Michael Hiltzik: Movie piracy, from the inside
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Digital technology, which has brought us such boons to civilization as mashups of studio movies like ‘The Shining’ and the cellphone videos without which TMZ.com wouldn’t exist, has also jumped up movie piracy to a new level.
As my column for Monday explains, the old standard of feature films being camcorded from the audience at paid screenings is being supplanted on the street by professionally copied DVDs that in many ways look and work as good as the boxed versions you can buy at your local retailer. Coming on strong: streamed or downloadable illicit movie files viewable on your home PC or flat-screen television.
The words of independent producer Avi Lerner are not an exaggeration: If lawmakers and law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. and around the world don’t catch up with the thieves, the movie business as we know it may not exist for much longer.
The column starts here.
About a week before Christmas, I took a stroll around the Los Angeles Toy District and bought a pirated DVD. As I wrote on Dec. 21, curious about the quality of the merchandise for sale on the street, I shelled out five bucks for a copy of the movie “District 9,” which was still days away from being available in your local retail store. As I’ve been informed, quite properly, by readers in and around the movie industry, that casual act made me part of a global problem that is killing jobs and eliminating opportunities for creative people everywhere. Consider this the other side of that column.
Read the full column.
-- Michael Hiltzik
