Guardian Unlimited talks about how pirates hurt the theatrical release of the film, and the inpact they are having in Hollywood:

This weekend saw the blockbusting release of the latest instalment of the Star Wars saga, Episode II: Attack of the Clones - a dream come true for many aficionados. Dedicated fans queued around the clock to see the movie, some camping out to guarantee themselves the best tickets for opening night.

But for one set of movie enthusiasts, getting to see this highly anticipated film was a great deal easier - they had to go no further than their computer screens. It is believed that around one million people decided not to wait to watch George Lucas's latest sci-fi epic with everyone else, choosing instead to download the movie from the internet before it was even released.

Studio executives and online experts believe that Attack of the Clones, like its Star Wars predecessor The Phantom Menace, marks a watershed instance of digital piracy, with hundreds of thousands of illegal copies being downloaded prior to the film's release last Thursday.

"This is a problem that we're seeing more and more ahead of openings, large and small," says Richard Taylor of Hollywood's governing body, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). "There's a growing epidemic of internet piracy of motion pictures, and it's this kind of activity that stands as one of the obstacles to legitimate online offerings."

News Corporation president Peter Chernin, whose Fox subsidiary produced the Star Wars films, says, "The revolutionary potential of the internet poses a threat to all media. Today, with a broadband connection, a full-length movie can be sent over the internet in an hour or two, be stored on the hard drive and played and enjoyed in full television quality."

But it's not just Star Wars, a notorious touchstone for web geeks, that is being targeted by the download pirates. A quick trawl through several peer-to-peer file-sharing applications and internet relay chat (IRC) servers uncovered a plethora of "exclusive" films, all available for immediate download and often of good quality.

Other big-budget movies likely to feel the pinch include the upcoming Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe and Kirsten Dunst. John McMahon of Columbia Tristar, which has spent an estimated ?100m on turning the comic book into a celluloid reality, thinks piracy is an issue that should be tackled. "Technology is forcing us to rethink the way we put content in front of consumers, and we all need to create relationships between ourselves and the consumer."