An opportunity to test a theory of copyright infringement
The Australian this week reported that Village Roadshow would "distribute all major films before, simultaneously or close to the US release" in Australia in an attempt to eliminate copyright infringement attributed to delayed releases of films (Wait times slashed to beat film pirates, 24 September 2014, p. 3). For a moment it was almost like Village Roadshow had read my thoughts on proving claims of greed and gluttony in digital media. Village Roadshow's Graham Burke, however, gives a more likely explanation that the move was prompted by widespread piracy of The Lego Movie, which earned special notoriety for its delayed Australian release despite its being animated in the same country. The ABC adopted a similar strategy for the most recent series of Dr. Who, so that patience-challenged fans could watch the first episode at the same time as BBC watchers in the UK even though this was an absurd time of the morning in Australia and the same episode could be had for free on the same evening at its ordinary time.
Village Roadshow's and the ABC's moves suggest some success for a "civil disobedience" defence of copyright infringement, by which infringers justify their actions as a protest against unreasonable terms being offered by the distributors.
Of course the success of a protest campaign doesn't, in and of itself, prove that the protestors are right. However, the original reason for delayed cinema releases given in The Australian — re-use of physical film reels shipped from the US — is no longer relevant and I'm not aware of any other reason to delay releases. (The Australian makes a vague reference to other reasons including "allowing time for heat from the US to spread" but I don't know why whatever is meant by "heat" should be generated in the US any better than anywhere else.)
So critics of delayed releases have got their wish, at least from Village Roadshow and the ABC. We can now wonder what affect these moves will have on the level of copyright infringement. If infringers' main reason for infringing really is to combat delayed releases, as some commentators claim, we can expect infringement to taper off. Probably not to zero; copyright infringement happens even in the US itself, which infringement apologists seem to take as the gold standard of release dates and pricing. But here we have an opportunity to see whether or not Australians really are willing to pay for digital media when it is released alongside the US.
