BathorysGraveland: I wonder if all the people approving or praising of this guy will get banned. Piracy being such a sensitive topic, and all.
Well when it came to that pedo topic a few days ago it didn't look like the mods ran through it with a fine comb and a banhammer. I think they'd be more likely to lock a thread if they see a lot of violations.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
No but we're bored out of our freaking minds. You try living in a shithole for a year with a gym, dining facility, and going on mission for a few hours a day and see if you don't go crazy. Been there, done that. Bootlegs are the only way to get movies over there. Can't buy them, limited to 1 DVD per care package to an individual, can't download, running 15kb/s takes days to download anything.
Chairman Miaow: I love the hypocrisy up in this thread. Almost everybody has just advocated piracy.
Exactly! They should just drop by the local Afghani DVD store like everyone else. Who would let a little thing like bullets stand in the way of entertainment?
That's not the point. There are so many people on this site who will say piracy is wrong even if it's unavailable where you are.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
No but we're bored out of our freaking minds. You try living in a shithole for a year with a gym, dining facility, and going on mission for a few hours a day and see if you don't go crazy. Been there, done that. Bootlegs are the only way to get movies over there. Can't buy them, limited to 1 DVD per care package to an individual, can't download, running 15kb/s takes days to download anything.
Yeah, but I don't see that someone being bored is a great reason to break the law on their behalf. And if you can only get 1 DVD per care package how is he sending them to avoid that? If there's another method I'd wonder why others don't use it.
Can't say that what he is doing is right. For the troops, yeah, yeah, but he is still committing crime. On a massive scale. And god knows, the American military isn't quite what you would call noble in many of its endeavours and procedures.
One could argue it's a "when in Rome" situation. From having lived in that part of the world, I can guarantee that almost every DVD in Afghanistan is bootlegged anyway. And not even the decent kind of bootleg, but the sort with people standing up in front of it because it was filmed on a camcorder in the cinema.
After all, it's the kind of country where, in most parts, DVDs would be illegal full stop thanks to sharia.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
No but we're bored out of our freaking minds. You try living in a shithole for a year with a gym, dining facility, and going on mission for a few hours a day and see if you don't go crazy. Been there, done that. Bootlegs are the only way to get movies over there. Can't buy them, limited to 1 DVD per care package to an individual, can't download, running 15kb/s takes days to download anything.
Yeah, but I don't see that someone being bored is a great reason to break the law on their behalf. And if you can only get 1 DVD per care package how is he sending them to avoid that? If there's another method I'd wonder why others don't use it.
Hence why I said "per individual." Send it to a company or platoon and you can send as many as you want. Yay for loopholes. Also, and this one is awesome lol, there's no copyright laws in Iraq or Afghanistan so pirating movies is perfectly legal there
So when's his trial going to commence? The copyright mob goes after 12 year olds who download a song, so they just MUST go after this huge professional commercial pirate or they'll lose all credibility.
On the one hand, just because they're soldiers and he's 92 and a war vet doesn't excuse breaking the law.
On the other hand, I think we can all safely assume that these companies aren't losing sales/revenue here, thus eliminating the reason piracy is illegal in the first place.
On the oth... shit, out of hands. Guess I have to have an opinion on just this. I don't approve, but I don't disapprove either.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
For what it's worth i agree with you here, i find the unquestionable hero worship given to soldiers kind of disturbing...
On the other hand this guy is a total bro, how the hell do you actually manage to bootleg 300,000 dvds and send them to Afghanistan anyway?
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
No but we're bored out of our freaking minds. You try living in a shithole for a year with a gym, dining facility, and going on mission for a few hours a day and see if you don't go crazy. Been there, done that. Bootlegs are the only way to get movies over there. Can't buy them, limited to 1 DVD per care package to an individual, can't download, running 15kb/s takes days to download anything.
Yeah, but I don't see that someone being bored is a great reason to break the law on their behalf. And if you can only get 1 DVD per care package how is he sending them to avoid that? If there's another method I'd wonder why others don't use it.
