Hollywood Star Wars leak
p2pnet.net News:- As everyone except the mainstream media knows, the latest Star Wars epic, Revenge of the Sith, showed up online the same day it opened in theatres not because of the work of an evil file sharer with Sony’s latest ‘pirate’ camcorder in hand, but because of yet another Hollywood insider leak.
But that didn’t stop MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Dan Glickman from screaming blue murder about p2p file sharers, BitTorrent and anything else that came to mind.
Afterdawn’s Dela emailed us to say he saw a report about the leak on Sky News, “so I went ahead to write a bit about it on Afterdawn.
“Basically, I just wanted to say the MPAA are pointing the finger at P2P users when its was really some insider they need to hunt down instead.
“Secondly, before, in January 2004, they were warned that most of the movies that appear before release date are all because of their own people.”
Dela is referring to the AT&T Labs report which says of a total of 285 movies AT&T researchers sampled on the p2p networks, 77% were leaked by industry ‘insiders’.
Actor and studio owner Mel Gibson knows all about that. His Icon company sued a Hollywood post-production house for the online appearance of his Passion movie.
And Russell Sprague got 130 movies from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member Carmine Caridi, who was ordered to pay Warner Bros a paltry $300,000 for providing Sprague, who died in an LA jail cell, with the copies.
Had someone other than an academy member been caught dishing out 130 Hollywood features, Warner would have demanded millions of dollars in retribution and the case would have been splashed, splashed and splashed again all over the world’s media by it and the other six members of the movie studio cartel .
But the Caridi debacle didn’t receive anything like the kind of mainstream media exposure it warranted.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why all the fuss about Star Wars piracy?
By Dela – Afterdawn
This week, one of the biggest and most anticipated movies of the year opened in theatres all over the world. Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith showed millions of fans finally how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader and is packed with tonnes of special effects and action scenes. News coverage on TV stations, in newspapers and on the Internet covered the opening of the movie very well but suddenly the focus has gone off the movie and on to an occurrence that happens much more regularly.
On Wednesday night, a copy of the new star wars movie appeared on the Internet and spread like wild fire (as one would expect). It is a full Workprint copy of the movie featuring two massive timers on the top of the video. The fact that this is a workprint means that this originally must have come from “inside”. This was not made by someone with a concealed camcorder in a movie theatre. My question is simply; why would the media make such a fuss about this?
I think it is safe to say that most major movies appear on the Internet within days of its release in movie theatres. Cam and Telesync copies of movies are not rare and I’m sure you’ve seen the ad’s at your local cinema warning you not to copy the movie from the screen with a camcorder, or face the consequences. The MPAA has condemned the individuals responsible for these copies but they need to look a lot closer to home to find the ones responsible for the Star Wars copy.
In September 2003, AT&T Labs published a study that basically told the MPAA to “stop leaking your own movies”, blaming industry insiders for a huge majority of movies that appear online before they appear in theatres. Perhaps the Star Wars copy would have never appeared online at all if more care had been taken? “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’,” MPAA president Dan Glickman said.
While copies of Revenge of the Sith are in fact available to download on BitTorrent sites, they did not originally source on a BitTorrent tracker, regardless of what Glickman believes. One has to wonder why the focus is immediately put on to the people (the star wars fans) who are downloading and sharing this copy of the movie with each other, and not on the industry insider who is responsible for the leak in the first place or the pirate on the street selling the movie. This copy probably was picked up on the street before it was even put on the Internet.
There is no charge to download and share the movie on the Internet, whereas on the street you will have to pay for it. Nobody on the Internet sharing this movie is making money from it, and nobody who was responsible for releasing it in the first place is making any money from it, it’s a hobby more than anything else to these groups who compete with each other to make major releases like this. It is also quite interesting to see how many of the sharers would not even think of watching this workprint copy of the movie before seeing it on a big screen first.
