Peer to Peer Piracy and the Film Industry Essay - 944 Words

Peer to Peer Piracy and the Film Industry Introduction Each day an estimated 400,000 films exchange hands through the Internet. Movie piracy, once reserved to pirate syndicates and illegal duplication factories, has become a common staple among college students with high-speed internet access. With advanced compression technology, movie files can be transferred across continents in hours and across campus networks in under ten minutes. File-sharing is seen as a victimless crime, but the motion picture industry is expected to lose $3.5 billion this year alone due to piracy. Pirate activities undermine every aspect of the legitimate filmmaking business since legitimate retailers cannot possibly compete fairly with pirate business.†¦show more content†¦This carefully planned release of the film to different markets is known as distribution windows, and is essential to the survival of the film industry. If a film is pirated at any point, the worth of that film can be fatally depleted long before it can retrieve its initial investmen t. Film Releases There are generally two critical points in a film’s distribution window where it can be pirated: in theatres, and retail DVDs. The most important release for a film is its theatrical release. A movie can earn back close to half of its budget in its opening weekend. However, the film can be pirated in two ways. Pirates can use hand-held video cameras to record films off of theater screens and then copy these films onto other medias. Another method of piracy involves the theft of the film print from a theater. This type of theft allows the pirate to make a relatively high quality copy from the theatrical print, which then serves as the master for the duplication of unauthorized copies. These illicit copies are not only distributed to pirates in the US, but also shipped overseas and distributed through illegal channels even before the film’s international theatrical release, cannibalizing a film’s opening weekend-returns. These copies are usually encoded and transfe rred over the Internet as well as through peer-to-peer networks. The second critical point is copies from retail DVDs. Before DVDs are sold to the public, production facilities churn out aShow MoreRelatedMedia Coverage On The Rise Of Digital Piracy1612 Words   |  7 Pagesinspired by continuous media coverage on the rise of digital piracy in Australia, the creation of new legislation related to piracy, in addition to the losses of local film creators and the familiarity of digital piracy within my peers. 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