92-Year-Old Pirates DVDs To Send To Troops

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Normally we do not condone piracy but, at least in this case, this guy deserves props for pirating. How many DVDs has this 92 year old man sent to our troops overseas? More than 300,000 since 2004. Damn shame the actual movie studios didn't send a single movie to our troops in the same time period. :(

"It's not the right thing to do, but I did it," says a 92-year-old man from New York who has become something of a folk hero to the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who have been on the receiving end of thousands of DVDs he pirated for their use. "If I were younger... maybe I'd be spending time in the hoosegow." He estimates that he's copied and shipped more than 300,000 discs since he started his operation in 2004.
Click to expand...
 
Ib4Soapbox....oh wait.

Seriously though this guy is doing something good for the troops so I say more power to him since the movie industry doesn't give 2 shits about the military and are all money grubbing assholes. Maybe they can learn something from this old man in being appreciative of the freedoms given to you by those in uniform.
 
This guy cared, about our troops, at an inverse proportion to the movie studios. So I say 'good on ya.'
 
I have to find it kind of funny when people talk about piracy for personal use and suddenly everyone is a fucking basement-dwelling thief, but this guy does it for troops and it's totally fine.

I support this man.
 
MavericK96 said:
I have to find it kind of funny when people talk about piracy for personal use and suddenly everyone is a fucking basement-dwelling thief, but this guy does it for troops and it's totally fine.

I support this man.
Click to expand...

Funny I was thinking the same thing.
 
$250k a movie (max they can charge you per movie iirc) times 300k movies is $75,000,000,000
300k times 10 years (maximum prison time per offense iirc) is 3,000,000 years

i personally applaud him
 
Steve said:
Damn shame the actual movie studios didn't send a single movie to our troops in the same time period. :(
Click to expand...

Not entirely true, as the NY Times article states
studios do send military bases reel-to-reel films, which are much harder to copy, and projectors for the troops overseas.
Click to expand...
.

Even when being charitable they are worried about piracy :rolleyes:
 
While on deployment in Iraq back in 2004, there were vendors that were allowed to come on base to sell their wares. The most popular vendor(s) had a MASSIVE amount of pirated DVD's, usually packing 2-4 movies (some at great quality, some terrible) on one disk. At $2-5 a piece, I was never behind on the latest releases, and even got a Futurama collection, with it's own bookshelf case and inserts for $30, that looked beautiful.

From the writing on some of the disks and the movies, it looked like most of them came from Russia.
 
Bash said:
Except that this guy by himself has fucking housed that charity.
Click to expand...

The soldiers are not there to watch movies. They're there to work. I think 45,000 movies are more than enough to go around. The numbers are still going up.
 
I can see what the MPAA is thinking .. "so, if we sue him can we force the debt upon his great great grandkids? Garnish their wages and such? Worth a try."
 
+1 to this guy. I can remember my boat getting a lot of free movies in the mid-late 90's. We even got Star Wars episode 1 free and a week early, despite all of Lucas' oddball release restrictions. Shame things seem to have changed now.
 
Azhar said:
The soldiers are not there to watch movies. They're there to work. I think 45,000 movies are more than enough to go around. The numbers are still going up.
Click to expand...

Please tell me that wasn't a serious message. :eek:
 
Azhar said:
The soldiers are not there to watch movies. They're there to work. I think 45,000 movies are more than enough to go around. The numbers are still going up.
Click to expand...

lol Seriously?

You are seriously going to claim you believe that soldiers where derelict in there duty's because of DVD's laying around that base.
 
Bash said:
lol Seriously?

You are seriously going to claim you believe that soldiers where derelict in there duty's because of DVD's laying around that base.
Click to expand...

Yes. Soldiers who watch movies are aiding and abetting the Taliban. Omar watches everyone through their screens.

But try not to take what I said out of context. I said they're getting a lot of movies by legal means. Hate the MPAA all you want - and I do - but I'll never justify piracy. Not even to people who served our country in the military.
 
and try and keep in mind soldierstomovies.org is just one of many charity.
 
Azhar said:
Yes. Soldiers who watch movies are aiding and abetting the Taliban. Omar watches everyone through their screens.

But try not to take what I said out of context. I said they're getting a lot of movies by legal means. Hate the MPAA all you want - and I do - but I'll never justify piracy. Not even to people who served our country in the military.
Click to expand...

