"Wolverine" has been downloaded over one million times... Does it matter?

Fox's leaked copy of Wolverine has been downloaded over one million times in the past week, according to BitTorrent news blog TorrentFreak.

It has the early cut of "Wolverine," without special effects or final music, ranked at no. 1 on its download chart. PirateBay, the world's top directory for downloads from the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol, has "Wolverine" ranked at no. 6. It's the only film on any of the charts that hasn't yet been released.

Fox has certainly been diligent about trying to minimize the damage. It is issuing takedown notices to any websites it finds linking to a BitTorrent download, though as TorrentFreak notes, "new ones are already uploaded before the requests are processed." And of course Fox News columnist Roger Friedman apparently lost his job for reviewing the pirated version of the film (meaning he also downloaded it... uh oh).

In a sense, though, all that may be victory enough for Fox. The fact that links to the movie aren't exactly stable and nobody in the mainstream media dare touches a pirated copy means the leak should be limited to those who are already active in the piracy community.

And will it keep them out of theaters? Not if a highly unscientific survey is to be believed. TorrentFreak has received 6048 responses to its poll asking "Will the ['Wolverine'] leak hurt the movie's success?" of which only 392 people replied, "Yes, I will download it and won't it in the theater / on DVD."

Sure, there's no reason people have to be honest in an online poll. But there's no reason not to be honest either. If anything, the piracy community is famous for wanting to thumb its nose at Hollywood as much as possible. So if only 6% of them say the leak has hurt "Wolverine's" business prospects, Fox might just be OK.