<story><title>The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record</title><url>http://torrentfreak.com/the-avengers-why-pirates-failed-to-prevent-a-box-office-record-120508/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tseabrooks</author><text>Torrentfreak&apos;s articles seem to get better and better. They note the ways in which piracy is hurting films (foreign sales) and show some numbers indicating that in the US it doesn&apos;t appear to be hurting sales much at all. While obviously torrentfreak can&apos;t ever be considered objective in regards to piracy, they seem to be getting closer each time.&lt;p&gt;Back on topic then, Does anyone have the background necessary to know if someone (anyone) is working towards disrupting the complicated publishing mess that keeps films from being available overseas for so long.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcampbell1</author><text>I am perplexed by your comment about overseas release dates.  There has been an absolutely massive compression in release dates in the past 5 years.  Most obvious blockbusters are now globally released, and the spread for smaller films has also been contracting.&lt;p&gt;Avengers was released overseas &lt;i&gt;prior&lt;/i&gt; to the US release.  A film like The Descendants was released 4 weeks early in NY/LA, and then foreign releases were only 6 weeks after the US release.  That is insanely fast for a movie that could potentially have never made it out of NY/LA.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record</title><url>http://torrentfreak.com/the-avengers-why-pirates-failed-to-prevent-a-box-office-record-120508/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tseabrooks</author><text>Torrentfreak&apos;s articles seem to get better and better. They note the ways in which piracy is hurting films (foreign sales) and show some numbers indicating that in the US it doesn&apos;t appear to be hurting sales much at all. While obviously torrentfreak can&apos;t ever be considered objective in regards to piracy, they seem to be getting closer each time.&lt;p&gt;Back on topic then, Does anyone have the background necessary to know if someone (anyone) is working towards disrupting the complicated publishing mess that keeps films from being available overseas for so long.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcr</author><text>I certainly do not qualify for &quot;have the background&quot; but I do have some
information. One part is cost of reproduction; it&apos;s rumored to cost
$1,500 for each reproduced film reel set. The current work (that &lt;i&gt;I&lt;/i&gt;
know about) is the move towards digital distribution.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://singularityhub.com/2012/04/27/movie-theaters-ramp-up-for-the-next-big-thing-satellite-delivery-of-digital-films/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://singularityhub.com/2012/04/27/movie-theaters-ramp-up-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another part is translation. Though language barriers have been
decreasing during the last two decades, they still exist, and most
people prefer to watch movies in their native language, or at least have
subtitles in a language they know well.&lt;p&gt;Various &quot;fan groups&quot; release subtitled versions of their favorite anime,
and at least to some degree, this addresses the time delay of
translation. More importantly, the entertainment industry has been
slowly learning from the fan subbing groups. A good example would be the
partnership between entertainment companies (read: investors) and groups
like CrunchyRoll which does and distributes officially sanctioned,
subtitled (re)releases a short time after the programs have originally
aired.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crunchyroll.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crunchyroll.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Though the former could easily be considered just cost cutting, the
latter is undoubtedly due to pressure from alternate distribution
channels.</text></comment>