After much humming and hawing, Sony released The Interview to the internet yesterday, charging $6 for the privilege of seeing a CGI Kim Jong-Un go pop. And, because this is the internet, hundreds of thousands of people are repaying the favor by torrenting the crap out of it.
According to estimates from TorrentFreak(which are in the same ballpark as figures we’ve worked out), 750,000 people have illegally downloaded The Interview so far. That’s probably a result of it only being released in North America so far, and also the film getting far more press than any mediocre comedy rightfully deserves.
As you’d expect, big torrent websites (like the recently-resurrected Pirate Bay) have put the movie front and center, with links showing up on the homepage. At the moment, the most popular torrents have around 60,000 seeds each. Bet that offer from BitTorrent to work out a worldwide paid distribution isn’t looking so bad now. [TorrentFreak]
