Oscar Nominated Films Still Get Pirated Big Time

Although Hollywood is making great efforts to prevent pirated copies from getting leaked online, statistics still reveal worrying facts for the industry of film.

Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer, has posted the results of his own research regarding this year’s Oscar contenders (and he's been doing this since 2002) and the percentage of pirated copies available via p2p networks.

According to a spokeswoman for the MPAA (who refused to make any comments on Baio’s study), camcorders ( to which she referred as being often inferior in terms of quality to those copied from DVDs) account for 90% of the movies being illegally shared over the Internet.

Although nobody denies that, Baio’s site, Waxy.org presents notable facts: 24 of this year's 26 Oscar nominations, (announced on Thursday), are available on p2p networks in DVD quality. Baio also says this was the highest number of Oscar contenders to be pirated since he started his research.

For those who are not familiar with the term, screeners are copies that members of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and not only), who get to vote on the Academy Award, get for viewing. This time around they received 20 such copies of the 26 films which got nominated, Baio claims.

Apparently, this year, pirates needed six days to get their illegal copies circulating on the Web which is longer than it took them doing that in previous years.