The Importance Of Intellectual Property In The Film Industry

Intellectual Property is thus an important matter for the film industry. It has been at the center of controversies and lawsuits from the beginning and has had various consequences on the film market. Nowadays, there is the issue of rising digital technologies, which increasingly threaten authors’ intellectual property rights by enabling new ways to circumvent the restrictions that were consequently imposed by IP law upon cultural consumptions. The brightest example is of course the phenomenon of piracy, which has struck on a global scale for decades. Piracy affects many, if not all, cultural and creative sectors. The music and the film industries are among the most impacted ones, especially since the rise of the Internet. New technologies have given ways to a multitude of new platforms to pirate songs, films and series, either by listening to, copying, streaming, or downloading online content illegally. The first conflicts over film piracy broke out with the invention of videocassette recorders. The best-known example is Sony’s VCR Betamax, accused by Universal in 1984 to enable home piracy. Although the U.S. Court ruled against Universal, it should be acknowledged that the VCR is indeed one of the first tools that facilitated piracy by the public. Sure, most people who have used Betamax videotapes to record films and programs that aired on television did not do it for commercial purposes. Yet, the Betamax gave unlimited access to the content users had recorded on it, just