A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is speaking out against the film industry’s anti-piracy campaign and the conditions that come with the “screener” DVDs members get for awards consideration. Over the years, the MPAA has tried various strategies to prevent movies from ending up bootlegged or on the Internet. Academy members have been made to sign legal pledges not to distribute screeners; they’ve been given special DVD players for specially-encoded DVDs; and DVDs have been watermarked to trace pirated copies on the black market to their original source.
Academy member Britt Leach (whose mostly-TV acting career spans three decades) says he considers the campaign “insulting,” and it has made him feel like a “criminal.” He also worries about his liability:
“I mean what would happen to me and my family if one of my screeners got into the wrong hands and was duplicated and they were able to trace it back to me? Would Interpol, the FBI, come and get me? What about my wife? My cats? It made me very worried. I could go to prison.
I mean what if somebody broke into my apartment? Or what if somebody who happened to be working here one day decided to steal one of my screeners? I could go to prison.”
As a result, Lerach says that after consideration, he will not renew his membership in the Academy.
