Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, an
independent journalist and programmer living in
Portland, Oregon. I created Every year, the Academy tries to stop Oscar films from leaking online. And every year, they leak all the same. I've been tracking Oscar piracy since 2004, but I've decided to up the ante, releasing all the underlying data and extending it to 2003. Six years of Oscar piracy data on all 186 nominated films from 2003 to 2008 -- including US release dates for Academy screeners, cams, telesyncs, R5/telecines, screener leaks and retail DVD rips -- can all be viewed or downloaded below.
Download: Excel (with formulas)
Download: CSV
This year, all but six of the 34 nominated films were available in DVD quality by the last week of January. This is about consistent with past years, but we're seeing a shift towards studios releasing DVDs closer to their theatrical date. This trend, combined with the new availability of high-quality Region 5 rips from overseas, is making the screener leak less meaningful. After all, why bother releasing the screener if the retail DVD or a direct-from-film transfer is already out?
Collecting this data took me all day, so I'm going to publish my analysis and pretty charts tomorrow. Update: Here's Part 2, with my analysis and charts.
Sources
- Yahoo! Movies for USA release dates.
- Ken Rudolph's wonderful list of official Academy screener dates. Thanks, Ken!
- VCD Quality and NFOrce for scene releases data. I used NFOogle for meta-searching all the NFO sites.
11:25 PM
Fantastic work! I am surprised that there is no DVD quality leak for There Will Be Blood. I guess there's still time before the show airs.
11:26 PM
I wish I could recall where I read it, but recently I read about a movie's screener piracy having negligible effect on release day. That in itself isn't surprising, but the director himself admitted as much.
5:33 AM
There's a "DVD Quality" telecine of there will be blood, but it's missing about 5 minutes.
Also the DVD of Michael Clayton came out yesterday, before that it was a VHS quality screener.
7:23 AM
Where's The Savages?
7:37 AM
CharlesV: I list the date for the There Will Be Blood telecine in there because it hasn't been nuked yet. If they nuke it, I'll remove it.
anonymous: The Savages hasn't leaked yet in any form. Let me know if you find something.
7:41 AM
No DVD screener of "There Will Be Blood" was send to Academy members. They have to go out and see it on the big screen.
7:45 AM
mare: Not true. Ken Rudolph, an Academy member, received his DVD screener on December 20. This date was in my spreadsheet under "Screener Release."
10:15 AM
i thought it would pertain not so much to the actual dates copies were released but more with, how many people downloaded before it was nominated, after it was nominated, after oscar night if there was a giant increase as a result of a nomination or even a win. whether though hampering the industry bringing more masses to watching good stuff and hopefully that 1 out of 10 people that may never have seen it, watch it, like it so much and then decide to buy it. digital files ain't never going to be as sexy as a rack of dvds!
11:23 AM
I’ve read a few reports on insider piracy over the years, and I have done nothing but procrastinate writing a post about how caption/subtitle/dubbing/audio-description houses are a prime *potential* source of such materials. If you look around, you’ll find a captioner (hint: its name has the initials NCI) that ostensibly lost contracts because it sent work outside L.A. even after being contractually obligated not to do that. Send something out of house and you lose control over it. If that house sends it to another house, you’ve lost control twice over.
11:54 AM
last i checked its not illegal for me to make a private copy for myself off my pvr.
NOW there also is no law that says i cant take out the commecials too. They are in fact not part of the show and as such your not modifying the show.
NOW gt over your selves. everyone is doing it its only natural id like a better more pro copy instead of having to tape it myself and spend the 3-5 hrs doing this crap.
Whats the diff of say YOU doing it and me getting it epsecially when i can watch ALL KNOWN tv on my sat?
NONE and zero cost to industry , once again, control freaks and greedy jerks.
2:33 PM
Interesting idea that releasing the DVD sooner gives less incentive to pirate the screener versions. I wonder if this is intentional on the part of studios, or just a case of changing market conditions giving an unexpected benefit.
1:07 PM
The non-sequential American-style dating makes it a real chore to parse the info.
1:19 PM
Ah, sorry about that. You can change the date format to whatever you like using Excel's Format->Cells formatting options. It only takes a couple seconds.
5:49 PM
Diving Bell is available on French retail DVD with ENG srt files.
There Will Be Blood DVDSCR is available now.
2:43 AM
Hey just a quick tip, perhaps if you freeze the top few rows (up to and including the row with Title, Oscar, etc.) and freeze the left column, the spreadsheet will be a little easier to work with.
8:29 AM
It's funny, Google Docs recently added support for freezing rows and columns, but it looks like it only affects editing spreadsheets. The embedded spreadsheets, exported HTML spreadsheets, and Excel exports don't have the frozen cells at all.
5:21 PM
Oh, that's a shame. They need to get on that. Great worksheet, though. It's definitely very interesting.
Just out of curiosity, do you check Joox.net when looking for leaked DVD screeners? I know that's always a source.
5:36 PM
No, because the releases eventually end up in one of the NFO databases anyway.