Aussie Pirate Captures Homer

Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 18, 2007

Leave it to a 21-year-old Australian to capture The Simpsons Movie on video and upload it to the internet. The kid did it July 26th, but Australian authorities are just admitting it today, August 17th.

Instead of calling the clever kid a bootlegger as they are, it’d be more respectful if the Australian Federal Police, who raided his Sydney home today, would call him a pirate. Then Johnny Depp could play him when they decide to make this story into a film. Du’uh

From IMDB Pro:

It’s hard to believe that it was acceptably watchable, but a video of The Simpsons Movie, captured on a cellphone by a 21-year-old in Australia, became the first pirate version of the movie to be uploaded to the Internet on July 26, Australian authorities said today (Friday). (Since Australia is a day ahead of the U.S., the copy appeared online even before the movie premiered in U.S. theaters.) Australian Federal Police raided the home of the suspected bootlegger in Sydney today, acting on a complaint by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). In a statement, AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said, “Within 72 hours of making and uploading this unauthorized recording, AFACT had tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P (peer-to-peer) systems, where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times, and in all probability, copied and sold as a pirate DVD all over the world.”

We all know it’s not right, not legal, and not nice to pirate movies, but it’s sure good to know how smart some kids are. Now if we could only talk this one into making his own movies, we might have the next Tarantino.

Read more articles by Maggie Van Ostrand