  • M-F4 (Score:1)

    by Slarty ( 11126 )
    It's going off the fact that statistically most IRC users are windows, using mIRC to boot. Alt-F4 is the standard windows hotkey to close the current application.
  • Of course they're concerned... why shouldn't they be? After all, as much as I love MP3s, they represent a significant loss of revenue to the people who make the things. As more and more people get on the net and bandwidth gets better, that will only get worse.

    With all the babble about "software should be free!" around here, people seem to miss the concept that some things can't be. Any idiot with a computer can grab a copy of Linux and use gcc to make software and distribute it for free... but it takes MONEY to make music and movies. Even "low-budget" flicks anymore usually have multi-millions at their disposal. And the big ones... The Matrix - $63 million? Titanic - $200 million? You think that the studios can afford for piracy to become mainstream?

    So, if pirated movies start becoming a big deal, then I think they have a lot to be worried about in terms of their future. Once again, people... if you like something, don't steal it, BUY IT.
  • Bootleg movies have been available for a long time on the net. I've seen available nearly anything that's new - Titanic, Godzilla, Armegeddon were the popular ones for a while. They had Starship Troopers bootlegged long before it was available in video stores.

    Usually people were using the old Vivo format for compressing them. If you have it in like 150px by whatever the file size can be as low as 150MB. For anyone with a network connection to the net that is a fairly reasonable download. In an hour you could see the newest movies without paying a penny.
  • Why didn't he show off his amazing cheeks? Curse you, WB, for cancelling Freakazoid!

    I can't really see the point of this. Yes, its free, but VCD is worse than VHS (at least it doesn't pixellate). Plus the cinema is a great social experience 8-).


    "Now if the film is rated NC-17..."
  • To me, it IS ok.

    Breaking the law is OK to you, so long as it serves your own selfish interests? This IS what you're trying to say, isn't it?
  • However, a legal justification alone is NOT sufficient grounds to equate copying with stealing.

    Based on WHAT? You made a rediculous comparison to the laws governing the treatment of blacks. Guess what...these laws were reprehensible, and they were CHANGED. If you don't like the copyright laws, work to get them changed.

    I vaguely remember a class I took in college that discussed Maslow's seven stages of moral development. You can't convince me for a minute that stealing copyrighted material puts you at level seven. I think it's much more likely a case of moral relativism.

  • What is it that separates the two, then? We are governed by laws, and in most cases, morality implies that these laws are obeyed. There are legitimate reasons for looking beyond the law, but I hardly think that the "convenience" associated with pirating copyrighted material qualifies.
  • The theater doesn't get to keep the $9. The distributor gets most of the money, leaving the theater with a few dollars.
  • It is still theft. What you are stealing is not something physically tangible, but it is still someone's intellectual property. If we don't respect intellectual property, we might as well abolish all private property and become communists. Many of us don't like this idea.

  • I suppose that you think Blockbuster pays $15 bucks for a movie that they rent too, right? try $90 or more each. Rental shops pay to play.
  • When they initially purchase them, they pay more than the initial price...sort of a licensing fee. The video store down the road here charges $CAD90 if you lose the video..they have special markings and stuff on the cassettes to know if you are ripping them off.
  • Track 08 - Rob Zombie - Dragula (Hotrod Herman Remix) ;]
  • Hmm...well, how do we make any money if anyone has the right to just take our stuff and use it? If everyone does this, then if we want to do things like eat...we would have to have a kind of gov't system which makes sure everyone has the necessities. I know...its a slippery slope argument, but our economy is based on trade secrets. M$, as evil as they are, did not become rich by sharing their work.
  • Yeh I was thinking of cutting The Matrix and PM to DVD disks and sending them over to a friend in Asia who probably won't see them for a year after they are here.
  • Using an ATI input board, I can record over two hours of 352x240 video at 15 fps onto a blank 13 gig hd. I don't think that going faster than 15 fps does any good, the $80 board can't keep up.

    The major pain in the ass is the 2 gig file limit of AVI.

    I can then use an MPEG encoder and transfer the movie to VCD, which is viewable on my Sony DVD player.

    BTW, I once downloaded 1/2 of a movie in VCD, supposedly a telesync. It was watchable, but only barely. It was only worth watching to see whether or not I wanted to see the movie in the theater.

