When the Oscars roll round every year, the movie industry goes to great lengths to stop nominated movies leaking to the Internet. Every year they fail, miserably. Here is a comprehensive list of piracy stats for all Oscars movies since 2003, from camcorder copies right up to DVD Screeners.



When it’s coming up to Oscars time, the movie industry tries everything in its power to stop nominated movies leaking to the Internet. They go to extraordinary lengths to stop every piracy format – cam, telesync, telecine, region 5 and DVD Screener – from hitting the net. But, their efforts almost universally fail, with most movies leaking in the end.

Some great statistics have now been collected by Waxy, which provides detailed piracy (leaking) data for all of the 185 Oscars nominated movies since 2003, right through to 2008’s batch. The amount of data provided is very impressive, even providing dates when a movie was leaked in cam, telesync, Region5/Telecine, DVD Screener formats.

The stats show that the average length of time before a movie leaked to the Internet (in any format, including ‘cam’) was just a single day in 2003, extending to a peak of 7 days in 2006. By 2008 the term was back to 4 days and over the 2003-2008 period, the average internet leak time was just 3 days.

From the day an official ‘Screener’ copy of the movie should’ve been available, the average time took to leak the movie back in 2003 was a completely unimpressive minus 3 days. So, 3 days before the Oscars screener was sent out to the Academy members, it was already available on the Internet. Again, 2006 saw the greatest success for the movie industry when 16 days passed before a screener was leaked. Over the 2003 to 2008 period, the average screener leak time was 6 days.

The most telling figures are when one looks at the number of movies nominated from 2003 to 2008 – a total of 185 movies. Of these 185, a massive 182 of these leaked to the internet in some way (from ‘cams’ upwards) and a worrying number – 143 – were leaks of ‘Screener’ copies, often leaked to uploaders by industry insiders.

In the vast majority of cases, a DVD or Screener copy of the movie was available for download on Oscar night.

Last year we reported on the OscarTorrents site. The site will not be available again this year as the creators have no time, but they’re promising to be “back next year”. In the meantime (and as usual), the full range of movies will be available at dozens of other torrent sites, right around the world.

The full Waxy spreadsheet is available to view via Google, in Excel format (with formulas) and CSV