Piracy Beats the Official Release to Market

In a week when piracy seems to be all around us The New York Times covers the story that thousands of people watched a version of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” online Wednesday, a full month before its scheduled release. 20th Century Fox are reported to not know how the unfinished copy of the comic book adaptation minus some special effects and including temporary sound and music got onto the Internet.
Hollywood studios are spending millions of dollars tracking every step of the film production process to avoid leaks.

The studio had to spend the day issuing take down notices but once out of the bag there’s little chance of getting it back in. BigChampagne are reported as estimating the digital film copy had been downloaded in the low hundreds of thousands of times in its first 24 hours on the Internet.

The current law allows for the swift issuing of take down notices but is reactive not proactive. I doesn’t work as it deals with instances not endemic viral posting. Its like putting fingers in the holes of dykes sooner or later the water makes it through.

We have to find a way of proactively stopping violation but we are not dealing with one media or format or even sector but many, each different and each with their own issues. What may work with music will not work with film and what works with film may not work with say books.

So today we are left with take down notices and the fact the cat is out and had many litters even before it has been detected.