Leaker of Avatar: the Last Airbender Movie Arrested in Singapore
Ladies, gentlemen, and that Technicolor flag, we got him. I repeat, we got the guy who leaked the Avatar movie!
So a few weeks ago, Twitter was stunned when out of nowhere, someone claimed to have been accidentally emailed the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender animated film. So, they proceeded to post the entire thing online for everyone to see, and you can guess where things went from there. Pretty soon, millions of people on the internet had already seen part of or the entire movie while Paramount has been left scrambling to put out the fires. And I’m ashamed to say that Im one of the people who saw some of the leaked clips. Not by choice, mind you; people have made the clips into shorts and posted them on YouTube!
But then, a few days ago, as of the time of this writing, authorities announced that they had found the person believed to be responsible for the leaks. And the worst part? They’re a repeat offender.
The Accused
The person responsible for spoiling the Avatar movie for everyone is said to be a 26-year-old from Singapore who goes by IDISSEVERYTHING, or Devesh, online. According to the International Cyber Digest, Devesh used an exploit to gain access to a screener company, AKA a company that distributes movies to critics and people in the industry before their official release. They used that to hack into Paramount’s servers, download the entire movie, and then spread it around online. And remember what I said about them being a repeat offender? In 2016, he hacked into the NFL’s Twitter account to put out some fake tweets saying Roger Goodall died. That got him sentenced to two years of probabtion, but it seems that he didn’t learn his lesson. He arrogantly posted a screenshot of his terminal with his username, and used his home IP address.
Smart enough to hack into a multibillion dollar corporation, but dumb enough to leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs back to his hideout? It’s a disgrace to computer geeks everywhere.
This Leaker is a Jerk
I don’t know why Devesh decided to do this in the first place. Maybe they were upset that the Avatar movie was getting pushed to a streaming platform instead of theaters where it belongs. Maybe they were just seeking to troll people and didn’t care what they leaked. The why doesn’t matter, at this point. What matters is just how many people he has disrespected in the process.
I am just as upset as everyone else at the way Paramount did Avatar dirty like this. They somehow believed that an animated film about one of the biggest animated franchises of the 21st century wouldn’t make its money back in theaters. All one needs to do is look at how much money anime movies, like Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, to know how wrong they are. They could’ve easily made back the budget for the film in a matter of days. So this outcome is the result of their poor decisions, and the entire fandom now has to pay the price.
But do you know who Devesh just disrespected the most? The people who worked on it. There were hundreds of people across the industry who devoted years of their lives to making this movie. And from what little I’ve seen of the leaks (which I reported), they cooked a masterpiece! The animation is so smooth and fluid, going even further into its anime influences that before. The artwork is gorgeous! And while I found the new voice actors a bit jarring, I could tell that they were doing their best to bring Team Avatar to life. And this guy just spat in all of their faces.
Yeah, he deserves what’s coming to him.
So, the penalties for what Devesh did are going to be very high. From what I’ve heard through the spirit vine, he’s facing at least seven years in prison, a $50k fine, or both. And you know what? He deserves it. He already pulled a stunt like this before and got off with a warning. Now he did it again and disrespected Avatar, the people who work on it, and the fans who have loved it for the past two decades. He needs to learn his lesson the hard way! Maybe rotting in prison for the next decade will make him understand!
