Star Wars Downloads: Free Publicity You Have
from the leaking-good dept
What do you get when add the biggest movie release of the year to the tale of unauthorized file sharing? Apparently the biggest file sharing story of the year. News outlets are agog that someone "leaked" the studio print of the latest Star Wars movie, which a few thousand people are now sharing online. This is bad ostensibly for the same reasons the entertainment industry frowns on all unauthorized sharing and piracy: it's taking money out of the studio's coffers. But really, does anyone think that the die-hard Star Wars geeks who are downloading the film will not go see it in theaters? Or buy more stuff like DVDs, video games, and the occasional Chewbacca novelty suit? If anything, free distribution to a just handful of avid fans will only add to the positive buzz and already impressive revenues. Color us conspiracy theorists, but we wouldn't be surprised if the "leak" was intentionally done for this purpose. It makes perfect sense. The bootlegged movie is reaching only a limited audience that will go see it anyway, it's already getting good reviews, and the "piracy" story is getting the studio tons of free publicity. Maybe this is a case where Hollywood has actually caught on to the value of free content. Nah, that'll never happen.
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No Subject Given by Karl on May 20th, 2005 @ 1:32pm
"the occasional Chewbacca novelty suit"
Very nice. :)
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Re: No Subject Given by Anonymous Coward on May 20th, 2005 @ 3:01pm
the workprint that is out is said to be of very poor quality. Also, the workprint source was given to a number of groups that traffic in pirated movies.
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Re: No Subject Given by Anonymous Coward on May 20th, 2005 @ 4:06pm
Yea, it looked pretty crappy from the screenshot on gizmodo. I'll wait for the DVD ;-)
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They already do this to a limited extent. by Anonymous Coward on May 20th, 2005 @ 8:56pm
We're are talking about providing content for free to get people to go the theater.
How about releasing trailers online? Or even a music video based on the movie...
-cmh
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Re: No Subject Given by Anonymous Coward on May 21st, 2005 @ 9:27am
It is pretty crappy. I saw two clips from it. A sample posted on boing boing and a clip my buddy made of Anakin and his PSP.
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That $150M could have been more! by Joe Baderderm on May 23rd, 2005 @ 10:06am
So, that leaked copy really hurt Sith's BO take this weekend. Do the math, if 10,000 people downloaded the movie and decided to stay home because of that (and not b/c they wanted to avoid sitting next to stinky Chewbacca suit dude) and that person could have accounted for a $10 ticket and maybe $15 in food sales (though it's semi-likely this person would sneak food in), that's not much in total sales that they are missing out on in relation to the total weekend take. And compare that to the 30 second blurbs on the news about the stolen copy being leaked, how much is free publicity worth?
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Re: No Subject Given by da man on May 29th, 2005 @ 9:27am
your a fukin helfy poofyter man n if i find ye im gna plug utter fuk oot ye
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by León on Nov 19th, 2007 @ 4:34pm
hola necesito el star wars
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