http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspxBy Mark Mullen, NBC News Correspondent For all the public flogging and private government meetings about the problem of content piracy in China, perhaps the best illustration of the problem can be measured by the remarks of another American I hearden-USCommunityServer 2.0 (Build: 60608.1)http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#73741Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:49:16 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:73741AnonymousFor all the public flogging and private government meetings about the problem of content piracy in China, perhaps the best illustration of the problem can be measured by the remarks of another American I heard at a lunch here inhttp://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#74629Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:21:51 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:74629A Pirate"Fox plans to sell its movies on DVDs for as little $2.25 - $3.75 – still more than double the going rate which can be $1 or less." Ah yes, good. So I can thank all those kids pirating movies here in the US because they're helping to teach those SOBs that their prices are too high and those kids are helping to bring the prices down. Laugh all you want, one reaction from the RIAA thugs to the P2P issues was lower CD prices. It works. We've been raped by the content cartels for too long... technology has caught up and now they're forced to change there tune. Try to find me 10 consumers who feel bad about it...http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#74708Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:43:16 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:74708Jeffrey Quinn, Regina, CanadaBefore China has a snowflake's chance in a Beijing summer of cracking down on piracy and intellectual copyright, they will need to do something about income distribution. When I lived there close to ten years ago, the average monthly salary was under USD$100. Some rural places, a family was lucky to have that much in a year. Ask these people to pay $15 for a movie or hundreds of dollars for computer software? The way the income is distributed, a good chunk of those who could afford the full asking price of non-pirate DVD's are equally able to afford their own personal private movie theater. Telling people who are struggling to keep famine at bay to pay more for movies so that Hollywood movie companies can make more money strikes me as being, well, what it is.http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#74847Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:25:25 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:74847S., Los Angeles, CAThere are aspects to this story that I have yet to see reported anywhere: A couple of years ago, when I was working for Disney, we had a security meeting concerning piracy, and in particular, an investigative trip to China and Indonesia that our security team had just returned from, and they showed us pictures of what they found: huge warehouses of professional equipment – the same equipment used by Technicolor to replicate and distribute DVDs. Piracy was no secret, obviously, but we thought they were running off bad copies in their homes and selling them on street corners. No way. They were matching the cover art nearly perfectly and making a lot of money off the product. But it was worse than that. In order to get the work done, they were kidnapping people off the street and barricading them in the buildings, sometimes without food or proper care. They broke up a few of these operations and arrested the people in charge, but as far as I know, it hasn’t been reported and exposed enough to stop it altogether. The loss to the entertainment industry was widely reported, but none of this was. Even back here, it didn’t just cost the corporations this money, it cost a lot of people their jobs in order to be able to report profits to the shareholders. A lot of people I know even within the industry had no sympathy for the loss of money, because they considered the corporations greedy and charging too much for the product in the first place. But none of these other details were ever revealed. Outside of the main concern, the human rights issue, I have to wonder where the equipment came from. It’s not something you can just order out of a catalog, and even if you could, you wouldn’t just know how to use it, or how to create the cover art. So, is there someone on the inside helping and getting a kick-back? And why is this confidential? Why shouldn’t people know what’s really happening? It bothers me that these aspects continue to be ignored. I hope there will be more said about it soon.http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#75801Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:30:36 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:75801Michael Moretti, Trujillo, PeruEveryone talks about China, but copies are prolific everywhere. I'm now living in Trujilo, Peru - and I often can buy the latest DVD's here before they even have them at your local Blockbuster. They are about $1.75 each. It is not unusual to be browsing at the video store with the local police at your side. As much as China seems like the great tiger of copyright infringment - South America doesn't skip a beat. The hardest part is trying to find an original DVD, CD. Even books and medicines are more often copies than originals. The good news is that as the end consumer, I'm perfectly satisfied. And with Sony showing a surprisingly large operating profit of $1.66 billion in 05/06 - I think they should be too. http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#75869Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:26:30 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:75869Erika Walker, New York, NYThe problem lies not only in China...but every country with any access to basic electronic equipment has picked up on piracy as a means to bypass exorbent prices. This occurs right under the industry's nose in most major US cities. Obviously the losses to the entertainment industry are not impressive enough to make their prices more attractive to consumers. If you buy 5 DVD's in the store you will spend about $100 whereas you could buy a years worth of pirates for the same price. Is the public so turned off by retail pricing that they are willing to risk prosecution or purchasing a product without quality controlhttp://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#76899Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:44:30 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:76899PetePirateThere is a simple cure for piracy. Lower the cost of DVDs and CDs. There is no reason to charge upwards of $30 for a DVD. They are going about it all wrong. It's as if the industry has decided, piracy is rampant so let's make as much money as we can. There is no way a store is going to sell a DVD at a loss, yet a month after release, the price has dropped like a stone. It's a scam. It isn't "costing" the industry anything if they would just lower their profit.http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/27/70359.aspx#77078Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:40:22 GMT8a5d2dbc-a0e4-4c7a-979f-3188051f228e:77078I AM WITH STUPID ^^^^^^Everyone in American should pirate DVDs too, maybe we can eventually get Fox to sell us retail DVDs for $2.25 - $3.75. Makes you wonder why you pay $15 - $20 for a DVD when they can make a profit selling them for $2.25. Oh yeah, greed!!!!