How did 2004 unfold in the world of web films, digital culture and technology? plugincinema gives you the low-down...

The Ongoing War on Copyright

This was a prominent theme of 2003 also - and we expect it to rumble on well past 2005. There were too many news stories to cover them all here, but we think the most significant were the rise of BitTorrent and similar systems; "Bram Cohen didn't set out to upset Hollywood movie studios. But his innovative online file-sharing software, BitTorrent, has grown into a piracy problem the film industry is struggling to handle.." And the news that the highly respected journal, The Economist, stated that the fall in music sales is not all due to piracy; "According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with Internet piracy. [...] Other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part." Peer-to-peer (p2p) technology was also making its mark in other areas such as TV as a new project emerged to use "...p2p networks, specifically BitTorrent, to create a grassroots television network..."

A Year of Open Source

2004 witnessed several interesting developments in the world of open source technology and its relationship to film. The BBC began development of Dirac - an open source codec. The BBC has a huge archive of material it is interested in releasing on the web - however the royalty costs of licensing the technology to do this are potentially massive - so enter Dirac, an open source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video. We interviewed one of the developers of this system, who told us "...people shouldn't expect Dirac to be 'there' for a little while yet - we're aiming to go to beta by Autumn next year". That is Autumn this year now! This year also saw the rise of 'open source filmmaking' - this is related to open source software (such as virtual dub), but where the 'source' - for a film maker is raw footage rather than programming code.

Games: Playing 2004 All the Way

Another area that had an interesting year related to film and technology was the games industry. November saw the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - the much-awaited PS2 game in the long running GTA series. Some commentators saw this as the game that proved the games industry had escaped from the shadow of Hollywood; "...The fact that revenues from the opening weekend of the game narrowly beat the UK's biggest ever movie box office opening weekend (Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban, if you're wondering) is a lot more relevant; and combined with the fact that the buzz and media coverage generated by the game has touched the hallowed levels reached by a new movie release, it provides more proof of the growing importance of videogames than could be provided by a mountain of figures."