Despite unprecedented copyright enforcement measures from Disney, at least one cammed version of the new Star Wars movie has circulated online, less than a week after the film's release.
I found a cammed version with a Spanish opening crawl and English dialog being seeded by about 6,000 people as of this morning. It's watermarked "www.thunderftp.net," is slightly angled, and has moderately distorted sound.
Disney billed its preparations as the "greatest anti-piracy effort in the history of cinema": files were delivered to exhibitors in two parts, one being a special decryption key, and some cinemas used armed guards and metal-detectors to root out cammers. Many amphitheaters were patrolled by ushers with night-scopes.
The movie itself has blown through all box-office records and is on track to be the most profitable film in history.
George Lucas intended the original Star Wars trilogy to be an allegory about the Vietnam war, and every episode of the original trilogy (as well as the new installment) features a battle between under-resourced, scrappy rebels who're overmatched by an unimaginably powerful, authoritarian adversary that deploys overwhelming force at groups and individuals that dare to defy it.
Apparently, the irony of this has been lost on Disney, but I think it would be naive to assume it was lost on the cammers. My guess is that the person who snuck a camera past the metal-detectors and gun-toting security, evaded the infrared surveillance of the surveillance-troopers in the cinema and released the cleaned up movie to a scrappy band of plucky rebels felt like a nascent Jedi, smuggling Death Star plans out through a brave little droid.
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS HAS ALREADY HIT PIRATING SITES
[Clinton Matos/Htxt.Africa]
