Author: Digital Digest | Latest News

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 31st October 2015 are in. Pixels was the week's best selling new release, but it failed to beat 'Jurassic World' to the top spot.

You can read the rest of the stats and analysis here

The MPAA has pointed to strengthening privacy laws in Europe as a key barrier to their anti-piracy efforts.

In their annual submission to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) detailing trade barriers that affect the core business of the movie industry, the MPAA has singled out changes to EU privacy laws as a major headache for their copyright enforcement actions.

In particular, the MPAA is displeased at how IP addresses are now considered private data by most EU states, which makes it difficult for the MPAA and their agents to force ISPs to give up subscriber information for alleged copyright infringers.

"Telecommunications operators and ISPs constantly invoke data protection rules to avoid any meaningful cooperation with the content sector," the MPAA writes.

"Such restrictive interpretations preclude meaningful cooperation with Internet intermediaries, such as telecommunications operators and ISPs, in particular cooperation to combat IP (Intellectual Property) theft."

The MPAA is also annoyed with the EU Court of Justice's decision to make data retention no longer mandatory, as Hollywood's copyright lobby believes data retention is "a very valuable tool for law enforcement". Without data retention laws, Internet companies can delete user logs for privacy reasons, thus making it more difficult for the MPAA to find the identities of infringers.

But as torrent news website TorrentFreak notes, the US currently doesn't have any mandatory data retention laws, so it is unknown why the MPAA believes the USTR is well placed to affect any change in the EU on this issue.

4K Ultra HD TV sales rose 494 percent for the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) reports.

The same report also found that for the first time, consumer spending on subscription streaming went above spending on packaged media sales in the quarter.

According to data obtained by the DEG, 2.8 million U.S. households already own a 4K Ultra HD TV, out of the 96 million total HDTV households. This bodes well for the launch of the Ultra HD Blu-ray format at the end of the year.

But the overall news isn't particularly bright for packaged media, with sales down 14% year-on-year in the third quarter. With $1.146 billion in spending on disc purchases in the quarter, it was eclipsed by spending on subscription streaming. Consumers spent $1.268 billion on SVOD platforms such as Netflix and Hulu, up 23.3% from the same quarter a year ago.

Overall, anything related to physical media appears to be on a downward trajectory, with brick and mortar rental (down 17.15%), disc subscriptions (down 15.6%) and rental kiosks (down 7.61%) all down. On the other hand, total digital spending was up 15.75% to nearly $2.12 billion.

Total home entertainment spending remained largely unchanged from Q3 2014 to 2015, up a slight 0.22%.

From the MPAA's great victory to a great loss for consumer fair use rights, read this and other news stories for the week ending 8 November 2015

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Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes has expressed a desire to delay releasing content to SVOD platforms such as Netflix, or even forgoing them completely.

Bewkes says that SVOD monetization simply isn't good enough compared to pay-TV and other platforms, especially considering most SVOD platforms provide content in ad-free form.

"It’s pretty clear that SVOD offers less monetization support in general for the quality an diversity of programing that we’ve all gotten used to seeing on the dial," says Bewkes.

Major Time Warner properties include Warner Bros. and HBO, with the latter having recently launched their own SVOD platform in the form of HBO Now.

But despite this move, and Time Warner's recent link-ups with major SVOD players Netflix (streaming the first season of the TV show "Gotham") and Amazon (which has access to HBO's catalog titles), Bewkes says the company may reconsider any future commitments to SVOD. 

"We are evaluating whether to retain our rights for a longer period of time, and forgo or delay certain content licensing," Bewkes said. "This would effectively push the SVOD window for content on our networks to a multi-year period, more consistent with traditional syndication."

This could prove to be bad news for the likes of Netflix and Hulu, who have relied on content providers like Time Warner to furnish their vast catalog of movies and TV shows. It may also be bad news for consumers, faced with a further fragmented SVOD landscape.

Hollywood trade group the MPAA has confirmed they and their major studios partners are responsible for taking down major torrent piracy group YIFY (and their YTS website), as well as the most popular version of Popcorn Time.

