MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-04-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] The war on DVD's, Bloombergs new crusade..
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Off New York Streets, Film Piracy Is Online Spencer Platt/Getty Images
DVDs, many pirated, on a table along Canal Street last July. This year,
a sweep by a city enforcement agency found none.
By ERIC A. TAUB Published: April 14, 2008
When Shari C. Hyman tried to buy some pirated DVDs of first-run movies
last February, she and her friends went to Canal Street, New York
City’s knockoff marketplace. What surprised them was not the racks
of phony brand-name handbags, the briefcases of counterfeit watches and
other bootlegged merchandise, but rather that illegal DVDs were virtually
nowhere to be found. Skip to next paragraph Related In Europe, a Push
to Take Away Piracy Suspects’ Internet Access (April 14, 2008)
In a neighborhood full of blankets and sidewalk “offices†with
everything a shopper might find in a boutique uptown, Ms. Hyman was
coming up empty-handed. “We tried to buy DVDs,†she said, “but we
could only get one woman to come out into the street, and she had them
stuffed into her jacket.â€
And that was a good thing, because as director of the mayor’s office
of special enforcement, it is Ms. Hyman’s job to eliminate the rampant
market in pirated DVDs of first-run movies.
Since December 2003, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg started an initiative
to stem the trade in bootlegged and counterfeit goods, Ms. Hyman has
“seen a huge decrease in illegal DVDs being sold in buildings.†In
a February sweep, the organization checked out three buildings and 32
storefronts for bootlegged DVDs, and found none.
But New York may not be the best barometer of piracy. Worldwide and
on the Internet, video piracy remains rampant. The movie industry has
devised new ways to fight piracy, and has pushed for antipiracy laws
and run ads to discourage pirates.
Besides pirated DVD copies of first-run films, copies are also available
online for illegal downloading, mainly through peer-to-peer file-sharing
networks. High-definition camcorders, some not much bigger than a
cellphone, can copy films from a movie screen with little loss of detail.
No one can measure piracy accurately, given the nature of the business,
but a study by the Motion Picture Association of America found that in
2005, $18.2 billion was lost through piracy by producers, distributors,
theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators around the world.
“Retailers do not believe piracy is at a maintenance level,†said
Bo Andersen, president of the Entertainment Merchants Association,
a home entertainment trade group.
No one expects to eliminate piracy. But given that a film’s opening
weekend often accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the theatrical earnings,
a few days’ delay in the availability of pirated copies can make a
big financial difference.
“In three years, the date that pirated copies of major motion pictures
became available has gone from, at times, weeks before a theatrical
release, to days after,†said Darcy Antonellis, Warner Brothers
Entertainment’s head of technical operations.
Surprisingly in this digital age, piracy in large part remains an
amateurish operation. According to Michael Robinson, vice president
and director of North American antipiracy operations for the M.P.A.A.,
90 percent of new movie releases that are pirated are recorded with a
camcorder. The industry employs monitors who use night-vision equipment
to see pirates in action, and theater owners pay employees up to $500
for catching a surreptitious recorder in the act.
Putting aside the fear of discovery and a federal conviction, an
individual typically sits in a movie theater with a miniature tripod
wedged into the cup holder and simply tapes the projected film. To
improve the sound, a pirate might plug the camera into the theater’s
audio system intended for the hearing-impaired.
And as high-definition camcorders get cheaper, pirated copies get
better. Today, high-definition camcorders from companies like Aiptek
can be bought for as little as $130. Copies are then hawked on DVD
or uploaded to file-sharing Web sites. Web distribution reduces the
criminal’s capital outlay to near zero.
Yet for those who do not share videos freely, one recording of a movie
can sell for hundreds of dollars, even thousands, if it is a good copy
of a popular movie that just opened in theaters.
Various technologies to prevent such recording have been developed, but
none have succeeded. In 2003, Cinea, a digital content security company
in Reston, Va., received a federal grant to work on one such approach,
but the company has abandoned its efforts, concerned that its approach
could be foiled by determined pirates.
But technology is helping those who wish to stop movie-sharing. Various
technologies, which the industry prefers not to discuss, allow law
enforcement to pinpoint which theaters have been used to create a pirated
copy. As more theaters use digital projection, even the screen used can
often be identified.
A number of companies have developed technologies to identify pirated
files, as well as the Internet protocol addresses of individuals who
download those files.
BayTSP, based in Los Gatos, Calif., and MediaSentry in Morristown,
N.J., use proprietary technology to get the digital addresses of those
who download illegal files. That information is given to the Internet
service provider, which can ask the customer to stop. When flagged users
try to download again, BayTSP identifies them as recidivists.
“We have captured 12 to 18 million unique copyright violations and
sent millions of cease-and-desist letters,†said Mark M. Ishikawa,
BayTSP’s chief executive.
Legal action has closed some sites that connect users with pirated
movies. The M.P.A.A. won its battle with TorrentSpy, a peer-to-peer
site that is now closed. But The Pirate Bay, a similar service based in
Sweden, is still running. The Pirate Bay says it is merely a platform
and is neither uploading nor downloading proprietary content.
Troma Entertainment is fighting back with humor. Its new movie,
“Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead,†is not due out till May,
but apparently pirated copies are already online.
The company hopes to flood download sites with fakes. Says Troma’s
president, Lloyd Kaufman: “We’ll combine five minutes of the film
with an old Tarzan movie and we’ll see what happens.†Next Article
in Business (7 of 17) »
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