Did Miramax Give Torrent Seeker A Free Movie Ticket?

from the odder-things-have-happened... dept

Tue, Apr 14th 2009 3:33pm — Mike Masnick

Really not sure what to make of this one, but people keep submitting it, so might as well put it out there to see what people think: apparently, a girl in NY complained on Twitter that she couldn't find the movie Adventureland online to download as a torrent, and Miramax (which put out the film), Twittered back telling her that she shouldn't download it (and, in a slightly creepy way, included the hashtag #fbi). The girl supposedly wrote back: "Okay I won’t, JUST FOR YOU," at which point, Miramax promised her two free tickets to the movie (though, in the end, she supposedly only got one).

What's odd is that the reactions among submitters has gone to both extremes -- with one group finding it freaky and suggesting that it would piss off fans of the movie -- while others actually found it oddly humanizing and endearing by Miramax (though... pretty much everyone felt that the whole FBI reference could have been left aside). I'm leaning a bit towards the latter option. As I noted when the Wolverine leak happened, studios are never going to be able to stop unauthorized file sharing, but they might as well figure out ways to act cool about it, and leverage it to their best advantage. It's not clear which side of that line Miramax is on right now... but hopefully it closer to acting cool, rather than acting as a creepy stalker.

Filed Under: adventureland, downloads, movies, twitter
Companies: miramax, twitter

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Archer, 14 Apr 2009 @ 4:58pm

hmmm
IF this is true, then i think it's awesome that miramax did that. now i understand they can't do that for everyone, but i think it shows that miramax may be a step ahead of the rest of the mpaa. hopefully miramax is starting to realize that movies theaters cost to damn much.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt, 14 Apr 2009 @ 5:02pm

lies
magically there's no link to this on the twitter account
people just suck up to the hype.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
MAtt, 14 Apr 2009 @ 5:03pm

clarification
What I mean is, there's no way to verify, or who this amanda is, or why this was decided to have sooo much press, etc.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
krharrison, 14 Apr 2009 @ 7:11pm

I don't think it was cool...
Miramax lost it for me when they used the #fbi hashtag. This wasn't the first one they used.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=miramaxfilms+%23fbi

One tweet says "Wow, you really want to admit that. You can't delete tweets you know. #fbi"

Another: "miramaxfilms: @theoisjonesing cmon man, don't tell us your going to be a pirate. #adventureland #fbi"

Why not find out why they feel the need to use torrents instead of vaguely threatening to turn you in.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anon, 14 Apr 2009 @ 7:38pm

"Miramax lost it for me"

Get over yourself. It's all out in the open, the #fbi seems tongue in cheek since the FBI can search for 'torrent' themselves. A tweet hash tag is not a damn bat signal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2009 @ 7:58pm

Amanda doesn't seem to think that Miramax' usage of the #FBI tag was threatening, so I don't know why we should. I saw this yesterday or the day before on Wired, and immediately thought about Mike's comments on Wolverine, and how Miramax was turning a possible negative into a positive. When you've got a limited budget to spend on entertainment, and you've got a choice to see a film from a studio with a good rep vs one running the MPAA party line, which way are you going to go? I'd assume most folks would go with the "good guys", unless the other film was just head and shoulders above the first one. So Miramax spends a few bucks on a ticket, and receives MUCH more than a ticket's price worth of goodwill AND free positive advertising (and since Amanda's from NY, perhaps the tickets cost twice what they do elsewhere, so she could only get one, wouldn't surprise me).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- nasch, 15 Apr 2009 @ 12:04pm
  
  Re:
  I would assume most people pay little or no attention to what studio releases the movie. I could be wrong though.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Friends who seed are friends indeed, 2 May 2009 @ 10:06pm

Two Tickets?
These kinds of 'threats' make people want to download all the more, thank God for aXXo torrents...
(please put some more up buddy)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bruno Movie, 2 Jul 2009 @ 11:08pm

Bruno
Can't wait to watch this film! :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]