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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.'"
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?
That is the definitely the right way to go about it. It shouldn't be _that_ absolute a threat but it seems more affective than the (potential)"threat" of legal action. Ok, maybe taking away a net connection for an indefinite period is harsh - but hey, they did it to Mitnick - filesharers are equally computer criminals.
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.
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
The only reason they are not seeking money at this time is this:
:)
1) They are nice and safe at home, watching the RIAA go after purported acts of piracy (aka fair use + us patriot act + dmca) and fail miserably.
2) They are still making money - and until profits drop below some invisible level they've set, I doubt they will do more than let the MPAA use their search bots/ip loggers to see what people are sharing.
3) Movie traders are not your average Kazaa user (no insult to Kazaa users, but its' still a noob's p2p), in most cases they are sharing files in private networks and hubs amongst friends.
4) They realize, to catch everyone sharing movies will cost them billions of dollars and so far they have been acting fairly obliviously to the reality of HOW many people are sharing the movies.
They will start attacking users when the RIAA finds a tactic that works and doesn't take 600 years to implement (like the RIAA's current plan would). If they want to start lowering the piracy levels, they will have to install metal detectors in ALL movie theaters worldwide, and have 'screeners' only watched by test groups in theaters - not handing out copies to thousands and expecting them not to use a vcd ripper and share the movies.
They could also digitally add a digital watermark to the entire screener, or even include 'extra' scenes, or a few extra seconds here and there to certain regions of screeners distributed and once a ripped release is released, they could see which region's version is releasing the screener - from that point they could focus on each that region and do the same thing, but make a variant for each user after they narrow it down - eventually they would know who exactly is sending out these screeners. With the advent of CG video, the movie companies could do a scene say with a table that has a white table cloth, and just put a different pattern, color on each version for each region - they would not have to modify the whole movie, just that pattern or color in one scene.
My point? They're not trying that hard, because they're not 'that' worried, yet. IMHO, if they really had a clue about the global sharing of movies/games/programs/music/literature, etc, they would be shocked, because guess what..... these people who download, still rent movies/goto drive-in's/goto walk-in's and all around still spend money because even dvd's or a proper rip, cannot compare to the big screen for a good movie.
There are hundreds of agencies looking for pirated material though, so people should not be 'too' comfortable sharing/downloading these movies (especially if they are located in the US or an area that obey's US law/has strong copyright laws). Programs like Peerguardian (search google and you'll find it for dl) are good for blocking tcp-only connections to you, when they try to download and verify the file is 'real' but if all they are looking for is a files-size and name, then it wont help either because that's not hard to get.
Be careful out there ya'll.