Slashdot Mirror
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...'"
You mean I won't be able to download those pirated movie captures? So sad.. they are much better than DVDs, since you can actually feel like you're in the cinema. You hear the croud laughing, crying or eating popcorn, and see all the late people who block your vision.
I truly hope pirates will get over this obstacle.
hemi
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).
So if you come out of the theatre wanting to COPY the movie, now you know why.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Cool! Now your chance of getting epileptic seizures in the cinema is even bigger! Way to go!
I first noticed it when I got an insta-migraine 30 minutes into a bootleg of the perfect storm - there's a barely perceptible flicker from the 24fps of film going to 30fps of video; it's not enough to be noticeable, but it causes me all sorts of problems and aftereffects (like if i walk around in the moonlight afterwards, the brightness level "pulsates" for a good 15 minutes). i imagine this will be a lot more severe, but still, the existing problems have already turned me off to videotaped bootlegs.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
In other news, massive increase in epilepsia has been reported.
I don't really understand why this is a problem for the film industry. Watching a semi-focused and shaking image of a movie with mono sound on my TV in no way substitutes for going to the theatre for a movie experience. Not to mention the time it takes to d/l from any p2p service. It is nothing like MP3 music which, although not perfect, at least provides comparable fidelity to the 'real thing' you can buy on CD.
So this is going to stop cam releases of movies? who cares about cams anyways, I'll take my dvd screener rip thanks.
To combat camcorder piracy Cinea and Sarnoff will develop methods of encoding films with artifacts that are invisible to the human eye, but play havoc with the electronics of a camcorder.
I suppose that given the natural latency of the human eye, this could work. When I pick up a TV screen in my old-style video camera, the picture has bands of light and dark in to, presumably due to the scan rate of the camera matching the scan rate of the television.
In the movies, when you see a scene with a television in it, why are there no such artifacts? Is it due to shooting with film, camera speed, ?? I would think that adding some sort of latency in a video camera to emulate that of the human eye would render such protection schemes useless.
As expected, the article nor the follow-up links had any information regarding HOW this protection would work (or at least none that I could find).
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
If the story is a duplicate, don't comment on it. I know it will take discipline not to cut and paste previous highly rated comments, but something has got to give here to make the editors take notice. I say, ignore the duplicate stories. No comments, no interest. There is no point voicing disapproval as it is generally ignored. Therefore I suggest voicing nothing at all.
Epileptic
Seizure
Lawsuit
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.)
There is a recent press release on the stuff by Cinea and Sarnoff. The release on the Cinea website is inside an annoying sequence of pop-up windows, but Sarnoff has the joint press release here. not much more information, but useful.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think you got screeners and cams confused. Cam copies are poor quality recordings of the cinema screen using a hidden camera.
Screeners - which you mentioned are copies from media (usually DVD) sent to rental stores, etc well in advance before a film starts showing. They have perfect quality, and dont differe much from the final DVD excapt that they may lack some extra/bonus features.
Sony announced their new line of digital video cameras today, which include a system developed to modulate flicker or other patterns that would ordinarily be picked up by recording devices.
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.
If you get a camcorder and record a regular CRT and play it back, you'll see all sorts of crazy flickering on the recording. That's because the screen only updates X times per second, and that doesn't always correlate up with how often the camcorder takes a shot.
Generally, people can use a CRT without seeing this flickering. Although if you use a lower refresh rate, most people get headaches, and some will notice flickering or just sense something is 'wrong'.
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.
those people who though it'd be a great idea to save money not having to hire a babysitter and bring their toddler who will, with fail, start crying exactly at the moment the opening credits start to appear.
Oooh, and also the people who really, really think everything is supposed to be laughed at by slapping their hands together while jumping up and down in their seat like a fucking spaz.
Let's not leave out the ugly Cassanova in the row in front of you making out with his horrid-looking girlfriend. Of course, we can't blame them since the movies are the only place where the lighting is just right.
And how can we leave out the dickheads who could have sat anywhere in an empty theater but sit right behind you, and seem to loose all control of their ability to control their legs, kicking the back of the seat every, goddamn, motherfucking, five minutes.
