Pirated copy of ‘The Hurt Locker’ airs on national TV

During the leadup to the Oscars, Belarus’ National State Television decided to show its views some previous Oscar winning films. One of them was The Hurt Locker, which won last years's best picture award. Problem is the version they showed had been downloaded from the BitTorrent site Interfilm.ru –– essentially a priated copy. Interfilm was raided by police in 2009 and it is now involved in a $1.25 billion copyright infringement claim.

The smoking gun is a female voice-over during the film that says, "“This release is created exclusively for interfilm.ru.” This was apparently commonly inserted into movies obtained by Interfilm.

A spokeswoman for Belarus’ National State television said that proper licenses for the film were acquired. The phrase mentioning Interfilm.ru could be a “technical error”, she noted. While you might expect this from college kids, it's pretty wild that a state TV station even in Belarus,  would stoop to this ... or should I say have this type of "technical error". Read more on TorrentFreak.

Hurt Locker Clip with the voice-over