Marvel’s Thor Ragnarok (which you can read our review of here.) was due it be released digitally on February 19th. However, some kind of blunder at Apple means that people using MoviesAnywhere and Vudu were offered it for immediate download via iTunes. Copies are now all over the Internet and getting pirated at a furious rate according to an article by notorious pirating news website TorrentFreak.
While it is not unusual for movies to get leaked to the internet at this time of year, but it’s usually done via the online pirating groups with the upcoming Oscar nominated movies via DVD screeners released to the Academy voters. The other method is usually the Hong Kong digital marketplace, where Chinese subtitled movies appear about a month before Western release. It’s rare for a digital movie to be leaked almost a month early via an official buying source like iTunes, but it’s happened.
As you can see from the screenshot above, there are nearly 12,000 people seeding (distributing the full file) and almost 7000 leechers (people downloading the film). That’s 20,000 people in the first torrent alone, with close to 60,000 people either sharing or downloading the film in this one screenshot alone… And that’s just one public tracker, it doesn’t include all the private trackers out there.
While this usually would mean millions in lost revenue for the Marvel film if you believe the mainstream media outlets, it probably won’t have much effect on digital or physical sales of the film. While Thor Ragnarok is now out there in close to 1080p quality for free, a lot of these same people will in fact be grabbing the bluray or 4K release of Thor Ragnarok when it finally arrives in those formats in late February 2018. Despite what the media outlets will tell you, a majority of people who download a film like this are doing it for a long term digital backup of their purchase. Doing so themselves is costly and requires people to know the right programs to use (which get changed or shut down as anti-pirating technology advances), as well as the time to sit there and rip the film into the right format. So they turn to professional rippers like these to get their digital copies. (Yes, most Bluray copies these days come with a digital version, but those versions are usually locked to one format, don’t work with all players, and get removed from playback after a window of time has passed)
Disney, who owns the Marvel film rights, has not made any comment on the leak and doesn’t seem to want to make one either.
We here at The Outerhaven do not condone nor encourage piracy for any reason. Please support your local, national and international industries by buying the official product through official sources. Piracy is wrong on all accounts. Please consult your local copyright laws for the use of digital back up of your own media. While torrent technology is usually linked with wrong-doing like this, the technology is actually safe, secure and preferred by a lot of top companies like Blizzard Entertainment for the faster delivery of patches.
