Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Is A Hard Movie To Steal

Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has become a huge sensation and sparked controversy, but the same old problem of people preferring to steal the movies rather than pay for a Netflix subscription continues with online pirates trying their best to get the film online via torrent files. However, the film’s unusual nonlinear structure has made it difficult to pirate.

When the film is watched on Netflix, interactive menus allow viewers to make choices at different parts of the movie which sets off different narratives and leads to different endings. However, the pirated versions of the film lack the interactive menus. With no ability for the viewer to make choices, the torrent files offer two options, according to Mashable:

1. A torrent of the film that makes the 68 choices that Netflix has defined as the “linear” timeline. This version of the film has a 96 minute runtime.

2. The second torrent of the film has a runtime of over five hours and compiles every possible different scene and segment into one long running compilation of footage that is not in any sensical order.

This has sparked online discussions on how a film like Bandersnatch should be pirated in the future, in particular, software that would allow a user to piece together a fragmented five-hour video file if they wished to do so.