    The quality of VHS tapes is also not really good enough to warrant converting movies to VCD, the analog fuzziness combined with MPEG compression produces marginal results. Fun toy though.
  • Doesn't economic theory state that if the consumers feel the price for a commodity is too high, they tend to find an alternate, lower priced alternative? This is generally the argument against government regulation of gas/oil prices, etc. Does it apply here, as the prime theatres in a city tend to set rates which are all around the same level?

    I don't condone theft, but I think this is a positive feedback loop: people steal movies because they're too expensive, then the movie/theatre industry passes these "losses" to the customer. Any thoughts?

  • Wouldn't that just be artifically inflating the perceived value of the item by increasing the risk associated with pirating? My view of movies is that they're currently overpriced right now (probably shared with a lot of people). I've even heard rumours that the cost will go up during the star wars run too!

    I've only taken a single course on economics. :)
  • The Matrix that is floating around is a pre-release version, raw edit. Unmixed audio, so on. But still cool.... :)
  • I was under the impression that the government was going to outlaw them.
  • If you would pay for it if you couldn't get it for free it's wrong.

    If you wouldn't use it, unless it's free, it's ok (illegal tho).

    I took a Lexus from the dealership last night. I couldn't really afford to buy it, but I'd like to see what it's like to drive one. I'll probably return it after a couple of weeks, so there's nothing wrong with that.

    I wouldn't pay to watch HBO, but I have a converter box that gives it to me for free, so that's okay, too.

    This is moral?

    I didn't like your previous post, so I'm going to track you down and put a bullet through your head. I don't see it as murder if the person I kill annoyed me, so I'm sure you won't mind either.

    An awful lot of atrocities have been committed because certain people thought they were "ok" to do.
  • FYI, it's telecine, not telesync (at least that's what they're called in the industry). These can do what you say, but are VERY expensive. Not car expensive; try house expensive. These are used to go from film --> digital video for CG, DVD, HDTV, etc. Very cool devices. Also works for diferent film formats/emulsions/sizes depending on mdel/cusomizations.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • "look nearly as good as the theater versions"...

    That could be a few years off. The mvoie industry hasn't yet figured out how to distributed movies digitally on a practical scale (first digitally distrbuted movie=the new star wars. only to two theaters). Film is very high quality. Think about how big the scan of a _single_ 35 mm picture is (assuming hi-rez, etc). Multiply that by a few hundred thousand, and you have a nearly theater-quality film, minus the sound. How much is a nice, hi-rez image? Let's say 75-100 mb. Even allowing for compression (but not too much; don;t want fossils/mosaics), your near theater quality film is going to be pretty giant. the best one can expect in the near future is "nasty TV quality," which is fine, i guess, if you just want to see the movie, but not so great if you REALLY want to see it (ie, a low-rez version on a computer monitor or TV isn't exactly the best way to watch any FILM, IMHO).
    Watching a film this way (and in most "home theater" systems, which are, to be honest, coplete rip-offs that sacrifice audio quality for mediocre gimmicks, but that's another rant) doesn't convey the full effect. Films are meant to be watched in public (yes, the audience matters!), on a big screen, with a good print, and, ideally, with excellent cound/acoustics. If you can do this in your home (ie, you have an in-home screening room) you can come very close to watching a film properly (excepting the audience; but nothing's perfect).
    If watching a poor quality movie on a computer screen with mediocre sound is your idea of a good time, don't bother. Go watch TV instead.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • I was selling official VCD's three and a half years ago with a Taiwanese computer company that I worked at part time. I also saw bootlegs around that time too and I wouldn't be surprised if they were around before then.
  • Bootleg movies, campus based sites, warez and the like are nothing new at all...


    The only NEW thing is the increasing awareness of HollyWood (and the recording industry, as per the mp3) and the increase in high bandwith providers for the home. Not only do script kiddies hack, they can run files at 800 k/sec.


    Combating this issue would have to be at the university end, because the size of the files alone is deterent for most people. However, that presents complications for linux geeks like me who run legitimate sites.

  • I tend to agree.... the existing infrastructure is the root of the problem, but it exists because these people want to make money, not because they care.

  • Pirating practice (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Friday April 23, 1999 @05:54PM (#1918733) Homepage
    I get angry over people who pirate software, video games, and yes, VCDs.

