sMoRTy71.com: Digital cinema - a pirate's dream?

Digital cinema - a pirate's dream?
News.com has an article on the film industry's push to transition to a completely digital distribution model. According to industry estimates, studios spend about $800 million per year just on printing and distributing films.

The new technology, which is being defined by the Digital Cinemas Initiatives, is based on the JPEG 2000 video format and will distribute films over the internet to servers housed at the theater.

Of course, the biggest remaining hurdle for the studios (other than convincing theater owners that they should shell out the big $$$ for the digital equipment) is copy protection.

Whatever system they do come up with, the one thing that is certain is that the copy protection will be cracked and exploited by pirates. Based on how much money (billions, supposedly) the RIAA claims to be losing on music piracy, I am surprised that the film industry is pushing so hard for digital distribution. Maybe they are counting on the incredibly large file size of an uncompressed digital film from being the main deterrent to pirates. But that seems like a short-sighted strategy since bandwidth speeds will eventually overcome that limitation.

I am waiting for a time when I will be able to legally download first-run digital films to my HTPC.