By now we’ve all been beaten over the head repeatedly when it comes to the pirating of movies via illegal downloads and streams. Typically these discussions about pirating seem to revolve around newer films from the big studios. What we don’t hear about as often is how pirating and releasing illegal copies of Blu-rays and DVDs impacts the little labels. These are the labels responsible for bringing all these weird, obscure cult movies to Blu-ray that I’m sure most of us never expected to see beyond the VHS days. Bootleggers can severely damage these companies by releasing illegal Blu-ray and DVD version of their titles for pennies on the dollar.

Sascha Imme, the CEO & Head of Acquisitions over at OFDb Filmworks in Germany, recently took to the OFDb website to tackle the issue of bootlegging. Sascha wrote a wonderful piece talking about the variety of issues that arise when someone makes illegal copies of a movie and tries to pass them off as legit. I wanted to pass some tidbits from Sascha’s blog onto the Bloody Disgusting readers because I know that much like myself, many of you are avid collectors of physical media. And when these bootlegs happen, it hurts the collector just as much as the labels.

Special shout out to BD reader Horst Matuschek for bringing this blog to my attention. I translated Sascha’s article from German to English using Google Translate so it’s not a perfect translation but you should be able to get the gist of it.

The situation is different, however, when the fictional teenagers (or below rather an adult) is Downloading and burning on a 20 cent blank and sold for 25 euros. And here we are in business of bootleg traders: take a foreign DVD or Blu-ray, the German soundtrack pack to then burn the result on a cheap blank – and hope for as many buyers.

This form of crime is a completely different caliber and harms not only the film industry, but ultimately also the inexperienced buyer who can not tell the difference in a legal publication (or want?) [and a bootleg copy] Bootlegs appear natural…and in some cases even [available] in commercial online stores.

Could we not be indifferent? No! After all, are we now a film label. We pay money for licenses, money for bonus material, money for beautiful packaging – Bootlegger make [none of] that. They steal diligently. And that bothers us not only “because it a matter of principle ‘, but currently also again very concretely: Two published by us tracks are brazenly offered as Bootleg – earlier on DVD and recently even as a burned Blu-ray.

This isn’t the whole blog and again the translation isn’t perfect, but I think you can see the very valid and important points Sascha brings up. From a buyer perspective it can be very difficult to tell the difference between a bootleg copy and a legit copy, especially when you’re looking to buy something online. Once you get the copy in hand you can usually tell pretty quickly if it’s a bootleg. A lot of bootleg Blu-rays come on BD-R’s for example. These can still be dolled up to look very nice, but at the end of the day they’re still a BD-R. To further complicate the matter however, some legit releases can be BD-R. Just depends on the release and the label releasing it.

Adding to the difficultly is a lot of the times these bootleg copies are the random one-off horror titles. The stuff we usually have to go to a foreign market to get. Given that there could be a language barrier this makes things all the more tricky. And, as Sascha pointed out, these bootleggers are sometimes able to get their stuff onto legitimate commercial sites like Amazon, so even if you buy from a site you trust you’re not entirely safe. These bootleggers do not care either. They’ll illegally release a movie even if they know someone already has the rights and is planning a release. This actually happened with OFDb and their upcoming release of Humanoids of the Deep that someone bootlegged.

We’re not going to be able to get rid of bootlegging entirely. That’s just not possible. But we can do our best to limit it and make sure it isn’t a successful and profitable approach for those trying to make a quick buck off someone else’s product. As I’ve said it’s not always easy to spot a bootleg right away, so you may buy one unknowingly. The key once you know is to not buy from that person or “label” again and make sure everyone you know that purchases Blu-rays and DVD does the same. Not only does it help the real labels, but it’ll save you from wasting your hard earned money on an inferior product.

There’s plenty of great companies out there – Arrow Films, Synapse, Kino Lorber, Scream Factory, OFDb Filmworks, Umbrella Entertainment, Criterion, Vinegar Syndrome, Shock, Koch Media, Illusions ULTD, Severin, Blue Underground, Artsploitation – the list goes on and on. We have lots of options for cult film on Blu-ray. Keep supporting labels like these while shutting down the bootleggers and they’ll continue bringing us the films we love.

You can read Sascha Imme’s full blog on bootlegs here.