File sharing: more Oscar-contending pics end up online
Hollywood has improved at delaying pirates from posting illegal copies of Oscar-nominated films on the Internet. The bad news is that eventually a higher percentage of nominated films end up on the Web.
Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer, says he has tracked when pirated copies of Oscar-nominated films appear on the Web for the past six years. He has logs whether the copies were recorded with handheld cameras or copied from DVDs.
A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade representing the largest film studios declined to comment directly on Baio's research. She did say that typically 90 percent of pirated movies that appear online come from camcorders.
She suggested that camcorded copies are often of inferior viewing quality than those copied from DVDs.
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