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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.'"
Most Movies On P2P From Insiders?
Should say: from the duh dept. Umkay?
(fp)
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
When "Hulk" hit the small screen early, Hollywood hit the roof. Two weeks before this summer's film adaptation of the angry green giant opened in theaters in June, copies started showing up on file-sharing networks around the world. The film cost Universal $150 million to make and distribute, but anyone with a fast Internet connection, a big hard drive and plenty of time could see it free.
Hollywood is desperately worried that it will soon face the widespread illegal copying that has bedeviled the music industry -- and that prompted record companies to file lawsuits last week against 261 people accused of illegally distributing copyrighted music online. Piracy of works in digital format, like DVD's or high-definition television is, in theory, so simple that whole movies could be zapped around the globe with a click of a mouse -- a prospect that Jack Valenti, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, has told lawmakers "gives movie producers multiple Maalox moments."
But the early debut of "Hulk" was not the work of the armies of KaZaA-loving college students or cinephile hackers. The copy that made its way to the Internet was an almost-complete working version of the film that had been circulated to an advertising agency as part of the run-up to theatrical release. And "Hulk" is not alone.
According to a new study published by AT&T Labs, the prime source of unauthorized copies of new movies on file-sharing networks appears to be movie industry insiders, not consumers. The study is "the first publicly available assessment of the source of leaks of popular movies," according to its authors.
Nearly 80 percent of some 300 copies of popular movies found by the researchers on online file sharing networks "appeared to have been leaked by industry insiders," and nearly all showed up online before their official consumer DVD release date, suggesting that consumer DVD copying represents a relatively minor factor compared with insider leaks.
"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, said Lorrie Cranor, a researcher at AT&T Labs and lead author of the study.
The production and distribution process provide a better choke point, Ms. Cranor said, than antipiracy measures that could hamstring consumer electronics devices and computer networks. "If you're not going to worry about the insiders, it's kind of pointless to worry about the outsiders," she said.
The insiders might be workers in production or promotion, or even Academy Awards screeners, to whom the studios send thousands of advance copies of DVD's each year. "The movie industry ought to treat everybody within its influence equally, from studio executives and investors, down through movie editors, truck drivers and out to the critics," concluded Ms. Cranor and her coauthors, AT&T Labs researchers Patrick McDaniel, Simon Byers and Dave Kormann, and Eric Cronin of the University of Pennsylvania.
Ken Jacobsen, senior vice president and director of worldwide piracy issues for the motion picture association, said he had not yet seen the report, but added that its conclusions seemed off.
"The industry experience is the awards screeners are a source for piracy," he said, but primarily during the Oscar-judging season. "The industry experience also is, on a rare occasion, a copy gets out of a postproduction house and enters the pirate marketplace. And the industry experience is that a majority of movies enter the pirate marketplace as a result of illegal camcording" in theaters. Digital piracy, he said, is "a serious problem for us now."
Still, large-scale swapping of high quality, full-length films and HDTV programs is out of the reach of all but the most wired consumer b
Google access and a new scientist story on the same thing.
[insiders putting] movies online before theatrical release [..]
Hopefully someone working on Duke Nukem Forever is reading
Trolling is a art,
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?
Offering beta versions of movies vie P2P is a great way "sex up" the product through illegality.
You might even make a buck by suing someone not "in the loop" who does it.
A possibly better way to advertise products might simply be to have better products.
But then, I'm known for my unorthodox ideas.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I wondered how that copy of Gigli could got onto Kazaa, seeing that nobody has seen it in theatres.
A major chanel for movies on P2P are copies sent to academy members by the studios.
Either don't pass them out, put a tighter reign on them, or don't complain when they get on p2p before the dvd release.
In other news fire is hot to touch.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Of course, if one has a sly sense of humor, and was put to the task of compiling a report for the suits in Hollywood as to identifying the leaks in the industry, the title page would have, in big huge letters, "For Your Consideration."
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
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.
Why? They could just have checked VCDQuality and saved alot of time/bandwidth.
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
redundant statement.
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.
Anyone who's taken a trip over to Suprnova can tell you that a good portion of the movies there, no matter how recently they've been released, are of excellent quality. The high quality copying is done a couple ways:
Some of the leaked movies are a copy of the actual film that they show in the theater - they use a machine to convert it to a digital format.
