Herbalife Investigation: American Dream for Sale? and The Whistlblower

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ABC's Brian Ross gets answers from company under federal investigation.
ABC's Brian Ross speaks to former Herbalife executive being paid by Wall Street hedge fund manager.

Our Notes:  It's interesting that the new CEO of Herbalife comes from Walt Disney, the parent company of ABC news.  The levels of spin throughout the entire so called investigation are interesting at best.  One issue we would like to point out is the fact that the second best selling product in the world is the dream of success.  The number one best seller in the world is sex.  Combine number one with number two and you get Hollywood.  One thing that is common in all multi level companies is the cult of easy success.  It makes billions every year.

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An Historical View of Hollywood Stars and Movies 1925

Hollywood Studios 1922 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let's take a trip back in time.  The year is 1925.  What was Hollywood like during that time?  What were the big movie hits and who were the big Hollywood names?  What was the gossip going on about the stars?  Let's take a look shall we?  Motion Picture magazine for the month of May, 1925.  You have gotten all this information for a mere quarter.

Motion Picture - Magazine, May 1925 from Chuck Thompson

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The Lucy Show, Lucy and Viv Learn Karate 1963

The Lucy Show, Lucy and Viv Learn Karate, 1963.  Classic TV here on GVLN.

While all the networks keep putting out more and more garbage, we are bringing back the good old fashioned entertainment.  Shows and movies that made sense and not filled with tons of propaganda messages.  Sure, propaganda has always been a part of Hollywood, but it's more prevalent today than it used to be.  

  The old stuff made more sense and was more geared towards the American way of life and not trying to destroy it.  Beside, looking at the fashions of the period and how life used to be is incredibly interesting.  No cell phones, no computers, no security cameras, not a lot of issues. 

Publicity photo of Lucille Ball and Clint Walker from the television program The Lucy Show. The episode is "Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty". Walker takes Lucy to a skyscraper under construction and Lucy discovers she's afraid of heights while on the girder. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 4

Blu-ray disc front (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In our last article we left off with the promise that we would explain what is legal and what is not legal in the way of films.  Here is what is legal.  It is legal to make one backup copy of any disk that you own.  Whether that disk is a video, music software or what have you.  Now here is the catch.  Even though you have the right to make one backup copy of any disk you own, you do NOT have the right to break any copyright protection on any disk here in the USA.  That means that when you buy a DVD or a Blu Ray movie, most all of them contain some form of copyright protection.  So you do not have the right to make a copy of those disks by breaking the copyrighted protection on those disks.

  Now, if you can make a copy of those disks while keeping the copyright protection on them, then you are fine.  However, most all of the software out there that allows you to make backup copies of movies or software work by stripping off the copyright encryption that blocks you from making a copy of those disks.  When you backup a copy of say a Hollywood film, you have removed the encryption therefore violating the software owners rights.

  To date we have yet to find one software program that allows you to copy a disk and still maintain the original copyright protection.  We have heard of one, but have not been able to locate it.  So what does one do?  We have recently learned that through Wal Mart and their on line business, VUDU, you can now take a copy of any DVD you own and for a fee, have a digital copy made and stored on line.  The digital copy is good on any device.

  The draw back?  Wal Mart has to have agreements with the studio for that particular DVD title.  If Wal Mart does not have an agreement with that movie studio or for that title?  No copy.  CLICK HERE to see more about the service.
On the bright side?  Wal Mart is the first company to be doing this and your purchase remains in the cloud for many years to come.  The fees are very low starting at $2.00 per copy.

The bottom line is this.  If you purchase a DVD or Blu Ray disk, software or music that contains copy protection and you also buy software to crack that protection to make copies just for your own use and do not distribute any of the copies in any way including lending them to friends, then you will be breaking the law, but no one is going to come after you for it.

Maintaining backup copies is a good idea.  A new Blu Ray title is not cheap.  If you want to take a few disks with you on vacation it is a lot cheaper to have copies stolen than to have your originals stolen.  There isn't much of a market for copies of films already released.  If you are just making a digital version for your PSP, it's up to you to decide which is the best way to go.  If it's in the cloud through VUDU, you still have it in the cloud and can have it on your PSP as well.

