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Camcorder Jamming Devices Announced
Adam Carrington writes "I'm definitely not behind things like DRM, but Virginia-based Cinea has an idea that I do support... jamming camcorders in movie theaters. CNET has some interesting details on how they plan on going about it. They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft." This might be the technology that drives the stake in analog projection.
Ending this form of piracy will result in the Hong Kong pirates coming up with better ways to steal movies. Hopefully the next time I download a movie off Kazaa it will be better quality than the last one I downloaded which was made from a camcorder. While I could wait for the DVD rip I prefer watching recent movies without paying
..because we all know how those high-quality camcorder-bootlegs are robbing millions from the movie producers.
This will deal a well-deserved shot to the disgusting practice called "telesync". Let us pray that from hereon in, all our pirated movies will be DVD rips.
Telesyncs are *SO* 1985.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
And how would you use these without also blinding your audience?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
... one that turns off the timestamp and REC on the LCD. They always get in the way! ;-)
Just think of how much bandwidth will be saved by people not bootleging StarWarez Episode III, at least not till the screeners come out.
camcorders to rip off content, ok, nice, who cares.
but to jam mobile fones, that would be a good thing,
and actually increase the value of the experience
for consumers, not just for the movie houses.
for that matter, how about jamming screaming babies,
and that person in front of me with the big head,
and the person behind me who keeps kicking my seat.
rant off.
Not evil. Misguided. Remember that you should never attribute to malice what is perfectly explainable by stupidity.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
I want to see "They Live" relreased in digital format.
No, subliminal messages don't work, but you could still print messages on the screen (invisible to the naked eye) using this system, and then only people trying to pirate the movie with a camcorder would be treated to the messages like:
OBEY
NO ALIENS LIVE AMONG US
and so on. Then, they turn themselves in when they reveal the subliminal messages to the press! Pure genius. Alternatively, you could sell sunglasses that let you read the subliminal messages (they'd have digital camcorders built in with displays on the inside of the glasses,) AND let you see that hilarry rosen is really an alien.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Instantly, the story was rushed to the forefront of the other waiting stories. I can see this put to use:
WarCraft IV Announced; Microsoft Sucks!
Matrix 2.0 Details; Bill Gates hit in face with pie
NPR reports bin Laden dead; New Microsoft IIS bug found
Ah, Slashdot.
A winner is you!
While I understand that the media conglomerates are opposed to people stealing their content (which costs millions of dollars to create), most people who purchase $2.99 "ShakyCam" copies of new release films off the street probably wouldn't have the money to actually *go* to the movies and spend $8.50 on a ticket, $6.50 for popcorn, and $5.00 for a soda.
This is similar to how the 12-year old kid who obtains a pirated copy of Photoshop to fool around with isn't really causing a net loss for Adobe because he wouldn't be able to shell-out the $650.00 (or whatever it is these days) for Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
if it's later discovered that this screen interference can be removed by drawing a line along the bottom edge of the screen with a .39 cent magic marker.
Somehow better mousetraps just don't seem to be the answer.
The trouble is that, with this particular problem of movie pirating, it has to be 100% effective or it's no good.
It doesn't matter if they find ways to block 95% of camcorders from being able to read the signal, since most or all pirated copies of a given movie come from one point source, so as long as there is *any* camcorder or other solution out there, the copy will be made, and once one copy is made, that's the ballgame, since VCD-Rs and mpegs will propogate from there.
Of course, the vast majority of these copies come from Asian countries, and are often recorded in poorer neighborhoods. I'd like to see how their business plan will get this digital protection mechanism into every theater in the East, regardless of the economic level.
If they only manage to get it into 80% or even 98% of the theaters, then it doesn't do any good at all.
Kevin Fox
According to their grant, the movie industry loses $3 billion a year to piracy and that Cinea's system will cut piracy by 50%. Considering that most piracy comes from insiders and not the theater camcorder person, how did Cinea come up with 50%? Was it through market research? Nope: It's "our own estimate." Well, that makes me feel better.
Yeah a laser pointer should do it as shown in this article.
But with any scheme that attempts to use light, you have to consider the safety of the audience topmost, including audience members that may suffer from photosensitive epilepsy.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Now, a screaming baby jammer, that I can agree with.
Ok.. let's see.. he want -every- cinema to install this gadget which no doubt will cost money, and might degrade the image quality..
