A slipped disc in piracy fight

With major media fanfare, Hollywood studios last week announced a big advertising campaign designed to curb film piracy. But behind the scenes, studio executives are wondering how much their own Oscar campaigns -- in which thousands of “for your consideration” DVDs are mailed to voters and opinion-makers -- are feeding the lucrative underground market.

While Academy Awards season is still months away -- and not even on the radar screen of the general public -- the Motion Picture Assn. of America is in talks with the seven major studios on how to minimize the potential harm caused by Oscar mailers, known in the industry as “academy screeners.”

“We’re weighing not sending DVDs this year because of the piracy issue,” said Terry Press, who heads marketing at DreamWorks SKG.

Press noted that Oscar campaign copies of last year’s Tom Hanks-Leonardo DiCaprio chase film “Catch Me If You Can” wound up in China and on the Internet auction Web site EBay.

Videocassettes also can be copied, studio officials say, but usually they are of lower quality than DVDs, which can be endlessly duplicated without degrading the images.

“People say the image is so much better on DVDs,” Press explained. “Well, that is just what counterfeiters think too.”

“Clearly, it’s an issue that needs to be addressed,” said Robert Friedman, chairman and chief operating officer of Paramount Pictures’ Motion Picture Group. “It’s becoming more and more apparent that the discs have gotten into the hands of pirates.”

Friedman said Paramount has been discussing the issue of Oscar mailers, but the studio has not decided how to proceed.

Last year, piracy concerns prompted Disney to send out only VHS copies of “Spirited Away,” “Treasure Planet” and “25th Hour.”

The 6,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who vote on the Oscars increasingly are requesting the studios and independent distributors to send them DVDs rather than VHS cassettes. (Under academy rules, voters may be sent the films either on DVD or VHS, but not both.) And most studios have been obliging -- up to now.

Warner Bros., for example, mailed DVDs to roughly 4,000 academy voters this last Oscar season, a marked change from only four years ago, when most voters opted to see the movies on the VHS format.

Universal, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer said Tuesday that they have made no firm decision on the issue.

Miramax Films, which captured the Oscar for best picture this year for the jazzy musical “Chicago,” said Tuesday that it planned to mail DVDs in the coming awards season, but it stressed that no final decision had been made.

“As of now, we have no plans to change from past years,” a Miramax spokesman said, adding: “We’re always looking to protect the integrity of our material.”

The studio strategists must allow for another complication going into the next awards season: a compressed campaign schedule caused by the academy’s decision to hold next year’s Oscar ceremony a month earlier, on Feb. 29.

As a result, Oscar voters will have to turn in their nomination ballots no later than Jan. 17, leaving precious little time for them to see movies that are coming out at year’s end.

Miramax, for example, has “Cold Mountain” coming out on Christmas Day. It must decide whether to jump the gun on the theatrical release of one of its big prestige offerings to put the film in the homes of Oscar voters early enough to make a difference.

The question of whether to mail DVDs to Oscar voters and rank-and-file members of Hollywood guilds representing directors, actors and screenwriters, as well as to various film critics groups, comes only a week after Hollywood launched its advertising campaign against movie piracy.

The ads, which include 30-second TV spots and movie trailers run by most major cinema chains, stress how film piracy affects the rank-and-file crafts people in the film industry.

The ad ends: “Movies. They’re worth it.”