Even as a filmmaker myself, I have difficulty coming down on the side of the conglomerates. I'm not a romanticist who believes pirates are necessary for the good of a culture. I just think the occasional Robin Hood is necessary when the culture is being strangled from the top down -- not that I'm calling Kim's a Robin Hood of film, but you get the idea...

Nice photos on that "longtime fixture" link. Having moved far away, I'd completely forgotten what an oppressive, dark, and hopelessly unaffordable fortress/jail/zoo NYC is.

As a regular customer of Kim's, I'm kind of surprised to hear this. The only bootlegs I was aware of (as far as DVDs go) were titles either out of print, or otherwise unavailable. I never saw bootlegged copies of commercially available titles. Without that place, where else would I obtain SKIDOO on DVD?

In terms of the staff, the gang in the video rental section are fine -- harmless, friendly film geeks. I never experienced a bad attitude from them. The CD floor, however, is another story.

And to Flickhead -- ouch! Yet you are so right on every count!

Justin, I do think I get the idea, or at least I hope I do. I think that, as with most issues, there are very few absolutes and an almost unlimited number of, shall we say, extenuating circumstances. You might remember, for example, Jonathan Rosenbaum writing about SuperHappyFun in Cinema Scope 21: "And speaking as someone who enthusiastically aspires to economic incorrectness whenever it's legal, I can only hope this cheerful enterprise can stay in business - especially if one considers that at least half of the titles I recently purchased from this source are extremely unlikely to ever come out on commercial labels."

In those cases, seems to me, not only will piracy be inevitable, it's hard to not also admit I'm actually glad that (black) market forces will always be working at all hours to satisfy these needs. Some of the filmmakers in question might actually be glad, too. It's pretty clear, for example, that Todd Haynes happily turns a blind eye to the many, many copies of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story floating around out there, for example.

At the opposite end of the sliding and often slippery scale, of course, would be Torrential Siths and so on. Wrong, inexcusable, theft, etc., etc. But in between, there are vast oceans and riverlets, whole continents and far-flung archipelagoes where whole sets of different rules apply. I suppose it's the best we can do to navigate them responsibly.

And quietly, of course. {g}

FB, I'll bet to some folks, even friendly film geeks are scary!

I only deal with the Kim's on Bleecker & LaGuardia, but I have a hard time believing that it's killing Claire Denis or Ingmar Bergman that they're losing the one-cent residual on rentals that, as Filmbrain says, have no American audience whatsoever. (By contrast, the profits they're losing from American studios and distributors who won't distribute great films by these master artists, for retail or for rental--that I can imagine being mad about.)

And the staff at the Bleecker store, which is all DVD/video, are totally great. You are completely invited, as a customer or even a shelf-browser, to hop into the "[i]Fat Girl[/i] vs. [i]Pianiste[/i]" debate being waged behind the counter as you wander past. I love those kids.

on a sidenote, but connected... the severely US-inspired swedish antipiracy agency Antipiratbyrån (APB for short) representing software makers, record companies and movie companies, got slapped by a government decision declaring APBs datacollection methods illegal. APB is also in trouble since previously being outed for using a mole (breaking quite a few laws as well as employer confidence) at an ISP to get information on prospective pirates. Will for the first time in history an antipiracy agency be deemed an espionage and extortion operation by a court? Will the tiniest nations stand up for rights and sanity or will it take it up the arse from across the pond? Who really owns The Internet? The excitement is palpable.

Meanwhile swedish and US film studios alike churn out bland films, crappy DVDs, sequels and remakes while the Asian continent, brimming with pirates, terrorists and gay asians as well continue to please the global cinephiliacs with good film, booming sales and high quality DVDs.

I rest my case.

broader information + wider distribution = better results.

I doubt the DVD-R of Wim Wenders' SUMMER IN THE CITY brought it on... the NY Post reports it's not about the movies, but DJ mixes; 5 employees ranging in age from 19 to 31 "allegedly spent three days in a back room making mix-tapes of popular rap songs, police said. The five workers were charged with trademark counterfeiting. A few record-industry executives joined cops outside the store and helped point out what police said were the "mixes of a variety of hip-hop songs and compilations the employees were selling," police said."

Yes, according to this link, "All of the CD-Rs and DVDs were described by an RIAA spokesperson as "urban in nature" — mixtapes, featuring music by artists such as 50 Cent, Nelly, Alicia Keyes and Jay-Z."

However, any crackdown on the highly visible cinephilia-friendly video stores like Kim's that regularly carry imports and dubs of undistributed or OOP films in a handful of US cities would be disasterous to film culture. The amount of money being generated by these video oases is a pittance compared to their cultural worth.

Agreed, naturally. Just thought I'd swing by with a few updates: Commentary from Grady Hendrix and Greg Allen and an experiment of sorts from Karina Longworth at Cinematical; her audio report isn't exactly Woodstein caliber but it is novel.