WW2 Vet Sent 300,000 Pirated DVDs To Troops In Iraq, Afghanistan 650
nbauman writes "WW2 veteran 'Big Hy' Strachman, 92, pirated 300,000 DVD movies and sent them to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were widely distributed and deeply appreciated. Soldiers would gather around personal computers for movie nights, with mortars blasting in the background. 'It's reconnecting to everything you miss,' said one. Strachman received American flags, appreciative letters, and snapshots of soldiers holding up their DVDs. He spent about $30,000 of his own money. Strachman retired from his family's window and shade business in Manhattan in the 1990s. After his wife Harriet died in 2003, he spent sleepless nights on the Internet, and saw that soldiers were consistently asking for movie DVDs. He bought bootlegged disks for $5 in Penn Station, and then found a dealer at his local barbershop. He bought a $400 duplicater that made 7 copies at once, and mailed them 84 at a time, to Army Chaplains. The MPAA said they weren't aware of his operation. The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops."
The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops. (Score:5, Funny)
Nice to see the studios have been keeping up with the times.
Re: (Score:3)
back to the future: where hawkeye and hotlips were still current characters...
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Interesting)
I know what you are saying, however from a practical aspect film is an awful choice for any war environment since it degrades so easily... Hell film gets scratched and fades in air-conditioned theaters with a trained projectionist running them. I wonder how long reel to reel film lasts in a tent in the desert (dust, sand, heat)?
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not sending the films out with patrols. They're showing them at base theaters which have more technical support and equipment than anything Main St. can rustle up. Of course, DVDs can be used to entertain small groups or individuals but that would give people more options than what is good for them.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not sending the films out with patrols. They're showing them at base theaters
Well, that's great, then. Any of those troops out there at some God-forsaken FOB can just catch a ride back to the main base for their movie nights out. They don't need entertainment in their little tent camps. They have the Taliban for that.
BTW, I'm not picking on you. It's not your idea, and I'm sure you're right about how it really works. I'm a retired Air Force guy, and if I understand correctly, most of us in-country are still pretty much base-bound. If so, this cartoon [mudvillegazette.com] characterizes the inequities of campaign life: The REMFs get all the good stuff, the guys at the pointy end pretty much get the shaft. And the guy who was the subject of TFA did what it takes to fix this one little inequity. I hope he doesn't catch the shaft himself, since 300,000 counts of willful copyright infringement probably exposes him to something like 300 death sentences.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Funny)
He's going to find out he just doubled our national debt. Intentional copyright infringement = more than statutory damages.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:4, Interesting)
I challenge the MPAA to file suit against him. He sent 300,000 DVDs which were probably watched by several times that many people, and it's all verifiable. Contrast that to file sharing suits where an individual user might be sued for making a few movies available to be downloaded a relatively few times from which MPAA has claimed huge losses from each individual user.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Informative)
If you really want make a soldier happy, you have remember that they might be at a tiny outpost with a platoon of young men all deployment. They might not have seen a female for months. Yes, send porn.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Interesting)
No offense taken, it's a legitimate question. I was in Iraq for two tours. When we left the FOB (Forward Operating Base), we were in enemy territory. I could not imagine a Marine or Soldier going off to get his jollies in his down time. The chance of being abducted and getting your head cut off on video was too great, not to mention the inevitable IEDs. But all this aside, almost all the locals had exotic parasites. Our medical staff were constantly treating them. Again, I have known plenty of dumb Marines in my day, but I cannot imagine anyone dumb enough to go out, risk his life and come back with worms or worse. But I do remember in about 2008, they busted some female Sailors or Air Persons for running a brothel on the base. They got caught trying to take a seabag full of cash back home and couldn't explain where it came from.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:4, Informative)
base theaters which have more technical support and equipment than anything Main St. can rustle up.
Not that this is very important to the topic at hand, but as a former member of our military that spent 5 years overseas, I can tell you that the base theaters pretty much all suck, the sound is awful and the projection is worse, and we went off-base wherever it was possible to watch movies instead. Of course, it's not possible to do that in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just don't tell me about "technical support and equipment" - even if we had it, it sure didn't go into making our base theater any better. Those places blow.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a joke, but it's also awfully revealing about how behind-the-times Hollywood's business practices really are.
