TAG | “Kiss of Death” for Australian “Australia” movie pirates |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 26 November 2008 | |
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Then you could well be one of the foolhardy Australians out there trying to illegally film movies in cinemas, either with a video camera or a mobile phone. The movie industry has uncovered more and more pirated movies coming out of Australian cinemas thanks to identifiable “watermarks”, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) today. Turns out the cinemas are getting tough on piracy, empowering its staff with “night vision” cameras to scope out who might be trying to make illegal pirate copies of movies, or even simply short clips. The report notes that those caught could either be sent out of the cinema, or could be handed over to police, with the cinema ushers successfully finding a pirate being given a $200 bonus for their hard work. Given that Baz Luhrmann’s new $160 million “Australia” epic goes out in cinemas today, particular emphasis is being placed on this movie to prevent it leaking out onto pirate networks – with the massive cost of this movie, 20th Century Fox wants to recoup as much money as possible, as do the cinemas who are battling the piracy menace. As most pirate movies are filmed in cinemas around the world, studios and cinemas are employing a renewed “take no prisoners” approach to stamping out the practice, although this will probably simply mean that movie piracy will move to those countries with the most lax cinema security standards. That said, with the “watermark” phenomenon that lets studios determine which countries pirate movies have come from, potentially even down to the specific cinema, no cinema will be safe and cinema owners watching cinema goers will surely only intensify. The action follows the recent AFACT court action against Australian ISP iiNet which alleges that iiNet is ignoring movie and TV show piracy by its users which, if successful, threatens to change the global Internet industry forever. See the SMH report for more details.
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