For years now I have been following the ceaseless battle between the movie industry and the broadband community, watching the war rage on all fronts with lawsuits, arrests, heated discussions and pleas from the industry talking about the supposed losses they suffer, all of this barely making a dent in the illegal movie download community now counted in the millions.

The question I keep asking myself is, “how did it all go so wrong?” In Sweden (where I am from), broadband speeds have been good enough to make downloading movies a breeze for years now.

To give you an idea, when I left the rain drenched Swedish summer, about four years ago, to live in the land of the long white cloud, my broadband speed was 13mb/s.

You would have thought that an industry that suffers from distribution issues (very few movies see simultaneous global releases due to the costs involved), the decline of movie theatres and ever growing competition from the gaming industry (gaming is now the number one entertainment property in the world, bigger then both the movie industry and the music industry put together), would have jumped at the idea of distributing the latest releases through such a speedy and cheap method, but obviously that isn’t the case.

The biggest mistake the industry made was underestimating the broader markets willingness to compromise with picture and audio quality to be able to see a movie that won’t hit the local cinema for months.

For years you have been able to buy bootlegged copies of movies in countries such as Thailand and China, but few really bothered since you never knew what you were going to get or if the DVD would even work when you got home. But the signs were already there, there were definitely some people willing to sit through a slightly grainy and shaky version of a movie, filmed on a handy-cam in a local cinema somewhere in a Bangkok suburb.

Instead of embracing the internet as a method of distribution, millions if not billions of dollars have been spent trying to curb this channel and the evil doers who are making the pockets of the movie execs as empty as the head of a former president whose name I will choose not to mention (but it ends with “W Bush”, oh and his first name is “George”).

Let’s be honest and open about the whole issue for once. It is never, ever, ever going to stop. Why you ask?, Well, why would it? Here is what we know about the internet, broadband, the users out there and the movie industry.

The internet is about instant access; as soon as an item is posted it is there for everyone to see. In the good old days, you might be able to read a review reprinted from the New York Times about a movie release, but it was definitely not assumed that you would have instant access to information.

These days, anyone can watch a trailer for the new Batman movie online, discuss it in an online forum, or watch a review or an interview with the stars of the movie. In fact, the movie studios themselves support and build the hype around their movies, using the internet to make it available to the global community. Ironic really isn’t it?

Now let’s take a look at broadband speeds. In places like Europe, Asia and the States, speeds are approaching 100mb/s for consumers making it possible to download full DVD quality in minutes. New Zealand is still in the wake of this progress, but it will come to us as well. With speeds ever increasing, what is going to stop anyone from distributing whatever they want over the internet?

Blu-Ray movies might seem a daunting task with their 50gigs per movie, but they are already up there on the internet, so obviously there is already a market for those who’s speeds can now be counted in double or triple digits. When it comes to the users, there is one big problem that the movie industry is never going to be able to overcome They are smarter than them. Do the execs at these companies really think that the 1000 or so guys they have working on DRM, finding wrong doers and coming up with new ways to try to stop people from distributing their properties, have a chance, against the hundreds of thousands of hackers, computer geeks and programming professionals, who have made it their mission to make sure that this, the ultimate distribution network for movies, is kept alive?

Finally lets take a look at the industry itself, for all the advances we have seen in computer generated imagery, the use of the internet for viral and guerrilla marketing to promote movies and making use of late night TV shows and other silly stunts (Pirates of The Caribbean stars joining the Americas cup is a good example), it is still a business that struggles with the simplest concepts of supply and demand.

Look, don’t get me wrong, I love going to the movie theatre to watch a movie. There is nothing like sitting in anticipation as the curtains open, the screen lights up and the surround sound kicks in, but I definitely have no need to see every single movie on the big screen. And that is my main issue, and where I think the movie industries current largest problem lies.

It isn’t up to the movie industry to dictate how you or I enjoy a movie. In some ways it would be the equivalent of U2 making you go to the concert before they will allow you to buy the CD. The reason movie theatres came around at all is because the TV did not exist. People had to gather in a common place to enjoy the latest silent movie starring “that dude who always accidentally steps on a rake making you howl with laughter”.

I would like to think that with mass-market penetration of flat-screens and 7.1 home theatre audio set ups, we have moved on from those days. So here is my suggestion to the movie industry… Release all movies at the cinema at the same time as you allow for the legal, purchase and download of the same movie. Watermark all copies sold (this technology is available today) so that you can trace them back to who ever purchased it, in case it does end up being downloaded illegally, you have accountability and that is really all you care about right?

And if you still want to use all those millions that you currently are wasting on hunting 14 year old Kiwi computer geeks who want to see the latest Star Trek movie at the same time as his MySpace mates in the states so he can discuss it with them, maybe you could subsidise movie theatres so that a family of four can watch a movie for the same price as two people can do it today. “But this will be the end of movie theatres!” I hear you say. No it won’t. I agree that it will probably mean that some theatres would have to close down or at least try to branch out in to other areas, however it reminds me of when digital cameras were first introduced.

Apparently this was to spell doom for companies like Kodak whose main business was selling us film and then developing it for bucket loads of money. I ask you, “Has that happened?”. No, there is a reason the Digital Photo machine in your local chemist has a “Kodak” sticker on it, or that the digital frame you just bought is from Minolta.

The truth is that smart businesses find smart ways to use new technology when they have to. The movie theatres might for example be able to turn in to more of an entertainment centre offering 3D movie/Concert experiences, big screen gaming or maybe even exclusive showings of movies you would love to see on a big screen again (Casablanca anyone?). You could also argue that a price reduction for families as well as a discount for anyone who first bought the movie online and the chose to go to the cinema for that “out of this world” experience would help sustain most of these fine institutes.

The point is, keeping an artificial environment alive so that you can dictate distribution methods (that by the way are more costly and less efficient then using the internet) is not a sustainable solution in a world that is rapidly becoming a tight nit community, where anything and anyone is as accessible whether they happen live in Auckland, Stockholm or Bejing.

I believe that the mass-bulk of illegal downloads outside of the distributing countries borders has very little to do with people not wanting to pay $15 for a movie, and a lot more to do with people being fed up with an industry that for some reason refuses to acknowledge that it is the customer who should choose how, when and where to experience their product, not them.