Pirates 'streaming' Hollywood's latest into your home
British cinema goers will have to wait until it opens next week to see if The Curious Case of Benjamin Button deserves the Oscar and Bafta nominations showered upon it. But thousands of people across the UK have already watched the film on their computers at home, thanks to the latest internet piracy phenomenon: live "streaming" of movies on YouTube-style websites.
Film piracy watchdogs are so concerned about the rapidly expanding phenomenon that they have now launched a major clampdown.
Films not yet released in this country, such as Marley & Me, with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, or Revolutionary Road, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, can be seen on sites such as Watch-Movies. net, which operate in the grey area of copyright law. The films have already been released in other countries, where they are copied, mainly by camcorder in a cinema.
