I’ve already alluded to this in NOW Magazine, but you studio execs just ain’t gettin’ it, so I’m dumbing it down:
1. Be Realistic
Ya know, bootlegged material has been around since long before Napster, so instead of trying to make your wares piracy-proof, why not give your customers a more compelling solution? Buying a song legally for 99¢ on the The iTunes Music Store is quicker and more reliable than searching for it on a P2P network. And the price doesn’t hurt, either!
Speaking of price, I read earlier this year that you’re combating DVD piracy in China by competing dollar for dollar; kudos for that, but how come the same DVD that sells legally for $2.65 USD in Beijing costs $30 and up over here?!
2. Give Us Our Rights
If you want to kill anything, kill the damn region-encoding on DVDs! In case you hadn’t noticed, lots of folks are using BitTorrent to trade back and forth movies and TV shows from around the world… That’s $2.65 USD that could be in your pocket for each and every unencrypted file!
While you’re at it, catch a clue and realize that while repackaged seasons of TV shows equals found money, you have no right to lock up programming that’s already been paid for with commercials… So back off our PVRs already, and instead concentrate on rolling out HDTV like you’re supposed to.
3. Up the Ante
One good thing about DVDs is that they’ve at least made the vastly-inferior Video CD obsolete. But quality alone won’t make any one format more compelling than another. Take the miniDV format, for example… Quality-wise, it’s just your average video codec, but combine it Final Cut Pro and suddenly you’ve got a thousand and one Blair Witch parodies!
So instead of crippling your hi-def Blu-Ray DVDs with three kinds of DRM, perhaps you can find a more useful purpose for that 54 gigabytes of disc space?
Andrew Currie 
One response to “3 Steps to Minimizing Movie Piracy”
AC:
somewhat disturbing to read that these blue laser DVDs will require constant internet connection in order to authenticate a DVD. How many homes still don’t have internet access, much less high-speed access? Someone who plops down several hundred bucks on one of these new players will then put their no-doubt high-priced HD DVD, only to be faced with the delay caused by their dialup modem seeking authorization to play? yeesh. I’m buying me a film projector and going retro if that happens. I can only imagine the sales pitch the sharks at the electronics stores will throw at people to downplay the mother-may-I part of this great new leap forward in audio-visual entertainment…..
Ed