The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) is known to maintain a tight grip on its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the word ‘Olympic’ can already result in legal trouble, especially when it’s used in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are the broadcasting rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC and its licensing partners are doing everything in their power to prevent people from streaming their events without permission.

Olympic Piracy Woes

This stance was made clear once again in a recent submission to the US Trade Representative (USTR). While it’s still uncertain whether the delayed Tokyo summer Olympics will actually take place, the IOC has other worries as well. The organization fears that piracy could spoil the “magic” of the world’s largest sports event.

“We are extremely concerned of the impact that online piracy could create during the next 12 months, which will include extensive broadcast coverage of not only the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020, but also the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing,” IOC writes.

While piracy is a global phenomenon, the organization appears to be most worried about Saudi Arabia, where beIN Media Group acquired the broadcast rights. Saudi Arabia’s piracy challenges are well-known and even prominent Saudis have been accused of promoting illicit streaming services in the past.

Lacking Enforcement in Saudi Arabia

The most egregious offender was the streaming service beoutQ, which disappeared in 2019. By then, however, many Saudis had become used to cheap streaming options and many unlicensed services remain available today. This is a problem and the IOC calls for stronger enforcement in the region.

“Robust enforcement efforts by Saudi Arabia against piracy are therefore essential to protect the exclusive rights of beIN in the region, support athletes and safeguard the goals of the Olympic movement,” IOC writes.

The Olympic Committee is worried that if piracy remains rampant the value of their broadcasting rights will decrease. It notes that this threatens the long-term funding of the Olympic movement, part of which indirectly flows back to the sporters.

From Torrents to Streaming

This isn’t the first time the IOC has voiced its concerns over piracy. Our first reports date back more than a decade ago, when the Committee targeted The Pirate Bay . Over the years, the stakes clearly changed as there are now hundreds if not thousands of high-quality pirate streaming services online.

IOC hopes that the US Trade Representative can help to address this problem. It requests Priority Watch List status for Saudi Arabia in the upcoming Special 301 Report and urges the US to ensure that the Middle Eastern country takes the problem seriously.

“The IOC respectfully requests that the USTR maintains Saudi Arabia’s position on the Priority Watch List, engages with the Kingdom to protect and enforce the intellectual property rights of rightsholders and considers taking further appropriate steps in order to address the ongoing harm caused to rightsholders and broadcasters from copyright infringements and piracy activities,” it writes.

Olympic Committee is Not Alone

The IOC is not the only rightsholder to identify Saudi Arabia as a problem area. The country’s piracy issues are also brought up by several other industry groups, sports leagues, and other companies. That includes beIN, which owns the local sports broadcasting rights.

BeIN notes that beoutQ has indeed shut down, but not with help from the Saudi Government, which failed to go after the operators. Also, following beoutQ’s demise, many other pirate services have stepped up to fill the gap.

“The effects of the beoutQ piracy remain as IPTV applications downloaded onto beoutQ boxes continue to offer thousands of pirated movies, TV shows, and TV channels from the United States, Europe, and across the globe.

“Despite repeated complaints by beIN and other rights holders, Saudi Arabia has never taken criminal or other action against beoutQ, or its Saudi facilitators and supporters,” beIN adds in its letter to the USTR.

These and other submissions will be used as input for the forthcoming Special 301 Report, which is used by the U.S. as a diplomatic tool to encourage other countries to improve copyright enforcement and legislation.

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A copy of IOC’s letter to the US Trade Representative is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Since 2003, publisher Activision has teamed up with various developers to release Call of Duty games on various platforms. Its longest standing partner is California-based Infinity Ward, whose team was responsible for the 2019 release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Available for Windows, PS4 and Xbox One, Modern Warfare received plenty of praise but not everyone is happy with the end result.

According to a lawsuit filed in a Texas court yesterday, Activision, Infinity Ward (IW), and Major League Gaming Corp (MLG) committed copyright infringement after copying and then passing off a character design as their own.

