Legal DVDs still 'piracy'

For fans of Asian cinema, especially those based in North America, DVD is often the only way they'll get to view such films as Hero, Infernal Affairs, Shaolin Soccer and Tears of the Black Tiger. All those films have been available on DVD for years, even though the films haven't been released in the States until just recently or not at all.

Understandably, film distributors have a dim view of this "gray market" for DVDs. The Chicago Tribune recently examined the issue.

Miramax actively fought the importation of Hero and other movies awaiting release that are already available on DVD overseas, the Tribune said. But with Hero, the imported DVDs may have actually helped the film's US release.

"It's a 'presentation' movie, so what we feel is if you see the movie on DVD, you'll want to go see it in the theater," Miramax chief operating officer Rick Sands said. "On the screen it looks magnificent. I think if it was a small movie, the piracy issue would be more impactful."
Yes, Sands calls this "piracy" even though the discs in question aren't necessarily bootlegs. Hero has been legitimately released on DVD in Asia, although some resellers have been known to make unauthorized copies.

From the consumer point of view, buying Hero on DVD is a little different from picking up the British version of the Clash's first album when it wasn't initially released in the US, the Tribune pointed out. The distinction is that movie companies have divided the globe into "territories," [or regions] and product is not meant to cross boundaries.

Hence those incompatible zone codes on DVDs. European discs won't play on American DVD machines, but many Asian discs will.

"We own those rights for the DVD, for all forms of distribution, and we are actively having people take down sites where the DVD is available," Sands said.

Although eBay prohibits the selling of known pirated materials, "legal copies of DVDs are a bit of a gray area," company spokesman Hani Durzy said. With 29 million listings at any given time, Durzy said, eBay can't be in the business of interpreting rights agreements between outside parties. But under its Verified Rights Owner program, it will pull copyright-violating listings at a company's request.

To a small distributor such as Magnolia Pictures, every ticket or DVD sale counts. In November Magnolia is set to release the raved-about Thai martial arts film Ong-Bak, which can be bought on DVD from various eBay sellers for about $15. The DVD of Ong-Bak is readily available in Thailand for around $7, but there are no English subtitles available, not that they really matter for it's the action that really counts.

"You don't want to basically give up revenue that's coming from another territory," Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles told the Tribune. "We'll probably register a complaint with eBay."

Meanwhile, Hero is harder to find online than it was last year. Likewise, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's crime thriller Infernal Affairs, a 2002 Hong Kong box office champion finally being released by Miramax next month (and being remade by Martin Scorsese), also has become less plentiful, the Trib says.

It's a sign of how long Miramax sits on these Asian films that Infernal Affairs 2 and Infernal Affairs 3 already are out on DVD. These delays, and Miramax's reputation for Americanizing the films, have boosted the import market.

"[Miramax] is notorious for releasing re-edited and chopped version these films in the market, and the majority of the fans preferred direct imports from Asia over Miramax's products," Ye Meng, of the Asian films Web site www.MonkeyPeaches.com, told the Tribune.

The Hero that American audiences will see isn't significantly different from the import version, although some ham-fisted exposition has been added.

In contrast, Miramax tried out numerous variations on Stephen Chow's martial arts comedy Shaolin Soccer -- including a dubbed version that was widely previewed -- before finally releasing it in April. That movie had set Hong Kong box office records back in 2001, and over the ensuing years Web sites such as Ain't It Cool News posted glowing reviews as well as updates on Miramax's many delays, thus spurring readers (including myself) to order the movie on DVD.
Given that Shaolin Soccer isn't a Hero-like spectacle, Sands blames the imports for the comedy's box office failure. "All indications were it was going to be a commercial successful film," he said, citing audience tracking studies. "One has to draw the conclusion that the pirated DVDs had an impact."

One also could conclude that Miramax reaped what it sowed. "They sat around on their hands for three years while it wound up becoming one of the most traded things on the Internet, and then they did a very limited release on it," Knowles said. "The movie failed because they never supported it."

No one can track the number of import DVDs bought in the US, but Scott Hettrick, editor in chief of the trade magazine DVD Exclusive, said these movies have such limited appeal that the discs aren't likely to have much impact on theatrical or home-video business.

"They're small films that aren't going to get $50 million marketing campaigns, so the more exposure and acclaim they can get just helps the overall awareness level for both products," he said.

Then again, these films don't have to be small. A few years ago another subtitled film became available on Asian DVD yet still managed to reach a wide US audience. Its title: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.