Anti-piracy swords drawn in theaters

After targeting colleges and companies and their computer users, Hollywood is taking its battle to curb illegal downloads to people who watch movies the old-fashioned way -- by purchasing a ticket.

When studio executives and movie theater operators gather this week at ShoWest in Las Vegas, 20th Century Fox will unveil a movie trailer intended to educate U.S. filmgoers about piracy, in particular illegal file-trading via services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

Initially, the two-minute trailer that puts a human face on the victims of piracy will be shown at most Regal Cinemas, the nation’s largest theater chain. It will be unveiled Wednesday at ShoWest, which runs today through Thursday.

Fox, which had disclosed plans to create the trailer last fall at a conference in Aspen, Colo., declined to comment, but Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said the trailer will make the case that downloads and other piracy are really theft that takes an economic toll on individuals working in the movie industry such as makeup artists and set builders -- not just multimillion-dollar movie stars or directors.

“These are just hard-working people on the movie set,” said Valenti. “They are not fat with compensation,” and their livelihoods are at stake.

Among some students, the notion that a trailer could persuade anyone to stop downloading movies seems naive, like the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. “It’s become so acceptable to download movies and music off the Internet that people don’t think it’s wrong,” said USC sophomore Jacqui Deelstra, 19. Added sophomore Art Priromprintr: “Nobody’s going to think ‘Oh, I’m hurting the movie industry right now’ -- they don’t care.”

Despite the estimated 400,000 to 600,000 copies of movies downloaded daily, relatively few people choose to watch films on computer monitors and even fewer, for now, have the technical facility to play downloaded material on regular TV screens.

The MPAA is determined to block the phenomenon before it does the same kind of damage to Hollywood that it did to the music industry.

The MPAA remains equally concerned about conventionally pirated discs and cassettes of movies. Addressing that issue, the international arm of the MPAA will announce today at ShoWest separate plans for a trailer in several languages tailored for the overseas market. Valenti said he expected the trailer to be ready by June for screening in Europe and Asia, where most piracy occurs.

Far more pervasive than downloading, conventional piracy includes the recording of movies in theaters with sophisticated camcorders, theft of prints or using computer hardware to make analog copies of DVDs.

The studios unavoidably play their own small part in facilitating piracy. Every year, they send out thousands of DVDs to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members for Oscar consideration, and illegal copies turn up around the world.

Only last month a crate of illegal copies of academy screeners, including “The Hours,” and “Chicago,” was confiscated at London’s Heathrow Airport. In some places, like Asia, having the screen crawl that warns viewers the DVD is “for academy screening purposes only” serves as a badge of authenticity.

Valenti, who last week hammered Duke University students about the evils of downloading, dismissed the academy screener problem as minuscule but emphasized that even “one pirated film is too much.”