Navigating The Pirates

Tim Burrowes

October 14, 2011 1:10

All independent filmmakers dream of seeing their film on the big screen. Seeing it appear on a pirate site first can mean financial death. However, becoming a ‘Filmmaker2.0’ will arm a director or producer against pirates, to turn a torrent into a revenue stream. Colin Delaney reports.

It’s the 21 Century filmmaker’s worst nightmare. Online piracy is costing the global industry billions of dollars. According to a recent report the Australian screen industry is worth $6.1B and supports 48,667 jobs. While this number is up by 5.1% since 2006-07, a study on behalf of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) showed that $1.37B in revenue was lost across the entire Australian economy due to movie and TV piracy while 6,100 jobs were forgone in 2010.

Filmmakers these days are well aware of the importance of protecting themselves against piracy before their film’s life has run its course but it only takes one pair of unscrupulous hands and a screener is online.

So what life does a film have if it’s been uploaded to the internet before its release? And how can a filmmaker best monetise their pirated film and utilise the data it generates?

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

Topics

Adam Blaiklock Distribution film Neil Peplow piracy Thomas Mai

1 COMMENTS

Sheri Candler 17 Oct 11

I cover this aspect of independent distribution, using peer to peer sites to distribute work for free while still reaching goals for the filmmakers, in a new book I co authored called Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul.

One of the case studies covered is a web series, completely crowdfunded through donations from “pirates.” To date, the series has been downloaded over 3 million times (downloaded, not views like Youtub), and raised over $80K. Two others are feature films, one from Spain and one from the US.

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