Movie Banned By Censors Becomes a Piracy Hit With Kiwis

[Renegade]

Oh, the irony is just...

...

Back. Peed my pants laughing again... Sigh... Guess I'm going to do a lot of laundry today.

Anyways, the irony is good for a laugh - censorship leads to piracy.

http://torrentfreak.com/movie-banned-by-censors-becomes-a-piracy-hit-with-kiwis-130725/

While there are often disputes over what age rating films should be awarded, New Zealand’s censors have just gone a step further by banning a horror film from any kind of public distribution. The censors say that Maniac, a serial killer flick starring Elijah Wood, is potentially “injurious to the public good” and cannot be shown in theaters or released on DVD. Maniac’s distributor says that the banning is an “invitation to piracy” and the signs are that’s exactly what’s happening.

maniacOne of the most obvious signs of censorship in entertainment is the ratings system. The US has the MPAA, the UK has the British Board of Film Censors and New Zealand has The Office of Film and Literature Classification. They all have an influence over who can see what and are often dragged into controversy as a result. For the Kiwi censors, yesterday was one of those days.

More at the link. Good luck with your laundry.

[40hz]

Best way to make something popular is to try outlawing it.

That's why some movies fight to get an R rather than a PG rating. The lure of getting to see something "inappropriate" is a powerful incentive for the 14-25 year old market segment.

[Renegade]

Best way to make something popular is to try outlawing it.

That's why some movies fight to get an R rather than a PG rating. The lure of getting to see something "inappropriate" is a powerful incentive for the 14-25 year old market segment.

I remember that.

Now? Not so much. I don't particularly care all that much about the ratings for myself.

Hollywood is incapable of producing anything as violent, vile, repulsive, and outright evil as I see in the news.

I do get tired of gratuitous sex though. It almost never adds anything important to the plot, and I have never seen a single scene where it couldn't have just been a fade to black and still had the same effect on the plot. There's lots of porn out there - why would I want to bother with crappy porn in the middle of a movie or show?

[TaoPhoenix]

I wonder if we're drifting off topic in a way.
Exhibit A: "Film cannot be shown in theaters or released on DVD."

So what precisely is the "legit" revenue stream again? iTunes/other Only?

So if you have this movie which has *no legal way to be seen* (or vanishingly close etc etc) what part of Lost Sales are the result of "Piracy" again"?

Is this the way out? To take a film and *amp it up* so it *cannot be shown* ... and then therefore there are no lost sales!? Blah Blah Kiddies etc, but for everyone else of age, is that the loophole!?

[Renegade]

^^ The irony is just twisted with this one.

[Tinman57]

  I just can't believe that NZ has such rigid censorship.  Isn't NZ supposed to be a free country?  Don't look that way to me......

[IainB]

Odd for NZ to ban a film in these supposedly more tolerant times. “Injurious to the public good”, eh? State censorship of anything is usually cock-eyed.
For example, the last I read of a film being banned was in the UK years ago - I think it was Straw Dogs (1971). Starring Dustin Hoffman as an American astrophysicist who has moved his family to England to get away from American violence, but then finds more violence than he could ever have imagined in his worst nightmares. Apparently, the film was banned because of a scene where his wife (played by Susan George) was raped and began to enjoy it. I saw the film on video in New Zealand, some years ago. It was quite a good film too - I see it has a 7.6 rating on IMDB. The thing is though, the film was a fiction.

Whilst the British censors might have banned something like that in 1971, the British mores are evidently different nowadays - it seems as though almost anything goes. For example, my 11½ y/o daughter drew my attention to some UK news the other day that ended up with my listening to an Oxford Union debate where it was mentioned that there had apparently been systematic grooming, raping and prostitution of underage (under 16) girls - some just children around the same age as my daughter - by a group of all/mostly Muslim men in the university town of Oxford. The group were convicted of criminal offences as a result, but it seems that the mainstream media, the police, and child protection authorities had all apparently turned a blind eye to it for some time, though it had been reported to them. Presumably the police might have been too busy fighting more serious priority crimes, but then it transpired that almost identical criminal gang activity had been occurring in other parts of the country, with similarly belated action by the MSM, the police, and the child protection authorities. That's bad enough, but the thing is, there has already been some TV documentary work about these crimes, and you can bet that somebody will make a good docu-drama film about this child-grooming at some stage, and that the censors will likely as not just let it alone because it depicts "real life", no doubt thus providing lots of good viewing for closet paedophiles whose prayers for a good, legally authorised wet-dream will have been finally answered.
I wonder, if that happened, whether it could be construed as being “injurious to the public good”, and thus censored.