“Deliberate, Intentional and Comprehensive Copying”

Plaintiff Clayton Haugen describes himself as a writer, photographer and videographer from North Carolina. He is also the copyright owner of two literary works and 22 photographs of a character he named ‘Cade Janus’, the central figure in his story ‘November Renaissance’, which he hoped could be made into a film.

In 2017, Haugen says he hired ‘talent’ (actress, cosplayer, twitch streamer Alex Zedra) to portray ‘Cade Janus’ and took a series of photographs, which together with his story were presented to film studios. In a further promotional effort, the photographs were also published on Instagram and in a series of calendars. It appears that the defendants also became of Haugen’s work.

As part of their hunt for a “strong, skilled female fighter”, the defendant videogame companies (through contractors) allegedly hired the same ‘talent’ (Zedra) and asked her to obtain the same clothing and gear used in the original ‘Cade Janus’ photoshoot from Haugen himself.

The companies also hired the same makeup artist, who was instructed to copy the makeup and hair as depicted in the original photographs, “even using the same hair extension piece.” Haugen further alleges that his original photographs were posted to “the wall of the studio” and used as a framing guide before the model was 3D-scanned.

“To conceal their planned infringement of Haugen’s Cade Janus Photographs and his Cade Janus character, Defendants required the talent and the makeup professional to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements,” the complaint notes.

“The resulting photographs were intended to be, and were, copies of Haugen’s Cade Janus Photographs,” the lawsuit reads.

Infringing Photographs Used to Market Modern Warfare

According to Haugen, the resulting photographs and three-dimensional images were not only used to develop the in-game character ‘Mara’ but also deployed as key assets in Modern Warfare’s marketing campaign.

“With this infringing female character as the centerpiece of an advertising campaign for the first time in the Call of Duty series, [defendants] shattered all previous sales and games-played records. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has generated more than a billion dollars in revenues,” the lawsuit reads.

Copyright Infringement Claims

As the copyright owner of the works in question, Haugen explains that he has the exclusive right to make copies and derivatives, and the exclusive right of distribution. The lawsuit reveals that while Haugen had copyrights registered for his story back in 2012 and 2013, the Copyright Office only registered his photographs on December 21, 2020, presumably so he could file this complaint.

Haugen says that the character ‘Mara’ is “substantially similar” to his creation ‘Cade Janus’ and provides samples to show that his original photographs were copied during a Modern Warfare photoshoot in 2019.

As a result, Haugen claims that Activision, Infinity Ward and Major League Gaming have infringed and continue to infringe his rights. In the alternative, Activision Blizzard has or has had a financial interest in the infringement of Haugen’s copyrights so can be held vicariously liable for the infringements of the trio.

In a further alternative, the defendants knew that the other defendants and their contractors were infringing and induced and/or encouraged that behavior, making them liable for contributory infringement of Haugen’s rights.

“Haugen is entitled to recover all monetary remedies from Defendants’ infringement, including all of their profits attributable to their infringements, to the full extent permitted by 17 U.S.C. § 504 ,” the complaint concludes, demanding a trial by jury.

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In the closing months of 2020, enforcement measures against private torrent sites in Denmark became evident when the alleged 69-year-old operator of NordicBits was arrested by Spanish police.

Then, following a complaint from local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime (SØIK) had a 33-year-old Danish man arrested in Morocco on suspicion of running DanishBits .

With both sites shut down, two other sites – Asgaard and ShareUniversity – opened their doors to new members but were quickly warned they too faced similar treatment.

Asgaard quickly shut itself down as did ShareUniversity, but fresh arrests earlier this month showed that the authorities were ready to pursue their operators.

Attention Switches To Persistent BitTorrent Pirates

When torrent sites shut down, there is a tendency among users to find new homes, as illustrated by the exodus from NordicBits and DanishBits to would-be replacements. While this can happen seamlessly, the authorities in Denmark have already signaled the possibility of tracking down site users, using data obtained during earlier raids.

“The most important thing is clearly to stop the illegal services, but it can certainly not be ruled out that seized data can lead to the identification of the users of the two illegal networks,” Deputy Police Inspector Michael Lichtenstein said in December.

