Who uploaded Boy onto the internet? - Video

Mihi it is sad that this was reported before actual facts have been investigated - A, there is no marae next to the Waihau Bay store and did you ask if Stacey TeHau was the actual buyer of the dvd? I seriously doubt she has been there at all and is speaking for someone who has received a copy and states it is from there! The locals are adamant the DVD did not come from the store as the Pararaki Marae receives a small profit from this movie and strongly admonish any1 who has copies!

I agree with Joesph and Slain's comments. Just out of interest to those at TV3. I'm in Australia, a friend of mine was at the Canberra Kapa Haka festival and apparently there was a few people there selling copies of the movie for $15 there. Looked legit AND they sold HUNDREDS! Personally you should have released the movie in Australia soon after the release in NZ. You would have made a KILLING in Australia, and my guess is that you still will. The Sydney Film Festival was the other opportunity to see it but there were only a few viewings and they were during the week in the business hours of the day - so poor timing for most of those who would have liked to have seen it. If you look at the example of another Kiwi made movie / documentary called 'This way of life', that was also at the Sydney Film Festival, they have a website where they are selling DVD's and are sending them all around the world as per consumer demand. The 'Boy' website should have had that option - I'm still waiting for that so I can order a kosher dvd. Get it together people, if you want to make money and profit start using all types of resources and not rely on the 'big screen' all the time. If you have a 52 inch LCD gorgeous screen at home with a mean sound system, then a DVD is the way to go :)

Joseph is correct that piracy is not theft but simply copyright infringement. However it is possible to argue that anyone profiting from piracy is guilty of theft as if money is made on a product then the creators of that product should get their cut. It is also worth considering that many people who see a downloaded movie would never see it if it was not free and some decide that they like it so they then go and see it at the big screen. Those that decide they like it and go to the big screen would often take along a friend or 2 so in this situation the down loaded movie was actually a piece of free advertising. Also word of mouth advertising always results which actually should help small producers. To those who scream theft over downloaded movies consider that if you have ever watched a movie at a mates place you are guilty of breaking the same laws. The purchase or rental of a DVD only gives you the right for private viewing by you and your immediate family. Video stores pay as much as 3x the normal retail price so that they can rent them out. In the case of watching a movie at a mates place the mate is no different from an uploader and you watching the mates dvd is the same as a a downloader. As far as making money goes how hard would it be for producers to create there own upload with a little advertising at the beginning (1-2mins) and have the advertisers pay per download, use bit torrent to reduce the upload cost by passing that automatically (the very essence of bit torrent) to downloaders and assume that each download will be shared outside the internet to a couple more people. Doing it this way while possibly not generating as much revenue per viewing would likely generate a much higher volume of viewers which would automatically offset the lower revenue per viewing. This also cuts out the middle men ie distributor and retail mark ups (which are very high) don't need to be added to the cost of getting a movie to the public.

Piracy is theft mate. Your are taking away rights to something you have have not purchased the rights to. A delay in sales is part of taking the film to places and building up to it's release to gain more awareness of the film and the wait maybe for a better suited release date. About the price i do kinda agree...the price could be better but I still don't understand how people can copy movies done by small time movie makers. Whoever it is is a disgrace to NZ

First of all, it's not theft, or stealing. It's copyright infringement. Secondly, the films been out for 13 weeks. There's obviously a demand for an international release, and a DVD release for consumers. Why has this not been done sooner? I can't seen any reasonable excuse in 2010 for not releasing films worldwide on the same day. Thirdly, a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Just because someone downloads a film, this does not equate to one lost FULL PRICED sale. It simply doesn't work like this. Finally, MAKE THE FILM LEGALLY PURCHASABLE ONLINE. iTunes, or whatever. Not for $35 bucks, or even $25 bucks. Make it $10 or $15 and THOUSANDS of people will buy it.

Tom Revill: Piracy is not that complicated. Theft is pretty simple. What makes it worse is that some people are saying it's "bad" theft because they stole from locals! Theft is theft no matter who you steal from. If you want to see it, pay for it legitimately. If you can't afford to, get a job and then see it!!

I am a student studying piracy as a part of my masters at Massey University. Needless to say piracy is complex issue. The creative industry needs to be on top of piracy by releasing DVD's before pirates. The New Zealand creative industry needs to look into multiple ways of distributing films simultaneously and should not rely on the box office alone.

the quality isn't that great, looks more like a cam footage. I'd also be very concerned if the lady on the show didn't realise she had brought a pirated version because it is not professional looking and does look very obvious to be pirated.

Who say's. I found it to be total drivel. 1*