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Eliza Skinner had no idea that her Disney+ series Earth to Ned would be permanently taken off the platform until a text on the show’s writer group chat in mid-May shared an article about Disney removing more than 70 films and series from its streaming services that month. Among the disappearing titles was the comedic talk show — which launched in 2020 with Skinner as head writer — centering on an alien welcoming celebrities to his spaceship.

Due to its classification as a streaming variety series, Skinner says the writers and performers weren’t receiving residuals, although the show’s team had heard rumors blaming Disney’s tax bill. But while her loss isn’t a financial one, Earth to Ned can no longer serve as a calling card to help land future gigs for Skinner, who also doesn’t own a physical copy of the show.

“It’s part of this overall...

Months after AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner, senior leaders from HBO, Warner Bros. and Turner flew out to the telecom giant’s headquarters in Dallas to meet their new bosses.

They sat in a cavernous conference room configured like a classroom for a series of “AT&T University” presentations. John Stankey, then CEO of AT&T Entertainment Group, and others sent a clear message to the gathering of media company executives: AT&T planned to harness the power of Time Warner’s content to help sell more services to its wireless telephone and broadband customers.

Signs that a new world order was taking shape emerged when the conversation turned to HBO, considered the crown jewel in Time Warner’s treasury. Participants were asked to describe what words came to mind when they thought of HBO’s reputation. “Quality” and “artistry” were among the super­la­­tives quickly offered. As the conversation progressed,...

Free trade, accessibility, and music rights reform cited as key areas.

The Global Cinema Federation (Gcf), the volunteer-based collective of exhibitors announced at CineEurope in 2017, has outlined its priorities heading into its second year and unsurprisingly the exclusive theatrical window and content theft are chief among its concerns.

Gcf, which aims to work with international regulatory bodies to further the goals of its members and whose executive committee includes Wanda-owned AMC, Cinépolis, Les Cinemas Gaumont Pathé, Toho Cinemas, Vue International, Cjcgv, and trade bodies Nato and Unic, has unveiled five position papers explaining its objectives.

“While further issues remain to be explored,...

When discussing piracy, there are plenty of opinions. Some believe that people would be willing to pay for movies if there were more legal options. Others believe that people who download illegally cannot be convinced to pay. To get the answer, Wellesley College professor Brett Danaher and Carnegie Mellon University professor Michael D. Smith reached out to two major movie studios and got their hands on detailed reports that show how many of their movies were downloaded legally before and after the January 2012 closing of MegaUpload website, which was one of the biggest sources of illegal content. According to the study, the studios saw weekly online sales grow by between 10,500 and 15,300 units. Online rentals also grew between 13,700 and 24,000 units per week. "We conclude that shutting down MegaUpload and MegaVideo caused some customers to shift from piracy to purchasing or renting through legal digital channels," the researchers said. The data examined...

The shutdown of file sharing and storage site Megaupload led to a significant increase in paid digital downloads at two major Hollwood studios, according to a new study.

The report, by Carnegie Mellon University's Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, looked at 12 countries (including Australia) and found that in the 18 weeks following the shutdown, digital revenues were 6 to 10 per cent higher than they would have otherwise been.

"Thus our findings show that the closing of a major online piracy site can increase digital media sales, and by extension we provide evidence that internet movie piracy displaces digital film sales," the study said.

Megaupload.com, run by the larger-than-life Kim Dotcom, was shutdown in January 2012 (although the process has not been without controversy and has been challenged in court). The site held an estimated 25 petabytes of content, much of it films, and accounted for approximately 4 per cent of worldwide traffic.

The Carnegie...

A new academic study has found that illegal file sharing harms sales of recently released film and television content.

The Carnegie Mellon University paper, which was funded by the Motion Picture Association of America (representing the six major Us studios) reviewed previously published academic literature on the impact of piracy on movie and music sales.

The study.s authors, Professor Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang, wrote that while the peer-reviewed academic literature did not uniformly find harm, it consistently showed that sales of recently released content was hurt by piracy.

.This result - that piracy harms motion picture sales - is consistent with all but two of the academic papers we are aware of that have looked at the impact of internet piracy on movie sales; a set of papers that span a variety of datasets, settings, and statistical methodologies,. they wrote.

The study found that illegal movie and...