Gadgets Blog » Warner Brothers: Piracy Allegations

In case you haven’t yet had your weekly dose of irony, one of yesterday’s news stories will likely do the trick. As has been a problem for media-oriented companies in the days of the Internet, piracy has been detrimental to revenue and sales.

Warner Brothers, which has its fingers in both the movie and music industries, is certainly no exception. In order to counter much of the piracy going on in the 21st Century, companies are resorting to some drastic measures, including Digital Rights Management (DRM) and anti-piracy software in order to protect their intellectual property.

Of course, preventing piracy by utilizing pirated software seems to defeat the purpose. According to The Hollywood Reporter, that’s exactly what a lawsuit leveled against Warner Bros. by a German software company claims. The company, Medien Patent Verwaltung (or MPV), alleges that Warner has been utilizing their anti-piracy technology since 2004 without properly buying it.

The technology doesn’t involve Internet-related piracy, but rather the practice of videotaping films while they are still showing in theaters. MPV’s technology places a unique code within each individual film reel, so when a pirate films the movie, the code is revealed. This security measure helps the company track down those who are pirating films, as they can narrow their search by a great margin.

While the allegations will likely take a while to sort out properly, the entire ordeal causes some controversy for Warner Brothers. If MPV’s suit is indeed justified, then what sort of message is being sent to those who pirate from large media companies? It will be interesting to see how this case unfolds…

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