It’s not uncommon for pirates to dismiss these kinds of statements as scare tactics or lacking in substance but there are now signs that SØIK and Rights Alliance intend to make good on their warning. In a statement published Friday, Rights Alliance says that it intends to “sharpen its focus” on these entrenched users “who stubbornly stick to their illegal activities.”

Referencing the closure of Asgaard and the associated arrests, Rights Alliance notes that SØIK is maintaining a keen interest in persistent pirates, something that it believes is “enormously important” in its battle to prevent online copyright infringement.

According to the anti-piracy group, its earlier actions against the sites listed above reduced the number of private tracker users by more than 75% but that leaves around 25% who, despite the enforcement actions, still aren’t getting the message. As a result, further measures will be taken.

“With the IP Task Force behind it, technical insight and access to the illegal services where the Danish incarnated users have moved from, it is now possible to take an active part in sanctioning them,” Rights Alliance warns.

Interestingly, the anti-piracy group makes a specific reference to users deploying anonymization techniques, noting that they have the tools to unmask them, whether they’re using a VPN or not. TorrentFreak asked for more information on this claim but Rights Alliance declined to elaborate at the moment, instead offering to supply more information in the coming weeks.

Warning To Operators and Users Of New Pirate Sites

With Asgaard and ShareUniversity no longer open for DanishBits and NordicBits refugees to get their file-sharing fix, there are reports that other sites are already stepping in to bridge the gap. However, Rights Alliance warns that these services won’t be the safe haven most users prefer.

“In the coming period, the Rights Alliance’s activities will be focused on the perpetrators and users of the newly established Danish services, including NorTor, which is trying to establish itself after the closures in December,” the group says.

NorTor is a reference to NordicTorrent (NorTor.org), a torrent site that’s attempting to get off the ground at the moment. The site’s operators bought the domain at the end of December and appear to be using hosting registered in Seychelles.

Potential visitors should also be aware that while easily blocked, the platform already has not one but two cryptocurrency miners running on its main page.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Plex is a multifunctional media software and service that allows users to easily access all their entertainment in one place.

Whether it’s movies, music, TV-shows, or photos, Plex can organize and index, making the content ready to stream on a wide variety of supported devices.

Like many other technologies Plex can be used for good and bad. There have been reports of people sharing vast libraries of the pirated content via Plex-powered servers, for example. But at the same time Plex is a gateway to legal streaming content including movies and series on its own Mediaverse platform.

The Mediaverse part of the Plex site appears to cause some confusion. While it offers content that can be legally streamed for free, it also lists many other titles, such as The Mandalorian , Game of Thrones, Wonder Woman 1984, and Tenet.

These other titles are not freely available for streaming, of course. Plex merely added an informational page to its library so people can put these titles on their watchlist. However, not all copyright holders appear to get this distinction.

Over the past month alone more than a handful of DMCA takedown requests were sent to Google, asking the search engine to remove these “copyright-infringing” pages. The takedowns suggest that Plex offers access to the full videos and list its URLs together with those of notorious pirate sites.

For example, ‘CTW Anti-Piracy’ sent a DMCA takedown request to Google on behalf of Vertigo Releasing Limited, asking the search engine to remove the Plex information page for the film “ Becky “. The Plex page is highlighted below among more traditional pirate sites.

Similarly, ‘Shoot-Down’ sent a takedown notice on behalf of DDI Double Dutch Inc for Plex’s “Elliot the Littlest Reindeer” page, while Groupe V Media hired ‘Police Du Net’ to remove the page of “Cardinal” season four. None of these pages link to pirated videos, obviously.

We assume that these requests, and many others , were all sent by mistake but that doesn’t mean that they are harmless. While Google is generally quite good at spotting errors, it missed these ones. That means that the Plex pages have actually been wiped from Google’s search results.

Instead of getting the Plex page, people will now see the following notice at the bottom of their search results.

After browsing through several Plex takedown notices in Google’s transparency report we also spotted one for which the search giant took “ no action “. However, that isn’t because it is deemed to be an erroneous takedown, but because the URL wasn’t indexed to begin with.

