Feature-Length Digital Piracy

AMAZON.COM Obsolete?

Joshua does not have a VCR here at Yale, but that does not prevent him from watching movies within the comfort of his own common room. This freshman watches the latest movie releases like Gladiator by downloading them as compressed audio-video files off the Internet in an increasingly popular format known as DivX. Across campus, Yalies are taking advantage of Yale's high-speed Ethernet connection by trading these files, often in direct violation of copyright laws.

DivX's more famous cousin, the audio format MP3, is notorious as a means for illegally trading music files. The illegal trading of copyrighted music files in the MP3 format makes national headlines daily as online trading sites like Napster face lawsuits from individual bands like Metallica and industry groups like the Recording Industry Association of America. The movie industry used to feel safe from growing Internet piracy because movie files seemed too large to be conveniently transferred online. Digital piracy is now a genuine threat to the movie industry, though DivX allows full-length films to be transmitted online via DSL or cable modem in as little as 45 minutes while retaining near-DVD picture quality. 

The Motion Picture Association of America has had to shift its attacks on piracy from the copying of videocassettes to the digital sector. Last year the DivX technology garnered national attention when the MPAA sued the distributors of a program called DeCSS which breaks through anti-copying protections on DVDs so that they can be copied into DivX files. Although the MPAA succeeded in its lawsuit, it set back its own cause by introducing publicity and subsequently new users to DivX.

DivX technology itself may also infringe upon the legal rights of Microsoft. Originally, the DivX code was modified from Microsoft's MPEG-4 video standard. Anticipating potential legal pitfalls, one of the latest versions of DivX technology such as DivX;-) Deux, distributed by DivXNetworks, claims to be comprised of entirely new code such that it does not violate any copyright or patent laws.

Still, David Davies, the manager of Student Computing Services at Yale ITS, wants to emphasize that DivX is like MP3 in that, "there is nothing inherently bad or illegal about the technology." 

Nonetheless, the proliferation of DivX trading across campus may saturate network connections and violate ITS policy. ITS prohibits "use that impedes, interferes with, impairs, or otherwise causes harm to the activities of others," including such activities as "resource hogging." ITS also prohibits use in violation of law such as infringing copyrights.

Joshua seemed nonchalant about the illegal nature of his online activities. "I don't feel bad about getting free movies." Taking advantage of his fast Ethernet connection, Joshua downloaded Gladiator and Scary Movie from Scour Exchange before the site was recently shut down. Joshua has not added to his DivX collection recently due to the difficulty in locating full-length versions of popular movies online. 

Michael, another freshman, agrees that the most annoying feature of downloading DivX files is the time required to find good movies. As one of the people on the providing end of the DivX exchange process, Michael is working to rectify the situation. Although he has downloaded a few short trailers, Michael mostly just provides the online community with full-length films of his choosing. Using his own DVDs, friends' DVDs and even DVD rentals from Blockbuster, Michael rips movies and copies them onto his hard drive, using around seven gigabytes of memory per movie. Using a program such as FlashMPEG, he then encodes the files into DivX files of 650 megabytes or less, depending upon what level of quality he desires. Using these files, Michael both burns CDs of the movies for friends and shares the movies online with anonymous users like Joshua by using programs such as iMesh and BearShare. Thanks to Michael, illegal copies of movies such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Rush Hour, and the ever-popular Gladiator are floating around in cyberspace for anyone to retrieve without paying a cent.

Joshua claims to not know many other traders of DivX files at Yale, although he admittedly does not associate with a very computer-oriented social circle. Michael, on the other hand, points to his own suite as indicative of the widespread usage of DivX files on campus. All members of his quad regularly watch DivX files on their personal computers. Chuckling, Michael remarks: "A very large percentage of Yale students are breaking the law."
 

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