Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko experienced somewhat of an early release this week when postings of the film showed up on YouTube. The documentary, which exposes problems with the U.S. healthcare system, doesn’t actually open in theatres until the end of June.

Unauthorized high-quality copies of Sicko also popped up in a number of P2P file sharing sites.

Moore and the film’s distributors, Weinstein Co. and Lionsgate, have come out with different opinions on unauthorized video postings.

Moore says he wants people to see his film on the big screen, but that he’s also fine with people sharing his work as long as they don’t profit from it. His film’s distributors, Weinstein Co. and Lionsgate, have hired investigators to pursue the people who posted Sicko online. They’ve also enlisted the help of anti-piracy specialists to saturate file-sharing networks with content decoys to make it harder for users to find the pirated content.

YouTube removed the infringing Sicko video clips earlier this week.

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Content creators will soon be able to register copyrights online. The U.S. Copyright Office scheduled beta testing of its new web-based system beginning in July.

The new electronic Copyright Office (eCO) application is part of a series of initiatives to speed up registration processing and tracking. Those who participate in the testing phase will be rewarded with a discounted filing rate.

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