According to the U.S. attorney’s office, yesterday a federal grand jury indicted Derek Hawthorne of Moorpark and Owen Moody of San Marcos on federal copyright violation charges.

Hawthorne is charged with uploading ‘Australia’ to a torrent site known as Movie Hogs and ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ to Demonoid.com. Moody is charged with uploading the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire” to The Pirate Bay.

The pair have been contacted by the FBI who ordered them to surrender to authorities next week. The charges are ‘Uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution’ which is a term under the tough Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, previously used to jail Star Wars uploaders at the now-defunct EliteTorrents site.

They face a possible punishment of three years in jail and fines of $250,000.

Authorities also arrested a third man last week. Jack Yates of Porter Ranch, an employee at a Los Angeles duplication company, is accused of illegally copying the movie ‘The Love Guru’. Yates was asked to copy the movie by Paramount so that Jay Leno could show a clip on his show but allegedly he also made a copy for himself which he passed to friends, one of which uploaded the movie to the Internet.

It’s alleged that Yates lied to the FBI so he faces stiffer punishment than the previously mentioned pair. The offense of copying the movie carries a sentence of up to a year in jail but for lying to the authorities he could get five years. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 16 2009.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

For the 2009 Oscars, 26 movies were nominated. In alphabetical order they are: Australia, Bolt, Changeling, Defiance, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges, Hellboy II, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, Milk, Rachel Getting Married, Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, The Duchess, The Reader, The Visitor, The Wrestler, Tropic Thunder, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wall-E and Wanted.

Of these 26 movies, 25 were available online by yesterday’s nomination day – only Rachel Getting Married made the date piracy-free. An MPAA-worrying 23 of these were downloadable in either DVD Screener or Retail DVD format (Region 5 included). In the past months many of the nominees appeared in our weekly download charts, with The Dark Knight as the absolute winner topping 7 million downloads in 2008.

Of course, the MPAA is always keen to point to the ‘evils’ of camcorder piracy and has clamped down heavily on this in recent years. However, it doesn’t seem able to deal effectively with its own internal issues. Of the 26 nominated films, 20 were distributed to Oscar voters in DVD Screener format. Many of them leaked onto the web, with the exceptions countable on one hand.

In 2003 the MPAA temporarily banned Oscar screeners to prevent them from leaking, but this decision was eventually reversed. Since then, the industry has touted technical solutions such as Cinea to protect their content, but for various reasons it hasn’t stopped the leaks. This year the average time from DVD Screeners being delivered to voters and subsequently leaking out to the web, was just 6 days.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Mininova’s search cloud is a nice illustration. Below is a screenshot of the search cloud on Mininova 12 hours after the Oscar winners were announced, and for comparison, here is another one taken two days ago.

Most prominent in the search cloud is yesterday’s winner “No Country for Old Men”, that received four Oscars, including the one for the best movie.

There is more though. Almost all awarded movies are in the list of most popular searches – There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, La Vie en Rose, Juno, The Counterfeiters, Once, Sweeney Todd, Taxi to the Dark Side, Elizabeth, Ratatouille and Golden Compass. There is only one remarkable absentee from the list, and that is The Bourne Ultimatum.

People are not only trying to find the movies on BitTorrent, it seems that a lot of people are downloading the award ceremony as well, because search terms like Academy Awards and Oscars are also among the most popular search terms.

Last year we reported on the OscarTorrents site, a site where BitTorrent users could choose their own winners. Unfortunately, the site was not available this year as the creators have no time, but they’re promising to be “back next year”. In the meantime (and as usual), the full range of movies will be available at dozens of other torrent sites, right around the world.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Some great statistics have now been collected by Waxy, which provides detailed piracy (leaking) data for all of the 185 Oscars nominated movies since 2003, right through to 2008’s batch. The amount of data provided is very impressive, even providing dates when a movie was leaked in cam, telesync, Region5/Telecine, DVD Screener formats.

The stats show that the average length of time before a movie leaked to the Internet (in any format, including ‘cam’) was just a single day in 2003, extending to a peak of 7 days in 2006. By 2008 the term was back to 4 days and over the 2003-2008 period, the average internet leak time was just 3 days.

From the day an official ‘Screener’ copy of the movie should’ve been available, the average time took to leak the movie back in 2003 was a completely unimpressive minus 3 days. So, 3 days before the Oscars screener was sent out to the Academy members, it was already available on the Internet. Again, 2006 saw the greatest success for the movie industry when 16 days passed before a screener was leaked. Over the 2003 to 2008 period, the average screener leak time was 6 days.

