Interviewer:
Do you think movie piracy has a negative effect on the movie industry as a whole?
Mr. Hussein:
It does have a great effect indeed, especially that it spread widely in the past few years. Every movie that premiers in theaters is found online minutes later, so that definitely affects the movie creators directly.
Interviewer:
That is for Arabic or American movies?
Mr. Hussein:
Both are affected! And sometimes in Egypt opposing companies would do a pretty dirty trick; let’s say you and I both have movies coming out this weekend, and I want to knock down your box office profits and increase my own. So I send one of my employees to record your movie and upload it on the internet for the world to see, so that instead of watching your movie in the theaters, they’ll watch mine.
Mr. Hussein:
Everyone knows what is right and what is wrong, and yet they still do the wrong thing because they think they won’t get caught.
Interviewer:
Movie piracy is obviously a 2-step process (recording and uploading). We want to put an end to both pirating and downloading movies.
Mr. Hussein:
I’ll tell you a story about a certain film that got uploaded the day of its release. The producers, infuriated, came up with a brilliant plan; they mixed-up all scenes of the movie into an incoherent jumble and uploaded it online so that people won’t understand anything and go to the theaters instead. Other techniques are used, like “watermarking” each copy of a movie in a different segment so that it would be evident from which theater it was stolen.
Interviewer:
Thank you so much for your time Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Hussein:
Thank you for supporting a good cause.