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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated June 20, 2005 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
1 -
Team America: World Police Special Unrated Edition Paramount Home
Entertainment
Shanghai is cracking down on pirated videos ahead of the city's international film festival. Stores have temporarily closed or boxed up unauthorized DVDs to avoid having them seized in police raids. Sidewalk sellers who peddle copies out of suitcases are also lying low. The eighth edition of the annual Shanghai International Film Festival _ the only one of its kind in China's vast entertainment market _ runs for nine days starting June 11. Police said the anti-piracy sweep also aims to prevent the embarrassment of actors and film professionals attending the festival seeing pirated versions of their films for sale. Pirated disks, including high-quality copies of recent Hollywood releases, are usually widely available in Shanghai and other Chinese cities for less than $1.
From a standing start in fall 2003, online DVD rentals are on course to total 13% of all video rentals in 2005, more than doubling the 2004 figure of 6%, according to Screen Digest. The British online market is growing faster even than the longer-established U.S. biz, where subscription services took 6.9% of the market last year, and are predicted to reach 12% this year, according to Adams Media Research. Britain's market leader has just logged its 6 millionth rental and ships out 17,000 different titles every week from its catalog of 32,000. A remarkable 85% of all rentals are for titles more than 3 months old. Films more than 3 years old account for 17% of transactions -- and TV shows, a negligible category in video stores, also make up 17%.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez began his first official trip to China by saying that the country's rampant counterfeiting of American products was the top issue bedevilling trade ties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated that global trade in fake and pirated goods, anything from designer dresses to DVDs, costs the American economy $250 billion each year. "Intellectual property rights are not up for negotiation, and frankly, abuse of intellectual property rights is not acceptable," Gutierrez told businessmen. "Intellectual property rights violations are a crime and we don't believe we should be negotiating crimes with our trading partners." Industry groups estimate that U.S. music, movie and software companies lose up to $3.8 billion a year in China from sales of pirated copies, a headache for firms.
Many Americans are changing how they watch movies - especially young people, the most avid moviegoers. For 13 weekends in a row, box-office receipts have been down compared with a year ago, but sales of DVD's and other types of new media continue to surge. Studios have made more on DVD sales and licensing products than on theatrical releases for some time. A box-office tracking firm executive says that "today's audience is a much tougher crowd to excite. They have so many entertainment options and they have gotten used to getting everything on demand." Last year Americans spent an average of 78 hours watching videos and DVD's, a 53% increase since 2000, according to a study by the Motion Picture Association of America, the film industry's trade group. DVD
sales and rentals soared 676.5% during the same period, and 60%
of all homes with a television set now also have a DVD player. DVD
sales and rentals alone were about $21 billion, according to the
Digital Entertainment Group.
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