• CNET News.com, Tuesday, July 3, 2007 10:45 AM

"Sicko," Michael Moore's documentary about the U.S. healthcare system, had a "glittering debut" at the box office over the weekend, but the controversial film has also made headlines for being widely and illegally distributed on the Web. That raises an interesting issue for Hollywood: To what extent does peer-to-peer file-sharing help build buzz for a film? Or depress box office sales?

Says Hollywood attorney Nancy Prager: "These guys aren't just spreading their opinions. They're spreading the actual movies." We don't need thieves marketing our films, she says. File-sharing advocates disagree. They think most people would rather see a movie on the big screen than on a computer, so pirates build "buzz."

So how can content makers leverage Web piracy? Moore's film may have been illegally downloaded tens of thousands of times on sites like YouTube before being removed, but the documentary still grabbed $4.5 million on just 441 screens this weekend. In fact, its sale-per-theater was nearly equivalent to "Ratatouille," the country's No. 1 film, making it a considerable success for a documentary.

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