Report: The Interview Was Illegally Downloaded 750K Times
According to the copyright blog TorrentFreak, The Interview was illegally downloaded more than 750,000 times over a period of 20 hours following its Christmas Day online release. The movie exceeded 200,000 illegal downloads in just 10 hours.
Ironically, the downloads were allegedly done through BitTorrent, a file-sharing site that had reached out to Sony and offered to distribute the movie. BitTorrent’s Chief Content Officer Matt Mason said it would be “the very best way for Sony to take back control of their film, to not acquiesce to terrorists threats, and to ensure a wide audience can view the film safely.”
Sony agreed the day before Christmas to release the movie for online rental via YouTube, Xbox Live and Google Play after pulling the theatrical release following a series of terrorist threats. The film pulled in a modest $1 million in 300 independent theaters on Christmas Day.
UPDATE — 5:57 p.m. ET: For their part, BitTorrent denies that users were able to download the movie from their site, seeing as the data is a tad sketchy. As a spokesperson told Mediaite via email:
We can not substantiate any claims by the piracy website “TorrentFreak” (the sole source of this information by the way) that 750k illegal downloads of “The Interview” have taken place since the movie’s release. But we can state emphatically that this is not available “on BitTorrent” or from a “BitTorrent network.”
Wherever the data is taken from, it is counting downloads from piracy sites and piracy networks. They are exploiting the BitTorrent protocol as part of a stack of technology they are exploiting for piracy, including HTTP, Google, iTunes, and the Internet itself. Unfortunately “TorrentFreak” is using the term BitTorrent as a euphemism for “Piracy” and that is being interpreted by your editorial team to mean that the infringing content is available “through BitTorrent.”
[h/t The Hill]
[Image via screengrab]
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