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...'"

Comments

Maybe 10 years ago..

[Nathan Ramella]

But are telecine/cam records really what's hurting the film industry? Sounds like a lot of effort for very little pay-off.

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?

Re:Maybe 10 years ago..

[mythr]

I'd be willing to bet that the flicker would change in rate as time went on. Sure, you could match it for a minute or two, but then it'd go out of sync and you'd get a ton of flicker again. As long as it changes more quickly than it's possible for the person to keep up, then their tactics will work.

It's also possible that they're just alternately showing frames later/earlier than their usual times. I'm not sure of the exposure time on most cameras, but it's probably less than half of 1/24 of a second (the time between frames on film). Moving frames by that small of a time it slightly would probably not be noticeable by most, unless they were actually looking for it.

I can't believe you people.

[falsified]

The MPAA is planning on using a technique that will protect its rights over the works its member studios have produced.

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?