Pirated ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ copy already hit 250,000 downloads after 12 hours

After an uber-successful theater run, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ is just two short weeks away from Blu-ray and DVD release on April 5. But, as usual, waiting is hard, and pirating is… well… not.

Pirates are off to an early start by downloading the film an estimated 250,000 times in about 12 hours after a single copy made its way online. Since, we’ve seen dozens of hosts, and that number is expected to increase to several million during the weeks to come.

Of course, cam footage of the film has been floating around the Web for months, but due to poor image and audio quality, interest has been relatively limited. Yesterday’s release is the first time the official Blu-ray version found its way online.

Disney and Lucasfilm have done their best to limit the exposure of pirated copies in recent weeks, even going so far as to send out tens of thousands of takedown requests. The effort doesn’t appear to have done much as the cam version of the film is still widely available despite their best efforts.

➤ Pirated ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Blu-Ray Leaks Online [TorrentFreak]