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Oscar Screener Leak Traced
EvilLiberalGuy writes "CNN has an article about a leak of a screener copy of 'Something's Gotta Give'. They are reporting that 'visible and hidden markings on the videocassette copy on the Internet identify it as the one sent to Carmine Caridi, a film and television actor'. Apparently this didn't stop the leak from happening in this case, but will it result in actions against Caridi and make others think twice before leaking films to the net?"
>> Caridi and make others think twice before
>> leaking films to the net?"
Can you imagine how many hands this went through before it got to Caridi? Manufacturing? Shipping? Someone had to imprint those special markings? Were the markings modified by the release group from one set to another that now matches the markings that were assigned to Caridi? Innocent until proven guilty here folks.
Carmine Caridi is about 70 years old which doesn't strike me as the typical source for screener releases.
We can tell, the movie sucks just by the name...
This whole hoopla was done deliberately in order to raise awareness of the film and build interest in seeing it.
Where as most of us would have not even noticed such a film, 10% of us will now at least pause and consider such a film!
in Godfather II (Carmine Rosato) and Godfather III (Albert Volpe) according to the IMDB. Coppola must be so embarrassed now.
If it's the FedEX guy who makes a stop on his route to burn a couple of DVD's then repacks them discretely, then this isn't going to stop.
However, if it's the actor, this kind of publicity is going to make many in his industry think twice. Reputation is the only way an actor can make a living, and having this kind of monkey on his back is bound to leave him floating without any job prospects.
Imagine how many other Hollywood types who happen to "release" a screener from time to time notice this article (and future ones like it I'm sure) and realize their careers could be next? It's sure to make them all think twice and likely decide it's not worth the risk.
BTW for the record, while I do believe movies cost too much to make and market, that doesn't justify this kind of blatant piracy.
Wow, that's a horrible point you're trying to make. This kind of thing is exactly why we DO need Palladium. This is a shining example of the MPAA catching the real criminal in the act instead of blaming everyone who happens to buy blank media or downloads porn off the Internet for stealing MPAA member company movies.
Is there something that people sign when they receive a screener which says that if the screener shows up on the net they are somehow liable?
Yes, as the article linked-to says. It also mentions that only 80% of voters actually signed and returned the forms -- but apparently the other 20% got to vote anyway. So the whole thing doesn't really seem to be taken seriously.
I mean, who is to say how the damn thing ended up on the Internet? Who knows what happened while burning the screener, in the mail room at the studios, during the mail delivery process, etc.
Or maybe he just dumped it in his trash after watching it (or before), and someone picked it up from there.
That is a picture of him. He played Det./Former Det. Vince Gotelli (1994-1999) on NYPD Blue (From imdb.com). If you can't place him, but know the series, his character was a night watch detective that retired and became an investigator for insurance companies.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
They can boot him from the academy, not all punishments are handed down by courts.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
He gives his screen copies to his personal assistant when he's done with them. The assistant then copies them to VCD and hands them out to his friends. Who knows where these end up?
I've seen screeners in used video stores. There's a piracy problem, alright, but it's from within the industry.
Actually, watermarking and Palladium are very different. The watermarking that was used to identify the source of the leak doesn't limit the use or the distribution of the movie at all -- it just allows them to determine the source of the leak. Since everyone who receives a pre-release copy of a movie has a signed NDA, it's (IMO) fair for the movie studios to use technology to determine who broke their NDA, and take corrective action afterwards.
Palladium, on the other hand, has the opposite goal -- it's goal is to prevent anyone from being able to do anything that the content creater doesn't want to have happen. So rather than treating people as honest and catching the exceptions, it treats everyone as a potential criminal.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Forget DRM and other schemes that assume that all of us are thieves (guilty, with no chance to prove innocence).
Instead, add signatures (undetectable to the viewer/listener) to allow illegal copies to be tracked back, to make it easier to identify and charge the actual perpetrators.
That way, multimedia formats can be left open, thus respecting the "Fair Use" rights of honest customers.
