On October 17 of last year the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) celebrated its 15th birthday. It was on this date in 1990 that founder Col Needham made the lists of actors, actresses and directors - lovingly compiled by him and a group of movie-fan-volunteers - searchable. The seeds were sown for the first movie website and the essence of the relationship between film and the information sharing on networks was begun.

At the end of January 2006 major film studio Warner Bros announced that they were making feature films available online by utilising controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing technology – enabling faster downloading speeds, whilst attempting to beat movie pirates at their own game.

The internet’s relationship with the movie industry has developed over a number of years. From a facilitator of debate by movie geeks, to a major marketing tool for new releases, to a distribution system for the films themselves, the internet’s importance in the eyes of the movie-men and women has grown exponentially.

In the downloadable document below, we take a detailed look at the relationship between movies and the internet and discuss how the medium has progressed from being a movie marketing channel to a viable distribution tool. We look at the love/hate relationship the major Hollywood players have with the internet: “They seem to fear the online revolution every bit as much as they salivate over the revenue it might generate,” said Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam at our last IAB conference, Engage 2005.

In the face of the threat of movie piracy is the internet a heroic saviour of the film industry or a dastardly nemesis that cannot be killed?

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• The buzz on movies and the internet downloadable document (1066k)
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