Joint US-China launch tackles movie piracy

LOS ANGELES In a first-ever move to stem overseas sales of illegally copied movies on DVD, the Warner Bros. film studio released the DVD for a film in China on the same day it debuted in US cinemas.

The release of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" DVD in China further illustrates the lengths to which Hollywood's motion picture studios are going to curb video and DVD piracy that they say costs some US$3.5 billion ($5 billion) a year in lost revenue.

"We are venturing beyond our industry's traditional business models to fight piracy and deliver the high-quality product consumers want," Jim Cardwell, president of Warner Home Video, said in a statement.

"Sisterhood", a movie with a modest cost that is aimed mostly at young women, began playing in US cinemas on Friday, and a studio-produced DVD was available the same day at Chinese retail outlets.

Typically, a movie would first play in cinemas and several months later, the videotape or DVD would be sold in stores or made available for rent.

But advances in digital technology have allowed people to make good-quality, illegal copies of movies and rapidly ship them around the world via the internet.

Recent blockbuster "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith", for instance, was available on the internet within hours of its worldwide release, and DVD copies were soon followed in street bazaars and black markets.

The piracy problem is particularly relevant in China because the government limits the number of Hollywood films that can be shown each year in the country, nor does the country have as extensive or modern a cinema network as in the United States, Europe or other regions.

But Warner estimates there are as many as 100 million video and DVD players installed in Chinese homes, and the studios want to tap that market,

The months-long gap between a movie's release in cinemas and on DVD, however, means vendors of illegal products get them to consumers long before the studios.

The Warner Bros. spokeswoman said it was highly likely the studio would try the same initiative in the future with other films and that time was needed to judge its effectiveness.

- REUTERS