Steve Sodenberg says the crew gets affected most, not the stars. I guess that means people behind the cameras are taking their salaries mostly in points rather than in salary. Wow…

Leave it up to 60 Minutes to cover a storyline that most would not even think of. Kudos Lesley. I won’t say who the person is, but someone close to me asked me to create a CD cover for them for their new Gospel CD.  The person giving me all the content for the CD couldn’t even explain the format they wanted because they didn’t own any store brought CD’s or DVDs - everything was bootleg.

Sadly this story will shed the light on an ugly trend these days that people by and large consider to be a victimless scam. They look at the big movie studios and music industry as having deep pockets, so the boot-leg movies and CDs they purchase through the black martket or online, won’t affect their bottom light.

Maybe this will make people rethink how and where they buy their media.

This is probably more a matter of the big boys in the board rooms getting upset with the little boys in the back alleys.  The mafia has always been part of the film industry.  Mainly in "production money" which in some cases offers a better return then even Bernie Madoff could.  A real one.  They have always had an easy "black market" from the point videotape came on the market.  It’s their film in a way. The problem is when the big boys’ bootlegged versions hit the streets.  The little boys on the streets then make their own bootlegged versions and sell those and the big boys are seeing their profit margins dwindle. 

The mafia is everywhere in this country. And they are in the board rooms. Not just in the back alleys. 

I honestly cannot watch 60 Minutes.  I still haven’t recovered from Madeline Albright and her classic "the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children are worth it" interview with Lesley.  And yes, I know. She didn’t mean it.  Well, she didn’t mean it after she realized she’d said it and everyone heard it.  I had just barely recovered at that point from Hillary Clinton and her "I’m not just some woman standing by her man" interview with Mike Wallace.  Or was it Dan Rather?  

Its an interesting question. The Mafia isn’t just going to go away, it will always just slink into something else.  I think it started out with Olive Oil.

….hopefull never petroleum.

I live in Howard Beach, need I say more?  I’m going to watch 60 minutes tonight, switching back and forth from the ballgame, and Curb.

I went to school in South Ozone Park. You need not say more. :)

Piracy of films, piracy in the music industry - these are certainly lucrative areas where organized crime can make money, and that is what organized crime has always been about: money. I recently learned that there have been inroads from organized crime families in the Albanian "mob" into ATM’s! Not the ones attached to banks, but those "independent" ATM’s that are now found in markets, drugstores and gas station "mini-marts". Using these ATM’s is risky, since some of them record your card number and PIN and then forward the information to those who use your money, or launder their money through your purchases in some odd way. Yikes! The film industry loses millions in pirated DVD’d, and yes - it mainly affects the crew, NOT the stars or major director/production members. Sadly, it seems that it is always the "little people" who are hurt the most by organized crime.

For years, the word was that the mob made money by targeting the addictions of lawbreakers who gambled, frequented strip clubs or prostitutes, or used drugs - or other mobsters. Now we know this was never really true, don’t we? It was said that mobsters only target their own and never kill "civilians". And we know that was also never really true, either. And yet we continue to romanticize the mob in film, literature, music. And I readily admit that I list The Godfather, and Goodfellas, and The Sopranos among my favorites. Why, I wonder? What is it about these sagas of greed and violence and vengeance that has fascinated us since the Jacobean dramatists first spattered the stages with blood and gore and vendetta? What a strange dichotomy exists when it comes to the many shoots of the vine of organized crime.

Anything that is unregulated is an invitation to the mafia.  That includes Wall Street.  They are everywhere. They even have lobbyists on K Street.

I watched part of the story, I had to stop when the over acting on the interviewers part kicked in and I started laughing. Good concept for a story but I could have lived without Lesley’s over exaggerated responses. When they talked about the pirate recorder that was caught and had his family with him, she was all blathering on about how could he have his kids there, like he had put them in danger. Yes he committed a crime and should not have involved his family but her over exaggerated response was like he took the baby to a crack house to play bare foot on broken glass, had me changing the channel.