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Readers, this is a sad, sad day for those of you who think movie piracy isn't such a bad thing. Yesterday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, disabled nine domains of websites that had been offering pirated films and TV shows. The crackdown spanned New York, New Jersey, Washington, North Carolina and even the Netherlands, and involved the seizure of assets from 15 bank accounts and the execution of several residential search warrants. Servers have not yet been seized, however, so it's possible that some of the sites could simply set up shop under different domain names. But John Morton, Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, issued a war-like pronouncement to would-be pirates at a press conference held at none other than the Walt Disney Studio lot: "If a site reappears, so will we. If the criminals move overseas, we will follow."
Haters of Hulu Plus and any other site that offers entertainment media for a fee will be dismayed to see that the following sites have been shuttered: TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.
Apparently, those sites have received a combined 6.7 million page views each month. To us, then, studios are ignoring a giant advertising opportunity for the sake of what amounts to penny-pinching. Why not partner with some of the sites so that everyone can benefit?
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that film piracy results in job losses for the movie industry, but we wonder if some of that could maybe be offset by paying, say, Johnny Depp a little less? After all, he brought in $92 million for work he did between June 2006 and June 2007. And check out the outrageous salaries of other actors and filmmakers who don't even come close to Depp's range (of playing the same fey, wacky, creepy character in every recent Tim Burton film). Maybe throw a key grip a few of those bucks if the industry's so concerned about worker's jobs. [From: Huffington Post]
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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsBillyupJul 2nd 2010 2:43PM
There isn't a single lost job in Hollywood due to Piracy. They hire the same amount of people they need to finish a film as they always have. Who would they NOT hire if they had to choose? The kraft services guy? No Sir, everyone needs to eat. The camera guys? Nope, who would run the cameras? With all the CG in movies, there is no way they wouldn't hire out a firm to build all the badass graphics we see in movies these days. So please enlighten us as to whom wouldn't be hired or who would be fired?
The Movie industry makes billions in profits every year. We're supposed to believe that 6.7 million people watching movies online is going to hurt anything other then their bottom line? Bullshit! Those 6.7 million people, for the most part, wouldn't be going to the theater anyway. Because of lack of funds, an unwillingness to spend money on crap(*cough*Twilight*cough*), and of course there is always that whole question of "How many people are there in the world? And you're worried about 6.7 million?" So truthfully, the movie industry is really only losing a fraction of what they are passing off as lose.
I myself watch movies on streaming sites. Does that make me a criminal? I believe not. I watch a couple movies online a week and will continue to do so(btw there are already a good handful of websites hosting the links from the sites taken down) until I can no longer. I have never been someone who goes to the movies every week yet, I have always been a movie fan. I've actually gone to the movies to see a film AFTER watching it online because I just had to see it on the big screen. There are movies I've seen online that I would never go to the theaters or the video store to see. The quality of film these days is just that bad. Who wants to pay for the same trite story lines rehashed over and over again? Who wants to pay for yet another Hollywood remake mistake? Let me reword that, who with any taste what so ever wants to dish out their hard earned money for something not only have you seen before but you believe you could do sooo much better with a box of Twinkies, a magic marke,r and a 1984 RCA Camcorder.
dtJul 4th 2010 1:43AM
Unlike the lies and twisted stories spread by our own corrupt Government, a person can't "lose" something they never had in the first place. I find it sad that our own Government has their pockets lined with money from big business.
Its also sad that they are wasting all of our taxpayer money on something like this. Money that could have been spent elsewhere on more important things. Such as paying the unemployed in this country their unemployment checks. 99% of the unemployed in this world are NOT in the entertainment business.