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Most Movies On P2P From Insiders?
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T Labs has determined that a significant majority of movies on P2P networks are the result of leaks from movie industry insiders (New York Times, free reg req'd). They not only point to the obvious cases (movies online before theatrical release, like The Hulk or Star Wars AOTC), but also examine other cases. The researchers examined 285 movies from P2P networks and used the quality of the file to determine whether it was some guy with a video camera or not. Choice quote: 'Our conclusion is that the distributors really need to take a hard look at their own internal processes and look at how they can stop the insider leaks of their movies before taking measures that might hamstring consumers' technologies and rights.'"
So while the MPAA is responding quickly to detected threats, they aren't seeking to estort money like the RIAA.
Why, by releasing movies on P2P networks, they might create a buzz of interest and get people to actually go to the theaters and buy a ticket!
What kind of cockamanie marketing scheme is that?
In other news fire is hot to touch.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Just to be sure on this... if one of my own employees steals code and gives it to a client, it's not the clients' fault if he uses it, right?
Surely this is not a relevant discussion. As the first poster said, of course insider leaks are a big part of the (illicit) distribution process. That was also the case before P2P, for counterfeit rings.
The question is surely a commercial one: can the studios survive free exchange of their wares, and if so, how will they manage and profit from it, and if not, how will movies be made in the future. Cause one way or another, free media is the way it's going to be, legal or illegal.
Personally I like going to the movies, and I like high-quality DVDs, and I find P2P useful only for stuff that I simply can't buy, like Episodes of BTVS (sorry!) that are not yet on DVD. But as soon as they are, I go out and buy them.
The smart people will learn how to use P2P to their own advantage. I predict future hits along the lines of Blair Witch, low budget, unexpected, distributed exclusively by P2P before it hits the big screen...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Most game software "leaks" are inside jobs.
It's gotten so bad that at many third-party developers I've had the chance to work with and talk to, all development work must be done on-site, and no development or QA hardware or recordable media (CD-R, DVD-R, external hard drives, etc.) may be taken in/out of the office.
Furthermore, many protocols such as outgoing FTP, etc. are blocked, and exceptions need to be handled on a case by case basis.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
True, this is probably news to no-one, but what I find of most interest is that this is not a study by a university research team but an large US corporate. If it were a university backed team, then the MPAA would no doubt dismiss their findings with the same haste that a typical Slashdotter would dismiss a Microsoft funded report dissing Linux. After all, it's a university and the **AA's know what rabid copyright infringers their students are... The fact that this comes instead from AT&T should lend a little more credence to the report and *hopefully* cause them to at least think about their strategy some.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Alas, P2P sharing is the only realistic alternative on how their latest album St Anger would ever get widespread. I want the good old days of ...And Justice For All and Master of Puppets back!
I have seen quite a few "near perfect" rips online that have the phrase "For Your Consideration" every 20 minutes or so... It is not only the "insiders" that are leaking these movies, but the people that they send them to, i.e. Academy Awards, Oscars, etc. If the industry deems it appropriate to send a perfect digital copy on DVD to independent reviewers and expect it to stay "in-house" they've got a lot of learning to do. I guess it's not fair to expect a movie reviewer to have to sit through [cough] a VHS copy without 5.1 surround sound, but that's their perogitave... The way things are now, movies will go the way of MP3's, it's almost inevitable.
" What they are worried about is that you'll find out the movie sucked before you've given them your money."
That's a key reason I do download movies. Let's face it, Hollywood can crank out shit like there's no tomorrow, but at the same time you get some good stuff once in a while. I could rely on critic opinions or imdb ratings, but that's a highly error-prone method.
For example, have you ever looked at the DVD insert on Fight Club? Listed on there are all the "critical reviews" from movie critcs absolutely BLASTING the movie as a piece of shit. That's one of those movies I first watched after downloading and now own.
Then take a movie like Alien 3. A 6.0 on imdb isn't exactly enticing me to see the movie, but downloading allowed me to realize that contrary to popular optinion the movie was worth buying (so I did).
That's the key here...the best critic is yourself, and if you can see the movie for free first and like it, even if it's crappy quality, you'll probably buy it.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
But the advertising houses that are the major source of leaks (you know, the guys who take any movie and reduce it to "In a world... where a man..."). I remember Film Threat looking into this two years back.
The problem is that while only a certain controllable group inside a studio needs/has access to the complete movie, a whole slew of folks at the advertising companies have it. So while some guy getting paid 20k a year to chop up some shots from the film to put into a coming attraction, he throws it up on the web. Because these companies are peripheral to the project but integral to the process (somebody has to put together the DVD/30-second primetime slot/Newspaper adverts) and so it is tough for the MPAA to regulate.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Should say: from the duh dept.