Hollywood distributes movies both digitally and on film. Not all theatres have converted - in fact only a small portion of them are fully digital. So this is a matter of Hollywood serving their customers - if they stopped film distribution, then most cinemas would close their doors.
Now that Kodak is bankrupt, and the future supply of film stock is uncertain, converting cinemas to digital may speed up - but it is still a very expensive process, and most local theatres don't have the cash to do it.
Re: (Score:3)
Hollywood distributes movies both digitally
I think you'll find the cost & throughput ratio that comes with mailing DVDs to Iraq and Afghanistan to be pretty good, compared with the digital delivery alternatives. Latency's a bitch, though.
Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score:5, Insightful)
"Digital distribution" from Hollywood to movie theaters isn't over the internet -- they're sent on hard drives. (Remember, the movies you see in theaters are much higher resolution than the ones you see at home.)
Not really. If the digital projector is only 2K, then it's basically the same as Blu-Ray (2048x1080 vs. 1920x1080). If the projector is 4K, then you can get more resolution on the screen. That said, the original (either film or digital) likely does have at least 4K resolution regardless of the projection system.
And, the reason the movies are shipped on hard drives is because they are just a series of JPEG 2000 [wikipedia.org] images, one for each frame. This is essentially like using MPEG-4 and specifying that every frame is an I-frame, which bloats the file size for very little gain in quality.
Reel-to-Reel? (Score:5, Funny)
Are they talkies at least?
Re: (Score:3)
I believe just last week, the only copy of "The Moon is Blue" was finally sent to Afghanistan from Korea.
That (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
What the troops REALLY want is to end the killing of innocents & come back home to defend THIS country.
Is that true? It's not like they didn't know what they were getting into when they signed up. I would love to see the data you use to back this statement.
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
75% of the republican donations from active military goes to Ron Paul.
Even Obama doesn't get as many donations as Paul does (it's about 40% to 60%). If you don't believe me, use your advanced engineering skills & google it. ;-)
Re: (Score:3)
use your advanced engineering skills & google it. ;-)
Maybe you should try that yourself:
http://www.military.com/news/article/obama-gains-edge-in-military-campaign-donations.html [military.com]
For you lazy ones: From January 2011 until March, servicemembers who gave more than $200 contributed about $333,134 to Paul's campaign, as compared to about $184,505 for Obama and just $45,738 to Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, according to an analysis by the center.
"But in March, Obama and Paul switched places," Choma wrote. "Members of the military sent $36,448 to Oba
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
GP was referring to number of donations, not to value. People (and their votes) are not dollars.
Re: (Score:3)
>>>It's not like they didn't know what they were getting into when they signed up
Well to quote one of the military guy who gave a speech at the Capitol building: "We were told that this War on Terrorism was necessary to defend our country. But we learned the HARD way that our only mission was to terrorize & brutalize arab civilians, and we no longer want to be a part of it! We should be at home defending OUR borders, and our constitution, as we swore an oath to do." (crowd of soldiers cheer)
Re:That (Score:4, Insightful)
What the troops REALLY want is to end the killing of innocents & come back home to defend THIS country.
Is that true? It's not like they didn't know what they were getting into when they signed up. I would love to see the data you use to back this statement.
Yes, most soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines know what they're signing up for. That doesn't mean they actually like the killing or injuring, or being away from home. People enlist out of a sense of duty, or to gain job skills, or because there are non-combat positions that appeal to them, or because it's the only decent option open to them. The notion that people join the military because they're bloodthirsty savages is completely out of touch with reality.
Re: (Score:3)
What the troops REALLY want is to end the killing of innocents & come back home to defend THIS country. And there's only one candidate who is willing to do that. If we really cared about the troops, we would honor their wish.
Look, if you want fantasy presidents, at least pick somebody like Milla Jovovich [imdb.com]. She hasn't a chance in hell of getting elected but I'd rather watch her campaign than Mr. Crazy. You really have to admit that her dialog makes more sense than Ron Paul's. Besides, if you polled the troops and asked who they would vote for Paul or Jovovich - who do you think would win?
Re:That (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
Please understand that I say this as someone whose politics lean fairly 'libertarian' on the whole. But:
Stop that. Seriously. Just stop it.
