View From the Phlipside - Movie Piracy

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.


Part of this story is very serious.  The rest however is either deeply ironic or just absurdly amusing.  Maybe it’s both.

The serious part has to do with movie piracy.  The real downside of the digital revolution is how easy it is to steal and mass produce copies of all kinds of media files.  Audio, video whatever can be copied on even the most basic computer.  If left in a digital form and shared on the internet the ability to cut into the profits of the artists and companies creating those pieces is absolutely enormous.


I’ve talked before about some practices in the music industry that have probably done more damage to the industry itself than to the pirates.  The reality is that some kind of solution has to be found that offers the buyer a reasonable ability to make use of the product they buy while protecting the long term interests and businesses of the producers.  At the moment the systems most end users like don’t leave much room for the producers and the ones the producers like put a stranglehold on the consumer.


This is becoming a real problem for the movie industry, especially in places like Spain.  Spanish law only makes piracy illegal if you are doing it for profit.  So Spanish movie lovers feel no compunction what so ever about going around the movie companies and just downloading bootleg versions off the internet.  Without the law on their side the movie companies don’t have much room to maneuver.  The situation is so bad that Sony Pictures is thinking about getting out of the Spanish DVD retail business all together.  That’s a potential major hit to the bottom line for Hollywood at a time when they don’t really need to see any more hits.


So that’s the serious part.  What’s the funny/ironic part?  Well that would be that Warner Bros., a leader in the anti-piracy fight here in the United States is currently being sued by a German company that makes, wait for it, anti-piracy technology.  According to the suit filed in the spring of this year Warner Bros. began using the technology, without paying for it, back in 2004.  That’s right Warner Bros. allegedly is using anti-piracy technology that it...pirated.


Your whole sympathy quotient for the movie industry just dropped a couple points, didn’t it?  Yeah, mine too.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.