Article Writing Homework Help

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on piracy in the film industry. Each year, due to piracy, whether via Internet downloads or bootleg DVDs, the film industry loses billions of dollars because people have stopped purchasing their products in a legal manner.

“Downloading copy-written material has moved from the hacker’s basement into the common household. With more media than ever being shared online, Hollywood is faced with an ever increasing threat” (Lasheras, 2009). Piracy used to be an act that was performed by a select few, usually those that were really talented with working their way around computer systems. However, due to the increase of technology, the skills to achieve piracy are available for anyone who seeks it owns a computer and has a connection to the Internet. Whether it involves sneaking a video camera into a movie theatre or ripping a DVD to a computer to make multiple copies, people are finding ways to avoid paying for movies. They are also finding plenty of ways to share these illegal copies with others, forming a community of movie pirates.

While it is usually the potential consumer that can be blamed for piracy, there have been many piracy acts that have involved someone within the movie project itself. For example, before its theatre release, an unfinished full-length version of X-Men: Origins Wolverine was leaked onto the Internet (Marikar, 2009). As it is an unfinished version, the only people that could have gotten a hold of it are those actually working on the project. therefore, the only people that can have leaked it were within that film company. Though the movie was removed immediately from the Internet, it had been available long enough for others to begin downloading it. 20th Century Fox, the distributor of the film, is concerned with what this leakage will do to the box office income of the film when it is released. Other movies that were leaked prior to their releases are Hulk and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, both of which were followed by lawsuits when the box office income did not meet the production budget.