VSDA PANEL MULLS ANTI-PIRACY MEASURES
The VSDA kicked off its usually upbeat annual conference in Las Vegas Wed. with a stark warning of financial peril facing its 12,000 chain and independent video store members. “Piracy is an attack on us all. We have seen what it has done to the music industry,” said VSDA Pres. Bo Andersen. “They did not see the threat coming. We do and we see it as the biggest threat to our business. We must confront it, now.”
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Anderson was introducing a keynote panel discussion designed to scare the delegates out of passivity about the trade in pirated DVDs as well as movie file-swapping on Internet peer-to- peer networks. The panel -- moderated by ABC TV news correspondent Robert Krulwich -- included Andersen, MPAA lawyer Fritz Attaway, entertainment industry and ex-RIAA lawyer Matt Oppenheim, Pres. John Fithian of the National Assn. of Theater Owners (NATO), and Barry Fox, Europe correspondent for Consumer Electronics Daily.
Playing provocateur, Krulwich responded to an introductory commercial -- urging consumers not to buy pirate videos because it saps funds from the movie industry -- with the challenge: “I read that theater box office revenue is $9.2 billion and DVD rental $22.5 billion. So what’s the problem? And do any of you have any research that shows how much you are really losing from piracy?” No one from the industry could quote any hard figures, but Andersen assured “we know very well we are losing business.” But he admitted “we know there is no magic bullet cure.”
The panel agreed that after leaks of Oscar screeners were largely plugged, the major source of pirate videos is material shot with a camcorder in a theater, on the day of U.S. release or earlier at media and trade screenings. NATO now rewards theater staff with $500 for spotting videotapers and getting the police to file a report, regardless whether the culprit is convicted. Using night vision goggles makes detection easier, Fithian said.
Pirates are now using miniature cameras -- sometimes contained in a pen strapped to a pair of eyeglasses -- and recording high quality sound by hooking into the headphone jacks installed for the hearing-impaired, Fithian said. Asked whether theater owners were worried about lawsuits by people accused of piracy who were simply wearing eyeglasses that somehow aroused suspicion, Fithian replied, “We are willing to take that risk.”
He also claimed Technicolor is now able to mark each film print with a watermark, invisible to the audience but identifying the specific theater as source, and detectable on pirate copies. “We can then call the theater and alert the staff to use goggles,” he said, “because the pirates tend to find a good location and then go back again and again.” Although patents show that several companies have developed ideas for watermarking in this way -- and even trying to upset the electronics in a camcorder so that it makes a bad copy -- Fithian couldn’t provide specific evidence of successful practical use.
Andersen, Attaway and Oppenheim told the audience that once a recording has been made, pirate DVD copies can be run off at the rate of tens of thousands a month with a bank of DVD burners small enough to stash in a hotel room. Attaway proceeded to make the picture even blacker, with a short demonstration of how anyone with a home PC and a little tech savvy can download a high quality copy of Spider-Man 2 from the Internet, using file sharing sites such as Kazaa. “It takes 6 hours with an ordinary phone line, but people can do that overnight,” he said. “They won’t realize that they are getting viruses and spyware as well as the movie. And when Internet 2 is available it will take 3 minutes.”
The VSDA and MPAA are considering following the lead of the RIAA, and suing people who have downloaded unauthorized copies. “Do we want to do that? No,” said Attaway. “But should we do it? Yes, if necessary. The one thing we can’t compete with is free. The stick works.” Oppenheim said, “The record industry tried to get across the message that it was wrong to copy. But it fell on deaf ears. Combining it with enforcement has cut unauthorized downloading, though.”
Oppenheim dismissed the idea of releasing all movies simultaneously worldwide, and perhaps also on DVD at the same time. It’s unworkable, he said. A legal downloading service such as iTunes might be “part of the solution,” he conceded. But in discussions over lunch after the session, independent dealers -- who make up 50% of the VSDA’s membership -- were quick to express fears over where this would leave them and their stores.
The VSDA and MPAA are lobbying for a change in the U.S. laws that make it a federal crime to use a camcorder in a theater only if it is part of a criminal racket. Simply switching it on is not now a federal crime, unless copyright infringement is proven. The trade bodies also want state laws passed that let police act against camcording. Fifteen states and D.C. have such laws, up from 5 this year. They also want the jail time raised from the current year or less.