American Sniper would win best picture and Birdman’s Alejandro Inarritu best director if the Oscars were determined by online piracy rates, a study says.It suggests being nominated in one of the four major categories has a particularly profound effect on illegal downloads of indie and art house films.The authors suggest that producers of such movies become more flexible about how and when their titles are released.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31535132Also see:Oscar Nominations Massively Boosted Pirate Downloads
While Oscar buzz is great for movie sales, not everyone prefers to pay for their content. According to stats just released by piracy tracking firm Irdeto, illegal downloads of nominated movies increased by 385% following the Academy announcements of January 15.While Hollywood would’ve liked it to remain a secret, news that the majority of Oscar contenders were available online just a day after the Academy’s announcement traveled fast.In anticipation of this eventuality, at the turn of the year piracy monitoring firm Irdeto began tracking dozens of top movies in order to compare the number of downloads before and after the Oscar nominations were made public. Some of the numbers just revealed by the company are eye-watering.
http://torrentfreak.com/oscar-nominations-massively-boosted-pirate-downloads-150219/