In terms of the damage to “Hostel: Part 2,” Roth said most of the piracy happened overseas in Europe. He said that an estimated 25 percent of the movie’s international box office take was lost because of piracy. “Literally, there were millions of downloads,” Roth said. “Piracy is a terrible problem in the U.S., but it’s worse in Europe.” The director went on to explain that a rough “workprint” of the film with unfinished visual effects, sound effects and music, was leaked on the Internet several weeks before the movie opened in June.

“When you make a film for teenagers and 18-25 year-olds and they’re the ones pirating it, then yeah, it hurts,” Roth confessed. He also went on to say that there needs to be a cultural change – rather than more cumbersome DRM technology – to prevent movie piracy. As an example, Roth claimed that in Japan piracy is considered shameful and is looked down upon even by teenagers. I can’t speak to Roth’s claims about Japan (I always though piracy in China was pretty severe) but I can say that he’s absolutely right about “Hostel: Part 2” here in the U.S.; it was incredibly easy to find multiple formats of the workprint version of the movie online. How these files remained online and were not forced to be removed, considering how quickly similar files are moved from YouTube, is an absolute mystery me.