Video Asylum

Posted by Some Guy on December 29, 2003 at 06:34:29

In Reply to: BOOTLEGGED VIDEO HELP PLEASE posted by kublakhan on December 28, 2003 at 11:40:23:

>Can anyone suggest ideas on how to track down a film that may have
>been bootlegged?

Put it this way... if the big studios can't stop, properly track, or prosecute that vast majority of cases, then it's going to be very difficult if not impossible for you to do the same as an independent.

As far as tracking it down, what do you mean? Do you mean finding the duplication houses or individual copies? Once it hits duplication, you've got to worry about DVD, VHS, and possibly VCD. Those then get shipped all over the regions and eventually back to the USA. The quality is usually terrible, but the people who buy boots don't seem to care much about that.

What you should be more concerned about is how it got leaked. For something that's not been released domestically, you have a lot better idea of how it could have gotten out and how to control such things. The best thing to do is have some kind of scroll on any finished edits that get dropped to video. I don't know what you could do for film prints... the studios have begun marking each print with a series of coded dots inbetween reels that supposedly identify which unique print it is. This information can then be tracked down to where it was shown to help create a legal case against the theatre for allowing the film to be taped. For an independent with limited prints, you probably already have an idea where it would have been done.

Basically, trust no one. It doesn't take much effort to pull the data off of a DVD these days and transferring a videotape to a DVD can be done in real time as well. Just one copy leaked out can be used as a master, so unfortunately you need to mark the picture some how, even if you have to do each one individually.

As for tracking it with peer to peer (Kazaa, Limewire, etc,) you're probably beating a dead horse with that. All that means is that different thieves have stolen it from the bootleggers. It probably won't help you much there because the users won't be able to say where they got it originally since it's passed through so many layers already. If your aim is to find out who originally got it, it will be very dead at that level unless your only interest is to see which copy got leaked.

How did you find out to what countries it got out? Do you have any contacts in that country that have been able to find copies of the film? Are you able to find out any of the duplication facilities in that country that have DVD capabilities? Some legitimate houses may be doing this in those countries due to the very different copyright laws that exist internationally... as far as I've heard, most places in the Far East that do that sort of work don't have to fear prosecution, so it's not something they'll hide that much. They may even sell you some copies if you pose as a distributor...