Archive for July 6th, 2009

Arrr

When the zompocalypse arrives, staying alive requires supplies, a shotgun and this guy, L.Cass. A PhD at zombiecology (the study of over 9000 ways to kill a zombie), L.Cass is no stranger to all things alternative, strange and just plain wierd. His blog (Zombies in Zen) is a collection of said strange things, drawings, musings, and whatnot. Today, he guest blogs with us, and has something to get off his chest. (Insert zombie moan).

So I read today that one of Fiji’s biggest pirate movie chains is asking the authorities to give them more time to clean out their stock of pirated DVDs, and replace them with new ones.

Their argument is that original DVDs cost too much, and that they need to secure funds to acquire original DVDs to replace their ‘copies.’

I have but one question…

“Whose fault?”

Starting a home video business with a tag line that is “A commitment to quality” and then filling out their 14 branches across Fiji with Pirate DVDs could only have ended one way…

…Badly

What did they expect to happen?

Cause no matter how you may try to defend it, pirating is basically… at the very heart of it… a very naughty thing to do.

It’s cheating.

And like cheating, it’s so easy to do. That is why video pirates came in and literally took over the home video market…

We can’t really blame them though. They saw an opportunity to make money and like any good businessmen, they cashed in on our tolerance for cheating.

In fact, they cashed in on our tolerance for a lot of things.

Do you remember how many times you’ve taken a pirate DVD home and found it to be a cinema copy? What do you do with it? You will either take it back the next time you visit the pirates and ask for a replacement, or you would say to your self “meh… it’s just a dollar” and then toss the DVD into some deep, dark drawer and pretend it never happened.

It is after all only a pirate copy… you’d have to be idiotic to complain to someone about the pirate DVD you bought from them.

“It’s just a dollar.”

Would you throw away a dollar?

We even went as far as acquiring a fancy new set of skills when it came to purchasing said pirate DVDs.

We’d walk into the store and see a movie listed on the wall, and if the movie came out last week… it would have to be a cinema copy.

“Wait… this movie was out a month ago. That should be sufficient time for them to acquire an ‘original copy’.”

Look at all the terms we had to learn.

Now there is an entire generation of youths out there who have never rented a legit movie in their life. The idea of renting is so foreign to them, it’s like we’re talking crazy.

“You want me to bring this movie back? WTF… I just gave you five bucks!”

Pirate DVDs took off… They spread so far and so wide that you couldn’t turn a corner in your neighborhood without walking into a pirate store.

So far the people who seem to be openly suffering from pirates, are the legit retailers. Sure you can argue we are depriving our selves of quality… but if we’re fine with it… why not leave us to it?

I buy originals for DVDs I like.

But I guess it involves the ethics of it…

But we saw what was happening. If anything, this should have been stamped out a long time ago. It’s all very unfair on us… It’s like a bunch of cops watching some guy sell crack to kids and not doing anything about it. Now that we’re all addicted, the authorities are like: ‘Stop buying that crack… here rent this weed’

Wait… I’m loosing the point…

It never really bothered me at a moral level until I watched a good friend of mine close off his legitimate video store.

He had a video store that operated out of Samabula, and it had the maddest collection of movies from the classics to the recent hits. I’d be over there every Friday to grab movies that the pirates wouldn’t copy. That’s one of the many down sides to these pirate outlets; they only stock the recent movies that are popular at the time. Their back catalogue is all but non- existent. But even my friends collection of classic movies didn’t save his shop from going under.

Like other legitimate dealers, these guys spent heaps of money investing in originals, which wasn’t worth it when they couldn’t recover the cost…

Because sadly it’s just so much easier to forego renting a movie, and to simply buy it… watch it… and then make a huge pile of cheap DVDs behind our DVD player.

But is there hope for us?

Can we switch back to renting? Can we pump out the pirate venom from our movie hungry brains?

Well… to put it bluntly: We’d better.

I’m sure the change won’t be too harsh if the legitimate suppliers make it worth our while. A decent costing of DVD rentals would be a start. I like the good old days when I’d rent a movie for a dollar if it’s an old flick or two dollars if it’s brand new. I could live with that.

Paying five bucks for a three night rental would be something I’d have to get used to. But I only feel this way because currently I have cheaper alternatives… Once the pirates are out of the picture, I’m sure we’ll have lines of people bitching and moaning on their way to the legitimate video store.

No more going home with 50 different movies you don’t know shit about. Now people we have to get back to carefully selecting their evening viewing. No more drawers full of those damn plastic DVD covers. No more ‘four for one dollar’ deals.

Look out for ‘over due fines’ and penalties for scratched disks.

It will be a painful process, but like all bad habits; we’ll soon overcome it.

I hope.