Wow how long till this guy gets busted and the MPAA sues him?
http://www.nytimes.c...-hero.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.c...-hero.html?_r=1
MASSAPEQUA, N.Y. ”” One of the world’s most prolific bootleggers of Hollywood DVDs loves his morning farina. He has spent eight years churning out hundreds of thousands of copies of “The Hangover,”' “Gran Torino”' and other first-run movies from his small Long Island apartment to ship overseas. Mr. Strachman's hobby has renewed his sense of comradeship with United States military personnel overseas, a connection formed during his service in World War II.“Big Hy”' ”” his handle among many loyal customers ”” would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.With the United States military presence in those regions dwindling, Big Hy Strachman will live on in many soldiers’ hearts as one of the war’s more shadowy heroes.
“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,”' Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law.
“If I were younger,”' he added, “maybe I’d be spending time in the hoosegow.”'
Capt. Bryan Curran, who recently returned from Afghanistan, estimated that from 2008 to 2010, Mr. Strachman sent more than 2,000 DVDs to his outfits there.
“You’re shocked because your initial image is of some back-alley Eastern European bootlegger ”” not an old Jewish guy on Long Island,”' Captain Curran said. “He would time them with the movie’s release ”” whenever a new movie was just in theaters, we knew Big Hy would be sending us some. I saw ”˜The Transformers’ before it hit the States.”' “Iit’s reconnecting you to everything you miss.”'
As he spoke, he was busy preparing some packages, filled with 84 discs of “The Artist,”' “Moneyball”' and other popular films, many of them barely out of theaters, to a platoon in Afghanistan.
As for his brazen violation of domestic copyright laws, Mr. Strachman nodded guiltily but pointed to his walls, which are strewed with seven huge American flags, dozens of appreciative letters, and snapshots of soldiers holding up their beloved DVDs.
“Every time I got back an emotional e-mail or letter, I sent them another box,”' he said, adding that he had never accepted any money for the movies or been told by any authorities to stop.
“I thought maybe because I’m an old-timer,”' he said.
In February, Mr. Strachman duplicated and shipped 1,100 movies. (“A slow month,”' he said.) He has not kept an official count but estimates that he topped 80,000 discs a year during his heyday in 2007 and 2008, making his total more than 300,000 since he began in 2004. Postage of about $11 a box, and the blank discs themselves, would suggest a personal outlay of over $30,000.
“I wouldn’t say it kept him alive, but it definitely brought back his joie de vivre,”' said Mr. Strachman’s son, Arthur, a tax accountant in New York.
Mr. Strachman has never ripped a movie from a store-bought DVD and does not even know how; rather, he bought bootlegged discs for $5 in Penn Station before finding a dealer closer to home, at his local barbershop. Those discs were either recordings made illegally in theaters or studio cuts that had been leaked.
Originally, Mr. Strachman would use his desktop computer to copy the movies one tedious disc at a time. (“It was moyda,”' he groaned.) So he got his hands on a $400 professional duplicator that made seven copies at once, grew his fingernails long to better separate the blank discs, and began copying hundreds a day.
Last month, in black grandpa shoes and blue suspenders that hoisted his trousers up to his sternum, Mr. Strachman and his spindly hands steered a master copy of “The Artist”' into the machine, fed the seven other bays with blanks, and pressed “Record.”' Six minutes later, in went “The King’s Speech.”' Then “Moneyball.”'
He eventually stuffed the maximum of 84 discs (12 titles, 7 each) into a United States Postal Service fixed-rate box, secured it with several yards of packing tape and scrawled out a packing slip for the Massapequa Park post office. The contraband, which he said could take up to three months to arrive, was addressed to an Army chaplain.
“Chaplains don’t sell them, and they fan out,”' Mr. Strachman said. “The distribution is great.”'
The movie studios are less enthusiastic. Although the most costly piracy now takes place online through file-sharing Web sites, the illegal duplication of copyright DVDs ”” usually by organized crime in Eastern Europe and China, not by retirees in their 90s in the American suburbs ”” still siphons billions of dollars out of the industry every year. And while Mr. Strachman’s movies were given to soldiers as a form of charity, studios do send military bases reel-to-reel films, which are much harder to copy, and projectors for the troops overseas.
Howard Gantman, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said he did not believe its member studios were aware of Mr. Strachman’s operation. His sole comment dripped with the difficulty of going after a 92-year-old widower supporting the troops.
“We are grateful that the entertainment we produce can bring some enjoyment to them while they are away from home,”' Mr. Gantman said.
Careful to minimize his malfeasance, Mr. Strachman said he had kept no copies for himself and had destroyed every master disc soon after the new releases came in.
I love it! Piracy in the service of an unnecessary war. I guess stealing and killing makes people heroes.
