Expendables 3 Leaks Online, 100K+ Copies Down in Hours

[Ernesto]

You’d have to be enjoying a Mars residency not to know that all big (and most small) movies get leaked online. If it’s available in a cinema, someone, somewhere will have a copy in a matter of days and it’s just a question of when, not if, it appears on the Internet.



As such, these events aren’t particularly big news but every now and again one comes along to make people sit up and listen. Several hours ago, July 24, 2014, marked one such notable leaking event.

Featuring every action hero known to man, from Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Jason Statham and Jet Li, to UFC stars Randy Couture and Ronda Rousey, Expendables 3 was always going to be a hit. However, the plan was to have it become a hit on the big screen before breaking into the home market.

That is not going to happen. Around twelve hours ago, a near perfect copy of The Expendables 3 appeared online and it’s already a smash hit with home audiences.

Screenshot from the leak

Figures gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more than 100,000 people have downloaded the presumed ‘DVD screener’ copy using BitTorrent alone, and at one point in excess of 65,000 users were engaged in transfers on a single torrent.

These stats push the leak well ahead of the initial pre-release popularity of the infamous X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak back in 2009 and once the news begins to spread today, things are only going to get worse.

Needless to say, the folks at distributor Lionsgate are going to be absolutely furious. While ‘cams’ are an annoyance, most movie-goers won’t want to destroy the movie experience by watching them. High-quality copies like this one are a different matter altogether and the soaring download numbers are a testament to that.

No blurry cams here, high-quality all the way

So who is behind the leak? At this stage it’s impossible to point the finger at the person who obtained the DVD copy. However, we can take a look at who brought the copy to the wider public Internet.

When leaks come from a so-called ‘Scene’ source it’s possible to track the copy at least as far back as the group that placed it online but with so-called P2P releases, as is the case with Expendables 3, that’s not quite so easy. However, the initial and most popular copy appears to be attributable to an entity known as Drarbg.

Drarbg has accounts on several major torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, and is one of the most prolific BitTorrent releasers online today. Many presume that this is a single person, but Drarbg has previously indicated that it’s a group of individuals working together as a team. Drarbg, as the name suggests, has affiliations with RARBG, a popular public torrent site.

It seems likely that this high-profile, high-quality leak will become a talking point in the hours, weeks and months to come and will probably be seized upon as a prime example of why piracy crackdowns are needed. However, there is also another angle to be aware of.

Nu Image, the production company behind all three Expendables titles, sued previous downloaders of its titles. Will history repeat itself? Time will tell….

Associated Link and Download info

Originally Published: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 08:26:56 +0000
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[Ernesto]

Stallone “Sad” at Expendables 3 Leak But Kellan Lutz Upbeat

The worldwide roller-coaster for The Expendables 3 continues to grab headlines and the movie hasn’t even been released yet. Normally that kind of situation would be coveted by movie makers, but the leak of the movie last month has put a different complexion on matters.

Last evening stars of the show were treading the red carpet in advance of the movie’s world premiere at the Odeon in Leceister Square, London, and of course questions turned to the inevitable topic.

Sylvester Stallone, who plays Expendables leader Barney Ross, was the first to be questioned. The 68-year-old said that while piracy leaves him sad, for some it had become a habit.

“That makes me feel really sad, but you know I understand that a lot of people have accepted that’s kind of a way of life,” Stallone said.

But while Stallone expressed disappointment, he also suggested that as a big star he probably wouldn’t be so affected. Others would, however.

“I think it’s unfortunate because it isn’t about me, i’m ok, but there’s thousands of people that won’t make movies. They won’t get a chance because they’ve lost a lot of money, that’s the trouble,” the star said.

Interestingly, another star of the movie viewed the leak in a more positive light. Kellan Lutz, who plays former Navy Seal John Smilee, said that while people are downloading illegally, that try-before-you-buy would lead them to still purchase theater tickets.

“So for the people who downloaded it, I actually think they’re gonna wanna watch it in the theaters because it’s a good movie,” Lutz said.

“They’re gonna watch it online, then they’ll be like ‘I gotta watch this in theaters now’, because all the one-liners that kind of go under-layered throughout the action, you just can’t hear that on a little iPad or computer,” the 29-year-old noted.

But while Lutz was looking on the bright side, Lionsgate continued to work flat-out behind the scenes in what they see as a damage limitation exercise.

As reported yesterday, the company has been issuing thousands of takedowns to remove unauthorized links to the movie online. This is in addition to legal action being taken against several torrent and other file-sharing sites.


Originally Published: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 11:05:20 +0000
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[Ernesto]

Over the past few weeks movie studio Lionsgate has rolled out an unprecedented anti-piracy campaign to stop people from sharing leaked copies of The Expendables 3.

Aside from dragging six file-sharing sites to court, Lionsgate sent out hundreds of thousands of takedown notices to websites that linked to pirated copies of the leaked movie.

As a result all traces of the movie were completely wiped from many file-sharing sites. However, the movie studio still isn’t satisfied and is now going after individual downloaders as well.

Lionsgate has started sending takedown notices targeting people sharing the movie via BitTorrent. The notices are being sent to various ISPs who are urged to forward them to the customers whose accounts were monitored sharing the movie.

Interestingly, this also includes those who use remote servers known as BitTorrent seedboxes. While many believe that seedboxes keep them safe from the prying eyes of piracy monitoring firms, this is not always the case. Yesterday, a customer of the Canadian seedbox provider Whatbox received the following notice.

Copyright warning

Via an email Whatbox urged the customer to delete the file in question, or face account suspension.

“A copyright complaint has been received for content existing on your account. To prevent account suspension, please delete the affected content within the next 24 hours,” the notice reads.

TorrentFreak contacted Whatbox, who explained that this takedown procedure is standard policy. As an Internet access provider it properly processes all incoming requests form copyright holders.

“When we receive a notice we check for the infohash and email the appropriate customer asking them to remove the file(s). Nothing is passed along to the copyright enforcement group except to confirm that the content was found and subsequently removed,” Anthony Ryan of Whatbox says.

“If a customer causes a large number of copyright complaints, we reserve the right terminate their service with a prorated refund and 24 hours of complimentary service to backup all their non-infringing files,” Ryan adds.

The above notice confirms that Lionsgate’s takedown efforts are now targeting individual downloaders, through their ISPs. The action appears limited to warning letters and at least for now there are no signs that Lionsgate will drag file-sharers to court.

Nu Image, another studio involved in the production of The Expendables 3, hasn’t taken any legal action either. However, they are more familiar with the topic than Lionsgate, as they sued a record breaking 23,322 U.S. Internet users for downloading a copy of the first Expendables film.

To be continued?

Originally Published: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:30:53 +0000
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