Digital Video Essay Film Piracy Film piracy, defined as the illegal copying and distribution of movies in print,

, videos, DVDs or electronic files, (The Film Foundation 2005) has become a widespread problem throughout the whole world. In Australia alone, a gross output sales loss to the economy of $1,370 million dollars (AFACT 2011) due solely to piracy of film was reported in 2010. New developments in digital technologies (such as server based and peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet), the increasing digitalisation of media and the invention of advanced media compression technologies (Video Production Schools 2012) have made theft of copyrighted material easier than ever. It is estimated that film piracy costs the film industry of America 3-4 billion dollars annually (De Vany, Walls 2007). This figure takes into account two main sources of lost revenue: declines in box office sales and a decrease in DVD sales (which severely impacts many DVD hire businesses). Groups of people such as film producers and distributors, who invest large amounts of money into the making and distribution of movies, are among the most heavily affected in the industry. Cinemas, which screen movies for the public, are also affected by film piracy; if people decide to stay at home and download a film for free within minutes instead of paying for a movie ticket and watching the film in the cinema, ticket sales will go down and the cinema will lose money. Cinema attendance in the US and Canada was down 5% in 2010 (Legal Piracy.com 2011) and due to this, an increase in average ticket prices occurred (this in turn could also discourage moviegoers). Film piracy also exists in physical forms. The trade of bootleg optical disks is extremely harmful to film distribution companies (NZFACT 2007); in 2005, the MPAs operations in the Asia Pacific region investigated more than 34,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting more than 10,500 raids. This resulted in the seizure of more than 34 million illegal optical disks, 55 factory optical disk production lines and 3,362 optical disk burners, as well as the initiation of more than 8,000 legal actions (NZFACT 2007) in this region alone. This is evidence of the fact that physical film piracy is widespread worldwide in New Zealand, for example, bootleg piracy was responsible for an estimated 24.1 million dollar loss in consumer spending in 2005 and the bootleg piracy rate was 50% (NZFACT 2007). According to a report in state-run media, the pirate DVD industry of China raked in 6 billion dollars in 2010. By comparison, Chinas box office receipts totalled 1.5 billion dollars in the same year (Los Angeles Times 2011), despite the fact that a pirated movie costs only about 1 dollar on average, a fraction of the average movie ticket in China. This indicates that people would much rather spend less money and easily buy and watch a pirated DVD than go to the movie theatre and pay the full price of a ticket. The greatest problem with film piracy is how easily one can practice it- it is simple to smuggle a video camera into the cinema, record a film and upload it for the masses to download. Many technologies are being developed, tested proposed to combat this. Thomson, a media company, is developing one such technology. It involves inserting artifacts (extra frames, flashes of light or pixelated grid patterns) into a movie before it is shipped to theatres. The artifacts exploit the differences in which the human brain and camcorders perceive images. An example of this is inserting extra frames with the words illegal copy on them, but making the words flicker at a frequency too fast for the human brain to process. The words, however, will appear in the camcorder recording (Kate Greene 2006). This method would be very effective, but would have to be developed further due to technological advancements in camcorders. Other solutions, such as digital rights lockers and camcorder jammers have also been proposed. Overall, it is clear that film piracy is a universal issue of utmost importance. Though innovation and technology continue to advance, the continued piracy of movies will have an adverse effect on the film

industries of the world if not prevented. Proposed solutions such as the insertion of artifacts into films are certainly worth investing in and developing as they have the potential to benefit society by stopping, or at least partially preventing, the worldwide crime that is film piracy. Bibliography: The film piracy problem. The film foundation 2005. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.storyofmovies.org/common/11041/pdfs/film_piracy_teachers_guide.pdf. [Accessed 18 September 2012]. Economic consequences of film piracy Australia. AFACT 2011. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.afact.org.au/assets/research/IPSOS_Economic_Consequences_of_Movie_Piracy_ -_Australia.pdf. [Accessed 17 September 2012]. Movie Piracy Facts | Video Production Schools 2012.[ONLINE] Available at:http://www.videoproductionschools.net/blog/2010/movie-piracy-facts/. [Accessed 19 September 2012]. Estimating the Effects of Movie Piracy on Box-office Revenue. De Vany and Walls August 24, 2007. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pareto.ucalgary.ca/hollywood/index.html. [Accessed 10 September 2012]. The Terrible Plight of the Film Industry. Legal Piracy 2011. [ONLINE] Available at:http://legalpiracy.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/the-terrible-plight-of-the-film-industry/. [Accessed 18 September 2012]. Movie Piracy and Copyright Protection. NZFACT 2007. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nzfact.co.nz/about.html. [Accessed 19 September 2012]. DVD pirates running rampant in China - Los Angeles Times 2011. [ONLINE] Available at:http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/22/entertainment/la-et-china-piracy-20110322. [Accessed 18 September 2012]. Preventing Movie Piracy - Technology Review. Kate Greene 2006. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.technologyreview.com/news/406063/preventing-movie-piracy/. [Accessed 20 September 2012].