Copying these productions is still difficult

Feb 10, 2010 08:29 GMT  ·  By
Regular computers and television sets cannot faithfully reproduce 3D technology
   Regular computers and television sets cannot faithfully reproduce 3D technology

Movie piracy is a very widespread phenomenon, especially in areas of the world where authorities have not yet set up any sort of rules on how people should be held accountable for their online activity. With the advent of 3D productions, more and more of which are beginning to make their way in movie theaters around the globe, pirates are currently having a difficult time copying and illegally distributing them to the general public. Movie studios therefore have a few more years before the phenomenon picks up for these productions as well, LiveScience reports.

“There is going to be a good period where 3D has got a little more value, because it can't be purloined from the theater. There's no commodity to it, nor can the files, even if they're copied, be viewed,” University of Southern California (USC) Professor of Production Michael Peyser, who is also the executive producer of the 2007 movie U2 3D, explains. Hollywood is basically at this point hoping that the new technology its producers have developed would stave off a large wave of piracy, and that this time would allow them sufficient breathing space to develop new measures to defend copyright.

But Internet analysts warn that one of the main reasons why pirates have yet to discover a way of leaking 3D content is the fact that there is no demand for it. People have yet to adopt 3D technology at the scale needed to elicit the attention of hackers capable of making such a transformation a reality. However, once this situation is straightened out, studios should make no illusion that their works will be safe from unauthorized replications. Additionally, the experts add, if 3D television sets become common, then the demand for 3D content will grow exponentially.

There are two main types of pirating at this point, one that involves a camcorder being sneaked into the theater without no one noticing, and another one where someone really good at what they do cracks the security encryption on legit CDs and DVDs, and is then free to share them with everyone else, and make as many copies as they want. The first variant is currently responsible for more than 90 percent of all illegal pirating. These files are then transferred to computers, and made available on torrent tracker sites, as files called torrents.