    However I myself have also been guilty of pirate oftware, and only once, a VCD of the Matrix. I really hope this won't get me burned =)

    I don't believe in pirating video games because I can and do rent them. I don't believe in pirating software, but I do *try* before I buy. It's taken a while, on a student's budget, but I own almost everything now except Adobe Photoshop, which is really expensive but definitely worth the price, and WinZIP, which I just keep forgetting to pay for. Everything else I use on a daily basis, I own. I usually borrow a game from a friend, though these friends seem to have less compunction about pirating vs intelligent consumerism. If a demo exists or it is a well known game, I don't have to borrow at all.

    The Matrix seems to be the only real violation of my moral code. Why? Because it's not available yet. If a legal DVD, VCD, or VHS existed for it, I would have bought one the moment I stepped out of the theatre. Why don't I just go back in and watch it again? I would, just for sheer entertainment value, but I especially want to be able to re-watch specific scenes, specific lines, to see the special effects and the fight scenes, the choreography and the dialogue.

    There is no spoon.

    For those who 'legitamately' pirate, there is hope. There is less need to borrow or steal a copy when more and more online demos and trial versions for games and software exist. Most games are rentable at Blockbusters, so the need to try a console game illegally before buying it is also negligent. Anyone who actually pirates a game has a much different reason, most likely wrong. I think there is one game I'm willing to pirate, and that is an older PSX game that I haven't been able to find, and I've been looking all over the state of CA for the last 2 years. What choice do I have but to pirate at that point?

    The problem of pirating video is not as bright. I'd imagine the turnaround time between release and DVD should be shortened as more film goes digital. Would it ruin the movie experience? I don't know, but I would definitely see good movies on a big screen several times, even if I owned it on DVD as well. I don't know that I can speak for anyone else however. I'd imagine the market for the Matrix VCDs is pretty good, and it would be interesting to see if the box office receipts for the Matrix suffer for it. I don't think so, personaly =)

    Likewise for the upcoming Star Wars. The day of or after it's release, I'd imagine a VCD would get leaked. Probably a pre-release copy on VCD, from some crafty cinema student at USC or something, what with USC's ties to Lucas, and it's cinema school.

    I don't condone pirating or stealing. If you like something, pay for it. If you don't like it, why would you waste the time and effort to download a 2 CD VCD? Same goes for software and games. If you don't like it, don't keep it; it just wastes HD space and CDs.

    AS
  • They have been sneaking in video cameras for years, it was even on Seinfeld. the only new aspect is the net and campus involvement.
  • You are very right on all points. The theft of anything--movies, software, a box of pens from your local OfficeMax--is wrong and illegal, regardless of who you are stealing from.

    People need to remember that the CEO of a media company doesn't "feel the pain" when a company loses money to piracy. Instead, its the administrative assistant at the low end of the totem pole whose job means they can finally afford a decent house in a good neighborhood.

    Take a look at your own lives, people. You pour time, effort and, in many cases, money into your creations. Imagine if you had written a piece of software like The GiMP? Ok, it instantly becomes one of the more popular graphics programs. Adobe comes along and changes it into PhotoShop 8. You'd cry hell.

    Why is that any different from thousands of people a month running off with a pirated copy of a movie? Looking at ticket prices alone, 1,000 stolen and, hence, unpurchased ticket viewings, priced at $5.50 apiece results in $5500 a month, or $66,000 a YEAR! That's someone (or two, maybe three someones) salary!

    --Rant Mode OFF--

  • The bootlegging of movies while still in theaters is not at all a new practice. They have been selling such movies here on the streets of NYC for years. A a matter of fact, there was a Curtis comic strip about it nearly 8 years ago, if i remember properly.

    The VCD (Video CD) trade has been around for nearly as long, since the format's introduction (I believe it was by Philips.) Only since the recent proliferation of high bandwidth connections hs the trade moved from hardcopies of VCD bootlegs to transferring the files (always over 1gig) over the net. Just hop onto EFNet and search for rooms with VCD in the title, there must be at least 20 at any given time.

    The VCD culture is actually quite diverse, as are the qualities of the films. Though many are poor quality recordings of theater releases, there are also:

    telesyncs - supposedly a special rig set up by which one can transfer directly from 35mm to video

    workprints - prints used by production companies to preview movies among prosucers, etc.

    screeners - similar to workprints, but usually the finished film

    They are recorded in mpeg format, and they usually have a .mpg or .dat ending. They can be viewed in some laserdisc players and some dvd players on regular tvs, or as mpeg files on a computer. I believe that they are done in 320x240, which is the standard for NTCS in the states. They aren't that bad wither ;) Just look around online for a bit, and you can find out tons of info on VCDs...

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