Find a better piracy 'cure'

It has been reported that Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, will retreat from his proposed ban of screener DVDs and videotapes for award voters and critics.

If true, it will be one of the smartest decisions he has made. Valenti doesn't like changing his mind, as opponents of the 82-year-old curmudgeon have learned numerous times. Hollywood is still his fiefdom, where Valenti is a crusty throwback to days when moguls called all the shots. But like his insistence that the MPAA ratings system works, Valenti's stand that screeners are a primary cause of film piracy simply doesn't hold water.

It's likely that without screeners sent to voters, The Pianist wouldn't have won Academy Awards for best director, actor and adapted screenplay. The same probably applies to Pedro Almodovar's Oscar for Talk to Her's original screenplay and Spirited Away for best animated feature.

Going back a year, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent's Oscar-winning performances in Monster's Ball and Iris, respectively, would have been upstaged by richer studio's nominees if DVD screeners hadn't been sent to voters who didn't attend the few advance screenings those films' distributors could afford.

A ban on screeners, in an award season already pushed up a month by the Academy Awards' move to February, would severely damage the chance of such deserving surprises again.

Valenti's rationale for the ban was that halting the availability of screeners to award voters and critics organizations would cure the problem of film piracy. Valenti cites statistics showing that up to 600,000 illegal copies of feature films, some yet to be released to theaters, are bootlegged worldwide daily. That's a lot of money that isn't going into Hollywood's pockets.

Something must be done to curb film piracy, but a ban on screeners isn't the answer. Consider Valenti's inherent claim in his proposal, that thousands of film industry personnel being adversely affected by piracy are responsible for the problem by duplicating screeners or loaning them to duplicators for profit.

That isn't where piracy flourishes. It's in subcontracted labs where thousands of legal copies are produced and some are smuggled out by employees. It's in the neighborhood megaplexes where minimum wage, nonunion projectionists have access to film prints and reasons to "rent" them to pirates. Or else it's in theater auditoriums where someone gets away with videotaping the screen, not the best system but still one with demand, especially on Internet sites where poor quality isn't as important as the thrill of downloading a blockbuster and showing off to friends.

And, yes, there could be a few Hollywood employees or critics desperate or disgruntled enough to bite the hands feeding them. But with screener coding and tracking safeguards available, the culprits and accomplices could be quickly traced and prosecuted. Or else screeners could utilize new technology allowing limited use after pressing "play" before the disc self-destructs.

Why, then, was Valenti so revved up about banning screeners? The conspiracy theorist in me has an idea. The realist in me sees so many dumb things being done in the name of stopping piracy that the idea of Valenti or anyone else leading a conspiracy among studios is silly.

On one hand, Valenti and the MPAA member studios - all the biggies except DreamWorks, which agreed with the ban - had something to gain by banning screeners. Those pesky independent films that often are better than studio releases wouldn't crash the award parties as easily. Those films come from small distributors that can't afford as many full-page ads in Variety touting potential winners, or rent as many expensive screening rooms for voter consideration.

The result would be more studio releases among Oscar nominees, brighter stars walking the red carpet and, possibly, a reversal of the Academy Awards' declining TV ratings over the past few years when screeners enabled more relative unknowns to be nominated. Of course, Oscar winners make more money in rerelease and home video, so more profits would stay "in the family."

But that scenario would require much clearer forethought than Valenti and MPAA member studios have shown in handling the piracy issue.

In the past two weeks, I've seen two advance screenings in theaters, one for critics only and one with a crowd of more than 200 people, ruined by misguided antipiracy efforts. Distributors decided that one way to thwart pirates would be to withhold delivery of film prints until a couple of hours before the screening. That means film reels are spliced together on good faith that they're in the correct order because a test run - a practice as old as the Oscars - is impossible.

On two occasions they weren't assembled in the correct order. Correcting the problem could take hours, so the screenings were canceled after a reel had already played through.

I've seen advance screenings turned over to security guards, who scan patrons with metal detectors to find hidden video cameras. Not a bad idea, but it only happens at screenings. Once the movie opens, the guards and metal detectors are gone and pirates can do what they please.

Then when audiences at screenings have been scanned and seated, security guards sometimes pull out night-vision goggles to peer into the dark for anyone with a camera. It's a creepy feeling when someone is looking in your direction with those things, not to mention the distraction from the movie that I'm sure filmmakers don't appreciate.

It's enough to make anyone wait for movies to come out on DVD or the Web and enjoy the comfortable privacy of home. Even if those movies are bootlegged. In effect, the use of such extraordinary security measures, and the resulting inconvenience, promotes the theater industry's most serious threat: that everyone will stay home.

All this is done on studio orders, not theater management. They are the same studios that were supporting Valenti's ban. It's hard to buy into their logic after seeing how reckless their other antipiracy measures have turned out.

The backlash to Valenti's ban was immediate. Numerous Hollywood artist guilds and critics' groups filed formal complaints against the ban proposal. Valenti entertained a few compromise suggestions but appeared to remain steadfast until the Los Angeles Critics Association announced Monday that its 2003 awards would be canceled unless the ban plan was rescinded. Certainly other groups would have followed that lead, taking away praise that becomes a key selling point on ballots and at box offices during awards season.

Meanwhile, theaters are already jammed with more films than anyone who isn't getting paid to watch them can see. With a screener ban, independent films would have fallen through the cracks and personal calendars. Many academy voters don't live near Los Angeles and New York screening rooms, so advance DVDs are their only way of staying informed about deserving films.

If Valenti surrenders, it takes away one more reason for them to vote stupidly.

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