You made it sound as if even with legal shipments you would be against that many.
What a soldier does when he actually gets some free time abroad is none of your business.
 
Azhar said:
The soldiers are not there to watch movies. They're there to work. I think 45,000 movies are more than enough to go around. The numbers are still going up.
Click to expand...

right... the soldiers are there to dick around with setting up reel-to-reel projectors and screens in the middle of the desert.

god forbid they throw in a dvd into a portable player and get a quick 90 minutes of entertainment before going out and getting shot at and blowed up.

...oh wait
 
Link to NYT article and audio clip

He sounds like a nice guy.

If he was ripping store-bought discs outright, I'd have an issue with it. But buying street copies (of dubious and varying quality) and duplicating them and sending em' off to the troops seems mostly harmless to me.
 
I call bullshit on this story. That's like 100 DVD's a day for 8 years. I just can't imagine someone burning 100 dvd's a day for 8 years no matter how much he loves Jesus and our Troups.
 
If he sent anything by micheal bay, recent films by cameron or that shitty hurt locker film, I say hang hiim! (damaging troops with shitty films). Also shoot the MPAA for allowing them to be produced.
 
Submarines get many movies from the studios on 8mm tapes in the interval between theater runs and home release. These must be swapped 1 for 1 with new movies, but over the course of my time we got fewer and fewer batches of new flicks.

We also had a network set up on deployments with all kinds of content, so we never lacked for something to watch.
 
Azhar said:
Yes. Soldiers who watch movies are aiding and abetting the Taliban. Omar watches everyone through their screens.

But try not to take what I said out of context. I said they're getting a lot of movies by legal means. Hate the MPAA all you want - and I do - but I'll never justify piracy. Not even to people who served our country in the military.
Click to expand...

So...everyone who does not join the armed forces is aiding and abetting the Taliban as well? Because they're wasting their time being lawyers, and accountants, and bankers, and engineers, and doctors...
 
DeathPrincess said:
If he sent anything by micheal bay, recent films by cameron or that shitty hurt locker film, I say hang hiim! (damaging troops with shitty films). Also shoot the MPAA for allowing them to be produced.
Click to expand...

The Hurt Locker was bad? De fuck? :confused:


While this is for a good cause, it still doesn't make it right.
 
Awesome!

Too bad the copyright agencies will be all over his ass now that this has gone fully public. :( Poor guy is 92 and they'll probably have him killed due to the stress and all they will be putting on him.

He's done more good than the MPAA has ever done... ever. What good does the MPAA do in society, think about it. RIAA, MPAA and all these agencies have zero purpose as far as citizens are concerned. They only serve the government.
 
Azhar said:
The soldiers are not there to watch movies. They're there to work. I think 45,000 movies are more than enough to go around. The numbers are still going up.
Click to expand...

I can't wait until your ass is over there. I bet you'd like a movie or two to help keep you going, oh wait, I forgot, anti-piracy is what keeps you going, right. :rolleyes:
 
Red Squirrel said:
Awesome!

Too bad the copyright agencies will be all over his ass now that this has gone fully public. :( Poor guy is 92 and they'll probably have him killed due to the stress and all they will be putting on him.

He's done more good than the MPAA has ever done... ever. What good does the MPAA do in society, think about it. RIAA, MPAA and all these agencies have zero purpose as far as citizens are concerned. They only serve the government.
Click to expand...

Just remember that Movies and other forms of digital goods are NOT essential and are only there for entertainment purposes. Everyone always seems to believe they are entitled to certain things in digital goods(video games, movies ect.)
 
To be fair, some studios do give the armed forces movies in advance of DVD/Blu-ray release. This is for the military base "theater" though not individual soldiers on the front line.
 
Red Falcon said:
I can't wait until your ass is over there. I bet you'd like a movie or two to help keep you going, oh wait, I forgot, anti-piracy is what keeps you going, right. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Actually my hearing loss is what keeps me from being allowed to serve, but thanks for your concern.
 
"If I were younger... maybe I'd be spending time in the hoosegow."
Click to expand...

Also, he'd probably not be using the word "hoosegow". But pulling this kind of thing off at 92, he's earned the right to, I think.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top