Following an FBI investigation into ‘maVen’, his file was handed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2006. By September of the same year, Geremi Adam was arrested by police outside a Montreal theater after ‘camming’ the movies ‘How to Eat Fried Worms’ and ‘Invincible’. They seized his laptop and other equipment but later released him. A month later he was arrested again outside another theater.

Facing a $25,000 fine and six months in jail, Geremi Adam was ordered to appear in court on 30th January. Clearly unimpressed by the prospect of being locked up and/or bankrupted, he failed to appear in court and has gone on the run.

“We have a warrant and the police officers will try to find Mr. Adam,” said federal prosecutor Yacine Agnaou in a statement. “When he is found, he will be mandated to appear in court.”

Meanwhile, outside the court a demonstration was taking place by a group calling themselves ‘Hors-d-Oeuvre’ who say that ‘maVen’ is being unfairly treated and that all media should be available on the Internet for free. “Free Geremi!” they chanted in unison.

Fortunately for Adam, he committed the alleged offenses before new tough legislation was introduced to punish movie cammers caught in Canada. He will likely escape the severe punishment of 2 years in prison, a fate awaiting fellow cammer, Louis-Rene Hache. RCMP Staff Sgt. Noel St-Hilaire said: “Unfortunately at the time there was no legislation that forbid anyone from filming in a cinema. There’s not much we could do then other than issue a warning.”

Although not turning up at court is likely to inflame the situation, it’ll be interesting to see if the mounties are prepared to put any serious effort into ‘getting their man’ in this instance.

More photographs from outside the court house are available, thanks to burns1de

Source: World Leader in Movie Piracy Flees from the Mounties

We do not link to actual torrent files for obvious reasons. The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

As of December 8, 2006…

Source: The Mosts Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and are for informational and educational reference only.

Source: BitTorrent DVDrip Top 10

The data is collected by Big Champagne, the numbers of seeds and peers is the average swarm size of the torrents during the last week. Check out Infofilter for daily updated BitTorrent Charts statistics.

thanks to p2pnet

Source: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk46)

The data is collected by Big Champagne, the numbers of seeds and peers is the average swarm size of the torrents during the last week. Check out Peermind for more free p2p filesharing (non BT) statistics.

thanks to p2pnet

Source: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk38)

The data is collected by Big Champagne, the numbers of seeds and peers is the average swarm size of the torrents during the last week. Check out Peermind for more free p2p filesharing (non BT) statistics.

thanks to p2pnet

Source: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk37)

The data is collected by Big Champagne, the numbers of seeds and peers is the average swarm size of the torrents during the last week. Check out Peermind for more free p2p filesharing (non BT) statistics.

thanks to p2pnet

Source: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk36)

The data is collected by Big Champagne, the numbers of seeds and peers is the average swarm size of the torrents during the last week. Check out Peermind for more free p2p filesharing (non BT) statistics.

thanks to p2pnet

Source: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk35)

In the documentary “done the impossible” the fans tell their part of this success story. They explain why and how they managed to get their Firefly heroes on the white screen in the popular movie Serenity.

The makers of the documentary offer a free, Creative Commons licensed .torrent download of their film. They state:

In our opinion, the modern state of copyright is counter productive to creativity and free culture. It puts unnatural restraints on “fair use”, hinders the creative process and has fundamentally destroyed an entire industry before it was even born.

Personally I’m impressed with the quality of this documentary, I highly recommend this one if you are interested in the story behind Firefly and Serenity.

You can view the trailer over here or download (.torrent) Done the impossible

Source: Done The Impossible .Torrent

The great thing about the project is that the movie is made entirely using Open Source software.

The movie is 11 minutes, including the credits, and they offer an impressive high definition AC3 5.1 surround copy.

The graphics are absolutely stunning but I found the story a bit disappointing. You can grab the .torrent over here

elephantsdream.org

Source: Elephants Dream

GNi signed an agreement with BitTorrent Inc., to provide an IP transit Internet address for streaming videos at one gigabit per second. GNi’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) with BitTorrent guarantees 99.999 percent uptime.

Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent stated:

“BitTorrent is emerging as a key player for distribution of video content over the Internet and needs bandwidth providers that can keep pace with our growth. GNi’s reliability and flexibility were key factors in our decision to work with them, so we can focus on the best user experience for our service.”

GNi provides multi-carrier/multi-homed Internet transit, managed services and 24/7 “remote hands” support to maximize uptime, eliminate points of failure, and provide reliable service for mission-critical applications. GNi provides their service to clients such as Symantec, HP and the Oakland Raiders. GNi guarantees 99.999% uptime and High Quality service.BitTorrent inc. is planning a video download website to distribute movies online.

Derek Wise, president and CEO of GNi said:

“We’re excited about working with BitTorrent, Their video distribution model presents some interesting challenges that allow us to demonstrate our innovative approach to delivering the best Internet services and support.”

press release

Source: GNi Selected to Support the BitTorrent.com Video Download Service

This cost saving can be essential, especially for low-budget movies. Take a movie with a 2 million$ budget for example. Distributing the actual prints for wide release will be 100% or more of the total budget. This will never happen; the movie will go straight to TV or DVD instead. But by distributing the film though BitTorrent this will be no problem at all.

And it’s not only the distribution that’s cheaper (wiki):

Digital cinema has some big economic advantages over film, being very cheap compared to film. For instance Rick McCallum, a producer on Attack of the Clones, said that it cost US$16,000 for 220 hours of digital tape where a comparable amount of film would have cost US$1.8 million. Obviously this matters most to low-budget films which are often shot for a few million dollars or less.

Wait a second; am I going to watch a cheap xvid rip in a movie theatre?

No, not exactly. A proper digital movie will be around 120 GB per hour (33 MB/s). In order to send it the movie must be compressed and encrypted (see DCDM format). We need it to be save, we don’t want any 200GB movies showing up at mininova or the piratebay.

Proper specs.

But there is more. BitTorrent will not only be cost saving, it will be also a lot faster. Of course the movie theatres should get a decent line, but with a 100Mbps connection a 200GB movie would take less than 8 hours to distribute. Without BitTorrent online distribution would be nearly impossible, imagine 1000 theatres downloading a 200GB movie from 1 host.

So please stop complaining about piracy and decreasing sales and do something, welcome to the wonderfull world of BitTorrent.

Digital Cinema (wiki)
More Digital Cinema
More on DC Ditstribution

Source: The Movie Industry should embrace BitTorrent