/ Cory Doctorow / 8:00 am Wed Mar 21, 2012

Sony pirates itself with "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" disc


The official design for the disc-art on the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo DVD makes the disc appear to be a pirate copy, designed to mimic a blank, home-burned disc with the movie's title handwritten in black marker on it.

Dragon Tattoo Has Unique DVD Design (via Hack the Planet)

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    1. Yeah but SOAD was trying to be all edgy and “fuck the system” but this coming from a corporate juggernaut is just… confusing. I mean, what are they trying to do here, exactly? It has nothing to do with the movie, and wouldn’t it “glamorize piracy”?

    2.  who cares. If they made up a fancy cover they would just be doing what everyone else does. Also how can people say it has nothing to do with the movie. SHE IS A HACKER! If she was a real person I’m guessing all of her movies would look just like this. This is a perfect idea. Pretty sure they aren’t bragging about how they came up with the idea. Even if they did maybe they haven’t seen system of the downs CD. I haven’t…

  3. Hollywood and big media have me confused. When are hackers cool and when are hackers bad? Also when is pirating cool and when is pirating bad? Do they choose or do I choose?

    2. here is the easy solution to your dilemma; its not just one person! you got there maybe even hundreds of different people with the power to put out product and they are not even required to tow the corporate line! You are shocked and disappointed by this? I am puzzle

    3. They do. Wouldn’t wanna overwhelm you with such a terrible burden. Such is the value and inherent superiority of the not-at-all-antiquated “gatekeeper” model of media distribution.

    4. Not limited to hackers. Observe the steady increase of the “anti-hero” in all kinds of entertainment. Then again, fashion have been able to sanitize and repackage even punk as something to be sold off the shelf.

  4. They want it to resemble a DRM-free no-previews no-ads copy -to be more attractive to the customer. 

  5. I’m not sure they want it to resemble a pirated copy as much as the DVD full of evidence that’s in the story itself.

    2. Cute concept, but means nothing to anyone who doesn’t already know the story… Nice styling, bad marketing.

      1. There are people who buy the DVDs for movies they haven’t yet seen? Can I have some of that money?

        1. I do that. Not all good movies are on TV at a moment I’m watching, but some are for sale at a big discount when I visit a shop. When I recognize a supposedly good or interesting movie, $5 is easily spent.

    4. That’s funny… this movie was so forgettable it didn’t even dawn on me, though this design makes a whole lot more sense now.

    1.  Yeah the Library staff are gonna love this – a lot of responding to patrons I bet.
      OTOH, I think this is very clever, and totally in keeping with the storyline of the books. Exactly what Elizabeth Salander would have in her collection :P
      (well actually she would have the contents stored on a server hosted in Gibraltar or something).
      BTW if you haven’t read the books, you really should :P

      1. Do retail copies of DVDs in the states really contain ads?

        Rental copies are a different matter.

        1.  Yes.
          And rental copies are often missing features to make them enjoyable.  The best example was the rental copy of “Up” that featured an old man with hearing aids as a main character… and the rental copy did not have closed caption options.  This of course was called an oversight when people started pointing out how shitty it was they removed features from rental copies.

  8. In the story, the character secretly films a horrible thing, and keeps a disk of it to blackmail that bad person into leaving her alone.  It’s not a pirated disk at all.  Maybe you should watch the movie or read the book before making up stories about what their intention is.

    1. I don’t recall the disk being labeled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Was that in the book?

    4. colinadams is dead on i believe (not about the douchey comment on the  end though.)  I saw the image on reddit and, naturally first assumed it was a DVD-R then saw the ratings emblems and realized then that it’s a riff off of one the disks used by Lisbeth Salander in the movie.

    1. I liked how the slipcover for the “Borat” packaging looked like a bad color photocopy too. The whole deal was designed to look like a bootleg you’d buy from a street vendor in Eastern Europe.

  11. Reminds me a little of a time years back when I was browsing in Newbury Comics in Boston.  I was looking at Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman, and this hippie dude who worked there comes up to me and goes “AWESOME book, man…..just, uhm, don’t steal it.”

  17. You know what federal law enforcement investigating copyright infringement would call that?

    Probable cause.

    Soon there is a warrant for your computers and your ipod and the warrant is totally valid because law enforcement acted in good faith.

    Granted it’s an extremely far-fetched scenario that law enforcement would happen upon you holding this CD and be motivated to investigate possible copyright infringement, but it is possible. Maybe Sony is that devious :p

    1. I think it is fairly obvious it is not a DVD-R by the presence of the slik-screened MPAA rating and logo, the legalese, the studio logo, and the DVD Video trademark.

      Try again, troll.

      1. Ooh, silk-screened rating and logo, that totally negates any perception by an overzealous officer. Allow me to enlighten you, CoyoteDen: no duh it should become obvious that it is not pirated material if one is observant. Also, grow a sense of humor.

        Recently in Canada, a man was arrested, strip searched, jailed, his house searched. Why? Because his daughter drew a picture of a gun. It turned out that there was a toy gun in the house.

        My point, made facetiously, is that probable cause doesn’t require much. Cory’s title here is also facetious, I responded in kind. So, um, try again, or something.

  18. The Who did the bootleg look with their “Live at Leeds” album sometime in the last century. Should they sue Sony for stealing their concept?

    1. It’s product placement for the Monster coke blade. Makes your coke 10 times stronger! available at your better dealers. 

    2. The double-edged razorblade was used in the film’s promotional material, I think you could even buy an official razorblade ‘dogtag’ a while ago. An odd choice, in as far as I recall a razorblade makes no appearance in either book nor film.

      1.  I vaguely recall the character in the film wearing jewelry incorporating a razor blade, possible as a necklace (to look like a dogtag as you say).

        I don’t know the cultural subtext but it’s something certain groups of people wear – I’ve seen it before, and seen similar jewelry for sale for years. I always assumed it had something to do either with being straightedge, or being a “cutter”.

  27. Rented a copy from the local Blockbuster vending machine and did a double and triple-take. It did look like the previous customer ripped a copy to CD-R, pasted the barcode ring on the CD-R, and kept the original.  Finally noticed the MPAA rating that identified it as a commercial disk.  Sneaky…

  28. As others have pointed out above, the disc design is probably more meant to evoke the DVD that Lisbeth records to have something to hold over Bjurman than to resemble a pirated disc. Given what is recorded on the DVD in the story, however, I have to question the wisdom of that. They’ve just simulated all of their DVD audience wanting to watch a video of a woman being brutally raped by her court-appointed legal guardian. Then again, that would sort of go with the general cluelessness of the American film version.

    And please don’t call spoilers. The novels have been out for more than five years — that’s plenty of time to overhear people discussing them while you wait in line to buy a coffee.

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