Fox Thwarts Potter Internet Piracy (but not really)
It amazes me how the music and movie industries just don’t get it. This is from techdirt:
Apparently, 20th Century Fox has proudly announced that they successfully stopped bootleggers from taping the latest Harry Potter movie — even though that’s apparently not true. As Dewayne Hendricks points out, he went online and found that you could, indeed, download a copy of the movie already. However, even if Fox was correct, you have to wonder at what cost. Harry Potter was the top grossing film this past weekend — and it would have been even if the film was available online. It received pretty good reviews, and it’s the type of movie franchise that’s definitely going to bring out viewers. Meanwhile, crappy video camera copies of the movie aren’t exactly the type of replacement that most movie goers are interested in. Yet, 20th Century Fox purchased and distributed thousands of night vision goggles, and promised rewards to anyone who caught someone taping the film. No one was caught. In other words, the whole procedure was a complete waste that cost a lot of money, didn’t do anything to make the industry more money, didn’t actually stop anyone from taping the movie or having the movie get online, and treated honest, paying theater goers as if they were criminals. And the movie studios are proud of this? Update: Well, it appears the original source may be completely wrong about this story. As a few people pointed out in the comments, Harry Potter is a Warner Brothers offering, not 20th Century Fox.