JEDDAH, 23 August 2003 — Hollywood has launched the first strike in its war on Internet movie piracy. Backed by the threat of punitive action, the film industry is trying an “ask nicely” approach.
Since the birth of Napster and peer-to-peer sharing programs such as Kazza, the music industry has been in a continuous battle with cyber-pirates who share CD-quality MP3 songs on the Web. Now Hollywood has joined the fight because of a similar threat posed to it by sharing movies online. However, instead of taking the approach that the music industry took, which was, “Stop sharing our music or we’ll take you to court,” the movie industry is fighting back by appealing to people’s emotions.
In a campaign launched last month, the movie industry is playing ads on TV and in theaters that show low-level film industry employees, such as technicians and craftsmen, appealing to the public not to share files because doing so robs them of their jobs and income.
This approach does not mean that the movie industry is kinder than the music industry, but rather that its problems are not yet as serious as those faced by the music industry. The main reason is technology.
The difference between downloading films and songs has to do with file size and quality. Films take up a great deal of file space so only people with extremely fast Internet connections are able to download them. However, with music, the files are small and in a matter of seconds, a user can download a good quality recording.
As technology progresses and downloading movies becomes as easy as downloading music, it remains to be seen if Hollywood will maintain its friendly approach.