Shocker: Hollywood downloads pirated content just like everyone else

Hollywood has been on a holy war against piracy for years, but that doesn’t mean it actually managed to achieve anything worth bragging with, especially as some studies have revealed that piracy doesn’t actually have an impact on Hollywood’s bottom line. No matter what Hollywood comes up with to defend against piracy, pirates still figure out ways to illegally download copyrighted content. In fact, TorrentFreak reveals that even Hollywood downloads just as much content as regular Internet users, no matter what its official stance against piracy is.

Hollywood director Lexi Alexander, who worked on Green Street Hooligans and Punisher: War Zone, took a strong stance against Hollywood’s business practices, movie quality and exaggerated anti-piracy spending in a blog post and a following interview, while admitting that she, and many colleagues of her own, had to download illegal stuff either because she needed it for work, or because of region-related obstacles that prevented her to obtain legal copies of the content she was looking for.

Alexander, who was born in Germany, revealed on her blog that “like many people in the film and TV industry, sometimes I find myself in Pirate waters. Because as an expat household, with three paid Amazon Prime memberships for three different countries, a paid Netflix membership, a paid ACORN membership, a ridiculously high DISH bill and an Apple TV box, we still can’t watch most programs from back home, even though we’re willing to pay good money for it.”

In an interview with Daily Record she also mentioned work-related illegal downloads. “I cannot tell you how often my ass was saved by some torrent site in those situations,” she said. “And I assume that 99% of my Hollywood filmmaker colleagues or their poor assistants have found themselves on a piracy site for just that reason (if they deny it, they’re lying. The end.)”

That said, Alexander doesn’t simply endorse all types of pirates, many of whom she likens with Hollywood “fat cats” who only want to make money off of illegal downloads just as Hollywood bosses want to make money off movies, but she believes that Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde should go free.

As for better ways of preventing piracy, she believes Hollywood should invest in creating better content, which buyers would be more likely to want to buy rather that illegally download.

Alexander’s insightful look at Hollywood’s business practices and piracy can be read in full by following the source links below.