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Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Jan 31st 2011 10:46am




Filed Under:
china, top gun, training, tv footage


Chinese TV Station Tried Passing Off Top Gun Footage As Training Exercises

from the now-when-will-the-infringement-suit-hit? dept

Via Gizmodo we learn of the hilarious claim that China Central Television's news broadcast recently showed some imagery purported to show Chinese military training exercises. The only problem is that some folks recognized the footage as coming from the Hollywood movie Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise. You can see the screenshots below, comparing the CCTV news footage (on the left) with the identical frame captures from Top Gun:

Of course, I can only assume that China Central Television did not have a license to show Top Gun on TV. What are the chances that someone in Hollywood decides to sue?

69 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  •  
    identicon
    ian, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 10:51am

    chinese top gun

    how do you know that TOP GUN wasn't actual made as a chinese training film???

     

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  •  
    icon
    Dark Helmet (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 10:54am

    Wow...

    This story simply Takes My Breath Away....

     

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  •  
    icon
    Aaron T (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 10:56am

    wow

    Someone has watched Top Gun way way too many times.

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:11am

    We should be able to vote the stories themselves as funny or insightful (ah, heck, toss in the "inappropriate" tag too, to make the trolls happy). This one certainly deserves the funny vote.

     

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  •  
    icon
    Jimr (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:12am

    Where will they send the Infringement Suit to? Think of all the lost revenue TOP GUN will lose now that they broad cast the final explosion scene? I guesstimate about 42 tillion dollars.

     

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    •  
      identicon
      Jason, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:20am

      Re:

      Put on yer white gloves Jimmer, that's 42 Cuh-tillion!!

       

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    •  
      icon
      Marcus Carab (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 2:09pm

      Re:

      Well, let's calculate this using MPAA methodology.

      Top Gun had a budget of $15-million (Source: Wikipedia). The population of China is 1,331,460,000 (Source: World Bank) - or over 1.3 billion Top Guns that now won't be made. Simple math tells us that 1.997x10^16 or nearly twenty-quadrillion dollars has disappeared as a result of this egregious intellectual property theft.

      But that's just the beginning: Top Gun also massively boosted sales of bomber jackets and aviator glasses by around 40%. We can assume by extension that it boosted fighter jet sales approximately the same amount. The cost of an F-16 is around $15-million dollars, so add forty per cent to that and multiply by the number of bomber jackets sold every year, which we don't have a firm stat on but can guess to be around twice the world population since most people own at least two jackets. Add that to our twenty-quadrillion figure, multiply by two (the number of lenses in a pair of Aviators) and you have the truly stomach-churning sum of infinity-million dollars that were lost to this one video alone. Now consider the number of films downloaded on BitTorrent every year and it becomes clear that piracy will bring about the heat death of the universe.

       

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      •  
        icon
        fogbugzd (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 4:05pm

        Re: Re:

        You forgot the multiplier effect. Granted, you listed secondary and tertiary markets and included approapriately inflated estimates, but industry standard practice is to multiply everything by three to account for the secondary and tertiary effects of the secondary and tertiary effects. Otherwise it was a good effort, and you definitely could have a future in IP economic impact analysis. I particularly liked the fact that you avoided any calculation of possible benefits of the piracy. Things like reviving interest in an old movie or opening up Chinese markets just muddy up otherwise perfectly fine self-serving calculations.

         

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  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:14am

    Official PDRC announcement

    Obviously movie film "Top Gun" has stolen aircraft training film from Glorious People's Democratic Republic of China. We condemn these heinous acts of espionage by foreign movie interests and stand proud with active strong military tradition of great China and many brave soldiers who have small resemblance to foreign movie actor Tom Cruise.

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Jason, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:16am

    30 seconds

    We went like this, he went like that. I said to Dark Helmet, 'Where'd he go?' Helmet says, "Where'd who go?"

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Sean, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:19am

    Giveaway

    I think what gave it away was when they decided to keep the audio track as well.

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Martian150, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:28am

    Top Gun at CCTV

    Oh, come on. There are fans of Top Gun at CCTV. A maverick employee was overcome by "that loving feeling."

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Wes, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:29am

    I can't believe Top Gun stole footage from China's training exercises and and used them in the film!

