Walt Disney Co. on Monday plans to become the first major Hollywood film distributor to back an anti-piracy DVD technology that stirred controversy last year in advance of the important Oscar race.
Disney said it would release DVD “screeners” — copies of movies sent to groups that vote on awards — only for DVD players made exclusively by a Dolby Laboratories unit, Cinea, and engineered to thwart illegal copying.
“We feel like this is a really strong first step in addition to all the other things we do to combat piracy,” said Dennis Rice, who heads Disney’s Oscar publicity campaign, which will include films such as “Shopgirl” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
