Yield Not to Temptation

Hollywood taking the anti-piracy message to movie screens – “just say no” has worked so well in other arenas:

When studio executives and movie theater operators gather this week at ShoWest in Las Vegas, 20th Century Fox will unveil a movie trailer intended to educate U.S. filmgoers about piracy, in particular illegal file-trading via services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

Initially, the two-minute trailer that puts a human face on the victims of piracy will be shown at most Regal Cinemas, the nation’s largest theater chain. It will be unveiled Wednesday at ShoWest, which runs today through Thursday.

Fox, which had disclosed plans to create the trailer last fall at a conference in Aspen, Colo., declined to comment, but Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said the trailer will make the case that downloads and other piracy are really theft that takes an economic toll on individuals working in the movie industry such as makeup artists and set builders — not just multimillion-dollar movie stars or directors.

“These are just hard-working people on the movie set,” said Valenti. “They are not fat with compensation,” and their livelihoods are at stake.

Among some students, the notion that a trailer could persuade anyone to stop downloading movies seems naïve, like the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. “It’s become so acceptable to download movies and music off the Internet that people don’t think it’s wrong,” said USC sophomore Jacqui Deelstra, 19. Added sophomore Art Priromprintr: “Nobody’s going to think ‘Oh, I’m hurting the movie industry right now’ — they don’t care.”

Despite the estimated 400,000 to 600,000 copies of movies downloaded daily, relatively few people choose to watch films on computer monitors and even fewer, for now, have the technical facility to play downloaded material on regular TV screens. [LA Times]

Traditional piracy, not down loading is the real problem for movies:

Far more pervasive than downloading, conventional piracy includes the recording of movies in theaters with sophisticated camcorders, theft of prints or using computer hardware to make analog copies of DVDs.