[Renegade]

^^ Interesting that you bring up pedophilia. There are some people that have been screaming about it for years, but, as you may well expect, they've been labeled "crazy conspiracy theorists" and dismissed. While it would be nice if they were simply crazy, reality seems to be pointing to the exact opposite.

[Tinman57]

and you can bet that somebody will make a good docu-drama film about this child-grooming at some stage, and that the censors will likely as not just let it alone because it depicts "real life", no doubt thus providing lots of good viewing for closet paedophiles whose prayers for a good, legally authorised wet-dream will have been finally answered.
I wonder, if that happened, whether it could be construed as being “injurious to the public good”, and thus censored.

 Well now, to be fair, if it depicts youth (under 18) having sex or being raped, it would be illegal in most countries, even if the actors were over 18.  The reasoning behind this is to prevent "Jack-off" material for pedophiles..... Which opened up another controversy, isn't it better to give them "jack-off" material so they don't go looking for action?  I kid you not, this was a big controversy when it became law in the U.S..

[app103]

This is a remake of the 1980 movie, that I wanted to see but couldn't. In my local theater (in the US), it was nobody under 17 admitted. (not even with a parent)

If I had showed up on time, when everyone was still in line, they wouldn't have had time to check for ID, but because I had shown up a few minutes into it, they wouldn't let me in. (I was only 15 at the time) Woman at the ticket counter told me to come back for the next showing and I would probably get in, but that would have put me past curfew by the time the movie was over. 

[4wd]

For example, my 11½ y/o daughter drew my attention to some UK news the other day that ended up with my listening to an Oxford Union debate where it was mentioned that there had apparently been systematic grooming, raping and prostitution of underage (under 16) girls - some just children around the same age as my daughter - by a group of all/mostly Muslim men in the university town of Oxford.

That was on the news, (or possibly in an expose), over there in 2011 or maybe even 2010 - I remember watching it on the TV.

[IainB]

I just watched the trailer at the link given by @Renegade in the OP.
I see that IMDB gives Maniac (1980) 6.3 stars, and Maniac (2012) 6.2 stars. Looks like it's not such a great film then.
Still, I'd like to know what it is that the censors don't want me to see that is so “Injurious to the public good”.
I don't think I'd like to watch it, but now that the Streisand Effect has been invoked, I just might...

[Renegade]

^^ You know curiosity and the cat... Be careful... you may be corrupted and start sprouting chaos tentacles!

[IainB]

Something about this had been reminding me of past silliness in censorship - in France - that I couldn't quite recall. It had been scratching around in the back of my brain. Here it is from the AP News Archive (Beta): (note my emphasis)

Mitterrand Book Banned in Bookstores, But Not in Cyberspace
PIERRE-YVES GLASS , Associated Press
Jan. 24, 1996 10:57 AM ET

PARIS (AP) _ A banned book that reveals Francois Mitterrand lied about his health during his entire presidency can't be found in any French bookstore. But you can read all about it on the Internet.

Pascal Barbraud, manager of Le Web, a cafe for computer enthusiasts in the eastern town of Besancon, transcribed all 190 pages of ``Le Grand Secret'' into his Internet site late Tuesday.

"We are thumbing our nose at the censors and other sorcerers,'' he said. "Between banning a book and burning it, there's only one step.''

``Le Grand Secret'' was written by Dr. Claude Gubler, Mitterrand's physician during most of his 14 years as president.

Gubler says Mitterrand had prostate cancer since 1981, the year he took office. But despite promises to keep the French public informed about his health, Mitterrand did not disclose he had cancer until 1992. He left office in May at the end of his second term and died Jan. 8 at 79.

Gubler's book came out last Wednesday and sold all 40,000 copies the same day. On Thursday, a Paris court put a stop to further sales, agreeing with Mitterrand's family that his right to medical privacy had been breached.

The case raises the question of whether a nation's legal decisions apply to Internet, the worldwide network of interconnecting computers used by millions of people. Though Internet is still in its infant stage in France, it already has about 200,000 users.

Plon, the publisher of the book, was considering what action to take against Barbraud for reproducing the text without permission.

"You don't play around with a court decision,'' said Plon publishing director Olivier Orban.

Barbraud was unfazed. He said he hoped the case would create a judicial precedent in favor of unrestricted use of the Internet.

"We are on a network that doesn't concern national legislation,'' he said.

And he says he has been flooded by electronic messages of support from Europe, Canada and French overseas islands.

Christian Hassenfrantz, state prosecutor in Besancon, said he received no complaint against Barbraud as of today.

I stumbled upon this quite coincidentally in this item on Reason.com, about free speech on the Internet:
As France Legalizes Insulting the President, Remember the Censorship Laws That Spurred Online Free Speech Culture

As the French say, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".