Pirates riding high on the air waves
The battle for control of content delivery must be continually fought otherwise piracy could kill the business from which we all make our living. This was the tenor of the sentiments expressed by speakers at the Tuesday morning conference session dealing with existing business and release windows for film and TV.
Big time entertainment executives warned that uncontrolled piracy was rampant. BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin estimated that around one million movies a day are downloaded illegally via his peer-to-peer file-sharing service.
MGM COO Rick Sands posed his stance with the question: “If you can’t protect your content you can’t derive value a€” so who’s going to pay for it?” ProSieben Sat.1’s Marcus Englert was in agreement. “This is a long term threat to our business and we have to fight it.”
Navin explained that his company was engaged in doing legitimate content rights deals with companies such as Warner Bros. Seamless distribution was important for two reasons he said. “Firstly, because it is about giving consumers more control over when and where they watch something. Secondly, because new distribution channels are a way for smaller producers to get their content to audiences in an economically-viable way. Right now, we have a situation where Wal-Mart sells DVDs at a loss to encourage its customers into the shop to buy other products.”
There is a debate on the value of day and date distribution, that is a digital release occurs at the same time as theatrical or DVD release. According to Sands the collapsing windows would make it much harder for content owners to generate value for their product. “I’m not saying windowing in its current format will remain unchanged. But windowing is about marketing your product to maximise value and we’ll do everything we can to protect it.”
Another issue from a TV distribution perspective was when broadcasters try to collapse TV and broadband rights into each other, said Granada International head of new media Martin Blakstad. “We’re resisting this because it’s primarily about broadcasters trying to build new business with out content a€” without allowing us to participate in the upside,” is how he is quoted in The News at MIPCOM.
with existing business and release windows for film and TV.
Big time entertainment executives warned that uncontrolled piracy was rampant. BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin estimated that around one million movies a day are downloaded illegally via his peer-to-peer file-sharing service.
MGM COO Rick Sands posed his stance with the question: “If you can’t protect your content you can’t derive value a€” so who’s going to pay for it?” ProSieben Sat.1’s Marcus Englert was in agreement. “This is a long term threat to our business and we have to fight it.”
Navin explained that his company was engaged in doing legitimate content rights deals with companies such as Warner Bros. Seamless distribution was important for two reasons he said. “Firstly, because it is about giving consumers more control over when and where they watch something. Secondly, because new distribution channels are a way for smaller producers to get their content to audiences in an economically-viable way. Right now, we have a situation where Wal-Mart sells DVDs at a loss to encourage its customers into the shop to buy other products.”
There is a debate on the value of day and date distribution, that is a digital release occurs at the same time as theatrical or DVD release. According to Sands the collapsing windows would make it much harder for content owners to generate value for their product. “I’m not saying windowing in its current format will remain unchanged. But windowing is about marketing your product to maximise value and we’ll do everything we can to protect it.”
Another issue from a TV distribution perspective was when broadcasters try to collapse TV and broadband rights into each other, said Granada International head of new media Martin Blakstad. “We’re resisting this because it’s primarily about broadcasters trying to build new business with out content a€” without allowing us to participate in the upside,” is how he is quoted in The News at MIPCOM.
