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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...
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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!
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
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.
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.