Railfan DVD Piracy
By Charles Smiley -- www.cspmovies.com
Over the years I have been informed about some people selling counterfeited copies of our DVD videos. Since all Charles Smiley DVDs are 100% gold-mastered (pressed) DVDs it’s easy to tell a counterfeit copy from a real factory copy. All of our DVDs come from the same factory that many Hollywood movies are made in. None of our DVDs are “burned one-at-a-time on someone’s PC.
Counterfeit DVDs that are “burned” use the data off of one of our real DVDs and the data is ripped and burned onto multiple DVD-R blanks that can be bought for pennies at any computer or stationary store. Once burned, the data-side has a fairly distinct band near the outer edge that indicates where the program ended
Burned DVDs often have a slight purple sheen to the plastic too. Real pressed DVDs are silver looking and the band near the outer edge where the program ends cannot be distinguished. The reason pirated copies are burned is that pressed DVDs are only made in lot-sizes of 1000-pieces minimum. Usually the products are sold as “new” and at very low prices that do not seem right.
The facing-side of our DVDs should have a silk screened color label. And the printed artwork insert in the box’s cover is always from an Offset Printing Press – not something from a consumer PC printer. These are a few spotting features to look for.
We have lots of good museums, hobby shops and dealers that make it to train and model shows. They sell our real products - and some of the products from our competitors too. They are hurt by these counterfeiting pirates as well.
A number of pirated rail videos have been noticed on Youtube. Some have been ours. We have a number of short “preview” videos on Youtube that we put up. If you see a full-length show of ours on Youtube you can be sure that it has been stolen and illegally uploaded. Please let us know by email at -- info@cspmovies.com
If you see any of our items that seem suspect, give us a call or email. Let us know who the individual might be and what train show you saw the material in. We know who our DVDs are distributed to and who our dealers are. The same thing applies to notifying our competitors as well – let them know if you suspect their products are being counterfeited.
If this gets much worse, it will be less likely that anyone will bother making new content. To make professional-grade videos I can tell you that the video and audio equipment, software, licensing, film to video conversion, content and music licensing, graphics generation and many other items can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment. And that doesn’t even include taxes and operating-costs or the value of the hours of editing and creation that are made by the people involved. Nobody wants to spend months making a product that some goon counterfeits.
