Some Interesting Data on Oscar-Nominees and Piracy

Andy Baio looks at how quickly the 2009 Oscar nominees showed up online in pirated form.

Baio writes:

Out of 26 nominated films, an incredible 23 films are already available in DVD quality on nomination day, ripped either from the Oscreeners or the retail DVDs. This is the highest percentage since I started tracking.

Only three films are unavailable — 'Rachel Getting Married' wasn't leaked online in any form, while 'Changeling' is only available as a low-quality telecine transfer and Australia as a terrible quality camcorder recording. (Update: A DVD screener of 'Australia' was just leaked today.)

...Surprisingly, it seems like this year's Oscar movies took longer to leak online than in previous years. If I had to guess, it's because far fewer camcorder copies were released for this year's nominees. This could be because of the theaters cracking down on camcorder recordings, but I suspect it's because fewer nominees were desirable targets this year for cams.