Bootleg DVD Movies of 'American Gangster' Already Selling In the Streets

Currently, various reports have Denzel Washington's new film, 'American Gangster' (opening in theaters today), already selling on street corners in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere for five dollars or less. This is especially troublesome to movie companies because the bootleg DVD movies usually don't hit the streets until the day after a film's release. But this movie has been pirated weeks beforehand, and the picture is so crystal-clear that it could fit comfortably on a shelf at a movie store.

Unlike your usual copies of pirated movies, the copies of 'American Gangster' are crystal-clear, with none of the "property of" burn-ins that typically indicate its origin. Besides a few minor audio pops here and there, it seems no different than the eventual DVD that Universal would release itself.

Generally, a movie's piracy problems tend to stem from 1 of 2 places: a small army of geeks downloading from evasive Web sites or the "person with a camera" DVD bootlegs shot in the back of a theater after the film's initial release.

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