Our final article will be on whether or not the disk is dead.

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GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 2

English: Underside of a DVD-R disc, modified to have transparent background. Français : Dessous d'un DVD (sur fond transparent) Frysk: DVD/dûbelskiif (Unterkant) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Upload / Download (Photo credit: johntrainor)

In our last article we looked at torrents and a site where nearly 2,000 videos are hosted for free downloads.  We discussed the quality of the files and the file types.  In this section we are going to go further into the quality of the video files themselves and once again you will be shocked at what we have found.  On testing the videos, we found the quality of the films to be outstanding.  So we wondered if the quality could be maintained if these files were transferred into DVD format to play on any DVD player.  In many cases, you end up losing a good amount of quality when transferring up.

Our first test on one of the films we downloaded didn't work to well.  The quality of the picture was fine, however, the sound did not transfer to the DVD.  There were also compatibility issues with some of the DVD players we tested the video on.  We switched to a different program that took longer but gave us much more control over.  On that end we had a tremendous amount of success.  We were able to make a great DVD copy from the torrent video.  We were able to put a new menu and scene selection as well as a play button.  On test, the new DVD passed as being excellent.

  What that means.  In our last section we talked about the lead time on the video, The Avengers.  This video is released one month before it's retail scheduled release and while it is still playing in some movie theaters.  This means an average person can take one of these downloaded torrent files and turn it into a viable copy.  Once the copy is made, it's not hard to press about 20 copies per day on the average desktop home computer.  Give a person 5 days and one can press about 100 copies by the weekend.

  As Saturday hits, those 100 copies can easily make their way to any flea market for sale.  If it costs about $3.00 per copy to produce, one can sell copies for about $8.00 each making $5.00 profit per copy.  That $8.00 price tag is much lower than the $18.00 new release price that the stores will be asking so if the flea market is a good location, one could easily sell all 100 copies over the weekend.  Profit to the pirate?  About $500.00 minus expenses for the space at the flea market plus travel and food.  On Monday, the process starts all over again.  So within a 4 week lead time period, it's very possible for a pirate to pocket about $2,000.00 just on one video.

  Think $2,000.00 isn't a big deal?  Let's look at that from a real perspective.  Once again, all one has to do is look at how many people a day are already downloading a copy of this one video.  Thousands of people a day.  If 100 people decide the pirate the video for profit, $2,000.00 become $200,000.00.  100 people making 400 copies and selling them over a 4 week period means 40,000 lost retail sales or  at a price of $18.00 each, $729,000.00.  That's nearly three quarters of a million dollars in lost sales from pirating.


10% off of your entire order from BuildASign.com. Use coupon code BASpromoTEN during checkout. Expires 12/31/2012.



  That still does not account for the lost sales from the people who illegally downloaded a free copy who now will not be buying or renting this film.  So it's fair to say that the net loss just from this one torrent site alone is in the millions of dollars.  This is only one torrent site.  There are hundreds of sites hosting torrents all over the world.  Once it's on one, it;s easy to put it on others.  Now let's once again go back to all the other videos on this one site alone and you see the pirates have an entire industry to plunder.

  This now leads to our next question.  How did the people hosting the torrents get a hold of a copy of the film before it's release date?  The copy we downloaded was not shot in a movie theater.  It's as clean as they come.  Others on the site one would say is obviously hacked from disk.  Not that hard to do.  But this being a film not yet out on disk and not being a film copied to a video camera from a movie theater, it's not hacked.  This is were we will begin our next section of this story.

For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.

Have a news story? Submit it above.

Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.

Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.

We cover what no one else will.

 

GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 1

Hollywood Sign (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are torrents destroying Hollywood?  There have been a number of articles we have been reading all around in regards to just his subject.  Some complain that torrents aka peer to peer file sharing is costing Hollywood movie studios billions of dollars in revenue.  Others complain that Hollywood is doing it to itself.  We set out to see exactly what the real deal was as we have seen a lot of holes in all the stories out there.  You are going to be surprised at what we have found.   

