Sony denies 'Spider-Man 3' pirated

Updated: The movie 'Spider-Man 3' has not been pirated, despite reports of copies being sold on the streets in China, claims Sony Pictures Entertainment. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that copies of the movie were on sale in Beijing. However, the news agency later backtracked, saying its reporters had been unable to play a copy that they purchased, and were uncertain whether it was genuine.

“Our investigation in China has revealed no case of the film being pirated to date,” Sony said in a media release today.

In fact, buyers who purchase the black market DVDs are probably being duped, the company claimed.

“We have uncovered examples of Spider-Man 2 being sold in Spider-Man 3 boxes in China. But thus far we can find no instance where Spider-Man 3 has appeared on DVD.”

Sony's investigators also claim they could find no copies of the movie online. We visited several peer-to-peer file sharing websites, and found several files which purport to be copies of the forthcoming Spider-Man movie.

However, large numbers of comments posted by users indicate that these are in fact other movies, including older Spider-Man movies and pornography, which have been deliberately mis-labeled. As most of the pirated movies on sale in countries like China are actually direct copies of movies downloaded from the internet, this evidence appears to support Sony's claim that there are still no pirated copies in circulation. It is impossible to confirm this without downloading the movies, however, as the comments claiming the movies are fake may not be accurate.

The movie was premiered in Tokyo last week, and is slated for release to movie theaters worldwide May 1. Pirated copies of popular movies generally appear online within days of the commercial release. Sometimes pre-release copies leak days or weeks before the official release date.

Update May 4: Several websites that track bit torrent releases are now reporting that at least two pirated versions of the movie are in circulation. These include one low quality subtitled copy apparently videoed illegally in an Asian movie theater, and another higher quality 'telesync' version (this term often refers to a copy videoed directly from a projection screen, possibly in an empty movie theater, with a direct, high-quality sound recording). Sample images posted online, which suggest these are indeed copies of Spider-Man 3, have the characteristic unsaturated colors and poor picture quality of videos recorded straight from a movie projection screen.