14 DAY TRIAL // Australia has come up with the solution to top all piracy solutions out there – it has decided to narrow the theatrical release window.
Since one of the main reasons that people choose to illegally download movies and TV shows and mostly any type of content is the long wait they have to endure before getting access to them, Australia has come up with the idea to narrow the exclusive theatrical release window from 120 to 90 days.
In the past few years, the number of CAM versions of the movies running in cinemas has diminished considerably. For the most part, that’s because people found other ways to rip the movies, but also because of the cool new TVs that everyone has in their homes. When you have a full HD TV, what’s the point in torturing yourself through a shaky cam recording, often with bad sound and even worse video and the random big-headed guys standing up at the wrong time?
But many times, that was the only way for people to get access to this content, especially since it wasn’t available through other means, such as Netflix, BluRay or DVD. The longer a movie stayed exclusive for a particular theater chain or for such locations in general, the most people sought alternatives.
Since Australians have been criticized on multiple accounts for their piracy habits, the group representing the Australian film and TV home entertainment industry has decided to do something about this problem.
“This 120 days is not the hard and fast rule anymore and there will be some studios this year that will be coming in around the 90 days. They don’t like the fact that they are losing out a lot of money to piracy,” said the Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association CEO, Simon Bush, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Aside from the number of days that movie theaters would have priority for, not much will change, since there will still be theaters that will have exclusivity in the market, these being the go-to place for those who want to see movies early.
“It continues to ensure that the theatrical window retains its rightful prominence in the market as the premium movie experience, but also allows the consumer to increasingly access the film earlier digitally and on DVD and Blu-ray and thus reduce what some refer to as the ‘piracy window’,” Bush added on this topic.
Whether this will have any impact on piracy or not, it remains to be seen, but chances are quite slim.