10 Comments

Interesting Piracy Facts

January 24, 2007 by in News with 10 Comments

Over at Waxy, they analyzed the effects piracy on Academy Award nominated films, and how encryption and DRM doesn’t prevent the illegal distribution of them:

  • Academy members received screeners for 30 out of 34. (Everything except Click, Monster House, Poseidon, and Black Dahlia.)
  • 31 out of 34 films were released online in some form, including camcorder footage. (Everything except Letters from Iwo Jima, Notes on a Scandal, and Venus.)
  • 24 screeners were leaked online. (In several cases, they were leaked months before Academy screeners were mailed.)
  • The average length of time between a film’s USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.
  • 9 screeners appeared online before they were mailed to Academy members.
  • On average, a screener appears online 24 days before it’s received by Academy members. (Excluding these early leaks, the average time is 13 days.)

This proves no matter how you protect content – it will be broken, where there is a will there is a way. Do you think if the industry made going to the theater cheaper, and lowered the prices of DVD the rate of piracy would decrease?

Read More


  • websnap

    I know piracy would decrease, but it’s silly to think it would go away entirely. There are a lot of really BAD movies out there that sometimes extra features added to the disk just doesn’t compensate for the $30 price tag (or the thirty dollar total theatre cost, for that matter). I can honestly say that my collection would double if the cost was more reasonable.

  • Masta’ B

    All I can say about that list is that it’s very frustrating that the 3 Oscar contenders that haven’t been uploaded yet are the only major nominees I have yet to see.

  • Jerry

    I have a DVD burner, and a Netflix account. Yet I have no desire to pirate movies. They’re generally crap anyway, remakes TV shows or comic books.

    I’m content to rent, and I rarely spend the $10 at theaters either.

  • http://www.throwthemind.com Nathan

    I think you need to give pirates a little more respect. You can download a Friday release of a movie by Sunday. I find these numbers to be wrong. I don’t see the movie industry loosing money from the theater because I think people go the same amount as they did 10 years ago…if not more the Digital Projection move theaters out now. As for DVD sales, you are not going to stop copying, and I don’t think downloading a copy from BitTorrent is going to stop either. The best thing to do is make it easy to buy, download and burn a dvd. That is there best hope.

  • Masta’ B

    I don’t agree with the numbers either…I believe piracy has been a major factor of spreading positive word-of-mouth for lower-release movies and increased both box office & dvd sales for such films. Personally I would very rarely shell out $20+ on a DVD of a film I hadn’t yet seen…being able to download a rip lets me filter out the crap, and direct my $$ toward movies that are actually worth buying…

  • http://www.myspace.com/AlexTheMartian Alex B

    Warner Bros. sent be the screener for Monster House… I guess I’m more special then the Academy members. Blah but I only get feature animation screeners because i belong to the International Animated Film Association. I do wish I got all the screeners Academy members get, lol.

  • http://www.myspace.com/AlexTheMartian Alex B

    Blah, Sony Pictures, not Warner Bros! my bad!

  • http://www.myspace.com/AlexTheMartian Alex B

    Why do you people talk about shelling out 20+ dollars on a DVD of a movie you haven’t seen… don’t anyone rent movies at Blockbuster any more???

    I personally never brought a DVD of a movie I haven’t seen, I just either see it in the theater or rent it, then if I really like it I buy the DVD so I can watch it any other time :-)

  • Masta’ B

    I’ve never rented a movie in my life. If I really want to preview something I can’t find online/at the cinema I’ll get it through an inter-library loan (free, they have most criterion releases, and you can keep it for much longer…) I go to a movie a week generally now that I’m living in the city, but – being a filmmaker – I can’t help feeling the need to have the movies I love in my collection. I guess the issue for me is that I’m impatient, if I get good buzz on a film I’m usually on my way out the door to see it, if I can’t I’m logging on to torrentspy…once it’s on DVD I can’t resist from adding it to my collection…

  • John

    I’m living in Eastern Europe at the moment, and piracy is rife…. I mean – Casino Royale was in the DVD rental shop here 2 days after its release in the UK…. CRAZY!!! They also don’t have original games – they sell the games with the cracks on them!!!

Privacy Policy | About Us | Contact Us | Write for us