‘Pirating the 2009 Oscars’ – Waxy stats
p2pnet news view | P2P | Movies:- “I’ve been tracking the distribution of Oscar-nominated films every year, culminating with the release of six years of piracy data last year,” posts on Waxy.org.
“I’ve updated those spreadsheets with this year’s 26 nominees, for a total of 211 films from the last seven years.”
Wow! That means all those camcording crooks must havebeen working overtime, eh?
However, Hollywood insiders supply much of the content which shows up online, and which is falsely attributed to file sharing.
Out of 26 nominated films, “an incredible 23 films are already available in DVD quality on nomination day, ripped either from the screeners or the retail DVDs,” says Baio.
“This is the highest percentage since I started tracking.
“Only three films are unavailable – Rachel Getting Married wasn’t leaked online in any form, while Changeling is only available as a low-quality telecine transfer and Australia as a terrible quality camcorder recording. Update: A DVD screener of Australia was just leaked today.)”
Revenge of the Sith
In 2005, “today the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent,” p2pnet posted.
Acting as inspiration was the movie cartel’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).
“This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents,”said an FBI statement.
Behind the massive, and costly (to US taxpayers) operation was Hollywood’s MPAA, at no expense to itself or the major studios.
It specifically cited Star Wars, Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, as being, “available for downloading on the network more than six hours before it was first shown in theatres” which in the ensuing 24 hours, “was downloaded more than 10,000 times”.
But the source file was a print copy available only to Hollywood insiders.
When Revenge of the Sith arrived on the p2p networks, “There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith,” raved MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Dan Glickman.
However, the online distribution of ‘Sith’ started not six hours before the cinema showings, but during the week before its May 19 release. And camcording crooks weren’t responsible.
One Albert Valente, “stole a copy of Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith from the post-production facility where he worked and illegally distributed it to others, ” admitted the MPAA.
‘… screeners for at least 20 of the 26 films’
Sith must have represented a major disaster both in terms of audience attendances and revenue, what with the free screener-quality versions loose on the P2P networks, one would have thought.
But, “It took just six days for ‘Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith’ to become the highest grossing release of 2005,” said the Los Angeles Daily News, going on:
” ‘Sith’ took in an additional $9.9 million on Tuesday for a cumulative gross of $182.7 million to surpass the $177.6 million earned over several months by the Will Smith comedy ‘Hitch,’ according to box office figures …”
And there are plenty of other similar examples.
Now, in 2009, according to Waxy, academy members, “received screeners for at least 20 of the 26 films, 25 out of 26 films leaked in some form online, if you include camcorder recordings, and the average time from the time screeners are received by Academy members to its leak online is 6 days.”
There is, though, one surprise, says the story: this year’s Oscar movies took longer to show up online than usual.
“If I had to guess,” says Baio, “it’s because far fewer camcorder copies were released for this year’s nominees. This could be because of the theaters cracking down on camcorder recordings, but I suspect it’s because fewer nominees were desirable targets this year for cams.”
Waxy.org – Pirating the 2009 Oscars, January 22, 2009
FBI statement – Federal jury convicts I ranking website admin in peer-to-peer piracy crackdown, June 27, 2008
Revenge of the Sith – Star Wars ‘Sith’ p2p uploader, January 26, 2006
MPAA – US attorney charges Star Wars movie thieves & Academy Award Screener, July 27, 2005
Los Angeles Daily News – ‘Sith’ rules box office, May 26, 2005
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
January 24th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Cams suck thats why lol
January 24th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
AND who wants to watch a bunch a MPAA loving wankers