More Oscar Piracy – Documentaries, Foreign Films, HD Leaks

Late last month we reported that although Hollywood is trying really hard to prevent pirated copies from getting leaked online, statistics show the industry of film has enough reasons for a high blood pressure.

We also posted the results of Andy Baio’s research, an independent journalist and programmer, regarding this year percentage of pirated copies of Oscar contenders available via p2p networks.

This time around we thought we should also cover the field of foreign and documentary films and their availability for download. Thanks to Bruce Lidl at zatznotfunny.com we can take a look at what interest is there in these films. "[…] fundamentally, a savvy video downloader likely has a far better library of available content than any one legitimate service could possibly provide, and that includes the relatively esoteric world of foreign and documentary films, and while not every one of the Oscar nominees are currently uploaded, quite a few of them are."

On the question of HD, Lidl comes with some predictions for the future:

On the question of HD, since none of the screeners were in high-def, the leaks of the nominated films in better resolution versions tracks when they became available commercially. My guess is that this situation will change in the future as more Academy members become comfortable with Blu-Ray. After all, Oscar films are precisely the kinds of movies that benefit from a better visual presentation and while seeing them in the theaters would be optimal, if home viewing is the only option, Blu-Ray is certainly preferable to standard DVD. Of the feature nominees in all categories, 13 are available in HD (720p, h.264 codec, mkv container), including two of the documentaries, although none of the best picture films that usually come out closer to the end of the year.