The multi-nation crackdown occurred a few weeks ago, in separate efforts targeting the operators behind YTS/YIFY, as well as the developers of the most popular branch of Popcorn Time, in New Zealand and Canada.

The major Hollywood studios have initiated lawsuits against three Canadian developers of Popcorn Time, who also operated the now defunct PopcornTime.io website. The MPAA led studios obtained a legal injunction, which allowed them to effectively shut down the PopcornTime.io, new legal documents have now revealed.

Almost at the same time, the studios obtained a warrant against the New Zealand based operator of YTS/YIFY, and also issued threats of multi-million dollar lawsuits.

Sources informed TorrentFreak that several of the targeted are now working with the MPAA, providing information in exchange for a more lenient treatment.

The MPAA declared victory against these two major piracy outlets.

"This coordinated legal action is part of a larger comprehensive approach being taken by the MPAA and its international affiliates to combat content theft," said MPAA boss Chris Dodd.

"Popcorn Time and YTS are illegal platforms that exist for one clear reason: to distribute stolen copies of the latest motion picture and television shows without compensating the people who worked so hard to make them," he added.

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 24th October 2015 are in. Another big week for Blu-ray (plenty of these coming up, right up to the end of the holiday period), as the release of Jurassic World helped Blu-ray revenue reach a 2015 high, and for weekly Blu-ray market share to reach an *all time* high (just shy of the magical 50% mark, which means Blu-ray will have outsold DVDs during the week).

You can read the rest of the stats and analysis here

The US Copyright Office has just released its list of copyright exemptions, and DVD and Blu-ray ripping remains illegal.

The US Copyright Office, a department of the Library of Congress, regularly calls for public consultation on exemptions to existing copyright laws. These exemptions are needed to prevent copyright laws from impinging on consumer rights, or to prevent teaching and research activities.

Public interest group Public Knowledge petitioned the US Copyright Group to exempt DVD and Blu-ray ripping from copyright laws, if the user is doing so for personal and non-profit reasons, such as to enable cross-device compatibility. The exemption, they say is needed to allow consumers to exercise their fair use rights, to allow consumers to move their legally owned media between their personal devices.

The US Copyright Office did grant limited exemption for DVD/Blu-ray ripping, in the context of ripping short portions for "use in documentary filmmaking" and for "nonfiction multimedia e-books offering film analysis." Teachers and students may also engage in disc ripping "for educational purposes" and for "film studies or other courses requiring close analysis of film and media excerpts."

In one big concession, an exemption was granted for game DRM ripping for "local play" games. This means that for games which require online authentication even for local solo play, the DRM in these games can now be legally cracked in order to allow for continued play. As for creating replacement servers to allow the continued use of online games, this remains illegal.

Other notable exemptions include jailbreaking of mobile phones, tablets, wearables with cellular connections, and even smart TVs. Jailbreaking of game consoles remain illegal because the US Copyright Office says the activity is still too closely linked to piracy at the moment.

From a supercharged PS4 to being super charged with a felony for YouTube streaming, read this and other news stories for the week ending 1 November 2015

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One of the largest piracy release groups, and the torrent download website they operated, has been permanently shut down.

The website, YTS, went down last week under mysterious circumstances, and so far, no explanation has been given for the shut down, or the decision by the release group YIFY to stop uploading pirated movies to YTS and other torrent sites.

But torrent news site TorrentFreak has confirmed, via numerous sources, that the YTS/YIFY shutdown is permanent, and that the reasons for the shutdown will be made public in the coming weeks.

YIFY has been one of the most prolific release groups on the Internet since the group's debut in 2010. Since then, the group has released over 6,000 titles, and their torrents are often the most frequently downloaded.

The end of the group's piracy activities will have a major effect on the piracy scene in the short term, with many fake YIFY torrents already appearing on various torrent sites. But in the long term, YIFY's demise will not be a killer blow to piracy, as other groups will simply take over and continue on from where YIFY left off.