Legal News

Avatar DVD Screener Leaks To BitTorrent
Wed 10th Feb 10 - 8:19

A few hours after Avatar received nine nominations for the upcoming 2010 Oscars race, a DVD screener of the film leaked online. The leak, which presumably originates from a screener copy sent out to one of the Academy members, is expected to be downloaded by millions of people before the Oscars winners are announced.

Avatar has been an enormous success. The film has broken nearly all records at the box-office, and together with The Hurt Locker it was last night’s big winner raking in nine Academy Award nominations.

James Cameron and the rest of the Avatar crew probably cracked open a few bottles of Champagne to celebrate, but today they will wake up with a serious hangover.

Only a few days after the nominations were announced, a DVD screener of Avatar (2D) appeared online. Before today, only a lower quality Telesync copy of the film has been available on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks.

Ironically, the DVD screener that is now widely available online most likely leaked through one of the Academy Awards voters.

There is no doubt that Avatar will also score big in the list of most downloaded movies this year. The Telesync copy of the film that has been available for over a month was already downloaded by more than two million people.

It is expected that the DVD leak will easily double or even triple these figures. Avatar has been among the most searched for keywords on nearly every torrent site for more than a month already.

Twentieth Century Fox has been extra careful with sending out the DVD-screener of Avatar, as more Academy members received it mid January, just a few days before they had to vote. Although this did delay the leak, it couldn’t be prevented.

Phil Hitchen, Associate at Ralli who specializes in business transactions, funding and intellectual property, comments:

"If the DVD-screener will affect the box-office revenues is up for debate. The film has already grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, which is an absolute record despite the relatively high piracy rate. In fact, high piracy numbers are often an indicator of success at the box-office and vice versa.

Prior to general release and at each stage of the distribution process it is often key to a successful film in revenue terms to control the process and avoid leaks. Regrettably with hits such as “X Men Origins: Wolverine” and “Avatar” there is always that possibility even with strict controls in place since there are many eager to find out as much as they can and those willing to feed that interest.

Finding an initial leak may be relatively straight forward but controlling it thereafter may be difficult and costly. The commercial issue is always how badly is the revenue stream likely to be affected and does the film company want to sue the leak and any known recipients for breach of contract and/or copyright infringement. If the leak in “Avatar”s case relates to content made available for the voting process there may be a commercial reason for being unwilling to take legal action.”