Battling the pirates of the multiplex

September 14th, 2005

Whilst spending a month in the United States, I read an interesting article published in the New York Times King Kong vs. the Pirates of the Multiplex August 28 2005.
We know the debate and the reality that piracy for Hollywood is now an issue so serious its probably the biggest blockbuster going on in that industry.
Timoth O'Brien says

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Pricewaterhousecoopers reports global revenues of $84billion in 2004, though DVD's supplied $55.6billion of that revenue.
The Motion Picture association believes Piracy is estimated to cost the industry $3 billion a year.
Piracy is divided between the hardened criminal gangs and those that believe they are digital Robin Hoods.
There is almost a civial war raging in the US between the music and film industries fighting to keep their revenues and profits and those hell bent on denying them some of their cake. Big business has set upon a ruthless path to drasticaly limit fair use of copyright and of course the stakes get higher and higher. Big business has lobbied successfully to slacken the laws around litigation
Theft is theft, but there is always a wider context as O'Brien explains

technological innovations, as always, will still move forward under their own internal logic. And some critics of Hollywood's response to digital piracy say that the film industry is not addressing the broader challenge: a rapid and epochal shift in how audiences watch movies