You're doing your cause no good by pretending it's even remotely likely that we're going to suddenly see Soviet-style gulags implemented by either Obama or Romney. You may not like their policies, but it's possible to disagree with them without needing them to be Joseph Stalin reincarnated. When you spout this stuff, you come across like a hapless conspiracy-theorist-slash-nutjob, which allows people to handily dismiss ANY valid points Ron Paul and his supporters make because you have included so many absolutely-fucking-crazy exaggerations and distortions along with the legitimate points.
CS Lewis offered some advice on writing [lettersofnote.com] that's relevant to everyone:
Stop turning "I don't agree with Romney's and Obama's policy proposals," into "therefore they're going to send me to a Siberian salt mine!" This is nothing but idiotic marketing sloganeering, and has NO BUSINESS in a political discussion, unless your goal is to perpetuate the issues already afflicting our political process. In other words: don't bemoan the bumper-sticker-ization of politics on a fucking bumper sticker.
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Seriously? That's incredibly sad if it is true.
No, it's not true. It also made me smile to see the responses from overly-literal people like you.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but I have no pity for the MPAA or RIAA (I'm guessing that your comment was sarcasm so you don't either.). Actually I'm glad this guy did what he did and put them in to that position.
From the Article: "The MPAA sends reel to reel movies and projectors to the troops." Which does how much good when you are on 30-60 sweeps with only your squad to chat with? Compared to the DVD these guys picked up from the Chaplain that they can later watch on the computers in the HumV or Abrams.
I have a lot of respect for the amount of celebrities that go entertain the troops, honestly I do. They risk their lives to go (even though the risk is not very high) and make sure out troops have some sense of normalcy. The MPAAs first concern is not for the troops fighting to keep them to be able to remain free, but for "OMG the troops may violate our rules."
The continuing cry from the MPAA really is nonsense, especially with the alleged hypothetical loss of revenue. If this guy did not do what he did, these troops would not have gone and purchased DVDs. There is no ability to do so in the remote locations these people are sent to. And on a Soldiers pay you are not going to purchase much any way.
Yes, I am a US Army Veteran.
War criminal (Score:5, Funny)
Sending a bunch of crappy bootleg cams to the troops should be considered a war crime.
Get this geezer a copy of vlc and some Matroskas stat.
Re:War criminal (Score:4, Interesting)
Get this geezer a copy of vlc and some Matroskas stat.
Given the fact that this is in the New York Times, what do you think the chances are that some savvy NY geeks will try to hook this guy up with a better system? They could spend only a few hundred or couple thousand of their own pooled bucks and get this guy a system to really crank it out. Set him up with an autoloader so it can burn while he sleeps, and a friendly GUI to pick what to burn. A small group of geeks pooling their resources and donating a little of their time could have a huge impact on a lot of deployed soldiers. And it would be nice to let this guy know that he's got friends other than the soldiers he's sending these to. You just need to do it without generating any publicity.
Get to it!
The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Funny)
The opposition has never had thermonuclear weapons.
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Haw they would rather face the nukes than the public opinion on this one.
Let's see who we can go after.
The 92 year old widower WWII Vet that spent 30,000 of his own money to send DVDs to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or the Chaplins that distributed them to the troops?
So do you want to take on an old man that risked his live in WWII fighting Hitler or the Japanese and that spent his own money to help the troops?
Or do you go after the Chaplins?
In an election year where it would be easy for people running for office to want to take on the rich cocain drunk godless heathens in Hollywood for Good and country?
Re: (Score:3)
That's the beauty in this: it's like the "Won't someone please think of the children?!" bullshit fallacies got turned right back around and used for good. If they want to pursue this (which I doubt), they have to go after a 92 year old vet that's spent $30,000 out of pocket sending DVDs to our troops. In what universe could that possibly have a positive result for them?
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
This will make it really hard for them to go after anyone at this point. You can't just dismiss people like this without looking like you're carrying a personal vendetta/grudge/race/sexual orientation/religious whatever against one person and another. The next person that gets dragged to court will ask why their client is being targeted while this other man is not.
Re: (Score:3)
Unless someone brought Charlie back from the dead and cloned him a couple dozen times, I think you mean Chaplains.
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they don't go after him doesn't it show some kind of prejudice? :-)
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:4, Informative)
Unlikely considering Dan Glickman and Chris Dodd are both Democrats, Senators even, and were the last two CEOs of the MPAA.
I also seem to recall the SOPA debate, large numbers of each party were on each side of the issue, so it wasn't really a partisan issue.
