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MPAA Calls for Ban on Screeners
neoThoth writes "The MPAA is calling for a ban on all screeners for awards ceremonies. They state piracy as the rationale for killing of this tradition of the industry. It's interesting how this is never mentioned in their cries for tougher piracy laws. It's own members are the main source of piracy. 'The Directors, Writers and Screen Actors Guild all get screeners, as does the Golden Globe-selecting Hollywood Foreign Press Association and various critics' groups.'" Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.
Man, this is weak. I always look forward Academy screener time. I get to toss out my old, crappy telesync SVCDs and replace them with pristine DVD-Rs.
they should have the right to influence something like this at a private function like the Oscars. This doesn't strike me as provocative or unscrupulous in and of itself.
Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.
Don't forget the Best Boy!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
You forgot the fluffers
I don't see why the MPAA just doesn't make slight, but easily noticeable differences between each screener. Maybe have a numeric code flash quickly onto the screen occasionally. Like what they do if there's a spy but they don't know who, they give out fake information and see which fake info the enemy acts on. If a certain coded screener gets pirated, then the MPAA knows who to send the lawsuit to.
I can't see David Letterman actually going and PAYING to see all the crap movies that his guests make!
And, while they're at it, why don't they just stop making movies all togather! That way, there'd be no piracy! Or not have awards! Or not release DVDs or VHS! Wouldn't that be great? And you can't trust theater bootlegs either, so no theaters!
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Their fight against piracy should begin at home. You can't sue people randomly if your own members are copying the stuff you send them. When the start sueing people, I will feel ever so slightly less annoyed with them.
SAILING MISHAP
I for one welcome our MPAA non-screening overloards.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.
Whithout entering the merit of piracy itself, isn't this argument a fallacy? Aren't only high-profile actors/diretors/etc rewarded a percentage of the movie income, while all the others receive the same no matter what?
Don't want to enter the issue "but piracing will make movies spend less money" (which I doubt, based on current trend), but I got curious by this part.
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No sig yet. Bear with it.
It's foolish that they're even TALKING about this. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that this means the movie industry's own people are the ones bootlegging movies. "If the people who make the movies are putting them out there, then how's it wrong for me to download?" (rhetorical, exampliary question) Bad, bad, BAD move.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
crappy leaked watermarked screeners add hype to a film making the desire and street buzz even greater with hundreds of kids promoting it and spreading good words making the film a "must see"
or
of course they might oppose it if the movie sucks as they need to rip off
This is not to condone piracy, but how dare the moguls drag in the very folks whom they the moguls abuse the most. Claiming that piracy hurts the crew is a cynical lie.
I never really got how piracy hurt X. There's a large segment of pirating acts that occur largely because the pirates aren't going to purchase something. If they aren't going to buy it, or they aren't going to buy it but still pirate it-- either way, the net income is exactly the same. If consumers can afford something, won't they typically go out of their way to own it? A DVD or CD album is always nicer to have on your shelf than a DVD-R or CD-R copy, after all.
I mean, does anyone really give a damn about the Oscars?
It's the industry celebrating itself in a annual act of masturbation on national TV.
If you disagree, please explain why Kevin Costner has a "Best Director" award but not Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock or Akira Kurosawa?
It might give them some appreciation for jumping movie ticket prices. And don't even get me started on the $5 bucket beverage...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
>Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, >but also camera operators, key grips, makeup >artists, and costumers.
Why be sarcastic about this? Its the truth, isn't it? I thought this is WHAT Slashdot wanted---instead of suing people the MPAA is educating them on why they should buy a DVD instead of copy their friend's.
First the general Slashdot position was "Don't shut down P2P, shut down the criminals." Then it was "Don't shut down the criminals, they don't know any better." Now it is "Don't educate people on WHY a movie costs 8 dollars".
Seems to me Slashdot is becoming more and more a piracy advocacy board. Movies and music cost money. Sorry, that's the way life works. Not everything can use the open-source software model. It takes a tremendous amount of people and resources to make a money.
Seems to me that educating people on why we need to contribute to movies is the best solution for everyone.
Brian
PS The Slashdot crowd is the FIRST ones to complain if a movie looks "cheap" or "fake".
The other screeners are the ones that work at the local movie theater.
Before every movie is played in the theater, the projectionist has to build it and *someone* has to watch every single movie before it's played to make sure the reels aren't put on backwards or in the wrong order or something like that. Anyone who's worked at the movie theater knows what late Thursday nights are like.
Someone needs to give these idiots a clue or two. With only a trivial effort in steganography they could "watermark" each copy uniquely. That way if if some reviewer leaked his copy they'd have evidence to nail him to the wall.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I think the MPAA is totally overacting. How many geeks out there are actually going to substitute a DivX for the cinimatic experience of going to a movie theater?
Personally, I know people who had access to the LOTR DVD screener rip, and downloaded it, but waited to watch it until after the movie came out.
They then proceeded to watch the movie in theaters 3 or 4 times before ever playing the DivX file.
It wasn't until the period between the movie leaving theaters and coming out on DVD that the DivX file came in handy.
These friends not only purchased the regular version DVD when it came out, but also the extended version DVD.
IMO, if the MPAA want's to stop the popularity of DVD Screener rips, they should release the movie in DVD the same week it comes to theaters.
The auto industry doesn't just hurt the "Horse and Buggy" industry, it also hurts the wooden wheel maker.
