Movie studios hate piracy. That’s obvious. It’s basically people stealing their work. What they really hated was their Oscar screeners getting leaked out and having people watch all those great movies for free.

But things are changing. Former Kickstarter CTO Andy Baio has been tracking Oscar screener data for the past 10 years and has found that Hollywood is winning the battle against pirates on that front. In 2003, it took a median average of 1 day for Oscar screeners to leak. In 2012, the median average is 22 days.

But, this doesn’t mean that they are winning the war. 92 percent of the nominated films are available as high quality DVD or Blu Ray rips. Baio points out that this indicates that Hollywood has nothing to do with less screeners getting leaked out. Instead, it looks like the nominated films are widely available on DVD or Blu Ray before they become screeners, so people rip those off instead.

Is there a solution to stopping leaked Oscar screeners or pirated films in general? The only real way is to embrace services like Netflix and VOD. Netflix, people will buy into and subscribe. VOD needs a suitable price point. $4 to rent a movie digitally is pretty high. Buying prices are nearly the same as owning the physical media, so what’s the difference there? [Andy Baio via Boing Boing]

mpaa, oscar screeners, piracy