Movie Piracy
Sunday, October 11, 2009 by rs09
Piracy - be it film, music or computer game and software piracy affects us all. Film piracy has skyrocketed with the reaches of high speed Internet. As Majid Yar in the reader states 'MPAA claims that the US film industry loses in excess of $3billion per annum worldwide as a result of piracy' (MPAA, 2o05) (Yar, 2008). One must consider why it is that Internet movie piracy is becoming increasingly popular? the simply answer is - It's free, readily accessible and relatively anonymous. Other factors could involve the fact that films are often released for download on many torrent sites much before they have even released in cinemas in some countries such as New Zealand and Australia. With faster Internet speeds a movie can be downloaded and ready to be played within a couple of hours and for free this seems to be the main attractive quality of Internet film piracy.
The position taking by many studios to combat piracy is completely missing the point one feels. The 'You wouldn't steal a handbag' commerical only appears on official DVDs and not on the pirated version of these films - so effectively the people who pay for watching the movie are subjected to this advertisement and not the 'pirates' who acquire the film for free.
The secondary position by the companies is to ridicule the quality of the pirated films. One can agree the cinema setting cannot be replicated however often the pirated films are a very good DVD quality. They may not of a 4.7GB quality but such a high frame rate is encoded within a 700MB file. This is done through the use of some pirated films known as 'screeners' where a copy of the film which was released for critics or censors has been stolen and posted on the internet and within hours thousands of users around the world have the latest movie in amazing quality.
The position taking by many studios to combat piracy is completely missing the point one feels. The 'You wouldn't steal a handbag' commerical only appears on official DVDs and not on the pirated version of these films - so effectively the people who pay for watching the movie are subjected to this advertisement and not the 'pirates' who acquire the film for free.
The secondary position by the companies is to ridicule the quality of the pirated films. One can agree the cinema setting cannot be replicated however often the pirated films are a very good DVD quality. They may not of a 4.7GB quality but such a high frame rate is encoded within a 700MB file. This is done through the use of some pirated films known as 'screeners' where a copy of the film which was released for critics or censors has been stolen and posted on the internet and within hours thousands of users around the world have the latest movie in amazing quality.