We can not forget all these people, for they are what make the movies a truly enjoyable experience, and make us all lose all hope for humanity.
why run from Vincenzo?
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'.
I don't mind if they hire thugs to guard the doors or pay good money to render the screens unrecordable so long as they keep shipping perfect copies in the form of DVDs (screeners) to people who vote in awards shows a few weeks or months prior to the actual theatrical release.
...what does that tell you?
This is what my grandmother would have referred to as "closing the barn doors after the horses have already left."
Hmmm. $50 to take four children (and myself) to go see Ice Age or invite over every neighborhood kid on the block to watch it on our HD for free before it hit the theatres. That's a tough call. Well, "free" isn't strictly true. $5 for a metric ton of popcorn.
I don't know what is wrong with the RIAA. If people are willing to watch a shitty copy (Cam/Telesync sucks) of a film instead of shelling out the loot for the full whiz-bang of a theatre experience
The truly stupid would say "it tells me we need to hire thugs to guard doors."
The moderately stupid would say "this means we need to lower prices."
The bright would do nothing.
The enlightened would see an untapped market.
My
Limekiller
One very simple possibility to deny bootleg videos is to install a high power
infrared light source. Most video cameras pick up infrared just as good as
visible light. Thus the bootleg copy is just garbage.
However, photography accessories include infrared filters, which may cut down
on quality (hey, what quality???), but enable the bootlegger to continue his
job. Also, to my knowledge there is no study about the medical effects of
beaming high wattage infrared light right into the eyes of cinema visitors
(including children).
Marc
Would be really mean but they could make the flash represent a snow crash image that'll fry all the techies brains.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
If you have ever filmed the front of a remote control with a camcorder, you know that the infrared LED can be seen pulsating when you press buttons. This leads to the conclusion that the CCDs inside camcorder catch a broader spectrum of light than the human eye does.
So I don't know how this cinema solution works, but if a friend asked me to equip his cinema against "pirates", I would just install a infrared strobe light somewhere - job nicely done.
Actually, whether or not the rest of what you said is true, it seems to me that digital projectors would in fact offer at least one benefit: artifacts, or the lack thereof.
If film artifacts are removed from the original film before it's encoded onto the disc, then they're gone for good. No degredation of the film over the period from release date to final showing due to handling and the simple running of the reels through the machine.
Plus, and this is totally unresearched, it seems to me that digital projectors would eventually pay for themselves. Imagine if the theater could hire just one person to que up the discs for movies to be played in a theater over the course of a day, week, or month. Then, that same person sits in one central 'control room' and presses a button to start and stop movies. This means no one sitting in the projection booth, forgetting to switch reels, or forgettiing to change the audio levels, or God only knows what else (Fight Club, anyone).
Ack!
I agree. Also I wonder when people start complaining about all the headaches, experiencing random nausea and such after a movie screening, will the MPAA blame this on the pirates too in some roundabout way? (The video cameras emit RF radiation etc. etc.) Or will they just try to pay the susceptible people silence money?
we discovered a new way to think.
k-zed writes:
... And WIN.
"I agree. Also I wonder when people start complaining about all the headaches, experiencing random nausea and such after a movie screening, will the MPAA blame this on the pirates too in some roundabout way?"
Are you kidding? This is America. Someone will watch the pirated copy and sue the RIAA.
My
Limekiller
Just like the Macrovision protection in DVD's, there we go again, paying the REAL pirates for that they pay other bandits to DECREASE the quality of images we pay to view. Or anyone believe that this, or DVD Macrovision for that sake, does actually mantain image quality as the perpetrators clain?
-><- no
Cinea LLC, which created an encryption system for DVDs[...]
Yes, the highly successful encryption system for DVDs! I'd say any individual involved in the creation of that system must be some of the smartest in the world, because we all know how unbreakable that is. Oh woe, if only we could decrypt DVDs, but alas it has proven as hard as breaking all other forms of encryption combined!
