In 1995, pirated CDs were just popular, and they were more common in the southern coastal areas and relatively rare in the north.

This is a very interesting phenomenon. The development of technology first gave birth to the piracy industry.

In Xiangjiang and Baodao, the cost of a pirated CD is very cheap, less than one yuan, plus the cost of ripping and transportation will not exceed one yuan and five yuan. If you smuggle it to the mainland, you can buy more than five or six yuan.

The profit margin of pirated CDs is quite large, and the more smuggled, the cheaper the cost, the more profit it will be.

At the beginning, pirated merchants in Hong Kong and Taiwan were not aware of the preferences of mainland people for movies. The number of discs smuggled in through fishing boats was astonishing but of mixed types, including Kung Fu movies from Hong Kong and Hollywood blockbusters, as well as numerous art films.

However, it is still mainly based on Xiangjiang's entertainment films.

Later, they found that the mainland people had a hot demand for entertainment films. One disc could cost eight yuan, but art films were not popular and they didn't pay for them.

Especially American blockbusters, which are most popular among the mainland people, can even cost more than ten yuan per disc.

Before Hollywood blockbusters were introduced in China, these films were released in Xiangjiang and Baodao, so the subtitles of the smuggled pirated discs were traditional Chinese, and the dubbing was mainly in Cantonese.

In this way, the pirates targeted Hollywood.

On the one hand, they track the latest news of Hollywood blockbusters, and on the other hand, they considerately review the American movies of domestic audiences.

That is, the movies shot in the United States were recorded into CDs and transported to the mainland.

These include almost all classic blockbusters in the United States from the 1930s and 1940s to the 1970s and 1980s, which is equivalent to doing a popularization of American movies to the people in China.

For the people in China, even the old American movies from the 1930s are new in their opinion.

Because they have not had any channels to access such movies in the past.

In China, watching movies is basically done through cinemas and TV, and it is difficult to see large quantities of foreign movies of various types, especially horror movies and films.

This type of film is also available in the country, but it cannot be seen by ordinary people. It is called an internal reference film.

That is, "internal reference", which can only be watched by officials or internal personnel engaged in film work. It has a certain academic color and can sometimes be seen by students from art schools.

The emergence of pirated CDs has broken this boundary.

Ordinary people can see foreign movies through a TV and a VCD player, plus a disc bought for five yuan, which has brought a strong ideological impact.

In the past, there were few passionate scenes in domestic movies, but foreign movies were everywhere.

Another type of film is film, commonly known as **** in China. Pirates found that the market for this type of film is no lower than that of Hollywood blockbusters, and can be paid at a high price, so a large number of ****s flowed into the country.

While pirated CDs have enriched the entertainment life of ordinary people, they have also brought many social and ideological problems.

Pirates will not identify the quality of the film, and they will rip whatever makes money. These movies will inevitably affect the people in China, and teenagers will be the most affected.

In order to gain profits, pirates have tried their best.

In the past, they placed pirated disc dens in Xiangjiang and Southeast Asia, but later they found that the risk of smuggling was too high and it was easy to be found by customs, so they moved the den to the coastal areas of the mainland.

From secretly taking photos in cinemas, to transcribing them into CDs, to distributing them to retailers everywhere, a complete industrial chain has been formed.

What Lin Zixuan saw on the streets of Beijing was just a corner of this huge network.

When pirated merchants saw that "The True Lies" was so popular in China, they naturally would not miss this opportunity. They would spread the pirated CDs in a few days and were in major cities across the country.

This will naturally affect the box office of "The True Lies" in China, but in the face of low-quality versions and discs, some people still choose to watch them in the theater, which shows the magic of Hollywood blockbusters.

Lin Zixuan is worried about whether "Seeking Away" will become the target of pirated merchants when it is released at the end of the year.

What should I do if there is a piracy?

At this time, the pirated merchants have not yet pointed their finger at domestic movies. This is not to say that they are very patriotic and do not pirate them in order to support domestic movies. The main reason is that they do not look down on domestic movies.

Think about it, even the movies that the audience doesn’t want to watch are not going out even if they are pirated.

In China, only internationally influential directors like Zhang Yimou are worthy of their efforts. What they make money and pirated has nothing to do with patriotism.

"Party A and Party B" caught the pirated merchant off guard, and they did not expect that the film would have a big box office.

It was a bit late when they realized it. There were only pirated copies in many cities in the south, and there were very few in Beijing. This is also the reason why "Party A and Party B" achieved such a high box office in Beijing.

However, Feng Xiaogang's next film will not be so lucky, and it will definitely become the target of pirated merchants.

The only thing that makes Lin Zixuan glad is that the vcd player is not so popular now, the quality of the disc is not high, and the picture quality is not clear enough, which affects the viewing effect.

Once the vcd player is updated and replaced and becomes a DVD player, the super powerful automatic error correction function will make pirated CDs popular.

Lin Zixuan and Mu Zhiyuan have talked about this topic.

One of Mu Zhiyuan's work functions is to be responsible for the publishing, reproduction, distribution management and other work of audio-visual system.

The official has not yet received enough attention from pirated CDs, and the domestic copyright awareness is still weak and the law is not perfect enough, let alone the crackdown.

For example, if you catch a person who pirated CDs on the street, how can you punish them? Confiscate the discs and fine them some money. It is impossible to arrest them for several years in prison.

Even pirates will not be punished too severely.

If he is really punished to lose all his money or life imprisonment, it will be a bit deterrent, otherwise it will not be effective.

Driven by huge interests, they will not stop piracy.

Only when the country really takes it seriously, regulates the legal system, and carries out nationwide crackdowns will it achieve results.

It can be foreseen that in the future, domestic films will not only have to deal with the invasion of Hollywood blockbusters, but also face the box office losses caused by piracy, and will only move forward with difficulty.

Pirates will gradually become a chronic disease in the domestic film industry.

Interestingly, many consumers of pirated movies think that piracy is immoral, but no one thinks that there is something wrong with their pirated discs, but instead thinks that it is normal.

This is a difficult problem that the entire film industry needs to face, and Lin Zixuan has no good idea, which requires higher-level intervention.

What he has to do now is to make the movie first, solve it if he encounters a problem, and take a look at it step by step. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!