LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood's greatest fear became a reality on Tuesday as film industry officials said a digital version of an Oscar "screener" was seen on the Internet after months of industry squabbling over whether sending out the videos to Academy Award voters would lead to movie piracy.

A copy of Sony Pictures Entertainment's "Something's Gotta Give" that was sent to an Oscar voter was found to be downloadable from the Internet to a home PC, a spokesman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, said.

"Sony let us know late last week that one had appeared on the Internet," Academy spokesman John Pavlik told Reuters.

Source: Reuters

We all know the MPAA finally woke up, just like the RIAA did. I hate to say it, but what the MPAA is doing (stopping screeners from going out for voting) is not the solution to the problem. It is not going to stop screeners from appearing online. We are just hearing a lot of news about screeners because the MPAA finally got smart.

The MPAA needs to take another note from the "lets act like the RIAA" handbook and sell movies online. And guess what? MPEG 4 has DRM built into it! We finally have a lot of options to legally get music online, we now need a legal way of getting movies online. How long will it be before the movie industry has movies available for purchase online? My guess? It will be a while.

Thanks to dad for the link!

Originally posted on Breaking Windows.