Was the ‘Sith’ leak deliberate?
p2pnet.net News:- The appearance online of Revenge of the Sith before its official release raises some interesting questions, particularly in light of yesterday’s take-down of the Elite Torrent BitTorrent indexing site.
Was the leak in fact a honey trap set up by the MPAA to give bounty hunters a clear shot at nailing torrent users?
That’s what a couple of emails from people who prefer to remain anonymous suggest, a possibility bolstered by the fact that in their press statement, the FBI and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement were able to state, very specifically, that Episode III – Revenge of the Sith was, “available for downloading on the network more than six hours before it was first shown in theatres” and in the next 24 hours, “was downloaded more than 10,000 times”.
Fast work for hide-bound federal agencies which normally need weeks of committeee meetings and countless signed approvals before they can move.
And, “Responding to news reports today that BitTorrent is already facilitating the illegal file sharing of the final Star Wars episode, Revenge of the Sith which opens in theaters today, Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) President and CEO Dan Glickman made the following statement,” said an MPAA misinformation release on May 19 – immediately after the “leak”.
“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.”
Interestingly silent
As we’ve pointed out several times, the Sith leak was a Hollywood work print which, one assumes, would have been accessible only to someone close to the movie.
A Hollywood insider, in other words.
And as we’ve also pointed out, there’s been absolutely nothing on this from Glickman (or from anyone else belonging to the major studio cartel) and in the meanwhile, the movie is producing record-breaking, eye-popping revenues, leak or not (which coincidentally gives the lie to MPAA claims that file sharing is wrecking the business).
To top it off, the mainstream media have also been interestingly silent on the subject.
No Way! – you say? Not even the MPAA would try to get away with rigging a leak like that!
But, way.
Maybe it observed that when its brother organization the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) used its Antipiratbyrån clone to plant evidence in an ISP raid meant to close down p2p networks in Sweden, the scandal received scant attention in the mainstream press.
And in the meanwhile, Bit-ance.net has taken itself down.
“Thanks for being a part of bit-ance.net, your data has disappeared and so have we ——- IRC” is all you see where the web page once was.
“Your data has disappeared ….”
Stay tuned.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
shut-down – Elite Torrents takedown genuine, p2pnet, May 25, 2005
eye-popping revenues – ‘Sith’ box-office record breaker, p2pnet, May 23, 2005
Antipiratbyrån clone – Big Music’s Bahnhof Bust, p2pnet, March 22, 2005
May 26th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
These preliminary work prints can be bouncing around for weeks – even months – before a movie opens. When this work print copy was leaked only a matter of hours before the official debut, there were already thousands of copies in theaters all over the country (if not the world) getting ready for its first showing.
Maybe anticipating that at least one of the (usually low paid)projection room employees would make a bootleg copy of the film, the studio decided to release a poorly-made and almost-unviewable work print copy in order to try to head off an expected release of a decent telesync of the real movie.
Also, the release did not pass through established “pirate” channels, as most releases do, but was instead posted directly on the binary newsgroups. This was not a “scene” release at all, but seemingly a rather amateurish attempt, so the question remains: who did it? Since it showed an obvious lack of skill and sophistication, it could be assumed that the person involved probably did not hide his tracks very well, and will probably be quickly caught. Unless this leak was planned from the top.
It might seem farfetched, but if the studio was somehow officially involved, that might answer some unsolved questions.
May 26th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
I definitly believe it was leaked from inside. Whether intentional or not, is the real questoins. I lean twoard yes. This was ‘the’ movie that most computer savvy people love. This is the one item that is at the top of all ‘underground’ and ‘hardcore’ pirates list. Most people that are into p2p love the star wars serious, (i don’t) but many do. This is probably the most popular movie around (look at the box office rev). So, with the base, ibeleive they definitly took advantage of it and actd on it.
May 26th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
I downloaded the movie from Bittorrent. Why? Becuase of my health, that’s why. I’ll be damned if I’m going to chance missing what may be the most important part of the story, the one that ties everything together, before I die. I can’t miss it, I’m part of the Star Wars generation that grew up on this stuff starting when the original was released when I was five years old, back in 1977. I’m not well enough to go to the theater at the moment, though if I’m feeling well enough one of these days I’ll likely try to since that is far and away a better experience than watching a postage stamp size fuzzy picture on my monitor with poor two channel sound. If I live long enough to see the DVD release, then I’ll buy that as well to add to rest of my collection. If Goerge Lucas or the MPAA have a problem with that, they can blow me. Period.
May 27th, 2005 at 12:59 am
well put
May 27th, 2005 at 3:38 am
Purposely planted to further sway the outcome of the Grokster decision which is due any day now.
May 28th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
I seriously doubt it was purposely planted, as a primary stance of the MPAA/RIAA is that P2P hits profits, and it was pretty damn obvious that a Star Wars film is going to be a huge hit withit.
If they were going to plant it, they would choose a film that had a good chance of losing money.
Additionally, they would not leak a workprint copy as it points to an insider as the source, something P2P is not at fault for, leaking a workprint actually harms their case.
Also I can hardly see George Lucas being too keen on his film being leaked (and if it was done without his permission, he certainly has enough money to bankrupt the MPAA in court suing them).
My 2 cents: No MPAA/RIAA involvement in its release, simply lax security on the workprints that someone made a copy of.
May 29th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
“Additionally, they would not leak a workprint copy as it points to an insider as the source,”
Read the story. The thing is that a workpriont copy WAS leaked and thats what this story says
June 7th, 2005 at 11:49 pm
Yeah right, when have these guys ever been accused of doing something sensible? They probably thought it would give them more spin. Harp on for a while about how far the greedy criminal filesharers have infiltrated polite society. Aside from the fact that it’s great publicity, guaranteed to spread beyond the star wars community, it’s also perfect conditioning material for a future assault on the public psyche with regards to the evils of bootlegging. I can imagine the propoganda now…
“If these ruthless, highly organised, gun running filesharers were able to breach the security surrounding a release like ‘The Sith’. Then just imagine all the drugs they could be selling to your kids!”
And in other news,
“Little Jóse Jr. (12), from Dippschitt, MI. claims to have seen Jesus in his eMule progress bar’s. Jóse, who was downloading the new Blink 182 album at the time said, ‘I was checking my downloads to see if any were nearly done when I seen Jesus in the progress bars. His face just sorta appeared when track 4 was at 58%. He told me that filesharing was wrong and I promised that I wouldn’t never do it again. Then I prayed for my soul to be not burned in hell’. Result’s of an anti-virus scan to detect the win32.myJesus.ad virus were inconclusive.”