Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent

[rdodolak]

Came across this article talking about how Hollywood can't even control piracy within it's own backyard ... or maybe they don't want too since it should be pretty easy for them to prevent employees from accessing the sites from within the studios. Anyway, here's the original article.

http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-st...orrent-121225/

BitTorrent is used by millions of people every day, including people who work at major Hollywood studios. Those who are said to be suffering the most from online piracy are no stranger to sharing copyrighted files themselves. New data reveals that employees at Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox are openly pirating movies, games and other forms of entertainment while at work.

While Christmas is a time for sharing there are certain files that some people believe should be excluded from that experience.

For more than a decade the MPAA has waged war against “thieves” who dare to share their movies online. Online piracy is costing the creative industries billions of dollars in lost revenue, they say.

The Hollywood group is therefore one of the main facilitators of the “six strikes” copyright alerts plan that will begin in the coming year. The main goal of this plan is to educate members of the public about piracy, and point them to legal sources.

However, new data uncovered by TorrentFreak shows that the MPAA might want to start in-house, as plenty of copyrighted material is being shared by employees of major Hollywood studios. With help from BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye we found that BitTorrent piracy is rampant in Hollywood.

Let’s take a look at some of the files these Hollywood studios are sharing, starting with Paramount Pictures. Keep in mind that what we show here is just a small fraction of the files that are actually being shared. It’s the tip of the iceberg.

Static IP-addresses registered to Paramount were associated (e.g.) with the downloading of a wide variety of content as can be seen below. The indie production Battle Force was one of the movies shared, as well as the Lionsgate film The Hunger Games. And what about Happy Feet, a movie distributed by competitor Warner Bros?

Paramount Pictures

At Warner Bros. BitTorrent is also used by many employees. Here there appears to be a particular interest in adult entertainment. The Expendables 2 is also among the titles that were downloaded via Warner Bros. IP-addresses. This is not without risk, as the makers of the movie are known to sue alleged BitTorrent downloaders.

Warner Bros.

Moving on, we see that Sony Picture employees are sharing games, TV-shows and movies at work. The list below includes 20th Century Fox’s Ice Age: Continental Drift, and an episode of Top Chef.

Sony Pictures

20th Century Fox employees appear to be sharing the least out of all studios we checked. We only found three titles: the independent film Jeff, Who Lives at Home, an episode of 90210 and the Ubisoft game Hollywood Squares.

20th Century Fox

Disney is the last studio we checked out, and even at this mighty copyright icon employees are carelessly sharing files on BitTorrent. Fast and Furious 6, for example, and the TV-shows Person of Interest and Downton Abbey.

Walt Disney

The above is no surprise of course. Last year the now defunct website YouHaveDownloaded already revealed that BitTorrent is used at virtually every company.

That said, it never hurts to point out that Hollywood isn’t without ‘sin’ when it comes to piracy. The MPAA and others lobby very hard for anti-piracy measures, but can’t even stop piracy in the offices of their own member studios.

Finally, we want to point out that we also “caught” BitTorrent Inc. sharing several files on BitTorrent. Interestingly enough, these files were all legally distributed with permission from the makers.

[joenostalgia23]

Fast and the Furious 6? I don't even think that one's out yet

lol @ ***hole fever

[ZoetMB]

While I don't condone any illegal copying, I do find this interesting. What disturbs me the most is that these studios constantly plead poverty, but they obviously have employees (or at least one employee) who is wasting both their time and computer resources uploading (and presumably downloading) files illegally.

These are big corporations who presumably have strong IT departments. It's incredulous to me that they don't have Bit Torrent (and sites like it) blocked, except perhaps for people who monitor the site for illegally uploaded content.

[McCrutchy]

Originally Posted by joenostalgia23

lol @ ***hole fever

I'm sure they only shared the best episodes as well, where the rectal thermometer goes above 100 degress fahrenheit.

[Tony208]

Some companies deliberately pirate their own material so they can find out who is pirating and then sue them.

[tilallr1]

Originally Posted by Tony208

Some companies deliberately pirate their own material so they can find out who is pirating and then sue them.

Which is true. But in the cases above, if you look, the studio employees pirating materials are not working for the same studio which produces the material. Which is funny. Unless of course they are trying to throw off the scent.

[HDMe]

Originally Posted by tilallr1

Which is true. But in the cases above, if you look, the studio employees pirating materials are not working for the same studio which produces the material. Which is funny. Unless of course they are trying to throw off the scent.

The other problem... is that IF the person they give the illegal movie to knows the person is a movie studio employee... it isn't entirely unreasonable for that person to assume it is an authorized gift.

Movie studios give stuff away all the time for promotional purposes... so IF a guy who works for Warner Brothers gives you something, it isn't unreasonable to think that it is ok to accept it.

It creates a mess of enforcing their copyrights if their own employees undermine the endeavor.

[blonde_devil]

not overly surprised by this. how do people get access to these before they are released? someone has to supply a copy somewhere. it is an old war tactic - create a situation so you are justified to attack. same here - people are stealing our movies so we need tougher laws against it but don't tell anyone we are putting those movies out there for them to steal. doesn't matter, won't change anything. someone will be hung out to dry over this and they will still try and crack down on the internet because people only use it to steal movies and music.

[Tony208]

Originally Posted by HDMe

The other problem... is that IF the person they give the illegal movie to knows the person is a movie studio employee... it isn't entirely unreasonable for that person to assume it is an authorized gift.

Movie studios give stuff away all the time for promotional purposes... so IF a guy who works for Warner Brothers gives you something, it isn't unreasonable to think that it is ok to accept it.

It creates a mess of enforcing their copyrights if their own employees undermine the endeavor.

Yeah it starts to sound like entrapment or something if they try to charge you after that

[Tony208]

Studios need a good digital delivery system so stealing doesnt become mainstream like it did with music

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Tony208

Studios need a good digital delivery system so stealing doesnt become mainstream like it did with music

lol, it already has, about 4 or 5 years ago.

[HorrorBlu]

Originally Posted by blonde_devil

how do people get access to these before they are released? someone has to supply a copy somewhere.

SAG members often have access to free screeners, especially around awards season. So they could be coming from there.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by blonde_devil

not overly surprised by this. how do people get access to these before they are released? someone has to supply a copy somewhere.

simple. people have been caught taking them from the pressing factory, they "fall off the truck" when being transported etc etc. screeners getting out in the press, you name it. don't forget that discs are pressed a good month or so before release date so they're sitting around waiting for a sticky fingered person to get a copy out in the wild

[HDMe]

Not only that... but the "golden master" that is given to the replication company could be leaked by someone at the movie studio too.

Not a movie company, but I worked for a computer software company... and I worked in a dept that delivered the golden masters ~30 days before intended retail to the replication company... so unscrupulous people in a dept like mine could make their own copies and take them home and re-distribute.

There are WAY too many times I hear people talking about seeing ISOs of movies that haven't come out on DVD/Blu-ray yet... and the only way that can happen is an internal leak.

Piracy of released stuff is one thing... but when someone at the company leaks the stuff before anyone even can buy it retail, I have to think that is a bigger source of the kind of piracy that costs people money. A lot of people will pirate stuff that they can't yet buy and if they don't like it, then they know not to buy... OR if they do like it, they still can wait for prices to come down instead of impulse buying.

These companies really need to crack down in-house before they worry about the after-market piracy. I'm not defending piracy in any way here... but when the company is the leak, nothing else they try to do will matter.