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Foiling Cinema Pirates
minesweeper writes "According to this Associated Press article, in fighting the piracy of advanced-screenings of movies, Hollywood has deployed agents with night vision goggles and placed metal-detectors at theater entrances. Nevertheless, video cameras are still being smuggled in and the recordings smuggled out and onto the Internet. Now, the latest attempt to fight piracy will be to show the movie with a particular flicker, imperceptible to the viewer in the theater, but making any video recording unwatchable. Quoth the article, 'Cinea LLC, which created an encryption system for DVDs, and Sarnoff, a technology research firm, are developing a system to modulate the light cast on a movie screen to create a flicker or other patterns that would be picked up by recording devices...'"
Granted there's always a market for somebody who would like to see the Matrix Reloaded captured on someone's pen-camera, but is that really the demographic that the movie industry is losing money from?
http://www.remix.net/
With people out there who say they can hear the difference between a CD and an MP3, I wonder if people won't complain about this, even if they can't see it.
Sounds to me like another reason not to go to a cinema anymore, along with reasons like the crappy picture quality (come on, stretching a 35mm film to that huge a screen is just dumb) and the fact that theatres in the netherlands only show ancient movies (except some big movies like LOTR which are released worldwide on the same date).
The quality of screener divx is just crap.
I'm not watching a movie I'm dying to see in this quality. And I'm not watching divx of movies I'm not dying to see.
That's just about it.
So keep the SuperAgents out of the theatre, please.
theefer
I'm sick and tired of the movie industry abusing it's power like
this. Not only do they have ogling agents and metal detectors, but now
they're purposely distorting the image. (Ignoring the risk of
epileptic seizures?) For those keeping score at home, that's yet
another account of reducing the use value of the movie to increase
it's trade value. (Others include regions and encryptions on DVD..)
I see this as economical sabotage as well as hugely egoistic. I'll be
sticking to warez and indepentent cinema from now on, rather than risk
funding even more of these pathetic stunts.
(This may seem a bit flamey, but well, "Fear leads to anger" and
Hollywood is certainly scary enough for me now. Thanks.)
"Only a small number of theaters have digital projectors, although it is expected that most theaters will go digital by the end of the decade."
That's complete rubbish - there is absolutely no reason to install digital projectors if you're an exhibitor. They cost huge amounts of money and deliver absolutely nothing extra in terms of image quality. Plus, they're bigger than 35mm projectors! The only person it makes sense for is digital prokector makers and distributors (since the 'prints' are cheaper to make).
Let's see. The major advantage of a movie theater vs. DVD or warez rips is the quality of presentation.
Lets mess up the quality of presentation in the name of 'copy protection' and make the paying customer suffer. Borrow the idea straight out of the CD business - copy protection with CDs is going down with the customers SO well!
Really smart...
(Yeah yeah, supposedly you cannot see the flicker. I belive it when I (don't) see it - until then I assume this degrades the image quality.)
Now if this is limited to 'pre-release' preview screenings where the people are not, by default, paying to see the movie - then I have little issue with this - go ahead and muck the picture as badly as you want if the screening is a freebie. However, if I'm paying for it, I don't want crappier quality in the name of 'copy protection'.
First off, this technology is only for digital cinemas. Not very many of them right now.
This also shows how little the MPAA and their minions know of film piracy culture. Most cams are nuked anyway, since they usually are unwatchable. Telesyncs (a tripodded cam with direct sound source) are a little better (and can be very good if shot properly), but are typically released if they are the only option - for the past six months, most films released eventually have Screener versions released. If the first release is a Cam/TS, that is usually superceded by a Screener within a week or two. Hey Hollywood: fix the leaks in the studios and your post facilities first before you attack the lowest of technologies. A PDA cam with a tiny surveillance lens? Please.
Before Oscar season, almost any popular film was available in DVDRip format, since the studios felt piracy was less important than gathering Academy votes, and they issued tens of thousands of Consideration DVDs to Academy members. If piracy of their most popular and valuable assets was secondary to winning awards, why all the fuss now about Cams?
There are also rips taken directly off the DigiBeta which are absolutely stunning. Again, this is an internal studio problem, and $2 million in taxpayer money will do NOTHING to stop that.
This is like fighting cocaine importation by attacking the kids on the street smoking cheap nickel bag weed.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
How bad would it be if both the movie and DVD were released at the same time? People that have kids will probably not take them to see the latest movie when they can wait a few months and buy the DVD at half the price of taking family of 4 to see it. Also some people have a really good home cinema set up why not let them watch it as soon as possible on it. That way all the advertising can be done at the same time for the movie/dvd release - hence cheaper for the company to advertise.