We reached out to Plex to inform the company about the takedowns and requested a comment. The company informed us that they are aware of these notices and will try to work things out with the copyright holders individually.

That’s probably wise because too many notices put sites at risk of being demoted , which can seriously hurt search traffic.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Dealing with pirates raises all sorts of issues for content providers and entertainment companies. On the one hand these are people trying to get something for nothing but on the other, many pirates are potential and even current customers.

Converting pirates into paying customers is a puzzle that many companies have tried to crack. Many do so with free trials, hoping that after tasting the real thing people will like it enough to come back for more, wallets in hand. Some innovate, offering a product or service that cannot easily be emulated. Others prefer to intimidate.

Screaming At Pirates

As reported last week, UFC President Dana White enjoys tackling pirates with threats and profanity , treating them as a danger to be eradicated by any means. The jury is still out on whether consumers ever respond to this type of approach but if we think of consumers as regular people, few – if any – appreciate being shouted out and called names.

Judging by the number of insults leveled at White late weekend, it’s pretty safe to say that his actions rubbed many people up the wrong way. To be clear, White will not give a damn if this is the case but according to games developer Adam Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans , being hostile to pirates isn’t an approach he recommends.

No Open Hostility Towards Pirates

Writing in GamesIndustry.biz this week, Coster explains that the problem of piracy is emotionally charged but the overall goal should be to limit the harm, not only on the business itself, but also on the people creating the content.

“We don’t want to spend our time and resources fighting piracy — it’s exhausting, expensive and, frankly, doomed from the start. We want our time going into making games and building an amazing community,” Coster says.

“We certainly don’t condone or accept piracy, and we explicitly tell our players that when the topic arises. We also don’t allow players in our communities to advocate for or help others pirate games. But when we discover pirates in our midst we stay friendly .”

While big companies tend to be outwardly hostile to pirates, stating that “theft-is-theft” and there are no excuses for getting something for free, Coster doesn’t mind acknowledging that there can be reasons why people go down that route. People without financial resources, for example, or people seeking access to his games where they aren’t legitimately available.

Keeping Things Nice Has Benefits For The Developer

Despite his understanding, Coster doesn’t condone freeloading behavior but still prefers to keep things civil. There are benefits to that, he says, including keeping the environment around games consumption (and indeed, games creation) a nice place to be.

“Our non-hostile approach has helped foster a positive community, including a handful of converted pirates. But more importantly, it has been essential for our team’s mental health. Adversarial relationships take a terrible toll,” he concedes.

Keeping the pirating masses happy – or at least emotionally compliant – has some interesting benefits for Coster’s company. He believes that almost all of his potential players are pirates so it makes little sense to have an adversarial relationship with them – especially when a “jillion angry people” descend on community management and customer support teams to air their displeasure.

A Better Approach

Given that this is one of the likely outcomes of being hostile towards pirates (or if one prefers, potential customers, who may walk away after being threatened) Coster says that anti-piracy measures should not be about the pirates. The starting point, whether he likes it or not, should be an empathetic approach along with gentle encouragement to buy his games when they can.

“People will try to steal your game. Huge numbers of them. This is just the reality. Treat it as a design constraint,” he says.

“This is a business problem. Do your best to ignore how you feel about it. Yes, this is far easier said than done. Now get out there and make something worth stealing.”

The full piece, which is a must-read for developers, can be found here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

YTS is one of the most popular torrent sites, serving millions of users per day.

All this attention got the site in legal trouble. Various movie companies including the makers of ‘Hitman’s Bodyguard,’ ‘Hunter Killer’ and ‘Mechanic Resurrection,’ took YTS ‘operator’ Senthil Vijay Segaran and the company Techmodo to court.

While lawsuits tend to end badly for pirate sites, these lawsuits turned out differently. All parties agreed to settle the lawsuits , three in total, in change for over a million dollars in piracy damages. The site, however, was allowed to continue and is still online today.

