So an anonymous couple in their early 60s have recently dabbled into media piracy. It used to be that people who shared ripped DVDs were anonymous freshmen living in the dorms.
Not anymore.
On two separate occasions these members of the elder set have now copied a DVD they purchased, and now received a full DVD wallet of Christmas classics.
This officially means that DVD copying has become mainstream.
And I think that’s great. In the wallet of the Christmas DVDs received from a friend that gave them out as Holiday gifts, there were several movies they already owned on DVDs, and then several very old and obscure chestnuts I’d never heard of, along with some well known classics.
Chances are that Couple X would never have bought or rent these ever, but now that they know that they are available, I could see them buying one or two of them to get the packaging.
But, regardless, they pirated, they are delighted by these films and I can see them getting hooked.
They also recently asked for help in copying a DVD they purchased to give to their friend. And I think once they get an easy system down they will do more of this in the future. They buy a lot of media and love to pass along the ones the buy (previously they just watch once and then give it away to friends and family, but now I could see them passing along a copy).
I think the solution to this for the media companies is not to clamp down more, the genie is way out of the bag, but to become even more open, especially with their libraries that don’t get watched much. If Couple X’s Tivo box was hooked up to a massive back catalogue of those Holiday films, I’m sure they’d pony up a few bucks to watch those flicks, or put up with Hulu-style ads.
In short, the tools for piracy have become easy enough for the least savvy to use them. And the DVD will remain strong over BluRay just because it’s easier to copy for the foreseeable future.
5 Comments
December 21, 2008 at 11:09 pm
My mom comes to visit from Australia twice a year. This time she brought with her a whole bunch of DVDs she wanted copies of to give to friends. She had received such copies from friends and then went out and purchased pretty much all that artist’s work – some dozen DVDs.
My mom is heading for 80 next year and just started blogging at http://letterstoann.com. who’d have thought.
Philip
December 21, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Here in Japan, I think people rent much more than they ever go to a movie theatre. Perhaps this is why DVDs cost $40+; so the studios have a way to make the money they don’t recoup theatrically. Music CDs are also rented often. It costs around $30 to buy an album, so renting & copying is much cheaper. Maybe this, again, shows that people are much more likely to copy media when it is too highly priced.
I know people in their 60s who have their kids burn DVDs (movies/TV) so that they can’t watch them later. So even if they won’t learn themselves, there’s always someone to do it for you.
December 22, 2008 at 12:40 am
my 89 year old grandma pirates media like a maniac and has for years. — maybe it’s the only thing keeping her ticking?
it’s the only reason she upgraded from mac os 9 to 10, just so she could burn dvd’s.
December 23, 2008 at 9:48 pm
If you really want to see examples of Old People using New Tech, go to the Moscow flea market. Gotta be one of the Ground Zero sites for content piracy on this planet. I saw Blu-Ray disks of Spiderman 3 hanging from clothespins the week the damn movie came out … a sight which caused a fried of mine in the movie business to have a minor myocardial infarction.
Anyway. There, the old, wrinkled babushkas squat on Tajik rugs next to battered laptops or desktops running off electricity jerry-rigged from nearby streetlights. The rug is strewn with the cardboard inserts for the jewel cases. You pick which movie you want, and they burn it on the spot for you.
The real deal, the selling point, is that you can opt for a low-quality (MPEG-1 or VHS-quality) version of the movie, in which case they can cram up to four different movies onto one DVD. Kinda like a mix tape. The old crones are fierce hagglers, and know what the latest, hottest movies are, how much they can charge for them, and can adjust the audio tracks while burning to include Russian, German, English or Spanish overdubbing & subtitles.
Necessity is a mother.
January 15, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I’m 49 years of age and come from the time of tapping your friends album to a cassette tape. Still have a couple of them laying around here. Burned a couple DVD’s using Mactheripper but the process was slow and compressed quality noticeably poorer that store bought DVD. For me now, the price and extras of DVD”S is well worth the purchase.