The
mother of all piracies
CABLE piracy will soon be kid’s stuff by the looks of it.
The ultimate horror for moviedom, the veritable big brother
of all pirates, the web pirate is here. His spectre has stalked
Hollywood for over two years. Now, his pranks have resulted
in a whole market for pirated films, with illegal downloading
topping 350,000 films a day this year.
Computer users, millions of them, have been surfing the net
to swap everything from music and movies to software, often
without paying for the privilege. Until recently, trading in
MP3 files gave showbiz buffs access to free music alone, with
song-swap services such as Napster and Gnutella making a killing.
Now, entire movies, most of them still in the post-production
stages and yet to hit theatres, can be downloaded.
Sadly, there’s nothing the Hollywood majors can do to stop
this illegal trafficking, and certainly not with the traditional
methods such as enforcement or litigation. The hackers are simply
too quick for them.
Much of the illicit file-swapping begins at File Transfer Protocol
(FTP) and Internet Relay Chat (ITC). The first is an exclusive
network of private servers accessible only by invitation, while
the second is a protocol-based chat facility that’s popular
among computer hackers. Both were invented for wholly legitimate
purposes, but now seem to degenerated into black market centres
for the pirates.
Here’s how the system works: Through a device known as
the theatrical window, one may, for instance, get an early post-production
version of a film from one’s sources in the studios. The
user then puts the video into his VCP, and using a device called
the capture card, transmits the film to his hard drive, Here,
the films are compressed by DIVX, a format that allows films
to be reduced in size, without in any way impairing the quality.
They can then be easily downloaded.
A cruder method is to simply set a camera next to a projector
in a theatre, record the film as it unspools on the screen,
and upload the same onto a computer. Of course, home DVDs can
be copied and transmitted across the net, too. And all in the
matter of a few pirate man hours, and at negligible costs, the
theatre collections of films that have taken a year or thereabouts
to make, take a nosedive.
Tilting AT Windmills
FACED by a black market of this sort, the Hollywood majors have
simply no idea on how to tackle the menace, Illegal downloading
of movies, now pegged at a staggering 350,000 a day, will soon
break the one million a day barrier, or so the experts predict.
Some studios and record companies have been working with the
Boston-based Viant Inc to tackle the proliferation of piracy.
New business models may thus be forged, but understandably,
all the "studies" are strictly confidential.
Other studios have been tilting at windmills. The motion picture
industry, is currently embroiled in a suit to stem the digital
video piracy. The case pits the giants against computer journalist,
Eric Corley, guru of hackers and publisher of 2600, a top magazine
and website of the computer underground. Corley allegedly publicised
a software utility known as Decoder Context Scrambling System
(DeCSS) that allows DVDs to be copied and transmitted over the
web.
The law suit, filed by studios such as Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer
and Time-Warner seeks to prevent Corley from republishing the
software code. But even if Corley’s hugely-successful 2600
is shut down, it will hardly help moviedom. The publicity has
already resulted in thousands of sites posting links to the
DeCSS programme. Hackers can turn to any of these sites for
the code.
Last week’s injunction by a federal US court, against song-swap
service, Napster, was a moral victory for the music industry.
Napster was ordered not to trade copyrighted material. But even
this will hardly help showbiz, because fans who traded in free
music, simply switched over to other such services like Gnutella.
Clearly, the law suit is proving to be a waste of time for the
studios. The more sensible approach to combating piracy would
be for the studios to provide easier and better quality digital
content themselves.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR INDIA?
FOR our filmmakers, the threat’s by no means a distant
one. Currently, downloading music and the movies may seem tedious
and unviable to our desi pirates, fraught as it is with breaks
and interruptions. But once the nation shifts to broadband,
as some Indian metros have already done, the problem of interruptions
will be solved.
By the looks of it, web piracy holds a bigger threat to Indian
showbiz than either cable or music piracy does. It’s time
the producers’ bodies woke up to the threat and collectively
explored avenues to stem the menace now.
Shaju George Alex.
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