Piracy

[cosmolinguist]

I saw a movie on Saturday. We got there just in time to miss most of the Darth Vader Orange commercial, thankfully. We did see some others, though, including the "copying movies is bad, mmkay?" one that ends "LOVE MOVIES. HATE PIRACY."

I've seen this before, and remember thinking there was something wrong with it as a tagline. Just now I realized it--and, as I was typing the words, I also realized another one.

First, it shouldn't say movies. Not on this side of the ocean. That's just silly.

Second, hate piracy is a dangerous phrase for me, because it makes me think Is that like hate crime? and then my brain is off and running with the notion of a creaky old wooden boat, ragged jolly roger nailed to the mast, populated by smelly guys with bandannas and hooks for hands who go around saying "arr! we be pirates because we don't like people of certain races, ethnicities, religions, or sexual orientations!"

Comments

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

have you seen the poster for FACT though? with the big van load of terrorists/ immigrants/ whatever else is going to spook a daily mail reader which has no relevance whatsoever to copyright theft but seems to be aiming for the easy option of upsetting the easily upsettable

[cosmolinguist]

I have not. That sounds very odd, and yet sadly likely to be effective on those types of people.

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

it's terrifying. usually they stick it in the dankest corner of the cinema because it's an embarrassment to them. and quite rightly so

[cosmolinguist]

Or maybe they just think the darkest corner is where the baddies who copy movies must be found. :-)

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

very possible - see below for *a* poster but not *the* poster (cannot find it online sadly)

[classytart.livejournal.com]

Is that the "PIRACY FUNDS TERRORISM" one, or yet another?

They are all laughable, though. To the rational, at any rate.

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

yes that's the one! comedy gold that is...



not the one i mean but also pretty hilarious

[innerbrat]

Muahahahaha! Hate Piracy!

"Yarr! We don't like your kinda people!"

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

You're not fair!! I read your opening paragraph, and I was getting ready to do my "isn't this racism against pirates!" material. Then you did it in your last paragraph! It ain't fair at all!!

[cosmolinguist]

I never claimed to be fair!

No hook, just as glamorous

[soltice.livejournal.com]

...and then my brain is off and running with the notion of a creaky old wooden boat, ragged jolly roger nailed to the mast, populated by smelly guys with bandannas and hooks for hands who go around saying "arr! we be pirates because we don't like people of certain races, ethnicities, religions, or sexual orientations!"

Why does that make me imagine a collossal sea battle with an opposing ship painted many colors, playing disco and bland techno, with Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as captain?

[cosmolinguist]

Does that mean they'd have a gay parrot who says things like "Not with those pants!"?

[soltice.livejournal.com]

Pearched on the shoulder of Speacky, the pirate that hates home appliances not painted a neutral color.

[emyjo.livejournal.com]

Well, the parrot doesn't need to be gay - it'll just have to have feathers of appropriate colors. And, of course, able to repeat appropriate catch phrases! Let's listen in!

"Grawk! Cheers, queers!"

"Prepare to have your asses boarded!"

"Polly wants a chardonnay!"

"Here's a tip: When buying a velour track suit, stop."

[cosmolinguist]

Those are all very very good things for a parrot to say, I think. Good to see your professed Queer Eye addiction is leading to some good.

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

Giggle.

[setharoo.livejournal.com]

This is shamelessly off topic, but I remember a time not long ago when the only commercials before movies were trailers. Since when did it become acceptable to pay more in ticket prices to watch ten to twenty minutes of advertising for Pepsi, TBS, or something absolutely unrelated to movies? I like to talk to whomever I am with in the theater, but that's fairly impossible when you have to talk over one hundred decibels of advertising junk. I guess that from a marketing point of view, this type of advertising ensures a more captive audience. But, it's just one way in which I think that too many in positions of power feel that the world is one of chiefly consumers.

[cosmolinguist]

Your awareness of (and subsequent annoyance at) marketing would drive you crazy at the movies here; it's even more common for such a large number of ads to precede the movies that it's okay to go to a movie that's started 15 or 20 minutes ago because you won't have missed anything. We were something like 20 minutes late for ours, and they still hadn't finished the commercials yet (the only good thing about the Orange one I mention here is that it does tend to be near the end).

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Behold the power of American Whining: For Lowes Cinemas, at least, the posted movie time is supposed to be the time that the first movie trailer. They start showing the product commercials about ten minutes before the posted time.

