Photo: Universal Studios
If you’re really eager to see the much-touted film American Gangster, you can apparently find high-quality bootlegs on the streets of Los Angeles. These aren’t the shaky DVDs that pirates make with camcorders at the theaters; they’re perfect copies from a studio master and they’re here a week BEFORE the film hits theaters.
Such security failures are becoming ever more common, according to a story in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, which reports that the animated film Ratatouille, the horror flick Hostel: Part 2 and the documentary Sicko also hit the streets before the theaters.
I must say that part of me enjoys seeing this happen to the folks at Hollywood, who like to denounce American inequality before flying their private jets to their sprawling mansions.
Schadenfreude aside, this is a huge problem for Hollywood. When perfect bootlegs start hitting the Internet rather than the streets, it’s going to take a huge bite out of Hollywood’s revenues, particularly considering that the people most likely to go to the movies (adolescents and young adults) are also the most likely to download pirated content.
My biggest question is whether this will hurt movie lovers or just movie makers? Will diminishing ticket sales and DVD purchases reduce the number or quality of new movies or will such factors simply reduce the amount the movie makers get for their services?
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