Now why would Charlie Cinemaowner want to install this? No reason at all.
True, the studios often own the cinemas and can force him to install the gadget, but that's no guarantee that he'll actually have the thing plugged in.
Not to mention that many Asian camcorder grabs are done with the concent of the cinema owner.
(The ones where the cinema isn't fulled with
people speaking Javanese or whatever)
It's just stupid. Need I say it's not going to stop piracy,
it's just going to cost the money for the theaters.
(And that means even more expensive movie tickets!)
WHY don't they look for them? Cams aren't the smallest of shapes, a little enforcement of theatre policies would go a long way.
Also, who says flickering monitors don't cause eye damage? Just because we can't easily see it doesn't mean our brain doesn't.
Stop fscking with my eyes!
Tournament Management Online &
Frame misalignment, their protection scheme if I understand correctly, is easily defeated. Simply adjust the "shutter" speed of the recording device to a longer duration. This will eliminate blank captures they intend to project.
I'd imagine their copy protection scheme will be *hell* on people with epilepsy. I have done work in offices that had lighting offensive to sensitive people and can just imagine what these theaters will do for an entire audience. The people investing their money in this have no idea what they are in for...
I made the mistake of reading your post. It was such low quality. It bad phrasing and not much point. Even the spelling was poor. With digital dictionaries available on the 'net there's no need to do that any more. I saw the English version (substandard) while it was still dynamic.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I was never vary impressed whan viewing a movie which was taped from within a theater. Neither tha audio nor video quality was even close to satisfactory.
This will force a new era in piracy. We've already seen the beginning with the availability of the second LoTR movie on the net before it hits theaters. All this means is that pirates will have to accept a small reduction in their proffit margins since they'll now have to bribe productuin and editing staff for advance copies of films, which will inevitably be of higher quality than those tapes by audience members in theaters.
I'm not entirely clear on why NIST is handing out grants oor research in this field though. Seems to me the products resulting from this research will have applications in limited areas of the security industry (in addition to the initial target of the motion picture industry) but have no larger societal benefit so they shouldn't be handing out grants in thie area.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Result: S/W available only as compelte .iso image with crack implemented.
Going to make theater movies unrecordable?
Result: P2P shared movies are all nicely ripped screaner DVD releases.
DRM, cleaning up the warez and vids available on P2P.
Camcorders are much more sensitive to infrared light than the human eye... why not just mount some infrared strobes in the front of the theater, aimed out at the audience? The people won't notice it, but the camcorders would effectively be blinded.
That was my first thought too. Mount an infrared projector behind the screen writing various patterns and anti-piracy images. Sucks to bring home a video with "DAMN YE, PIRATE, ARRR!" written in huge letters all over the best scenes.
But the issue isn't the public recording in the public theaters, it's the employees and publicity hacks who set up a tripod in an empty theater, or better yet, rip it off the proofing screen in a projection room, or better yet, just rip the DVD press copy.
The movie industry's worst enemy is itself: it has inserted so many middlemen that it can't trust. Those middlemen have no fealty, they just want to make a buck. With every move to eliminate the middlemen, the middlemen find new ways of keeping involved.
[
My friend lived in New York and he bought a bootleg copy of the movie "Ghost", yeah the one where they mold clay (don't ask why). Anyways it was still in theatres at the time, and when he got home he put it in the vcr. Well all it was was some guy with a sheet over his head making "ohhhhh" sounds for 20 minutes. Super funny the fact that the guy who sold the bogus bootleg went to the trouble of filming himself for 20 minutes being a dumbass! ahhh it can only happen in New York.
Now, if legislation like the DMCA is used to keep you from trying to crack the thing, _that_ is bad, but DMCA didn't even exist when Circuit City was pushing DIVX.
The one bad thing I remember thinking at the time was that one was in danger of buying a DVD player that couldn't play DIVX and being left out, or buying one that could and paying extra for something which might (and did) become completely useless.
flash back to watching my first rip of LOTR... gorgeous love scene in the woods... Liv Tyler looking stunning (in an elven sort of way)...
and the cameraman burps. gawd.
MPEG artifacts, I can deal with. but please no more of this.
We went to see XXX not long ago and a couple of losers sat down in front of us with an infant. The kid mighta been six, eight months old. An infant.
