Movie piracy: We need a hi-tech solution to illegal downloads | Editorial | Comment is free | The Observer

The movie industry needs to fundamentally reassess it's entire business model if it is to see off the pirates. First up, they need to drop their regionalism - here in France it's a roughly 50/50 chance that an English-language film download from iTunes will be available in both English and French, rather than merely overdubbed. The Internet is an instant global marketplace; impose petty restrictions such as this and people around the world will instantly be directed into the hands of the pirates. They want to see the film now, not in six months time, and they want to be able to pick the language version they want, not the one imposed on them by the distributors.

Secondly, and perhaps far more fundamentally - but building on my first point, is immediate global availability. Every movie should be available as a download from the studio from the day it is released, and that availability needs to be universal and global. Most movie downloads happen at least in part because that is the only way of seeing a film which is of the moment for the vast majority of people around the world. Why would anyone wait months to find out if The King's Speech will ever make it to a cinema in Mumbai if they can download a review copy of it from The Pirate Bay a few days after the premiere?

There is a huge demand for films around the world and a channel to make them instantly available. If instead of relying on staggered and unpredictable releases every movie was immediately available to buy as a high quality, HD widescreen download from the day of release, I suspect the film industry's revenues would multiply overnight - and I don't believe it would have the slightest impact on cinema attendances either.

The cat has been out of the bag for a long time. It is time the film industry realised this and gave their global audience - an unbelievably massive one - what they have actively demonstrated they want. Current distribution models are built on pre-broadband Internet models - it's time someone woke up and realised that the Internet is only going to get faster and easier for those who wish to use it for entertainment consumption, and that the artificial barriers they were previously able to erect have been demolished by it. Time to think again...

via guardian.co.uk

Guardian editorial weighs in....

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales