The funny thing is China is undercutting US 3D work in films (cost $50,000 to add) with WTO-ignoring $20,000 per film 3D work.

The very same place where they pirate it, using military-owned shops that make the Politburo members even richer billionaires while the proletariat they supposedly represent choke to death on pollution and low wages.

You mean there is a delay in a shitty 3D CGI movie? Cry me a river.

I am possibly (probably) showing my technical ignorance here, but how does one pirate a 3D movie? Won't it look all shitty on your DVD player/computer?

@3 China fabs the 3D TV sets. They love them, in fact. US consumers don't seem to be buying, which is why CES had fewer 3D units on display.

Pirated 3D movies are just electronic copies. Most made by Chinese military owned shops. Enforcement, therefore, is ... non-existent.

If Studios really wanted to cull a large portion of pirating, they would release high quality digital downloads day of release and charge for them. A large portion of pirates (not all, or maybe even most, mind you) is availability.

I know a lot of people that wouldn't mind paying for the movies but don't care for the theater and don't want to wait 5 months. So they pirate it.

A lot can be said for accessibility.

And no, I'm not just throwing shit out. You can take a look at other successful digital markets and how they've effected pirating. Steam would be a video game equivalent and the digital download market is booming. It does work.

@4--Thanks. See, I didn't even realize 3D TVs were a thing. (I bought a TV once in 1997, I think, inherited one from my now-wife's roommate in about 2003, and finally got around to buying a flat screen in 2010.)

@6 Even though there is 3D for home entertainment, it's a long way from the experience in a newer iMax theater. They haven't figured out a way to pirate that yet. That's what the studios are banking on these days.

trololol only them furriners pirate them movies! if they only came out in good ol red blooded U S of A no piracy ever! it's bullshit that them furriners might have a shitty nerd thing when i wan't it!

Zero sympathy. Welcome to Rest of the World status, America.

The piracy is inevitable, of course, but it has a quicker and stronger impact on sales internationally. So nowadays they maximize their ticket sales by releasing international first, so they can get the biggest opening-weekend numbers there before the pirated copies triggered by initial release are readily available. Then release in the US the following week because our relatively higher income levels means more people will still pay to see it, even though pirated versions of last week's international release have been available for a few days.

This particular form of early release - in a format the majority of people don't care to indulge in for a variety of reasons - is what you consider bullshit? When the difference in release times is only a week?

How do you rate this compared to the practices behind book distribution, when the difference in release dates between hardcover and mass market paperback formats is more like a year?

The point of watching a movie in a theater is the quality, not the speed.

If that's not so anymore, if people only care about free and immediate gratification and will accept shithole quality to get it, then they deserve what they get. Fuck em.

@8 - American movie theaters have dozens of security safeguards in place to prevent people from getting even a shitty cammed version of a movie. On the other hand, the manager of a cinema in Ljubljana can set up a massive tripod with an HD camera that has the sound patched directly from the film itself, inside the projector booth. Now, between the douche with a flip cam getting expelled from a theater in Times Square, or the Slovenian theater owner who can set up sixty pounds of equipment before he opens for the day, who is going to get the better quality bootleg?

So THAT'S why the torrents always come with subtitles for languages that nobody speaks...