*puts on "Got DeCSS?" t-shirt and walks away*
Yeah, we have standards, dammit! We demand only the best from our stolen movies!
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."
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.
:)
Time to go off-topic. Yes, I can hear the difference between a CD and an MP3. Assuming you're talking about a 192kbps or less mp3 on a decent sound setup. Also, I'm not one of the people who has damaged his hearing by blasting rap-metal in my car so loud that people 3 cars over being vibrated in time with the bass.
If you are someone who has blasted his music at high volume, you *have* damaged your hearing and that does explain why an MP3 sounds "just as good" as a CD to you. It's as if you were color blind and trying to critique monitors for their suitability in color correction work.
Another factor is what use for playback. If you listen to a CD and an MP3 on your cheap computer speakers or your average car stereo and say "they sound the same" that's because of your cheap speakers. A crappy divx rip and a DVD look the same with your eyes closed, too.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Personally, I think that a movie seen at a theatre flickers quite badly even today.
If you are bothered by a 60Hz monitor with a white background you are probably going to be bothered by a white scene in a cinema as well. I hope that this technology will not worsen the effect too much.
The research is funded by a $2 million grant from the Advanced Technology Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency.
So the government is funding commercial companies (Cinea, Sarnoft) to come up with a technology to help protect the profits of other commercial companies? Not entirely unexpected, I suppose...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
I recently visited Los Angeles and was invited to see two prescreenings (The Italian Job and Bruce Almighty). In both screenings they searched bags and wanded the patrons.
They had a list of 'disallowed' items including still cameras, video cameras, and cellphones. In practice, they didn't do anything about cellphones, as most people had them and would be unwilling to leave them at the door.
As for the cameras, I didn't know the restriction at my first screening, and I had my digicam with me. I put it in my jacket pocket and held my jacket in my hand when I held my arms out for wanding. They didn't notice a thing. I didn't use it at all, but it was pretty silly how easy it would be to get a camera in.
The second time around they felt my jacket pockets and found a lump where I kept my paperback book. They peeked in to the pocket and said, "What's that?"
"It's a book." (under my breath, "It's what we used for entertainment before movies.")
Anyhow, it's nice if they can block recording in select theaters. I recall an earlier slashdot story a year ago about this, and how it would be useless unless they got it in *every* theater. At least in prescreening situations, this technology seems a lot more useful.
Kevin Fox
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.
Actually they use a genlock to get the TVs and monitors to match the scan rate of the film camera.
The reason Apple Macs used to be seen so much in films is simply that Macs have always had a genlockable video output (along with Amigas), whereas PCs require more work to genlock.
I'd like to see the studios (and yes, I know they're too dumb to do this) release a screener copy of say, Matrix Reloaded, to the P2P networks themselves, and then see if people don't still flock to the theaters. I mean, they keep saying it's hurting sales so much, so if a good divx copy is widely available at the same time as the release in theaters, nobody should show up. But I think most people want the big-movie-theater experience with a movie like that.
If somebody watches a pirated film, gets a headache, sues the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America, which obviously has nothing to do with film piracy), and still manages to win... then it's really time to move to Canada.
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..."
I agree. A friend of mine's son has Epilepsy, and can't even look at a computer screen at less then 70 hertz for more then a couple minutes. Introducing a flicker into movies I'm sure will be an eyesore for most people (think: 60 hertz, high res, hours or more looking at the screen) and an obstical for others that prevents them from seeing movies in theaters at all.
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.
Sony threatened a lawsuit against Sony, claiming that the system developed to reduce flicker was primarily intended for circumventing access control on copyrighted motion pictures published by Sony and that Sony camcorders incorporating such a system violated the DMCA with respect to Sony's copyrights.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
If this becomes a problem for the bootlegging market, I see some demand emerging for motion picture film cameras (if they can find one on eBay that's quiet and small enough) as they would not be effected by FPS rates or sneaky scrambling techniques. They film the thing in the theater, maybe at a really late night showing on a Monday night when it's not too crowded, leave, get the thing developed, and capture the pirate-able motion picture onto their computer one way or another.
