Fancy watching the latest Hollywood film in the comfort of your own home
tonight, free of charge? The Wrestler, perhaps, or Slumdog Millionaire — or
even Revolutionary Road, the Kate Winslet drama due out on Friday.All you
need is a home computer and an internet link. Illegal downloading of films
started as a trickle with the arrival of broadband but has suddenly turned
into a flood.
About 6% of the 15m or more consumer broadband users in Britain freely admit
to downloading illegally posted films at least once a month. A Hollywood
blockbuster film is typically downloaded 2m-3m times worldwide in the month
of its official release, according to Envisional, a Cambridge-based internet
monitoring firm that acts for several Hollywood studios. Illegally posted
films even have a top 100 chart on The Pirate Bay, a website that offers
links to pirated films.
The reasons for the sudden surge are intriguing. The first is that technology
for downloading has become better and cheaper — computers with vast storage
capacity and drives that will burn DVDs; high-speed internet connections.
Equally to blame, though, is a band of dedicated and fearless internet
pirates who get their hands on copies of films, sometimes even before they
are in cinemas, and make them available through filesharing websites. These
uploaders even brand the pirated titles with their signatures as a mark of
quality and proof of their audacity.
The films they post on the web are not the grainy versions filmed in cinemas
with shaky camcorders and marred by the occasional member of the audience
walking in front of the camera, but can be DVD-quality versions, sometimes
even in high definition, the new crystal-clear format.
The film industry says that the growth of these sites is a threat to its very
existence — piracy of all forms is estimated to have cost the film industry
£486m in the UK in 2007, the most recent figure available. The practice
deprives writers, artists and producers of a fair reward for their work. In
December a group of more than 100 of Britain’s best-known producers,
directors and writers, including Sir Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh, Richard
Curtis and Stephen Daldry, wrote to The Times demanding action — but there
seems little the authorities can do about it. Like home taping in the 1980s,
which caught on with the arrival of the compact cassette recorder and
survived attempts by the music industry to stop it (remember the “home
taping is killing music” campaign?), film downloading has defied efforts by
the industry to stamp it out.
“We are aware of the increasing seriousness of the problem and are giving it a
high priority,” says Eddy Leviten of the Federation Against Copyright Theft
(Fact), which represents the audiovisual industry on copyright matters.
“Shutting down servers and services can be a complex business, not helped by
the cross-border nature of the internet.”
So who are the pirates and why do they go to such lengths to upload films?
Over the past three years, a character calling himself aXXo — assuming it is
a man — has built a reputation as the best in the business by consistently
posting good-quality copies of the latest films (often before their official
release), carefully compressed so that they fit neatly onto single CDs. In a
recent survey, one in three movies shared online was attributed to him.
Little is known about aXXo but a recent interview did appear on a blog about
filesharing. He remained tight-lipped about how he obtained his material but
did explain why he had illegally posted at least 1,000 films online in the
past three years. “If I see a great film,” he said, “I believe everyone has
the right to be entertained by it.”
This hippie ideal seems to be at the core of the pirating community. Britain’s
leading uploader is KingBen666, who runs a website where filesharers post
music, video and software and swap tips. When we contacted him he declined
to speak but did refer us to another of the site’s uploaders, known as Geno.
Aged 19 and based in the Midlands, Geno was willing to talk about his
motives.
“I don’t make any money and I don’t condone profiting from this kind of
thing,” Geno said. “The keyword is ‘sharing’. I do it for people who don’t
always have the means to pay full prices. Compared to all the money the film
industry makes, what we do is a drop in the ocean.”
He was scornful of the anti-copying security used by the business. “It seems
no matter how much companies are willing to spend on protection, clever and
talented people out there are going to be able to defeat it,” he said.
Downloading films via these sites couldn’t be easier, though it is illegal to
possess copies or distribute them (see panel). To demonstrate, and with the
knowledge of Fact, we went to filesharing sites featuring five of the films
that won this year’s Golden Globes awards: The Wrestler, Slumdog
Millionaire, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (the latest Woody Allen), The Reader
and Revolutionary Road. We also downloaded a couple of recent action films,
Quantum of Solace, the most recent Bond film, and Iron Man.
Once the right free software had been installed from the internet, it was
simply a matter of clicking on the film and choosing where on the computer
to store it. Because the files are large — 700MB is typical — they can take
hours to download. Once the film is on the computer, it can be burnt to a
DVD or streamed wirelessly to a TV via a video-receiver gadget such as a PS3
or Xbox. The picture quality is limited mainly by the size of file you
download — even the lowest-quality films were almost as good as a Freeview
digital broadcast.
The fact that all the films were of such high quality raises the question of
where they came from. The filesharers we spoke to refused to elaborate but
on the versions of The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire that we downloaded a
clue was visible in the form of a caption that flashed up on the screen at
the start. It read: “Property of Fox. May not be copied, transferred or
sold.”
