The Two Towers Hits the Net

tfreport writes "The Drudge Report is reporting that The Two Towers has already began to be file swapped online. This is four months before the movie is set to debut! An executive in New York promised if this is indeed part of the film that they would be punishing anyone and everyone that downloads the film or distributes it to the full extent of the law."

Comments

Attributing blame.

[FyRE666]

Shouldn't the movie studios/recording industry pour all their efforts into finding the source of these leaked files rather than blaming everyone else on the 'net for their lack of basic security?

You know, simply NOT allowing their staff to send emails full of huge mpg files, or carry out CDRWs full of company assets would seem to be a good idea, would it not? It'd certainly be easier to stop this sort of thing at the source.

Imagine if the mints (places that "make" money - not the sweets) had security this lax? Everyone in the country would be a potential criminal. Mind you, the RIAA already think this, so...

Maybe the movie industry really *isn't* worried...

[SimplyCosmic]

... maybe they deliberately leaked it, knowing full well that the extra hype would only help the movie, the fanatics would still go to the movie theater to see it ten times and would buy all six versions of the DVD, even after seeing it from a downloaded P2P copy.

[ conspiracy mode ]

Additionally, intentionally releasing a relatively clean copy of a movie that they know will be heavily traded provides them a great bullet point in presentations to Congress about how those eterrorist hackers are trading complete movies online and legislation needs to be immediately enacted to give them full search-and-seizure rights to your computer.

[ /conspiracy mode ]

Re:"The Two Towers"

[bourne]

Please expand on this. Who is "they", and what are your sources?

Following the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, and because of the similarity between the buildings' nickname, "The Twin Towers", and the movie's title, "The Two Towers", the director and producers briefly considered renaming the second movie in the trilogy. They eventually decided against it, Peter Jackson's main reason being that, "fans would kill me".

From IMDB, the Internet Movie DataBase.

Salivating Thieves: Stealing A Movie Not Fair Use

[reallocate]

For all you who imagine that electronic shoplifting is somehow different than walking into a local shop and pocketing a DVD, here's the text of the fair use clause from the U.S. copyright law. You will notice that "wanting to see a movie prior to release" is not listed as an example of fair use.

...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.