NEWS
The trade in illegal downloads and pirate DVDs has been boosted significantly by the release of the latest eagerly awaited Bond flick Casino Royale.
It seems the British super-spy has met his match in the pirate community with two illegal versions of the movie being downloaded more than 200,000 times over the film's opening weekend. Already those downloads will be spreading as well as being burned to DVD for sale across the country.
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However, complaints from Sony Pictures or the cinemas will be tempered by news the film still managed to gross £13.4m over the opening weekend in the UK, making it the third most successful opening weekend of all time at the UK box office.
Versions of the movie appeared online on Friday, before some cinemas had even started showing the film in the UK. Among those file-sharing services being used were Mininova and TorrentSpy, according to Dr David Price, head of piracy intelligence at internet monitoring company Envisional.
Price said by Saturday it was relatively easy for anybody with a broadband connection to find the movie and download it for free.
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However, illegal viewers aren't going to be getting the same experience as honest movie-goers. One of the copies being widely circulated online, according to Price, is very poor quality, having been recorded on a camcorder over the heads of other cinema goers. It is also badly in sync with a poor quality recording of the soundtrack.
A second copy however, posted online on Saturday offered a better quality version, said Price, who suspects the improved sound is a result of the pirate responsible for recording the film capturing sound direct from the T-loop system in cinemas, provided for the hard of hearing.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Downloaded 200,000 times! Is it me or is the market missing the chance to sell to 200,000+ people by only releasing to cinemas?
2. anonymous
Thats true, surely if they released films simultaneously on DVD sky and cinema it would help to reduce the piracy. I for one couldn't be bothered downloading a pirated version if my local video shop had it in...
3. Martin Brindley, MCC International
Yes, must have been offered it 1, 2 or maybe even 007 times...
Seriously though, I think that the trade in these low quality versions isn't as prevalent as it once was. Movies are now available on DVD only a few months after they are in the cinema so the time for consumers with an allergy to over-salted popcorn isn't a long one. That, coupled with us being used to better quality media through the likes of Sky HD, regular digital TV and the emergence of sites such as DivX's Stage6 online has meant that we will no longer settle for such poor imitations.
4. MusicFan
The above comments concerning "missed" revenue by releasing the DVD after the Cinema and also the "reduced time to release" causing less downloads shows a complete lack of knowledge on the subject!
The whole point about downloading from the internet is that it is FREE. Most people who download films do so because they can. Not because of the urgency to see the latest film.
And the talk about downloads being poor quality doesnt wash either. Most films are available for download FREE converted to divx from DVD pre releases. If you dont want to watch poor camcorder copies then you just wait a month, then download the FREE dvd rip.
Maybe if DVD's and Cinema tickets with popcorn wernt so expensive, then a handful of people might buy / go and see it instead of download it. But it would not affect the vast majority of downloads.
The world's population grows year on year, theres more than enough of us to co-exist! Like the news said, it was still the "third most successful opening weekend of all time at the UK box office" So how can downloads be affecting it?