Forget Oscars; 'Avatar' beats 'Hurt Locker' for most-pirated crown

By Eriq Gardner

"Avatar" might have tied "The Hurt Locker" for most Oscar nominations last week (with nine apiece), but the sci-fi epic is winning in at least one category: The film once again was the most-pirated movie on the Internet last week. A DVD screener of the James Cameron pic leaked onto file-sharing networks just as the film was nominated for nine Oscars.

Oscar buzz also seems to have compelled pirates to check out "Locker," which jumped to the fourth most-pirated film last week. In our look at Oscar film piracy, we missed an interesting fact about the movie: "Locker" first leaked onto the Internet more than five months before its U.S. release date.

Here's the entire Top 10 list of most-pirated movies on BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak:

Oscar screener piracy: The good and the bad news

By Eriq Gardner

Andy Baio is an enterprising journalist and technologist who has done some fascinating work over the years tracking how Oscar films are pirated. On Wednesday, he released his latest piracy figures showing historical trends from 2003 to 2010. His conclusion: "The tide may be turning" against Oscar piracy, he wrote.

Baio points out that fewer Oscar screeners leaked this year. Even more surprising, the median time between the U.S. release of an Oscar-nominated film and the leak date (whether by screener leak, camcorder leak, retail DVD leak, etc.) grew. Take a look at this chart he put together:

Ruling on Men at Work's 'Down Under' causes men to chunder

By Eriq Gardner

Thanks to a catchy hook and exotic Aussie flair, Men at Work's 1980s song "Down Under" became an international sensation and the pride of the country. But a ruling by the Australian Federal Court today that the tune's flute riff incorporated a copyrighted children's song from the 1930s has the nation saying "You better run, you better take cover."

Colin Hay, the band's lead singer, has already admitted that its flautist used two bars of a 1930s folk song called "Kookaburra Sits in an Old Gum Tree." The testimony was enough to lead Justice Peter Jacobson to rule that the band plagiarized, opening up the possibility that the Men at Work, Sony BMG and EMI Songs might have to fork over up to $60 million in royalties to Larrikin Music Publishing, the rights-holder of "Kookaburra."

Report: US military going rogue for online content

By Eriq Gardner

There's been a lot of heated debate lately about copyright laws and Hollywood's reaction to file-sharing on digital networks.

Industry veterans are accustomed to sticking up for the rights of content owners and usually take heated rhetoric with grace. But not every day do they see a story so incendiary it questions their patriotism.

According to a report, US soldiers stationed oversees can't get online movies and music from legitimate services because of IP address blocks intended to control the way that foreigners access US media. As a result, many uniformed military members have supposedly pleaded with the RIAA and MPAA to get involved and help them out. Allegedly, these pleas have been ignored, and military members are coordinating a "campaign" to download as much music and movies as possible from BitTorrent and other P2P software clients.

If true, this would be an incredible story. RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth could hardly believe her ears about the report from what she calls "notoriously anti-content providers" who "write this crap so that folks will believe it." Needless to say, Duckworth says the report is untrue.

"We've never heard of this," she says. "Regardless, it is the service operators and not the content providers who are responsible for any location restrictions required by their licenses. In fact, enabling fans' access to legitimate music sites in a quick and convenient manner is in the best interest of the U.S. music labels that we represent."

 

If service operators like the ones mentioned in the report — Netflix, Amazon and others — are the ones controlling IP blocks, and are doing so without any contractual obligation, the industry associations deserve a pass. We'll continue to look into this situation and update if necessary. 

'Avatar' tops most-pirated movie list

By Eriq Gardner

"Avatar" is proving just as popular in the piracy underground as it has been at the box office.

The James Cameron epic ranks as the most downloaded film on BitTorrent. Some believe that online pirates want to check out the film on digital networks before going to see the "real" 3-D experience in the theaters, but the appetite for the film seems strong enough that pirates want a second, third, and even fourth taste by downloading the film. Recently, we examined whether "Avatar" is immune from piracy, as Cameron has suggested.

