Oscar nominations lead to greater piracy: report

Just as a Grammy nomination can lead to a boost in CD sales or a Nobel Prize for literature will give consumers pause to consider buying an author's books, announcing the nominees for the Academy Awards will lead to a spike in interest...on torrent sites.

An Irdeto study published this week shows that there was a 385% increase in global piracy rates for those films that received an Oscar nomination on January 15. Irdeto, which specializes in helping content owners minimize the impact of piracy, monitored illegal downloading activity in over 200 countries from January 1 until February 14 and found that this spike and the continuing growth in popularity was a global phenomenon.

The top 10 countries excluding the US, for illegally downloading this year's Oscar nominated films are Russia, Italy, the UK, Brazil, Canada, India, Australia, Spain, South Korea and the Netherlands. Visitors to bit torrent sites in those countries alone accounted for over 3 million downloads. And, when the figures are represented in terms of number of internet users per country, Australia has the highest concentration of illegal downloaders, followed by Italy and Greece.

As for which films are the biggest hits with visitors to torrenting sites, "Selma" saw the biggest increase -- 1033% -- in downloads following its nomination for best picture, with "American Sniper" (230%) a distant second.

However, based on sheer numbers of downloads globally, "American Sniper" is head and shoulders above the competition. It has been downloaded 1.38 million times globally since its nomination compared with just 144,075 times for "Selma." In fact, Clint Eastwood's biopic was the most commonly torrented film in 100 of the countries surveyed.

If the Academy Awards were decided in this way then, according to Irdeto, "America Sniper" would scoop the statutes for Best Picture and for Best Actor for Bradley Cooper's performance.

Best Director would go Alejandro González Iñárritu for "Birdman," which has been downloaded 796,697 times since its nomination and British star Rosamund Pike would pick up the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in "Gone Girl" (downloaded 1.25 million times between January 15 and February 14).

And while the source of a pirated film can be down to a shared ripped DVD copy or of course someone sneaking a video camera into a cinema, a pirated version of a film on the Bit Torrent network is more likely to have started out life as a "screener" -- the copies of films handed out by studios to judging panels -- be they for the Oscars or Golden Globes.

Just under one third -- 31% -- of pirated copies were taken from theses screener discs, making them second only to retail DVD or Blu Ray discs (34%). In comparison only 11% of the movies in the study were pirated by filming at a cinema with a camera.

Some consumers are born pirates but Irdeto's findings also highlight that watching an illegal copy of a film can simply be down to the fact that in a country outside the US, that is the only way of being able to watch a film.

"Our data clearly shows that the rest of the world is paying attention to the Academy Awards and there is significant demand for new movies to be available earlier, in more geographies and over more platforms," said Rory O'Connor, VP Services, Irdeto and the company's global expert on online piracy and countermeasures. "In the world of internet re-distribution, the window between theatrical release and worldwide market availability may simply be too long, leaving room for pirates to take advantage and offer consumers alternative means of instant gratification. Today's consumers simply refuse to wait to access these movies through legitimate services."