There will always be people who want to buy movies. They like to show off their Blockbuster-style library when friends and family come over. They’ve seen “Braveheart” two dozen times and they know all of the lines from “Scarface.” Their idea of a fun Friday involves drinking games set to movies and their most common date involves a DVD player, popcorn and some of the finest films ever made. As technology improves, so do the caliber of movies coming out, but let’s face it; not every movie is worth purchasing. In fact, some of the year’s “top movies” will leave us wishing we had those two hours of our lives back. And so the quest to bootleg free movies continues. Here are some of the top downloads of 2008.
The Dark Knight was the biggest hit at the box office in 2008 and also the most pirated movie, according to data collected by www.torrentfreak.com. The movie raked in $1 billion at theaters worldwide but was also downloaded 7.03 million times. According to TorrentFreak, “Comments on various BitTorrent sites reveal that many downloaders obtained an illegal copy after they had already watched the movie in the movie theater.” Perhaps the window of time with films is interfering with the consumers’ desire to have immediate access. Thomas Rubin, chief counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy at Microsoft, suggests that many people download new movies and music not because they want to steal it for free, but because they want access and more flexible ways to consume it.
Yet even more prevalent than download sites are peer-to-peer sharing networks, which allow people access to other people’s downloaded films. File sharing networks like Pirate Bay and Mininova were responsible for 17 million shared copies of Watchmen, 13 million copies of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and an astounding number of shared TV shows like Heroes (54.5 million) and Lost (51 million). Authorities around the world are looking at new ways to curb illegal file sharing, going so far as to block internet users’ access if they’re caught downloading or issuing prison sentences for top offenders. Yet it seems that a little piracy does little damage to top movies like “Wolverine,” which grossed an easy $80 million in one weekend.
Recent statistics show that there were $4.5 billion in music downloads, $5.4 billion in movie downloads and $47 billion in software downloads for 2008. A recent lawsuit against BitTorrent site Pirate Bay seems to have hurt the peer-to-peer films sharing network temporarily. In April, the site’s Swedish administrators were forced to pay $3 million in fines and spend a year in prison. Yet media analysts say there are a number of other websites waiting to absorb the Pirate Bay audience. “Google now can and does do what the Pirate Bay has always done,” Harvard professor Ben Edelman explains. “And if they’re prosecuted, they would have much more interesting arguments in their defense.” He says Internet users can type in something like “Wolverine torrent” and receive many listings of where they can find free movies up for grabs. As Edelman says, “It’s a cat and mouse game; sometimes the mouse gets eaten, but there are always more mice scurrying around, willing to try their luck.”
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