14 DAY TRIAL // It seems like it’s always someone else’s fault for how Internet piracy is evolving and never that of the movie studios. Whether it’s the pirates who don’t have other type of access to the content due to weeks and months of delays, the ISPs who provide them with the Internet connection, the governments who don’t impose stricter rules or Google who keeps scouring the Internet and providing people with whatever results they want, it’s never the movie studios’ fault.
Avi Lerner, CEO of the company that made “The Expendables 3,” is, understandably, quite upset with what’s happened over the summer. Nearly a month before the movie hit theaters, there was a DVD screener version making the rounds on the Internet, something that he says has caused losses of some $250 million (€200 million).
In his anger, Lerner is pushing the situation onto President Obama’s plate, who, he says, doesn’t want to pass a simple anti-piracy law because he’s scared of Google and the ISPs.
The Nu Image CEO and founder Avi Lerner explains that according to his data, more than 10 million people had grabbed an illegal copy of the movie before the August official release. Whether this contributed to the fact that the movie was a box office flop can’t exactly be evaluated, but Lerner is pretty certain there’s a connection.
“Everyone wants to hide what happened on Expendables 3, especially the domestic distributors. ‘Don’t talk about it!’ But I’ll tell you there is about $250 million box office we lost,” Lerner told Hollywood Reporter.
High level attacks
While the movie industry has been the main supporter of SOPA, the anti-piracy legislation that didn’t pass back in 2012, they still believe that there’s more that should be done. The backlash following SOPA has not only made that particular law impossible to pass, but it also ruined the chances that any similar legislation would be passed in the future.
Yet, Lerner feels that something needs to be done and the person that needs to do most of it is President Obama.
“It’s sad because if we had a good president that cared about the film industry he would pass a very simple law, an anti-piracy law, but they don’t want to stop it because they are scared of Google, and he’s scared of all the ISPs,” he accused.
Taking things a step further, Lerner takes a swing at Google too, saying that the company, who has just introduced an anti-piracy algorithm, has no interest to stop it all because the more people download the movie, the more traffic they get. Without the traffic, there’s no advertising revenue.
Google is not the gatekeeper of the Internet and its job isn’t to police the Internet. As for Obama, while the movie and the music industries may want their anti-piracy legislation, there are far more Internet users in the United States that will protest against any such measures because they’d restrict more than access to copyrighted content, just like SOPA did.