Star Wars Episode 3 Being Pirated Across The Web Options

[azn_r4pf4n]

+ source ; CNN

Final 'Star Wars' film leaked to Web
Thursday, May 19, 2005 Posted: 6:23 PM EDT (2223 GMT)

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The final chapter of the Star Wars saga has gone over to the Internet's dark side.

"Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" has been leaked onto a major file-sharing network just hours after opening in theaters, at a time when Hollywood is increasingly concerned about online piracy.

At least two copies of the film, which was first shown in theaters in the early hours of Thursday, have been posted to the BitTorrent file-sharing network -- a new and increasingly popular technology that allows users to download large video files much more quickly than in the past.

The Motion Picture Association of America has been aggressive in going after Web sites that provide "tracker" links that enable BitTorrent downloads of copyrighted material, including six lawsuits this week against sites with links to TV shows.

According to Web site Waxy.org (http://www.waxy.org/), one print was leaked on Wednesday before the film was even released in theaters. The movie was time-stamped, suggesting it may have come from within the industry rather than from someone who videotaped an advance screening.

One popular tracker Web site showed more than 16,000 people currently downloading the film via BitTorrent.

Hollywood is trying to avoid the fate of the music industry, which claims it has lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales to illicit file-sharing networks.

Movie files are about 50 times larger than music files, which makes them much more cumbersome to download, but new technologies like BitTorrent and increased high-speed Internet penetration are closing the gap.

Lucasfilm Ltd and the MPAA were not immediately available for comment.

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it sucks that this is happening. i dont use bittorrent but lots of people use bittorrent that I know of.. and they're gonna be in big trouble once those anti-pirating companies track many people down.

[antix10_kos]

I went to see Mindless Self Indulgence in concert last night. After the show, my friends and I hung out with the lead singer, Jimmy Urine. We asked him if he had went to see the new Star Wars and he was like "Dude, I don't have time. It's downloading on the bus right now."

A lot of people are like that. They don't have time to stand in line, pay like $10 for a ticket, and sit for like 3 hours. If you download it, you can save it for later, watch it in parts, pause it if you have something to do....I mean, it's not like the movie industry is hurting that badly, especially in this case. One of my friends went to see it opening night; he and the people he went with stood in line for like two hours to get tix to the last showing on opening night....Star Wars III is gonna be the biggest movie all month, if not the year in terms of ticket sales. Merchandise is gonna go through the roof, as it always does after a big movie like Star Wars. Money will be made. The movie industry is just mad because they don't have the whole market to theirselves anymore. They're not used to losing control over the distribution of their product. Up until a few years ago, they controlled everything about the film's release and the final product. Now they've been outsmarted by the common people, duped out of a small share of profits, and they're pissed.

Personally, I don't download movies cuz I share a computer with a bunch of other people and they take up too much space. I have downloaded them before but I prefer to rent them on dvd and copy them or just to go out and buy it. Sometimes I'll even go to the theater and see it, if I like it enough...