Earlier this month, the Motion Picture Association of America collectively decided to end the practice of sending \screener"" videos and DVDs to Oscar voters in order to halt the spread of piracy.
While many downloadable movies and street bootlegs of Oscar contenders end up being created from one of these screeners, MPAA leader Jack Valenti and the MPAA member studios have come under heavy fire for the decision. Many of the smaller, arthouse divisions of larger studios claimed that the ban will make it more difficult for small films to reach the voters.
Last week, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild voiced their opposition to the ban as well. The MPAA held a teleconference Thursday to discuss the backlash but has only agreed to talk again at a later date.
This entire screener debacle has reinforced two concepts that I have strongly believed in for years: the inevitability of piracy and the bleeding credibility of the Oscars.
As long as you download smartly-in other words, avoid letting others download from you-you're in little to no danger of being caught. The very nature of the Recording Industry of America's investigation focuses on those who allow their files to be downloaded and not on those doing the downloading. Now that cable and DSL Internet access is commonplace, movies are downloaded at a similar rate. Can I blame the MPAA for wanting to protect its property? Not at all-but the banning of screeners isn't going to do anything other than make the Oscars completely skewed in favor of the major studios.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that screeners could be protected in other ways. Studios could require that the screeners be returned after being viewed. They could place a screener code on the films so that any bootlegs found would be traceable. I know Valenti knows about these options because I'm certainly not the first to propose them. If that's the case, why the ban?
If anything, this is another move by the major studios to kill off independent filmmaking. In recent years, most independent studios have either gone bankrupt or fallen under the wings of a larger powerhouse as an ""arthouse"" division. This thinning of the herd is not based on the quality of films but on monetary force. Usually, the only time a casual filmgoer hears of these smaller films is when Oscar time rolls around. Without that small bit of public relations, these smaller, quality films will die out-and a large part of the spirit of filmmaking will die, as well.
wwtemby@wisc.edu.