Here's the list of the ten most pirated films last week:

1. "Avatar"
2. "Smokin' Aces 2" 
3. "Amored" 
4. "2012" 
5. "Whiteout" 
6. "The Time Traveler's Wife" 
7. "The Lovely Bones" 
8. "Up in the Air" 
9. "This is It" 
10. "The Invention of Lying" 

Source: TorrentFreak 

Is 'Avatar' really immune from piracy?

By Eriq Gardner and Matthew Belloni

"Avatar" director James Cameron has frequently touted 3D filmmaking as the industry's best hope for combating piracy.

He's followed others in the industry, such as DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was one of the first to posit that one can't camcord 3D cinema.

Is it really true? Can 3D glasses accomplish what no industry lawyer has been able to do in holding back the pirates?

Cameron may be a visionary, but we're betting he's dead wrong here.

According to a story in the UK's The Times, "Avatar" was illegally downloaded almost one million times within seven days of its release—a record. By comparison, "New Moon" was pirated 610,000 times in the same time period. Word that "Avatar" is an underground hit follows overlooked news that "Avatar" leaked onto file-sharing websites a few days before it hit theaters.

The film is doing amazing boxoffice anyway. And if there was ever a poster child for the argument that online pirates merely check out "event" films for free before going to theaters for the real experience, this would be it. But we're sure that 20th Century Fox has high hopes for the future DVD release of the film, which could be hampered by rampant filesharing.

A few months ago, a UK scientist examined the question of whether 3D films are immune to piracy. He proposed that future pirates might eventually attach a 3D glasses-type filter to their camcorders or set up two cameras in the theater so as to recreate the 3D experience at home.

With 3D televisions poised to stampede the market in 2010, the prospect of splashy new hardware demanding for content could give rise to a wave of 3D piracy in the very near future.

In fact, we'll go out on a limb and predict that the introduction of 3D will only escalate the piracy/copyright battles, as studios refine their technology with DRM, pirates respond, and court battles ensue.

One of these days, we bet we'll be reporting that someone is claiming 3D glasses as a copyright circumvention device.

'Heroes' is most-pirated TV show of 2009

By Eriq Gardner

In 2008, pirates were obsessed with good vs. evil, making NBC's "Heroes" the most-pirated TV show of the year.

This year, the buzz is that the show may be on the verge of cancellation thanks to dwindling ratings (it averages about 6 million viewers a week, down from nearly 14 million when the show first premiered in 2006).

But "Heroes' continues to be a juggernaut in online piracy. According to Torrentfreak, "Heroes" was downloaded 6.58 million times in 2009, topping the year's most-pirated list.

The only other show in the top 10 that boasts fewer weekly viewers than total illegal sharers is Showtime's "Dexter," with about 2.3 million viewers and 2.78 million pirated downloads. (And Showtime is a pay cable service, of course.)

Here's the full list:

1. "Heroes" (NBC)

2. "Lost" (ABC)

3. "Prison Break" (Fox)

4. "Dexter" (Showtime)

5. "House" (Fox)

6. "24" (Fox)

7. "Desperate Housewives" (ABC)

8. "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," (Fox)

9. "Grey's Anatomy" (ABC)

10. "True Blood" (HBO)

RELATED: And the most-pirated film of 2009 is....

RELATED: Is '"Avatar" really immune from piracy?

Here's a bar graph that compares estimated downloads with estimated weekly TV viewership:

Second 'Love Guru' pirate to plead guilty

By Paul Bond

A second person has agreed to plead guilty in the case involving a copy of "The Love Guru" ending up on the Internet a day before its theatrical release.

The whole affair could serve as a cautionary tale to folks who abuse their access to unreleased films, even when their motivation might be as innocuous as to, say, be the life of a party.

Mischa Wynhausen, 31, of Irvine is set to make his felony plea in the next couple of months, and it's agreed he'll serve three years probation for the crime of uploading the Paramount Pictures movie to the Internet.