Unanimous consent (Score:3)
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Although the most costly piracy now takes place online through file-sharing Web sites,...
ORLY?
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, I'd love to see the MPAA go up against the AARP!
Re:The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The MPAA Lawyers have never played this nice..
Indeed, I am quite confused too.
They didn't mind the bad press over suing a 12 year old child OR a 80 year old grandfather for only 'several' movies, so we know it's not the age part that did it.
(source [betanews.com])
They also don't mind sending threatening letters to the military asking them to crack down on their own troops for them, so it isn't the American troops away from home part that did it either.
(source [myce.com])
They didn't mind suing people for downloading movies for personal use and no profits involved, so we know that isn't what did it either.
(source [google.com])
This is a complete reversal of past policy on all counts!
My personal guess is that the lawsuit is already in the works, and they requested the court seal the details so the press doesn't get word of it. Then they release this announcement to try and look like they are being good guys. There can't be any other possibility. The Grinchs heart growing 3 sizes only happens in the movies.
Will they go after the post office now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that they go after ISPs for downloading, should they not go after the post office to be consistently persistent?
Would be a lovely case to see go to court! They could sentence him to community service...
Quote from article (Score:5, Informative)
“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law. “If I were younger,” he added, “maybe I’d be spending time in the hoosegow.”
The guy spent $30,000 of his own money to do it. Maybe the MPAA could sue him for a portion of the 'profits'. The best part is he was continuing to make copies, right there, while they were interviewing him. It's brought joy back to his life.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't quite understand the level of hate against the MPAA.
I understand the hate against the RIAA, because the only real cost in producing a record is equipment, which is normally handled by the small recording studios anyway (which typically get paid at the point of recording). In the age of digital distribution, the RIAA seems pointless, since it does little to protect artists but seems to only benefit outdated middle men.
But at the moment, bankrolling a Hollywood-quality movie is no small undertaking; i
Re: (Score:3)
Both the RIAA and MPAA spend huge amounts of money lobbying for abusive legislation designed to curtail our freedom and privacy, even if you're not a "pirate".
Whether they're pointless or not is irrelevant.
Re:Quote from article (Score:4)
There's plenty of reason to hate them. They gave us such wonders as DVDCSS, region coding which we get to pay for every time we buy a DVD drive even if we don't watch movies. They gave us HDCP so even connecting one's own video camera and computer up to a TV is a pain. They gave us all the crap protection on BluRay as well. We get to pay for that too. Don't even start on the crazy content protection and de-resing on a Windows machine, even for content you produce yourself. They tried to get the VCR banned. They are why so many PVRs are locked down.
Lets not forget all the under the table money to get copyright law perverted to their cause and to use the publicaly funded FBI as their own private copyright cops. In turn, that brings us things like the whole Megaupload situation (crushing rule of law and due process on two continents).
All of that affects people whether they ever watch movies or not.
Meanwhile, since they are so adamant about strict honesty and propriety, they must be paragons of ethical virtue, right? (OK,OK, you can stop laughing now, you're going to break a rib that way!).
They moved out west in the first place so they could freely 'pirate' Edison's patents. Their shady accounting practices are so legendary that they're named for them. According to their official figures, no movie in recent memory has ever made a single penny in profit. One wonders how they keep going decade after decade losing money like that!
But yeah, other than that, they're fine, upstanding coke snorting narcissists. What's not to like?
One 92 year old man (Score:5, Insightful)
did what corporations couldn't or wouldn't because of few measly lost dollars, which would have brought in millions worth of good will.
Here's an idea maybe we should have a send the troops a bootleg campaign. Imagine 1 million bootleg dvd's being sent out lol..... The MPAA cry would be heard in every corner of the world Khaaaaaaaaaaa....
How American... (Score:5, Insightful)
the place where a mother can go bankrupt in the trial for download a cartoon for their kids, and a man can make whatever he wants because he took a job when he was 16, 70 years ago... and we applauded... awesome...
Re:How American... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops.
Did you send them vinyl records too?
Maybe a few laserdiscs?
I just got back from a deployment to Afghanistan.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just got back from a deployment to Afghanistan, and I can tell you that sometimes the only way to get to sleep is by watching something that will get your mind off of what's really going on. My favorite was light comedies and sitcoms.
