A student in Ireland has seen The Phantom Menace, even though it doesn't open in Europe for another month. He watched it on his PC.
The student, who uses Zero as his nom-de-Net, told Wired News Thursday that he and some friends came across a huge, MPEG-format digital video in their routine scouring of Net sites and forums for free content.
"The quality is surprisingly good," Zero said by email.
Read more Star Wars coverage - - - - - -
Zero and his pals found two different sources for what they say is the same file. One source was an unnamed Czechoslovakian Internet site with various files available for download. The other was a participant in an Internet Relay Chat channel, who offered to transfer the film to any Europeans participating in the chat.
Zero said he has no plans for further distribution of the film, for fear of piracy violations. But he suspects the video is making the rounds with great speed.
"On the Net, anything obtained is public domain," he said. "And a large number of copies are instantly distributed to friends."
The discovery follows news that Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace appeared on pirated video discs in the Portuguese-run territory of Macau this week, just a week after its release in US theaters.
The online version of the film is in MPEG format and was reportedly filmed in a cinema using a camcorder, Zero said. It is 1.3 gigabytes, and separated into two pieces for what would be an extremely lengthy download: One file is 720 MB, and the other is 580 MB.
Zero, who declined to say where he lives, said he has received more than 20 requests for a copy of the video since publicizing it on an Irish discussion forum. The requests have come mainly from his online acquaintances. Since the video is stored on his shared school network, he suspects others on the network have accessed the file as well.
Zero said he has watched the video in its entirety.
"In this college we call it ABS syndrome -- Anything But Study," he said. "Seeing as I'm in the middle of exams I watched it last night."
