Less than 24 hours after the release of controversial movie, "The Interview", the film has become a pirate hit with over 750,000 downloads recorded from Torrent sites.
The movie is presently available only in the United States, and the overwhelming amount of downloads seen on torrent sites tend to be a way by which people are trying to circumvent this restriction.
The film appeared on the torrent sites just an hour after its official release and even Pirate Bay joined in pointing people towards the movie, notes Torrent Freak publication.
Last week, Sony Pictures had said the company would cancel the movie's opening, following a cyber-attack blamed on North Korea. Amid mounting pressure from people including President Barack Obama who decried the action as a "mistake", the company announced it will not drop the release of the movie all together.
Sony was reacting to the "terrorist" threats issued by those responsible for hacking the company's website. The company was left with no options but to find online platforms to show the controversial movie to a broad audience.
Thursday afternoon, Sony and Google argued that a group of hackers shouldn't be able to curb the freedom of speech. Soon, the film was available for streaming on YouTube, Google Play and Xbox live.
However, people from outside the US will have to wait for weeks or months before the film becomes available to them.
Sony had said on Friday it was "surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform".
In his rebuke of Sony Pictures' decision to cancel the release of the film on its stipulated date, Obama said that Sony "made a mistake" succumbing to a force created by external sources.
"We cannot have a society in which some director someplace can start imposing censorship in the United States," he said in a news conference, adding that Washington will respond to the cyber-attack in a "manner that we choose".
