Exhibition of Movies on Television

Once a movie leaves the theater, and often even before it lands in home video, it begins an exhibition journey through a number of windows that typically starts a couple of months after the theatrical release with pay-per-view cable and satellite outlets in hotels. The movie might then be released on DVD and also show up on home cable or satellite pay-per-view and “on demand" systems, as well as on trans­atlantic or transcontinental airline flights. Later, it might appear on a subscription cable channel such as Showtime or HBO. Still later, the movie may run a number of times on a major broadcast or cable network. Eventually, a local television station might pick it up as part of a package of films it licenses for late-night or weekend airing. All this amounts to a lot of money. In fact, the post-theatrical windows can turn a hit film into a bonanza for the production and distribution firms. It can also turn a disappointment at the box office into a break-even or even mildly profitable film.

The Problem of Piracy

film piracy the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material for profit

Profits in the motion picture industry are continually threatened in the United States and around the world because of film piracy—the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted films for profit. The activity is illegal under international copyright laws, but it is rampant around the world. You can see it pretty openly in many U.S. cities: vendors selling videos of films that are still in theaters. Sometimes pirated copies are produced by having someone take a video camera into a theater and shoot the movie. In more sophisticated cases, pirates smuggle a movie out of the theater, copy it as a video master, and then return the original. These illegal practices made it possible to purchase cheaply many major films on the streets of major cities on the days that the films debut theatrically. Stripping the copy-protection codes off DVDs and uploading movies to the internet means that many people can illegally download hit films for free.

Consider the ethical responsibility of the buyers of these DVDs as well as the behavior of the pirates. The U.S. movie industry estimates that such theft is costing the industry billions of dollars a year—money that it would have received if its companies had sold those DVDs or digital streams. Within the United States, federal and local law enforcement groups have been trying to combat piracy. On a global level, the U.S. government, aware of the importance of the film industry to U.S. exports, has been pressuring the governments of countries in which enforcement of copy­right regulations is particularly problematic. In addition, the MPAA, the group that represents the major production and distribution companies, has hired detectives who roam the world trying to identify the pirates.

As for internet piracy, which the MPAA on its website calls “a global avalanche,” the organization states that it has a “multi-pronged approach,” including educating people about the consequences of piracy, taking legal action against internet thieves, working with law enforcement detecting piracy operations, and helping to advance technologies that will “allow the legal distribution of movies over the internet.” Like the recording industry's RIAA (see Chapter 10), the MPAA has sued Americans for copyright infringement in the smallest of towns and the biggest of cities. Penalties can be severe. For example, by federal law a person caught illegally recording movies in theaters can get up to five years in prison and be fined up to $250,000.10 Unfortu­nately for the industry, all sorts of piracy continue.