Movie Critic Sold Screeners for $40 Each?
Originally published on: 6/27/2006 5:14:29 PM
Apparently, movie critic Paul Sherman was selling movie screeners to the pirate groups online. That fact, in itself, wasn't surprising. You're not going to get movies from the theaters online (prior to DVD release) without someone on the inside making them available.
What I found surprising is that he was only getting about $40 each when he sold them. That hardly seems worth the effort to me. He sold 117 movies and didn't even clear $5000.
The devil's advocate in me says that the market indicates that a movie is only worth $40 on the open market, making it pretty hard to claim the damages claimed by MPAA, but that many transactions is just asking for trouble eventually.