I had a look over a few forums and read some live conversations on IRC channels and the general attitude was that the quality isn’t good enough for such a movie for a first time viewing, but will do perfectly for viewing after seeing it properly until it’s released on DVD. In fact, many people are seeing this as a sort of “collector’s item”. The fact that it’s a workprint copy still including its original timers really gives some star wars fans reason to hold onto a copy of it(maybe they feel some kind of “magic” about it just to have it like people do with bootleg copies of their favourite artist’s music), whether or not they buy the retail DVD later.
A very good example of how leaked movies become collector’s items is Apocalypse Now. A workprint copy of this excellent movie appeared online many years after its filming. In January 2004 a workprint copy of the movie appeared online, a massive 289 minutes long; 6 SVCDs in total. It was a rough copy that the director had put together and included some never before seen stuff. For movies fans, this was huge, as it’s the only print that ever leaked so you can see why it could be seen as a collector’s item, even though it apparently had terrible quality.
To sum this all up, the media is paying too much attention to the star wars leak and the movie industry needs to start pointing the fingers at its own people instead of P2P users/developers. If the media reported on every leak of a major movie, it is all we would ever read. However, in many countries in the world downloading movies is illegal, even if you have seen it in theatres already simply because the movie studios are not compensated for it but in some countries it is legal to download.
However, in my own personal opinion, I don’t see how this leak has taken any “magic” at all from the movie. It is most likely that some revenue will be lost because of it, but this time, the finger should be pointed at the media that made such a huge fuss over such a regular thing and simply alerted the general public that the leaked copy existed and even explained in some cases how easy it was to download.
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Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
screaming blue murder – Revenge of the Sith online, p2pnet, May 20
AT&T Labs report - Movie insiders and file sharing, p2pnet, 2003
knows all about that – Film workers pirated The Passion, p2pnet, March 6, 2004
LA jail cell – Movie ‘pirate’ dead in jail cell, p2pnet, March 2, 2005
May 22nd, 2005 at 4:26 pm
The Studios the comprise the MPAA should do something to enhance the security of their distribution channels before they have their paid mouthpiece, Mr. Glickman, start running around hysterically screaming “The Sky is Falling and it’s BitTorrent’s fault!”
It really isn’t that hard to way-lay a print of a movie for a couple of hours on it’s way to a movie theatre that still uses the old fashioned projectors and the big reels.
The are so many hands that touch the product in post-production that’s is very easy for any one of them to shag a copy of it also, even before it’s officially “in the can.”
If any other industry came to Washington bitching and fuming about this sort of ‘problem’ while it’s got such huge gaping holes for stuff to leak from, they’re just going to be told to go back and fix those problems before there is going to be ‘legislation.’
May 22nd, 2005 at 4:44 pm
It’s much easier to point a finger at someone else than to point it at yourself. Right now, the movie studios have someone else that they can point a finger at.
True, sharing the movie is technically illegal, but until such problems are stopped at the source, nothing is ever going to change.
Sucks to be the movie studio, doesn’t it?
May 22nd, 2005 at 8:55 pm
I was just about to write about this. Here are some excerpts from my rough draft:
Who dropped the ball?
The initial copy released was a Workprint (WP) with the counter prominently displayed on the screen. WP’s rarely leak onto the Net and are definitely not circulated outside the studio because of their still undeveloped nature. Nonetheless, this WP copy was similar to the finish product and this fact points to only one conclusion: George Lucas dropped the ball on security inside his own studio.
Some (or many) might think this is little harsh criticism directed at Lucas but lets not forget: sharing isn’t stealing.
Moreover, new legislation protects him from “Cam” rippers inside the cinema. DMCA and the FBI help him hunt down those who rip DVDscreeners or DVD’s. He has the full backing of the MPAA and IFPI in tracking and prosecuting bootleggers around the globe. I assume LucasFilm LTD has the strictest of non-disclosure clauses tuck away in their employee contracts and top notch security systems surrounding their production facilities.
May 23rd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Hey spammer, I wish i had your IP address (or better yet, your street address) so that I could teach you a lesson.