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MPAA Ruins Own Films As Anti-Piracy Measure
WCityMike writes "Steve Kraus, a Chicago film projectionist, noted in this week's Movie Answer Man column that movie studios are quite purposefully putting 'large reddish brown spots that flash in the middle of the picture, usually placed in a light area' in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films. Among recent films that feature these spots are 'Ali,' 'Behind Enemy Lines,' '28 Days Later,' 'Freddy vs. Jason' and 'Underworld.' (I guess they had to destroy the movies in order to save them ... )"
i don't understand why they don't flash something more useful - like a serial number - so that they can identify where and when the illegal copy was made.
--Slashdot readers delight in generalizing the behavior of other Slashdot readers.
I'm sure it couldn't be that hard to edit the "ruined" frames, no? Final Cut Pro anyone?
"It's a simple plan: make movies so bad no one will want to copy them. " ...Or even watch them.
Honestly, I feel some movies are SOOOO bad as to have STOLEN my time. Too bad we can't go after the movie studios for false advertising. I guess if you compress all the good parts of a movie into a 3min "preview", then even the shittiest of movies can look like Oscar nominees.
Unless these spots are particularly difficult to identify, someone need only write a filter to detect them and fill in the offending space, possibly with the average of the previous and next frame.
in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films
WTF? These supersized cap codes have nothing to do with *ruining* copies of the film. Rather they are used to *identify* the person responsible for leaking the film. These films go to the projection houses long before their release dates and are often seen on the internet often before opening day. So obviously some houses have evil employees capturing the movie into computer video formats and leaking them via P2P networks. All the MPAA has to do is download and look at a pirated movie and look for the cap codes and bam, they have ID'ed the projection house responsible for leaking the film. These cap codes have been in film forever - but only recently have they been enlarged enough so that they show up in low resolution computer encoded video.
What the movie industry SHOULD be doing, instead of pissing in the wind, is add value to the movie experience. I personally don't go see a movie in the theatre unless it is a 'Spectacular' movie. One where the experience of seeing it on a Big screen cannot be duplicated by any other means and actually plays and integral part of the film.
They should invest, partner, encourage more theatres like the IMAX franchise. As I understand the Matrix has done very well in those venues and cannot be duplicated in any other environment.
Give the movie goer a REASON to see the movie in a theatre, make us CHOOSE the theatre instead of our living room/computer monitor/etc.
There will always be individuals who would not pay to see a particular movie in a theatre, this is something that cannot be changed (and should not show up on any studio's bottom line). These are the same people who would rather pirate them to just be up on the popular culture of the day.
Make Better Movies, make us WANT to go to the theatre, make us excited enough to go, otherwise they will destroy themselves fighting a trend that will never cease to move forward.
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When I go to see a movie in the theatre, I pay more for the 'experience' then the actual movie. Why would you ruin a potentially great movie like "Return of the King" by watching some crappy DIVX-over-compressed copy of it?
"If it sucks without butter, it still sucks with butter, only creamier." - AC
Let's pretend I sneak a video camera (yes, I know it's more technical, trying to make a point) in my local theater and record the film, then run home, encode it and upload it to the world.
The movie company then downloads the film, see's the spots and tracks it to my theater. Now what? Are they going to shake down the theater owners, untill they install security and metal detectors?
How does this really prevent anything <snip>
That's not the point of the spot system. The whole purpose of the MPAA doing this is to ruin the MPEG compression so that you won't want to upload it to the web. A movie will go from being 1.5 GB to >3GB if the spots are left in the movie.
You won't see the spots because they will only be in one or two frames (which might be illegal in some contries) every few seconds, but when your encoder tries to compress the movie, it will have to create an I-Frame (completely uncompressed) because the frame with a spot in it is sufficiently different from the frame before it that the compression won't save any space. So you will get three I-Frames in a row where you would have only one and two compressed frames.
So yes, you could still get the film videoed and on the web, but with your ADSL or cable modem, it will take signifigantly longer to upload, and likewise much longer to download (thus deterring "piracy").
Remember DIVX? It was the same idea.
Sorry, I will not buy into a format that requires that some central service authorize my media before I can watch the movie. That central service may go down (again, like DIVX) or suddenly decide.. "Hmm, we're going to re-release _The Lion King_. Let'd disable everyone's copies so they're forced to see it in the theater!"
No thanks. Once I buy media, I want to be able to watch it whenever I want. I urge everyone to avoid formats that require any sort of "authorization" for this reason. If no one buys it, it will fail.
They're being amazingly stupid by adding even more annoyances.
Don't forget skyrocketing ticket prices (I paid $9.75 per ticket Saturday night), 20 minutes of adverts and previews, and then the cr@pola movie starts.
Movies only need to look as far as the music industry to see what happens when prices rise, choices lower, and tastes merge. I think they forgot that this is an "art." Now, it's merely a business.
Too bad for us.
I know that most people seem to hate critics (western anti-elitest attitudes and all that.) But, still, I'm amazed people manage to find themselves having paid money for movies they felt were so bad that they actually stole their time.
.. I really don't have much sympathy for folks who end up not liking movies that had wicked-awesome previews. What on earth do you expect? Previews are probably some of the best examples around of how advertising is essentially the art of manipulation.
.. you have to find the critics that represent your tastes before they are worth much) must share part of the responsibility. If you believe, even in the slightest, in supply and demand, the quality of movies coming out is a good indication of the the quality of the demand. People don't know what to look for and refuse to vette their interests against film critics, so the studios can afford to keep pumping out crap so long as its backed by a preview with cutting edge effects and several rounds through focus group testing.
.. they know that currently, they're better off spending their time to secure franchise rights and developing wicked looking previews than actually making a good movie. Like any industry that has become more about the name than the quality of the product, the hollywood movie machine has become better at advertising and market manipulation than it is at producing decent movies.
Thats like figuring out if you should by a Ford by asking a salesguy at a Ford dealership. Figuring out which movies you should see should be done by using independant sources (reviews, friends)
Franchise whores (ie: "I know the movie will suck, but I'm an XYZ fan so I have to see it") and people who have stigmas against film critics (ie, the entire profession, not an individual film critic
Like the manipulative, abusive boyfriend, people keep clinging to this (attractive, albiet) fantasy that the studios are trying to correct their recent track record of abusing or ignoring the minds of the people who pay for the tickets. But they arn't
My test? If the 'summary' of the movie contains pre-existing characters/franchises/brands, or hinges on one plot device, asume its bad until multiple discrete, independant sources suggest otherwise. Don't even bother with the preview; they're fun to watch, but a ludicrous way of determining which movie will contain an additional 157 minutes of quality cinema.
"Old man yells at systemd"