Lions Gate Films is treading into new territory with its new release The Rules of Attraction–but not because of its racy content.
The Toronto-based studio is testing the limits of movie marketing on the Internet by promoting its satirical college pic through Altnet, a software company promoted on a Web site called Kazaa, Reuters reports.
Kazaa offers software that allows computer users to download and share digital copies of films via a peer-to-peer system–and therein lies the controversy.
Like the now-defunct song swapping service Napster, which was driven out of business by the recording industry earlier this year, Kazaa is being sued by much of the movie industry over copyright issues.
But Lions Gate is working with Altnet, which is not in litigation with any studios. Their software is encrypted with copyright protection so that it cannot be copied.
The software maker’s link to Kazaa, however, hasn’t fazed Lions Gate vice president of new media Tom DeLuca, who thinks studios stand to benefit form peer-to-peer systems and movie downloading.
“For this film, the target is 18- to 34-year-olds and the college crowd, and they are heavy online users,” DeLuca told Reuters. “We have to look at new and creative ways to get our message out there … One thing we couldn’t ignore was where our target audience was.”
The suit against Kazaa, filed by music and movie companies, is set for a hearing in early December in Los Angeles. For now, Lions Gate finds itself sitting on the other side of the movie industry fence.
