I read a lot of film blogs, and it’s sort of fascinating to me to see how frequently bloggers and reviewers break film embargoes (and how often footage and trailers leak). I can’t imagine how studios keep tabs on the absolute proliferation of bloggers and websites who engage in this behavior, or how it’s really remedied.
It’s proven fairly difficult so far to find the reasoning behind embargoes, although there’s quite a bit of speculation stating that the reason for enforcing them is to prevent negative reviews from coming out prior to a film’s release. Thus far, the only mechanism of control I have seen is for punishing critics or bloggers who break an embargo — in the form of studios not inviting the individual back for future screenings.
This is by far the most informative article thus far: http://www.mcnblogs.com/mcindie/archives/2007/07/what_it_means_m.html, which compares the embargo system to a caste system in that national critics usually get to see films before regional critics, while alternative papers with a high readership will get invited to screenings before freelancers or bloggers who have a small readership.
Leaked footage and trailers could be removed with DMCA takedown notices , but embargoes present a sort of interesting dynamic of studios controlling information with no incredibly forceful tool in place.
As a general curiosity: does anyone know more about studio embargoes? Most of my attempts at finding information pull up opinion pieces that are just slightly less fascinated and confused than I am.
