Three weeks ago a high quality leak of the The Expendables 3 film appeared online. The movie is supposed to release on Friday, August 14th. At least 2.5 million people have already watched The Expendables 3. It is Hollywood’s biggest piracy leak since 2009, when an incomplete version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked online before the movie was released.
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“The studios have put a lot of protections in the entire production process, that’s why this type of leak is very rare,” said an expert on Hollywood movie piracy.
The first and second Expendables films grossed $103 million and $85 million, respectively. Due to a massive loss in revenue, movie studio Lionsgate sued the owners of six websites that failed to remove the infringing files – Limetorrents.com, Billionuploads.com, Hulkfile.eu, Played.to, Swankshare.com and Dotsemper.com.
“Hulkfile.eu is no longer accessible in the U.S. and will shut down completely soon. We can’t keep building our business on the weak base the preliminary injunction left us with,” Hulkfile’s operator says.
Hulkfile also claims that Lionsgate could have easily taken down the links themselves if they would have used the site’s removal tool, but Lionsgate’s takedown partner MarkMonitor didn’t show any interest in using the tool.