So, if a movie "starts" at 1:20, you can sit down around 12:50 and watch the dopey ad slide show (in the theaters that have them... RENT THIS THEATER FOR PARTIES AND PRIVATE SCREENINGS! and JOE SALES CHRYSLER CARS! GET YOUR BEST DEAL LOCALLY!), then the ads start at 1:10, the trailers at 1:20, and the movie somewhere around 1:35.

Unfortunately, not all theaters follow this, so you have to remember whether it's one where the posted time is the first commercial, or the first trailer, or *gasp* actually THE START OF THE MOVIE (and yes, we have at least one of THOSE).

[cosmolinguist]

JOE SALES CHRYSLER CARS! GET YOUR BEST DEAL LOCALLY!

That reminds me of something... Admittedly, my moviegoing experience in the states was in smaller towns than I'm in here but, as far as I can tell, the ads before the movies in the US are on a far lower scale: they're for things like local restaurants and chiropractors and the production is, of course, none-too-flashy; here it's cars and Guinness and whatever, just like you'd get on TV. I don't know which type is more painful to "watch" (not that I'm ever really watching either, though).

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Here in Detroit, there's two types. The slideshow (which is by no means universal, and seems to be getting less common) is a mix of local still ads for things like car dealerships and restaurants, and really stupid movie trivia sponsored by Coke (for instance, their "Who Said...?" series is usually quotes from movies that just came out, so you're not likely to have seen them yet). The film-based advertisements (which have become nearly universal, but only over the last decade or so), though, are the big budget TV-style commercials for things like Sprite and Scion, the kind of ad you'd expect on TV.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and when Americans started to whine about the pre-movie ads, newspapers ran articles the gist of which were, "Look, Europe's been dealing with this crap for decades, freakin' deal with it, ya whiny Yanks." Only in less confrontational language. :)

[cosmolinguist]

"Look, Europe's been dealing with this crap for decades, freakin' deal with it, ya whiny Yanks."

So, like the gas prices, then? :-)

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

Oh I always talk during the ads. Usually about the ads. For example the Fanta ad I saw last time, and turned and said "If we have to see ads in the movie theater, would it be too much to ask that they not suck?"

[cosmolinguist]

They are sometimes quite fun to heckle, yes.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

You're lucky - we've had ads before the trailers for at least 30 years. So much so that people feel nostalgic for the kind of commercials you used to get at cinemas ("After the film, why not visit Patak's Curry House, just 300 yards from this cinema?") and get annoyed at the fact that the ads you get now are the same as the ones you get on TV.
When I go to the cinema alone, I bring a book (and sometimes portable CD player) for the commercials.

If one had a bandanna for a hand...

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

I would think one wouldn't get very much done with it.

And if one had a bandanna for one hand and a hook for the other.... seems like they'd be getting caught on each other all the time...

[cosmolinguist]

This is one of the few times that I wish language was like math and you could use parentheses to indicate which several-word modifiers get grouped together and which are just several words, so you could say smelly guys with (bandannas and (hooks for hands)). Or whatever.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

yeah. it was just the way my still-in-oh-god-is-it-morning?-mode brain parsed that and on reflection it seemed to fit with the overall tone of the post :)

[cosmolinguist]

But in lieu of parentheses, sentences are supposed to have grammar and syntax, and I knew as I was wrting this one that it was bad. It's testament to my mental state that I actually opted to just leave it instead of tweak it before posting.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

I've never liked the term "piracy". Consider:

Definition 1: Board a ship on the high seas, and steal it and/or the cargo, probably killing the crew whilst you're at it.
Definition 2: Make an unlicenced copy of a CD/DVD etc., cheating the copyright holder out of the normal sale price (assuming you'd have bought a legitimate one anyway).

The two don't seem to be in quite the same league.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Well, that's kinda the idea, i'n't? To make the illegal copiers look as bad as possible?

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Presumably so, but it still seems rather unreasonable.
In some circumstances, "victims" of piracy may even benefit from it. For example, if someone pirates MS Office because they can't afford the price in PC world, they are not using a rival free product (e.g. Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org)) and are perpetuating MS standards, to their benefit. MS don't really lose out as if that person could not obtain the pirate copy they'd have had the rival product, and no sale is therefore lost.

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

*falls over with the giggle*