Oscar Pirates, Fewer Films Leak Online This Year
Written by Ernesto on February 04, 2010The 2010 Oscar nominees were announced yesterday, inspiring many people to fire up their BitTorrent clients. Each year we take a look at the availability of the nominated films online. This year there is a downward trend as only 79% of the films have leaked online in DVD quality.
Waxy’s Andy Baio has been collecting detailed piracy stats for every Oscar-nominated movie since 2003. Much to the delight of the MPAA, his most recent statistics show that, compared to previous years, fewer Oscar nominees have leaked online.
The statistics for all 2010 nominees, except documentary and foreign films, show that 27 of the 34 films were available on BitTorrent in DVD quality last night. Nearly half of the films have leaked as a screener and 10 of those are estimated to be leaked by Academy members.
Although the majority of the Oscar nominees are available online, the movie industry has certainly scored a small victory. Last year all films leaked in one format or another. On another positive note for the MPAA, the median time for films to leak after their US-release date has nearly doubled to 21 days. In 2003 it took only one day for most films to leak onto the Internet.
On the negative side, there were still 4 films that were available online before they they premiered in US movie theaters. In The Loop, The Hurt Locker, The White Ribbon and The Young Victoria all leaked in advance of their official premiere.
Leaked DVDs or Screeners of Oscar nominees
The graph below further shows that there are less retail DVD rips available compared to previous years, 44% versus 100% in 2008 and the years before. As Andy also mentions, this figure may go up a little before the official Oscar award ceremony broadcast.
Leak Formats
Although this data suggests that the movie industry is becoming more effective in preventing screeners from leaking online, we have to emphasize that more than a third of the leaks originated from deviant Academy members who like to share the work of their colleagues.
The Oscar screener of Avatar was sent out relatively late, only a few weeks ago. It leaked onto the Internet today and is not included in the graphs above.
Previously: Avatar DVD Screener Leaks To BitTorrent
Next: ‘Ink’ – The Movie That Blew Up On BitTorrent
46 Responses
Thats odd
And first
Wheres the blu ray rips on these graphs?
I assume that Blu Ray rips are counted as retail DVD.
might be because most of the movies suck this year so its not even worth the bother to leak them… kind of saving someone pain and hours of their live wasted watching a movie hoping in vain that it will “automagically” become a good film in the last 13 seconds before the credits roll.
Can he include a graph with how many screeners were sent out in the first place?
Weren’t the studies reluctant to distribute screeners for a few years?
Of course, this could just be the Oscars ceremony becoming more irrelevant over time.
YES
NEXT
Times are changing haha
Just shows that piracy will be finally taken under control. Good thing is we now have Spotify and Voddler to take our music and movies needs, services we only dreamed about years ago. And Steam works great for games. I’m happy to see this development to good online services so I dont need to pirate anymore.
Academy members received screeners for all but four of the 34 nominated films (In the Loop, Paris 36, The Secret of Kells, Transformers 2).
So actually, they’re only missing three.
@8
Services we only dreamed about? What you on about? those services are crap like the folk that run them. And as for piracy getting taken over well………………….
This is complete bullshit. I have seen 8 out of the 10 Best picture nominees. 1 of the ones I haven’t seen is Avatar which I have deliberately avoided to see in the cinema in 3D in the next few days.
When we had 5 nominees for Best Picture, I had never seen more than 2 at this time before.
A Serious Man is the only one not out there.
@11
Spotify is crap? You get to listen to tons of music for free. Why is that crap?
@12
‘A Serious Man’ is out, I just watched a 720p Blu-ray rip.
I myself tend to stay away from new releases/leaked movies (some leaked to
BT before they were available on DVD) because I think for sure those are the ones the MAFIAA is watching. Same goes for new games.
What I search for in BT and what I download are………
….Well, perhaps I shouldn’t announce to the whole world what it is that I download ;-)
Ya right!
Another BS statistic from the master of BS and corporate parasites.
It is not going to make me go back and feed these criminal pigs.
I am boycotting.
@8
The biggest problem with those services? Country-centric.
Spotify and Voddler aren’t available globally.
these statistics are a load of shite. there are actually more screeners than ever. and before march 9 we’re bound to get the last few.
Correction”
Only 79% are available publicly online in DVD quality.
All of those movies are available currently.
And the winner for best picture is…James Cameron’s retarded crapfest, Avatar! Much better than his dull crapfest, Titanic.
