Movie piracy is all bad, right? No good can come from it, right? If a movie makes it onto BitTorrent (as all movies invariably do) then it seriously harms its potential to make big money at the box office, right? Hmm, maybe, maybe not.

Welcome to Hollywood

Hollywood is against movie piracy, and rightly so. It represents people watching content without paying for it. Which is clearly wrong.

If everyone did the same then there would be no Hollywood and no new movies would ever get made. But not everyone does do it, and those who do don’t necessarily stop going to see movies in theaters or stop buying them on DVD and Blu-ray.

Proof of this can be seen in the list of the Top 10 Most Pirated Movies recently compiled by TorrentFreak.

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Hollywood has finally realized the Internet is here to stay, digital content is here to stay, and piracy is here to stay. So it’s doing all it can to stay in control of its own destiny. With mixed results. I’m not convinced UltraViolet is the answer.

UltraViolet

UltraViolet is Hollywood’s answer to DRM. It’s an initiative that began three years ago but has only now seen the light of day. In theory it’s a system ensuring consumers need to buy content only once while still being able to watch it however and whenever they choose.

Horrible Bosses is the first movie to be released with UltraViolet enabled, with Green Lantern, One Tree Hill, and others joining later. Buy Horrible Bosses on DVD or Blu-ray and you’ll obtain a code allowing you to stream the movie to a range of devices. Sounds great, isn’t really.

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Ivi TV has turned to crowd-funding in order to pay the huge legal bills it will be facing as it gets head-to-head with the cable companies and television networks. But not many people seem to be willing to dip their hands in their pockets.

Ivi TV Service

Ivi TV launched over a year ago, in September 2010, as an app downloadable for free. Once installed on the device of your choice, Ivi TV enabled anyone to stream cable broadcasts over the Internet by taking the live feeds from Seattle and New York and rebroadcasting them to subscribers on the Web.

Ivi TV founder Todd Weaver believed this was legally acceptable thanks to a rewritten passage in the Copyright Act designed to help and protect fledgling local cable systems in the 1970s. But unsurprisingly the cable companies and TV networks disagreed, suing Ivi TV to get it taken offline.

It has been offline since February but Ivi TV has launched an appeal and Weaver is determined to fight this injunction to the bitter end. Which all costs money. And lots of it.

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TV and movie studios are increasingly fighting back against piracy, usually relying on the legal system to protect them and their content. However, one of the companies on the receiving end of this treatment is turning the tables, possibly with justification.

Warner Bros. Sues Hotfile

Earlier this year five major Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros. sued file-sharing service Hotfile over copyright infringements. The case is ongoing, but Hotfile has already had to give up information on its users and affiliates. But Hotfile isn’t going down without a fight.

It has now filed a counterclaim against Warner Bros. alleging fraud and abuse arising from misuse of the anti-piracy takedown tool (Special Rightsholders Account) Hotfile created for the studio in 2009 following a request for a speedier system than DMCA.

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Hollywood is struggling to transition from the past to the present, to a time when the Internet was but a sci-fi wet dream to a time when it’s integral to our everyday lives. And the MPAA is struggling to tell the truth.

MPAA, Hollywood, Piracy

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is a non-profit organization designed to “advance the business interests of its members,” which is basically the big Hollywood movie studios such as Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Walt Disney.

But its job over the past few years has been more about (mis)educating the public about piracy, how evil the Internet is, and how each and every one of us is contributing to the downfall of the content-creating movie industry.

Unfortunately the MPAA has employed some rather dubious tactics in the pursuit of this, including blatantly lying to make the specter of peer-to-peer file-sharing look much more scary and damaging than it actually is.

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In what was an entirely predictable result of a stupid decision, the number of people illegally downloading Fox TV shows has increased over the past week. Rupert Murdoch and his out-of-date cronies really don’t get it, do they.

Fox’s Eight-Day Delay

Fox recently instituted an eight-day delay between a show airing on television and being available to view online on Fox.com or on Hulu. The idea was to ensure only those who pay for the privilege get to watch these shows the day after transmission.

In reality, thanks to Fox only signing up one distributor before launch, the vast majority of people are being made to wait more than a week to catch up on the Web. Which most people who are very into their favorite shows just aren’t going to be able to do. Cue the obvious result of this doomed plan.

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A company offering DVDs for rent in a unique way has been ordered offline by a federal judge. Apparently it isn’t acceptable to stream a DVD over the Internet under any circumstances whatsoever.

Movie Piracy

Move piracy has been a problem for Hollywood for years, ever since home video became a dominant force and you could buy a hooky copy of the latest releases on street corners and in markets all over the world. These days DVDs have made it even easier, with people happy to sell you a copy of the latest blockbuster filmed by someone on their smartphone.

And then there is the Web, the latest villain the movie industry can blame for all its ills. Then again it does have the law on its side. Seemingly even when a company feels it is operating within the bounds of a legal loophole.

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