YTS Database

Initially, this was received as great news by the site’s users. However, for some, it turned out to be a disaster. As part of an undisclosed agreement, YTS also shared information from its user database . This was a limited one-time arrangement, we learned from an insider, but one with broad consequences.

After settling the case with YTS, the same movie companies moved on to several users. These film companies had sued BitTorrent users in the past but now they have extra ammunition, including emails, IP-addresses and download logs obtained directly from YTS.

This information was put to use right away. Over the past months, we have reported on several lawsuits where YTS users were targeted, and movie companies also approached alleged pirates out of court by contacting them directly via email . The latter also happened to Colorado residents W. Nelson and R. Flattery.

Settle Or Else

Both were approached with a settlement demand out of court, which they chose to ignore. Perhaps they had hoped the filmmakers would move on to other targets instead, but that was not the case. A few months ago, they were taken to court .

Flattery and Nelson were sued in federal court, where the filmmakers demanded damages. In theory, that could reach $150,000 per copyright infringement, which is many times the offer they first received over email.

In many federal lawsuits against torrent users, the evidence isn’t exactly rock solid. However, with emails and IP-addresses from the YTS database, the movie companies had a much stronger case here. And faced with potentially live-changing damages claims, both defendants have agreed to settle.

Defendants Settle After All

Earlier this week the movie companies asked the court to dismiss the claims against both defendants. Most of the time the settlement agreements remain private but, in this case, they were entered into the court’s records.

Flattery agreed to pay $2,320 in damages to Morgan Creek Productions and admitted to sharing copies of the movie “All Eyez On Me.” He was also accused of sharing several other movies, such as “Lost Child” and “Hunter Killer,” but maintains that this is incorrect.

The settlement amount can be paid off in six months and the movie company offers to waive the final $120 if the defendant pays on time.

Nelson settled with several movie companies, including the makers of “Rambo: Last Blood” and “Hellboy” but no movie titles are mentioned in the agreement. He must pay $10,500.00 in minimum monthly installments of $50.

“Generous” Deal

According to the attorney of the movie companies, both defendants were offered such “generous” deals because COVID already impacted the defendants substantially, suggesting that they lost work.

“These generous arrangements were made in view of the impact the novel coronavirus has had on the employment situation of Defendants and further hardships currently endured by Defendant Nelson,” the attorney writes.

Needless to say, this is a grim ending for the defendants. And the same is true for fellow Coloradoan S. Moody, who settled his case in early November. While they are probably happy to get this burden off their back, it must be strange for them to see YTS continue business as usual.

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A copy of the letter informing the court about the settlement agreements is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Due to their very nature, pirate sites become successful by offering pirated content and after staying online as long as they can, tend to die in the same way.

The demise of unlicensed sites often comes about due to legal pressure but for some, it can be possible to move onwards and upwards with a change of business model.

That was the case with former ‘pirate’ site Fakku , a platform that built its popularity on unlicensed scans and translations (scanlations) of adult manga comics, also known as ‘hentai’.

The site launched in 2006 and built a decent audience but by 2015, Fakku had gone completely straight after transforming itself into a site offering only licensed content. As a poacher turned gamekeeper, Fakku now has to contend with sites doing roughly what it did for nine years, i.e posting other people’s content without permission.

Fakku Steps-Up Its Targeting of Pirated Content

The company behind Fakku, Fakku LLC, began sending takedown DMCA notices to Google several years ago, demanding that sites publishing its content have their URLs delisted from search results. While this resulted in many thousands of takedowns, it wasn’t until the start of 2020 that Fakku really stepped on the gas.

Fairly quickly, Fakku was asking for up to 340,000 URLs to be delisted in a week, a number that jumped to 1.1 million in the summer. At the start of this year, Fakku went into overdrive and in the week starting January 4, 2021, the company asked for around 4 million URLs to be delisted, a figure repeated just a couple of weeks later.

This put sites including hentaishark.com, nyahentai.com, and nhentai.net under considerable pressure, with the former being subjected to more than 8 million DMCA notices, something that could cause it to be downranked by Google. However, it’s the 10th most-targeted domain on the list – hentai.cafe – that now finds itself in Fakku’s legal crosshairs.

