Your take on downloading movies

Ahem! Could you expound on that one?

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"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

Your questions that've been brought up in the last paragraph of your post are legitimate ones. My answers are a resounding yes to all of them, especially "should that be illegal?"

Wonder why I have the feeling I don't need to be reading this thread...

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I know why!

I'm in Canada though, so they can't touch me for it (for now at least).

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I don't see how the movie business could loose money on the "ACTUAL" download.
If I like it, I'll buy it, if not, i wont. It's no loss of theirs. A good example is German director, can't remember his name, who keeps pumping out movies based on video games, which are so horribly horrid, he doesn't deserve to be called a director.
Plus he gets his fund from the government (Or so I've heard anyway) So it's no big loss for him. Furthermore, It's the big shots who take all the money, not the people who actually MADE it.

Bottom line is, make good enough movies and people Will buy them. At least that's how it works for me.

I assume you're thinking of Uwe Boll...? Either way, being government-funded doesn't really change things. At some point, if the films bomb, the government stops funding him. Whether or not the movies are horrid is beside the point, as well.

Anyway, you might be the kind of person who always buys a movie you like, but obviously it differs from person to person. The industry loses money in those instances in which someone downloads the movie instead of buying a ticket, a DVD, or both. I'm sure that happens plenty. That doesn't mean it's the unmitigated evil that the film industry thinks it is, but it's not unreasonable of them to suggest that they lose some money on it, or that it's basically theft. Of course they lose money on it. The moment someone watches it online instead of going to see it, renting it, or buying it, that becomes true.

Hi,

I was wondering what the majority of the people here on the forum thinks about ripping DVD's or downloading movies. I myself get a lot of downloaded movies from friends and once in a while I download one myself, as long as my bandwith allows me to. I also borrow a lot of DVD's from the library and rip them to my PC. I know some of you might see me as a thief, but I don't have the money to rent or buy every movie I want to see, I am 16 yrs old, I don't work, I buy a lot of DVD's too, but sometimes I just can't afford them.

So tell me what your opinion is?

Greets
Spikez

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I don't.

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Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
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My Movie Review Thread | My Top 100

Only if it's unavailable on DVD.

I use dvdfab to make back-ups, other than that, no. Downloading them is a good way to get a virus.

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...uh the post is up there...

I'm pretty sure if the torrent has been downloaded a couple hundred times and there aren't any comments saying "don't download, virus found, etc." it's safe to steal.

Downloading movies is usually an unpopular topic on most movie boards but I do admit I am guilty of doing it.

I still buy a lot of DVDs as well and will still see them in the theater when they're big-screen worthy. It would be nice if movies and DVDs would one day actually go lower in price instead of going up every year but that's not going to happen. Seriously, $12 for movies and $25 for DVDs is just sad, especially when you're addicted to buying them. I have DVDs I still haven't watched.

People may hate me for saying this and you can disagree with me if you like but my own justification of torrents is like this...
To me DLing them just takes the place of renting them from the video stores, buying used DVDs, or borrowing them off your friends. The industry loses money from all 3 of these options anyway.
If a store buys 10 copies of a DVD the hundreds of other viewings by so many customers aren't really contributing to the original cost. If you and 5 of your friends rent a $5 movie one night doesn't mean the DVD has made $20 off each person. Same thing with buying used DVDs and everybody does that guilt-free.

A lot of the movies I download are ones I probably never would have watched in the first place unless talked into it. Lots of times I watch one and think, "Ghaah! I'm glad I never wasted money on that one!" When I am surprised though, I do tend to buy it anyway.

It can be abused though, especially by people who download only.
As for viruses, I've never in my life gotten one from DLing movie torrents.
There are fakes but they will always ask for a code which is BS. Real torrents don't ask for any codes. If they do, it's a scam.

Computer programs obtained through illegal downloading however will usually have a nasty little surprise hidden in it for you.

And just an FYI...
The last movie I downloaded was the new Transformers movie.
I had it waiting on my computer for a week but there was no way I was watching it that way for the first time.
Saw it in the theater a few days ago and I'm definately buying this one on DVD when it comes out but I do plan on watching the torrent sometime next week just to get some extra robot-joy from it while I wait.

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Fear the Probe!

It's ok downloading movies from torrents as long as you cant find them, either way I still end up buying the original in the end (when i find it)...hate the thought of having copied DVD's in my collection.

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Honestly, let's face it. It's illegal, just like stealing a car or smoking weed. I did a stupid thing. I gave neg rep to people who said they got movies, etc. from the internet. I was on the law's side, but look at this website, that is pretty darn convincing that the entertainment industry is just trying to be pleased. It changed my mind.

http://iwouldntsteal.net/

And of course, that brings on the Copyright laws. I honestly think selling copied DVDs should be illegal. Whoever took the time and money to make that product should be the one getting their money in their pockets, not some poor guy who needs a quick buck for some booze. Seriously, that has to stop. We know people who have sold copied DVDs for their own personal profit gain. That's not fair to the person who made it in Hollywood. Why don't we call the cops on them? Give them a tip-off? What if it's somebody we are close friends, too? Or even family? I don't think it's that important to go to jail for. I think you should just pay a fee of how much money you earned (not by your count of how much money you got, but by how much money that product was worth you sold for less or more) and get a warning, and the next time you go to jail. That is just what I believe in. John McClane and FILMFREAK were right, it's not like it's that important to go to jail for, and if it even is, not like that we are the real criminals are out there murdering and stealing TVs from people's bedrooms. (Sorry for the neg rep, I'll make it up to you).

But of course the copyright laws can be debated.

I would draw a distinction between someone who burns mass copies of a specific content and sells them to the general public, and someone who burns a copy of a dvd and lends it to a friend for free. Though it still does reduce the amount of rentals or sales of that content either way. I think it's a consistency issue, I mean how do you define "piracy," it seems to be fluid and ever-changing. To some degree, being the consumer and feeding into the profits of these individuals and institutions, I would dare say they are more in debt to us. If it weren't for us enjoying and giving them free publicity perhaps they wouldn't have been as successful. In a way the consumers, I feel anyway, have some right to the content as well, perhaps not to profit from it but at least to share it with others and for backing up of one's own library.

That's my point!

I wonder what jokerboy did to get banned.

Yeah, that's weird. He wasn't here for very long.

Anyway, I download movies and you can too! Ask me how. I have zero interest in defending my position or getting into some half assed moral debate about it. I've been recording VHS movies right off the rental shelves for almost 25 years now with my Father's "little black box", AKA the copy guard defeater and now downloading from the internet just seems like the next logical step.

The best part is that I don't really foresee myself having to download or buy movies at all for too much longer because soon I will just be able to stream whatever I want to watch online. It's the wave of the future folks.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

I still haven't gotten around to it yet PW, I have nearly 40gb of music though, and almost 900 copied DVDs.

A question, say I borrow movies from the library for free, am I to be punished for copying them either morally or criminally? My tax dollars did contribute to buying them.

I've always believed and even been told by several people that if you copy something and use it for your own personal library you aren't doing anything wrong. Now obviously there are plenty of over legislated States and Countries (I know... SHOCKER!) that will say differently but I have yet to meet a single person or hear a story even of someone who has been arrested or done time for copying a movie. People that do it and try to sell them get popped all the time but a private collection is nothing to worry about.