Doesn't selling DVDs and videos contribute to piracy as well? I mean, if the pirates couldn't buy the DVDs or videos in the first place, it would be harder to copy them. I think they should ban the sale of DVDs ;) And while their at it, the practice of renting them contributes to a ton of piracy. Therefore, Blockbuster and it's smaller competitors should be banned from renting DVDs or videos to consumers.
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perl -e 'print(pack("H*","646176652e7761676e657240676d616
Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers. Actually based on how the movie industry operates...these people were all compensated before the release of the movie. They work in a union and most of them don't do anything on the set anyways....they are just the backup in case the head guy takes an extra coffee break. The only people really getting screwed are the ones that distribute and produce the movies. Distributors make a good percentage of theater profits, having to take care of the end of producing additional prints of the film and then securing contracts with theaters to show them. Producers also make a percentage of ticket sales, but also make a percentage on every DVD/VHS/Any-Future-Media purchase. Theaters make a very small percentage, if at all, and obviously make their money off the concessions. Distributors and Theaters will re-negotiate their deals based on how the movie does during the opening weekend. What is also BS is that typically more than half of the proceeds from movie tickets is made on opening weekend. So in the time it would take a person to video tape it and distribute it, if this person isn't an insider at the movie theater or at the studio/distribution house, it would only affect subsequent weekends which are much less important. Long story short, it doesn't affect any of those people, just the people who are taking a percentage of the profits from DVD sales, i.e. Production Company, Distribution Company, Investors, (sometimes actors).
I wonder if theyll ever create a kind of disc that the media breaks down as the laser passes over it. Aka, one time read or maybe two or three times read.
I'm not sure that it hurts anyone but the movie companies. The movies that are pirated are being made, and therefore, the people who help to make them are still getting paid for their work.
The MPAA isn't going to say "we aren't going to make movies anymore because a few people pirate them." The majority of people are still going to go to the theater or buy the DVD if they want to see a movie. Nobody loses but the companies that make the movies. And even if, say, 50,000 people download a pirated movie instead of going to the theater, at $7 a ticket only $35,000 is lost, some of which goes to the theater. Movie pirating is not mainstream enough to be a major concern at the moment.
Don't forget the Best Boy!
And the gaffer!
My personnal favourite:
One entry found for gaffe.
Main Entry: gaffe
Pronunciation: 'gaf
Function: noun
Etymology: French, gaff, gaffe
Date: 1909
: a social or diplomatic blunder
Oh, to be paid to make diplomatic blunders...
: )
You can't take the sky from me...
So many things wrong with this. First of all, just becasue screeners are a source of piracy, does not mean they are the main source of piracy. Nowhere in the article does it say this, and having seen many "pirated" movies, I can say that very few of them have been screeners. Most seem to be ripped from DVDs or, to a lesser extent, VHS tapes.
Second, the people who receive screeners are not really members of the MPAA. The MPAA is an industry group of major movie studios. The people who get screeners are members of the Academy and Writers, Directors, and Screen Actors Guilds. Yes, the people who leak screeners are technically part of the industry, but they are not members of the MPAA.
Third, what does it matter if these people are in the movie industry? The MPAA has noticed a source of pirated movies over which it potentially has control and has attempted to close up this hole. Would you rather they went after you?
They need to do this. I live in LA, and every friend I know in the MP Industry has loads of free movies they get from screeners. They often have them before it's released in theatres. You can't bitch about people bootlegging your material when you send out a buttload of copies before it's even released just to get votes for an awards show.
It's good discipline on the part of the MPAA. They need a little.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
If there's anything Hollywood fears more than piracy, it's the possibility that their audience might develop the ability to delay gratification.
In the decades since the collapse of the studio system, moviemaking costs have been driven higher and higher for bad reasons - namely, sky-high star salaries and the desperate emphasis on blockbusters.
What can also be measured is how the majors make fewer movies involving fewer actors, and take fewer risks. Monoculture, thy name is Hollywood.
This would be OK if it worked, but it works less and less: other media like the Net and gaming are overtaking movies, and many megabucks stars (e.g., the unusually bland Costner) can't make a profitable movie to save their lives. The frantic, eggs-in-one-basket hunt for opening weekend success - think of all the screeching hype that has replaced honest movie reviewing - also grows from this narrow-minded approach.
But it's not only the movie industry's fortunes that are affected by this model. One of the great means for transmission of ideas and values in society is film. Unlike films of even 30 or 40 years ago, Hollywood's navel-gazing product today rarely has much to say to anybody older than 13 (and when it does, the message is inevitably, "You should be 13 again!"). Independent film, which can sometimes do much more, isn't distributed because all the screens at the gigaplex are showing the corporate product. The festival circuit is literally teeming with hundreds of cool films you'll never see because they are crowded out of contention by, say, a single Gigli, which is one Gigli too many.
Thus do a few unimaginative men make a less interesting world for all of us. Excuse me if I'm not too worried about them.
I've worked with a media company, so I know their solution:
They are starting to use a faint watermark, across the entire picture. The watermark is individual to the tape itself (a number, letter, symbol or combo).
This way, if the tape is pirated... it's easy to trace back.
Each tape is signed out to a particular person. That person previously signed NDA's. Now they have to sign NDA's... and there is something to ensure they don't forget about it.
If the tape is leaked.... they know exactly who to go after. The tape's watermark will lead to the person responsible.
It is not possible, legally or physically, to "steal" data. It is not possible to "pirate" data.
It is guerilla antitrust.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It may be illegal, but it isn't theft.
The MPAA is taking a legally defensible and appropriate action to control the dissemination of data.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Quotes from Thomas Jefferson To Isaac McPherson; Monticello, August 13, 1813.