Wynhausen got the copy through family members of Jack Yates, a 28-year-old man from Porter Ranch who obtained a screener through his employment at Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcasting. Paramount had engaged that company to make clips that were to air on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," but Yates
decided to take an extra copy himself for screening at a family gathering.

It was a terrible miscalculation on his part, leading to an investigation by the company that employed him and by the FBI and, eventually, to his arrest.

Shortly after his arrest, Yates pled guilty to a misdemeanor for illegally distributing the movie to others, and he served six months in a federal prison, having been released Sept. 21.

While Wynhausen's crime of posting a film illegally on the Internet was more substantial than was the crime committed by Yates -- a felony, in fact -- unlike Yates, he'll serve no prison time. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said the reason in part stems from the fact that Yates originally tried to obstruct the investigation by lying to the FBI, while Wynhausen was cooperative.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Silber wouldn't discuss a motive for the crimes, except to say that no one involved seemed to profit from it monetarily. But according to an affidavit, Yates brought his unauthorized
copy of the movie for viewing at a birthday party for his grandmother. From there, it went to a cousin and then to Wynhausen.

No fines were assessed against Wynhausen or Yates, though Wynhausen has agreed to pay restitution to Paramount, an amount to be determined probably by summer. An affidavit indicates the infringing video was posted to mininova.org and that it was downloaded 85,000 times in the eight months it was there.

In cracking the case, Yates' former employer, LADB, supplied surveillance footage taken on May 29, 2008, to the FBI that showed Yates with two copies of the movie. The video shows him hiding one of the copies as he approaches his parked car.

The movie opened June 20, 2008, but Wynhausen, a friend of some of Yates' family members, posted it to the Internet on June 19, 2008, and again the next day.

"The Love Guru," starring Mike Myers, grossed $32 million at the domestic boxoffice and another $8.6 million in foreign markets.

“Guru,” starring Mike Myers, earned just $32.2 million at the domestic boxoffice and another $8.6 million in foreign markets.

And the most-pirated film of 2009 is....

By Eriq Gardner

Paramount's worst fears are confirmed: "Star Trek" was the most pirated film of 2009.

In October, studio COO Frederick Huntsberry delivered a presentation to the FCC that detailed how "Star Trek" had become a hot commodity in piracy circles. Illegal file-sharing had advanced from "geek to sleek," he said. Now, according to data from TorrentFreak, "Star Trek" was downloaded nearly 11 million times this past year, just edging "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" in total downloads.

Interestingly, for all the fuss about the "Wolverine" leak, the film barely makes the top 10. 

Meanwhile, Guy Ritchie's "RocknRolla" was the third most pirated film this year. The film was distributed in the U.S. by Warner Bros. and grossed less than $26 million in worldwide box office. We wonder whether its availability online hurt boxoffice—or whether Warners might have promoted the theatrical release more heavily with the knowledge of its underground appeal.

Now, drumroll please...here are the ten most pirated films of 2009:

Meet the man arrested for pirating 'Wolverine'

By Eriq Gardner

We're starting to get to know the man arrested yesterday for allegedly uploading an unfinished copy of Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" to the web more than a month before its May 1 release.

Accused pirate Gilberto Sanchez was released from custody yesterday on a $50,000 bond. Waiting for the paperwork, Sanchez, 47, told a reporter he was a glazier by trade and called the arrest "ridiculous."

Sanchez, who lives in the Bronx, admitted uploading the film to popular file-sharing site megaupload.com (which, for our money, means the arrest wasn't ridiculous at all). How did the copy of "Wolverine" end up in his hands? "I bought it from a Korean guy on the street for five bucks."

OK then. Case closed.

Actually, the FBI probably has a lot of work left to do on this case. We may know who is responsible for putting the copy of the film online, but who is culpable for releasing it in the first place? The grand jury indictment targeting Sanchez doesn't address how he acquired the film or whether any Korean guys on the street were involved.  

If convicted, Sanchez faces three years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.