Growth in movie piracy but bigger growth in box office sales

by Justin Prince

For the past decade, movie piracy has been on the rise across the world.

Despite the rise, movie studios and cinemas are continuing to thrive in both Canada and the U.S.

According to websites such as WIRED.com and TorrentFreak, many people are downloading illegal movies. In 2013, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey had the most illegal downloads with an estimated 8.4 million torrents downloaded. During the week of Feburary 2014, Thor: The Dark World, Homefront and Ride Along were on top of the most torrented list, despite still being in theatres or not yet available on DVD.

“We think we have very effective policies to prevent this type of occurrence,” said Michael Langdon, the director of communications for Cineplex Entertainment. “We found it to actually be exceedingly rare and for the cases that do transpire, we do have special programs in place to deal with it.”

Most movies haven’t been affected at the box office according to BoxOfficeMojo, a website that keeps track of all movie earnings each year. The most downloaded movies from Feb. 3-9 averaged about $179 million per film in box office revenue. According to Langdon, Cineplex alone had 77 million people go into their theatres in 2012, or more than 178,000 for each of its 161 cinemas.

“Looking back at 2012, it was our best year ever as a company,” said Langdon. “The business is incredibly strong.”

But some studios are still being impacted by movie pirating. The Art of the Steal, a new film directed by Jonathan Sobol, is currently sixth on TorrentFreak’s most pirated movie list, even though it’s not supposed to be released in theatres until March 17.

There are also some people who are pirating movies using different methods, like ripping the files from a DVD or uploading a press copy of the movie as explained on the site. According to the Director’s Guild of America, there were 25 million people actively visiting Pirate Bay, a popular torrent site, in 2009.

“The RCMP is particularly interested in the investigation of counterfeit products posing health and safety risks to Canadians,” said Sgt. Richard Rollings, the “O” Division spokesperson for the RCMP. “The RCMP focuses on intellectual property crime investigations that are large scale … and investigations have the potential to expand beyond the retail level and target the highest level responsible for the counterfeit goods.”

According to the RCMP website, copyright infringement in Canada can include anything from movies to photographs. To be charged with copyright infringement, the person has to sell or rent out an illegal copy of any copyrighted media. Under the Copyright Act, the maximum penalty for copyright infringement is a $1 million fine and up to five years in prison.

Both the RCMP and Cineplex both have policies and programs in place to prevent piracy.

“It’s a crime,” said Langdon. “We have lobbied the government for much stricter rules, regulations and penalties for people who steal movies, which is effectively what they’re doing.”