The most telling figures are when one looks at the number of movies nominated from 2003 to 2008 – a total of 185 movies. Of these 185, a massive 182 of these leaked to the internet in some way (from ‘cams’ upwards) and a worrying number – 143 – were leaks of ‘Screener’ copies, often leaked to uploaders by industry insiders.

In the vast majority of cases, a DVD or Screener copy of the movie was available for download on Oscar night.

Last year we reported on the OscarTorrents site. The site will not be available again this year as the creators have no time, but they’re promising to be “back next year”. In the meantime (and as usual), the full range of movies will be available at dozens of other torrent sites, right around the world.

The full Waxy spreadsheet is available to view via Google, in Excel format (with formulas) and CSV

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

For members of ‘The Scene’ – a shadowy collective of internet pirates inhabiting networks dedicated to releasing movies, music and software onto the internet (often before they are officially available), Nunez’s sister and people like her are a very valuable resource. Often unwitting, people like her are a common source of the coveted DVD screener – a promotional DVD copy of a motion picture sent by movie studios to reviewers, critics and censors before the official movie release date.

After Nunez’s sister received her copies of the movies ‘Flushed Away’ and ‘Happy Feet’ for review, it’s alleged by prosecutors that the 27 year old saw his opportunity and obtained at least one of the movies from his sister with the intention of releasing it onto the internet.

In January, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences received a tip off that ‘Flushed Away’ had been uploaded to the internet. According to VCDQuality – a site providing news relating to the availability and quality of pirated movies on the internet – the first copy appeared on 22nd December 2006 with a second report 2 days later.

Unfortunately for Nunez, the movie contained a digital watermark and although watermarks are usually removed by the Scene release group to protect its source (via a process called ‘de-dotting’), in this case this clearly did not happen. It’s a possibility that Nunez was unaware of the presence of a watermark and decided to ‘go it alone’ by releasing the movie without the support and experience of an established Scene release group. This approach has been taken before with DVD screeners, with disastrous consequences. Whatever the reason, the watermark not only identified the copy as an Academy screener but also allowed it to be traced back to his sister.

Confronted by FBI agents, Nunez confessed not only to the uploading of ‘Flushed Away’ but also to the uploading of the Oscar-nominated ‘Happy Feet’. However, a subsequent FBI forensic examination of his computer revealed only evidence relating to ‘Flushed Away’.

As the prosecution’s case is believed to fall within the realms of The Family Entertainment Act (an act partly crafted to sentence distributors of pre-release copies of films, songs or other works) Nunez finds himself charged with criminal copyright infringement.

If found guilty at his March 2007 trial, he faces up to three years in jail.

Previous convictions under the Family Entertainment Act include those of Scott McCausland and Grant T. Stanley. Both were sentenced to five months in prison followed by five months of home detention for their role in the operation of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker and specifically the internet distribution of a workprint copy of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, 6 hours prior to its theatrical release.

It’s doubtful that the almost inevitable conviction of Mr Nunez will deter others from DVD screener piracy. Feeling the pressure from a perceived increase in DVD Screener piracy, in 2003 the MPAA banned Oscar screeners but eventually they were re-instated. Since then, the industry has touted technical solutions such as Cinea to protect their content but for various reasons it hasn’t stopped the worldwide proliferation of this years’ candidates.

Even with the threat of jail sentences hanging in the air for original uploaders of pre-release material, virtually every Oscar nominated movie can be downloaded completely free of charge via sites such as the cheekily named www.oscartorrents.com.

This is one battle the movie studios cannot seem to win.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Almost all oscar winners are in the search cloud. Crash of course as the Best motion picture of the year, Brokeback mountain, King Kong, Syriana, Walk the line, Capote, The constant Gardener, Memoirs of Geisha, Hustle and flow, and The chronicles of Narnia.

Even Tsotsi (foreign language) and March of the Penguins (documentary) are in there

Actually, the only Oscar winners not in the list are the animated and short films. Wallace and Gromit (animated film), The moon and the Sun (animated short film), Six Shooter (live action short film) and A note of Triumph (short movie).

But people are not only looking for the movies, it seems that a lot of people are downloading the show as well because search terms like Academy, Academy awards, Oscar and Oscars are also among the most popular search terms.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.