Movies end up online through a small group of people inside the film industry
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By Jussi Ahlroth
Whereas television shows are simply uploaded after being shown on the small screen for the first time somewhere in the world, movies are often found in peer-to-peer networks before the world première.
The Wired journalist Jeff Howe explained how this is possible last year in an article entitled The Shadow Internet.
Behind it all is a number of active groups of people working in the film, music, and software industries, who compete to be the first to upload the products of their respective industries onto peer-to-peer networks.
The source of movies on the Internet is surprisingly often a mole working inside or having ties with the film industry, who is able to steal a preview copy of a film and deliver it to one of the groups. The mole can be a representative of the media, someone working for an advertising agency, the warehouse manager of an online store, or an employee in a company that manufactures CDs or DVDs.
The long-awaited Star Wars movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, had its world premiere last May. The most devoted fans had queued for tickets for weeks. The film appeared online six hours before the world première. It was downloaded ten thousand times in the course of the next twenty-four hours.
The illegal copy of Revenge of the Sith was acquired through the company editing the final cut. Honour and glory in the "Robin Hood fraternity of the media world" are often enough of an incentive to take the risk.
After it has been liberated by one means or another, the film is compressed for faster transfer, and uploaded to a private website that is inaccessible to outsiders.
The datafile is then sent to public peer-to-peer networks, for example the Swedish-based piratebay.org, one of the world's best-known sites offering BitTorrent links. The film can be downloaded from there at the click of a mouse with the help of BitTorrent software installed on your home PC.
In addition to stolen preview copies, copies of DVDs and digital recordings of American HDTV broadcasts circulate on the net.
The picture quality of HDTV broadcasts is three times better than that of DVD movies. They are in great demand.
The Motion Picture Association of America, an interest group upholding the rights of eight major American film studios, launched a fierce offensive last year against the people inside the industry responsible for the illegal distribution of films. However, the network of pirates is complex, constantly shifting, and extraordinarily difficult to trace and root out.
Key websites have traditionally been shut down as the result of a legal battle, and the administrators have faced fines and indemnity payments.
Still, this is not enough, since new sites are put up constantly. This is a well-known fact, and therefore the war is being fought on two other fronts as well.
Film companies have established a co-operative business called Movie Labs, whose purpose is to create different technical means of preventing or hindering piracy. Not much is known about Movie Labs, as it was established only last autumn.
The most promising solution in terms of the industry's future is a peaceful approach. Production companies and television channels are already developing ways to allow the legal downloading of movies and TV programmes as quickly and as easily as is now possible by illegal means.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.2.2006
More on this subject:
 TV programmes are uploaded to the Net instantly after being broadcast
FACTFILE: What is a peer-to-peer network?
JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi
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