They don't even hide their booty, the movie pirates who wander the New York subways hawking bootleg DVD copies of The Departed, The Prestige, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and every other film currently in theaters. They're brazen: most of the salesfolk are desperate-looking Chinese immigrants who barely speak English and scurry through subway cars showing off their pile of movies, but one guy I saw recently had a honed pitch -- in three languages! -- about how his DVDs were not those garbage-y ones filmed off the screen by some dude with a camcorder but crisp, pristine versions ... just like real DVDs! (He was, perforce, obligated to so ask $8 each, not just the usual $5, for his wares.)

And now the mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, is cracking down, says Variety:

City also will push for a New York state law that criminalizes the act of recording a movie in a theater. Proposed law would make it a misdemeanor for first-time offenders and a felony for repeat offenders.

...

A public-service campaign educating the public about the dangers and victims of piracy is also planned, officials said; the MPAA will finance the campaign in consultation with the city.

The "dangers" and "victims" of piracy? Does anyone imagine consumers gone bug-eyed at the cost of multiplex tickets and concessions will pity multibillion-dollar global corporations threatened with seeing their obscene profits cut down -- if they're cut at all -- to the merely ridiculous? Now, as a producer of easily copied intellectual property myself, I fully recognize that creators must be fairly paid for their work if we, as a society, are to expect them to continue producing stuff that we enjoy, but no one is selling pirated copies of my movie reviews on the subway ... or pirated copies of foreign films, underground poetry, or open-source software. As much as I'm tempted when I see someone on the N train buying a bootleg DVD to ask them whether they realize that their money isn't going to the people who are entertaining them but to thieves who are making money off the creative efforts of others, I know that no one is going to care -- people who buy these illegal DVDs only want to see the films in the way that's most convenient for them, and the thought of "hurting" a ginormous corporation is simply not a concept that enters the mind of the average consumer.

The desperation on the part of the corps is rather startling, as Cory Doctorow -- one of the leading voices on the whole issue of rethinking copyright, or at least the corporate stranglehold in it -- pointed out the other day on Boing Boing:

The Los Angeles Council of the Boy Scouts of America will offer rewards to Scouts who absorb a brainwashing regime written by the MPAA. The merit badge patch in "respecting copyright" will almost certainly not include any training on fair use, anything about the fact that the film industry is located in Hollywood because that was a safe-enough distance from Tom Edison that the its [sic] founders could infringe his patents with impunity; that record players, radios and VCRs were considered pirate technology until the law changed to accommodate them; or that the entertainment industry enriches itself without regard for creators, who are routinely sodomized through non-negotiable contracts and abusive royalty practices. I'm sure it won't mention the anti-competitive censorship masquerading as the Hollywood "rating" system, or the way that the studio cartel's copyright term extensions have doomed the majority of creative works to orphaned oblivion, since they remain in copyright, but have no visible owner and can't be brought back into circulation.

Bravo, Scouts -- letting an industry group brainwash the children in your charge is the only way you could sink lower than being mere religious bigots -- now you're religious bigots who shill for a cartel of Fortune 100 companies.

(There're lots of juicy links in Cory's posting -- check it out.)

Even some stars recognize what is -- and isn't -- at stake here. Jack Black has a new short promo out for his upcoming Tenacious D film, and it's a hilarious faux public-service announcement "decrying" piracy ... you know, a "please, won't you think of the rich and famous celebrities?" kind of thing.

But I have no doubt that it will be years before the studios recognize all the revenue they're missing out on -- all that cash that is going into the pockets of those subway pirates, for one -- by not releasing day-and-date DVDs (and pay-per-view, and downloads) of new theatrical releases. They've already hit the iceberg, and they're blaming the circling sharks for causing the crash.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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