a stark backdrop to the impact that digital piracy has on the large investments that producers make in creating state-of-the-art films , '' said Rep. Howard Berman , chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs , who oversaw a congressional hearing on piracy after the leak . `` During our hearing in Los Angeles , director Steven Soderbergh said that in 2007 , the entertainment industry generated a trade surplus of $ 13.6 billion , '' Berman added . `` Imagine what those numbers would be if we could rein in piracy . '' Bootleg , or illegally copied , movies have long been a thorn to the film industry . In 2003 , a version of Universal 's `` The Hulk '' appeared on the Internet two weeks before the film opened . A New Jersey man pleaded guilty to the theft . And in 2005 , a pirated print of `` Star Wars : Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith '' was uploaded to the Web within hours of the movie 's release . But where Hollywood 's biggest headache used to be murky , muffled copies of films taken by someone who snuck a camcorder
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- When the highly anticipated movie '' X-Men Origins : Wolverine '' opened Friday in theaters , many fans had already seen it . The pirating and distribution of `` Wolverine , '' starring Hugh Jackman , is being investigated by the FBI . The online leak of a pirated , unfinished version of the 20th Century Fox film a month ago sent federal authorities springing into action and stoked a heated conversation within the entertainment industry about digital piracy . Piracy of upcoming films is not new , but the theft of `` Wolverine '' is especially troubling for an industry concerned with a stalled economy and the financial bottom line . It 's rare for high-quality copies of a big-budget blockbuster to appear on the Internet more than a month before the film 's release , experts say . Within a week of `` Wolverine 's '' March 31 leak , more than a million people had downloaded the movie , according to TorrentFreak , a blog devoted to the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol . Watch intrepid reporter look for answers '' `` Unfortunately , the recent leak of the Fox film ` Wolverine ' provided