An illegal copy of the hit movie was available on a streaming
website and downloaded more than 3,000 times even before the
official film was screened in the US, according to the Australian
Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). That copy, said to be
the first in the world, was traced to an address in Sydney.
Cooperation among the Australian Federal Police, AFACT and
distributor 20th Century Fox resulted in the removal of the
unauthorised copy within 72 hours of its posting.
AFACT investigators found that the movie had also been re-edited
with an unauthorised French language version, reformatted and
shared using Bittorrent and other peer-to-peer services, resulting
in more than 110,000 downloads.
Adrianne Pecotic, executive director of AFACT, said that more
than 90% of newly-released movies that appear on the internet and
on the streets around the world originate from camcorder
copies.
"The speed and spread of illegal copies across the global
internet as a result of this copy being made from a mobile phone in
a Sydney cinema is staggering," she said.
