James Bond beaten by pirates

The trade in illegal downloads and pirate DVDs has been boosted significantly by the release of the latest eagerly awaited Bond flick Casino Royale.

It seems the British super-spy has met his match in the pirate community with two illegal versions of the movie being downloaded more than 200,000 times over the film's opening weekend. Already those downloads will be spreading as well as being burned to DVD for sale across the country.

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However, complaints from Sony Pictures or the cinemas will be tempered by news the film still managed to gross £13.4m over the opening weekend in the UK, making it the third most successful opening weekend of all time at the UK box office.

Versions of the movie appeared online on Friday, before some cinemas had even started showing the film in the UK. Among those file-sharing services being used were Mininova and TorrentSpy, according to Dr David Price, head of piracy intelligence at internet monitoring company Envisional.

Price said by Saturday it was relatively easy for anybody with a broadband connection to find the movie and download it for free.

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However, illegal viewers aren't going to be getting the same experience as honest movie-goers. One of the copies being widely circulated online, according to Price, is very poor quality, having been recorded on a camcorder over the heads of other cinema goers. It is also badly in sync with a poor quality recording of the soundtrack.

A second copy however, posted online on Saturday offered a better quality version, said Price, who suspects the improved sound is a result of the pirate responsible for recording the film capturing sound direct from the T-loop system in cinemas, provided for the hard of hearing.