Talk:Cam (bootleg)

I think it's no longer a stub 212.143.17.66

ARticle claims that xivd is most common for Cam releases untrue svcd or VCD is more common. Search nfoforce.nl for cam and see how few are xvid.Cartoonborg 14:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The editor/creator of this page might be living in the US/UK, and to be very honest, XviD/DivX is the most common from my... "experience." Refer to the common Bittorrent releases/ers, I see the majority is XviD-encoded, but only a few are in VCD .iso/.bin-.cue format.TinFoil

Note dates of above. This article needs serious expansion and update. Even the formats have shifted in the 3-4 years since it was originally published. While xVid is still quite popular for smaller, lower quality files, as broadband access has proliferated and become faster, x264/H.264 and other higher res codecs have seen much greater use. This is a difficult number to attribute/reference, since there are few reliable and well-accepted sources of up-to-date data on technical specs for pirated copies of movies or other material.Googlyelmo (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

History
This article completely disregards the important history to "camming". Long before DVD's and file transfers were even a twinkle in Al Gore's eye, camming a movie from a cinema screen and selling it on blank vhs tapes on the street corner was the ONLY way to get pirated movies. This page focuses only on cammings place in the past few years. Wikipedia has only been popular for the past few years, so it makes sense that the pages here were written around what happened in these recent years, but in the interest of factuality and special interest it makes sense to actually go into the more real roots and history of camming as a practice. JayKeaton 13:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that mention of pre-internet "cams" is necessary to complete this article. I have little knowledge of the subject, other than remembering an episode of "Seinfeld" ca. 1996 [episode called "The Little Kicks," possibly one other] where Kramer attempts to cam a movie, after seeing a friend do it and sell VHS copies on the street for $5 a piece. Such tapes were widely available from street vendors all throughout Manhattan and the outer boroughs of New York City as early as 1986. I worked in a copy & printing shop where the owner had a lucrative contract to make color xeroxes of VHS covers, and the customer was clearly either camming or duping.

I'd also criticize this article for several unsubstantiated statements, such as the one claiming that ushers in some theaters have used/do use "night vision goggles" to spot cammers. I find that very hard to believe, because of the expense & intrusiveness. I have never cammed, never will, but I would be quite upset if I saw a theater employee scanning the auditorium with such goggles, it is an invasion of privacy, and I highly doubt any theater owner would permit, much less sanction, such use. In most instances, due diligence would be satisfied (and this article's author doesn't mention the contracts between film distributors and exhibitors, another glaring omission) by naked eye monitoring, and in fact 'night vision' use in a theater would periodically painfully blind, temporarily, the user when any scene in exterior daylight (or other bright source) came on. Moreover the legal exposure, in this day of 'upskirt' voyeurs and the like. This statement should be verified/attributed or removed. Even a link to a newspaper article mentioning such use of "night vision" goggles would suffice. The article might also mention and discuss that cams are one of the types of cinematic piracy that the movie industry is most upset by, since they appear in the first weeks that a movie is in North American theatrical release and probably cause the producers the most real losses (that would have to be cited/linked, but the MPAA web site is full of pages of data claiming such losses).Googlyelmo (talk) 17:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Blade Runner Workprint cam made in 1990 i think the first. you can find it on torrents Sergey Woropaew (talk) 15:14, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Can't people just wait for the movie to come out?
^__^

they do, that is how cams are made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.226.173.190 (talk) 12:54, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Other possible uses for this term
I think that Cam/camming could also apply to illegally recording stage plays and concerts and directly recording something off of a TV screen, like videos on YouTube where people record a TV screen playing something. --Fladoodle (talk) 21:41, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Biased POV article
This article does not read as NPOV, and seems to paint the entire thing in an insidious slant. It seems as if people whose motives are to insinuate this is the worst crime against humanity that you could perpetrate. Seems inappropriate. -70.66.90.57 (talk) 16:08, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:06, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Universal kpax cam copy screenshot.png