The hype for Sony's The Interview is measurable in theater receipts, digital downloads and alarming piracy rates.
Hackers can threaten Sony, leak its private documents, ruin the work lives of hundreds, if not thousands, threaten theater owners with a “9/11-style attack,” and temporarily make us question if our speech is really free. What they can’t do is stifle people like themselves, individuals who have the means to release information because they, for whatever reason, see it as a public service.
The great irony of all this is that perhaps the way most people will see The Interviewis through illegal means. According to Torrent Freak: Data shows that The Interview was downloaded an estimated 200,000 times though piracy websites during the first 10 hours it was available.
They later updated:
The number of estimated downloads had exceeded 750,000 after 20 hours.
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UPDATE 12/30: BitTorrent reached out to Den of Geek to clarify the original report from Torrent Freak. The original report is counting downloads from piracy sites and piracy networks, which use the BitTorrent protocol as part of a stack of technology they are exploiting for piracy, including HTTP, Google, iTunes, and the Internet itself. A spokesperson representing BitTorrent wrote to us: "Unfortunately 'TorrentFreak' is using the term BitTorrent as a euphemism for “Piracy” and that is being interpreted to mean that the infringing content is available 'through BitTorrent.'" We've updated our article and apologize for our error.
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It has been a long road to get here, and it feels like we’ve been covering this story for weeks now, but the hackers intended purpose--to thwart the release of The Interview so that no one could see it--failed. Not only did the film release earlier than expected, it was also more widely available to Americans than its planned nationwide theatrical release. Streaming services like Kernel, YouTube, Xbox Live and others stepped up, uniting with Sony to show that they wouldn’t let the fear of another hack stand in the way of our first amendment right. Smaller theaters chose to show the film and they were rewarded with sold out shows on Christmas Day.
What’s the bottom line here? Fear isn’t going to keep people from the theater. Empty threats won’t halt the distribution of a satirical motion picture. And if you tell Americans they can’t have something, they’ll likely illegally download it anyway. Merry Christmas, and long live consumerism.
Den of Geek Editor Chris Longo is the conductor of the Twitter follow train. Hop on here as he tweets about America.
