Six-month anti-piracy strategy delays Dark Knight piracy for just 38 hours

[admin]

Warner Bros. devoted six months to an extensive anti-piracy strategy for the release of "The Dark Knight", and have deemed the 38 hour period between the film's premiere screening and the first appearance on file-sharing sites to be a success - keeping bootleg DVDs off the streets as the film racked up a record-breaking US$158.4 million on its all important opening weekend.

http://www.gizmag.com/even-batman-cant-beat-pirates/9711/

[drfsupercenter]

What exactly was this strategy?

And I was one of the people contributing to the opening weekend profit... I tried to see it in the IMAX but it was booked solid for days... so I had to see it in the normal theater (and I had to get the ticket an entire hour early to just get a seat!)

The Dark Knight is too good to be pirated anyway

--EDIT--

OK, I read the article... that seems to explain it...

I mean, even with all that fancy stuff, you can always just pay someone enough to go unnoticed... say the manager of a certain theater wanted to pirate one, he could just "conveniently forget" to turn the infrared detectors on...

[admin]

The Dark Knight's success has more to do with the actual movie itself, than the lack of piracy (I mean if people had to wait 38 hours to get a pirated copy, then they wait ... they're not going to say "I give up" and then go buy a ticket).

I suspect nobody wanted to pirate The Love Guru either, but does that mean it made a lot of money?

[drfsupercenter]

The only difference is that The Love Guru looks like a horrible movie.

I know a bunch of people who were all racing to see The Dark Knight before everyone else... like preordering tickets and whatnot. I settled for waiting a day after it opened, but it was still opening weekend.

I think the thing is that people want to see it on the big screen, and not some camrip. If a telecine turned up on The Pirate Bay, I'm sure less people would have seen it in the theater.

[admin]

What's definitely true is that TDK is now the most pirated movie on the net probably, but if ticket sales are still strong (looks that way), then it shows that piracy does not affect box office, and possibly gives it a little boost too.

[drfsupercenter]

Haven't we been saying this to the MPAA for years?

There are those people who will pirate a movie whether or not the quality is any good, either because they can't afford to buy DVDs or because they do not want to... then there are the opposites who won't pirate anything at all.

And there are the people in the middle, who will pirate the movies that they want to watch but don't think are worth the cost of seeing it in a theater (Around here the tickets are around $10, and after popcorn you're paying $20 to see one movie...), but if a movie's really good they'll go and see it in the theater. I still say piracy and the MPAA stealing, er, making money are mutually exclusive events... and I think it's obvious by what's happening with The Dark Knight.

Now if only the IMAX tickets would stop being sold out.. I'd actually pay another $10 to see it... because I heard it was filmed for IMAX and wanted to see it on the huge screen (I just couldn't because it was sold out for days)