Sony: Avoid Spider-Man 3 Bootlegs
Published by Rachel Baumbach April 25th, 2007 in Entertainment, Movies.
Earlier today, Reuters reported that pirates in China had already created bootlegs of Spider-Man 3.
“Costing just over $1 apiece, the pirated DVDs appear to be of the actual movie, complete with a picture of the hero in a new, black spider suit which he wears for some of the film,” the news agency reported.
The only problem, as admitted by Reuters, is that the “bootleg” that they purchased on Tuesday would not play. They attributed this as “a common problem with Chinese-made DVDs, which are often made with poor equipment in dingy backrooms.”
Sony has now come out with a flat-out denial that their blockbuster has been pirated…yet. The statement from Sony is as follows:
Contrary to news reports about stolen copies of Spider-Man 3 being sold illegally on the streets in China, our investigation in China has revealed no case of the film being pirated to date.
Similar hoaxes and false alarms have occurred prior to the release of other major films. We have uncovered examples of Spider-Man 2 being sold in Spider-Man 3 boxes in China. But thus far we can find no instance where the Spider-Man 3 has appeared on DVD.
In addition, after an initial investigation of online sites worldwide, we have so far found no pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 on the Internet.
This incident underscores one of the problems with piracy – people who buy illegal movies often get ripped off themselves.
There are four main reasons for the existence of a bootleg market:
1. A product that people want
2. Unethical people willing to buy pirated goods to save money, even if the quality is poor
3. Unethical people willing to steal from others and pirate the product
4. Insufficient enforcement