When I first met Eli Roth, he was just a young, first time filmmaker hot off of his infamous first festival premiere for Cabin Fever, bringing Austin a very special screening almost a full year before its 2003 release. And now, almost Five years later, Eli has returned, showing us his latest, Hostel Part II. But this time, while he was all smiles, jokes and frivolity for the friends he's made over the course of his many visits here, there was a heavy message on his mind. "Get out there, and tell your friends to see this in a theater."

You see, just a few weeks ago, Eli's biggest concern was Pirates 3. Now his biggest concern is straight up pirates. Someone stole an early workprint of the film and dumped it online. "The worst part," Eli confided to me after the screening "is that you want people to see your film in a theater. But here's this version before we did sound or visual effects. It's not my movie." Then he rolled his eyes and joked "You almost wish it was pristine, so at least they'd see the movie you're proud of making."

And in a market with half a dozen huge films all bankrolled with massive advertising budgets, to see a small, well made, low budget film like this get fed to the internet wolves while trying to keep up with its own modest advertising budget – well, it just breaks my heart. As well as disappoints me at just how many folks are going to have their enjoyment of this movie squelched because they're watching a substandard version; or worse, pretending that they've seen the final film and writing reviews of it – affecting others opinions of it.

A few months back, while surfing film chat sites, I found a link proclaiming that it was a full length, pristine file of 300, a mere three weeks after release. Yeah right. If not a scam, it had to be a handycam, over the shoulder job. Out of curiosity, I clicked the link. I'd seen the film and I had to know what was up. My media player exploded onto my screen and streaming, right to my desktop, was a perfect video copy of the film. I couldn't believe it. This wasn't supposed to be this easy. You weren't supposed to just be able to stumble upon it. But there it was, plain as day. Now at this point I'm pretty sure the pirates felt fine. Maybe they'd paid already, maybe they hadn't. But the film was a blockbuster, and cleaned up, piracy or no. They weren't hurting anybody, right?

But when I think about all the hard work my buddy put into his little baby, his pride and joy, being shown in a first draft version, streaming to someone's desktop rather than projected at the theater while people are screaming and writhing in their seats at a midnight screening like they were here tonight. Well, that's the piracy that kills film. That's the piracy that you can't wave away with a "don't they have enough money?" This isn't some juggernaut getting a taste of a good old-fashioned sticking it to the man. This is small film hoping to compete against the big boys. And getting cheated.

Sure it's got some name recognition. But only because people enjoyed the first one and it did very well for a film made for a scant $3.8 million. And if you enjoyed the first, you're really going to enjoy the second. So why don't you help a fellow film lover out. Get out there, and tell your friends to see this in a theater. And see it yourself.

But if for some reason you've already seen it, by, maybe, I don't know, accidentally slipping and falling down and unintentionally clicking a link that just happened to stream this to your computer, and it just wouldn't shut off no matter how hard you tried – you just might owe Eli Eight bucks. And you might even owe yourself a look at the finished film. There's a collection center near you showing Hostel Part II this Friday. See you there.

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