They could possibly accomplish that by projecting it onto their own screen and videoing it, then capturing that video into their computer, or maybe some sort of a negative scanner that can scan a couple hundred thousand negatives automatically in a reasonable period of time. What do you think? Genius?
Before the days of digital electronics, they'd paint matte layers by hand and project in the TV footage with the original image in a multiple exposure.
See "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) for a good example of this. There's a TV news anchor reading
at his desk, shot from the side (right profile.) On the desk is a TV showing the synchronized front-on view of the same news anchor. Then the scene you're watching switches to the front view of the news anchor: they shot the scene with two (motion picture film) cameras, and used the early footage from the second camera composited on top of the TV shown in the footage from the first camera.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is not a movie known for being loaded with special effects. However, Robert Wise got a lot out of what he did have to work with: it's a wonderful flick.
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) --
Maybe the theaters I worked at were different than the ones you saw, but even with the platter system(which is what I assume the huge film plates you refer to are), you still need someone up in the projection booth. Granted, they can be a manager or someone else who has other things to do, but you still need someone up there to do the cleaning and threading. First off, as to your comment about moving the plates around, the film sitting on the platters weighs a lot, it took two of us to carry the film around(the platters themselves generally do not get moved as moving them increases the chances of getting a brain wrap). The film gets threaded through the projector between each showing(you don't have to rewind, but you do have to rethread) which usually takes a little while(not more than 5 or 10 minutes generally) especially if you do basic cleaning of the projector in the process. Thus, they do not just switch the film on and that's it. Granted, it's not an overly hard process to learn, but it isn't trivial by any stretch of the imagination. Also, if you don't want the film to look grainy and dirty, you have to do at least some cleaning of the projector between each showing. The film tends to create a good amount plastic dust and flakes during its run through the projector which have this habit of sticking to the film since it has a pretty good static charge to it. Thus, if you don't sweep the remaining stuff off the projector, you'll end up with a good amount of dust just waiting to stick onto the film. This all doesn't take into account actually building the films. Films come in nice little carrying cases divided up into sections so that it can be shipped more easily. These film strips have to be taped together along with the trailers and whatnot at the beginning of the film. This is also not a trivial task, and when you're done with a run, you have to break the film back down so you can ship it back to the distributor. I've worked at some good sized theaters, and they were all like this. So, in my experience, it most definitely is not just push and go. It requires a decent amount of work to clean and thread a film.
I really hope it hasn't.
I was at the Boston Common theater last night watching A Mighty Wind - which I wouldn't suspect to be a wildly pirated movie.
It was driving me crazy because it had a flicker over it the whole time - almostly like it was missing a frame, but not entirely, sort of a haze.
I asked my friends if they noticed it and none of them did.
I'm hoping that maybe I'm just nuts and it isn't that I somehow am part of the population that can see the flicker and therefore get fucked over and can't go see movies that do this.
It was really fucking annoying. It didn't matter too much since that movie is one that isn't really a visually stunning film - but if I watch the Matrix and it is like that, I will likely just burn the whole place down.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
"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.
Of course, it doesn't concern me. Last time I was in a theater was to see "Bowling for Columbine." Which is, as far as I'm concerned, about the only movie worth seeing this year. I'm not sure anything that I've seen in the past about 3 years has been affiliated with the MPAA (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) but I'm definitely not contributing to the blockbuster machine. I'm not seeing the next Star Wars flick (Didn't see the last one either) not seeing Lord of the Rings, not seeing the next X-Men flick and I'm not seeing the next Matrix flick because I don't like the MPAA and I don't like their tactics. And if I waver on the whole MPAA thing there's still always the fact that you go and drop $9 on a movie and have to sit through half an hour of commercials before the movie starts.
For a few dollars more I can go see a live play and be much more entertained. The play won't have some corporation trying to ram its merchandise down my throat either.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
which is why in most recent films, you're unlikely to see any computer without one.
-
The film projectors "flash" each frame of the film multiple times to reduce the flicker-effect. So the real frequency could be 48, 62, or even 96 fps.
