DRM and piracy are basically irrelevant for indie films

Tim Wu from Slate has a good piece differentiating piracy of Hollywood blockbusters and Sundance indie films. His conclusion supports Caachi's position that piracy for indie filmmakers isn't really a concern and may at times be a welcome piece of marketing for some filmmakers. Tim says:

"Film piracy, the conventional wisdom goes, is a threat to the film industry at all levels. That's certainly the sense at the Sundance Film Festival, where both the festival and distributors invest heavily in anti-piracy measures, including undercover agents who attend screenings to capture illicit videotapers. But it turns out that they may be wasting their money. Sundance films, present and past, simply do not register in the online pirate world—unless they are one of the few that have already made it big (like Clerks or Little Miss Sunshine). This proves two things: When it comes to content piracy, obscurity, not security, is the best defense. It also demonstrates that movie pirates are fundamentally parasitic, not predatory."

Why this result? The simplest explanation is that it takes a critical mass of interest—lots of people who want to see a film—before it will get decent pirate distribution. There are a number of reasons for this, but, crucially, every step of the piracy distribution system relies on knowing that the film exists at all. Moreover, to get effective, fast distribution on a peer-to-peer network, you need lots of reliable peers—enough people willing to share the burden of distributing the film online.

In the end, it's a numbers game. How many people want to see the film? Of those, which will get access, break the protection, and put it online? How many will download it, and of those, how many will share the burden of allowing others to download it? These numbers determine whether a film is online at all and mark the difference between a BitTorrent download that takes one hour, and one that takes five days or doesn't work at all.

What this suggests is that film pirates are not predators but parasites. They do not roam around looking for new and unknown films to eat, but rather prey on big films with name recognition."

[Originally saw this on Scott Kirsner's CinemaTech blog].