I disagree with this as well as AT&T's asessment. Actually, I believe that most movies are "inside jobs" but not as inside as they seem to believe.
They based their conclusion on the quality of the bootleg. Now, I've seen a bootleg that had quality so remarkable that I would swear that it must have been created by an insider with a method of transferring it digitally. That is, until someone *walked* in front of the movie screen. How's *that* for an analog hole?
So I was fooled by a remarkable quality big screen to video camera recording. Now, I still believe that this particular instance was an inside job because this was no ordinary camera piece of recording equipment and, aside from the guy who barely poked his head into the viewing area, I think that the theater was otherwise empty.
I think that most bootlegs are recorded by people who work at the movie theater. We will see a day when watermarks are being inserted into the movie itself.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
One more reply to this before I have to get some work done. :-)
A key difference between grabbing MP3s and grabbing movies online is that there's a percieved value difference between CDs and DVDs. Most people believe CDs are a rip-off at their current prices, while most believe DVDs represent a good deal. People are willing to still go out and buy a DVD even after seeing a movie (for free or in the theater) because they believe there's value in their purchase.
Even when presented with a way to download near-perfect copies of movies, I believe people will still turn to DVDs or legal download options (if they exist) than to copying.
For those of you who don't download many movies, the stuff that's available isn't all camcorder quality. For example, the recent Matrix movie leaked to the net was a digital rip I believe (well it looked and sounded bloody amazing on my TV anyway). I still saw the movie in the theater and will buy the DVD -- I'm sure there's more like me.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
...was at a film distribution company. The Homeland Security folks could learn a thing or two from these people.
Once on entering the facility, and again when I left, I had to stand on a little box, about four inches tall. A security guard then waved a wand over me and another physically patted me down. My notebook bag had all contents removed, inspected, and then put back in place. They did a pretty good job of putting everything back where it came from.
If everybody did things the way those guys did, I don't think insiders would be contributing much to the P2P networks.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
You're missing the point of the article.
The "Industry" (or as someone expertly put it the *AA's) want legal means (DRM, taxes on blank media, etc, etc) to take away computer user's rights when dealing with all media, not just media copied from them.
What the AT&T Study basically said, is that it doesn't matter if you make it illegal to sell hardware to convert a DV recording into a DVD or VCD without a license, since the content being distrubuted is being authored in-house by the studios or their contactors.
It's like allowing a taper at a rock concert to plug straight into the soundboard instead of using mics in the audience. Both are illegal (unless permission is granted, a la The Dead, etc) copies of material, but banning the sale of high-quality microphones to people not in the music industry wouldn't stop the board recording from being made.
The US Governemnt, however, has a sad history of limiting the quality of a product for "our protection", examples include GPS (we get the crummy one, the military gets the good one), crypto (fixed now, but remember when 56-bit was barely legal), and so on.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
Just to be sure on this... if one of my own employees steals code and gives it to a client, it's not the clients' fault if he uses it, right?
... they just ship MPEG-encoded video streams around. Eliminate the custom hardware and dump it to a multimedia PC and you have the same effect, but with fewer controls on the viewer's behavior. That possibility is what has the industry so up in arms, and explains the court cases against video recorder/player manufacturers.
Of course it is, if he knowingly misused copyrighted code. Even if your employee didn't tell him the code was stolen, the client has a responsibility to make sure he is operating within the bounds of the law. Ignorance of the law is rarely a successful defense.
Yes, you're probably right about P2P being used for exclusive releases. There's precedent for it. Films used to be held for years before being released for private viewing on cable, satellite or DVD, if ever. Now I see more films made for exclusively for home viewing than ever make it into the theaters. A logical extension of that would be to just eliminate the DVD and send the data direct. That's all satellite and digital cable do anyway
What irritates me is that the entertainment industry as a whole has gotten so accustomed to profit levels that would be considered miraculous in most other industries. Most large-scale manufacturing operations (those that, say, make blank CDs for pressing) operate on a tiny fraction of that kind of margin. A few percent over cost is considered a good year. True media piracy, and simple file-sharing of copyrighted material, all those things would become very uncommon if a. the entertainment monopolies were broken up under Antitrust law and returned to a competitive market and b. media cost to the end user returned to levels inline with what they are willing to pay. The consumer armed with a choice of vendors should ultimately determine pricing: that is what antitrust law is all about, and why monopolies are very bad for the consumer. Illegally inflating profits via a monopoly position, and then claiming that you are being stolen from when people find a way to not pay is somewhat hypocritical.
The thing to remember is that the entertainment industry is just that, an industry, a business. And the history of business, in every country on the planet, has shown that when businesses achieve near-absolute control of their marketplace, the invariably abuse that market. They just can't resist, and furthermore they come to believe that this is their rightful position. What makes the MPAA/RIAA cartel so extreme in this regard is that they are trying to make the government guarantee them their monopoly.
