New Rules For Oscar Voters

The Academy has tighten the rules for the Oscar voter, to avoid piracy or supporting campaigns meant to influence the members in their decisions.

Ris Robertson, the academy's executive administrator said that the new rules were intended to prevent any members from appearing to support a particular contender.

"Lending your name to a screening invitation in effect makes you part of that film's campaign, and that's something we'd like to minimize as much as possible," Robertson said.

Because of the recent cases of nominated films, which have been pirated prior to their release, the members should neither have access to websites with photos, video or visual information about screenings. The voters might access the websites which "contain only basic screening information".

All voters might receive from now on only encrypted DVDs or special players to combat the problem. For the foreign movies, the Academy will organize special screenings.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is prohibiting any of its members from hosting screenings of Oscar-nominated films unless a member is directly linked to a specific film or the studio that produced or is distributing that movie.

The new rules are about to be imposed in order to better organize the upcoming 78th Annual Academy Awards.