     

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  •  
    icon
    cseiter (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:35am

    Dubbed Version

    You've lost that rov'in feerin',
    Rooro, that rov'in feerin',
    you've rost that ROV'IN feerin',
    Now it's gawn, gawn, gawn, rororo

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:41am

    You people who are joking about this are going to be really surprised to find out that the Chinese pilots are so good that they actually recreated that entire sequence just to show how awesome they are. They even have the exact same explosion!

     

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  •  
    identicon
    MAC, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 11:42am

    Communist plot...

    Obviously, slipping chinese training video into popular western movie is communist plot to take over the world.
    Subliminal messages have been seen, will activate in 2012...

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Fushta, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:10pm

    OK, one of two things happened:
    1) The Chinese use Top Gun movie clips to train their pilots, so it just looks like they are the same clips,
    or more realistically,
    2) the Chinese use the same special effects team that Top Gun used.

     

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  •  
    icon
    Chris ODonnell (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:12pm

    How long until the MPAA files a copyright claim against the Chinese military?

     

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  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:16pm

    The movie used Grumman F-14s for the "good guys" and Northrop F-5s for the "bad guys".

    Some F-5s were sold many years ago to the Taiwanese government, but certainly never to China.

    Who knows? Maybe China and Taiwan are at war and engaging in dogfights, but keeping it a secret from the rest of the world.

     

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  •  
    icon
    Robert Ring (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:28pm

    So this means Tom Cruise is a Commie, right?

     

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  •  
    identicon
    flyfish, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:28pm

    Last week called, they want their news back

     

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    •  
      icon
      Marcus Carab (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 2:35pm

      Re:

      weird because last week just called me too and said don't listen to that flyfish guy, he's an asshole

       

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      •  
        identicon
        Anonymous Coward, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 8:11pm

        Re: Re:

        According to techdirt copying is or least leads to innovation. Clearly, CCTV is a very innovative chinese company or at least well on their way.

         

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        •  
          identicon
          Jason, Feb 1st, 2011 @ 6:30am

          Re: Re: Re:

          *According to Techdirt copying is necessary for innovation.

          There, fixed that for ya. Simple p->q |= q->p thing, ya dig?

           

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  •  
    identicon
    NullOp, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:29pm

    Caught!

    This all reminds me of the 60's when everything was claimed to be a Russian invention. And the "Caught Red Handed" Award goes to.....who do you think? Geez....

     

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  •  
    icon
    Prashanth (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 12:34pm

    Does anyone remember the Iranian missile photo fiasco from a few years ago? One of the four missiles appears to have failed, so it was pasted over with one of the other missiles (with an identical smoke cloud). This kind of reminds me of that, but on a somewhat larger scale.

     

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  •  
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    Overcast (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 1:18pm

    haha, too funny how "governments" really don't have a clue much past your typical forum troll.

     

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  •  
    identicon
    HarryMonmouth, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 2:26pm

    Training?

    Could the simple explanation be that they are training their military to use bit torrent.

     

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  •  
    icon
    Paul Hobbs (profile), Jan 31st, 2011 @ 3:41pm

    Let's focus on the real issue

    I think that with all the amusing banter going on in this thread, we have lost sight of what is really important. Because the CCTV (is there something ironic in the acronym of China's state-controlled TV broadcaster?) used the footage of Top Gun without authorisation (which I admit is an assumption), poor struggling actors like Tom Cruise are being denied their dues - how is Tom expected to survive if people keep watching/using his films without paying for the privilege?

     

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    identicon
    URGthrash, Jan 31st, 2011 @ 8:17pm

    thats funny, what strikes me as so funny that a Chinese training video would feature only American aircraft, top gun only showed 2 aircraft , the f-14, and the f-5a talon , both are not Chinese aircraft ( even thou im sure half the parts where made in china ;) )

    goes to show ya , how the press will force feed garbage to those willing to watch

     

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    dave (profile), Feb 1st, 2011 @ 9:22am

    tom FTW

    ...and after successfully suing and winning his case, China is shut down for copyright infringement.

    and that, children, is how Tom Cruise single-handedly defeated china.

     

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  •  
    identicon
    TheEndoftheInterwebs, Feb 11th, 2011 @ 6:44am

    Chinese caught "sampling" Top Gun

    China once again shows that anything cool they do is "borrowed". Almost makes you want to pre-emptively nuke them, i mean send the MPAA after them (same thing??)

    If you want to read more, check out http://www.theendoftheinterwebs.com/2011/02/chinese-military-caught-sampling.html

     

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