Spoiler Nation: Secrets About Movie/TV Secrets Revealed!

It might also keep you out of jail. Spoilerazzi have been known to get criminal in their attempts to unearth info. The producers of Transformers tallied over 7,000 attempts to hack their computers to swipe design concepts for their metamorphic robots during preproduction. And no film in recent years has been more doggedly stalked for plot details than Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Last year, a thief broke into the film's production office, stole a computer and files, and tried to sell the intel to a website operator. ''Steven was pretty upset,'' says producer Frank Marshall. ''There were story points we'd rather have people discover in a theater with 500 people while eating popcorn.''

Ironically, many spoiler sites have become more discreet — but only because they've become more popular, so much so that sites like the Lost hub DarkUFO.blogspot.com now sell advertising. The new sensitivity at fansites includes separate light and heavy spoiler sections, hangman-esque guessing games, and multiple ''Are you sure?'' warnings, all intended to appease time-shifting DVR viewers and those who want to be spoiled a little, not a lot.

Yet amid this potentially perilous mediascape, the entertainment industry has also found opportunity. Indeed, Hollywood has come a long way since the late '90s, when Harry Knowles was public enemy No. 1 for posting reviews of test screenings on aintitcool.com. Now, studio marketers are discovering how to play the spoiler game to their advantage, previewing chunks of film on sites like YouTube, all in the name of manufacturing buzz. Simultaneously, Web-savvy filmmakers like Kevin Smith and Peter Jackson have cultivated fan bases by pulling back the curtain on the moviemaking process. Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro plans on being pretty transparent as he embarks on The Hobbit. ''It's easier to protect the 20 percent of a project that's really sensitive if you're open about the other 80 percent,'' he says. ''I think that's the way to go, especially with a project like The Hobbit, which is a holy book for so many people. People should know the path you're walking.''

NEXT PAGE: ''It might look like we're media whores. But we feel the more we're out there answering questions and dropping teases, the less appetite there is for spoilers.''