That is so true. I was just thinking this the other day, here in Asia, we have people selling bootlegged VCDs of every possible movie. Then we have people like the local chaper of the MPAA trying to stop all this people. I'm thinking why bother?
Those who would shell out the money to see a movie on the big screen whould have already done so. It's those who won't normally shell out $10 a person to see a show that will buy the VCDs.
So instead of spending many millions of dollars fighting a battle you will never win, why not make a few bucks off these people? Come out with your own version of 'bootleg' make a compressed version of your movie, in 320x288, make the color a bit off-ish and downmix the 5.1 sorround to a mono.
Sell it for $2 more then the piates and what do you have? a product that is still better then a camcorder movie, but still crappy enough to keep people in the cinema. You make mone instead of loose it in sales and fighting pirates, and even if the pirates bootleg that, because it's within their means, people'd rather do the right thing.
And Step 3, Profit!
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Remember how the RIAA tried to legislate their own police powers? It's not uncommon; corporations want as much power for themselves as possible. And power is not just money. Power is also control over what one produces, be it legal, electronic, or physical.
The problem is that they want to maintain absolute control over their content, and ultimately that's nigh-impossible, as I discussed before.
On the way to trying to develop this degree of control, the content becomes increasingly difficult to enjoy. Are they in danger because of this? I'm afraid not, at least not until someone disrupts their current source of revenue: consumers with low standards.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
This technique doesn't involve subpoenas to ISPs to get the identities of p2p users.
This technique doesn't involve scare tactics targeted at network admins.
This technique does not involve arrests, fine, or prison sentences.
This technique does not involve some cockeyed "protection scheme" that renders the product absolutely useless in certain circumstances.
What the fuck do you guys want?
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
... there aren't any epileptics watching.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
The latest batch of pirated movies that I've seen around Hong Kong and southern china are DVD quality ripoffs from DVDs that the movie studios send to journalists, academy / awards voters and other folks that need to be appeased in the PR process.
Video cameras in movie theaters are now obsolete. The process of pirating movies has been perfected with social engineering.
Is it just me or does seem more like a publicity stunt on the behalf of the MPAA more than anything else? Something they can point to and say "Hey, look, we're doing our part in trying to prevent movie piracy."
As mentioned before spending all this time/effort/money to try and stop cam movie rips, while at the same time distributing massive amounts of screeners which are then ripped at close to dvd quality is ridiculous. It seems more likely that they'll use this as a political tool the next time they try to push some "anti-piracy" legislation trough congress.
Anyone with even a moderate understanding of graphics programming could write software to remove the flickers. Certainly the quality may suffer a tiny bit, but films recorded in the theater are not so great anyway. This isn't like attempting to make counterfeit money; minor issues aren't going to matter.
"At the right refresh rate, you could recreate this effect while annoying only perhaps 0.5% of your audience, and if it's just for a few preview screenings, it might be a good idea for them."
Yes, annoying only half of one percent of your audience with HEADACHES is an outstanding idea. Especially the people who take the time to come to your preview screenings.
Assclowns.
Now they've found another way to make us pay for stuff that's only nessesary because they want total control and the power to make some people feel important.
We've heard about RIAA making up glued discmans and similar stupid things to prevent reviewers from ripping the preview CDs and putting them on the net before public release. We've also heard about MPAA effectually strip-searching reviewers to make sure they don't carry recording devices into a preview show, and now they want to invest time and money in developing means of making it impossible to make a viewable recording of these shows.
Who's paying for this? You and me!
Does it work? - Nope. Never did, never will. It an arms race that'll never be won.
I think it's about time RIAA and MPAA sat down and realized that they'll never be able to prevent this and therefore plain and simple stop doing these pre-release things altogether. Or limit them to no more than a few days ahead of the public release. - That way the pirates won't have much time to make their copy and the impact on sales will be much less. Of course this means that all the VIPs will have to wait just like everybody else...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Or you could wait for a DVDScr(DVD Sourced Screener) which is perfect quality(and much better than a movie theater can do). Hell the DVDScr for 'Die Another Day' had better video and audio than the local theater where I saw it.
"imperceptible to the viewer in the theater"
Just like flourescent lights have an imperceptible flicker?
Just like security cameras have an imperceptible high-frequency audio hum?
Just like mp3's have imperceptible audio distortion?
Just like city water has an imperceptible aftertaste?
Just like Microsoft has imperceptible security flaws?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does."
Education is the silver bullet.
It's as simple as that. They assume we're all criminals, and treat us thusly. I mean, come on, searching people at the doors of movie theatres? For cameras? It's just ridiculous, and insulting.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I expect that some people will still see it...
There's a large variance in human persistence of vision; it's more of a bell curve. The reason for this is evolutionary; studies have shown that some people have better visual resolution, while other have better motion detection thresholds. For example, my resolution is lousy, but my color vision has better frequency discrimination, and I can detect even very slight motion in my peripheral vision ("How did you know I had come into the room?").