Movies suck nowadays, most stuff isnt even worth the bandwidth for downloading. Oscar nominations for crappy movies only give you the least crappy selections. Maybe if Hollywood makes some good movies again, people will put in the effort to leak them.
I really less interested in films nowadays and alternatives are just getting cheaper.
I love piracy and all – but even crunchyroll is filling the gap of fan-subbed pirated copies the day after the initial aired release.
I’m hoping that electronic copies without DRM – or hosted streaming sites (with limited commercials) take over for broadcasting networks.
And lowering the costs of releasing a film is in everyone’s interests – that means you won’t need a massive budget to get your work seen.
in the end – I should have a massive screen in my house playing hi-def movies at less than 3% of my household income. I’m kinda waiting for games to get as cheep as movies now.
@23
Because games are totally getting cheaper… (sarcasm)
[quote]10 of those are estimated to be leaked by Academy members.[/quote]
I’d like to thank the Academy.
It’s wrong to watch something you haven’t paid for; however, there is something even worse about the cost involved in par taking in something that is so uniquely human.
Swap it! Encrypt it! | Transfer files – Send large files
http://www.swapitencryptit.com
@26
I’m watching stars in my back yard and i haven’t paid for it. Is it wrong?
It’s a REALLY GOOD news for filesharing.
It shows that fewer and fewer people are willing to take risks to get those (incredibly bad) movies.
Maybe with some luck and time, they’ll stop leaking holywood stuff.
So people who downloaded movies before going to see them at the cinema will stop spending money on those, and start to download more interesting, non-majors movies.
This could be a great news for culture. And an income loss for the sharks would be the cherry on the cake.
lol wut , i dont want bollywood
These movies were so bad that even pirates didn’t want to rip them.
That’s right Hollywood, even pirates have standards!
lol @ pirates having standards.
I wish Crazy Heart would leak. http://www.twitter.com/movieleak
In your analysis you completely skipped the angle of demand from the downloaders. Cams etc are not very well liked, with ever increasing bandwith etc I think our demand for quality has trumped the demand for speed because we are used to HD rips now.
Like I care WHEN something “leaks”.
See, I don’t pirate INSTEAD of buying.
I can either afford something, or I can’t.
Yea, that thing the industry doesn’t understand.
Accordingly, I don’t care about how soon or not the mass produced churned out shxt from failywood comes out on the net.
I have to agree that this is more likely due to the fact that a lower percentage of movies released this year were mega hits enough for people to want to rush them to release.
I’ll give them that the audio watermarking and whatnot probably account for the increased delay, but that will probably drop again next year.
What’s the upper graph? Is US RELEASE the threather release? It’s really confusing to talk about release instead of specifying what release you are talking about.
I dont think BlueRay rips should be counted as RETAIL DVD.
I would hope that RETAIL DVD means the actual DVD contents (VIDEO_TS stuff) and not THEMOVIE.AVI
because if that graph includes DVDRIPS.. that means piracy is going way down..
0_o
lol @ reasoned mind for never making a valid point.
Pay $40 and Watch all the 2010 Best Picture Oscar Nominees (10 movies) + Free Popcorn at AMC Theatres http://bit.ly/dcW1zu
Friend of my parents is in the academy.
He let me borrow the film ‘Happy Feet’ for the day, one month before it was released in cinemas.
Shit was week. I did everyone a favour by not leaking it…
Also, the DVDs they use can apparently only be watched two or three times before they are unreadable.
Is this true, or just a scare tactic by parents/friend?
man ppl need ta work a little harder ta get more dvde screeners so we can continue ta seed n thank them for their efforts
@14
I just went over to Spotify, and I got this message saying that due to licensing restrictions, Spotify is not available in my country.
See? Spotify really is crap! Until we abolish licensing restriction laws, piracy will continue.
ghe good blog
It is good, because I would not want to waste my bandwidth on crappy movies.
I’ve heard that some screener DVD’s now include code to identify the Academy member that was issued the disk. That would jeopardize the anonymity of the ripper/uploader.
Well it’s good to see illegal use of Bittorrent drop.
This is likely due to the availability of inexpensive movie streaming services on-line, much like illegal distribution of music dropped for the same reason.
It’s interesting that the sudden drop in 2009 is directly timed with the release of online streaming from services like Netflix.
Of course, like the RIAA, the MPAA will never admit that actually giving people what they want reduced piracy, and instead will simply credit increased DCMA enforcement.
3 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.