What are you really burning

When you hear the term ‘copyright', perhaps it calls to mind something that only really applies to lawyers and big companies. But if you think about it, copyrights provide you with a guarantee of quality - the quality that the creator intended - and they help creative people go on being creative.

Copyright protects creativity by giving whoever creates an original work control over how that work is used and distributed. Stories matter to people and, as a result, there will always be a demand for them. The question is how those stories will be told if no one is willing to pay entertainers for them.

What is piracy?
Anyone who sells, obtains, copies or distributes copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright owner is a pirate. So downloading a movie without paying for it is morally similar to walking into a store and stealing a DVD off the shelf. And sharing it through peer-to-peer applications or posting it on a forum for downloading is like giving illegal copies to people for free - possibly millions of them. Piracy is committed in many ways, including the downloading and swapping of movies on the internet, and on the streets, where illegally duplicated DVDs are sold by dodgy dealers and street vendors.

What does it cost the NZ entertainment industry?
The film industry reckons the losses caused by piracy total more than a massive $70 million a year. That represents nearly half of the annual national box office and is about 25 percent of the size of the legal market. This includes illegal downloading and the distribution of films.

What's being done?
NZFACT is helping to fight piracy by educating people about its effects, taking action against internet thieves and disc pirates, working with the police around the world to root out pirate operations and working to ensure movies are available legally using new technologies.

What can I do?
Not many people would dream of shoplifting a DVD from a shop. But for some reason, some people wouldn't think twice about downloading a copy of a movie they didn't pay for from the internet. Or about buying a movie from a dodgy dealer, but not from an authorised outlet. Why? Perhaps it's because the movie industry produces creative intangible products - intellectual property - as opposed to products that people can touch and feel. For some reason, this makes some people feel more comfortable about the act of taking something without paying for it.

Online safety tips to stop movie piracy
NZFACT encourages you to remember these simple online safety tips:
1Watch out for titles ‘too new to be true': Movies that haven't come out in New Zealand cinemas yet, or which are still showing in cinemas, will not usually be available on DVD. If very recent titles are being sold on DVD on an auction site or local online retail sites, they are most likely pirated. Pirates also make ‘spoofs' of titles available on peer-to-peer networks, so what you think you are downloading might be a fake.

2Remember: ‘You get what you pay for': Even if you're hoping to see your favorite movie titles at a discounted price, the extremely low prices offered on some websites might indicate pirated product.

3Read the label: Once your DVD arrives, look at the packaging carefully and beware of products that don't look genuine. Poor quality print on the disc's surface and sleeve cover, as well as the lack of original artwork and any missing studio, publisher and distributor logos on the disc and packaging, usually suggest the product is pirated.

4There's no legal way of downloading movies in NZ:Ensure that the DVD you are watching is both classified and rated. There is continuing evidence that movies not rated by the Film and Video Labelling Body have adult pornography on the DVD and not the movie title that was indicated (sometimes written in pen!).