I didn't know about this guy. We got most of our movies over there from local vendors who would sell pirated copies (that's legal in Afghanistan). The MPAA is getting the Customs Service and DoD to crack down, though. We used to be able to buy whatever we wanted from the locals and bring them home. Then when I came home from Iraq in 2008, we were allowed to bring one copy of each movie/TV show, and that was fine as well. This time when we were coming home we were told that we could only bring one item, period. Which was fine, again, because now we're ripping the movies to our hard-drives, anyway. I wonder how long it'll be until the MPAA gets the Customs Service to look at all of the content of our laptop hard drives on re-deploying back to the U.S....
If you were lucky enough to be stationed at Bagram Air Field, then you had a PX where you could by legit movies for full price, but for most of us stuck out at various FOBs scattered across the country, the local guy was all we had. Hopefully the Pentagon Pukes don't listen to the MPAA and take that away from us, or we'll be in a world of hurt over there. This deployment sucked pretty bad. Not sure what'll happen if the next one is even worse due to those greedy MoFo's in the MPAA...
Re:I just got back from a deployment to Afghanista (Score:5, Insightful)
thank you for what you have done, and I am glad you are safe enough to type this
Re:I just got back from a deployment to Afghanista (Score:5, Insightful)
they served in fucking afghanistan!
the "got back from a deployment" part is the main thing. The details that occured are probably something that i dont agree with, but the signing up to serve the country, and do what your told by superiors during this deployment are things that, even if you or I dont see it directly, have an effect on our daily lives. The people that are out there doing this actually are doing a great thing for the rest of us that are sitting comfortably in our air conditioned cubes. Thanking someone for their service, regardless of their personal reasons for signing up, is just something that I do. I do this in airports, and I also do this for firemen and police officers who are directing traffic. Maybe it makes no difference, but maybe someone who is putting up with a lot of shit that is actually making my life easier can feel a bit better, or less shitty, about what they are having to put up with.
please, with all the heart felt sincerity that you dont believe possible from my first thanks to the soldier, take all of your judgement and cynicism, and shove them deep up your ass while shutting the fuck up! and have a nice day
Re:I just got back from a deployment to Afghanista (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed the same in 2005 and 2007 returning from Iraq... in 2005, a light, cursory search by a couple Marines. Nothing invasive. In 2007, we had to travel to Kuwait to have some pogue sea-bees strip search our shit, like we were criminals. We had to go through explosive detectors (we were in combat 2 weeks prior, carrying explosives) and empty out our pockets- as if one of us, after surviving Fallujah, would want to bring down a plane on our way home. That pissed me off. We couldn't bring any ripped movies back with us, and were threatened with laptop searches.
Re:I just got back from a deployment to Afghanista (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a Comm troop deployed to an airbase in Pakistan in 2004. While there, the OIC for the Comm flight (Officer in Charge of all communications) thought it would be a brilliant idea to order the "morale" servers shut down. These were essentially just file servers that people had dumped music and movies to as they cycled through, and were pretty much the only access to entertainment we had at a rather isolated base. He was on a kick for going to JAG or IA, and figured shutting down some copyright infringement would be a good point for his transfer and for his oak leaves. What actually happened was even the base commander was pissed, and at a commander's call a couple days later, (aka an official, in uniform, at attention kind of meeting), when he got up to speak, he was booed. Thinking back on it still shocks me to this day. If a single airman ever booed an officer in a commanders call, there'd be UCMJ action, no question. But an entire base of airmen spontaneously and unanimously booed him. It would be akin to the CIO getting booed at a shareholder meeting or press conference, where the board can legally imprison any attendee they care to.
(In the end he stood up and promised a "legal" solution to the problem would be deployed within 24 hours. Myself and my co-server types looked at each other, decided he was talking out of his ass, and just turned the regular servers back on at the appointed time).
The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops"
As if this were not proof enough that the studios and the MPAA are out of touch with reality.
"Reel-to-reel" for real (Score:5, Interesting)
And while Mr. Strachmans movies were given to soldiers as a form of charity, studios do send military bases reel-to-reel films, which are much harder to copy, and projectors for the troops overseas.
Lost Revenues (Score:5, Interesting)
So, based on the MPAA model for determining damages, doesn't 300K bootleg DVDs represent something approaching the GDP of many small nations? I mean, I haven't done the math, but 300K, times $10 on the shelf at Walmart, means that these companies lost somewhere over $200B.
