When a London company announced several years ago that it was offering the first legal service to Watch Vampires Suck Movie Online for Free, video store owners around the world began worrying about their future.
Downloading services today are marketing to the very kind of person who used to drive to Blockbuster or Movie Gallery twice a week. After all, DVD and VHS renting is a massive market. Here's a prediction: major film studio will eventually have their own online downloading services. Dumping movies into your home computers is going to be massive.
Another reason to avoid illegal downloads is quality. Viruses are one more reason. The creators of viruses constantly have to devise new and clever ways to infect the unsuspecting public.
Just a few months ago, somebody sitting at their home computer uploaded a high-quality copy of a newly released film onto a certain illegal person-to-person file-sharing network. Within weeks, that one file had been downloaded by 30,408 people on six continents. Dozens of other illegal copies of the movie found their way onto the hard drives of many thousands more.
Today China is the capital of movie piracy. Indeed, within hours of a film being released nationwide in the U. S., illegal DVD copies are available on the street in Shanghai and Beijing. About 90 percent of DVDs sold in China are bootlegs, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Why? Because China puts quotas on the number of foreign films allowed into the country -- and carefully screens them, making sure nothing gets in that would spread dangerous ideas such as free speech or democracy. In Iran, every film must pass approval by Muslim morals police. The same restrictions apply in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Islamic world. And in Burma, Cuba and North Korea. So in each of those nations, movie pirates are feeding a hunger for freedom that dictators have tried to quash.
Such pirates fill a gap overseas where legitimate markets are heavily restricted. So the pirates may actually be pointing the way to new markets that the internet can open. Once upon a time, the big movie studios opposed the release of their movies on TV. They also fought the development of cable movie channels such as HBO. Then they resisted VHS and DVD marketing. Hollywood feared that TV, cable and home video would destroy movie theaters.
Some of the world's biggest DVD-counterfeiters are in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. One DVD mill near Manila was cranking out 14 million DVDs annually. Indeed, bootlegged DVDs traceable to China have been identified in at least 25 countries. So it will be with downloadable movies. Already a Sweden-based site functions much like Google, listing movies that are illegally available for free download. In a recent visit to that site, investigators found more than 5 million users online, trading illegally copied films.
So, expect the pirates to exploit the internet. But watch out for Hollywood to figure out clever strategies as well -- as the ability to Watch Vampires Suck Movie Online for Free becomes a part of everyday life.
Downloading services today are marketing to the very kind of person who used to drive to Blockbuster or Movie Gallery twice a week. After all, DVD and VHS renting is a massive market. Here's a prediction: major film studio will eventually have their own online downloading services. Dumping movies into your home computers is going to be massive.
Another reason to avoid illegal downloads is quality. Viruses are one more reason. The creators of viruses constantly have to devise new and clever ways to infect the unsuspecting public.
Just a few months ago, somebody sitting at their home computer uploaded a high-quality copy of a newly released film onto a certain illegal person-to-person file-sharing network. Within weeks, that one file had been downloaded by 30,408 people on six continents. Dozens of other illegal copies of the movie found their way onto the hard drives of many thousands more.
Today China is the capital of movie piracy. Indeed, within hours of a film being released nationwide in the U. S., illegal DVD copies are available on the street in Shanghai and Beijing. About 90 percent of DVDs sold in China are bootlegs, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Why? Because China puts quotas on the number of foreign films allowed into the country -- and carefully screens them, making sure nothing gets in that would spread dangerous ideas such as free speech or democracy. In Iran, every film must pass approval by Muslim morals police. The same restrictions apply in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Islamic world. And in Burma, Cuba and North Korea. So in each of those nations, movie pirates are feeding a hunger for freedom that dictators have tried to quash.
Such pirates fill a gap overseas where legitimate markets are heavily restricted. So the pirates may actually be pointing the way to new markets that the internet can open. Once upon a time, the big movie studios opposed the release of their movies on TV. They also fought the development of cable movie channels such as HBO. Then they resisted VHS and DVD marketing. Hollywood feared that TV, cable and home video would destroy movie theaters.
Some of the world's biggest DVD-counterfeiters are in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. One DVD mill near Manila was cranking out 14 million DVDs annually. Indeed, bootlegged DVDs traceable to China have been identified in at least 25 countries. So it will be with downloadable movies. Already a Sweden-based site functions much like Google, listing movies that are illegally available for free download. In a recent visit to that site, investigators found more than 5 million users online, trading illegally copied films.
So, expect the pirates to exploit the internet. But watch out for Hollywood to figure out clever strategies as well -- as the ability to Watch Vampires Suck Movie Online for Free becomes a part of everyday life.
About the Author:
Movies are one of the best forms of entertainment we have, and as long as Hollywood keeps making new ones, we will keep looking for free movies online.
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