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Piracy

Disney Pulls TV Channels From Vietnam, Govt 'Concerned' Piracy Will Run Riot (torrentfreak.com) 61

An anonymous reader writes: A newspaper run by the Communist Party of Vietnam is reporting the "disappearance" of a number of popular channels from pay TV packages. Citing National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild as examples, the paper notes they're owned by Disney. Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is said to be "concerned" that the withdrawal will allow piracy to run rampant in Vietnam. Multiple high-level trade reports in the U.S. note that piracy has been rampant for years.
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Disney Pulls TV Channels From Vietnam, Govt 'Concerned' Piracy Will Run Riot

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  • If there is no legal way of seeing the show then there is no lost sale by the piracy. Disney has decided Vietnam's money isn't good enough, so honestly the Vietnamese population should just shrug and download.

    • If there is no legal way of seeing the show then there is no lost sale by the piracy. Disney has decided Vietnam's money isn't good enough, so honestly the Vietnamese population should just shrug and download.

      Their latest business decisions are so par for the course that Disney golfers are taking the double bogey instead.

      With a drop. On the green. A foot from the hole.

      • Coming soon - "The Marvels 2, Rise of the Flerkens!"

  • Piracy run rampant? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @03:36PM (#64007907) Homepage

    I don't know about Vietnam, but I once went to a video store in Malaysia. It was a full storefront in a mall, with a logo, and all the employees wore uniforms like a regular store. There was one shelf near the front door selling "import" DVDs—in other words, legitimate ones—and the rest of the whole store was stocked with bootlegs. I mentioned casually to one of the employees that, at the time, you could not buy Lucasfilm movies like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark in the U.S., and he seemed genuinely perplexed. They all knew the product the were selling was unauthorized; whenever they got a tip that the "copyright cops" were going to raid them, they just didn't open their doors that day. But they really didn't seem to realize just how sophisticated the video piracy industry in Asia really was.

    • You seem confused. It was a regular store according to their norms.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem for companies like Disney is that different markets need different pricing. While an American might pay $30 for a movie, A Russian might only pay $3 for it.

      If they make the discs available in Russia for 1/10th the price, people will try to export them. They tried to limit that with region locking. Internet services have the same problem. You can get YouTube Premium for 1/10th the price by setting your location to Brazil before signing up.

      Thing is, if Disney doesn't even want to be in the Vietnam

  • Piracy has been popular in this country since day 1 of the internet. They download anything from movies, shows, ebooks, OS, software, photos, etc... It's too bad that the market isn't profitable enough for Disney but honestly the in-profitability was in fact caused by piracy to begin with. I don't think streaming services will ever be profitable. I know for a fact that well known companies with market caps above $1B and steady profitability use pirated software in their work computers. Even a country wide e
    • Yeah, it's not just Vietnam. I remember regularly shopping at Russia's (perhaps the world's?) biggest pirate market in Moscow, Gorbushka. It was allegedly "legalised" in 2001 & only sells licensed copies but whenever you go to buy anything, the attendant'll ask you, "Do you want the expensive copy or the cheap copy?" The police & other public officials shop there too.

      I suspect that online piracy has somewhat diminished its pirate DVD/Blu-ray sales by now.
  • Disney said put all of them in the basic package or have none of our channels

  • Vietnam's government cares about their own culture. If the American companies pull out there will be no legitimate market, no place for Vietnamese content to be shown, no incentive for foreign works to be translated into Vietnamese. So even as Vietnam becomes wealthier there will be no place to sell domestic content. Another worry is that all the foreign content and ideas will be completely unregulated.
  • How is there piracy when all property is held jointly by the People?

    Is NatGeo still CIA official cover or did that end with the magazine and all the foreign travel?

    Personally I will always be grateful for learning that the great photos were often one in a thousand. It substantially changed how I approached photography back in the days of film, from Velvia 50 to T-Max 3200.

    That hobby was about as expensive as one kid!

    • Vietnam has had a largely market-based economy since the 80's. The communist party is really just the old guard maintaining power while not rebranding. Also, I don't really see why they care if there's piracy of content a company in any trying to sell legitimate versions of. Disney can't claim lost sales for something it isn't trying to sell in the first place.
    • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      How is there piracy when all property is held jointly by the People?

      This joke hasn't aged well. These days, Vietnam is about as communist as China. In other words, monopolistic capitalism disguised as communism.

  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @04:37PM (#64008023)

    Disney has the most advanced legal team in the world, and is reputed to have several strategic nuclear devices. Does this mean...war?

    • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      Disney ... is reputed to have several strategic nuclear devices.

      Disney has Jedi knights. The Force is more powerful than any weapon, according to someone called Sheev Palpatine (or was it a Darth Vader saying?)

      • Disney ... is reputed to have several strategic nuclear devices.

        Disney has Jedi knights. The Force is more powerful than any weapon, according to someone called Sheev Palpatine (or was it a Darth Vader saying?)

        Last time there was trouble in this area, this was a country that defeated the world's most powerful military. But if Vader is still CEO after the fight with DeSantis, that could do it.

  • Whenever a government, especially an authoritarian one, is concerned about something you have to be careful. What's the real story and play here?

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