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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated July 16, 2007 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
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Apocalypto Touchstone Home Video
G-8 leaders meeting in Germany agreed to join forces in a global effort to clamp down on piracy in the wake of a rising trade in counterfeit movies, music and software. "The benefits for economic growth and development are increasingly threatened by infringements of intellectual property rights worldwide," their statement said. The leaders said they recognized the "urgency" to implement concrete measures to improve cooperation, including strengthening coordination between national customs and law enforcement administrations and launching "technical assistance pilot plans" with key emerging economies to help build the necessary capacity to combat piracy. They also agreed to look into the creation of an intellectual property rights task force focusing on anti-counterfeiting and piracy -- with a potential mandate to develop new electronic information system for use by customs authorities.
Film director Robert Sarkies says he fears DVD piracy could strangle the New Zealand film industry. The issue has been highlighted by the conviction of an Auckland man over the illegal distribution of a pirated version of Sione's Wedding. Mr Sarkies says piracy is putting people's livelihoods at risk, because fewer films will be made if investors do not see a return on their money.
In the biggest bust of a pirated media production racket this year, Taipei police seized 42 DVD burners and nearly 60,000 bootleg DVDs and arrested seven suspects after raiding a residence, the Movie Picture Association (MPA) said. Representing Hollywood's biggest production studios overseas, the association had enlisted the help of local police after discovering flyers advertising cheap DVDs in Taipei nearly two months ago, a senior MPA official said. The raid was on an "underground factory" with a yearly production capacity of 1 million black-market DVDs, the official said. A marketing manager for Business Software Alliance, a group that helps top software-makers fight copyright infringements, said almost half of all piracy occurring in Taiwan involves software, leading to losses of $122 million for the global software industry.
A family-owned media company, Crest Digital, partnered with Phillips, the European electronics giant, has developed traceable authentic content technology, which they call TRAC. Crest Digital has teamed with the leading film company in China to bring the system to that country, the world’s largest producer of both legitimate and pirated CDs and DVDs. TRAC discs will be made at a plant that will have an initial annual manufacturing capacity of 100 million DVDs and CDs. With TRAC, a visible stamp, or “watermark,” is put on the information side of a CD or DVD and invisible “data channels” are embedded into it. Law-enforcement officials can access the data to determine whether the disc is legitimate. And decryption keys or other anti-piracy utensils can be applied during the process, so filmmakers, music companies or computer firms can produce secure “gold masters” that can be unlocked only by someone with a decryption key.
Police smashed an alleged pirated DVD and VCD factory in Jakarta. A City Police official said his team had arrested four people and seized more than 100,000 DVDs and 30 computers used for copying discs in the raid. VideoBusiness: TV DVD releases slow as segment matures Studios are selectively scaling back their catalog TV DVD release plans in an effort to keep the maturing category fit as its growth slows. According to NPD Group, TV DVD unit sales rose 40% in 2005, but in 2006, that growth slowed to 11%. That still beats kidvid (up 10% in 2006) and new release/catalog theatrical (up 5%), but it’s a cautionary sign to studios, who are more often considering whether a release of just one season is enough. Through the end of March, TV DVD represented 7.2% of all new release DVD sold, according to NPD. That compares to TV DVD’s 8.9% share in 2006; 8.5% in 2005; and 6.7% in 2004.
The Canadian government appears set to introduce legislation that will crack down on film pirates and finally criminalize the camcording of movies in theaters here. The Canadian measures will follow earlier action by 38 U.S. states to criminalize camcording at the multiplex. The camcording issue moved front and center when 20th Century Fox threatened to delay the theatrical release of its movies in Canada if the government refused to move against organized crime syndicates that camcord movies here for their pirated DVDs.
Longtime "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon is urging people to donate DVDs for U.S. troops in Iraq, saying movies offer them a safe escape from wartime realities. "This program accomplishes two things: the troops are entertained and they know that citizens at home care and support them," McMahon said. Operation DVD collects new and used DVDs to distribute overseas to U.S. military personnel. The year-old program has already collected more than 250,000 DVDs. Robert Boots, California spokesman for Operation DVD, said the goal is to eventually have 1 million DVDs distributed to U.S. troops with more than 200 titles in rotation at each base. Collection boxes are located nationwide at schools, retail stores, churches, and government offices.
Hollywood studios "can never spend enough to fight piracy," Motion Picture Association [MPA] chief Dan Glickman said. Though the lobby has doubled to about $10 million its annual budget to fight movie piracy in Britain over the last five years, Glickman said that with each problem the MPA tackles in its second-largest market after the U.S., new ones arise farther away. "China is a special case," said Glickman, noting that while the world's most populous nation is not yet a significant market for MPA films, Hollywood has arrived at a turning point with the Eastern capital. The MPA's overall annual budget to fight piracy is about half its total budget, Glickman said, estimating the total budget between $75 million and $100 million a year. If accurate, this would mean that the money the MPA spends each year to fight piracy worldwide -- used for everything from lobbying to education to tipping off law enforcement -- ranges from $37.5 million to $50 million. This figure pales in comparison with money the MPA says was lost to piracy last year in China. Those estimated losses, of $2.7 billion, almost match Britain's $2.5 billion annual DVD business. end
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