Have you ever downloaded a movie
from the net or bought an illegal DVD?
New Computer Technology that allows quick compression and
transmission of pirated movies is the centre of a war pitting
Hollywood against the digital thieves. Using the technology
Internet hackers trade and own access to content without
ever paying for it.
DeCSS software which was available till recently on the
web as a download was designed for individual users to make
DVD copies for personal use, which is legal under the fair-use
provision of copyright law. Using the software anyone can
decode the movie file on a DVD and compress it into a DivX
file, a compression format that combines Microsoft's MPEG-4
compression technology and MP3 audio compression technology.
A movie in DivX-compressed format is typically 8 to 12 times
smaller than a DVD file. A DivX film can then be traded
on the net and a typical download of a Hollywood movie takes
3-6 hours.
Taiwan based Movie88.com and Film88.com a website based
in Tehran operated a video-on-demand site renting a long
list of Hollywood hits for viewing on PCs. Film88 operated
on a video-store model, letting people stream movies for
three days in return for a payment of $1 to $1.50. It offered
a range of top releases including "The Scorpion King"
and "Star Wars." Viewers were limited to watching
movies in a small box on their computer screens, using RealNetworks'
RealOne media player. Viewers could pause, fast-forward
and rewind the movies, although resuming play took several
minutes as the movie caught up.
Hollywood's Motion Picture Association
whose members include the seven major studios such as Warner
Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox shut down both the movie
rental site Film88 and Movie88.com earlier this year. So
far, Hollywood has also been successful in shutting down
projects such as iCraveTV.com, an Internet TV service launched
in Canada, and Web VCR service Record TV. But as services
crop up in countries that do not recognize U.S. copyrights,
anti-piracy fighters have an increasingly difficult time
nailing down these elusive threats.Though Film88.com was
being operated from a country with unfriendly U.S. relations,
its content ran from servers based in the Netherlands. Hollywood
is hoping a law will be passed that would allow it to use
hacking techniques to prevent the illegal download of music
and movies from the internet. Meanwhile Motion Picture Association
has sent 40,000 letters to ISPs hosting what it deems rogue
operators.
Internet piracy is Hollywood's real-life horror story. Fighting
back against rogue operators, Hollywood has launched a massive
strike at Net bandits of all sizes that violate its' copyrights.
With so much at stake Hollywood studios are taking no chances.
At a select screening of a new release in Los Angeles in
August I along with the invited audience were frisked at
the entrance, had to pass through a metal detector and hand
over our cell phones. Once the film started the aisles were
patrolled by Hollywood security enforcers wearing night
vision goggles and searching for hidden video camera devices.
Theatrical Distribution was also being secured by employing
private detective firms who held the film in their possession
and stood by in the projection room from start to finish
with specially trained attack dogs. With the advent of internet
the movie business is now facing a challenge over its intellectual
property rights from techno wiz kids who are forcing Hollywood
to find newer security techniques. In the near future higher
security screening at a film show may become a norm just
like buying popcorn is today.
Hollywood feels that the theft of American copyright is
the "potential undoing of America's greatest export
trade prize." The Motion Picture Association estimates
that DVD and Internet piracy costs US studios more than
$3bn each year.
Meanwhile the DVD has become the fastest-selling consumer
electronics product in history and DVD player penetration
continues to develop rapidly around the world. In 2002,
worldwide sales of DVDs by the US motion picture companies
exceeded $10 billion, or more than one-third of their total
worldwide feature film revenues from all media. As of June
30, 2003, there were a total of 108 million homes with DVD
players worldwide, excluding China; of this total, 46 million
DVD homes were in the US, with major additional growth predicted
for the coming years. In Europe, DVD sales for 2002 climbed
at 5.5 billion euros (3.4 billion in 2001). In the same
time, DVD players found a home in 17.2% households (7.6%
in 2001) selling 28 million units (12.9 million in 2001).
In 1996 Warner Bros. released the first-ever commercial
DVDs in Japan, followed shortly by a US release. Just two
years later, the company shipped a record-breaking 1.5 million
copies of a single title - "The Matrix" - to retailers
and Warner Home Video became the world's largest home video
company, grossing over $4 billion in global revenues in
2002.
In October 2003 at MIPCOM in Cannes Warren Lieberfarb, the
industry visionary who led the DVD format into a worldwide
success story, will receive the MIPCOM DVD Lifetime Achievement
Award. Warren Lieberfarb is acknowledged internationally
as the architect and innovative force behind the industry-transforming
DVD. His vision and sheer tenacity are responsible for offering
the film industry a new revenue source of billions of dollars
and for radically transforming the way consumers experience
home entertainment.
The burgeoning battle over online film distribution continues
to trouble the Hollywood studios while Indian films are
easily available on the day of their release on DVD across
North America. The Indian film DVD cost US$ 5 - 10 are flown
in from overseas into Indian stores in USA. This is a blatant
violation of intellectual property rights for the Indian
filmmakers. There are lessons to be learnt from the way
Hollywood has organised itself as the MPA to take on the
digital thieves across the world. If Indian Film Industry
also does the same and unites all the various organisations
and trade bodies it may one day put an end to illegal copies
of Indian DVDs floating in the global market.
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