KIM'S BUSTED - HOW GREEDY CAN HOLLYWOOD GET?

Kim's Video, NYC's famous video store, was raided on Wednesday, and five employees were arrested for trademark counterfeiting. Cops seized nine computer towers, a CD burner, a laptop computer, 471 compact disks and 53 videos. Most of their targeted items were music-related, and some reports claim that record industry execs were on hand to identify bootlegged items. The internet is abuzz.

Think what you want about bootlegging (oh no, Hall and Oates won't be able to make their car payments this year...), and think what you want about Kim's employees (*sob* that video clerk sneered at my rental selection) but this is the last of the great NYC video stores. They carry movies that you've only dreamed of seeing, their clerks actually care about movies and some of them have done great things (in the early 90's, Barry Long single-handedly converted half of New York's population to the joys of Hong Kong movies), and while they break the law on a pretty regular basis (breaking street date, carrying parallel imports and grey-market DVDs) these guys should be cut some slack. They are a brick and mortar store that'll only ever cut into the profit margins of the studios so much, and without them we'd all have to order our parallel imports on-line, and that's really geeky.

Hopefully, the notoriously scrappy Mr. Kim won't take this lying down, but now that Kim's is on the Fed's radar, this might be the beginning of the end.

As for me, I love Kim's. They do more for the New York movie scene than all the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos combined, and I'll be heading down there to buy something today. I'd encourage you to do the same.