It looks like a new habit, movies available for sale or download before their official release. Wheter people working in the movie industry leak the movies to illegally earn some money, or to hype the movie is not sure, but again a movie has been for sale before it's official release.
This time the the new "Lord of the Rings" movie can be purchased in China. For only 1 US dollar you can be the proud owner of a pirated copy of the DVD.
DVDs of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" were available in Shanghai two weeks ago for about $1 a pop, according to one Western film industry executive who visited that city. The film opens in North America on December 18. |
Interviewed at the CineAsia movie convention, the executive said as many as 40 street vendors were openly offering DVDs outside a Shanghai mall; he declined their offers, and thus can't verify the quality of the counterfeit copies.
Officials at the Motion Picture Assn. (MPA), the foreign arm of the Hollywood studios' lobby group, fear the "Rings" sequel will soon be available in other markets, such as Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia, where video piracy is rampant -- if it's not there already.
Dolby reps told Daily Variety that DVDs of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" were already being plied in Beijing two weeks ago.
I wonder who is responsible for leaking these movies, you would say that not many people have access to the movies and it shouldn't be so hard to mark the movies to track the people distributing them. Read the entire story here.
Source: CNN.com
