On The Net Before The Screen

"Coming soon to a theater near you" may soon be a phrase of the past, CBS MarketWatch Correspondent Stacey Tisdale reports.

James Bond will, of course, beat the bad guys in his latest film -- but there is one villain 007 can't seem to beat. In the computer age, when anything you can find can be found on the Internet, it looks like movies are next.

The problem is called "Internet piracy," when newly-released films like The World Is Not Enough are appearing on the Internet weeks before they appear in movie houses. Says computer analyst John Katz, "Movies that are being released by the studios to either reviewers or other people working for the studios are finding their way onto the net. It's difficult to prevent these things from happening."

And the Bond movie isn't the first blockbuster to be pirated. This summer, The Phantom Menace and The Matrix also debuted online.

Experts, however, are quick to point out that the quality of the films being pirated isn't very good. Jerry Rich, of MGM studios, has some words to the wise: "people will look on the Internet so that they can find the James Bond movie. But if they do find it, they'll watch it and probably be very disappointed."

Quality may not be a problem for long. A few weeks ago, computer hackers cracked a DVD privacy code, allowing any movie that comes out on DVD to be posted, with better quality, on the Internet.

Still, many moviegoers say that going to the movie theater is half the experience, and that it's something they won't be likely to give up soon.