He/She -- whatever -- cried through the whole first part of the movie. Then something weird happened. Some noob in the projector booth flipped the volume switch up -- way up.
The move was painfully loud. My buddy Winky, ordinarily not a do-gooder, started mumbling about the annoyingly loud sound and wondering if it's actually *safe* for the baby to be there.
My other buddy, Drummer Todd, said it wasn't our business and we should just sit back and chill. In the Impala on the way over, we *did* say that we wanted a loud fucking movie with a lot of explosions.
Well, with the sound jacked, it was a loud fucking movie.
So Winky actually got up, went out into the lobby, and -- we learned all this later -- told one of the people at the popcorn booth that there was an infant in the movie and that with the sound as loud as it was, it might be a good idea to (a) turn down the sound, and (b) eject the infant.
So a few minutes later Winky comes back, sits down, and a few moments after *that*, a manager and a little guy in a red vest come looking for the info. They're shining their little light sticks all over the place trying to figure out where Winky was sitting.
Drummer Todd is telling all of us to shut the fuck up and chill, that the sound's fine, that the baby's not our business. Winky starts signalling for the ushers and a guy two rows behind us tells Winky to sit the fuck down.
Winky ignores him and nearly trips over Drummer Todd trying to get out in the aisle to flag the ushers. The couple in front of us -- the couple with the crying baby -- actually turn around to see what's going on and tell me -- me! -- to quiet down.
All this is going on while Vin Diesel has just let on that he really *is* a secret agent to the hot Russian chick while they're sitting in the cafe. She's explaining to him that there's a sniper outside and is about to cap him when he walks out. So they get up, walk over to the waiter, and whack the silver tray out of his hand. Now, it's a fine scene -- a pivotal scene in the movie -- but imagine this scene with the sound turn up so fucking loud you can't really hear anything. And then imagine a metal tray clattering and bullets flying -- all in 6.1 DTS -- or whatever they have. It was absolutely mind-numbingly loud. Truly, the single loudest experience I have *ever* had in my sixteen years of life.
Anyway, the ushers locate Winky, head on over to us, and ask the couple with the infant to please leave. They don't want to leave and it looks like a confrontation is gonna happen. All the while they're arguing with the ushers, the kid -- the fucking infant -- is balling his/her -- whatever -- head off. Balling and balling.
Finally, common sense prevails. The couple get up, glare at Winky, and -- with the infant in tow -- leave the theater. The ushers nod toward Winky, Winky nods back, and Drummer Todd tells him to sit the fuck down.
And a few moments later, the sound drops back down to normal.
And that was that. Very weird.
But I agree: forget the camcorders. Turn off the mobile phones.
And for the love of god: don't bring infants into films like XXX. It's insane.
Now with all the amatures with handhelds out of business, we can now get professional rips of new movies by organized crime syndicates! No longer will we have to sit through grainy VHS camcorder copies of Hollywoods latest tripe. The mafia (asian and otherwise) will now have a viable buisiness model for peddling their illegal wares. Throw in P2P networks as a method of distribution for the geeks and we can't loose! Thank goodness for copy protection!
Don't Jam, just put copper mesh in the walls and make the theater a big Faraday Cage. No jamming needed so your not violating FCC regs and the RF won't get in or out. A company I used to work for had one in a lab for RF testing, no pager or cell phone could receive a signal inside.
I've seen the same effect in older buildings that used a metal mesh for plaster lath. I had to put an 802.11 AP in every room of an old house because the RF couldn't get through the walls. Cell phones wouldn't work either. Same effect in buildings whose glass windows have a high metal content.
Face it, if you're likely to receive a call that is so stupendously important that it couldn't wait until you pick up your messages, then perhaps you shouldn't have gone to the movies in the first place.
How does a guy get a name like 'Winky?'
Anyway, I'll agree. The idea of 'jamming' camcorders is insane. How many times have you actually been bothered by someone with a camcorder?
The answer is none. Anybody desperate enough to film the movie is gonna be as low-key and low-in-the-seat as possible.
It's the mobile phones and beepers that oughta be jammed -- in movie theaters, restaurants, and anywhere where you, the cell phone owner, are surrounded with people who are not using cell phones and aren't even thinking about cell phones.