We began by searching out a torrent software product that has an excellent overall rating.  Once we found the software and loaded it the rest was easy.  What we found was a real shocker.  We came across a host web site that could easily be compared to the Amazon of movies.  Though the selection was limited to just under 2,000 videos, the selection was still very impressive and hosted on an incredibly well laid out site where a great deal of both time and money was spent on the site.

The image to the right here is a sample screen shot of the listings from the site we are presently talking about.  If you click on the image, you will get an enlarged view.  This site has it all.  If you choose to view the info on the movie, you go to a new page where a brief synopsis of the movie is on the page along with usually 3 screen shots from the actual film.

You also have an option to watch a preview of the film you are considering.  The majority of the previews we have watched are the actual trailers for the film with only a few that were done by someone from outside of the movie studios.  Again, when you opt for the film preview, a new pop up window appears and the preview plays on the pop up.  This is some nice expensive software and design.  Again, look at the picture above.  That is a very well thought out site design.

  This site above is where we ran the vast majority of our tests.  Again the site is extremely well laid out and no expenses seem to have been spared.  Yet there is no charge for downloading any of these movies.  You read that right, no charge for downloading any of the movies on this site.  This site also has a very large Facebook fan page where they announce all their latest releases.

  On the torrent software, there are an average of between 200 and 400 seeds or people at any given time of the day or night that are both downloading these films as well as uploading them.  The way the torrent software works as you are downloading something, you are also uploading a smaller section of that same file to someone else as well as other films you have in your torrent list that others are looking to download.

  It's an exchange service of sorts.  The site we are discussing here makes the entire process seem very legitimate because of it's incredible professionalism.  What really shocked us is the new video release that showed up on the site a few days ago.  The Avengers.  This film is still being played in some movie theaters and has a release date of September 25th, 2012.  This torrent site already has the entire video available for download for free.  With hundreds of people downloading this video at any given moment during a 24 hour period, that means that thousands of people a day are getting this film before it even hits the store shelves.

  So on that end, yes, Hollywood is suffering huge losses on the potential sales of this and other titles before it even hits the shelves.  Plus as we have already said, this film is still playing in some movie theaters.  That affects the sales of tickets at the theaters as well.  The picture here shows the download from the torrent site.

This site usually offers the film in two to three formats.  1080 P full high definition, 720 P standard high definition and when available, 3D 1080 P.   The site has all three formats available for the Avengers film on line now.  More than a month before it's scheduled release date.  Amazon has a pre order price on the 3D Blu Ray version of 29.96 with free shipping and you have to wait for it.  It won't ship until release date.

  How do you estimate the loss on this one title alone?  We ran our tests for two weeks.  We were able to download about 50 films with a retail value of somewhere around one thousand dollars.  Again that was only for two weeks and we did not spend all day every day doing so.  We downloaded about 4 or 5 per day.  About 3 to 4 hours worth of time each day.

  We checked a number of items during this time.  We checked for back door attacks, viruses, open port hacks, malware, spyware and anything else that could go wrong.  We had no issues on any of the files or any of the times we downloaded and uploaded the torrents.  What about quality?  Here is where once again we were very shocked.  The quality of the torrents are extraordinarily good and the file formats used on just about everyone of these films were a universal MP4 format.  Only a couple of the films was in an mkv format.  The mkv format is not a common format and one will not be able to play the video without a special codec or video player to handle the file format.

  MP4 videos are about as universal to operating systems as MP3 audio is.  Microsoft, Apple and Linux systems can all handle these formats.  Even Andriod enabled products have no issues with this file format.  Every film we checked played very smoothly and was of true HD quality.  Only the mkv file formats had some motion issues.


Ending notes:  This ends part one of this series.  We have not mentioned the name of the exact torrent software nor the name of the site in this discussion for a reason.  The site contains illegal downloads that do hurt legitimate companies and their employees.  It is not our intention to teach people how to download illegal video files, but to educate people in the problems associated with these types of sites and issues.  We have since deleted the torrent software from our own system and will soon be deleting the downloads once this series is over.

For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.

Have a news story? Submit it above.

Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.

Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.

We cover what no one else will.