Wolverine's mad 'cause you pirated his movie
Wolverine has escaped from 20th Century Fox’s secret labs and is rampaging across bit-torrent sites. The bootleg of the film, a spin-off from the blockbuster X-Men comic book franchise, may be missing the score and many special effects, but it’s available a month before the premier, in near-DVD quality, without watermarks or a time code.
Reports claim that it’s an early workprint, at least 10 minutes shorter than the release, and that action sequences may be “less gory” than in the final version.
Already, the bootleg is the top selection* at the major bit-torrent tracking sites, which serve a small file pointing downloaders to others who have the movie to share.
Over the last few years, an increasing number of high profile science fiction and comic book films have sneaked out of the editing room and onto the Internet, to the rejoicing of cheap nerds worldwide. These leaks come amid an ever-growing fear among movie studios that even allowing digital distribution of film and television, through sites like Hulu and Sling, is sanctioning piracy– and countering their “just say no” message.
Six year ago, an early cut of Ang Lee’s The Hulk was posted to a private file sharing site and quickly spread across the Net, two weeks before its debut in theaters. The rough edit became a flashpoint for criticism, sending Universal Studios into a fit of embarrassment, and the FBI on a pirate manhunt. The culprit turned out to be a 24-year-old New Jersey man, who got it by way of a friend-of-a-friend at a Manhatten ad agency. He pled guilty to “felony infringement” after being given the full-court press about his evil ways, eventually settling for a $2000 fine, plus $5000 restitution to Universal (down from $250,000) and 6 months probation. All for a movie he claimed never to even have watched, and certainly hadn’t profited from.
The fallout from the leak led to the Motion Picture Associate of America’s then-president Jack Valenti trying to end the practice of sending out screeners for Oscar consideration– a nuclear option that may have made voting for the Academy Awards a bit difficult.
In 2005, a cut of the third Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith likewise found its way online– but on the same day as the actual cinema release, causing lesser damage. While the original source was never found, the MPAA and FBI eventually snagged a scapegoat: the private EliteTorrents site, eight of whose members were arrested and charged with conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. All but one copped a plea. The hold-out, 26-year old Daniel Dove of Virginia hoped to get sympathy from the jury but was outmatched: last year, he was found guilty and received 18 months in the federal pen, along with a $20,000 fine.
In the coming month, before the “official” release of Wolverine, expect a fair bit of hand-wringing and brow-furrowing from both the MPAA and supporters of digital video distribution.
* Over 250k downloaders on a single site alone.
