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June 10, 2005
Market forces: the Kim's Video raids; UPDATED
Kim's Mondo Video, a multistory shop on St. Marks Place, in Manhattan's East Village, is one of the first stops in NY for people who love movies and make movies: where else are you going to be have a warehouse worth of legal releases at your fingertips, from Asian distributors of stuff by someone like Hong Sang-soo, or the latest BFI releases that won't make it to the US for ages, if ever, and so much more? (Slinking around various Chinatowns is another story altogether.) I've had many terrific walks through the place with filmmakers, comparing notes about artistic inspiration and encouragement. But according to today's NY Times, the blind eye's been opened, with allegations of illegal copying rather than vibrant curating, with a police raid leading to Kim's being "closed for five hours on Wednesday by police officers who left with boxes filled with CD's, DVD's and computer equipment. Five store employees were charged with trademark counterfeiting. According to [employees] .... known widely for the its... sometimes ornery staff, the police arrived about 1 pm on Wednesday, and ordered all customers to leave. Then, all of the 20 or so clerks, managers and other employees who were working in the three-floor store, which sells DVD's, CD's, books and production equipment, were told to line up on the ground floor. The police quickly identified four men and one woman and led them away in handcuffs. They ordered everyone else to leave and searched the store until about 6 p.m., when officers filed out carrying boxes." Via GreenCine, another take at ReverseBlog from a self-professed "disgruntled ex-employee": "Bootlegging and artist's rights are thorny issues, and I don't pretend to have the brains or the facts to deal with either of them... What I do know, and what concerns me, is that you'll never once hear a goddamn thing about the police raiding Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. With good reason, yes; both franchises [toe] the line very nicely, trimming their 'NC-17' titles to a perfectly palatable 'R,' paying a respectable minimum wage, and never, gracious me, never! sullying their shelves with a release that's anything less than 100% studio-approved legit. And from sea to shining sea their clerks will—without any of the storied Kim's surliness—offer up the same flavorless selection of New Releases... Short of a renewal of trustbusting, these chains will never get in trouble for one very good reason: they don't give a shit what's on their shelves and they've got gobs of money to back up their indifference. Kim's Video, regardless of its failings, does care. And slavedriving sunuvabitch though Mr. Kim may be, let's not lose sight of the fact that he's gone to all ends of the earth to offer the best possible selection to his clientele, legality be damned." UPDATE: The NY Post says it's not about the movies, but DJ mixes; 5 employees ranging in age from 19 to 31 "allegedly spent three days in a back room making mix-tapes of popular rap songs, police said. The five workers were charged with trademark counterfeiting. A few record-industry executives joined cops outside the store and helped point out what police said were the "mixes of a variety of hip-hop songs and compilations the employees were selling," police said."
Posted by at June 10, 2005 11:41 AM
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