Pirates of the Big Screen

The Daily Herald's Eric Peterson reports that the Motion Picture Association of America has honored nine officers from the South Barrington police department for their role in bringing down an international video piracy ring. On Friday, April 10, officers arrested Gerardo Arellano of Hoffman Estates at the AMC 30 in South Barrington, charging him with videotaping "Hannah Montana: The Movie." They later discovered thousands of pirated DVDs and CDs in his home.

That AMC 30 has been my movie theater of choice for about a decade now, and I've always been impressed by the police presence there. I find it shocking that anyone thought they could get away with recording a film at that theater -- especially on a Friday night when a police officer is almost always visible in the building -- and I'm glad I've never been in a theater while someone was trying to do this. There are enough distractions at the theater already without me having to sic the cops on some dude with a camera.

That's not to say I'm some kind of morality cop or anything; I'm not necessarily appalled by the idea of someone videotaping a movie, but I am appalled by what it might mean for me as a moviegoer.

What piracy might mean for me is higher prices across the board, and I don't think any of us want that. Here's the pricing structure at the South Barrington AMC:

• Adult: $10
• Senior: $9 (60 and up)
• Matinee: $8 (Before 6 p.m. Monday-Thursday; before 4 p.m. Friday-Sunday and holidays)
• Child: $7 (2-12)
• Student: $7 (Only on Thursdays)
• Senior Day: $6 (Only on Tuesdays)
• A.M.Cinema: $6 (All shows before noon Friday-Sunday and holidays)
• IMAX Experience surcharge: $4 extra
• Digital 3D surcharge: $3 extra

That's pretty steep. Back in my day, I paid $3.75 to see a matinee of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" at the old Cineplex Odeon at Town & Country. Now matinees are eight-freakin'-dollars. Don't be surprised if rates go up across the country in the next few weeks as two of the highest-profile releases in history are released. Industry analysts think "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is poised to score the biggest opening weekend ever, and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" could probably give that a run for its money. (Have you seen the trailers for that? Holy crap, does that look awesome.)

Wait, some of you may be thinking, aren't you the guy who used to say movies were a comparative bargain? Yes, I was that guy, and I still believe that $10 is a relatively small price to pay to see something that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and which employed hundreds (if not thousands) of people. But I don't have to tell you that times are tough, and I don't have to further tell you that paying $14 to see "Star Trek" in "The IMAX Experience" is not exactly an ideal situation.

That being said, I'm not really worried about what this kind of piracy means to movie studios. They're going to make millions of dollars on their tentpole pictures, both at the box office and in the home market.

Who's in the market for these videotaped movies anyway? Issues with picture quality aside, the time between box office and DVD release is so short now. If you missed Nicolas Cage's "Knowing" when it premiered in theaters on March 18, you only have to wait until July 7 to rent it on DVD. Remember when you used to have to wait a year or longer to see a movie on VHS? I remember seeing "Jurassic Park" in the old Randhurst theater more than a year after it originally came out on June 11, 1993. It didn't hit VHS until the fall of 1994.

Of course, pirated DVD rips made from screener copies or, in rare cases, straight from the digital source, are a different matter altogether. Those could potentially take the place of a studio-pressed copy in someone's collection, and hurt DVD sales. I know this because I've seen a few in my day that are perfect copies, with special features intact. That's where the MPAA should be redoubling its anti-piracy efforts: on the person at 20th Century Fox who leaked the "Wolverine" movie in its entirety, or the Oscar voter with a DVD burner.