I won't say it's legal but all things considered it still seems like a relatively minor infraction to me. It's all the better if it keeps some of the troops over there from doing stupid things because they're bored(Idle hands and all that). If I had to guess he probably just burns multiple movie files to said disc since most movies don't actually consume the whole 4 odd gigs of space so each single dvd he sends probably has like 4 movies I think. Perhaps he puts in multiple discs in a single dvd case?
I am a pacifist who hates our troops fighting, and even I think this is awesome.
It's not if it is right or not, its that he did something that cost him time and money and gave him no benefit to himself, to bring joy to others that didn't have the means to. While its not feeding orphans its still cool.
He wasn't doing it for profit, so I really don't see the issue here. Chances are he'll get away with it too, due to the circumstances. America seems to be an obscenely pro soldier country.
No but we're bored out of our freaking minds. You try living in a shithole for a year with a gym, dining facility, and going on mission for a few hours a day and see if you don't go crazy. Been there, done that. Bootlegs are the only way to get movies over there. Can't buy them, limited to 1 DVD per care package to an individual, can't download, running 15kb/s takes days to download anything.
Yeah, but I don't see that someone being bored is a great reason to break the law on their behalf. And if you can only get 1 DVD per care package how is he sending them to avoid that? If there's another method I'd wonder why others don't use it.
Hence why I said "per individual." Send it to a company or platoon and you can send as many as you want. Yay for loopholes. Also, and this one is awesome lol, there's no copyright laws in Iraq or Afghanistan so pirating movies is perfectly legal there
Ah I see. With 300k DVDs sending to the company or platoon seems a lot more feasible.
Well I don't think the copyright thing would help him much since he's in the US. Though I suppose it'd make it legal to have them over there once they arrive.
While his intent was admirable I still an uncomfortable with this flagrant breaking of the law. I would of far preferred if he campaigned for a charity to the intended effect.
Yeah, but I don't see that someone being bored is a great reason to break the law on their behalf. And if you can only get 1 DVD per care package how is he sending them to avoid that? If there's another method I'd wonder why others don't use it.
Hence why I said "per individual." Send it to a company or platoon and you can send as many as you want. Yay for loopholes. Also, and this one is awesome lol, there's no copyright laws in Iraq or Afghanistan so pirating movies is perfectly legal there
Ah I see. With 300k DVDs sending to the company or platoon seems a lot more feasible.
Well I don't think the copyright thing would help him much since he's in the US. Though I suppose it'd make it legal to have them over there once they arrive.
I'm not really defending him, I'm defending myself. He took that risk so whatever happens so be it but the American people won't be happy if he gets sued but not all the teenage game pirates out there.
I gotta be honest here, copyrigthts and movies and all that are pretty much joke laws at this point. They need massive reconstruction if they actually want to be effective anymore in this digital age.
However, that said, this guy may have done wrong, it was for a good cause so I will give the old dude some credit for being such a good guy to want the military forces to have some way of coping with whatever is going on over there. Good on him!
CM156: On topic, I think the MPAA going after this guy would be PR suicide. Plain and simple. So of course, they're going to do it.
They will. The way copyright law works, if you know about the violation and don't go after it, you lose the right to go after future violators. Odds are, this will end with a quick, undisclosed settlement.
Chairman Miaow: I love the hypocrisy up in this thread. Almost everybody has just advocated piracy.
Because it was for a good cause. In the greater scheme of things, most of these soldiers have bigger things to worry about than picking up a movie, so it's not like they would have bought them anyway. Might as well get some good PR.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
Soldiers get special treatment because they made a decision few will. Putting their lives on the line because the people in the Congress and the White House are a bunch of morons. You see the same amount of respect for police officers and firefighters... because their willing to risk their lives for something more important than themselves.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
Soldiers get special treatment because they made a decision few will. Putting their lives on the line because the people in the Congress and the White House are a bunch of morons. You see the same amount of respect for police officers and firefighters... because their willing to risk their lives for something more important than themselves.
It doesn't mean that we need them to make that decision right now, that it is a good decision, or that it is a laudable decision. Those are all separate from a hard decision.
