Strangepants :
Y and whilst IMDVD claims to be legit, and certainly has studio original discs, they give you “not for rental” copies;

do they rent out screeners or the free copies you get with dvd players?
read the editorial in yesterdays fiji times about piracy which is lol worthy considering theyve been advertising pirate shops for years. vesumona the bastards

I was actually just having a light hearted rant about how certain businesses were allowed to grow so big on the back of piracy, and how we got used to it… and may have to start getting used to renting again.

Buying a ripped copy of “Dark Knight” here does nothing for Warner Brothers projected sales figures.

Plus… I have like 60 gigs of music

But I also have like a 100 CDs cause I buy the ones I like. I don’t think Piracy is as black and white here in Fiji as it is in other countries.

Cheers for the links: TLDR

Can you name a single legit DVD rental business in Suva? There are none! VideoEZ tried, failed and went pirate before finally closing … and whilst IMDVD claims to be legit, and certainly has studio original discs, they give you “not for rental” copies; so obviously no rental contracts with any studio there either. Your friend probably fell into this ‘illegal rental of original copies’ bucket too.

I hate cheap crap copies from the “commitment to quality” guys as much as the next guy … but guess what!? The movie producers couldn’t give a toss about this part of the world and aren’t going to reprice their product to suit our GDP.

Let’s face it: the entertainment industry is stuck in the past and wants us to ignore the fact that high-quality digital copies cost next to nothing to make … I’m all for supporting the creators of entertainment content with my money, but the distribution technology has moved on and the studios/labels haven’t. They pushed new tech like cassette tapes and then CDs then DVDs … but are busy trying to pretend like it’s 1990 and the internet still hasn’t been invented.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4206.html

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/06/researchers-conclude-piracy-not-stifling-content-creation.ars

Chew on that for a bit … and consider this: you said “I buy originals for DVDs I like.” Same here: but I’ve got to like it BEFORE I’ll buy it. No wonder many studios deliberately leak movies and tv shows to the internet before release to pump up the interest.

Time to stop over-simplifying the issue, stop swallowing the bullshit PR the studios are pumping out to justify their out-dated business models, and have a good hard think about the best way to support the content and artists we love using the technology we have.