‘Pirates’ drive Warner Bros from S. Korea
p2pnet news view Movies | Music | Crime:- “The United States Air Force at Osan Air Base in Songtan, South Korea, is openly allowing American service members to purchase counterfeit goods, DVDs and pirated computer/console software from carts and shops located outside the main gate,” said a 2007 p2pnet feature slugged The Pirates of Osan.
We also highlighted the US air base scandal in a more recent post, this time centering on a small-scale event in Brazil hyped by Hollywood as a major bust.
Now, “Hollywood studio Warner Brothers will end its home video and DVD business in South Korea at the end of the year due to rampant piracy,” says the Yonhap news agency, quoted by Agence France-Presse.
“One of the reasons for the pullout is a slump in the video and DVD market, resulting from online piracy and illegal downloading,” the story has a Warner Brothers Home Video Korea spokesman saying.
“Piracy used to chiefly mean robbery on the high seas,” said the p2pnet Osan post, going on »»»
And to ‘counterfeit’ something was, and still is, to copy it, usually with the intent of re-selling it as the original with currency, art, and antiquities probably as the most popular counterfeit items.
Since the end of the 20th century, the entertainment and software cartels have been running a huge media campaign under which ‘piracy’ is now principally used to portray peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing as a deadly menace and a crime ranking with murder and rape, rather than as a means by which movies and music, among other things, are being handled in the digital 21st century.
According to Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel, and Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, the Big Six Hollywood studios, their hundreds of millions of men, women and child customers around the world aren’t reasonable people looking for a fair return for their money. Rather, they’re all potential hard-case, hard-core copyright ‘thieves’ and intellectual property ‘criminals’.
The cartels try to equate files shared with sales lost and routinely and regularly lump file sharers together with ‘pirates,’ or counterfeiters, as they used to be known.
There is, of course, absolutely no relationship between the two. Counterfeiting is a crime, and no doubt about it. Sharing is, though, merely sharing. No money changes hands. No one is deprived of something he or she used to own. And it’s never been demonstrated that a file shared equals a sale lost.
Nonetheless, that’s the assertion as the corporate entertainment industries relentlessly sue their own customers in a desperate attempt to control how, and by whom, movies and music are distributed online.
Warner is, “the last remaining Hollywood company to withdraw its home entertainment business from South Korea,” says AFP, adding:
In October the studio announced plans to become the first in Hollywood to make movies available through video-on-demand in South Korea, two weeks before DVD releases.
p2pnet – The Pirates of Osan, January 2, 2007
small-scale event – ‘Large scale’ MPAA ‘anti-pirate’ bust, October 31, 2008
Agence France-Presse – Warner Brothers to close home video business in SKorea: report, November 9, 2008
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November 12th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Hmm….so if I’m to understand correctly, the best way to obtain pirated media without being persecuted by the copyright cartel is to join the US Air Force.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
LOLOLOLOL !!!!! ROFL !!!!!
So their solution is to not even TRY to sell it, instead, leaving the ONLY way to get it
through the internet ??
This is biggest case yet of cutting off the nose to spite the face I have seen to date.
They have proven once and for all that the RIAA is in fact the stupidest bunch of
dumass lawyers in existence.
I am CERTAIN that no other factors could be affecting sales in Korea.
Pansies.
Lying pansies.
November 12th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I think the jury is still out as to whom is ’stupidier’? sp?. The RIAA or MPAA.
Again, another story of, ‘lets not evolve our business model to supplant the file-sharing community with a quality product at a quality price’, but instead, ‘we’ll show them, we will take our ball and go home!’.
And Dreddsnik is right, now the best and only place to find new movies in South Korea is on a P2P, way to go MPAA.
Where do you think those kiosks got the movies to begin with? Will this hurt their ’supply’.
Not even a noticeable smidgen.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:29 am
and like i sai din 1999 why are they targeting kids that download for personal use wihtout intent on resell, especially when you have south korea and tiawan stomping ( that sa form of press ) 10000 – 20000 cdrs , dvdrs a day?
Because they can’t go after them and being angry little bastards they go after what they could.
The weak, the disabled and the poor and the least likely to know how to defend themselves.
YUP they are assholes, pure and simple, and if it were about money they’d hire those mercenaries in iraq and invade those countries.
HA can’t do that either can YA!!!
Notice who has the fastest internet on earth at the cheapest prices lately???
November 13th, 2008 at 1:26 am
The US military became a victim of copyright infringement when all that Iraq torture material was broadcast around the world – and not a single penny was paid to the content owners. that’s major piracy. If I were head of the Air force I would have ordered the bombing of CBS for that 60 minute broadcast that started it all – just like the Al Jazeera headquarters got JDAM’d (twice)
November 13th, 2008 at 10:30 am
check this out, no more lobbying crap from the RIAA/MPAA
http://bnonews.com/elections/?id=186
November 13th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Good. NOW do the same in UK,pretty please.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Unless the military puts “copy-right agents” outside the gates inspecting every single item as ppl come in, there is absolutely no way of stopping this.
I was in Bosnia and outside our gates (Camp BUTMIR), are stores that sell music. Now, many of this music was local Bosnia, Croatian type music (which I highly enjoyed and purchased), however, there where many “compilation” type disks, “concert” disks, of my favorite music, never before seen in the US (which I purhcased).
Much of this music was advertised as “domestic” (domestic to Bosnia) and the jewel boxes contain coverart that is outstanding when compared to a US jewel-case CD, meaning it looked exactly like normal cd’s as sold in the United States.
The only way to ensure that US military personnel do not purchase this music is the draconian style of all or none. I can tell you that, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, the artwork, jewel case is great, even pre-wrapped in shrink wrap !! So, unfortunately, the only way to STOP it would be to ensure and task all the gate guards to search every single person coming in to the base, and every CD that a person has on them, would have to be confiscated.
BTW, you’ll see this type of “music pirate” report aka military is supporting music pirating in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Bosnia, and well basically any/all military bases overseas. This type of story is a “gotcha” story which is designed to screw the military and make us all look bad in an overseas “light”.