How the title of SkyFall was leaked to the media

The name of the next James Bond film was unveiled to the media at a press conference held in London back in November. However, such is the flow of information these days that the name of the film was already widely leaked and it came as little surprise to anyone in the room that the name of Bond 23 would be SkyFall.

The reason for this leak of information was simple. Every time a domain is registered for a website that information can be accessed – it is publicly available. When a company specializing in registering domains for movies registered a number of domains including the word “Skyfall”, with some varients also including “James Bond” it was a dead giveaway that the domains were being reserved for what was then known simply as “Bond 23″.

Some commentators believed that it was a bluff; some thought the domains were being registered for a game; and some thought it could be for any other movie, ignoring the fact that many of the domains included “movie”, “film” or “James Bond” in them.

However, since domain information is publicly available there is little filmmakers can do about such leaks unless some new mechanism is made available to them so that they can register domains completely privately. And these days that is a real challenge.