UK film minister Shaun Woodward is giving advice to Hollywood on how to make those movie pirates who, it's said, also help to fund terrorists, walk the digital plank.

"The real answer is in the technology," he told the BBC, and needless to say, 'technology' includes DRM.

But remote consumer control such as that provided by DRM is only part of the answer and, citing the "success of legal music downloads," making films available as soon as they're in the cinemas, "could help stop fans watching illegal copies," Woodward said at an "anti-piracy campaign" launch, according to the story.

Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney would probably agree. Or was Woodward at the recent Mipcom 2006 in the US?

There, "We understand now that piracy is a business model," Sweeney declared. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates competes the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don’t like the model but we realise it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."

Back in the UK, the Beeb says Woodward told film executives, "You're going to have to look at slightly more ingenious ways of making electronic copies available so that people may actually pay a different price for something that they can download at home, which is just being released in the cinema. If they want to watch it at home, then maybe you should make it available to them.

"But they should pay a premium rate for having it earlier on and it should be encrypted in such a way that it can't be copied."

Meanwhile, adding weight to the Hollywood party line, "Some gangs used film piracy to finance 'some appalling organised crime around the world, which often reaches into terrorism'," he declared, failing to reveal the details.

But not to worry, though. FACT of sniffer dog fame is on hand and ready to help.

Funded by the entertainment cartels, FACT is an acronym for Farcical Approaches to Copyright Transgressions, or the Federation Against Copyright Theft, and it's involved in a stunning 'joint operation' initiated by FedEx and Britain's HM Revenue & Customs, and picked up by Hollywood's MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).

Central to it are Flo and Lucky, two black labradors with the amazing ability to be able to sniff out the difference between counterfeit and real optical DVDs.

Anyway, "Camcorded copies of hits including Pirates of the Caribbean 2, X-Men: The Last Stand and V for Vendetta have been traced back to the UK," says the BBC, so, "On Thursday, Fact and the Film Distributors' Association launched guidelines to help cinema staff and police catch people making surreptitious recordings".

Surreptitious recordings, you say?

Sony is a major developer, manufacturer and seller of tiny, easily concealed camcorders - the Sony Handycam, for example - of the type Sony and its Hollywood brethren swear are being used to "devastate" them.

It's also:

• A member of the Big Four Organized Music cartel which is trying to sue customers into buying DRM-infested, high-priced, low-quality digital downloads;
  
• A provider of dangerous (to Sony customers) spyware hidden in music CDs;
  
• One of the multi-billion-dollar Big Six movie studios which claim they're being "ruined" by file sharers;
• One of the entertainment companies being investigated in the US for price fixing and bribery.
  
  

But what of Woodward's idea centering on making films available as soon as they're in the cinemas?

FACT chairman Brian Robertson who is, by coincidence, Sony Pictures UK finance director, said it's probably not technically possible at the moment.

But, "It is a radical thought" although, "the film-makers themselves may have an issue with it because they want people to experience something on the big screen, not on the small screen."

Major US DVD retailers may also have an issue with it.

They're already complaining about online sales and Target Corp has told the studios it, "might have to reconsider the amount of shelf space allocated for movies if studios undercut the wholesale price of DVDs by giving online services a better deal on digital offerings".

Stay tuned.

Also See:

BBC - Technology 'can beat film piracy', October 13, 2006
probably agree - Hollywood lauds pirates, October 10, 2006
stunning 'joint operation' - Hollywood goes to the dogs, September 22, 2006
for example - Sony camcorder crook, July 31, 2006
already complaining - Online sales unfair: retailers, October 12, 2006