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This study examined the veiled chain of film piracy, a major crime in the Nigeria entertainment industry. Studies on film piracy in Nigeria have focused on its economic implications, both on the copyright owners and on the Nigerian economy. The organization of the activities of the film pirates has, however, been neglected. Narratives were extracted through in-depth interviews with pirates, "marketers," and "producers." Data indicated that pirates were insiders in the film marketing industry and included importers of foreign movies, registered and nonregistered retailers of Nigerian films, as well as marketers appointed by copyright owners to distribute their films. With the connivance of sales girls working with the copyright owners and dubbing companies, original copies of films (white face) are "procured." Pirates distributed pirated copies, also secretly known as "green face," without issuing receipts or putting the logo of the company on it. For security reasons, pirated films are sold only to buyers introduced by a member in the piracy network. Efforts aimed at fighting piracy must take into account this veiled network to effectively combat intellectual theft via aggressive ban on the public sale of such products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Film studios have spent the past two decades lobbying extensively to establish new legislation restricting access to copyrighted materials online. While there is growing evidence of the effect film piracy has on studio profits, the evidence on the impact of anti-piracy legislation is limited. If anti-piracy legislation is having the film industry's desired impact, we would expect film revenues to be consistently higher following the passage of major laws that restrict access to pirated content, or major enforcement actions, such as the shutdown of Web sites that provide illegal content for download. This paper applies an intervention analysis approach to weekly data on movie box-office revenues in the USA to determine whether the passage of new anti-piracy policy has generated significant changes in box-office revenues during the period from 1997 to the present. These effects are evaluated in both the short and long term, which allows an assessment of the duration of effectiveness of government actions. The results show that four of the six included policies are ineffective in the long term and those policies that do impact revenues in the short term often harm film studios, rather than help them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The music and movie industries have dominated the discussion on Internet piracy. Both industries have employed the use of technologies that limit the ability to share digital files of their audiovisual works, known as digital rights management technology. In addition, both industries have pursued aggressive legal action campaigns to enforce intellectual property rights against individuals who are illegally downloading files and websites that facilitate piracy. But by all counts, these efforts have failed to control the problem, and arguably damaged their reputations. Though music and movie piracy has received the most headlines, the PC video game industry has similarly suffered. The video game industry, too, has pursued the traditional enforcement routes that other industries have used to combat piracy, with the same middling results. Thus, some developers have turned to alternative means of combating piracy, which are primarily aimed at changing the hearts and minds of its gaming community. By fostering a negative social stigma towards piracy, developers have found an effective means of protecting their intellectual property. This Article focuses on two primary methods that video game developers have used to combat Internet piracy. The first method is the use of open pricing models, whereby purchasers pay what they want for a particular game or package of games. The second method is the use of endogenous digital rights management technology that does not entirely restrict access to the game, but which can severely frustrate game play, often in a comical manner. The success of this latter method is unique to the game industry. Ultimately, these methods have had a positive effect on the industry's attempt to combat piracy. intellectual property laws have already been amended and employed to combat piracy. Legislation and litigation are often the first responders to changing industry landscapes. Yet these traditional avenues have been ineffective in protecting intellectual property on the Internet. Perhaps, then, the answer lies in the video game industry's approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do structural market conditions affect people's media consumption over time? This article examines the evolution of Chinese pirate film consumption from the mid-1980s to 2005 as a structurational process, highlights its different mechanisms (as compared to those of legitimate cultural markets), and teases out an unconventional path to broadening the scope of societal tastes in culture. The research reveals that, in a structural context consisting of a giant piracy market, lacking advertising or aggregated consumer information, consumers developed "movie talk" from the grassroots. The media environment comprised solely of movie talk guides people's consumption of films toward a heterogeneous choice pattern. The noncentralized, unquantifiable, and performative features of movie talk that may contribute to such an effect are discussed herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]