With piracy so rife in the film industry, is it really such a bad thing?
Throughout the ages pirates have been the bane of many lives, whether by the sea, land or air they have pilfered whatever treasure they could find. Piracy is particularly ubiquitous online. Getting hold of the latest film before it hits our shores and for free motivates the seven million illegal downloaders in the UK. If you haven’t already taken part in the ‘ghastly’ act you will know someone who has.
Consumers no longer want - or really need - to pay for films. BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing system, opened for business back in 2001, leading to a surge in illegal downloading. ISPs now report that torrents make up as much as 80% of their data traffic, whilst 95% of downloads worldwide are illegal according to Tony Cohen, chief executive of Freemantle Media.
Online celebrity pirates
One of the most infamous pirates is aXXo (search DVDrip-aXXo for any of his downloads). When he disappeared for a few months last year, the forums were alight with theories about his absence – had he been captured by the authorities, been hit by a car, lost his inside contact etc. Searching for aXXo in Mininova - another torrent website that holds film torrents - will throw up such recent additions as Bolt, Transporter 3, Australia and Twilight which even has its own subtitled version for the hard of hearing.
Torrent freak, a dedicated torrent blog, unsurprisingly places The Dark Knight, the highest grossing film of 2008 with over a billion dollars taken at the box office, as the most downloaded torrent with over seven million downloads. With these levels of illegal downloads occurring it’s no surprise to find that Warner Brothers, along with MGM, Colombia Pictures Industries, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI took a stand against one of the largest torrent search engines Pirate Bay (a Swedish site).
The owners of Pirate Bay claim not to be making money from the site. However according to Svenska Dagbladet, a Stockholm morning paper, as much as £14,700 is generated via single display ads on the site. Accessing the site from London even provides localised ads, which suggests it has an advertising model in place.
Will equilibrium be found between the pirates and film companies?
So, given the continued rise of the pirates, can a balance ever be found? “If you view online pirates as a social deviant hell-bent on the destruction of capitalism, then no, there's no common ground,” says Jonathan Green, technical director at Franki&Jonny. “If your view of an online pirate is someone who as well as paying to go to the cinema and buying DVDs also downloads a film from a torrent server once in a while (in the same way as 10 years ago, they may have borrowed a VHS from a neighbour), then yes, there is common ground.”
Matt Mason is the author of The Pirates Dilema, a book which puts the case that pirates are an essential part of the capitalist system. Mason argues: “I suspect things will continue to get worse until there are enough legal alternatives in place. But for that to happen simultaneous release will have to be a consideration, and it probably wont happen until DVDs/Blu Ray are well and truly dead and buried.” Mason goes on: “We’ll see the studios using file sharing sites more to promote films, and content deals between the studios and torrent sites are already happening.”
What’s in store for the future of film online?
The music industry has somewhat stemmed the piracy of music online with the likes of iTunes, Amazon and now Spotify due to offer downloadable songs later this year. It’s a model that the film industry needs to adapt to ensure its survival.
“Release schedules have to collapse both in terms of the windows between theatrical release and DVD rental / release and worldwide distribution,” argues Green. “Picking up a buzz around the theatrical release of a film that's not available in my territory for several months, the temptation is to just nip online and download it. Similarly, if I want to watch a film that's no longer on general release or not on sale, I'll go online and download it…The industry must accept that "pirates" are just normal consumers and understand what is driving them to download their content illegally.”
The Pirate Bay trial has closed, with the verdict due on April 17th. No matter what the outcome of the trial, it’s fair to say that online film pirates will be around for the foreseeable future. They are a “vital part of a healthy capitalist system”, says Mason. “We need free market extremists at the edges when the market and government fail.”