Many pirated films, it seems, are leaked by disgruntled film studio employees
and DVD factory workers. More often, though, the films have been pirated
from pre-release DVDs distributed by the studios themselves.
Contrary to popular belief, the red-carpet film premiere is not the first time
most people in the industry see a movie. Studios routinely send out
so-called screeners to critics, awards judges and others well in advance of
a film’s official release, and these screener discs often make their way
online.
Unfortunately, then, the studios, in their eagerness to impress the
cognoscenti before a film opens, may be unwittingly aiding the pirates.
Perhaps they need to step up their security. If they don’t, and attempts to
enforce the law do not improve, things could soon be a whole lot worse.
A new breed of pirate site streams blockbusters to ordinary web browsers — no
fancy software or waiting for downloads. At the moment, watching a streamed
film is a patchy experience with frequent interruptions. Soon, though, as
connection speeds grow faster, seeing a pirated film will be as instant and
easy as turning on the TV, and that could mean an unhappy ending for the
motion picture industry.
Technology makes it easy
Music radio had been available for decades, but it was affordable recording
technology — cassette recorders and blank tapes — that fuelled the
home-taping boom in the 1980s. Now the same is happening with films.
Manufacturers of computer hardware have made it easy for the pirates.
Broadband
The faster the internet connection, the less time it takes to upload and
download films. Virgin Media is rolling out a 50Mbps service over its cable
network, which would cut the time of a typical film download to minutes.
Software
Downloaders use programs called BitTorrent clients to grab movies over the
internet. BitTorrent distributes big files simultaneously among large groups
of filesharers by breaking it up into hundreds of chunks. As soon as a user
has downloaded a chunk, it becomes available to others from that user’s
machine. The more people sharing a file, the faster each will complete their
download. BitTorrent programs such as Vuze and µTorrent are easy to use —
and free — as is Transmission for Mac owners. The most popular file format
for video downloads is DivX, which works in Windows Media Player and
QuickTime. There is also a free DivX Player available at www.divx.com, which
also burns discs, and most recent DVD players will play DivX files from
discs.
Storage space
External hard drives are plummeting in price. New to the market are NAS
(network-attached storage) drives that can be connected directly to a
router, so you can play films from them without a computer but with a
suitable video player — see below. The 2TB LaCie 2big Network houses a pair
of 1TB drives for about £300 — enough to hold hundreds of HD films. Some
drives even have torrent software built in. Once instructed, the £150
Freecom Network Drive Pro (above) will download films to its 1TB drive on
its own.
Disc burner
The disc drive in most recent desktop computers can write CDs or DVDs in
minutes. The majority of torrented films are available as downloads of 700MB
— the amount of data that can be written onto a blank CD, which costs mere
pennies. Downloaders of larger files will have invested in something like
the £140 LG GGW-H20L, which will burn a high-definition (HD) Blu-ray disc in
20 minutes.
Video player
It’s no longer necessary even to burn a disc to watch a downloaded film on a
big TV. Last year software updates to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360
allowed them to handle DivX files beamed to them over a home network. Then
there’s Western Digital’s £80 HD Media Player (left); connected to a TV’s
HDMI input it will play just about any digital video format fed to it,
including full HD files, from a computer or an external USB-based hard drive.
The legal position
Am I breaking the law by downloading films?
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) says possession of an
unauthorised copy of a film, whether taken by a camcorder in a cinema or
duplicated from a DVD, is illegal under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988. You don’t need to have seen the film to be infringing the act.
Prosecution, though, would be a civil rather than a criminal matter, brought
by a copyright holder. The law exists to protect producers, writers and
artists and ensure they get a fair reward for their work. That said, there
is no record of a film downloader being prosecuted in the UK.
Sharing pirated material opens you to criminal prosecution — and bear in mind
that most BitTorrent software will, by default, offer your downloads to
others. Operators of peer-to-peer networking sites face a further legal
threat because they are likely to profit from advertising and so are subject
to prosecution under the Fraud Act 2006.
Is new legislation needed?
Fact says the copyright act is sufficient, though the global nature of the
internet makes prosecution difficult. The body supports the Ofcom initiative
to make internet service providers liable for the sites they host; if that
becomes law, it believes the number of peer-to-peer sites will be
“dramatically reduced”.
I’ve illegally downloaded a film. Can I be traced?
If your internet service provider were forced to reveal your computer’s IP
address, you could be — even if you’d deleted the film.
Will I be taken to court?
The music industry initially went after filesharing consumers but was accused
of heavy-handedness and last week announced it had dropped the practice in
the US. Hollywood is likely to fare no better. In Britain, Fact says the
film industry is trying to “educate, not prosecute”, but it is “looking at a
number of targets” among sites hosting pirate copies.