Still, this should come as no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain stem. The Sherman Antitrust Act, and laws written for a similar purpose, were enacted to provide the government with tools to correct extreme aberrant behavior in the private sector. It seems to me that the MPAA and the RIAA both come under that heading, with the RIAA taking the lead in outrageousness.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's not correct to assume that because many files stolen via P2P are leaked by insiders, movie stealing will go away if these leaks stop. It's likely that the best quality movies propagate very quickly over P2P while poorer ones do not - which only means that once these leaks are plugged, the next highest quality version will become the most popular.
First off, it's about time for them to look at this focus rather than, as the report states, solutions that will hamstring consumers (i.e. attacks on p2p and other emerging technologies). Had Metallica figured this out in the Napster days, they would have realized their problem was in house rather than with their fans. Remember, what pissed Metallica off the most was hearing an unreleased song of theirs on the radio because a radio DJ had downloaded it via Napster. I don't think it's conspiracy theory to notice that the RIAA lawyers cynically manipulated artists who were upset about this by focusing their attention on p2p rather than on the problems that were in their own studios.
Well, I don't know if it's just advance screeners getting perfect dumps...
But I know in the case of the MR that floated around KAZAA in May it was a camcorder job. And it was an industry screening, and an inside job.
The shot was badly composed, the image was flickering, and the sound was echo-y.
Before you chalk it up as what it might appear to be, think back... Where was an advance screening of Reloaded where the audience was dead silent? No coughs, no applause, no food chewing, burping, etc.?
NOBODY getting up to go potty...
OK, here's the deal.
Good movies get passed around on P2P networks because they are good movies.
Bad movies don't get passed around on P2P networks because they suck.
Now, how the hell you can possibly believe that downloading Matrix: Reloaded and watching it on your 19" computer monitor with a 2.1 sound system possibly compares to a giant screen with pounding sound and NO FUCKING COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS?!?
Also, factor in the fact that, even with a decent home-theater setup (and ignoring the aforementioned low-quality of even the best downloaded movies), you still don't get the satisfaction of spending an evening out with your friends or significant other. Even slow films with a more dramatic touch are better watched on a big screen. More emotion to see, crisper sound.. And again, NO FUCKING COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS.
Those people that don't care about low quality and don't care about choppy sound, a moving cam, etc etc etc are the kinds of people who wouldn't go to the fucking movies to begin with! They would just wait to rent it anyway, or wait to get their hands on a screener on VHS. Believe it or not, the Internet didn't create movie piracy. It's been around for a long time, and it's always been insiders.
People will pay for the privelage of going to a movie theater and seeing a movie, larger than life and exactly as the makers of the film desired, even with movie piracy around.
To throw in my own little anectodal evidence, I downloaded Matrix: Reloaded the week it was in theaters. And I've seen it in theaters twice. And, if they re-issue it before Matrix: Revolutions comes out, I will see it again. Even though I already have the option of watching an inferior version as many times as I choose.
Don't downplay the theater experience. That is all.
Here is what they decided:
Each advanced copy of a video has a digitalwatermark. Each is invidiual. It's on the entire screen, and somewhat vague (your eyes will overlook it unless you stare at it, kind of like a magic eye).
If they see a leaked copy online... they can trace it back to exactly who was in charge of that copy (the watermark is often initials or a code for the individual).
So far, tests of this have been very successful, nobody wants that liability on their hands. They get access to one of these tapes, nobody wants to put them online. Since they are essentially signed.
There are several other techniques used widely in the industry. This is the big one.
It's a mild watermark. Your eyes tend to look beyond it at the picture (kind of like a bugscreen on a window).
Now the individual (previewer, editor etc.) makes it a business to keep it secure. Even screenshots.
We had one of our films end up as a Bitorrent file.
It was listed as a "screener" but was obviously not captured in a theater.
Funny thing, as I downloaded it I was helping distribute it.
Oh, the irony...
(a little bit of me was proud that the film was in demand by people willing to share their bandwidth and take the time to fetch it, and burn it to VCD to watch at such poor quality. This film is not a Hollywood block buster, its just a little NZ art house film, Fingers crossed they will buy the DVD when it comes out so that they can really enjoy it as it was meant to be)
...the researchers reviewed 285 movies for quality...
Uh huh... and I'm dating a big titted blonde bimbo right now...
how come the researchers who downloaded the movies aren't getting busted?
Can I call myself a researcher and escape prosecution?
The problem is that the film industry has lost sight of what they "sell".
AT&T, on the other hand, may have their eyes fixed directly on what they sell. They sell bandwidth.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)