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.
But Hollywood already makes too many unwatchable movies!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
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
Here are some links to reputable sources that underscore the problem in Chinese society.
Please read " Singapore implicated as piracy hub". This article has a chart showing that the rate of movie piracy for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is 91%, 25%, and 44%, respectively. Contrast these shocking figures with figures for normal Western countries like Australia and Japan; their rate of movie piracy is 8%.
Please read " China Learns to Say, 'Stop, Thief!'". It explains that Chinese society has a software piracy rate of 92% in 2002 and claims that this figure is an improvement over the rate of 94% in 2001.
This problem of pirating movies and software is a cultural problem, not a legal problem. Most Chinese simply believe that stealing intellectual property is acceptable.
Have you searched Kazaa et al for "Matrix Reloaded"?
I have, and found many different file-sizes near 700 MB. So I decided to download a few (cable modem is very nice), and the titles I got were:
Someone is having fun poisoning the network -- but they're poisoning it with valid movies, instead of output from /dev/random!
The last movie, Lustgarden, is a foreign (Swedish?) 3-hour fuckfest. Don't let your kids use Kazaa!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Actually, that's not the way the mp3 format works. Due to some really strange coincidence, all 0's happens to be "Rapper's Delight". It's weird, I know.
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
Now it will be harder and harder to make "Legitimate Copies" of screenings I have already paid for. Now I'll have to wait for a mod-chip to come out for my video camera, or wait for someone to do the equivalent with only a memory stick
I'm no medical expert, but wouldn't certain types of screen flicker trigger epilepsy attacks. Who would be legally liable for that?
The article speaks about disruptive patterns. This won't be cheap nor easy, and who will pay for it? Most likely the people who buy cinema tickets, DVDs and merch - the consumers.
Without the monopoly on reproduction that the state grants with copyright, the market value of those movie tickets would be lower. The "industry" uses techniques that lower the use value - the value for society that the movies actually have - in various ways, just to increase the market value of their movie tickets and DVDs even further. (For example, they lower the transportability with region codes, they lower the copyability (which should be inherent in all digital media) with various technologies, and now they even lower the picture quality (if ever so slightly) with subliminal (according to the dictionary definition) patterns.
Making a product worse, less accessible, just to be able to increase it's market price is in my opinion very immoral, and that's what I called economical sabotage.
I didn't misspell it. I don't call myself a spelling master in any way, and english is my second language, but please don't distort what I write to make my arguments appear less valid. (By the way, I didn't see a single counter-argument in your post. If you agree with me, why don't you say so instead of resort to unfriendliness?)
Yes, I use warez already, but I have no problems justify it. That copying and sharing movies considered wrong is a testimony to the pro-copyright hegemony that continues to surprise me.
Robert Anton Wilson once claimed that "what the thinker thinks, the prover proves", meaning that people will justify anything, but no matter how hard I think or try to "prove", I can't justify the way copyright looks today.
I'm surprised at the lengths some people will go to defend practices of the same corporations who would do almost anything to make a buck.
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.
Time to go off-topic. Yes, I can hear the difference between a CD and an MP3. Assuming you're talking about a 192kbps or less mp3 on a decent sound setup. Also, I'm not one of the people who has damaged his hearing by blasting rap-metal in my car so loud that people 3 cars over being vibrated in time with the bass.
If you are someone who has blasted his music at high volume, you *have* damaged your hearing and that does explain why an MP3 sounds "just as good" as a CD to you. It's as if you were color blind and trying to critique monitors for their suitability in color correction work.
Loud bass/rap music can be bad for your hearing in several ways:
(1) Low frequencies tend to move more of the basilar membrane and this means more overall damage.
(2) As we age, we tend to loose the ability to detect high frequencies -- someone listening to loud bass music is setting himself up for total hearing loss later on.
(3) A lot of percussive sounds generate a large initial pulse which contains all frequencies -- this means the whole basilar membrane gets a jolt and this means potential damage to at all frequencies.
Sounds should be taken in moderation like most everything else.