Digital Pirates Appear to be Getting the Best of Movie Studios

Feb 9th, 2009 • Posted in: News

One analyst notes that piracy is becoming mainstream behavior as it becomes increasingly simple to point and click your way to a purloined film

NEW YORK
Digital pirates seem to be winning the battle with the motion picture industry, according to an analysis from the New York Times.

Reporters Brian Stelter and Brad Stone describe Warner Brothers’ most recent, and most ambitious, antipiracy campaign, which involved months of planning to monitor and protect each physical copy of The Dark Night, the latest Batman film.

The campaign failed miserably, they write, with millions of illegal copies being downloaded worldwide.

There’s a combination of technological and ethical issues at play in the ongoing battle, according to Richard Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal.

“Young people, in particular, conclude that if it’s so easy, it can’t be wrong,” Cotton told the Times.

Another expert quoted in the piece, media-measurement executive Eric Garland, notes that piracy is becoming, “at least among some demographics, a very mainstream behavior.”

One option being considered by the motion picture industry parallels the approach that stanched, at least temporarily, the bleeding from illegal music copying: make it easy to legally view, and pay for, films on demand.

Source: New York Times, Feb. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 3, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 21, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 6, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 20, 2007.

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