It seems to me that they are targetting the center of the curve only, and that they will lose the people on the edges.
Personally, I expect to be on the wrong end of the curve for this, and it will probably annoy me enough that I will stop going to movies, just as I've replaced all the landlord provided long life flourescents in my apartment with incandescents, because the 60Hz "flicker" drives me nuts when I try to watch TV or work on the computer (there's a reason that some people like to work in a dark office; it's because the alternative is unbearable to them; expect these people to not go to movies with this "feature", either).
When this happens, they will also lose the people who are members of those people's social networks, and who are more willing to select some other form of entertainment (e.g. "Dave and Busters" or whatever) than go to a movie without one of their friends.
-- Terry
Even if everyone entering a movie theater gets a pat-down and a background check, its not gonna change anything in hong kong where most of the camera-copies come from. I think most that are done here involve a little greasing of palms anyways, that wouldn't stop anything.
Hollywood is just wasting more money that they are going to get back from us through $14.25 movie tickets.
matt
I think you are the one with the mindset problem. "Ownership" is an abstract idea that cultures choose to enforce through the mechanism of government. It makes a lot of sense for items that are fundamentally scarce... material goods, livestock, land. It may make some sense for encouraging innovation and the collection of data that would otherwise not be collected. Maybe. It makes little sense for cultural artifacts... things like music, art, and stories will be produced inevitably, and it's been that way for millennia, and some of our greatest cultural treasures have been created by copying and building on past innovations. But I guess the way you see it, Shakespeare "stole" all his materials and should tossed into the slammer with other murders and rapist.
Let China do whatever the heck it wants to do... maybe it's better, maybe it's worse, but we don't have the grounds to tell them what their culture should be like. (And if you haven't noticed, an awful lot of people in Western culture rationalize the "theft" of music... perhaps our laws should be changed to match our actual beliefs, and not the economic will of corporate content controllers.)
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I'm no medical expert, but wouldn't certain types of screen flicker trigger epilepsy attacks. Who would be legally liable for that?
LOWER THE GODDAMN PRICES!
If you want more people to go to your movies, stop charging them $8.50 a pop!
Some people would agrue that doing so would decrease revenues, but if piracy is making them lose as much money as they say, lowering the prices would benefit them in the long run. They will have more people going to movies at less cost, and therefore less of an audience for pirates.
You will always have people that won't pay for anything, but they would never go to the movies anyway. The best way to defeat piracy is to eliminate the demand for it, and in this case, it is best to lower the prices.
Don't be a smart-ass... the people who believe in complete, total cultural relativism are just as naieve as the people who believe that their culture's values define a universal ideal to which all other cultures should adhere. In reality, morals emerge from the day-to-day experiences of human existance. E.g., "do unto others as you would have them do onto you".
Things like murder, rape, and violence have been universally condemned by every culture. That's because it makes people feel bad. Of course, not that every culture has also had exceptions to these rules... things like "justified homocide", "holy war", "preemptive strike", prostitution, marital rape, and the "he-had-it-coming" defense... the badness of the experience is absolute, but the rules with which a culture encodes it vary widely.
It's a wide world though, and cultures start to have a greater number of opinions on things like "nonmarital sex", "blowjobs", "dissedent speech", "spitting on the ground", and "pirating music". My point in the previous post was that we should realize that there is a great room for flexibility here, and it's ultimately up to the Chinese where they want to take it.
I, for one, think humanity as a whole would be better if we severly curtailed the role of copyright and patents. It's probably not optimal to abolish them altogether, but I we should radically rethink them. Think about it: if no copyright existed, people would still be making music, art, books, and software (open-source is a good example of the latter, but it is by no means the only example: a lot of software that is produced is done so because it will pay for itself). If no copyright existed, we might have less quantity and less special effects and less pop-garbage merchandise. But it might be made up for in terms of stronger culture and localized talent with richer variety.
Stepping even further back (and ignoring my particular stance on intellectual property), I think there's a lesson here about globalization: globalization brings with it legal and cultural homogenity and more centralized control. This is bad... the human race will be more robust if reasonably-sized regions can experiment and evolve independently (much like the U.S. gets an advantage out of different states experimenting with different policies [e.g., notice how all the lawmakers have rethought deregulation of the power industry after that little experiement in California failed]). WIPO's ideas about intellectual property may be ideal (*cough*bullshit*cough*), but I'd much rather us find that out by having different nations experiment with different IP models than to have WIPO impose its will on the world and have reform come only decades later after reform, revolution, or revolt have had sufficent time to brew.
The only thing we have to fear is a world where nothing can change...
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction