Navigational Things
Main
Incredibles
Business
Society
Terrorism
Propaganda
Time Travel
TV Torrents
BT vs DMCA
Pirates: AWOL
VAT Stats
Links

My friend who bought The incredibles on DVD, just 2 hours after midnight on the day of release (18th of March, 2005), was not best pleased to find himself being preached at by the product he'd just paid for.

The UK "2 Disc Collectors Edition" package for The Incredibles - only just released at the time of writing - contains a leaflet from the "Piracy Is A Crime" campaign, with the usual untrustworthy statistics ("90% of all pre-release pirate DVDs are illegally filmed from the back of a cinema with a camcorder") provided by their friends, the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

"I bought the 2-disc collector's edition of the incredibles without a second thought. I just saw that it had been released and bought it. And now I was a happy customer.

But when I opened up the case I was less than impressed; there was little postcard warning me about the dangers of pirated pre-release dvds, complete with a grainy shot from The Incredibles to illustrate the supposed poor quality of said pirated DVDs.

Way to go guys - the people who've just bought your DVD are exactly the people who need (misleading) warnings about the dangers of pirated DVDs. Especially when your example is a pirated DVD of the film that that the warning comes in.

There's also a staggaring irony here. I missed The Incredibles at the cinema and the only reason that I was so ready to plonk down my money the moment I saw the DVD was because I'd been able to see a leaked screener of it a couple of weeks previously."

To contrast with the image on the leaflet, he gave me a comparable frame from the screener copy (a pre-release DVD used for reviews and awards shows - such as voting for the Academy Awards) which was made available online in early December last year. Roll over the image below (or just click on it, if you're not javascript-inclined) to see the difference between the faked-up scare story and what's actually available to modern copyright infringers.

Move your mouse pointer across the picture to switch images

The Incredibles, ™+© Disney/Pixar - images used in accordance with Fair Use principles