The problem is that because it's been so convenient to steal things in the past, people have become used to it to a point that they -actually- believe that breaking the law with a computer is a world away from, say, lifting a sweater from a department store. They'll come up with all sorts of arguments to justify it of course..they'll likely say that software isn't a tangible good so it isn't the same as stealing a physical object, some even make the ridiculous argument that software in its most basic form is composed entirely of electrons, and that no one can claim electrons. I think it'd be kind of difficult to find any consumer item that's electron free :)
The truth is, it's just stealing. Plain and simple theft. It's more comfortable than shoplifting, because you can do it from the comfort of your own home with relatively little chance of being caught, but when you get right down to it, it's still theft. Apparently, however, some seem to believe it their right to steal.
is this paragraph:
"There's a difference in the way a camcorder and the human eye see the world," Schumann said. "We've figured out some ways to exploit that. The trick is to make sure there is no negative impact on the viewing experience for the audience."
I would completely quit going to see movies at the theatre for $10 a show if they start to flicker to avoid copying. I'm already ticked off that most theatres are run by 17 year olds who can't focus properly.
S
"They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft" ...as if that somehow adds substance or credibility to the article.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I love their math:
"According to Cinea's grant abstract, the motion picture industry loses some $3 billion a year due to piracy, including the sale of illegal copies made using camcorders in theaters."
I bet this is how that was calculated:
- Seeing a show costs $10.
- "Pirate" tapes sold on the street: 18.75 million
- Said tapes viewed by 4 distinct people
- each viewer sees the movie four times.
So:
18,750,000 tapes
* 4 viewers
-------------
75,000,000
* 4 views per viewer
-------------
300,000,000 views total
* 10 dollars to see the movie, legit
-------------
3,000,000,000 dollars "lost" to piracy
Give me a break.
S
My consumer camcorder has a variety of settings that affect the way it "sees" rapid motion. When transferring 8 mm films through one of those cheap reflector boxes, for example, the normal settings give a pulsating and unevenly bright image because of strobing. But if I use one of the "simulate slow shutter" settings, I can get very good results. The LONGEST of these settings does smear and blur motion, but one of the intermediate settings removes the flicker while adding very little motion blur.
And this is just a cheap consumer camcorder--and it's a feature that it has ALREADY.
I can easily believe that Cinea might be able to introduce short "tachistoscopic" artifacts that might screw up a camcorder on its normal settings, but if the camcorder's effective "simulated slow shutter speed" is 1/20 of a second or so, the artifacts will have to last 1/20th of a second or so to be visible to the camera--and at that speed, they'd be pretty visible to the naked eye.
I find it very hard to believe that the people who take videos off a movie screen don't know how to adjust their camcorders. Or that, if the Cinea scheme becomes popular, camcorder vendors will not respond with settings that are called by some other name but nudge, nudge, wink, wink designed to overcome the problem. Or that it can't be taken care of by some kind of digital processing afterward (analogous to using timebase correctors on analog VCR copy-protection schemes.)
In other words, it's a scam perpetrated on theatre owners.
Also, undoubtedly the "camcorder-jamming" artifacts are actually just as visible as, say, dirt specks flashing quickly by on individual frames of a dirty print. It may not make a lay audience walk out and demand their money back--they don't do that for dirty prints now. But people will be aware that the image quality isn't what it should be.
To a critical eye, DLP is currently SLIGHTLY inferior to traditional film projection in some regards (superior in others). Anything that tips that balance is going to be a problem. If the ordinary UNCRITICAL lay audience judges that "perfect" digital DLP actually isn't quite as good as 35mm and starts thinking of it as a cheap-and-cheesy alternative. I would think a cinema manager would be nuts to shell out a couple of hundred thousand for a DLP setup then add anything that would make the image quality worse.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite. You don't need to be reachable immediately at the press of a button all the time.
-30-
I can get around this protection scheme with only 2 black markers. The first marker is for taking dictation, the second is for rapidly drawing pictures of what's on the screen.
They'd have to blink the film A LOT in order to break that scheme.
i hope everybody noticed they got a $2 million dollar grant from NIST to develop this technology.
your hard earned tax dollars, not going to towards things like a faster internet, faster genome sequencing, or an aerospace plane, but instead to pay to develop a technology that will make some guy rich helping hollywood fight a fringe form of copy protection that will be dwarfed by the possibilities of direct digital piracy that will be opened up by the digital distribution/projection infrastructure this proposed technology depends upon.
wtf.
