Hollywood Robbery

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On Christmas Eve, another copy of Samurai appeared online and was traced back to a screener that had been sent to Oscar voters. Since Warner Bros. gave out only VHS copies, the bootleg was not of great quality. But its existence is an embarrassment after a year of high-profile debate over the risks of screeners — a beloved industry perk. Valenti of the M.P.A.A. had pushed hard to fight piracy by banning all screeners outright. But independent studios complained the ban would penalize small movies trying to get award nominations. In December the U.S. district court overturned the ban. Last week Sony traced a pirated copy of Something's Gotta Give to a screener intended for use by veteran character actor Carmine Caridi, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Last Samurai and other pirated screeners have also been traced back to Caridi, according to a source close to the investigation, though it is not yet clear if Caridi had anything to do with leaking the film.

Studios have been loath to acknowledge their own holes in the security net. A 2003 study led by a group of AT&T researchers found that 77% of online pirated films came from weak links within the movie business itself — from Academy members to critics to cinema projectionists. The report was criticized by studio execs, who found its definition of movie insiders overly broad. Nevertheless, this past year, some studios have started quietly inserting hidden markers in screeners that identify the owners. Under a new pledge, which 80% of Academy members have signed, anyone found to have leaked a screener can be kicked out of the Academy.

So far, Warner Bros. has traced thousands of online Samurai copies and 25 bootlegs from 12 countries to one screener and two camcorder copies. That is not a lot of leaks. But it takes only one. As downloading speeds increase and camcorder technology continues to improve, studios will be forced to put down the night-vision goggles and invent a new business model for a new world. "Nobody believes you're going to dissuade people from downloading," says Garland of BigChampagne. "It's all about co-opting that content and building businesses around it."

Fittingly, The Last Samurai is a movie about men fighting to protect their archaic way of life. Their customs stand no chance of surviving. But the samurai fight on anyway, barreling into battle with their swords drawn against the cannons and artillery guns that boom into the future. At press time, Samurai had earned $98 million in theaters; and according to BigChampagne, about 49,000 copies are bouncing around on the Internet, for free.

— With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles, Matthew Forney/Shanghai, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Joyce Huang/Taipei, Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow, Sara Rajan/New Delhi and Grant Rosenberg/Paris