Spy Kids 3D and illegal P2P

Hollywood movie executives view illegal peer-to-peer networks as a grave threat to the film industry. The Motion Picture Association of America claims between 400,000 and 600,000 movies are illegally traded over p2p networks every day, and between one and four Internet users has downloaded a movie.

These are alarming statistics, but only indicate the extent of the problem, and its potential impact — they tell us nothing about how films are actually captured and placed on p2p networks. Occasionally, the press will mention furtive movie theater taping sessions with hand-held video recorders, but according to a January 2005 story in Wired Magazine, most film pirates are far more sophisticated in their methods and organization.

The Wired reporter, Jeff Howe, describes a subculture of tech-savvy gangs which strive to be the first to get pre-release copies of films on "topsites" — special high-level nodes on p2p networks — "where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and videogames available on the Internet originate."

The gangs use a variety of methods to capture new films and prepare them for uploading to a topsite, says the Wired article. The key is digitizing analog film reels, as most films aren't pressed onto DVDs until months after the official release dates. Wired describes a pecking order of potential sources, the lowest being the pimply teen sneaking dad's camcorder into a test screening. The gangs prefer to make contacts with film workers and people with high-quality film-to-video equipment, or projectionists who have access to newly distributed film reels. Using a top-of-the line video camera and a direct audio patch from the projector, a film can be ripped to tape, and then turned into a compressed digital version ready for uploading to topsites. Wired cites the case of a projectionist in Maryland who proved himself to one gang by getting a copy of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over the day after it opened in theaters.

The codecs used for compression are important: an ideal movie will be small enough to be downloaded relatively quickly using a broadband connection, and can be burned to a CD-ROM, yet have enough quality to be enjoyed on a computer screen.

For participants, money is not the motivating factor, but rather a desire to be "first" in ripping a film and introducing it to a p2p network, as well as an interest in getting copies of other films over the network.