-- p
Cripes, even a lawyer wouldn't agree with you.
.. its copyright infringement.
.. should we just call these people 'theives' and arrest them? Or should we start understanding that theft != copyright infringement? Nobody ever wants to be robbed, but there are times where authors do not mind the supposed act of 'theft' .. er, copyright infringement.
..
It's illigal, yes. It's breaking the law. However, its not theft
I mean, even the law calls it something other than theft.
Fans of The Grateful Dead or KRS-One were encouraged to bootleg shows by the copyright owners, but no formal agreements were signed by anybody
Both are illegal, both are (arguably and to varying extents) ethically wrong, but they are not the same thing. Folks who claim they are the same thing are simply parroting the cries of their sad and embattled heros, the Business 2.0 reading media/content exec. Save your breath, they have enough money and time to get their message across without you tagging along behind them waggin your tail
When it gets down to it, it behooves your survival skills to differentiate between the real world and the real world according to its current wealthy conformists. Now _theres_ a world of difference I hope you can appreciate.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I didn't hate DIVX because it let you "rent" discs and throw them away. I hated it because it was potentially affecting the library of movies available on regular DVD. When DIVX came out, DVD was just starting to become popular. It really had the potential to totally make or break the success of DVD as a format.
Disney, for instance, was one company planning DIVX-exclusive releases. Even if you bought the "DIVX-gold" releases, which theoretically you could play forever, they still had the right to revoke your ability to view that disc at any time.
I don't want studios to have that much control over something after I buy it. This is the same reason why DRM is evil and should not be supported in any way. DVD's region coding and copy protection are nothing when compared to the evils of DRM. Period. EOF.
So, by ripping a new Britney album, it reduces the incentive for her to make the next one. So what is the downside to that? -MD
Happy meals fund terrorism
Has any studio actually put the $3Billion in "piracy losses" into their annual statement?
If not, they should shut the fuck up, or prove the statement.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
You're right.
And that's the point: why should I care about something that doesn't benefit me? I'd much rather support a cell phone *ban* that benefits me, the movie consumer, than a slow, technological paradigm shift that will (a) raise prices, (b) create new glitches, and (c) be cracked within weeks and will only benefit rich guys like Valenti wearing Italian suits.
Of course, department stores keep a watch over their sweaters. They don't try to make a business model out of, for example: Leaving piles of sweaters unattended at busy street corners, with a sign saying "Sweaters $39.99. Please take one and put your cash payment in this evelope"
Anybody who understands human nature would see that that scheme would be utterly unworkable. Likewise, nobody should be surprised when people cheat on copyrights as soon as technology makes it cheaper and easier than buying a real copy.
Copyright infringement may not be right, but your righteous indignation isn't going to change things. The only way to stop this behavior is to make it more like a department store: physically protect the merchandise. However, this is just about impossible with copyable stuff. Too bad. If the content producers go out of business under the current model with current human nature, there'll be a shortage of content. Then somebody else will come along and figure out a new way to make money on entertainment that is more workable, and not dependent on the honesty of millions of anonymous consumers.
It has been discovered that some people that go to movies don't pay. They have friends that work at the theaters that let them in for free, or go see more than one movie after getting their ticket. Some have even gone as far as hiding in the trunks of cars at what few drive-ins remain.
To combat this piracy threat, estimated at 20 million samolians a year, theaters will require all persons entering the theater to have barcodes branded on their foreheads. They will be cross checked against a central database to ensure that they only see the movie they paid for, and that only one person with the unique bar code is in any theater at the same time.
Since every major cinema will have different standards, the FCC will use an auction to allocate the portion of your forehead to be branded. Those sections in the middle region, which are flatter and easier to read, will of course bring the highest dollars.
Privacy advocates are already concerned that the 'movie police' will now be able to tell what movies each and every person in the world have seen, and began lobbying for legislation prohibiting this practice. But since it was released that Ralph Nader often visits www.goatse.com, all lobbying efforts have mysteriously ceased.
In other news, following recent examples of airport security checks, movie theaters are installing food detectors at all entrances to ensure no dangerous food items are brought into the facility. The theaters will provide certified safe foods at concession areas for those that wish to eat or drink during a movie.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Where are those screeners coming from? Well, the film industry of course!!!!!