Rooting for Juno to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards this Sunday? Or Atonement? You can always watch them both again and decide: Nearly every film nominated for an Oscar is available for download in a DVD-quality format from popular file-sharing networks like Mininova and isoHunt.
Andy Baio, author of tech media blog Waxy.org, tracks the release of pirated Ocscar-nominated films. Baio notes that pirated copies of 148 out of the 151 films selected for an Academy Award from 2003 to 2007 have cropped up online.
"Virtually every Oscar-nominated film is available in DVD quality online by the time of the show," said Baio in an IM conversation.
"Nearly 100 percent every year."
Baio collects information from public sites that track releases of pirated films to assemble his insanely detailed spreadsheets. According to Baio, only five of this year's 34 Oscar-nominated films have yet to leak in a high-quality format: August Rush, Enchanted, Diving Bell and the
Butterfly, The Savages and There Will Be Blood.
Calling all Underwire fans! If there were a Most Wired Film category, what movie would you nominate to win?
While you can submit as many nominees as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.
