Written by Brandy Smith
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
It’s official ‘Twilight: Eclipse’ now holds the industry record as the largest midnight gross ever. It grossed $300 million from it’s Wednesday midnight shows alone. With that kind of money coming in, I bet you’re not surprised that there are a lot of people trying to to get in on the action. Some websites actually decided to skip out on the “Team Jacob” and ”Team Edward” t-shirts and actually resorted to offering free online viewing of the hit movie just get a piece of the pie. It got so ridiculous it became the subject of an announcement made by Walt Disney Studios early Wednesday morning and ignited a severe crack down on piracy.
According to csmonitor.com “Operation In Our Sites” will be a callaborated effort by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and NIPRCC ( National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center) to identify and shut down Web sites that engage in such activities.
The ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton announced the seizure of nine web sites that have been offering movies, usually within hours of their release into theatres. The nine websites that are included are: tvshack.net, movies-links.tv, filespump.com, Now-movies.com, planetmoviez.com, thepiratecity.org, zml.com, ninjavideo.net and ninjathis.net. All visitors to those sites will be redirected to a page with a message from the FBI, ICE and NIPRCC explaining the seizure of the sites.
The seizure of the sites were a direct result of the work of undercover agents who went to the sites and downloaded new releases. Along with the seizures came residential search warrants issued in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Washington.
Why should we care about piracy? According to Matthew Loeb, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees ” Intellectual property is the basis of our modern economy. The stealing of digital content is not a victimless crime,”he adds, “It’s also the theft of tens of thousands of American jobs.”
Although some may argue that with the recession it is simply just more pratical and affordable to just watch online or purchase burned copies of movies… we can’t forget about the fact that more than the wealthy producers and actors are affected by piracy. There are a lot of ordinary middle class people involved in the production of these movies that depend on the success of these movies. When movies are distributed illegally, all of the credit for the movie is essentially going to the distributor and not the people that actually put in the work. That’s like going to work everyday only to allow some else to pick up your check on payday.
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