Some of them are leaks of the DVDs that are sent out to awards judges. Every once in a while the words "For Your Consideration" will pop up across the bottom (this is also usually the source of the bootlegs on EBay)
With the ways movies are distributed now, there's really not much that they can do about cutting off the source. Until they move to a completely digital format in theaters will lots of fun DRM, this will continue. (Although even then people will find a way to crack it, I'm sure)
-- Dr. Eldarion --
'and the economic effect is "basically nil -- there's no evidence whatsoever that people are not going to the theater or not buying DVD's or not renting videotapes because of this activity."'
I think this cannot be stressed enough. Yes, people are downloading your movies. No, you aren't losing money. I love owning DVDs, but I also download like mad. My monthly DVD budget doesn't change based on the number of movies I download, but the movies I buy sure does. I can list off a large number of DVDs I've purchased after downloading them first.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
You can read the full report at http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/drm03.html
So many articles on movie/game sharing seem to think that p2p networks are where these start off. They're sadly mistaken. Any article that doesn't dig deep enough to talk about irc or release groups or anything actually related to the scene does not deserve my interest. The copies of movies on kazaa and other p2p nets are taken from the original groups, downsampled and put on kazaa. If they think that p2p applications are to blame then the mpaa needs to contract a real research team.
They watched 285 unauthorized copies of movies! That adds up to $3.7 billion dollars in fines per researcher, and a minimum of 784 years in prison!!!
Sig.i>
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.
Insider releases will always be an issue as long as people outside the profit circle (shipping companies, lower echelion MPAA employees, etc) have pre-release access to the disks/tapes that the movie is on. Either they need to build encryption into the projectors/disks or they need to make the people handling the movie pre-release some how more connected to the profit stream the movie generates.
I don't know how much money it takes to replace the pride and joy an insider gets from seeing the movie out on the net before the 1st screening, but i bet it's less than the amount the MPAA would writeup as a 'loss' if they caught the person involved in the distribution.
Can anyone think of a movie in recent times (past 2 or 3 years) that *wasn't* available on the net before the 1st screening?
/* * pope1 */
Here is a list of the sources that can be used.
Courtesy of http://www.vcdquality.com/
CAM -
A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this wont be possible, so the camera make shake. Also seating placement isn't always idle, and it might be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there's text on the screen, but a lot of times these are left with triangular borders on the top and bottom of the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera, and especially in comedies, laughter can often be heard during the film. Due to these factors picture and sound quality are usually quite poor, but sometimes we're lucky, and the theater will be fairly empty and a fairly clear signal will be heard.
TELESYNC (TS) -
A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses an external audio source (most likely an audio jack in the chair for hard of hearing people). A direct audio source does not ensure a good quality audio source, as a lot of background noise can interfere. A lot of the times a telesync is filmed in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera, giving a better picture quality. Quality ranges drastically, check the sample before downloading the full release. A high percentage of Telesyncs are CAMs that have been mislabeled.
TELECINE (TC) -
A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, although 4:3 telecines have existed. A great example is the JURASSIC PARK 3 TC done last year. TC should not be confused with TimeCode , which is a visible counter on screen throughout the film.
SCREENER (SCR) -
A pre VHS tape, sent to rental stores, and various other places for promotional use. A screener is supplied on a VHS tape, and is usually in a 4:3 (full screen) a/r, although letterboxed screeners are sometimes found. The main draw back is a "ticker" (a message that scrolls past at the bottom of the screen, with the copyright and anti-copy telephone number). Also, if the tape contains any serial numbers, or any other markings that could lead to the source of the tape, these will have to be blocked, usually with a black mark over the section. This is sometimes only for a few seconds, but unfortunately on some copies this will last for the entire film, and some can be quite big. Depending on the equipment used, screener quality can range from excellent if done from a MASTER copy, to very poor if done on an old VHS recorder thru poor capture equipment on a copied tape. Most screeners are transferred to VCD, but a few attempts at SVCD have occurred, some looking better than others.
DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr) -
Same premise as a screener, but transferred off a DVD. Usually letterbox , but without the extras that a DVD retail would contain. The ticker is not usually in the black bars, and will disrupt the viewing. If the ripper has any skill, a DVDscr should be very good. Usually transferred to SVCD or DivX/XviD.
DVDRip -
A copy of the final released DVD. If possible this is released PRE retail (for example, Star Wars episode 2) again, should be excellent quality. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD.
