I know since I wrote up that article on piracy I’ve been talking about it a little more than usual. Today though, I have a hot little story for you. It seems Lions Gate Films President Tom Ortenberg just doesn’t care about pre-release piracy. Recently, a workprint of “Hostel: Part II” was stolen and thrown up on Bit Torrent sites. This is a big deal, as workprint copies of movies are very early studio releases for internal use only. You do the math of how serious this is.
So why didn’t Tom Ortenberg care about his workprint being stolen and leaked? Now everyone will see “Hostel: Part II” before the theaters – or will they? See, workprint copies of films are missing scenes, overdubs, special FX, and plenty of other things that make a movie a movie. The copy of Hostel that was stolen was in “rough, unfinished form”, thus not the final version that will appear in theaters.
It may impact the release of the film on a miniscule level, but Ortenberg doubts it. No financial impact, nothing. Looks like some movie studios understand how piracy works and realize that at times, it won’t always hurt your films.
Movie Chief: Pre-Release Piracy Makes No Impact on Box Office [TorrentFreak]
I have spent a lot of time in the film business in LA, as well as later working with firms to develop strategies to mitigate piracy. The only real answer is day and date release across all formats: Theater, Pay-Per-View, Legal Download, DVD/Video, etc.
It’s inevitable, and although it may change the way the next generation experiences film, it is the way the world. This is difficult for even me, who grew up watching classics like Rollerball, Carrie and Dolomite in the theaters! But that’s why it’s called the film “business.”
To that point, on a strictly financial basis, it also makes a lot of sense. With a $100M film, a studio may spend $20M+ marketing it. Six months later they will spend another $5/10M+ marketing the video. Right out of the gate, they could save this second wave of advertising and increase margins, make films more profitable, etc.
Lastly, whether the studios sanction and develop DRM strategies to make this a possibility – it will happen anyway in the form of piracy.
On the bright side: our parents got to say cool things like “when I was young we didn’t have a TV.” Our generation can say things like “When I was young, I got to see Mario Brothers and TMNJ on the big screen. Ahhh… the classics!
Seeing Super Mario Brothers in the theater is the same as a gang rape.
The Lionsgate guy is right – watching a poor torrent version of a movie is NEVER going to replace seeing a finished film in a theater on the big screen in surround sound with 5 of your friends in my book.
Imagine in the future, we’ll show our kids when they’re in computer science classes, and proving that no form of copy protection in the universe will prevent a individual from tinkering with the lock, since the bigger the lock, the more attractive it is. And after all the brilliant maths students crack hardware forms of DRM, our future generations will laugh at how much of a joke DRM was.
And any other form of hardware protection mechanism.
(Especially the days of the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari 8bit/Atari ST’s)
And it’s not just pirates that like to bypass copy protection. Mathematicians love to take their skills and crack a copy protection scheme because it’s like putting together a puzzle.
As long as there are bril
Imagine in the future, we’ll show our kids when they’re in computer science classes, and proving that no form of copy protection in the universe will prevent a individual from tinkering with the lock, since the bigger the lock, the more attractive it is. And after all the brilliant maths students crack hardware forms of DRM, our future generations will laugh at how much of a joke DRM was.
And any other form of hardware protection mechanism.
(Especially the days of the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari 8bit/Atari ST’s)
And it’s not just pirates that like to bypass copy protection. Mathematicians love to take their skills and crack a copy protection scheme because it’s like putting together a puzzle.
(It’s like a mind exercise, and a great educational way to stimulate youtr mind since not only are you dealing with algorithms, you’re also dealing with powers that be, and it’s like skateboarding. a rush.. and throwing all night parties in abandoned warehouses.
As long as there are brilliant minds out there that are into mathematics and keep with it, no form of copy protection will ever work.
ur m
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b0011ks5FM8
proof that pick gnomes are real!
j