Does Quality Mean Nothing to Pirates?

It's a typical Saturday afternoon in late summer of 2005. I'm doing some wash down at the local laundromat. I just stand there, watching the fuzzy TV tuned to Telemundo with one eye and the hypnotic swirl of soap and boxer shorts with the other. My daydreaming is suddenly interrupted by an unassuming woman peddling some DVDs. Out of curiosity I take a look at what she has to offer. Amongst her collection is a copy of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Having wanted to see the hyped film but not wanted to venture into a movie theater, I purchased a copy for eight dollars.

I took the bootleg home that night and watched it. I got the gist of the movie but when it was released on DVD, I went out a purchased a retail copy. Is it because I have a conscience? Perhaps. Is it because I wanted to see the film without squinting, turning up the volume to the max or learning to ignore the audience laughing and/or blocking the view by standing up? Absolutely.

The new Indiana Jones film is best viewed badly cropped with washed-out colors and barely audible dialogue.

Film piracy is running rampant. In 2005, the MPAA estimated that they lost $6.1 billion in revenue worldwide due to to widespread copying of bootlegged films. I find it hard to believe that many people would put up with a barely enjoyable film experience. I suppose watching the latest release in a quality below that of a VHS tape recorded in SLP (and dunked in dirty water for good measure) is a necessary inconvienence when the notion of going to a movie theater or just waiting for a DVD or cable release gives your eyes an excuse to roll.

Nowadays, downloading films off of file sharing sites with tools such as BitTorrent has become easier for the average computer user. As a consequence, friends, neighbors and coworkers are trying to extol the "flawlessness" of their ill-gotten copy of Hit Movie 4: Things Blow Up. Thanks, but no thanks.

The intent of this article is not to lecture anyone on copyright infringement. I'm just questioning the logic of people who profess a love for movies trying to justify the heinous quality of their downloaded films. I often get the line, "it looks just like a legitimate DVD release". And it does, but only if the data from that theoretical DVD was downgraded heavily to fit on a 3-inch CD and someone decided to put a crying baby on the main audio track.

Ironically enough, some of the biggest proponents of bootlegged movies that I know personally are also the ones with the most money poured into their home theater setup. 52" LCD HDTV on the wall connected to 7.1 Dolby surround sound systems with bass that can shake the whiskers off a cat three miles away. Sometimes they even have a brand spanking new Blu-Ray player as well. Yet all they watch are these horrible looking and sounding illegal copies. Seriously, why even bother?