It is the general practice of the more prominent piracy groups to remove these markings before release. All pirates know that these markings exist and it doesn't make sense to shut down future outlets. If the source gets caught then that means the source dries up. The pirates work very hard at keeping there sources anonymous. This goes for the markings in theatres as well. It is not difficult to remove the offending frames. My guess is that this was released by someone in the middle not really involved in wholesale piracy. I would be curious to see what copy of this movie they are talking about because every major piracy ring has already released it's own copy.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
25 frames per second -> one single frame in a cut between scenes with the details printed out in plain and simple english
(eg cut from a blue-sky scene, make the cut-in frame "almost" identical colors, with the writing a slightly different shade of blue; cue film to frame XYZZ, let human visual system read the result... or put the cut-frame in the middle of just about *any* scene with very rapid movement [eg car-chase, fast-pan over a busy scene])
- You (the viewer) will never notice
- if the method is not publicised, why would anyone LOOK for said frame when pirating it
Anyone who remembers DeCSS understands that "anti-piracy techniques" are not necessarily the stellar heights of advanced rocket-science. Usually anti-piracy technologies are not "sufficiently advanced technology" (ie they're easily distinguishable from magic).Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Simply change the color of some or multiple background items in the movie. Or something simpler. The specific color combination identifies the copy of the movie. The purple vase in this scene, the red shoes in that scene, the green hat in the other scene.. Look it up on the big chart, and voila, you have a name.
No need to make it complicated by relying on frame by frame specificness. Color of the background items will most likely survive a transfer to any given format. And it's not immediately obvious which items you need to look at, unless multiple copies get leaked and someone watches both of them and pays very close attention to them.
And it doesn't have to be color, that's just a simple example to give you an idea of how easy this is. Recolorizing something is pretty trivial to do in post processing anyway, but so are a lot of other things.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I know for a fact that one of the major Hollywood talents has leaked his share of movies.
When they did Star Trek V: The Worst Movie EVAR!!1, the producers were hardcore about protecting the scripts. Each one was coded in various ways (starbase numbers were the most popular for TNG scripts -- I think I was "Starbase 28" or something like that, Patrick was "Starbase 21" or something . . . I know they used our call sheet number in some way.) including stamping the name of the script's legitimate owner in HUGE semi-transparent letters across each page.
Being a super-nerd, I really wanted a copy of that script. Even though their Enterprise was less than 200 yards from my Enterprise, the STV:TWME!!1 producers wouldn't let me have one, so I bought a bootleg at a convention.
You know whose script was bootlegged and photocopied a zillion times? William Fucking Shatner's, that's who. Now, I seriously doubt that WFS wanted his script to get out, since he was the director and everything, but somehow it did.
It's easy to find out who was the rightful owner of a script, screener, or whatever . . . but determining exactly who was responsible for releasing it into the wild is a bit more difficult.
(And the script was as bad as the movie, for those of you keeping score at home.)
How I hate to post anonymously... but gotta protect the innocent.
My girlfriend is a massage therapist. We live in Los Angeles County. Many of her clients are Hollywood People.
For Christmas gifts, several of her regulars gave her screener copies of movies. Evidently, this is common. That's what that big tiff was about when Valenti said that screener copies were no longer going to be released.
But look at the math. There are 5,816 voting members of the Academy. So you figure there are probably on the order of 6,000 screener copies of each film out there. Compare that to the number of copies sold; for argument's sake, let's use the first week DVD sales of Monsters, Inc (7 million) as a baseline for total sales.
So if all the screener copies get given to massage therapists, dog-sitters, etc, you have lost 0.08% of your sales. Obviously, this doesn't take into consideration people digitizing movies and putting 'em online -- this, of course, could be done regardless of screener copies by any shmoe who rents the DVD and rips it.
Shit. I think I had a point, but I don't remember what it was. Whatever. RIAA sux.
You think that's bad, the DVD for the movie "The Ring" contains in its special features the forbidden movie that you watch and kills you 7 days later. The secret of the movie (SPOILER: STOP READING NOW IF YOU WANT TO BE SURPRISED BY THE MOVIE) is that if you copy the video tape and pass it on to someone else, you'll be fine.
So, the basic message is, copy and redistribute this movie or you will die.
P.S. someone posted basically the same comment that was posted before the last time someone got a 5: funny for the joking about the line from pirates of the carribbean.
...but if you were privy to the techniques they used to encode the scripts, wouldn't the other actors have that knowledge too? If so then the script could be modified to make it appear that it came from some other source.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.