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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 ... )"
They've been doing this for years. It's a simple plan: make movies so bad no one will want to copy them.
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The red dots were the best part of some of those movies.
they should blast the audience with emp energy. take out cell phones and cameras alike. no cameras = no piracy. maybe they can even make one for loud annoying kids.
I've been saying for years that the big studios are just flinging shit onto film. Now we have more direct evidence :)
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.
It's just Tyler Durden messing around again. Look closely and you'll find it's a penis.
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)?
And in other news the MPAA will require people to duct tape their eyelids closed before entering the cinema. A MPAA spokesperson was quoted saying:
- "In order to produce decent movies we have to make sure noone sees them".
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.
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.
The article does not say the blotches are used to screw up compression to ruin the film for pirates, as the slashdot summary suggests. Rather, it is just 20-year old "cap code" technology enlarged to be more easily visible in high-compressed pirated copies.
Cap code was "designed to uniquely mark film prints so that pirated copies could be traced to the source." Originially the dots were small enough that compression obscured them out of usability.
I've seen some pirated movies, and in my opinion, a few splotches on a few frames isn't going to screw them up a whole lot. They already tend to look and sound bad.
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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.
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http://www.vcdquality.com/image.php?id=18919
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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
DVDs that you buy in the stores are pressed (instead of burned), so by definition they all end up having the same image.
It's possible for stamped DVDs to include up to 188 bytes of individual data in the Burst Cutting Area. To get an idea of what BCA markings look like, turn over a GameCube disc and look for a fine 1.2mm wide "barcode" that overlaps the inner edge of the data area. Though DVD Video does not use the BCA, the forthcoming DVD HD Video specification may require decoders to read decryption key and serial number information from the BCA and add watermarks to the decoded picture.
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I suppose no one can rightfully argue with you on the point that death is chronic.
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