Fakku Takedown Notice Ignored By Hentai.cafe

On Wednesday, Fakku’s legal representative filed a request for a DMCA subpoena at a court in the Eastern District of Michigan. The application reveals that on December 1, 2020, Eric Green of anti-piracy company Remove Your Media wrote to hentai.cafe demanding that the site take down a copy of Comic X-Eros #66, ‘Bullied Revenge Hypnosis #5’.

“Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the infringing material or items,” the letter reads, adding the URL where the content can be found.

Checking out the URL in question reveals that the content remains up, suggesting that hentai.cafe failed to take action in response to the notice.

Fakku Wants To Identify The Operator of Hentai.cafe

This inaction appears to have prompted Fakku take to more aggressive action against hentai.cafe. Fakku’s application for a DMCA subpoena demands that Cloudflare, which hentai.cafe uses to help keep its site online, hands over the personal details of the operator and/or owner of the pirate site.

The information requested is broad and includes (but is not limited to) the “billing or administrative records that show the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), IP address(es), account number(s), credit card numbers and any other electronic or physical documents identifying the name(s) and address(es) or contact information of the operator and/or owner of the Infringing Website.”

At the time of writing the DMCA subpoena doesn’t appear to have been signed off by the court but in the majority of cases, this is usually a formality.

Quite what Fakku intends to do with the information isn’t clear. It could be a straightforward matter of taking some kind of legal action, if possible, but Fakku has also been known to offer somewhat controversial assistance to pirate sites to get themselves out of legal trouble.

The DMCA subpoena can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Last year, the US Department of Justice booked one of its biggest successes in its battle against online piracy.

In August 2020, law enforcement upset the international piracy ecosystem by targeting several high-profile Scene members , which were the source for many pirated movies and TV-shows.

The criminal investigation focused on the SPARKS release group of which three alleged members were indicted. However, the crackdown, which resulted in raids in various countries, had a much broader impact.

Following the raids, several topsites went offline. Some of these had their infrastructure caught up in the enforcement, but many others decided to lay low as a precaution . Meanwhile, the rumor mill was in full swing, with some fearing that the action was just the start.

Historic Scene Release Drop

After a few days, it became apparent how broad the impact was. Not just in The Scene but also further down the piracy pyramid, where torrent and streaming sites noticed a lack of fresh content.

In a report published in early September, we showed that there were 1,944 new scene releases the Wednesday before the enforcement actions. A week later, a day after the first raids, this number had shrunk to 168 releases .

During the weeks that followed things slowly but steadily started to recover. With help from Predb.org we decided to take another look at the release volume at the start of the new year. Based on recent figures, we can conclude that the release volume ultimately recovered.

We compared the release numbers starting the week before the raids (Monday-Sunday), followed by the two weeks after, and finally data from last week. For a clean comparison this analysis doesn’t cover the week the raid took place, which included the largest dip.

Release Volume Recovers

The bar chart below shows the releases across all categories. This started at 12,776 before the raid, then dipped to 3,680 and 4,463 in the two weeks after. From there it gradually climbed back to 11,759 last week, which is pretty much back to normal.

Looking at individual categories, there are similar recoveries. The TV-X264 category initially dropped 90% from 5,254 to 572, but is now back at 4,913 . And Anime, Movies-X264, and XXX releases all bounced back too, as shown below.

Based on these data we can conclude that the US Government’s enforcement actions had a major impact, but not one that’s lasting. This doesn’t mean that all groups continued business as usual, but there are certainly plenty left.

Prosecutions Continue

While the dust appears to have settled a bit in the Scene, the legal troubles for the three indicted SPARKS members are far from over.

Thus far Jonatan Correa (aka ‘Raid’) is the only defendant to have appeared in court. He pleaded guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced this spring. Due to his cooperative stance, the prosecution agreed to a sentencing guideline of 12 to 18 months imprisonment, instead of the maximum of five years.

