WB Took Pains To "Delay" Pirating of Dark Knight

Jay writes "The L.A. Times is reporting on a new studio tactic — not to prevent piracy, but to delay it, as was the case with special tactics used with Dark Knight. 'Warner Bros. executives said the extra vigilance paid off, helping to prevent camcorded copies of the reported $180-million film from reaching Internet file-sharing sites for about 38 hours. Although that doesn't sound like much progress, it was enough time to keep bootleg DVDs off the streets as the film racked up a record-breaking $158.4 million on opening weekend. The movie has now taken in more than $300 million. The success of an anti-piracy campaign is measured in the number of hours it buys before the digital dam breaks.'" You know what else helps to have a big opening weekend? Making a good movie.

Comments

Der...

[whisper_jeff]

I'm just glad the summary had this added on: "You know what else helps have a big opening weekend? Making a good movie." I mean, seriously, the successful opening weekend probably had next-to-nothing with the "extra vigilance" and had everything to do with the fact that the movie is, top to bottom, fantastic. Make a good movie and people will pay to see it. Make good product and people will pay money for it. It's not rocket science. But, of course, they'll tout the success of the movie and the "extra vigilance" as proof that piracy hurts their other movies which don't have similar record-breaking opening weeks. Never you mind that those movies aren't half as good as The Dark Knight - their success suffered because of those filthy pirates! sigh...

Re:well...

[tzhuge]

"They" are business people, and probably negligent in their jobs if they didn't focus on box-office sales as a metric. Like it or not, the movie going public likes CG-fest blockbusters, and, as long as that's the case, the studios are going to focus on those.

Why not stop camming?

[Goffee71]

If they were that serious then they could stop the 'scourge' of cammed movies at source. Equip cinemas with an IR light emitter just below the screen, pointed at the audience that spreads beams across the cinema, digital camcorders will pick these up and make the movie unwatchable. If cammers start using IR filters on the cameras, upgrade them to field-emitters (or was it wave-emitters?) that send out a signal that distorts whatever the CCD 'sees'.