Considering he received flags, which have a monetary value, he was getting revenue from this operation. This is a criminal enterprise of epic proportions.
This 92 year old man, a patriot, who supported hundreds of thousands of troops who were serving their country...must be the absolute scum of the earth.
But seriously - as long as I can make it patriotic and for a great cause, I can get away with something that has quite clearly crossed the line into "This has got to be illegal, no matter how you cut it"? Doesn't that suggest something is wrong with the law in the first place? What if I was making bootlegs for crippled orphans?
Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
This man is a hero.
When gramps is doing it, the battle is over (Score:5, Insightful)
When old guys who tend to be "conservative" are doing things like this, the battle is over. I'm picturing an Iwo Jima like flag planted over the smoking, bombed-out corpse-strewn wastelands of the **AA orgs.
The old guys are relaxing and smoking a J when that flag is properly planted too. You google around, you see plenty of people with gray hair smoking pot. Same deal. The DEA and the **AAs just haven't got the memo yet, so watch out; but they are dead, Dead, DEAD. As soon as a Gen-Ys get into power, so fucking DEAD.
Re: (Score:3)
One old guy did this. It ain't a movement yet.
That said, I've always wondered why there aren't more people with nothing to lose out there righting the world's wrongs. Always chalked it up to, when you get that old, you just don't have the energy care anymore.
As for Gen-Y killing the **AA--hah. Good luck. You realize that when Gen-Y is in power, they'll be in power in the **AA too, and won't want to give that up, right?
The DMCA fines are thus: (Dr. Evil finger here) (Score:3)
I used to record TV shows (Score:4, Informative)
What TFA is missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most freaking brilliant thing... (Score:3)
...I have ever heard in my life.
People, we need to take a lesson from this great American. Not only has he figured out how to stick to the MPAA, he figured out how to do it while looking like a fucking HERO. No jury in America would convict this dude.
Bravo!
It brings a tear to my eye. It's so beautiful in its utter simplicity. Why the hell didn't *I* think of this?
Soldiers of freedom: We must follow his example. I want the troops FLOODED with bootleg DVDs. They must never be without the latest movie or TV show.
Re: (Score:3)
The copyright law has been broken. (Score:4, Insightful)
And the US Military is guilty of receiving 300,000 counterfeit disks. It isn't as if the guy had an address book of a lot of soldiers to distribute disks to directly.
And if the military accepts reel-to-reels from Hollywood when DVDs or better-yet downloads will do, that's gotta be another crime right committed there. And thus a quandary to consider.
But if I was the judge, Mr. Strachman wouldn't even get a slap on the wrist from me because those soldiers deserve everything we can give them; while reel-to-reel is idiotic in 2012, in a war zone. But those chaplains, oh they'll have Hell to pay for distributing discs with IP far and wide.
This made me feel better about... everything. (Score:3)
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell yes! This guy is my fucking hero of the day...
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. At $150,000 for willful infringement, and 330,000 copies, he's looking at $49,500,000,000, in damages. (SRC: 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2)).*
That's about 1/3 of Hollywood's combined gross for every movie released 1996 and 2012 (as of last weekend). (SRC: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/ [the-numbers.com])
No due process problem with that.
--AC
*Actually, the statutory damages are per work, not per infringing act, so the real number would be reduced to reflect the number of titles he copied, not the number of copies he made).
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it was more to the point going after him would be a huge PR Issue.
1. Sue a 92 year old man
2. Sue a World War II vet.
3. Sue someone giving something to the troops that their own personal expense.
4. Do this during an election year.
Being Old, people can assume you just out of touch, at best, or that you just don't quite know what is going on. (Old people know this and play the act to get what they want)
Being a WWII vet, Society owes you for your help to save the world from Nazi and the Javanese war machine.
Giving to the troops, Every honest american should support the troops, if you don't then you are a Hippy Communist.
Election year. Those senators who are rerunning will not offer you much support, for they don't want the opponent to show that you are against the Elderly, Vets who Support the Troops.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Funny)
JAVAnese? Shit, my understanding of WWII is totally off!
Re: (Score:3)
Curse you Google! Google needs a better auto-correct.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it was more to the point going after him would be a huge PR Issue.
1. Sue a 92 year old man 2. Sue a World War II vet. 3. Sue someone giving something to the troops that their own personal expense. 4. Do this during an election year.
