• Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, July 29, 2008 11:30 AM

Warner Bros. launched an unprecedented campaign to keep pirated copies of its summer blockbuster "The Dark Knight" from making their way onto the worldwide Web before the film's official release a few weeks ago. This was a considerable challenge, considering that the Batman movie's core audience of superhero geeks is same group of young men attracted to file-sharing communities.

Because of this, Warner Bros. spent six months developing its anti-piracy strategy, locking down the film with a "chain of custody" that listed who had access to the film at any given moment as it moved from production to post-production to the theater. Warner also varied its shipping and delivery methods, staggering delivery of film reels, so the whole movie wouldn't arrive at theaters in the same shipment. This cut back on the possibility of the film being stolen or copied. It also conducted on-site spot checks in theaters to make sure no camcorders were recording illegally.

In the end, Warner's efforts kept the first illegal copies of "The Dark Knight" off the Internet until 38 hours after its release. In turn, that kept bootlegged copies off the streets until a few days later, helping catapult the film to its $158.4 million opening weekend.

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