Online Piracy: Threat Or Myth?

by , 10:30 AM EDT, May 28th, 2002

Media piracy is the buzzword lately, but a recent Guardian article suggests that the real pirates are in the boardrooms of the entertainment companies. Written by independent filmmaker Alex Cox, this article tells it from the other side of the entertainment industry, and examines the veracity of recent comments by the Motion Picture Association of America, the increasing corporate influence over intellectual property law, and the recent trend towards restricting consumers' use of technologies such as DVD. The article asks:

But is the MPAA's claim that Spider-Man piracy has cost Columbia Tristar millions in lost profits even true? Spider-Man is one of the most successful studio releases of recent years. Currently the only pirate versions available on the internet are of incredibly bad quality, shot by somebody's camcorder off a cinema screen. To download them from the web, you have to be fanatical, and very easily pleased.

High-quality "pirate" versions of Spider-Man or Attack of the Clones will not be available until the DVD comes out; downloading them will require a super-fast internet connection. The DVD release of both films is many months away. What fanatical Star Wars or Spidey fan is going to sit at home for six months waiting for a decent pirate internet version without seeing it at the pictures (probably several times) first?

Interesting questions indeed. You can read the entire article at the Guardian's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

It's getting harder to believe that all the woes of the entertainment industry outweigh the massive profit they make from us, and this article is just one of a growing number of voices that seek to remind us of that fact.

If the discussions in this article aren't quite enough to spark your interest in Big Media's maniuplation of IP law, there's this other small issue: legal action against the five big music companies alleging that they engage in price-fixing. Not only is this behavior in violation of anti-trust laws, as far as the FTC is concerned, but according to George Scriban, that very tactic is possibly responsible for falling sales.

Well, fancy that.

The Guardian: 'But Who Are The Real Pirates?'