GVLN - Are Torrents Killing Hollywood? Part 3

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Hollywood Sign (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In our last article, we asked the question about how films are getting on the Internet before they are even out on the retail shelves?  Here we are going to partially answer that question.  From what we have learned there are legitimate reasons for sending files of any film over the Internet.  Hollywood film executives, producers, promoters and others share films before they are even released on the Silver Screen.  Sometimes it is to get professional comments, get extra financial backing, further promotions, planning cover or poster design art work and or graphics and many other reasons.  These folks will also send out copies of the films as part of a resume,  to raise financing for their next film, even thank you's to friends and plenty of other fair reasons.

  Now what happens all to often, is those who receive these copies also share them with their friends, family and others.  Eventually these earlier releases find their way to sites that are more than happy to share these films with the world.  What is interesting is that intellectual property rights is a western civilization concept.  It is not shared by a great majority of the world.  Even many in western civilization do not share or understand the concept.  Therefore there are many people who do not consider sharing a copyrighted film to be of any issue.

  A great case in point is the country of China.  The vast majority of China has no concept at all of intellectual property rights which is why copycat items flood so many markets that come out of China.  China is a mecca for forged items of every sort.  Even with over 20 years of western influence now having raged over China, this is still a major issue that all western companies face and will continue to face.

  Are torrents the only way that films are being violated?  Not at all.  There are now a host of new ways that films are being exploited for illegal downloads all over the Internet and the wave is growing.  We have recently learned of some new software that will download a copy of any streaming film.  Films are being hosted on more illegal sites everyday.  You Tube now hosts more TV shows and movies on the site.  Many of them are copyright violations.  The movies on the site are usually legal, the TV shows are not unless uploaded by the studios if they feel that the retail market is not longer there for DVD sales.

   On recent reviews throughout the You Tube site however, we found numerous TV shows that were all uploaded by independent individuals not authorized to upload these shows.  In You Tubes defense?  It is the job of the executives to police the site for violations and ask You Tube to block and prevent further uploads of the copyright owners works.  There are so many ways to download content from You Tube these days that it has become ridiculous.





  It is estimated that the number one way for getting video through 2015 is illegal downloads.  But there is a new battle now being waged that will catch a lot of people by surprise.  A new technology that is now about 2 years old developed by a one of our nations leading technology universities has developed a high frequency identification technologies that can not be stripped out by copying or transcoding videos.  The high frequency is not audible to the human ear, but is able to be tracked throughout the Internet.

  If a film has the technology loaded onto it and the film is put up for file sharing or playing on another site, the copyright owners can track exactly the originating source and all sources that have both downloaded and further uploaded that film. CLICK HERE for some general information on how this works.  The process described on the site is not the exact technology being used now in films and music, but is similar in it's nature and structure.  Each legal digital download can now have these signals built into them that identifies the purchaser, so if you upload the video onto another site or through a torrent, the copyright owners are able to track it instantaneously.

  For DVD and Blu Ray disks, a generic version is being implemented that identifies the title of the film as well as tracking technology.  So even when one breaks the encryption on these disks, the software used to break the encryption does not remove the high frequency tracking codes.  The new technology will end up short lived however as developers of software will eventually implement a two phase system of stripping out the frequency and then loading a scrambled frequency back onto the cracked encrypted files.

  So how does Hollywood fight these new threats?  This is exactly what destroyed the music industry and now it looks to destroy Hollywood films as well.

In part 4 of this series we will cover what is legal and what is not and we will end the series with answering the question, is the disk really dead?

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