The deals underlying movie distributions are cut once or twice a year, mostly at trade conferences. It's not something the theaters are privy to. You are normally not allowed to license elsewhere unless you care to lose your distributor. It's something that plagues many independent theaters, at least in Europe.

It's all a bit of a power play over their heads and it's one of the reasons why you can't start an online streaming service in today's environment, which was one of the questions that was relevant to the political pirates last I've heard from them.

I don't know much more because I'm out of touch with the whole piratism thing, I just wanted to correct the "why u no pay" attitude earlier. It's a bit silly to think they could have reached parliamentary representation on that party line, and slightly condescending to everyone involved.