Breaking the law doesn't make something wrong, and that's pretty much what this boils down to I think. A guy is helping out a ton of soldiers at absolutely no cost to anyone other than himself, I don't understand how people can have a problem with that.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
He knows that.
"It's not the right thing to do, but I did it," Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law.
"If I were younger," he added, "maybe I'd be spending time in the hoosegow."
He's an old man trying to pass the time since his wife died by getting closer to the soldiers that he identifies with because of his time in the military. If Hollywood wasn't piping the ability to get these movies in the hands of guys and girls who want to reconnect to home in some way - in other words, if he wasn't actually cutting into industry sales by what he did - what's the harm? Legally it's questionable. Morally everything can be made questionable depending on what system is being applied. But actually? Did he deprive anyone of their sales dollars by doing this? I think that would be hard to prove. These soldiers didn't buy bootlegs because they wanted to save a buck, they bought them because the commodity wasn't available otherwise. And some elderly gent gets to feel like a part of society in one that rarely makes a space for the elderly to feel essential to the community.
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
Because they have one of the worse jobs in the world and are horribly underpaid for it? Sure it doesn't give him a legal excuse to break the law, but he's 92 years old and has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people far away from their homes and family.
They chose to do that job and I doubt it was mostly for saintly reasons. It certainly isn't the kind of job that I think does the most benefit in the world anyway.
And I don't think his age excuses it, unless he isn't mentally fit.
Chairman Miaow: I love the hypocrisy up in this thread. Almost everybody has just advocated piracy.
Because it was for a good cause. In the greater scheme of things, most of these soldiers have bigger things to worry about than picking up a movie, so it's not like they would have bought them anyway. Might as well get some good PR.
But there are plenty of people on this site who will say that piracy is bad even if the game is unavailable in your area. So how is that any different, still no lost sale?
accipitre: Can you be more of a bro than this? The gratitude this man receives is overwhelming. I have mixed feelings about the matter of the piracy itself, but if it's possible to be doing it right when it comes to bootlegging DVDs, he is. The MPAA is going to have a rough time handling this one.
What he did was wrong, and he should be ashamed...PHA+SW0gaGlkaW5nIHRoaXMgaW4gc3BvaWxlciBzbyB0aGUgR21lbiBkb250IHNlZSBpdCwgYnV0IHRoaXMgZ3V5IGlzIGF3ZXNvbWUuIEFuZCByZWFsbHksIGhvdyBjYW4geW91IHN0YXkgbWFkIGF0IGEgOTIgeWVhciBvbGQgV1dJSSB2ZXQgc2VuZGluZyB0aG9zZSBib290bGVncyB0byBvdXIgYm95cyBvdmVyIHNlZXM/PC9wPg==
Mortai Gravesend: I don't see why people think soldiers deserve such special treatment. They get paid over there, they aren't saints or something. And being a WWII veteran doesn't really give him leave to break the law.
Because they have one of the worse jobs in the world and are horribly underpaid for it? Sure it doesn't give him a legal excuse to break the law, but he's 92 years old and has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people far away from their homes and family.
What do you mean one of the worst and underpaid? I'm sure a sweatshop worker in China would love to be a US soldier since a Sweatshop worker tends to have a much more dangerous job if at least as dangerous as a US soldier. That's not even mentioning the fact that people pay off college by going to the military, not necessarily "poor pay" either. Considering the US military is so corrupt and many of its members commit crimes such as murder and rape (I'm going to assume mostly against the female soldiers) and on top of that GET AWAY WITH IT, it's rather surprising more people don't just hate the military like they did during the Vietnam War.
Instead of breaking copyright law he could have bought DVDs to send to the troops. Hell, he could have started a donation campaign and sent a ton more over and probably convinced the companies to match the donations as a PR stunt.
I have total respect for the guy even at 92 he found a way to help troops overseas.It cost him alot of time,money and effort to himself that he did just to keep troops spirits up.
I wonder if all the people approving or praising of this guy will get banned. Piracy being such a sensitive topic, and all.