Being Old, people can assume you just out of touch, at best, or that you just don't quite know what is going on. (Old people know this and play the act to get what they want)
Being a WWII vet, Society owes you for your help to save the world from Nazi and the Javanese war machine.
Giving to the troops, Every honest american should support the troops, if you don't then you are a Hippy Communist.
Election year. Those senators who are rerunning will not offer you much support, for they don't want the opponent to show that you are against the Elderly, Vets who Support the Troops.
"The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything...that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about." -Noam Chomsky
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
As to your wonderful Sig.
We have never had a Democracy.
You would not want one.
We have a democratically elected constitutional republic.
Which means that we democratically elect politicians to act and make laws withing the confines of power delegated to them by a constitution.
Capitalism was not the problem. The problem is that we continue to elect people who only make laws that empower themselves.
A business can attempt to buy a politician to represent them. That is fine. Businesses and Unions do it all the time. The problem comes when the politicians make laws that create a new power that they then use against the people for the benefit of those paying for their re-elections.
The bigger problem is that all the people voting in the election know that they are being fucked. They just do not care.
So public laziness and apathy is what is wrecking the country.
The problem is that puts all the blame on us. So instead of fixing the problem we create outside enemies to blame it on. That way we can do nothing about it and it is no longer our fault.
Sleep well.
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The bigger problem is that all the people voting in the election know that they are being fucked. They just do not care.
So public laziness and apathy is what is wrecking the country.
Actually, the biggest problem is that people are not apathetic enough. We need the opposite of the get out and vote program. If people who didn't deeply research candidates didn't bother to vote, then only the votes of those who are well-informed would count. You could no longer run an election by saying, "the other guy is a socialist / the other guy doesn't care about poor people" where the vast majority vote for the guy that has the best chance of winning against the guy they hate, without realizing bo
Re:Well that's okay (Score:4, Insightful)
In the rest of the world outside of U.S., when you say "democracy", you mean a country where representatives are elected by the populace at large - kinda like U.S. Words like "republic" are largely orthogonal to that - not all representatives democracies are republics, and not all republics are democracies.
Those antiquated definitions that you use - dating back to, what, Plato? - are quaint, but pretty pointless, since no country in the world today matches your definition of "democracy" - all that do have non-sham elections, elect representatives, don't vote directly on each and every law.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
A business can attempt to buy a politician to represent them. That is fine. Businesses and Unions do it all the time.
No it isn't fine: The majority of the country does not control a business nor have a vote in a union, so this bribery ensures that some people are not represented in government.
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If the people would vote them out then we would not have this problem.
The politicians act this way because it works. It works because the people allow it.
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GP is an obvious troll, but hey - Shia family laws (aka legalized rape) in Afghanistan were adopted on U.S. watch. Which leads to the question: what good all that effort did, exactly?
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because that's our purpose — to "main and kill brown babies". They're perfectly fine, and will no doubt reach their fullest potential as humans, under the likes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. I hear that poisoned water goes well with Afghan schoolgirls' education. In fact, I hear there is no actual tyranny and oppression in the world — unless you count the US, of course.
Dipshit.
You mean the Saddam Hussein that the US installed and armed and only decided to kill when he wouldn't play ball with our oil companies? Were you referring to the Taliban that was headed by Bin Laden? Is that the same Bin Laden family the Bush's had ties to? http://www.denverpost.com/rodriguez/ci_4319898 [denverpost.com]
Who's the "Dipshit"?
People like you, who spout mindless platitudes like "Support our Troops" have the blood of innocent men, women and children on your "Dipshit" hands.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't answer the question.
It's a loaded question with false assumptions.
Is it OK? Is it justifiable?
Even if done intentionally, sometimes the answer is "yes." If the goal is justifiable and there are no practical alternatives in which one can avoid the act, then yes, the action is justifiable. Col. Paul Tibbetts flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. He killed a shitload of children that day. That said, his actions helped hasten the end of WWII, thus saving a lot more lives than were lost that day (an estimated five million). He slept like a baby from that day all the way until he died of old age. There were hundreds, if not thousands of GIs who shot and killed Hitler Youth (we're talking kids as young as 12 here), because the alternative was to be killed by them.
But then, that sort of shatters the whole sophomoric postulate in the first place, doesn't it?
Is it a decent price to pay for your own comfort?