The two other defendants, George Bridi from Great Britain and Norway resident Umar Ahmad (aka ‘Artist’), have yet to appear in US court. According to the information we have available, Bridi has yet to be extradited from Cyprus where he was previously detained while Ahmad is still at large.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After a film premieres at the box office, movie fans typically have to wait a few months before they can see it online, depending on the local release strategy.

This delay tactic, known as a release window, helps movie theaters to maximize their revenues. However, for many pirates, this is also a reason to turn to unauthorized sites and services.

Shrinking Release Windows

In recent years these release windows have slowly decreased and this process was accelerated in the COVID pandemic. Increasingly, traditional delays have come down, and in some cases, release windows have disappeared completely. Warner Bros, for example , now releases movies on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously.

This shift is nothing short of a historic breakthrough. While more choice is good for consumers, these changes also breed uncertainty. Some movie industry insiders and theater owners, for example, fear that their income will be negatively impacted. At the same time, there are concerns that piracy will spike.

These and other questions are addressed in new research conducted by Carnegie Mellon’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics ( IDEA ). The research group, which received millions of dollars in gifts from the Motion Picture Association, just analyzed how early releases affect piracy and box office revenue.

Impact on Box Office and Piracy

The results are published in a non-peer-reviewed paper titled The Impact of Early Digital Movie Releases on Box Office Revenue: Evidence from the Korean Market.

As the title suggests, the research focuses on the Korean movie market which is the fourth-largest in the world, following the US, China, and Japan. In recent years movie studios have experimented with release windows in korea, which are significantly shorter than in other countries, including the US.

Instead of waiting three months, Korean “Super Premium” digital releases typically come out a month after the theatrical release. This means that movies are available while they are still playing in theaters.

The researchers use this unique situation to compare various movie revenue streams, as well as piracy figures, with the United States. To get the full picture, they also add in the effect of early versus regular digital releases in Korea itself.

Box Office Revenue is Unaffected

Following a complex statistical analysis, the researchers can estimate the effect of the early “Super Premium” releases on Korean box office revenue. They find a small negative effect of less than 1%, which isn’t statistically significant.

“We find a statistically and economically insignificant decline in theatrical revenue due to the early SP release, equivalent to an approximate 0.8% drop in total theatrical revenue in Korea during the first eight weeks of the theatrical run,” the researchers conclude.

This is an important finding as it shows that releasing a digital copy of movie months in advance doesn’t hurt theater revenues. This suggests that both consumption channels are complementary, which is great news for movie studios.

More Revenue for Movie Studios

And indeed, the researchers find that “Super Premium” video on demand (SPVOD) releases boost studio revenue by roughly 12% during the first weeks.

“Using digital movie sales data in Korea and industry estimates of studio margins on theatrical and SPVOD revenue, we estimate that SPVOD releases increase the marginal revenue received by studios in the first eight weeks of a movie’s Korean release by approximately 12%.”

While this all sounds positive, it’s undeniable that these early releases also impact piracy. This is confirmed by the data which show that the “pirate” release windows are also decreasing. Not just in Korea, but globally too.

No Boost in Piracy Figures

According to the researchers, however, this isn’t much of a problem. People will download pirated copies earlier, but the data don’t show that the piracy volume in Korea or the US increases for these movie titles. Pirates just get to download a film sooner.

“Finally, while the data from torrent piracy suggest that early SPVOD releases lead to earlier global availability of high-quality piracy sources, we see no evidence that these early sources increase piracy demand for movies released in SPVOD windows in either the Korean or US markets.”

All in all, the findings show that the movie industry is on the right track by shortening release windows. It’s not just good for consumers but also increases studios’ income too.

More Research Needed

That said, it’s far too early to generalize. This study looked at a very specific set of movies for which the “Super Premium” release came out after 28 days. It could very well be that longer, shorter, or no delays will have a different impact.

This shortcoming is recognized by the researchers who also stress that more research into the effects on piracy is needed. Especially in cases where a movie is released in one country before it’s available somewhere else.

But with more and more release experiments taking place, we expect that follow-up studies are already underway.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.