The most awaited Marvel movie couldn't escape being a victim of piracy

• The CAM print of the upcoming Marvel movie, Avengers: Endgame was spotted on the piracy website, Tamilrockers before its release
• More pirated versions of the movie were also shared on BitTorrent, a P2P file sharing service, after the movie officially launched in China.
• A Russia-based gambling website, 1XBet, has also been spotted sponsoring a cleaner RIP of Avengers: Endgame.

The finale to Marvel’s Avengers movie line-up is one of the most awaited movies ever with first day collection from the box office in India pegged to reach ₹500 million — the highest ever for a Hollywood film in the country. But, Avengers: Endgame still couldn’t escape being a victim of piracy and the repercussions are worldwide.

Eight moviegoers were caught in Malaysia for trying to secretly film Avengers: Endgame on their phones. The country’s movie halls are being extremely vigilant to avoid piracy. Officials from the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs were present at the movie hall to remind attendees to not break any rules.

Officers were also assigned to carry out spot checks in 21 halls at GSC cinemas in Kuala Lumpur. In case somebody managed to slip past them, there’s a hotline number to report people trying to illegally film the movie. If found guilty, they will be fined up to 100,000 Malaysians Ringgits and face jail time extending to 5 years.

Before the film even launched, a CAM print copy of the movie was available on Tamilrockers, a piracy website.

Once the movie launched in China yesterday, TorrentFreak reported a surge in pirated copies — between 1.2GB to 2GB in size— of the movie being shared on servers in the country. What started as P2P file share on Thunder, a Chinese torrent client, soon spread to English-language torrent networks like BitTorrent.

The decision to release Avengers: Endgame early in China was a conscious choice by Marvel Studios to combat the problem of piracy in China according to media reports, which obviously didn’t do the trick.

Some American conservatives even support the leak because they don't appreciate Disney treating China as a 'premiere priority'.

An improved version of the pirated copy and a bigger file size of 3.6GB hit the internet a little later, sponsored by a Russia-based gambling website, 1XBet — it has sponsored pirated promo screeners of TV shows in the past.

But, in all the cases, the frame isn’t straight and the audio, despite claiming to be TS — direct audio — is staggered with plenty of background noises in the mix. Even the video itself is a tilted screen.

Keeping those factors in mind, it’s unlikely that box office sales will be affected since people who actually want to enjoy the movie will probably want to watch it without spraining their neck.

Joe Russo, the direction of Avengers: Endgame, had previously requested fans to not spoil the movie but those efforts have met minimal fruition.


Keeping pirates movies aside, even Reddit users are undermining that goal by sharing the details of the movie plot on various threads. A video clip filled with spoilers was also shared across Reddit as well as Twitter last week.

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