VHSRip -
Transferred off a retail VHS, mainly skating/sports videos and XXX releases.
TVRip -
TV episode that is either from Network (capped using digital cable/satellite boxes are preferable) or PRE-AIR from satellite feeds sending the program around to networks a few days earlier (do not contain "dogs" but sometimes have flickers etc) Some programs such as WWF Raw Is War contain extra parts, and the "dark matches" and camera/commentary tests are included on the rips. PDTV is capped from a digital TV PCI card, generally giving the best results, and groups tend to release in SVCD for these. VCD/SVCD/DivX/XviD rips are all supported by
Um... ok, if you really want to call some dude working at a video store an "industry insider".
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Well, did he delete the file? ;)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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?
...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.
Go to the Movies : $9.50 each person
:)
Buy the DVD : $14.95 - $19.95
Download and burn DVD : ~$200 for burner and $1.5 per disk.
Figure for a family to go see a movie ~$38.50 + concessions...It's way cheaper to buy the DVD. However, when DVD's are > $20 each - it makes more sense to copy them...
The point is, lower the prices on this stuff (movies and music) and people will pay for it. A large portion of the piracy is due to price gouging, IMHO.
Oh, and put out more movies worth seeing!
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.
If the MPAA were serious about stopping these internal leaks, there is a very simple and inexpensive way that they could stop this which would be 100% effective. :-)
Simply make all of their employees watch a stupid preachy commercial exhorting them to respect copyrights. (And stop making us watch it. It was funny the first few times, but the joke is old now.)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
The movie industry doesn't have to worry so much as the music industry for several reasons, mainly because they know not to gouge their customers.
Let's compare the two.
1) Movies come out in theaters for about 8 to 12 dollars, sometimes cheaper. This is as close to a live concert as your going to get. A live concert tickets for a major band is easily $30 dollars. Not to mention having to wait in a really long line, and deal with all the kids. Go to a movie on a Tuesday, sneak in a coke in your pockets or girlfriends purse and your cool.
2) Once out on DVD you get all kinds of extras, and a really high quaility piece of art. CDs are cds, they don't make them with surround sound or anything special. No video of live concerts or anything. And you usually have to pay 18 bucks for them, even when they have been out for 10 years! You can get all those marginally good movies for $10 bucks in those bins.
3) Movies can cast 10s of millions, while CDs could be made for near nothing. Yet they continue to sell for about the same and they just trust the user to want a collection.
I think the music industry could learn a thing or two. I don't really think we need multi-million a show tours. I don't want a million lights and gimics. I just want to see a live band for a decent price. I wish I liked phish, cause then I could get it. Why must I pay $100 bucks for a Radiohead concert. What ever happened to the arena concert?
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.
Yeah, I've been doing alot of research on this topic too. I've been downloading movies online ... but just to check out the quality to see if it was an insider job.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
The worst part is not enough people know he's a troll, so when I down-mod him I usually get marked Unfair.
The problem is that the film industry has lost sight of what they "sell". At the simpliest level, they are selling: a story projected on a huge screen, sound better than you have at home, and a decent seating environment. No foreseeable technology is going to allow the general public to have the "big screen" experience at home in the near future. Therefore, the movie industry has something of unique value.
The problem is that as that by expanding into the home market, they gave up a lot of their uniqueness. When the cost of creating a copy of a movie for home use was high, they could make money because they could do it cheaply. However, as the cost to distribute lower quality formats falls, the "value" the studios offer to home users pluments.
Now, I'm certainly not denying the studio's invested a lot of capital and "own" the movie, but think of it like this: I go see a famous comedian in a club, and remember/write down all his jokes. I can go tell those jokes to my friends, or type them up and email them across the internet. Chances are, even though they are still funny, they are much better when you see the actual comedian perform them.
There is a reason film and music companies are called "media" companies. The idea is that they provide the "medium" which conveys content to end-users. Medium used to be expensive, now it's cheap. Their business model is broken, they spend tons on content and are trying to profit of the medium.
"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."
Sounds like hard work, all those hours downloading and watching movies... I wonder what they do on their spare time ? Maybe they go to meetings, fill out spreadsheets and wait tables.
Reminds me of the Dilbert where Wally *almost* gets the job to "stress test the server by downloading high quality media files from the busiest servers on the 'net". "I was this close to making surfing porn my job" he says. Dilbert replies "I would've had to kill you."
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true