Arjuna, a regular reader and frequent commenter, emailed in with an editorial idea as a follow-up to my “Will You Pay to Upgrade to a 3D TV?” post wondering how much 3D has affected film piracy.
The question as Hollywood appears to be turning to 3D for more and more of their blockbuster releases, many of which are being converted from 2D to 3D such as the recently released Alice in Wonderland and the upcoming Clash of the Titans. However, to this point very few of these films were actually shot in 3D, which means the experience will likely differ from one film to the next, or at least that is the assumed logic from one to the next.
Outside of CG-animated films, which are already in 3D and for many years were actually just flattened for 2D releases, Avatar is the first (and really only) film that comes to my mind when we’re talking about “must see in 3D” films. It’s made nearly $3 billion at the worldwide box-office, but has already been reported as one of the fastest films to hit the bootleg forums.
Reported at the New York Times back in early January, Avatar was the fastest-pirated movie. The film was illegally downloaded 500,000 times in the first two days of its release and 980,000 times in the first week. The numbers come from TorrentFreak.com, which regularly tracks film downloads on a weekly basis and using those numbers ChartsBin created the graph of the most downloaded films of 2010 you see just below.
Take note, with Star Trek taking the 2009 crown at nearly 11 million downloads it will be interesting to see how a 2010 chart compares. The 2009 top ten doesn’t contain a single 3D movie, but one would have to assume 2010 will at least include one or two as Avatar is almost guaranteed to make the list as well as Clash of the Titans. There’s no telling if Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I being released in November will have enough time to make the list, but it too is being converted from 2D to 3D.
However, bootlegged copies weren’t much of a concern to Fox as a studio spokesperson told the “New York Times,” “Bootleg copies are unlikely to have much impact. Seeing the movie in 3-D in a cinema offers an experience that cannot be replicated.” I would accept that argument for a film shot in 3D, but what about these 3D conversions? Do they offer as much cinema-going necessity?
Regardless of necessity, the fact still remains, you can’t pirate a 3D movie in 3D. Avatar director James Cameron said as much to the Times of London saying, “You can pirate a 3-D movie, but you can’t pirate it in 3-D, so you can’t bottle that 3-D experience.” Or can you?
With the recent release of the first 3D TVs to the marketplace one has to wonder if 3D movies are as pirate-proof as industry folks seem to assume. David Booth at Great Unanswered Questions writes the following:
In the 1920’s Edwin H. Land developed a new synthetic material; it was a nitrocellulose film embedded with crystals of iodoquinine sulfate (Iodoquinine sulfate studied under the microscope was found to polarize light) and it is now known as Polaroid. Current 3d systems utilise this property. The light you see is in effect filtered by the polaroid, so that the wave can only osscilate up and down, or left and right.
3d cinema is in effect encrypted only to be viewed with polarised binocular vision; but in doing so it also has to provide the decryption key, namely the glasses. Since the glasses are in effect just filters there is nothing to stop a would be pirate attaching said filter to his camera, or indeed two cameras if they felt they wanted to be bothered with post-production to reproduce the 3d effect. Creation of red/blue anaglyph prints, or indeed for the emergant home user 3d viewing technology would be a piece of piracy cake.
Taking this into account, Eriq Gardner and Matthew Belloni at The Hollywood Reporter predict “the introduction of 3D will only escalate the piracy/copyright battles, as studios refine their technology with DRM, pirates respond, and court battles ensue.”
Considering we are just now starting to see the effects 3D can have on the box-office with the massive success of Avatar and the $208 million Alice in Wonderland has earned in less than two weeks, we are merely in the beginning stages of this all. However, I have to wonder if 3D will allow pirates and studios to both come away happy. After all, how mad can you get at movie pirates if your films are also massive box-office successes? Knowing the greed of film studios they will still get upset and the court battles Gardner and Belloni refer to will obviously ensue, all while box-office and downloading records are being shattered.
Thanks to Arjuna for sending in the question and if you have other editorial ideas feel free to share them with me.
