LOS ANGELES — Before a single frame of "Spider-Man 2" was shot, Sony Pictures Entertainment launched a global effort to protect its summer blockbuster from piracy.

During production, daily film footage was locked overnight in vaults. When Sony conducted preview screenings on its lot near Los Angeles, guests were subjected to airport-style identification checks, metal detector scans and surveillance by security guards with infrared goggles.

"Everyone got wanded at every screening," said Jeff Blake, the studio's vice chairman. "Film reviewers, talent agents, artist managers, even Sony executives — including me."

Each of the 10,000 theatrical prints was embedded with a unique digital tracking code. Sony also took the extraordinary precaution of delivering seven reels of film to each multiplex in two well-guarded shipments before its June 30, 2004, premiere at a minute past midnight.

One of those cinemas was the Loews Kips Bay Theatre in Manhattan. And somewhere in that first early-morning audience in New York City sat a bootlegger with a camcorder, the first link in a network of rampant global piracy.

Four hours after its premiere, a copy of "Spider-Man 2" was on the Internet. By morning, counterfeit DVDs showed up for sale in malls and makeshift stalls in the Philippines.

Within a week, street merchants were hawking pirated copies of "Spider-Man 2" in Scotland, Israel, Hong Kong, Peru and South Africa — and downtown Los Angeles. Within a month, Sony investigators had collected bootlegged "Spider-Man 2" DVDs from Australia, Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America and the United States, nearly all of which traced back to the one copy made at the Loews Kips Bay.

"The lightning speed with which these copies spread around the planet was horrifying," Blake said. "No matter how much you spend on security or what precautions you take, the grim truth is once a film gets uploaded on the Internet, suddenly it's everywhere."

The global flight of "Spider-Man 2" illustrates one of the ugly byproducts of the digital transformation of entertainment. In addition to creating profitable new businesses, such as movie DVDs and downloadable music services, digital technology has created an unprecedented opportunity for leeching by commercial pirates.

The damage is hard to calculate. In many cases, the people who buy pirated goods cannot afford to buy $10 movie tickets or $20 DVDs. So the DVDs that sell for $1 or $2 in markets around the world are not necessarily replacing sales the industry might otherwise have made.

Nevertheless, the Motion Picture Association of America claims that disc and tape counterfeiting siphoned off $3.5 billion in potential revenue last year. And the International Federation of Phonographic Industries estimates that 1 of every 3 music CDs sold last year, or 1.2 billion discs, was an illegal copy.

"Piracy not only has an economic impact on our industry," said Dan Glickman, chief executive of the global Motion Picture Association and its U.S. affiliate, the Motion Picture Association of America, "but it has an impact on the creative spirit in this country."

Despite a growing number of raids and arrests around the world, entertainment industry executives say the amount of disc bootlegging continues to grow. That's because there is no shortage of eager bootleggers, as well as a variety of ways to cash in on piracy.

The shadowy network that brings pirated movies to market is elaborate and lucrative. In countries rich and poor, the rewards can be great and the risks minimal.

Even small-time bootleggers can clear thousands of dollars a week. And when anti-piracy laws are enforced, the punishment is often light.

"Prosecuting these cases has been an uphill battle," said Leroy Frazer Jr., chief of the special prosecutions bureau of the Manhattan district attorney's office. "Judges don't treat pirates as seriously as they do other criminals. They don't think pirates victimize anyone — particularly not the people who buy their wares.

"They say bootleg customers know exactly what they are buying."

'SUDDENLY, IT'S EVERYWHERE'

Bootlegged movies travel the globe through a complex and clandestine pipeline. Here is a look at how the process typically works:

1. A pirate surreptitiously records a movie with a camcorder as it is being projected in a theater.

2. The recording is transferred to a computer and, often, posted online. The master copy is delivered to a manufacturer either as a DVD or electronically.

3. The manufacturer starts churning out discs, then sells to a network of distributors. They, in turn, sell to teams of vendors and street peddlers.

4. Other bootleggers get the bogus DVD and start making their own versions. Meanwhile, online pirates obtain the disc and post its contents to the Internet.

5. Manufacturers around the globe download the movie file from the Internet and produce more copies to feed their own networks of distributors and retailers.

— Los Angeles Times