The rough cut of X-Men Origins:  Wolverine that leaked last week (see “Wolverine Rough Cut Leaked”) has already been downloaded over one million times on BitTorrent.com, according to TorrentFreak, the #1 download on its Top 10 list for the week.  The movie is also among the top torrents on Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. 

Fox is battling back, canning a blogger who reviewed the early cut (see “Fox Axes Blogger”), and sending takedown notices to the torrent sites, but new links go up as soon as the old ones go down.  The massively quick distribution of the pirated copy shows the difficulty in putting the genie back in the bottle once it's out.

A poll on TorrentFreak asked its readers what impact the early viewing of the film would have.  Of the over 5000 respondents, only 6% said viewing the film would have a negative effect on theatergoing or DVD purchase, while 41% said it would have a positive effect on those behaviors.  Others said it would have no effect.