Monday, August 30, 2010

If You Download Resident Evil Afterlife Movie Online Free, Are Video Stores Doomed?

By Richard Green

When a London company announced several years ago that it was offering the first legal service to Watch Resident Evil Afterlife Movie for Free, video store owners around the world began worrying about their future.

After all, average citizens all have a larcenous streak. Why not get something for free? A key reason is that downloading movies on the internet without paying is illegal -- a violation of a number of federal laws. Don't feel any risk? Remembers the very public examples that law enforcement made of unauthorized music downloaders several years ago? So, if you are downloading movies illegally, ask yourself if you really want to hear your name on the cable news shows?

Another reason to avoid illegal downloads is quality. Viruses are one more reason. The creators of viruses constantly have to devise new and clever ways to infect the unsuspecting public.

Just a few months ago, somebody sitting at their home computer uploaded a high-quality copy of a newly released film onto a certain illegal person-to-person file-sharing network. Within weeks, that one file had been downloaded by 30,408 people on six continents. Dozens of other illegal copies of the movie found their way onto the hard drives of many thousands more.

Today China is the capital of movie piracy. Indeed, within hours of a film being released nationwide in the U. S., illegal DVD copies are available on the street in Shanghai and Beijing. About 90 percent of DVDs sold in China are bootlegs, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Why? Because China puts quotas on the number of foreign films allowed into the country -- and carefully screens them, making sure nothing gets in that would spread dangerous ideas such as free speech or democracy. In Iran, every film must pass approval by Muslim morals police. The same restrictions apply in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Islamic world - and in Burma, Cuba and North Korea. So in each of those nations, movie pirates are feeding a hunger for freedom that dictators have tried to quash.

So, yes, Hollywood will be smart to continue adapting today's ever-changing technologies. Several studios have worked out a deal with a file-sharing site that rents movies, which can be downloaded, but which self-destruct after viewing! Where will that go? Only time will tell.

Pirate successes are worth careful study. They do point to untapped opportunity. Not so many years ago, Hollywood actually fought the idea of marketing videotaped movies. The big studios feared that people would stay at home rather than go to their local cinema. They were wrong, however. Home viewing has expanded Hollywood's reach. Today many new releases are never screened at a theater, but instead go directly to home video.

Some of the planet's biggest DVD counterfeiters are in China -- whose bootlegged discs have been identified in more than 25 nations worldwide. You can expect these same pirates to exploit the internet. But Hollywood would be smart to study their successes and figure out how customers wanting to Watch Resident Evil Afterlife Movie Free can make moviemakers a lot of money. - 40732

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