The Force Awakens Leaks Online to Pirate Sites

Just two weeks ahead of its official digital and blu-ray release date, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been leaked online to pirate sites and is already being downloaded at a record rate…

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As per the usual with most big-budget movies, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been hit by the pirate bug. Just a mere two weeks away from the home release of the digital and Blu-ray/DVD release of the film on April 1st and 5th, and pirate sites (of which we refuse to link to) have the film up for Blu-ray quality downloads.

According to Variety, in just 12 hours, more than 250, 000 people have downloaded the film. And, while there were some potato cam (lower quality version) versions of the film that hit pirate sites just days after the film was released in theaters, this latest piracy debacle, seems to be HD quality and legit:

"“Lower-quality “cam” rips of “Force Awakens” cropped up on pirate sites shortly after the movie’s theatrical debut last December, but the latest leak appears to be the first DVD-quality copy to hit piracy networks.”"

We here at Dork Side of the Force do not in any way support or endorse piracy in any form. If you must have a film, then buy it like the rest of us…but we are not here to judge you if you should download it illegally, either. According to many commenters on the Star Wars Leaks subreddit, although they had seen the film in theaters many times, and preordered the Blu-ray, they still downloaded the pirated version, just to have an early release copy.

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And, as a side note, if you were planning on downloading the film from one of the illegal pirate sites, we’ve learned that the deleted scenes and extras are not included in the leaks.

We want to hear from you: Do you download films from pirate sites? If so, do you plan on downloading The Force Awakens, now that it’s available? If not, what keeps you from personally not downloading free content? Let us know in the comments and on social media.