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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 ... )"
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, aside from viewers like me having just ANOTHER excuse to wait until the DVD comes ou and rent that, rather then deal with tampered film (among the other lame problems of theater viewing, like ticket prices, travel, lines, food, seating, etc)?
Um ... so I think I'm missing somthing. Whats stopping someone from using a diagnostic tool (since DivX is multipass now) from finding points where the compression goes to crap and just cutting out the bad frame? Yeah it's a LITTLE more work but as most compressing jobs take on the order of several hours I don't see why the pirating groups wouldn't do it to save the output quality.
If I ever download a movie, it's so I can watch some of it and decide if it's worth shelling out the $30 to go see. It's about $30 because:$9 for me, $9 for my g/f, and the rest for popcorn/etc.
Can't bring in outside food or drink anymore. Can't even bring in a backpack, either - post 9/11 fears and "anti-piracy measures" gone too far.
I don't care if the movie looks like crap on my computer. I'm not interested in keeping most movies anyway. If I like it, I'll go see it in the theatre or wait for the DVD.
This really isn't a bad thing. Heck, since the MPAA is purposely altering movies, maybe they should go ahead and let us download stuff and leave p2p alone. If the stuff on p2p is of such low-quality, what is the big problem?
Oh, the problem is that we'll watch it and realize that the movie sucks and we won't shell out $$ to go see it.
I wish I could have my money back from John Carpenter's "Vampires" - aside from 1 hot nude chick, that movie was a total waste of time and money.
Interesting, so they are so desparate to do things against piracy that they are willing to lower the quality of their films, not to stop it, mind you, but just to make an act of piracy to some measure less attractive?
This amazes me considering that DVD movie technology, and by extension, digital movie files, naturally involve a measureable loss of detail and quality over, say, watching it in a theater.
It almost sounds like a desparate measure; as if someone out there threw the idea out without taking into consideration how little quality matters when it comes to satisfying the average DVD consumer.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
At the first cue mark, 8 seconds from the end of the reel, you'd roll the second projector and uncap the arc lamp. At the second cue mark, you'd close a shutter on the first projector, open the shutter on the second, and throw the sound feed over the the second.
After you changed over to the other projector, you had to shut off the carbon arc, unload and rewind the film on the first projector, thread it up with the next real, check the carbon arcs, and go back to sleep for 10 minutes.
And yeah, I still always see the cue marks.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Actually I suspect they do (something like) this:
I watched a divx rip of a dvd screener of Bruce Almighty, and where he looks at his beeper, it shows something like 555-1234, but when he reads it out load, he mentions a completely different number. Now, I find it hard to believe this is an error (it's not even a 555-number, and a quick look on imdb.com reveals it's not been noted as a goof, so it's probably only in the screener. Now, if every copy of the screener has a different number in the audio track, it would be easy to spot who leaked it.
I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
As pointed out beautifully in the article you should have read. Now ask yourself - why would they NEED to enlarge them, if not to screw with compression, in the same way the RIAA has done with sound recordings? RIAA put spikes in that don't play badly, but that really screw with attempts to rip to mp3, resulting in pops and cracks. The MPAA is just combining two technologies here.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I researched this a year ago when working out a fake number to use in a book, and finally have the opportunity to share this worthless information...
There have been several times when I have walked out of a theatre thinking "There goes two hours of my life I won't ever get back." I wonder if enough people start sending bills to the movie studios for the time lost sitting through their crappy movies (AND the commercials in the trailers) that they might get the hint?
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
I bought St. Anger just for the free music. I listened to the album once and wasn't too impressed, but the free music on the web site wasn't bad. It's three full concerts from 1994-1998, with the audio taken right from a mixing board. So you don't get the crowd noise (and you really miss it in songs like "Master of Puppets") but the sound quality isn't too bad. And since I paid $13 for the album and got three concerts of good songs thrown in, I think I spent my money well.
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson