Film Piracy Dilemma

What should you do when the theft of intellectual property affects you personally? In my case I bought a DVD online that I’m almost certain was recorded from a television broadcast and sold without a license. My dilemma is that I want to add the film to my small collection and cannot find it for sale anywhere else.

The film is Ring of Fire, a little-known 1961 thriller starring David Janssen and Joyce Taylor and directed by Andrew L. Scott. To summarize the plot, a trio of juvenile delinquents kidnap a deputy sheriff in a small Washington town and later start a forest fire that threatens the town. There are a few issues in the script, but the acting is good and the cinematography is even better. For a 50-year-old film, the special effects in the disaster scenes are great.

The DVD arrived in the mail a few days ago and I watched it right away. From the quality of the video, right off I thought it might have been made from a TV recording. That was confirmed when the TCM.com logo appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the screen at two points during the film. Nevertheless, in general I was happy with my purchase, although the scene where Joyce Taylor pulls a gun out from under her shirt wasn’t as sexy as I remembered it from when I first saw the film as a kid.

Then I started wondering about the source.

Before sending email about the TCM.com logo to the web site where I purchased the DVD, I visited the Turner Classic Movies web site. Here’s what they say about licensing:

TCM does not generally handle licensing elements of the films it airs on its network. We suggest you search for the film on www.tcmdb.com to determine which studio owns the film you are interested in, and then go to that studio’s website for information on how to submit licensing requests.

My purpose isn’t to out the web site that sold me the DVD. It is possible that the purveyor licensed the film, although I doubt if he went to the trouble or the expense. When I asked him about the TCM.com logo, he pointed me to pages on his web site that explain how he has built his collection of rare movies (TV broadcast masters are a major source) and how he adds quality during the remastering process. He also said I could return the DVD for a refund. Is that a tacit admission of wrongdoing? He probably feels that he is doing collectors a great service at a fair price.

So do I. I would like to own the film for two reasons. First, Ring of Fire is set in nearby Shelton, Washington, and in the Skokomish River canyon of the southeastern Olympic Mountains, an area where I and several friends have enjoyed many hours exploring the old logging roads. Second, the film features dozens of great cars from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, my favorite era for American cars.

Although the film is dated, it would be a hoot to watch it with friends just due to the setting alone. I had plans for several showings later this summer. As I said, it is hard to find.

I’m not going to argue in-depth the case for protecting the rights to intellectual property. If you don’t already agree that artists, musicians, authors, film makers, and other creative people need to be compensated for their efforts, I’m not sure how to convince you. While a single instance of consuming content without paying for it—a practice that is becoming increasingly common in our digital age—likely doesn’t matter, such piracy, if unchecked in the aggregate, lessens the incentive to create great new content.

Full disclosure: I worked for a company that makes software. I strongly believe that people should pay for the software they use. That belief extends to art, books, films, and similar content, digital or not. The problem is compounded when people use pirated content to create products that they later sell. But should it extend to a film made in 1961 that probably isn’t paying out royalties any more and likely would cost more to license than a small volume of DVD sales could justify?

What bothers me is the seller’s apparent attitude and operating policy. He seems to assume that his customers are dumb, don’t care, and are unwilling to try to right a small wrong. In other words, do whatever you can get away with to make a buck and issue a refund if anyone complains. Sign of the times? What if every business operated that way?

So what do I do? Returning the DVD likely won’t deter the web site from selling unlicensed DVDs in the future (although it might if more customers complained). In fact, the purveyor might just resell my copy to the next customer. I trust him when he says I will get a refund. But here’s the problem—I don’t want one. I would rather own a licensed copy of the film.

Before posting this, I took an informal poll. Not one person told me to return the DVD. The general feeling was that the web site purveyor was the bad guy not me. (I don’t feel guilty now, but might if I watched the film again with friends.) Also that piracy depends on scale—it should be punished or stopped when it involves, say, thousands of copies of a well-known product, but that making a big deal about one old film is a waste of time. In effect I was told to let it go, no one would know.

At this point I’m still deciding what to do. Add a comment if you have an opinion.