I'm Shocked, Shocked, To Find That Downloading Is Going On In This Establishment

A breathless lede in the Los Angeles Times:

A copy of the hit movie "Something's Gotta Give" that was sent to an Oscar voter has turned up on the Internet, prompting an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences investigation and signaling a fresh setback in Hollywood's battle against movie piracy.

That's legitimate news, given the debate last year over whether such copies should be sent out at all. But I wish the reporter had been a little more skeptical about the Academy's claim, cited later in the article, that this was "the first time a so-called screener sent to an Oscar voter had been made available for illegal copying." As Andy Baio points out, it isn't the first time. Indeed, such leaks are very common.

[Thanks to Tim Virkkala and Eric Dixon for the links.]

Comments

[Johnny]

My mother can't get out to the theatres but would like a copy of this movie. Where can she get it?

[PapayaSF]

I suspect that a number of Academy members are finding out that lending their screener to their nephew who's into computers is not a good idea....

[Steve Skutnik]

What happened to "watermarking" screener copies of movies that were to go out as to trace back the sources of the leak that they were talking about? Are the folks at the Academy that dense - that all they can do is hopelessly complain about leaks and not make any intelligent attempts to say, track down and plug them?

[Sam]

They do watermark them, usually. Though not individually. They probably send out over a thousand copies of their movie as screeners, and it would be a very difficult task to individually serialize them. But if you watch one of these (I saw one for Two Towers last year) it usually says "property of " every so often. But all that really does is to make it so someone can't turn that copy into a bootleg that they can pass off as the real thing.

[Steve Skutnik]

I can imagine it wouldn't be trivial to provide a serialized watermark, but until they do that, what exactly do they expect to happen every time they distribute hundreds of copies of a movie in advance with little means of controlling what happens to them afterwards? Obviously, counting on the integrity of their screeners hasn't worked - which would seem to be the real source of the problem, not whatever P2P client has come into unique scrutiny lately.

[Swamp Justice]

If they truly wanted to limit movie leaks, they would invite the screeners to a private theater instead of mailing unprotected DVDs into the wild blue yonder.

[Eric D. Dixon]

The Hollywood reporter has also picked up on Andy Baio's research:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2067825

[PapayaSF]

They *have* started to watermark each one. That's how they knew it was Carmine Caridi's copy.

[Xavier]

They have tried inviting the judges to private screenings, but most of them are too lazy to go. Most of them probably don't even watch the screeners that are sent out.

The risk of leaks could be reduced if the studios were a little more selective in what they distributed. I've seen some ripped Oscar screeners for really awful movies. I saw one for Ghost Ship once. Why do the studios bother sending out screeners for crap like that? Do they think they have any chance at all of winning an Oscar?

[Tom from Texas]

Actually, Xavier, that Italian singer/ghost chick in Ghost Ship had the best natural rack I've seen in a film all year. Nice ass, too.

[The Other Joey]

The only films that really ned to have screeners sent out are independant and foreign films. Any major release can be seen at any theater in the country at some point, but limited-release films really need the help, and are usually better and more deserving anyway. Not to mention less likely to be pirated, since their fanbases are relatively small.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I think the Oscars are very important. I mean, how would Gwenyth Paltow get in touch with her feelings without it?