Nice strawman, but it needs more stuffing to be believable. Maybe if the original question was along the lines of "Do our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan justify the intentional targeting and killing of children?" It would have been shown for the intellectually dishonest question it was, as it was exactly what you gents were asking in the first place. Funny thing is, the answer to that one is usually (depending on circumstance) "no" (now if the kid was walking towards me with explosives strapped to his chest, all bets are off).
Funny thing is, many people see the goals in Iraq and Afghanistan differently. Some see it as liberation from oppressors. Others see it as a grab for power/oil/whatever. The answer to the specific question of children (whether killed intentionally or incidentally) will either be written off as the cost of war, or as a horror to be stopped at all costs.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:4, Informative)
There are equally qualified historical references that strongly suggest that the military had spent a billion dollars (back when that meant something) and they were damned if they weren't going to see their new toy go BOOM!!! Moreover, we were already looking down the barrel of what we saw as Soviet competition/expansion, and we needed to scare the Schist out of them. There were a lot of politically expedient reasons to drop the bomb, on a friggin Catholic Church (near ground zero), but don't for a minute suggest it was to save American lives or hasten the end of WWII. That simply doesn't wash. In fact, in the early days of nukes there was talk of turning China and Russia into matching blue glass ashtrays, and the Army Corp of Engineers had grand plans for using nukes to build huge new canals all over the planet.
By the way, if the First bomb was necessary? Why the Second one? Why did we test the effects on nukes on our own soldiers? Why did we hide the fact that fall-out from nuke testing had seriously impacted people in eastern Nevada and south-western Utah? Why have we never talked about the mishandling of radioactive wastes from bombs or their transport through heavily populated towns and cities? The entire fiasco that has been the arms race from poison mine tailings killing innocent native Americans, to lack of a sane plan to decommission our weapons is incredibly well documented.
The whole MADD thing was mad from the start and has continued being mad to this very day. Vaporizing, incinerating and irradiating people was, is and forever will be an unconscionable act.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:5, Informative)
If if if.... wars are fought for politicians careers, and contractors shareholders. All the lofty ideals are just the lies they use to dupe 18 year old poor kids into signing up to die.
and from that BS, I would be happy to have clean hands.
My Fucking grandfather fought in Korea. He sat in a half track with machine guns gunning down DPRK soldiers for the "lofty goals" of fighting communism and keeping "South Korea" free... in a conflict that officially has outlived him. To "keep free" a country which, still to this day, arrests political dissidents who insult the government.
Lofty ideals my ass. We are allied with the Saudis....the people who only decided, after very public international pressure was applies, that maybe they shouldn't stone a woman to death who was seen in public with a man who wasn't her husband...oh yah...and gang raped by the group of men who saw her in public without said man. Yah.... tell me more about your lofty ideals.
Given who we are really talking about being in charge, and what wars are really fought for...I will take clean hands any day of the fucking week.
Re:Well that's okay (Score:4, Interesting)
I daresay I have a wider sample size than that, but it doesn't mean much since I'm a Norwegian politician, and those I've talked to are people I've come into contact with in that context. Maybe you too, presumably being American, have a sample bias? The plural of anecdote is not fact. In this case, it's probably best to google around for some polls. Much to my dismay, most polls returned by Google and Wikipedia deal with US popular opinion on the invasion rather than Iraqi popular opinion, but I did find one.
Overall, 59% of those questioned think Britain's role is negative, 22% positive; 64% say the US is negative, 18% positive; 68% view Iran negatively, 12% positively. Also, 56% think the 2003 invasion was wrong (up 6%), while 42% say it was right (down 7%).
Source: BBC [bbc.co.uk]
Re:I hope they sue him. (Score:4, Interesting)
Which, of course, is why they won't go after him. But I wonder if inaction in this case would work against them in future cases?
Re:"I am only doing it for the troops" defense (Score:3)
So - ACTUALLY do it for the troops!
For every digital work, if you send a copy to a Troop, with the postal receipt to prove it, what happens? Does he only escape because of some combination of being A, a Vet, B, 92, or C, having spent so much?
Suppose it's like a buck to mail a DVD in a compact mailer - is that a new copyright loophole? Or without those statuses above do you get crushed in flames?
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I think it's funny that CSS was completely useless here.
Only here? :)
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Re:Stealing is bad (Score:5, Interesting)