I do love my director’s commentaries, deleted scenes, etc, however, and certainly one of the reasons we buy (quite a lot of) DVDs/Blu-rays instead of PPV (generally. . . ). PPV is usually a “try it to see if we like it” first option on something we didn’t see in the theaters.

I think the real commercial market will be in selling things that the pirates can’t provide; the extras and the premiums, the links to merch, commentaries and interviews, etc. Back in the early days of film, the experience of watching, as an event in itself, was often as important as what was being watched. To compete with pirates (because you aren’t going to beat them), you have to offer customers more. It may come down to 3-D or gimmick technology, but if it puts more fannies in the seats and sells more authorized copies, that’s one way of doing it.

I know how the technology works, Fred, and where the files are. It doesn’t matter where the files are. It matters how people get in the front end of the illegal file supermarket and their willingness to do so. If they can’t bookmark a reliable url, you’ll greatly reduce the number of people who will even bother. The “junkies” will still get theirs, yes, indeed, however many virtual corners they need to hang out on to do so. As they always have, and always will.

Once a film is pirated, it’s a race to extract value as audience interest. If everyone sees the pirated version and buys a pirated DVD – why buy the real one? So if you can’t stop it, at least be ready to out-distribute them and out-price them. If DVD’s were a great deal cheaper, many people would build their collections, so it might actually drive up revenues by cutting retail prices. It would certainly make piracy less profitable.

You’re mixing apples and pineapples. The sites that provide links are not the sites where the files are. Shut down the “10″ today and, as history has proven multiple times, there will be 20 tomorrow. Given current technology, you are not going to be able to shut down access to those files without curtailing free and unfettered access to a lot of things we consider essential. If the last twenty years of the music business has proven anything, it is that every effort to curtail illegal filesharing is doomed to fail.
They convicted the guys behind Pirate Bay, the biggest link site in the world for movies, and it hasn’t made a dent in the practice. There’s a lesson to be learned there, but nobody seems to have paid attention.

The MPAA doesn’t have the resources to stop this kind of piracy, even if they get their fondest wish and ACTA allows them to use the Department of Justice and the FBI to do their dirty work. Beyond that, the Federal prison system isn’t big enough to hold everyone they could convict.

What makes you think a “War On Piracy” is going to work any better than the “War On Drugs” has?