An Argument Against Piracy (As If It Even Needed One) - justin_guber

An Argument Against Piracy (As If It Even Needed One)

Moon river's playing on the speakers of the outdoor area of the Old Wing Coffee Bean of One Utama. I'm sat smack in the middle, facing the highway, and the faint smell of durian is in the air.
(Who the flying fuck brings durian to Coffee Bean? Does an Arabica blend complement the pungent odour of the king of fruits?)
I'm sat here surfing on-line, salivating over the Clerks II special edition on the View Askew website, thinking about the movies I've been watching and the DVD's I want and all these thoughts in my head just strengthen what I've known all along.
Piracy sucks.
I've got DVDs that are out of sync. I've got DVDs with incredibly shitty transfers. But most of all, I've got DVDs that won't play, even though they played two years ago, or even one year ago, or even three days ago. The shelf life of pirated DVDs is insanely short. Especially the current ones on the market that are obviously duplicated using a much more 'cost-effective' method which leads to a short lifespan. You can tell just by putting the DVD up against the light - the fuckers are see through, for Gods sake! Compare it with an original DVD, shiny and silvery, as opposed to the current pirate batches, gold and transparent and not worth a damn. And since I have an original branded DVD player, not many of the current pirated DVDs run on it.
And isn't it strange that, instead of taking advantage of this fact so as to point out the poor quality of pirated DVDs, manufacturers in Malaysia instead produce DVD players that are specifically designed to play the shittiest duplicated DVDs known to man? Anyone notice that?
Yes, I know. I made a movie about piracy which didn't explicitly state the evils of piracy (if you thought I was gonna cop out like Remp-It did by having the guy die you must be out of your mind) but that doesn't mean I believe in it. I don't condone it. I'm just stuck in the same situation that I presented in the movie: that in Malaysia, piracy is the only choice.
And it's pissing me off more and more. Case in point: there are only two of the movies from my Kevin Smith collection that actually work on my DVD player - my original Clerks X box set and Jersey Girl (which I actually enjoy as a movie, but don't really feel the need to watch it repeatedly). Mallrats stalls at the one hour mark, Chasing Amy refuses to play, Dogma is jumpy and Clerks 2 flat out refuses.
It's bugging me more and more these days, because I'm a repeat watcher kinda guy, and I want my fucking movie dose. And I eat up movies like M&M's, there's no way I can afford to buy the movies off Amazon, and even then, there's no way I can know for certain the movies'll come through. My friend ordered Buena Vista Social Club three years ago off of Amazon and it's still with customs.
Sigh... maybe I should make me one of those powerpoint presentations about piracy the way Gore did about the environment, tour some colleges or something. Try to make a difference. Tell the country what needs to be done, try to get some shit moving in the bowels of the government.
Then I could film it like Gore did and release it. Hah.

8.12.06 08:26

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