In an age of rampant Internet piracy, TFN's Joshua Griffin takes a look at the latest Episode II bootlegs and their affect on the industry in Digital Pirates Sink Ships, a new editorial in the Jedicouncil. Here's a clip of the introduction:

Each week in Entertainment Weekly there's a little blurb about bootlegs available on the common market of currently running movies. Usually they pan the stolen property as incredibly fuzzy, popping sound and pathetic presentation when compared to the theatrical counterpart.

But everything changed this week.

While there has always been good quality bootlegs available a little further under the radar than they report (consider the recent SVCD Signs and pretty good DivX xXx), this next generation of digital replicas is going to be the greatest bane in the Internet age Hollywood has had to deal with.

While the street date of the Episode II DVD isn't due for another two months reports have circulated that bootlegs are running rampant all over Hollywood. And it seems Star Wars is the latest target.

There's actually at least four versions floating around. The first and oldest is the theatrical copy on VCD, which hit the Internet two days before the film hit theaters. But now, we've heard of these 3 new versions: an SVCD version, a DivX version, and a DVD-R version. From what we've gathered, the DVD-R one is the first disc including menu screens and commentary. The other two are just the movie itself. The picture and sound quality of the SVCD are of superior quality, keeping in mind of course this is stolen property.

For the rest click here. Living in fear of bootlegging has long delayed the advance of technology, something we live with to this day.